Richard K Dembowski

Eating Dinner with a Fork, Spoon, and Knife: How a Corps Executed MACV's One War Strategy Richard K Dembowski

Publisher Marketing: During the Vietnam War and the years following, there has been a contentious debate regarding the nature of the conflict. Some proponents argue it was an insurgency while others claim it was a conventional war, with each side advocating the implementation of either a counterinsurgency or conventional strategy. Both sides are correct in their assessment because both an insurgency and a conventional war existed inside South Vietnam. When General Creighton Abrams took command of the Military Assistance Command-Vietnam (MACV) following the 1968 Tet Offensive, he enacted a One War Strategy designed to combat both the insurgency and conventional war. II Field Force-Vietnam executed the One War Strategy inside Military Region 3. From early 1969 until its departure in 1971, II Field Force conducted full spectrum operations. Its four lines of effort (advisor mission, combat operations, pacification, and Vietnamization) incorporated offensive, defensive, and stability tasks. During this period, the corps successfully secured Saigon, interdicted North Vietnamese Army units infiltrating into Military Region 3, destroyed the Viet Cong insurgency, trained the South Vietnamese Army's III Corps, and redeployed itself back to the United States. II Field Force successfully waged both a counterinsurgency and major combat operations inside South Vietnam's Military Region 3.