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June 18, 2025

The Enduring Lessons of Vietnam: Implications for US Strategy and Policy

Martin G. Clemis
©2025 Martin G. Clemis

ABSTRACT: This article argues that the Vietnam War is a useful case study for assessing an enduring flaw in America’s approach to war. The United States suffered defeat in Vietnam because it privileged military strength and the pursuit of victory on the battlefield over other elements of national power. As in Vietnam, the wars America will likely face in the future will blend conventional and unconventional methods and use a carefully calibrated mixture of military and non-military means. The United States must situate its demonstrated strengths in conventional war fighting within a holistic framework or face similar strategic outcomes.

Keywords: Vietnam, strategy, Vietnam Revolutionary War, hybrid warfare, gray zone conflict

 

Moving beyond the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Global War on Terror, the United States and its military are reorienting toward great power competition and multidomain combat operations. Many policymakers and practitioners believe this reorientation is a sound strategy given the current state of global politics and that most of America’s adversaries possess sizeable standing militaries. Some defense analysts, however, consider the nation’s focus on conventional warfare foolhardy because, in their estimation, large conventional wars are relics of the past. The truth, however, lies somewhere in between. History suggests that future wars will likely require the United States to blend conventional and unconventional methods and use a carefully calibrated mixture of military and nonmilitary means. To date, America’s preferred method of waging war has revolved around technology, firepower, and large-scale combat operations, but in the future, this approach will likely prove inadequate.1

To achieve its national security policy objectives, the United States must situate its strengths in conventional warfighting within a holistic framework that leverages and synthesizes every element of national power: military, political, economic, diplomatic, and informational. The American experience in Vietnam is a useful case study that offers valuable insights and lessons for US policymakers and practitioners to prepare for future wars.

The United States suffered defeat in the Vietnam War despite possessing overwhelming military and economic power. How did the world’s mightiest superpower, with arguably the most tactically and operationally proficient military, fail to achieve its political goals or defeat a grossly overmatched adversary? The answer lies within the nature of war: to impose our will on the enemy through force. According to Clausewitz, war involves reciprocal exchange, a mutual interaction between the belligerent states, their populations, and their militaries. He argued, “War is not the action of a living force upon a lifeless mass . . . but always the collision of two living forces.” Nor is it, Clausewitz later noted, “an exercise of the will directed at inanimate matter, as is the case with the mechanical arts, or at matter which is animate but passive and yielding, as is the case with the human mind and emotions in the fine arts. In war, the will is directed at an animate object that reacts.” What this means, in modern parlance, is that the enemy gets a vote. Or as Confederate general George Pickett responded when asked by reporters why his fateful and eponymous charge failed at the Battle of Gettysburg, “Gentlemen, I have always thought the Yankees had something to do with it.”2

The United States’ humiliating defeat at the hands of a smaller and weaker adversary stems not only from the reciprocal quintessence of war but also from what Clausewitz called its subjective nature—the means each side uses to achieve desired political ends. Strategy matters, and in the case of the Vietnam War, the ends, ways, and means each belligerent employed mattered greatly. Strategy does not determine victory or defeat on its own. Rather, a host of contextual and circumstantial factors, many of them outside the control of policymakers and practitioners, also play a role in shaping which side wins. Popular support, international and domestic politics, bureaucratic inefficiency, human imperfections, insufficient knowledge, fog and friction, chance, and the enemy’s actions all play a role. History has shown that there are no guarantees in war and that good strategy does not always produce victory. Nonetheless, a sound strategy—one that is flexible, contextually grounded, attuned to underlying dynamics (social, cultural, political, economic, and military), and cognizant of war’s complex nature and the need to synthesize all its facets—can frustrate an adversary’s designs and achieve victory. Nowhere was this truer than during the Vietnam War.3

Vietnamese Revolutionary War: Theory and Practice

The Vietnam War branded the “Anti-American Resistance for National Salvation” by Hanoi and its southern appendage, the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF), generated a complex and ever-evolving mixture of large-scale combat operations, guerrilla warfare, diplomacy, information operations, and mass politics. Communist strategy was deliberately complex and reflected a comprehensive understanding of war’s complicated nature and the need to use every element of state power—political, moral, psychological, and military. The strategy they developed, calibrated to address specific enemies, led to victory in three separate conflicts: one against the French (1946–54), another against the United States and the government of South Vietnam (1955–75), and yet another against the People’s Republic of China (1979). Hanoi’s strategic approach resembled what Mao Zedong called “revolutionary war” or “people’s war,” a method for overthrowing a weak or failing state and seizing power by nesting warfare, politics, and diplomacy within a framework for protracted conflict.4

Many believed Mao’s prescriptions for war contained universal principles that, while rooted in a set of circumstances unique to China, provided a blueprint other revolutionary movements could follow if they properly situated these principles within the distinct conditions of their own societies. China proclaimed that its wars against Japan and the Kuomintang demonstrated how a relatively weak and undeveloped revolutionary movement could defeat a much stronger and better-resourced enemy. Such claims were, in many ways, inflated, ahistorical, and dismissive of outside factors and contingencies that facilitated the Chinese Communist Party’s rise to power. Nonetheless, Mao’s ideas proved highly seductive to aspiring revolutionaries around the world.

