Discuss the effectiveness of US tactics such as 'defoliation' and 'search and destroy'

by joewantstolearn (student)

During the Vietnam War, the tactics most commonly used and with the most notoriety today are, ‘search and destroy’ and ‘defoliation’. With the realization that bombing would not be enough to triumph over a guerrilla army, the US commander General Westmoreland created a strategy of ‘search and destroy’. From heavily defended US bases in the south of the country, US and South Vietnamese forces would locate enemy forces and destroy both them and occasionally their base areas in raids from helicopters.

Defoliation on the other hand was a way to prevent the enemy any cover or subsistence in the jungle terrain. American forces used an array of chemical herbicides: fast-acting Agent Blue was the chosen herbicide for crops, while Agent Orange was the favoured herbicide for forested areas. So with all the effort put into these tactics just how effective were they? To determine the effectiveness of these US tactics I have created two success criteria: did the tactic cause change that helped the war effort? And what were the drawbacks?

For historian Christian Appy, “search and destroy was the principal tactic; and the enemy body count was the primary measure of progress” [1] and with that in mind, the search and destroy tactic appears effective right off the bat. According to US reports in one of the search and destroy missions named Operation Junction City “nearly 3,000 NLF died as compared to 282 allied fatalities” [2].

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While those figures supposedly paint a victorious image for the US, it is important to note that army and marine officers were conscious that confirmed kills from successful missions meant that promotions were more likely, in fact “one study revealed that American commanders exaggerated body counts by 100 percent” [1] so how much change could the tactic truly have brought?

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Furthermore, while some search and destroy missions were successful with the US forces supposedly winning the body count battle, the tactic failed to have an overall lasting impact on the war. The NLF (National Liberation Front) was able to occasionally outwit the US forces. In the largest search and destroy operation of the entire Vietnam War around “80 US and ARVN battalions … failed to destroy the remaining enemy forces before they could flee to their Cambodian sanctuaries” [2]. While the 9th Division of the NLF were able to recoup and reclaim the area Operation Junction City took place.

Ideally, a war is supposed to be between armies and military forces with little civilian impact however, civilian casualties were excessively high in search and destroy missions. The most well-known example for this was the My Lai massacre of March 16th 1968. US troops who were part of Task Force Barker (the codename for a search and destroy mission), murdered over 350 unarmed women and children. Actions like this “encouraged even greater peasant support for the Vietcong in the countryside” [5] this being of more detriment to the allied forces.

Additionally, with the Vietnam War being the first televised war, the public quickly became aware of such tragedies as the My Lai massacre. This meant the search and destroy tactic had a negating impact on the Vietnam War as the American public were outraged by the actions of the US troops and joined the protest movement, which is one of the main reasons the US left Vietnam. This displays how the US tactic of search and destroy was ineffective as it suffered such a major drawback with innocent villages such as My Lai being mistaken for NLF strongholds and innocent villagers and civilians being massacred. Indeed, “for every Viet Cong weapon captured by search-and-destroy, there was a body count of six. Many of these were innocent civilians.”[3]

Defoliation was an important tactic in the fight against the NLF. President Kennedy, who initially directed the defoliation program, Operation Ranch Hand thought “annihilation of the natural environment and food supplies” [5] would reduce NLF mobility. The defoliation tactic succeeded in that it achieved its main aim of defoliating rural and forested areas and restricting the Vietcong access to food and cover. In total “5 million acres of forest” [6] was defoliated and “500,000 acres of cropland destroyed” [6] meaning rural support was likely denied to the guerrillas, helping the war effort.

However, the effectiveness of the defoliation tactic is hindered by a major drawback the effect it had on the civilians and the environment. With “over 19 million gallons of chemical poisons over six million acres of land in South Vietnam” [2] – 11 million of which was Agent Orange – dropped across Vietnam during the war there were serious long-lasting effects. The Vietnamese people suffered numerous health effects.

According to the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to Agent Orange, resulting in 400,000 people being killed or maimed, and 500,000 children born with birth defects” [7]. There were also ecological effects with dioxins from Agent Orange settling in the soil and entering the eco-system. This inhibited the effectiveness of the defoliation tactic, as the damage caused by the US was essentially a free propaganda and recruitment source in aid of the NLF.

In conclusion, though the US were able to carry out successful search and destroy missions, the body count is questionable and in some instances the Vietcong where able to regroup and returned after the US had left captured areas abating the change produced by the tactic. The tactic also had severe drawbacks in that civilians were accidently and sometimes purposefully killed, leading the Vietnamese people to resent the allied forces and support the NLF and was therefore not greatly effective.

On the other hand, defoliation was more effective as it hindered the NLF food and coverage in forested areas and brought around a greater level of change than the search and destroy tactic. However, it too suffered drawbacks in the effect it had on the civilians and the country of Vietnam, so the tactic was not as effective because of the damage it caused destroying the very people the tactic was supposed to be protecting.

Bibliography

Vietnam: The War the U.S. Lost by Joe Allen
Essential Histories – The Vietnam War 1956-1975 by Andrew Wiest (2002)
GCSE Modern World History – Edexcel Unit 4 – Controlled Assessment CA5: Vietnam, 1960 – 75