War Without Fronts
The American Experience in Vietnam
Westview Special Studies
The concept of Westview Special Studies is a response to the continuing crisis in academic and informational publishing. Library budgets are being diverted from the purchase of books and used for data banks, computers, micromedia, and other methods of information retrieval. Interlibrary loan structures further reduce the edition sizes required to satisfy the needs of the scholarly community. Economic pressures on university presses and the few private scholarly publishing companies have greatly limited the capacity, of the industry to properly serve the academic and research communities. As a result, many manuscripts dealing with important subjects, often representing the highest level of scholarship, are no longer economically viable publishing projectsor, if accepted for publication, are typically subject to lead times ranging from one to three years.
Westview Special Studies are our practical solution to the problem. As always, the selection criteria include the importance of the subject, the works contribution to scholarship, its insight, originality of thought, and excellence of exposition. We accept manuscripts in camera-ready form, typed, set, or word processed according to specifications laid out in our comprehensive manual, which contains straightforward instructions and sample pages. The responsibility for editing and proofreading lies with the author or sponsoring institution, but our editorial staff is always available to answer questions and provide guidance.
The result is a book printed on acid-free paper and bound in sturdy, library-quality soft covers. We manufacture these books ourselves using equipment that does not require a lengthy make-ready process and that allows us to publish first editions of 300 to 1000 copies and to reprint even smaller quantities as needed. Thus, we can produce Special Studies quickly and can keep even very specialized books in print as long as there is a demand for them.
About the Book and Author
This book is a unique source of information about U.S. troop involvement in South Vietnam from 1965 to 1972. A quantitative analysis of the critical dimensions of the war, it is based on then-classified information collected from the military command in Vietnaminformation that was examined by Robert S. McNamaras systems analysis team and then used by decisionmakers in Washington and Saigon. The author, one of McNamaras key analysts, did the research during the war. He stresses that Vietnam was a war without fronts or battle linesa war different from any that the United States had previously fought. This difference made it difficult for both the public and the military to comprehend. According to Mr. Thayer, the flaws in strategy stemming from this lack of comprehension made U.S. failure in Vietnam inevitable.
Thomas C. Thayer was chief of the operations analysis division in the Advanced Research Project Agencys research and development unit, Vietnam, for over three years. He returned to Washington, D.C., and joined the assistant secretary of defense for systems analysis as head of a team studying intelligence and force effectiveness in Vietnam.
First published 1985 by Westview Press
Published 2019 by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright 1985 by Taylor & Francis
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Thayer, Thomas c.
war without fronts: the American experience in vietnam
(westview special studies in military affairs)
Includes index.
1. Vietnamese Conflict, 19611975. I. Title.
II. series.
DS557.7.T453 1985 959.7043 85-17892
ISBN 13: 978-0-367-21310-7 (hbk)
To those who were permanently disabled in a physical or mental way by serving in the war, with special empathy for anyone who must spend the rest of life in a wheelchair as a result
Contents
PART ONE
BASIC PATTERNS OF THIS WAR WITHOUT FRONTS
PART TWO
THE MAIN FORCE WAR
PART THREE
THE CASUALTY TOLL
PART FOUR
PACIFICATION: THE OTHER WAR
PART FIVE
CIVIL OPERATIONS
PART SIX
A SUMMING UP
Map of South Vietnam
Amid all the renewed attention to the Vietnam War, one dimension remains sadly neglectedsystematic analysis of our actual performance in the field. Rightly or wrongly, we had at peak over 540,000 men in Vietnam and paid a price of 58,000 dead over the eight years between when we intervened directly in 1965 and finally withdrew by end-1972. But all too little attention has been paid to what they didor did notor could or could notaccomplish.
Perhaps the key reason why so little coverage has been given to what actually happened in Vietnam is the sheer difficulty of assessing that atypical conflict in all its complex dimensions. Indeed, almost the first thing that struck me when I became involved with Vietnam was how different it was from most U.S. wartime experience. Compared to World War II or the Korean War, for example, it was so different as hardly to be explicable in conventional military terms. Instead it was a multidimensional politico-military conflict encompassing not only out-of-country bombing and a main force war of more or less conventional forces, but a guerrilla struggle, a clandestine terror campaign, and the like.
Another sharp departure was the relative lack of any battle line which could be drawn on maps, or of the conventional large scale battles and maneuvers by which military victories are usually won. It was, as Thomas Thayer says, a war without fronts.
Also striking was the fragmentation of the Vietnam conflict. It took varied forms in over 10,000 different hamlets, 260 districts, and 44 provinces. The forces engaged ranged from divisions down to individual terrorists or guerrillas. Thus the usual means of assessing what was happening usually proved unsatisfactory, if not misleading. For example, conventional order of battle analysis hardly sufficed to assess the effect of the attrition strategy which our side pursued or the real impact of insurgency war.
This situation spurred a series of efforts, mostly by Americans, to find better ways of analyzing what was going on. It gradually became apparent, particularly to Secretary of Defense McNamara, that by far the most useful insights came from quantitative analysis of the accumulating mass of field data by a handful of civilian and military analysts in the Southeast Asia Division of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Systems Analysis. I thought at the time that their periodic Southeast Asia Reports were the best single source available on how the conflict was really going, (even though on occasion my staff and I vigorously questioned their conclusions). I still think so.