In 1965, the Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Lin Piao, argued that Mao’s theory of revolutionary people’s war was transcendent, a template revolutionaries could apply in places other than China. Mao’s theory of creating rural revolutionary bases to encircle cities, Piao observed, was “of outstanding and universal practical importance to the present revolutionary struggles of all the oppressed nations and peoples, and particularly for the revolutionary struggles of the oppressed nations and peoples in Asia, Africa, and Latin America against imperialism and its lackeys.” Piao’s claim that Mao’s approach held “universal practical importance” was boastful but accurate.5

Following the end of World War II, the trend toward Maoist methods marked a global paradigm shift. Some argued that the world had moved from the age “of interstate industrial war” to an era of “war amongst the people.” Prompted by the advent of atomic weapons, decolonization, and Cold War competition in the underdeveloped nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, this shift was characterized by the global proliferation of Marxist-inspired revolutions.6

Certainly, the use of guerrilla warfare, terrorism, propaganda, political action, civil agitation, and strategies of erosion or attrition have been around for centuries. It was not until the Cold War, however, that ambitious revolutionaries fused these elements within a unique strategic framework. Ingenuity, some believe, lies not in originality but in the capacity to merge existing modes, methods, or knowledge. Whether science, mathematics, or the arts, innovation lies in the ability to take what is already known or established, to recognize relationships and connections that no one has yet noticed, and meld them into a new, coherent, and comprehensive whole. Douglas Pike, one of the leading analysts of Vietnamese communism during the war, believed Hanoi had achieved such ingenuity, arguing: “They pushed along a developmental trend in warfare. They invented nothing, discovered nothing, but they synthesized what had been learned about war and politics.”7

Although shaped by many characteristics, the essence of the Vietnamese Revolutionary War was its synthesis of military and political action. Unlike its Western adversaries, it did not divide warfare and politics into separate spheres of activity. They were, instead, blended into a unified whole and weighted equally. Armed conflict, though indispensable, was not prioritized over political activities such as diplomacy, propaganda, and grassroots mobilization. Moreover, their blended approach was applied in a targeted fashion to achieve specific political objectives. Taking a page from Mao, the Vietnamese understood that victory required “a much broader set of instruments of national power that the military instrument alone.” Treating politics as coequal rather than an adjunct to military force was one of the things that made the Vietnamese communists’ approach to war effective and problematic for their opponents. Placing military and political activities on equal footing also demonstrated that Hanoi understood, profoundly and in a manner that their adversaries did not, that “war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means.”8

The Vietnamese communists, though they adopted key elements from Mao’s framework for war, tailored their methods to the conditions in Vietnam using a unique fusion of political and military action known as dau tranh. This synthesis was the heart of the Vietnamese approach to war and explains the effectiveness of Hanoi’s strategy. Phillip B. Davidson, General William Westmoreland’s onetime deputy, summarized this synthetic approach as follows:

In operation, it totally integrated two principal forms of force, armed conflict and political conflict, which the North Vietnamese call [armed] dau tranh (struggle) and political dau tranh. Their integration created a kind of war heretofore unseen: a war waged on several fronts, not geographical fronts, but programmatic fronts, all conducted by one authority, all carefully meshed to serve one end— the seizure of national power.9

Dau tranh underscored one of Clausewitz’s most important insights on war: moral forces are not only as important as material forces but are inseparable. The Vietnamese communists understood this profound truth and applied it.10

As Davidson indicated, Hanoi built its war-fighting method on synthesizing two “programmatic fronts:” armed and political dau tranh. The first, armed dau tranh, included a wide spectrum of revolutionary violence: conventional combat operations, guerrilla attacks, sabotage, terrorism, assassination, kidnapping, and insurrection. The purpose of armed dau tranh was to attrit the enemy, including military forces, government officials, and civilians. The psychological impact of armed force and violence generated was an important and intended corollary. Despite its fundamental role in the revolution, however, armed dau tranh was never pursued for its own sake. Military activity and other forms of violence were always cast within a political context and geared toward specific political outcomes. Political goals, meanwhile, were the supreme master and guiding hand that controlled and directed revolutionary violence in all its manifestations. The second programmatic front, political dau tranh, involved a variety of nonviolent revolutionary activities, predominantly propaganda and information operations, to influence specific segments of the population living in South Vietnam, including civilians and military personnel. Like a hammer and anvil or pincer, Hanoi used armed dau tranh and political dau tranh simultaneously to crush the enemy between two powerful converging forces.11

