S8 Ep273: LAM SON 719 AND THE FAILURE OF VIETNAMIZATION Colleague Geoffrey Wawro. The 1971 invasion of Laos (Lam Son 719) exposed the failure of Vietnamization, as South Vietnamese troops were routed without US ground support, proving they lacked the leadership and

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John Batchelor

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🗓️ 1 January 2026

⏱️ 11 minutes

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LAM SON 719 AND THE FAILURE OF VIETNAMIZATION Colleague Geoffrey Wawro. The 1971 invasion of Laos (Lam Son 719) exposed the failure of Vietnamization, as South Vietnamese troops were routed without USground support, proving they lacked the leadership and logistics to fight alone. By 1972, only massive American air power, reinstated by Nixon during the Easter Offensive, saved South Vietnam from collapse, while Nixonsimultaneously pursued détente with China and the USSR to isolate Hanoi. The relentless "Linebacker" bombing campaigns eventually forced North Vietnam back to the negotiating table, though the peace deal essentially replicated terms available years earlier. NUMBER 15

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0:00.0	This is CBSI on the world. Jeff Warrho is here. His new book, exhaustively researched,
0:11.4	and he visited many of these sites in Vietnam, including the battlefield of Kaysan, 50 years later.
0:18.9	The Vietnam War of military history.
0:23.7	It is now 1971, winter.
0:29.9	And another country is violated, invasion of Laos.
0:32.8	It's called something I never knew about.
0:34.3	Lamsan 719.
0:35.8	I only knew it as Laos.
0:41.2	However, this is a disaster times 10 because it demonstrates the Arvin are not ready to fight without the Americans. And that fact is denied. Nobody brings
0:49.7	it up back in Washington during the Vietnamization. What was Vietnamization? What was the theory, Jeff?
0:55.9	Vietnamization was the idea that became a part of Nixon's secret plan to end the war.
1:01.4	You know, the pieces were that he was going to fight harder than Johnson.
1:04.7	He was not going to observe the same strict rules of engagement.
1:08.0	He was going to bomb more.
1:10.2	He might even reintroduce bombing to North Vietnam, which Johnson had suspended in October of engagement. He was going to bomb more. He might even reintroduce bombing to North Vietnam,
1:12.6	which Johnson had suspended in October of 68. He would try to detach Hanoi from its superpower patrons,
1:20.1	Moscow and Beijing, through diplomacy to the opening to China, detente with the Soviet Union.
1:26.3	And then he would then prepare the South
1:28.7	Vietnamese military for life without America. So he would just, he would make massive deliveries
1:33.9	of weapons and material to the, to the South Vietnamese military so that it could, it could fight
1:39.7	like Americans and stand alone without American support. So Operation Lamson 719 in the spring of 1971,
1:51.5	this is going to be a Laotian incursion like the Cambodian incursion of 1970, the previous year.
	...

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