General Creighton Abrams and the Operational Approach of Attrition in the Vietnam War
Abstract:
General Creighton Abrams assumed command of U.S. Armed Forces in the Republic of South Vietnam in the summer of 1968. This change in leadership has been viewed as a radical departure from the operational approach implemented by his predecessor, General William Westmoreland. This monograph proposes that U.S. Armed Forces in South Vietnam consistently followed a strategy of attrition from the introduction of battalion-sized combat troops in 1965 through the Westmoreland-Abrams transition, and encouraged the South Vietnamese to follow this strategy during the period of Vietnamization. The National Command Authority and General Westmoreland adopted a strategy of attrition in February of 1966. The Military Assistance Command-Vietnam implemented this strategy throughout 1966 and accelerated it in 1967, when General Abrams became General Westmorelands deputy commander. The operations were designed to attrite Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regular forces as outlined in the 1966 meeting. The Tet offensive of January 1968 appeared to discredit the strategy of attrition and contributed to the ouster of Westmoreland and his replacement by General Abrams. General Abrams promoted a one-war strategy that had the desired end-state of population security for the people of South Vietnam. In reality, the one-war was a multi-tiered strategy of attrition. The training of South Vietnamese forces was predicated on their capability to conduct attrition warfare upon the departure of American forces. Despite claims of a radical shift to counterinsurgency and pacification operations, General Abrams continued the strategy he inherited from his predecessor. In turn, he passed it on to the South Vietnamese. In effect, there was continuity of American strategy in South Vietnam. Any limited success achieved by U.S. Armed Forces in South Vietnam was a result of attrition, not counterinsurgency, and the ultimate failure was their inability to transition from attrition to maneuver warfare.