The different means inherent in dau tranh allowed for a level of operational and strategic flexibility that set it apart from the Maoist model. Rather than a steady progression through Mao’s three-stage process—from strategic defense to strategic equilibrium to strategic counteroffensive—the overall design allowed Hanoi and the National Front for the Liberation to transition back and forth between stages when necessary and in response to local conditions. Politburo leader and architect of the anti-American war, Le Duan, declared, “For the revolution to win . . . one must have armed forces besides political forces and must know how to carry out military and political action cleverly and in accordance with the correct situation prevailing in a given place at a given time.” This complexity produced a highly fragmented operational environment with no clearly defined front lines, contested zones of control, and intermingled forces: a patchwork of political and military conditions that varied from region to region, province to province, and even village to village.12

Adding to the sophisticated mélange of armed and political dau tranh was yet another form of struggle: the diplomatic. Diplomacy was the third leg of Hanoi’s dau tranh strategy. Some historians have subsumed diplomatic struggle within the framework of political dau tranh. Others, however, have treated it as a distinct, although integrated, mode of struggle. Diplomatic struggle used formal negotiations, propaganda, and information operations to manipulate world opinion, generate support for the revolution, and stoke opposition to South Vietnam and the United States. Hanoi’s target audiences included neutral states, fellow communist regimes, and its enemies, particularly the United States. Within the diplomatic realm the most critical and decisive audience was the American citizenry. “Communist hopes for victory,” read a New York Times editorial published shortly after the introduction of American combat forces, “now turn more on an American withdrawal through exhaustion or in response to the pressure of public opinion rather than on conventional military success.” The main front in the Vietnam War was not in Southeast Asia, but here in the United States.13

Although some may disagree with Clausewitz’s concept of a single hub upon which everything in war depends, others believe there is credence in the idea that an enemy’s society and military contain key vulnerabilities that can be targeted for effect. For Hanoi, American public opinion was the point upon which all their energies (military, political, diplomatic) were directed. Over time, Hanoi’s method of war proved highly effective, as growing numbers of Americans became disillusioned with what appeared to be an endless and unwinnable war. Ultimately, the diplomatic struggle helped turn public opinion against the war. Combined with the shock and disillusionment generated by the 1968 Tet Offensive, Hanoi’s diplomatic efforts prompted a complete reversal in US policy, from 20 years of escalation and increasing commitment to preserving South Vietnam to disengagement, withdrawal, and the eventual abandonment of its ally. Diplomatic struggle did not singlehandedly win the conflict for Hanoi; however, it played a seminal role in shattering America’s political will. More than an adjunct to military or political action, diplomatic struggle was central to Hanoi’s theory and practice of war and a key component in Hanoi’s victory over the United States.14

The significance of diplomatic struggle transcended its role in the Vietnam War. Hanoi’s success at leveraging diplomacy and information operations underscores an enduring fact: that military force is not always the primary test by which wars are won or lost. “The Vietnamese communists realized,” one analyst wrote, “dimly at first but then with increasing clarity, that it might be possible to achieve an entire change of venue and make the primary test take place away from the battlefield.” This view is an important, though largely overlooked, caveat to conventional military thought and an entrenched belief dating back to Clausewitz that wars are largely decided by the test of arms. Such an argument may have held true in the centuries between Westphalia and the end of World War II. After 1945, however, the assertion that military force is the supreme and final arbiter in war had become increasingly dubious.15

Theoretically, the three legs of Hanoi’s dau tranh strategy could not be separated, despite the fact they were distinct clusters of activity. The melding of these concepts into a unified method was fundamental to Hanoi’s theory of war. Although conceptualized as a perfect balance of warfare, politics, and diplomacy, Hanoi’s dau tranh strategy operated quite differently in reality. The war in Vietnam ebbed and flowed over time, and the political, military, and diplomatic situations were never uniform or consistent. The proper mixture of violent and nonviolent means was dictated by local and international conditions and thus required judgment in application. Nonetheless, dau tranh’s marriage of military, political, and diplomatic effort permeated every aspect of Hanoi’s war against the United States.16

Theory alone does not drive armed conflict nor determine victory or defeat. Success and failure in war are rooted in praxis. Herein, lies war’s subjective nature. Indeed, Mao repeatedly argued that war is the real-world application of objective principles and laws.

