Vietnam Escalation and Global Army Readiness, 1965-1968
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ABSTRACT DEMPSEY, CHRISTOPHER MARTIN. The Other Side of the Story: Vietnam Escalation and Global Army Readiness, 1965-1968. (Under the direction of Nancy Mitchell.) From 1965-1968, the United States Army bore the brunt of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s military escalation of the Vietnam War, while attempting to maintain its Cold War deterrent responsibilities around the globe. While scholars have exhaustively researched the varying aspects of the former, fewer have studied the implications of these decisions on the latter. This paper examines the devastating effects of escalation in Southeast Asia on the army’s ability to remain ready to fight another war should one have arisen anywhere else in the world. Specifically, it traces the downward trend of army readiness as a result of Johnson’s decision not to call up the reserves until 1968, paired with the rapid expansion of the army from 1 million soldiers in 1965 to 1.5 million in 1968. © Copyright 2009 by Christopher Martin Dempsey All Rights Reserved The Other Side of the Story: Vietnam Escalation and Global Army Readiness, 1965-1968 by Christopher Martin Dempsey A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts History Raleigh, North Carolina 2009 APPROVED BY: ________________________ ________________________ Joseph Caddell Richard Kohn ________________________ Nancy Mitchell Chair of Advisory Committee BIOGRAPHY Christopher Dempsey is an active duty officer in the United States Army. He received his Bachelor’s Degree from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 2000, and upon graduating was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant into the Armor branch. He has served in the army for nine years, including a tour of duty in Iraq from 2005-2006. In the fall of 2007, he began work on his Master’s Degree at North Carolina State University, and plans to complete his studies in May 2009, after which he will become an instructor at West Point in the military history division of the school’s history program. He is married and has two daughters. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are far more individuals to thank than the confines of this document allow. Thanks first to the instructors at three different institutions that have guided my training in the historical profession. From North Carolina State University: Craig Friend, Susanna Lee, and Joseph Hobbs. From Duke University: Alex Roland and Peter Feaver. From UNC-Chapel Hill: Wayne Lee and Joseph Glatthaar. Thanks also to the individuals that greatly assisted my research for this project. Specifically, Lieutenant Colonel Gregory Daddis while working on his PhD from UNC-Chapel Hill; David Keough from the Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks, PA; William Donnelly from the Center of Military History; and Rich Boylan from National Archives II in College Park, MD. Thanks especially to my committee members: Joseph Caddell (NC State), who offered initial guidance, a wealth of expertise, and a passion for military history; and Richard Kohn (UNC-Chapel Hill), who offered direction, structure, feedback, and instruction in the profession of military history. Special thanks to my thesis advisor, Nancy Mitchell. She taught me how to read and write as a historian, how to teach the subject, and how to assist in the development of a project like this. Without her help, this paper simply would not exist in its final form. Lastly, thanks to my wife Julie and my daughters, Kayla and Mackenna, for giving me the time and support I needed to complete this work. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................ 1 CHAPTER 1 – ‘YOU CAN’T GET THERE FROM HERE’.............................................. 16 Merging the Reserves............................................................................................... 22 Further Reductions................................................................................................... 32 Readiness Hearings.................................................................................................. 36 ‘You Can’t Get There From Here’........................................................................... 43 ‘Out of Forces in this Country’................................................................................ 49 CHAPTER 2 – ‘PERILOUS INSUFFICIENCY’................................................................ 51 Baldwin vs. McNamara............................................................................................ 54 Not Combat Ready................................................................................................... 60 Readiness Revisited.................................................................................................. 63 Rusk, McNamara, and The World’s Policemen....................................................... 68 Worldwide Military Posture..................................................................................... 72 A ‘Shocking’ Decrease............................................................................................. 75 CHAPTER 3 – A ‘YEAR OF ADJUSTMENT’.................................................................. 77 The Reserves’ Changing Mission............................................................................. 80 An Active DMZ........................................................................................................ 83 A Downward Trend in Europe................................................................................. 89 Reinforcements......................................................................................................... 92 Domestic Deployment.............................................................................................. 94 Toward the Brink...................................................................................................... 99 CHAPTER 4 – ‘A CONCERTED, WORLD-WIDE COMMUNIST EFFORT’................ 101 Flashpoint in Korea.................................................................................................. 104 Too Little, Too Late................................................................................................. 109 A Final Report.......................................................................................................... 114 The Impact of Vietnam............................................................................................ 116 Czech Invasion......................................................................................................... 119 Resignation.............................................................................................................. 122 CONCLUSION – FROM CONTAINMENT TO THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR.... 124 iv Introduction “Combat readiness matters even if conflict does not result in war, because it can affect deterrence, calculations of risk, political maneuvering, brinkmanship, and thereby the diplomatic outcome.” – Richard K. Betts, Military Readiness This is a story of how limited war affects the entire army. Specifically, it is the story of how gradual escalation in Vietnam from 1965-1968 affected the United States Army’s ability to maintain adequate levels of combat readiness around the world. Although the army’s primary mission throughout the Cold War was the deterrence of war in Europe, the bipolar U.S.-Soviet environment of the period required the United States to maintain readily deployable conventional forces to respond to aggression elsewhere. Because of the vast resource requirements diverted to the American effort in Southeast Asia, however, this goal was unattainable, and the buildup in Vietnam left the army’s global forces unready for conflict anywhere else.1 There is a certain subtlety to this argument that must be addressed. It involves the small but important difference between the terms “preparedness” and “readiness.” Preparedness indicates a psychological state of mind for an event at some point in the future, as well as an implementation of the structures needed to accomplish a given task. For example, the United States Army was certainly “prepared” for war outside of Southeast Asia, as it was willing to fulfill any mission its civilian counterparts deemed necessary for national 1 Most historians, when studying the concept of deterrence, have concentrated on nuclear rather than conventional deterrence. As this paper deals with the latter, the best works on the subject include James Reed Golden, Asa A. Clark, and Bruce E. Arlingaus, Conventional Deterrence: Alternatives for European Defense (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1984); John R. Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983); and Robert B. Killebrew, Conventional Defense and Total Deterrence: Assessing NATO’s Strategic Options (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1986). 1 security, and it had the plans, units, doctrines, and strategies in place for contingencies around the world. Readiness, on the other hand, indicates a present-tense ability to accomplish an imminent mission. Though the army may have been willing to fulfill any assigned mission and may have had the structures in place with which to accomplish a given task, it may simply not have had the capacity (in terms of manpower, equipment, and training) to do so. This, then, is the argument: that while the army had prepared itself psychologically and structurally for