What do you think?
Rate this book
The United States Army in Vietnam #9
MACV: The Joint Command in the Years of Withdrawal 1968-1973
MACV: The Joint Command in the Years of Withdrawal, 1968-1973, describes the evolution of the command during the period of U.S. disengagement from Vietnam. By late 1967 the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), had grown from a small, temporary advisory and assistance organization into a large, permanent headquarters that directed more than half a million American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines in a wide range of combat and pacification operations. By that same time, however, President Lyndon B. Johnson and his principal advisers had concluded that it was necessary to begin reducing the cost in lives and money of a seemingly stalemated war. The Communist Tet offensive of January-February 1968 confirmed the president in his decision and set the United States upon a path of disengagement that President Richard M. Nixon also followed. During the period covered by this volume, MACV gradually withdrew its American troops from South Vietnam and worked to prepare Saigon's forces to defend their country by their own efforts. The MACV headquarters itself drew down toward reversion to an assistance and advisory group. This volume tells the story of MACV's evolution as an organization and of the command's role in making and implementing American national policy in Southeast Asia during the period of U.S. disengagement from the Vietnam War. It treats both national-level decisions and military operations from the perspective of the theater joint commander.
486 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 5, 2022
Considering how much I enjoyed and learned from the first volume of this duology, I was disappointed by the quality of the second.
In this book, Graham A. Cosmas continues his narrative of the MACV's development, focusing on the years of withdrawal – 1968-1973. Although the result is no less informative, I found the author's conclusions misleading. In the previous volume, he masterfully described the internal intrigues and strategical mistakes that tore the Joint Command and made its job more difficult. However, in this volume, he seems to be vacillating, for some reason, between confronting the fact that the MACV bore a large chunk of the responsibility for the American failure in Vietnam and justifying the Joint Command. It does not become clear why Cosmas feels obliged to absolve the MACV from their blame, but his attempt to do this takes a heavy toll on the insightfulness and accuracy of his analysis.
For instance, he argues that "a combination of circumstances" prevented the Joint Command from achieving more than fleeting success in the Vietnam conflict. If this is the version of events that we choose to believe, though, disasters like Vietnam are bound to repeat themselves over and over again. The MACV did not accidentally stumble into tragedy. They brought it upon themselves with the inadequate strategy that they developed for fighting the Viet Cong. From defoliation to helicopters, to napalm, to search and destroy missions, it was one damaging activity after another, and they had come up with all of them.
It is also surprising that after all the instances of MACV incompetence he chronicles, the author chooses to justify the Joint Command with the argument that while South Vietnam could not be a self-sustaining state, North Vietnam had already developed into a militarily and administratively effective nation by the time the Americans intervened. First of all, Hanoi was no better in governing than were the chaotic military juntas in Saigon. Alternatively ravaged by famines and persecutions, North Vietnam was stable neither economically nor socially. Furthermore, it is important to keep in mind that the majority of the time the American soldiers fought not the North Vietnamese troops, but the National Liberation Front – the South Vietnamese Communist guerrillas – and if they could not prevail over them, they had only their erroneous tactics to blame.
Furthermore, Cosmas suggests that the MACV should have blockaded or invaded North Vietnam instead of fighting guerrillas in the South. This is precisely what military strategist Andrew Krepinevich, Jr. warns against in his brilliant work THE ARMY AND VIETNAM. Not to mention that the Joint Command were doing something similar anyways. They were waiting for the North Vietnamese to launch an attack on South Vietnam and devoted excessive amounts of resources and energy to preparing for it. They should have paid more attention to the Viet Cong's infiltration of the villages, and, most importantly, developed workable strategies for dealing with it instead of decimating the civilian population no less brutally than the Viet Cong men did.
The MACV, along with the policy-makers in Washington, also bear full blame for the fact that after President Lyndon B. Johnson's military escalation in 1965, they did not restate with sufficient clarity the political goals and military objectives of the American government. As becomes clear from Cosmas's narrative, Nixon’s announced war aim, to secure the South Vietnamese people’s right to determine their own political future without outside interference, also required battlefield success more complete than the President's military strategy could deliver. The MACV's biggest mistake was its refusal to accept that Washington was not fighting to win, but was trying to achieve a limbo between victory and loss – without looking forward in time to determine what future this limbo would lead South Vietnam to. This is why the Joint Command, instead of pushing for a low-cost, tolerable military effort, supported an escalation that still fell short of what was needed for decisive victory, and at the same time pretended in their reports that the ineffective strategy was producing positive results.
Contrary to what the author believes, the MACV did not accomplish as much as it could have. While they managed to sustain South Vietnam for longer than it would have survived without them, they did so at an unnecessarily high cost of life and equipment. They relied on superior American technology to get them through the conflict, but fighting with high-tech but without strategy is the same as cooking a meal with good ingredients but without knowing a good recipe – it will result in a mess. They also greatly underestimated the strength of the Viet Cong. Viet Cong battlefield triumphs were usually so demoralizing for the American soldiers because they had been convinced by their superiors that the enemy is substantially weaker than they were, so when this proved not to be the case, it abruptly dawned on them that their situation was more worse than they thought.
One thing that I agree with Cosmas on is that the geography of South Vietnam did not favor the Americans and played a role in the failure of their war effort. As the author describes, South Vietnam was flanked on the west by a 900-mile land border, most of which was covered by jungle and mountains. Cambodia and Laos, the republic’s neighbors on that side, lacked the power to prevent the North Vietnamese from using their frontier regions for military bases and lines of communication. From these cross-border posts, the North Vietnamese could invade South Vietnam at every point from the Demilitarized Zone to the Mekong Delta, presenting Saigon with an almost insoluble defense problem. The same bases provided retreating Communist troops with sanctuaries from American and South Vietnamese ground attacks. Intensive American air strikes and small-unit reconnaissance and raids harassed the bases and supply routes, but did not make them unusable.
