Buying Time, 1965-1966 (The U.S. Army Campaigns of the Vietnam War)

In January 1965, the principal U.S. ally against communism in Southeast Asia, the Republic of (South) Vietnam, appeared to be headed for collapse. Armed revolutionaries fighting a proxy war on behalf of Communist North Vietnam held the political and military initiative. The insurgents controlled nearly half of South Vietnam’s countryside and almost a third of its population. The U.S.-trained South Vietnamese Army was losing soldiers and equipment at an alarming rate. Regiment-size enemy units threatened the nation’s capital, Saigon, and the fractious coalition of civilian and military officials who governed the country seemed unable to deal with the crisis. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his National Security Council concluded that the Republic of Vietnam could only survive if the United States took a more active part in the war.