Victory or defeat in war is decided by the military, political, economic, and geographical conditions on both sides, the nature of the war each side is waging and the international support each enjoys, but it is not decided by these alone; in themselves, all these provide only the possibility of victory or defeat but do not decide the issue. To decide the issue, subjective effort must be added, namely, the directing and waging of war, man’s conscious dynamic role in war.17

Hanoi’s dynamic role in the Vietnam War and its fusion of military, political, and diplomatic “struggle” was the subjective application of its strategic principles.

Between 1965 and 1968, Hanoi’s only realistic and achievable path to victory was to force an American withdrawal. An outright military victory over US military forces was impossible. Thus, Hanoi’s only realistic and achievable means to drive the Americans out of Vietnam was to frustrate Washington’s strategic designs and limit its policy options at each level of escalation. The means to achieve this goal included maintaining relentless political and military pressure, inflicting maximum casualties on US troops, evading allied efforts to root out and destroy the insurgency, and refusing to submit to US demands that the communists abandon efforts to conquer the South and reunify the country through war. As historian David W. P. Elliott argues, the fundamental objective of Hanoi’s approach was to frustrate and ultimately exhaust the United States by eliminating its strategic options in South Vietnam. The emphasis was not on inflicting a military defeat on the United States (an impossible task) but on breaking its political will.18

Frustrating America’s strategic goals and creating a stalemate in South Vietnam was only the first step in fulfilling Hanoi’s strategy. In 1968 Hanoi launched a series of attacks nationwide known to history as the Tet Offensive. Tet’s strategic goal was to demonstrate to Washington policymakers and the American public that the United States could not win the war. The shock and awe the attacks generated, Hanoi hoped, would break the stalemate and force US policymakers onto the horns of a dilemma: escalation or disengagement. Much to Hanoi’s astonishment and delight, the Johnson administration chose the latter.

Tet was a crushing military defeat for the Vietnamese communists, a costly gamble that severely damaged the southern insurgency and placed Hanoi’s plans in jeopardy. Nonetheless, it was a long-term strategic victory for Hanoi because it laid bare the futility of allied efforts, completely reversed US policy, and set the conditions for Hanoi’s eventual triumph in 1975. Hanoi’s strategic frameworks and its aggregated approach propelled Hanoi to victory by grinding down America’s political will, inducing a state of psychological exhaustion in the United States, and forcing Washington to abandon its efforts to defend and preserve South Vietnam.

Analysis

On April 30, 1975, two years after the combatants had signed the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam and the United States withdrew the last of its military personnel, armored units from the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) crashed through the gates of the presidential palace in Saigon and forced the surrender of the South Vietnamese government and its armed forces. The Second Indochina War and America’s 25-year odyssey to protect and preserve an independent, noncommunist South Vietnam was over. Although it failed to achieve a decisive military victory against the United States, Hanoi had defeated the world’s leading superpower by frustrating its strategic designs and breaking its political will. In his book, On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, Harry G. Summers recounts a brief conversation that allegedly occurred in 1975 between an anonymous US Army colonel and his North Vietnamese counterpart. “You know you never defeated us on the battlefield,” the American colonel goaded. “That may be so,” the Vietnamese officer replied, “but it is also irrelevant.” This exchange, apocryphal or not, captures a profound truth that applies to all wars: battlefield victories and tactical-operational excellence are meaningless if a state cannot translate these abilities into long-term strategic gains or fail to achieve the war’s political purpose.19

For some, America’s flawed approach in Vietnam is indicative of a fundamental strategic weakness that has plagued the United States and its military since 1945. In 1969, one observer argued there was an “aching void” in American strategy. Nearly 40 years later, and three years into the Iraq War, strategist and author Colin Gray made a similar claim. He declared that Americans “are very competent at fighting but they are much less successful in fighting in such a way that they secure the strategic and, hence, political rewards they seek. The United States continues to have difficulty regarding war and politics as a unity” This lack of vision and failure to synthesize military and political efforts appears to be the leitmotif of the American approach to war.20

Some historians believe America’s failure to craft effective and successful strategies is largely rooted in the “American Way of War”—an enduring method and mentality that focuses on the pursuit of military victory for its own sake and the destruction of enemy forces on the battlefield through technology, firepower, large-scale combat operations, and strategies of annihilation. Antulio J. Echevarria II maintains that the United States and its military have not developed a “way of war” per se, but rather, a “way of battle.” According to Echevarria, America’s approach to war is “fundamentally flawed” because policymakers and practitioners view war as an alternative to bargaining rather than an integrated component within the ongoing bargaining process that lies at the heart of war’s reciprocal nature. He claims that after 1945, the American concept “rarely extended beyond the winning of battles and campaigns to the gritty work of turning military victory into strategic success, and hence was more a way of battle than an actual way of war.” This “bifurcation” of military and political effort, a fundamental flaw in America’s approach to war, has prevented civilian policymakers and the US military from translating tactical-operational excellence into strategic success in Vietnam and subsequent conflicts, notably Iraq and Afghanistan.21

