S8 Ep625: 7. "Vietnamization" aimed to prepare the South Vietnamese army (ARVN) to fight alone through material support and Nixon's increased bombing campaigns. However, the 1971 invasion of Laos (Lam Son 719) was a failure, demonstrating that ARVN lacked the leade
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2026
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
7. "Vietnamization" aimed to prepare the South Vietnamese army (ARVN) to fight alone through material support and Nixon's increased bombing campaigns. However, the 1971 invasion of Laos (Lam Son 719) was a failure, demonstrating that ARVN lacked the leadership and spirit to execute complex air-mobile operations without U.S. ground troops. Nixon also pursued "detente" with China and Moscow, hoping to isolate Hanoi and secure a peace deal. Despite devastating "Linebacker" bombings of North Vietnamese cities, the NVA remained resilient, eventually accepting a peace deal only to await the final U.S. departure. (7)
1967
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| 0:32.5 | This is CBSI on the world. |
| 0:34.4 | Jeff Warro is here. |
| 0:35.9 | His new book, exhaustively researched, and he visited many of these sites in Vietnam, including the battlefield of Kaysan, 50 years later. The Vietnam War of military history. It is now 1971, winter. And another country is violated, invasion of Laos. It's called something I never |
| 1:00.3 | knew about. Lamson 719. I only knew it as Laos. However, this is a disaster times 10 because it demonstrates |
| 1:09.6 | the Arvin are not ready to fight without the Americans. |
| 1:14.2 | And that fact is denied. Nobody brings it up back in Washington during the Vietnamization. |
| 1:21.1 | What was Vietnamization? What was the theory, Jeff? |
| 1:24.5 | Vietnamization was the idea that became a part of Nixon's secret plan to end the war. |
| 1:30.4 | You know, the pieces were that he was going to fight harder than Johnson. |
| 1:33.5 | He was not going to observe the same strict rules of engagement. |
| 1:36.7 | He was going to bomb more. |
| 1:39.0 | He might even reintroduce bombing to North Vietnam, which Johnson had suspended in October of 68. |
| 1:45.8 | He would try to detach Hanoi from its superpower patrons, Moscow and Beijing, through diplomacy to the opening |
| 1:52.8 | to China, detente with the Soviet Union. And then you would then prepare the South Vietnamese |
| 1:58.2 | military for life without America. So he would just, he would |
| 2:01.5 | make massive deliveries of weapons and material to the, to the South Vietnamese military so |
| 2:07.9 | that it could, it could fight like Americans and stand alone without American support. |
| 2:13.5 | So Operation Lamson 719 in, in the spring of 1971, this is going to be a Laotian incursion, |
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