The Spy Who Loved Us_ The Vietnam War and Pham Xuan An's Dangerous Game ( PDFDrive )

62 THOMAS A. BASS
on its war is no longer profitable. It will decide on its own to
withdraw. This is how you win. You do not defeat the enemy.
You cannot defeat them. You are too weak, but by carrying out
a prolonged war, you will eventually wear them down so that
they leave of their own accord. The Chinese call this people’s
warfare. The Viet Minh learned it from the Chinese. They
think the idea was invented by Mao Tse Tung, but it is actually
a lesson from Clausewitz.”
I am surprised when An tells me that the Vietnamese never
won the Vietnam war. “No, the United States did not lose
the war,” he says. “We were fighting what Clausewitz called
total war, where the entire nation is mobilized to fight an aggressor.
According to Clausewitz, this war ends only when the
aggressor calculates that his gains will never outweigh his losses.
At this point, he will pull out. This is the only way for a weak
country to fight a strong power. The Chinese improvised on this
idea, but Clausewitz is our real teacher.”
“This is exactly what happened,” An says. “The Americans
went away. That’s all. We fought until the French left the country.
We fought until the Americans left, and then we overthrew
the puppet regime. We didn’t beat the enemy militarily. Even
Dien Bien Phu was just one battle that the French lost in a
much larger war. The Americans didn’t lose the war in Vietnam;
they withdrew. It wasn’t even their war to lose. It was the war
of their puppets. The Americans built the country. They were
the kingmakers, but then it collapsed. It wasn’t the fault of
those who built the house that it collapsed. It was the fault
of those who lived in it.”
After An’s induction into the Party, Le Duc Tho served tea
and cakes. “He made a little speech, saying that I was still a
young man and that the war would soon be over. He knew the
major powers were gathering to discuss arranging an armistice
in Korea, and he thought the war in Vietnam would soon be resolved
as well. He knew the Americans were replacing the
French, but he had no way of knowing that the Second Indochina
War would last as long as it did.”