Contrary to popular opinion, American policymakers understood what they wanted to achieve in the Vietnam War. Their ideas for how to achieve their desired ends through war, however, were shortsighted and muddled. As Clausewitz observed, “The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose.” During the Vietnam War, the means Washington and Hanoi employed to meet desired political ends set the two apart. Both held fundamentally different views on war, including its essence and the proper mixture of ways and means to meet their desired ends. Although the United States and North Vietnam both agreed on war’s “logic” (the use of military force to achieve political aims), they differed on its “grammar” (the conduct of war). The United States implemented a disjointed effort that channeled the nation’s military and political energies into detached spheres of activity. This bifurcation produced a fragmented and ineffective strategy that privileged military over political means and failed to combine all the elements of national power effectively. In Vietnam, the Americans sought decisive victory largely through combat operations, technology, and firepower, thus validating Echevarria’s argument that the United States has fought its wars over the past 60 years as if they were battles.22

By 1968, some had recognized that the US strategy in Vietnam was lacking. As one American officer noted at the time, “a political revolution is something quite different from a conventional military campaign, and yet we persist in viewing Vietnam as a war which will be won when we bring enough power and force to bear.” The following year another critic echoed this sentiment, stating “with regard to military strategy, Americans seem to have been influenced only by the very worst interpretation of Clausewitz’s doctrines and by the Prussian example of Moltke, so that the sole aim of most orthodox military commanders has always been ‘the destruction of the enemy’s main forces on the battlefield.’ ” Edward Lansdale reached a similar conclusion after the war, arguing that while American military officers understood that war is a political instrument, they regarded political and military operations as “separate, even compartmented entities.” Rather than use military power as a means to gain political goals, Lansdale argued, they focused primarily on defeating the enemy in battle. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger perhaps summed it up best. “We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one. We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion.”23

More than a century before American forces landed in Indochina, Clausewitz offered his readers two bits of strategic advice germane to the American experience in Vietnam and subsequent conflicts. First, he wrote, “No one starts a war—or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so— without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it.” Next, he declared, “the first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgement that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish . . . the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature.” Hanoi firmly understood the nature of the war it fought, including what it intended to achieve through war and how to achieve it. The Vietnam War was largely a political conflict, a revolution to seize political power, reunify the country, and transform Vietnamese society along ideological lines. This goal, however, could only be achieved by frustrating America’s strategic aims and convincing Washington to change policy and withdraw from a war it could not win. Hanoi tailored its ends, ways, and means to and in concert with these objectives. They were also a reflection of Sun Tzu’s famous dictum: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”24

Hanoi knew the enemy intimately, and while they fared poorly, not in a hundred but in thousands of engagements, they triumphed in the end because they understood America’s military strengths and its political weaknesses. More importantly, they formulated a strategy that offset the former and exploited the latter. While American military power was a force they could never overcome, American public opinion was something they could, and did, target for effect. In 1969, British military officer Robert Thompson observed that Americans are by nature an impatient people who, due to their immense wealth and power, expect quick results. Protracted wars such as those in Vietnam thwarted such expectations. Should Hanoi stretch the war out indefinitely, frustrate Washington’s strategic goals, and make the war “a test of will rather than a trial of strength,” Thompson argued, America’s resolve could falter.25

The communists’ astonishing victory in the spring of 1975 demonstrates that the Vietnam War was a test of wills rather than a trial of strength. The ingenuity of Hanoi’s wartime strategy lay not, as previously discussed, in its originality but in its application. The Vietnamese communists possessed both the strategic vision and the ability to synthesize various modes of “struggle” with existing means of warfare and politics in a comprehensive, unified, and highly effective method of war. They also possessed the requisite patience and political will necessary for waging a protracted war of attrition against a much more powerful adversary. Yes, there were difficulties, setbacks, errors, and times when Hanoi’s revolution came close to failure. Nonetheless, they were able to navigate the fog and friction of war, outlast the Americans, and achieve victory.26

Hanoi’s triumph also underscores the fact that the war in Vietnam was not America’s to win or lose unilaterally. The enemy also had a vote, and much like the Yankees who dashed Pickett’s hopes for victory on the final day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Hanoi and the National Front for the Liberation had something to do with American defeat. David beat Goliath in Southeast Asia. Moreover, he did so decisively and in an arena far removed from the battlefields of South Vietnam: in the hearts and minds of the American people and their elected representatives. Although beset by impossible odds and overwhelming material disadvantages, Hanoi won its war by shattering America’s political will, driving its armed forces out of Vietnam, and inflicting a crushing defeat on the South Vietnamese after their ally had turned its back on a state and a people it had supported for a quarter of a century.

