Easter Offensive - Aftermath

Aftermath

For more details on U.S., North Vietnamese negotiations, see Paris Peace Talks.

At the conclusion of the ARVN counteroffensive, both sides were too exhausted to continue their efforts. Both sides, however, considered their efforts to have been successful. The South Vietnamese and Americans believed the policy of Vietnamization had been validated. The internal weaknesses of the South Vietnamese command structure, which had been rectified somewhat during the emergency, also reappeared once it had passed. During the operations, more than 25,000 South Vietnamese civilians had been killed and almost a million became refugees, 600,000 of whom were living in camps under government care. American casualties in combat for all of 1972 totaled only 300 killed, most of whom were killed during the offensive.

Hanoi, which had committed 14 divisions and 26 independent regiments to the offensive (virtually its entire army), had suffered approximately 100,000 casualties and almost all tanks destroyed (134 T-54s, 56 PT-76s and 60 T-34s). In return, it had gained permanent control of half of the four northernmost provinces—Quảng Trị, Thừa Thiên, Quang Nam, and Quang Tin—as well as the western fringes of the II and III Corps sectors (around 10% of the country). The North Vietnamese leadership had made two grave miscalculations concerning the abilities of its enemies. The first was to underestimate the fighting ability of the ARVN, which by 1972 had become one of the best-equipped armies in the world; the second was a failure to grasp the destructiveness of American air power unleashed against an enemy that was now fighting a conventional battle. Combined with these strategic errors, PAVN commanders had also thrown away their local numerical superiority by making repeated frontal attacks into heavy defensive fire, and suffered massive casualties as a consequence. Hanoi, however, wasted no time in making use of what it had gained. The North Vietnamese immediately began to extend their supply corridors from Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam. The PAVN rapidly expanded port facilities at the captured town of Dong Ha, and within a year over 20 percent of the materiel destined for the southern battlefield was flowing across its docks.

In Paris the peace negotiations continued, but this time round, both sides were willing to make concessions. The chief American negotiator, Dr. Henry Kissinger, offered a cease-fire in place, recognition of the PRG by the Saigon government, and total American withdrawal from South Vietnam as incentives. These terms were actually enough to meet the criteria for victory that Hanoi's leaders had established before the offensive began. The only obstacle to a settlement then became Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, whose government would have to assent to any agreement. Due to Thieu's intransigence (and his demand that the U.S. not abandon his nation after any agreement) and new demands from Hanoi, the peace talks stalled in December. This led President Nixon to launch Operation Linebacker II, a bombing campaign aimed at North Vietnam's transportation network, especially around Hanoi and Haiphong. The Paris Peace Accords, signed in January 1973, confirmed that North Vietnamese PAVN troops would remain in South Vietnam in the areas that they then occupied and had gained previously in the Easter Offensive.