However, it was not a sudden victory for the DRU. While Nixon promised to withdraw troops, he was still concerned about the postulated Domino Effect theory, as well as the effects that withdrawal form the … would have an American prestige. To sue face, he opted for a policy of Vietnamisation- continuing US involvement only as far as supporting the RUN’s own efforts to win against the North.
Vietnamisation spelled great suffering for the people of the DRU. The great bombing campaign- Linebackers 1 and 2, Rolling Thunder, among others- laid waste to vast tracts of land, while Operation Meuu forced the Ho Chi Miuh trail to move further into hostile Cambodian territory. However, like the Nazi bombing campaigns amongst Britain in World War 2, this only served to strengthen the people’s resolve. Many in the South were suffering as a result as well- to root out the Viet Cong. The US was clearing jungles and displacing populations as well as destroying agriculture. As a result, the Viet Cong general more support from sympathetic villagers. Vietnamisation also failed to holster the ARUN’s strength, as corruption and poor organisation compromised the troops’ morale.
Tet also provoked Nixon’s adoption of a policy of Triangulation in order to isolate the DRU from its Chinese and Soviet support. However, this policy failed, but not as a result of any North Vietnamese action. Rafter, it was the RUN’s president Ngayen Van Thieu who ‘refused to deal with the communists’.
It would not be fair however, to say that the failure of Vietnamisation and Triangulation to defeat the DRU was part if the North’s Strategy to win the war, much less that they were directly caused by Tet. It must be remembered that Tet was a failure, with consequences which, while beneficial to the DRU, were not directly influenced or even intended. The failure of the Americans to capitalise on the situation was solely their own: the bombing campaigns did not take into account the human situation in the DRU and RUN, nor the North’s determination; and Thieu, who promoted the failure of Triangulation, was installed by the US in lien of Ngoh Dinh Diem, to fix its own previous mistakes. In effect, the eventual victory of the DRU was not caused by some predetermined sequence of events with Tet as the catalyst, but rather by lucky coincidence and the US’s series of monumental failures.
Thus, it can be argued that while Tet provided the promise for US withdrawal, it was a failure in and of itself, and only indirectly influenced by the successive failed attempts by the US to bring the war to a favourable end. Such events were certainly not integral parts of the North Vietnamese strategy, but rather fortunate abolitions.