The Great Strategic Error

To start with, let us change the question from “Who lost Indochina?” to another question: “How did the reality of the war in Indochina differ from our perception of it?” This is the key question in one of history’s most complexly multifaceted and ambiguous wars.

Ambiguity is the key word—the key to the war, to North Vietnam’s success and to our difficulties, particularly during the period of our initial commitment and military buildup running to the Tet offensive of February 1968. Communist strategy was based on preservation of a screen of ambiguity beneath which they could operate at their own level of capability without presenting a clear target to our infinitely greater and more sophisticated capabilities. The screen was briefly withdrawn during the Tet offensive, then quickly restored in the wake of Hanoi’s military defeat and political victory, and most recently withdrawn again for the final North Vietnamese victory. We recognized the various aspects of this ambiguity as empirical data and in some cases took vigorous (if not wholly effective) action. But we did not act on a perception of the whole fabric of ambiguity as the means by which the Communist side forced the war into a pattern which channeled our efforts into directions which Hanoi found tolerable (although hurtful), while not depriving it of its own ability to operate on the ground at its own level of military capability.

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Norman B. Hannah

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To start with, let us change the question from “Who lost Indochina?” to another question: “How did the reality of the war in Indochina differ from our perception of it?” This is the key question in one of history’s most complexly multifaceted and ambiguous wars.

Ambiguity is the key word—the key to the war, to North Vietnam’s success and to our difficulties, particularly during the period of our initial commitment and military buildup running to the Tet offensive of February 1968. Communist strategy was based on preservation of a screen of ambiguity beneath which they could operate at their own level of capability without presenting a clear target to our infinitely greater and more sophisticated capabilities. The screen was briefly withdrawn during the Tet offensive, then quickly restored in the wake of Hanoi’s military defeat and political victory, and most recently withdrawn again for the final North Vietnamese victory. We recognized the various aspects of this ambiguity as empirical data and in some cases took vigorous (if not wholly effective) action. But we did not act on a perception of the whole fabric of ambiguity as the means by which the Communist side forced the war into a pattern which channeled our efforts into directions which Hanoi found tolerable (although hurtful), while not depriving it of its own ability to operate on the ground at its own level of military capability.