Giap obituary: winner of three small wars

[Bill Moore]

Sometimes it takes some time for the real historical account to surface (especially those associated with a Communist regime and a sympathetic Western news-press). That said, there are those who maintain now, as more records and accounts are surfacing, that Giap was on the outs with the North Vietnam government through much of the US involvement. Any sources or comments on this? Remember that Communist regimes are quick to lionize and slow to discredit. Tet '68 is a good place to start in this type of research and work back from there.

Through the years the biggest criticism I heard about Giap was his disregard for his people's lives. His unconventional campaigns may have been skillfully executed (not sure how much influence he had those tactics), but the human wave attacks on fortified positions (repeatedly) were called into question. I suppose doing that a couple of times would demonstrate their will to the world which is important, but if (this is a big if) we continued to fight it would have eventually depleted his conventional capacity to wage major combat operations. However it didn't get to that point, so whether through deliberate strategy based on sound analysis or sheer luck he prevailed.

Some thoughts from various authors on Giap follow:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...guyen-giap.htm

Giap's nearly fatal mistake in the anti-French war was the too-early challenge of French forces in open battles during the first half of 1951. In three battles, the Viet-minh were defeated each time and Giap almost lost his position as Viet-minh commander in chief. The Viet-minh immediately went back to stage II - smaller battles on their own terms in scattered areas.

The basis of this fame is Giap's leadership of the Viet Minh in their victory over the French in the Indochina War. Giap's fame as a tactician and strategist were exaggerated, that neither his tactics nor his strategies were new or imaginative. Giap's greatest ability was an organizer of the masses in a total effort behind the war. Giap successfully combined the roles of civil organizer, politician and battlefield leader in achieving his victory over the French.

I have seen several comments like the one above, and it illustrates that those who conduct this type of analysis don't understand that as a strategist in this type of war his ability to mobilize the masses, sustain their will to fight, and remaining focused on the political objective was decisive (not the tactics).

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a141243.pdf

This particular paper claims Giap offered nothing new as a strategist or tactician, which in my view demonstrates the flawed understanding of war that many U.S. Army officers have due to their education and training beingfocused on tactics and campaigning. While this paper in many ways praises Giap's achievements, I think the author misses that Giap designed a holistic strategy (not simply a military strategy) to achieve their strategic political objectives. Winning battles was not his focus, so perhaps his brilliance was his ability to keep his focus on the desired strategic aim, while his Western adversaries on the other handwere very much focused on winning battles, which may imply no one in the U.S. sidewas looking at the larger picture. I'll go a step further and argue that our COIN doctrine as practiced simply reinforces this approach.

ABSTRACT (Continued) drawn from the research are that Giap's fame as a tactician and strategist were exaggerated, that neither his tactics nor his strategies were new or imaginative. Giap's greatest ability was as an organizer of the masses in a total effort behind the war. Giap successfully combined the roles of civil organizer, politician and battlefield leader in achieving his victory over the French.

Break, jump to the summary:

Although Giap does not rank with Napoleon or Rommel as either a strategist or tactician, he should be remembered for his ability to simultaneously combine the roles of organizer, politician, and military leader while creating and leading his army. Few other generals have played such all encompassing roles in the history of warfare, especially modern warfare.

This is the key in my view, and unfortunately I have little hope in the U.S.'s ability to transform its approach to where it can truly combine the political and military into one coherent strategy.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/peoplescentu...ranscript.html

This PBS interview with Giap is interesting.

Q: What was new about the idea of the "People's War"?

Giap: It was a war for the people by the people. FOR the people because the war's goals are the people's goals -- goals such as independence, a unified country, and the happiness of its people.... And BY the people -- well that means ordinary people -- not just the army but all people.

We know it's the human factor, and not material resources, which decide the outcome of war. That's why our people's war, led by Ho Chi Minh, was on such a large scale. It took in the whole population.

Q: Was Dien Bin Phu an easy victory because the French made so many mistakes?

For us, the problem was that Navarre wanted to retain the initiative whereas we wanted to seize it. There is a contradiction that exists in a war of aggression whereby you have to disperse your forces to occupy a territory but rally your mobile forces for offensive action. We took advantage of this contradiction and forced Navarre to disperse his forces.

Q: Was your Tet offensive in 1968 a failure?

Giap: As far as we're concerned, there's no such thing as a purely military strategy. So it would be wrong to speak of Tet in purely military terms. The offensive was three things at the same time: military, political, and diplomatic. The goal of the war was de-escalation. We were looking to de-escalate the war. Thus, it would have been impossible to separate our political strategy from our military strategy. The truth is that we saw things in their entirety and knew that in the end, we had to de-escalate the war. At that point, the goal of the offensive was to try to de-escalate the war.