Why did the US military do such a poor job of training South Vietnam's own military during the Vietnam war?
From what I've read (including memoirs by Vietnam-era soldiers and officers), this was an enormous failure on the part of the US military.
South Vietnam's military was a mess by the early 1970's, as America with withdrawing from Vietnam. It did a very poor job of standing up for itself against North Vietnam and the various guerrilla irregulars, it was riddled with drug-abuse and corruption, and it still needed American air support just to prevent total calamity.
Why? Why didn't American soldiers focus hardcore on training up the South Vietnamese military, instead of launching a bunch of useless missions out in the jungle to "take" territory that would be given back anyway?
I don't get it.
Mike2012-01-10T13:27:33Z
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Well, your question is not easy to answer because there are many factors, but I will touch on some of them.
1, the US/RVN strategy was unsound. No matter how well trained soldiers are, if the strategy is bad they will never win. The US could have fought in Vietnam for 100 years the way we were doing it and we would have made zero progress. So in a big way the level of training cannot be measured by how much progress RVN soldiers made.
2, RVN soldiers had a ton of internal problems. Corruption, turn-coats, spies, drug addicts, et cetera. Drugs, alcohol, prostitutes and other contra band were easily available and many soldiers fell to these vices. Every military suffers from these, but especially ARVN did. Viet Cong operators and communist sympathizers were a huge operational problem, the VC or NVA would know critical information through these channels, which of course affects the battle's outcome. Corruption was ride ranging, from organizing crime rings to knowingly selling weapons and equipment to the enemy. The Soviets suffered the same exact problem with the DPRA Army in the 80's.
3, The overall quality of RVN recruits and soldiers. Many were illiterate and/or came from backgrounds that did not complement military service (city boys, rice farmers, village peasants, etc). It is very hard to take a 17 year old who cannot read or write and teach him to be an effective soldier, when all he's done his whole life is pick tea leaves. This problem is compounded by the next point..
4, Language and culture barrier. I can tell you from personal experience that it is very difficult teaching someone who does not understand your language. I worked directly with Iraqi soldiers and even though they were of about-average intelligence, the language barrier made them look like morons. And the culture barrier would often make it worse. Even if you are really trying to make these foreign recruits into good soldiers, they cannot necessarily understand the message. In some other cultures being on time does not carry any weight, they will think nothing of being 25 minutes late for formation or training. And this really does affect the training schedule. Eventually all the US soldiers are frustrated, which is made worse by the next point...
5, Troop rotations. Even the most frustrated trainers eventually find a way to "make it work". But by the time you've come to an understanding with your foreign trainee's, it is time to go home. When I was in Iraq our most productive time period was probably the last 2 months of the deployment, that is when we saw the most progress because we had spend 8 months working out the bugs and kinks. But we, who now understood the language and culture (even on a basic level) were being replaced with a new batch of soldiers who had to start from square one. The same thing happened in Vietnam. Once a group of soldiers got good at their work, it was time to leave.
I don't really want to say "equipment" because pound for pound American equipment is head-and-shoulders above Soviet and ChiCom stuff, but the amount of equipment and the supply lines have a lot to do with it. When most US troops left in 1973, we weren't delivering massive amounts of material anymore. N Vietnam was being supplied by the USSR, China and North Korea. By sheer weight of supplies, a more sound strategy and a more effective force, the NVA soldiers were able to out-fight the ARVN soldiers.
I would say "partial failure" because many ARVN units were in the field woefully unprepared, but many of the failures were outside the reach of the US military.
There was also partial success. Many ARVN units did succeed in the field, and especially Special Forces/LRRP teams were very highly skilled and effective against the North. If the ARVN had not surrendered almost en masse during the last NVA offensive, we may have seen a better picture painted of the ARVN's capabilities.
Edited to respond to Travis: Recruitment wasn't the problem, the problem was quality and adaptability to the life as a soldier in combat. The N Vietnamese Army, ChiCom Army, Cuban Army, et all, suffered from peasants working as soldiers. The NVA was not a force of robotic super-soldiers, they had illiterate farmers in their ranks as well. This issue goes all the way back through history and is a major contributor to the overall effectiveness of a fighting force.
