Army University Press
Published 22 Nov 2024The Battle of Huế is known for urban combat, destruction, and anguish. The city of Huế mattered to all the combatant forces. The city and its people paid the price. Interviews with noted subject matter experts Drs. Pierre Asselin, Gregory Daddis, James Willbanks, and Cpt. Wyatt Harper are augmented with archival audio and film, and detailed maps. This documentary places the Battle of Huế within the context of Hanoi’s 1968 Tet Offensive. How North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the United States perceived the Vietnam War in 1967 and 1968 are central to this documentary. Covered are the key moments of the battle — including the People’s Armed Forces of Vietnam (PAVN) and People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF) planning and assault on Hue. The responses of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), Vietnam Marine Corps (VNMC), the United States Marine Corps (USMC), and the U.S. Army (USA) are addressed to offer insight into an informative example of urban warfare.
0:02:39 – Why the Tet Offensive
0:10:53 – Why Huế
0:15:53 – Military Decision Making Process | Doctrine
0:26:51 – Warfighting Function | Doctrine
0:27:59 – Paralysis by analysis | Doctrine
0:33:15 – Courses of action | Doctrine
0:38:22 – Weather and operations | Doctrine
0:40:52 – Huế Massacre
0:41:18 – My Lai
0:46:05 – Huế and Modern Warfare
April 14, 2025
Huế: Battle for the Heart of Vietnam
QotD: Pax Americana replaces Pax Britannica
Britain […] inherited responsibility for a century of the “Pax Britannica” by the simple expedient of being the strongest economy standing after the Napoleonic Wars. (The United States – the only potentially economically healthy rival post the devestation of Europe – having shot itself in the foot by joining in briefly on Napoleon’s “anti-British coalition” movement in 1812, and having its trade smashed and most of its ports and the capital reduced to smoking ruins as a result. Bad timing.)
The British government spent most of the next century being dragged – reluctantly – into being arbitrators of conflicts they wanted nothing to do with. Finishing with being stuck with the Great War, and then responsibility for some of the most hopeless basket-case states handed over to “Mandate Powers” by the Versailles peace … as one British minister presciently pointed out, no one wanted Palestine, and it would be nothing but a disaster for whoever gets stuck with it … (Fortunately for the US, their Congress repudiated Wilson’s ridiculous League of Nations before the plan to lumber the US with the Mandate for places like Georgia – the Russian bit on the Black Sea that is! – could be put through.)
It is unsurprising that the British taxpayer spent the next 50 years trying to get out of international police-keeping obligations. With the sole exception of reluctantly agreeing to fight against the expansionary dictatorships in World War Two, British taxpayers voted for disarmament and de-colonisation whenever they could. (Abandoning some states – particularly in Africa – that might eventually have developed into safe and secure states, way before they were ready for independence … much to the cost of world peace and security since …)
The United States has had a similar experience more recently. Having inherited responsibility for maybe 50 years of the “Pax Americana” by the simple expedient of being the strongest economy standing after the Second World War. (Their only potential rival being the British Commonwealth of Nations — who between them had 5 of the next 10 biggest and healthiest post-war economies — being more than happy to let the dumb Americans have a go at being world policemen for a time, and see how they liked being blamed by everyone else for absolutely everything.)
The Americans discovered pretty quickly that the things they had been complaining about the British doing for the last 200 years were exactly what they had now signed up for, and finding even quicker that their taxpayers simply weren’t willing to carry the can, and take the blame, for very long at all.
Arguably the US’s fun with being world policeman was already pretty much over after Korea, and certainly after Vietnam. It is notable that the first Gulf War was NOT paid for by the US taxpayer … the US troops turned up but only if Saudi Arabia and Europe paid for them to do so (and preferably with a British Division on one flank, Australian warships on the other, and NATO fighters overhead …) none of this “we will carry the can and our taxpayers will just cope” crap for post-Vietnam American taxpayers.
Nigel Davies, “Types of Empires: Security, Conquest, and Trade”, rethinking history, 2020-05-02.
