ジョンソン大統領の派兵後のベトナム戦略 -地上米軍派遣発表 (一九六五・七) よりテト攻撃 (六八・一) まで-
現代史としてのベトナム戦争
2002 年 2002 巻 130 号 p. 63-75,L8
詳細
2002 年 2002 巻 130 号 p. 63-75,L8
After massive U. S. Army forces arrived in the summer of 1965, the Vietnam War became the American War perfectly. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the U. S. made its strategic decisions between July 1965 and the end of January 1968 when the Vietcong's Tet (old calendar's New Year in Vietnamese language) attacks occurred.
Since Christmas Day of 1965, the U. S. had continued the pause (tentative stop of bombing against North Vietnam) for about one month. The message by this act was that the U. S. would continue the pause if Hanoi did stop its support to guerrillas in South Vietnam, but would escalate bombings if Hanoi did not accept the U. S. proposal. Secretary of Defense McNamara had in mind that the U. S. was ready to try the pause again one year later.
In 1966, the Vietnam War became a stalmate and was struck in the quagmire for the U. S.. In the spring, President Johnson replaced McGeorge Bundy, who shared his opinion with McNamara, by Walt Rostow, whose opinion was close to the military, as the Assistant for National Security Affairs. Between June and September, U. S. kept the bombing against the POL (Petroleum, oil, lubricants) storages which were located in the northern part of the 20 degree line in North Vietnam. The POL bombing was not successful in itself. However, it could remove obstacles in the bombings of Hanoi and Haiphong.
At the end of 1966, McNamara proposed another bombing pause in order to start negotiations for peace. President Johnson, however, rejected that proposal. Instead, Johnson strongly supported Rostow's “Winning Strategy” plan in 1967. The ultimate goal of the plan was to make Johnson win the presidential election of 1968. Rostow insisted that to achieve the goal, it was indispensable to keep a winning atmosphere in the Vietnam War.
The words “winning atmosphere” did necessarily mean a victory. It was enough to show that the enemy would never win and that a victory of the U. S. would come in the near future. In that sense, we may say that the “Winning Strategy” was a defensive strategy.
Based on the strategy, President Johnson allocated most ground forces near the border where they anticipated that the enemy's main forces would attack. He then declared “We can see the light at the end of the tunnel”. However, in the last day of January (Tet days) 1968, the enemy made unanticipated attacks not to the border areas but to almost all cities in South Vietnam.