Contemporary Implications

America’s failed war in Afghanistan and current great-power competition with China and Russia underscores a pressing need to revisit the strategic lessons of the Vietnam War. The loss of Afghanistan marks the second time in the past 60 years that America’s approach to war has come up short. Washington’s inability to defeat the Taliban or build a functioning Afghani government occurred largely because the United States either forgot, dismissed, or willfully ignored its experiences in Indochina. Instead, under the banner of “no more Vietnams,” the Pentagon focused its energies and attention during the 1970s and 1980s on developing the doctrine, training, and equipment necessary for fighting large-scale combat operations and conventional wars against peer competitors, particularly the Soviet Union. This focus paid dividends in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. In the decades that followed, however, it did not.

According to former US Army Lieutenant General Daniel P. Bolger, Operation Desert Storm was an ahistorical one-off, a grossly lopsided victory that would likely never happen again. In the war’s immediate aftermath, even as the Kuwaiti oil fields set ablaze by the retreating Iraqi forces still burned, Bolger was already issuing dark and chillingly accurate prognostications for America’s future wars. The United States, he cautioned, must put the Gulf War in its proper perspective and understand that America’s evident skills in conventional warfighting would only encourage potential adversaries to adopt the strategy and tactics Hanoi used to great effect 20 years earlier. Despite President George H. W. Bush’s declaration that the “specter” of Vietnam had been “buried forever” in the desert sands of the Arabian Peninsula, Bolger warned, the “sanguinary shade” of Vietnam could well rise again should the United States obey the seductive urge to fight the next war in similar fashion.27

The “sanguinary shade” Bolger warned of rose again in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, the United States salvaged an acceptable, if not ideal, political outcome through trial and error, tactical-political adaptation, and some luck. The war in Afghanistan, however, was an unequivocal loss, an improbable and humiliating defeat for the United States. Much like the war in Vietnam, America’s 20-year odyssey in Afghanistan was a test of wills rather than a trial of strength, and in the end, the United States once again failed in this arena. Two analysts describing the fall of Kabul observed, “The humanitarian tragedy that unfolded . . . was the culmination of the smart application of protracted and irregular warfare strategy and tactics, wherein the technologically inferior Taliban outlasted the political will of far superior Western forces.”28

The synthetic approaches adopted by America’s “pacing threats” also pose challenges for American policymakers and practitioners in the twenty-first century. Beijing and Moscow have worked to expand their global influence and advance their interests in the twenty-first century using a complex mixture of military and nonmilitary means. China and Russia laid the intellectual foundations for this variegated approach in the aftermath of Desert Storm, a period when militaries around the world attempted to come to grips with America’s dominant use of cutting-edge information technologies and weapons platforms.

China considered Desert Storm a watershed moment. In 1999, two People’s Liberation Army officers argued that war would be “reborn,” taking on other forms and in other arenas outside of military force. In an essay titled Unrestricted Warfare, they asserted, “War, which has undergone the changes of modern technology and the market system, will be launched even more in atypical forms.” According to the authors, the world witnessed a “relative reduction” in military force and the concomitant rise in political, economic, and technological means. The “new principles of war,” they maintained, “are no longer using armed force to compel the enemy to submit to one’s will, but rather are using all means, including armed force or non-armed force, military and non-military, and lethal and non-lethal means to compel the enemy to accept one’s interests.” The PRC later refined the non-kinetic means discussed in Unrestricted Warfare in the “three warfares” framework.29

First introduced in 2003 in The Political Work Guidelines of the People’s Liberation Army, the three warfares include public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare. The Chinese consider these activities interrelated and mutually reinforcing. In 2016, analyst Elsa Kania noted, “In peacetime and wartime alike, the application of the three warfares is intended to control the prevailing discourse and influence perceptions in a way that advances China’s interests, while compromising the capability of opponents to respond.” Much like political dau tranh and the three “diplomatic circles” used by Hanoi during the Vietnam War, the “non-kinetic” means laid out in Unrestricted Warfare and the three warfares are distinct yet interdependent means of influencing foreign and domestic publics. Moreover, much like Hanoi’s fusion of “political struggle” and “diplomatic struggle,” the “three warfares” are meant to be used concurrently with military force, both latent and active. The hybrid political-military-technological-legal-economic means laid out in Unrestricted Warfare reflect a holistic, well-balanced concept for waging war, one designed to offset American military dominance using every element of national power at Beijing’s disposal.30

