Countering the United States in Vietnam } 233
DRV. Between 1966 and 1969, China supplied an estimated $85 million per
year in economic assistance to the DRV. Economic assistance was militarily
important as the DRV increasingly shifted manpower and resources to the
war effort in the south.
As noted in a previous chapter, in 1964 the VWP launched a major offensive
push intended to topple the pro-US government in Saigon and bring to power
in its place a noncommunist but neutralist government that would ask the
Americans to leave South Vietnam—all this before the US presidential elec-
tion scheduled for November 1964 eased political obstacles to large-scale US
intervention. Several considerations underlay this crucial decision—which
would, in effect, transform the DRV-aided insurgency in South Vietnam into
a full-scale US-DRV war as well as a proxy war between the PRC and the
United States.^3
Early in 1964, movement of men and materiel down the trails greatly
increased. Previously, people being sent south were mostly southerners who
had “regrouped” north after 1954. Now that was no longer the case. Northern
cadres began to go south in increased numbers. Whole units of the DRV mil-
itary, the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN), began to move south. This mas-
sive influx of men and material from the north combined with the paralysis
and chaos in the south to push the Saigon government to the brink of collapse.
By late 1964, there increasingly seemed to be only two realistic options for the
United States in South Vietnam: to withdraw, abandoning the Saigon govern-
ment to its fate, or to intervene with US combat forces to crush the insurgency
or at least prevent it from consolidating control over South Vietnam. US lead-
ers never seriously considered withdrawal, and moved steadily toward direct
and large-scale US military intervention.
VWP leaders recognized the US move toward deeper intervention, but
they also understood that President Lyndon Johnson would be reluctant to
undertake a new war while facing the 1964 election campaign. 1964 thus be-
came a decisive year for Hanoi.
US leaders were unwilling to concede the defeat of the nation-building and
counterinsurgency efforts in South Vietnam. They were unwilling to abandon
South Vietnam to communist takeover, believing that if it became commu-
nist the availability of territorial sanctuary for Thai and Cambodian commu-
nists would render those countries fatally vulnerable to communist takeover.
Malaysia and other countries of Southeast Asia might then follow. The coun-
tries of Southeast Asia would fall to communism one after the other, like a
line of dominos stood on end. US leaders decided, instead, to continue the de
facto policy of trying to contain the expansion of the communist sphere at
the 17th parallel.
The CCP’s support and encouragement of revolution across Southeast
Asia (reviewed in the previous chapter) was the basis for the US “domino
theory.” US intelligence had followed closely the polemical battle between the