37. Intelligence Memorandum Prepared in the Central Intelligence Agency1
1968 AS THE YEAR OF DECISION IN SOUTH VIETNAM
Summary
Extensive evidence that the Vietnamese Communist high command planned to initiate the “decisive” phase of the war in 1968 has been uncovered in documents captured since Tet. This decision was almost certainly taken by the Hanoi politburo in the summer of 1967. It called for the launching of the so-called “general offensive and general uprising” often discussed in Vietnamese Communist theoretical literature over the years as the final stage of the war. The groundwork was laid simultaneously for the start of political negotiations to accompany the military action.
It does not appear that the politburo in Hanoi firmly tied the conclusion of the offensive and the end of the fighting to any particular time frame, i.e., the year 1968. The enormous effort and cost which the Communists put into the Tet offensive, however, strongly suggests that they entertained a serious hope, if not a firm belief, that the military pressure would bring an early and decisive turn in the conflict, hopefully during 1968, even if the fighting was not terminated during the year. Such a development, in their view, would force major allied concessions and open the way to a negotiated settlement of the war. There [Page 94] is considerable evidence that Hanoi was prepared to move ahead quickly into wide-ranging substantive discussions on the conflict once the bombing of North Vietnam had ceased.
In choosing to launch the general offensive during the winter-spring campaign of 1968, it appears that Hanoi was convinced that its military strategy, even though highly costly in Communist combat casualties, had forced the war into an indecisive, stalemated stage more deleterious to the allies than to itself. This was the point, enemy theoreticians had often argued, when massive military pressure should be combined with diplomatic maneuver to break the allied will. At the same time, the Communists were probably also influenced by a full recognition—long in germination—that they could not win a complete military victory over the allies. They would, at least initially, have to settle for a compromise in South Vietnam short of their optimum objectives of earlier years.
Other factors, including the domestic situation in the US and conflicting pressures from the Soviet Union and China, probably also played some role in Hanoi’s decision.
[Omitted here is the 11-page body of the memorandum.]
- Source: Central Intelligence Agency, Job 80-R1580R, Executive Registry Subject Files, 266-Vietnam. Confidential. A notation on the memorandum reads: “This memorandum was produced solely by CIA. It was prepared by the Office of Current Intelligence and coordinated with the Office of National Estimates and the Director’s Special Assistant for Vietnamese Affairs.” An attached covering note from Helms to Rostow transmitting a copy of the memorandum, September 27, reads: “You asked for a memorandum on this subject some time ago. Here it is.”↩