Russian strategists also believe a paradigm shift had occurred in 1991. A decade after Desert Storm, Russian general Valery Gerasimov contended, “The very ‘rules of war’ have changed. The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness.” Although there is debate over the accuracy and even utility of terms such as “gray-zone conflict,” “hybrid war,” and “political warfare,” or whether such terms are even applicable to Moscow’s approach to war given the conventional nature of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, Russia’s current strategic thinking, much like China’s, recognizes that modern war requires a well-balanced synthetic approach that incorporates a variety of military and nonmilitary means.31

Conclusion

America’s enemies will not play to its military strengths in the next war. Adversaries, including near-peer competitors such as China and Russia, will likely adopt a strategy similar to the one developed and fielded by the Vietnamese communists during the 1960s, an approach that will negate American military power and frustrate Washington’s strategic designs through a complex mixture of kinetic and non-kinetic means. The weaponization of emerging technologies, including cyber warfare, artificial intelligence, drones, and social media disinformation operations, will further complicate Washington’s efforts to combat hybrid threats.32

America must maintain its current dominance in conventional war fighting if it is to check Chinese and Russian ambitions and remain the world’s preeminent liberal democracy. Nevertheless, it must situate the US military’s operational and tactical excellence within a holistic framework that utilizes every element of national power and all means at its disposal, including political warfare, economic warfare, information operations, and diplomacy. Military power alone is insufficient to defend the nation’s interests and safeguard the international order. America’s leaders, therefore, must craft a national security strategy recognizing this reality. Doctrine, too, must address the hybrid character of modern war. Finally, policymakers and strategists must understand and respect the “passions” of the American people. The past 50 years of history have shown that public support is often ephemeral and susceptible to erosion, particularly during protracted conflicts fought for ambiguous or dubious ends. For these reasons and others, a critical reexamination and analysis of the assumptions, modus operandi, and strengths and weaknesses of America’s approach to war is in order. History, particularly the Vietnam War, can provide critical insights and a foundation for such a reappraisal.

 
 

Martin G. Clemis
Martin G. Clemis is an associate professor at the US Army Command and General Staff College. He is the author of The Control War: The Struggle for South Vietnam, 1968–1975 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018) and a contributing author in An American Lake? The United States, War, and the Environment in the Recent Pacific World (University Press of Kansas, 2025), Beyond the Quagmire: New Interpretations of the Vietnam War, and Drawdowns: The American Way of Postwar (New York University Press, 2016). He has articles published in Army History and Small Wars and Insurgencies.

 
 