MACV left me with mixed feelings. On one hand, the information is well-organized and graspable. On the other hand, I do not agree with the bulk of the author's interpretations of the facts included. This book is worth a read if one disregards the misleading conclusions, although the scope of the work makes the narrative superficial at times. For instance, the account of the Tet Offensive is not as insightful and detailed as I wanted it to be. A background in the significant events of the Vietnam conflict is required from the reader.
In this book, Graham A. Cosmas continues his narrative of the MACV's development, focusing on the years of withdrawal – 1968-1973. Although the result is no less informative, I found the author's conclusions misleading. In the previous volume, he masterfully described the internal intrigues and strategical mistakes that tore the Joint Command and made its job more difficult. However, in this volume, he seems to be vacillating, for some reason, between confronting the fact that the MACV bore a large chunk of the responsibility for the American failure in Vietnam and justifying the Joint Command. It does not become clear why Cosmas feels obliged to absolve the MACV from their blame, but his attempt to do this takes a heavy toll on the insightfulness and accuracy of his analysis.
For instance, he argues that "a combination of circumstances" prevented the Joint Command from achieving more than fleeting success in the Vietnam conflict. If this is the version of events that we choose to believe, though, disasters like Vietnam are bound to repeat themselves over and over again. The MACV did not accidentally stumble into tragedy. They brought it upon themselves with the inadequate strategy that they developed for fighting the Viet Cong. From defoliation to helicopters, to napalm, to search and destroy missions, it was one damaging activity after another, and they had come up with all of them.
It is also surprising that after all the instances of MACV incompetence he chronicles, the author chooses to justify the Joint Command with the argument that while South Vietnam could not be a self-sustaining state, North Vietnam had already developed into a militarily and administratively effective nation by the time the Americans intervened. First of all, Hanoi was no better in governing than were the chaotic military juntas in Saigon. Alternatively ravaged by famines and persecutions, North Vietnam was stable neither economically nor socially. Furthermore, it is important to keep in mind that the majority of the time the American soldiers fought not the North Vietnamese troops, but the National Liberation Front – the South Vietnamese Communist guerrillas – and if they could not prevail over them, they had only their erroneous tactics to blame.
Furthermore, Cosmas suggests that the MACV should have blockaded or invaded North Vietnam instead of fighting guerrillas in the South. This is precisely what military strategist Andrew Krepinevich, Jr. warns against in his brilliant work THE ARMY AND VIETNAM. Not to mention that the Joint Command were doing something similar anyways. They were waiting for the North Vietnamese to launch an attack on South Vietnam and devoted excessive amounts of resources and energy to preparing for it. They should have paid more attention to the Viet Cong's infiltration of the villages, and, most importantly, developed workable strategies for dealing with it instead of decimating the civilian population no less brutally than the Viet Cong men did.
The MACV, along with the policy-makers in Washington, also bear full blame for the fact that after President Lyndon B. Johnson's military escalation in 1965, they did not restate with sufficient clarity the political goals and military objectives of the American government. As becomes clear from Cosmas's narrative, Nixon’s announced war aim, to secure the South Vietnamese people’s right to determine their own political future without outside interference, also required battlefield success more complete than the President's military strategy could deliver. The MACV's biggest mistake was its refusal to accept that Washington was not fighting to win, but was trying to achieve a limbo between victory and loss – without looking forward in time to determine what future this limbo would lead South Vietnam to. This is why the Joint Command, instead of pushing for a low-cost, tolerable military effort, supported an escalation that still fell short of what was needed for decisive victory, and at the same time pretended in their reports that the ineffective strategy was producing positive results.
Contrary to what the author believes, the MACV did not accomplish as much as it could have. While they managed to sustain South Vietnam for longer than it would have survived without them, they did so at an unnecessarily high cost of life and equipment. They relied on superior American technology to get them through the conflict, but fighting with high-tech but without strategy is the same as cooking a meal with good ingredients but without knowing a good recipe – it will result in a mess. They also greatly underestimated the strength of the Viet Cong. Viet Cong battlefield triumphs were usually so demoralizing for the American soldiers because they had been convinced by their superiors that the enemy is substantially weaker than they were, so when this proved not to be the case, it abruptly dawned on them that their situation was more worse than they thought.
One thing that I agree with Cosmas on is that the geography of South Vietnam did not favor the Americans and played a role in the failure of their war effort. As the author describes, South Vietnam was flanked on the west by a 900-mile land border, most of which was covered by jungle and mountains. Cambodia and Laos, the republic’s neighbors on that side, lacked the power to prevent the North Vietnamese from using their frontier regions for military bases and lines of communication. From these cross-border posts, the North Vietnamese could invade South Vietnam at every point from the Demilitarized Zone to the Mekong Delta, presenting Saigon with an almost insoluble defense problem. The same bases provided retreating Communist troops with sanctuaries from American and South Vietnamese ground attacks. Intensive American air strikes and small-unit reconnaissance and raids harassed the bases and supply routes, but did not make them unusable.
MACV left me with mixed feelings. On one hand, the information is well-organized and graspable. On the other hand, I do not agree with the bulk of the author's interpretations of the facts included. This book is worth a read if one disregards the misleading conclusions, although the scope of the work makes the narrative superficial at times. For instance, the account of the Tet Offensive is not as insightful and detailed as I wanted it to be. A background in the significant events of the Vietnam conflict is required from the reader.
Displaying 1 of 1 review