Vietnam, a small country sitting quietly in South East Asia exploded onto the world scene and became the face of flawed American foreign policy. The United States went around the globe to an area that most of its citizens never heard of and set out to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam as part of its wider containment policy to prevent the spread of communism around the world. In June of 1964, President Lyndon Johnson assigned General William Westmoreland to command the United States Military Assistance Command in Vietnam (MACV), a position he held for four years. This paper will evaluate General William Westmoreland and his strategic actions during his tenure as the MACV commander from 1964 to 1968.
“During World War II, Westmoreland…show more content… Genera Westmoreland’s formal power came from the President appointing him to the position. He was able to use this formal power but also his informal authority to help shape the commands of the Australians and South Koreans when they arrived into the Vietnam area of operations. The Secretary of Defense envisioned his strategy for Vietnam and was implemented and passed on to Westmoreland from the Joint Chiefs; however, when executed they were in complete contrast to one another. Westmoreland believed in the strategy of escalation or attrition warfare and the “President allowed the troop strength to grow to 175,000…and granted him freedom of maneuver as he saw fit. On 7 June 1965, General Westmoreland sent a dispatch to the Joint Chiefs of Staff outlining the grim situation in South Vietnam. General Westmoreland indicated that if President Johnson wanted to maintain an independent South Vietnam, he would have to deploy U.S. forces immediately. “I see no course of action open to us except to reinforce our efforts…show more content… or third country forces as rapidly as is practical during the critical weeks ahead. Additionally, studies must continue and plans developed to deploy even greater forces, when required. Clearly, Westmoreland knew the strategy was not working and used his informal and formal power to indicate to the President that he needed more troops in order to be successful. His attrition warfare strategy and his desire for escalation put him at odds with the KCS and the President, who secretly called his Westmoreland’s strategy, search and destroy. Nobody had a solid strategy for Vietnam during this time and Westmoreland could only implement a pure overwhelming power strategy or as Clausewitz would call it…an annihilation