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Endnotes

  1. National Defense Strategy of the United States of America, 2022, Including the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review and the 2022 Missile Defense Review (Department of Defense, 2022), https://media.defense.gov/2022/Oct/27/2003103845/-1/-1/1/2022-NATIONAL-DEFENSE-STRATEGY-NPR-MDR.pdf; and Sean McFate, The New Rules of War: Victory in the Age of Durable Disorder (William Morrow, 2019), 25–42. Return to text.
  2. For a discussion of Clausewitz’s “paradoxical trinity” and the interplay of war’s existential and instrumental elements, see Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton University Press, 1976), 89, 77, 149; Hew Strachan, Clausewitz’s On War: A Biography (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007), 177–81; and George Pickett quoted in Marc Jason Gilbert, ed., Why the North Won the Vietnam War (Palgrave, 2002), 1. Return to text.
  3. This article is an expanded exposition of the communist Revolutionary War strategy and the Vietnam War. It was developed for the US Army Command and General Staff College Officer Course and presented as an unpublished class reading for the core curriculum. Return to text.
  4. For Maoist and Vietnamese theories, see Douglas Pike, PAVN: People’s Army of Vietnam (Presidio, 1986), 209; S. C. M. Paine, “Mao Zedong and Strategies of Nested War,” in The New Makers of Modern Strategy: From the Ancient World to the Digital Age, ed. Hal Brands (Princeton University Press, 2023); Mao Tse-Tung, Selected Military Writings of Mao Tse-Tung (Foreign Language Press, 1963); and Vo Nguyen Giap, People’s War, People’s Army: The Viet Cong Insurrection Manual for Underdeveloped Countries (University Press of the Pacific, 2001). Return to text.
  5. Lin Piao, Long Live the Victory of People’s War (Foreign Language Press, 1966), 48. Return to text.
  6. Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (Vintage Books, 2005), 5. Return to text.
  7. John Shy and Stephen Collier, “Revolutionary War,” in Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed., Peter Paret (Princeton University Press, 1986), 815; and Pike, PAVN, 210. Return to text.
  8. Paine, “Mao Zedong,” 661; and Clausewitz, On War, 87. Return to text.
  9. Phillip B. Davidson, Secrets of the Vietnam War (Presidio, 1990), 18. Return to text.
  10. Clausewitz, On War, 137. Return to text.
  11. Pike, PAVN, 209–27. Return to text.
  12. Le Duan, The Vietnamese Revolution: Fundamental Problems Essential Tasks (University Press of the Pacific, 2005), 58. Return to text.
  13. Seymour Topping, “Communists Are Thankful,” The New York Times, October 20, 1965. Return to text.
  14. Clausewitz, On War, 596; and Pierre Asselin, Vietnam’s American War (Cambridge University Press, 2018), 144–48. Return to text.
  15. Douglas Pike, “Guerrilla Warfare in Vietnam,” in Guerilla Warfare in Asia (International Documentation and Information Centre, 1971), 54. Return to text.
  16. Pike, PAVN, 212. Return to text.
  17. Mao, Selected Military Writings, 226. Return to text.
  18. David W. P. Elliott, “Hanoi’s Strategy in the Second Indochina War,” in The Vietnam War: American and Vietnamese Perspectives, ed. Jayne S. Werner and Luu Doan Huynh (M. E. Sharpe, 1993), 70. Return to text.
  19. Harry G. Summers, On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War (Ballantine Books, 1995), 1. Return to text.
  20. Thompson, No Exit from Vietnam, 129; and Colin S. Gray, Irregular Enemies and the Essence of Strategy: Can the American Way of War Adapt? (Strategic Studies Institute, 2006), vi, https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/721/. Return to text.
  21. For a fulsome discussion of the American Way of War concept and its critics, see Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military and Policy (Indiana University Press, 1973); Brian M. Linn, “The American Way of War Revisited,” Journal of Military History 66, no. 2 (April 2002); Colin S. Gray, “The American Way of War: Critique and Implications,” in Rethinking the Principles of War, ed. Anthony D. McIvor (Naval Institute Press, 2005); and Antulio J. Echevarria II, Reconsidering the American Way of War: U.S. Military Practice from the Revolution to Afghanistan (Georgetown University Press, 2014); and Antulio J. Echevarria II, Toward an American Way of War (Strategic Studies Institute, 2004), v, https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/774/, Return to text.
  22. Clausewitz, On War, 87. Return to text.
  23. William F. Long, “Counterinsurgency Revisited,” Naval War College Review 21, no. 8 (1968), 4; Thompson, No Exit from Vietnam, 129; Edward Lansdale, “Contradictions in Military Culture,” in The Lessons of Vietnam, ed. W. Scott Thompson and Donaldson D. Frizell (Crane, Russak & Company, 1977), 42; and Henry Kissinger, “The Viet Nam Negotiations,” Foreign Affairs 47, no. 2 (January 1969): 214, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/1969-01-01/viet-nam-negotiations. Return to text.
  24. Clausewitz, On War, 579, 88–89; and Sun Tzu, “On the Art of War,” in Roots of Strategy, vol. 1, ed. T. R. Phillips (Stackpole Books, 1985), 28. Return to text.
  25. Thompson, No Exit, 63–64. Return to text.
  26. For historical works that discuss the Vietnam War from Hanoi’s perspective, see Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam (The University of North Carolina Press, 2012); and Pierre Asselin, Vietnam’s American War (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Return to text.
  27. Daniel P. Bolger, “The Ghosts of Omdurman,” Parameters 21, no. 1 (Autumn 1991): 38, https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol21/iss1/2/. Return to text.
  28. Gabriel Honrada and Daniyal Ranjbar, “No Clear Winner, One Clear Loser in Afghanistan,” E-International Relations, August 25, 2021, https://www.e.ir.info/2021/08/25/no-clear-winner-one-clear-loser-in-afghanistan/. Return to text.
  29. Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare (PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, 1999), 6–7. Return to text.
  30. Dustin Lawrence, “Clash in the Gray Zone: China’s System to Win Without Fighting,” Military Review (November-December 2024): 77; Elsa Kani, “The PLA’s Latest Strategic Thinking on the Three Warfares,” The Jamestown Foundation Global Research and Analysis, August 22, 2016, https://jamestown.org/program/the-plas-latest-strategic-thinking-on-the-three-warfares/; and Edmund J. Burke et al., People’s Liberation Army Operational Concepts (RAND Corporation, September 29, 2020), https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA394-1.html. Return to text.
  31. Valery Gerasimov, “The Value of Science Is in the Foresight: New Challenges Demand Rethinking the Forms and Methods of Carrying out Combat Operations,” Military Review (January-February 2016): 24; and Seth G. Jones, “Russia’s Shadow War against the West,” Center for Strategic & International Studies, March 18, 2025, https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-shadow-war-against-west. Return to text.
  32. Sal Artiaga, “Irregular Warfare in the Age of Technology,” Insights 1, no. 13 (February 2024), https://irregularwarfarecenter.org/publications/insights/irregular-warfare-in-the-age-of-technology/. Return to text.