The idea that the ARVN was not a well trained and dedicated Army is a complete misconception. In fact, the ARVN almost always sustained fewer casualties than the Main Force VC or NVA when they went head to head. They decisively won two out of the three major encounters with the NVA (Tet in 1968, the Spring Offensive in 1972, and the Final Offensive in 1975). They might very well have won the Final Offensive in 1975 too if they had been given the logistic and air-support Nixon promised them if the South Vietnamese government would sign the cease-fire in 1973.
The misconception has several sources. First, the American military advisers were trying to judge the ARVN against Western standards. The ARVN was NOT a Western Army (no matter how it was trained and organized). It was a very Asian Army in how it fought according to the principles of Sun Tzu rather than the principals of Von Clausewitz. But, within the framework of the principles of Sun Tzu the ARVN was a fairly competent military force, in fact more competent than the NVA which also fought according to the Art Of War by Sun Tzu.
Second, the American media (which was biased and unfair) took every opportunity it could to criticize the ARVN and praise the NVA. Head to head, in a fair and even fight, the ARVN almost always won. When backed up by the Americans it DID always win. The ARVN destroyed the Main Force VC during the Tet Offensive, won every single battle within 24 hours except the Battle of Hue (which took about a month to win with heavy US backing), and mauled the NVA so badly it could not mount another major offensive for more than four years. With US logistic and air-support the ARVN went head to head with the NVA in an over-the-border invasion in 1972, fought the NVA to a standstill, counterattacked, and was in the process of wiping out the NVA units trapped in South Vietnam one by one forcing Hanoi to sign the cease-fire in 1973.
Even at the very end the ARVN 18th Division (considered one of the worst units in the South Vietnamese Army) went head to head with FIVE North Vietnamese Divisions just outside of Saigon at the Battle of Xuan Loc in 1975 and fought them to a standstill for almost two weeks. They were finally forced to retreat (they were NEVER overrun) by the combination of casualties, being greatly outnumbered, and the concentrating of most of the Communists tanks that had invaded South Vietnam.
The ARVN never did have a great deal of trouble with the Local VC (which were guerrillas). It was the Main Force VC and NVA regulars (which were conventional light infantry forces) that caused the Americans to deploy troops to South Vietnam, not the Viet Cong.
Americans were used to pin down the MF VC and NVA in the rural areas from 1965 to about 1970 allowing the ARVN to occupy and pacify the urban areas (where most of the population lived). This strategy was actually successful and the Tet Offensive in 1968 was an unsuccessful attempt by the Communists to offset the success.
The above statement is not a popular or Politically Correct view, but it is historically accurate.
South Vietnam was captured by North Vietnam and is now communist, thus having a red army. Relations with the US are bad and are good with Russia. Vietnam later experienced more wars known as the Indochina wars.
"The overall quality of RVN recruits and soldiers. Many were illiterate and/or came from backgrounds that did not complement military service (city boys, rice farmers, village peasants, etc). It is very hard to take a 17 year old who cannot read or write and teach him to be an effective soldier, when all he's done his whole life is pick tea leaves."
This is one of the silliest things I've ever heard. The Communists in Cuba, China, and yes even VIETNAM had no problem using local populations as recruits for their armies.
I agree with the above. I am going to add that we, the US, never actually took charge of that war, and we should have. We controlled the military actions, to be sure, but we never took the war in spirit. In that I mean that it WAS a full blown war... it was one country militarily invading one of our allies and our response was to play policeman? That was stupid. It was political follies played out in congress that the soldiers in Vietnam had to eat the consequences for. If we had fought it like a shooting war, which it was, the outcome would have been different. The US military could (and did) decimate NVA forces on the battlefield, hands down. You meet their force with force and then counterattack... all the way into Hanoi, if necessary. You fight it as a war. You force a surrender, and then deal with rebuilding your ally's crippled military.