Kmflett's Blog

From Harold Wilson on Vietnam to Keir Starmer on Venezuela: The tactics & strategy of supporting the US.

The US has been involved in an act of piracy in helping US forces seize a Russian flagged oil tanker in the North Atlantic. US planes took off from joint UK/US bases in England and the RAF was involved in providing cover. As the Defence Secretary Healey noted the US and UK military work very closely together. Indeed but as with Trump saying the quiet bit out loud is not often the best political strategy.

What that altogether more wily politician Harold Wilson did on Vietnam might provide a lesson for Keir Starmer.

Unlike Australia and New Zealand, Britain did not commit forces to US efforts to prop up the corrupt Diem regime in South Vietnam from 1962-1975.

If Britain did not commit front line troops in Vietnam, British Government support for American action was largely unwavering. In March 1965 Harold Wilson told the Commons that the Government fully supported ‘the action of the United States in resisting aggression in Vietnam’.

He was echoing a line developed by the Tory PM before him Alec Douglas Home and backed by the Tory PM after him, Heath, as well.

What did this full support mean?

While no troops were officially committed, the SAS fought in Vietnam under the banner of the Australasian forces. Other troops were seconded to the US and fought under that auspices.

These were not rank and file soldiers but specialists and experts in jungle warfare.

Indeed Britain trained US, Vietnamese and Thai troops in its Malaysian facilities in the late 1960s.

It was not just training and expertise that was provided.

The British monitoring station at Little Sai Wan in Hong Kong was used by the Americans to help them target bombing raids on North Vietnam.

All that said Wilson also resisted considerable pressure for Democratic President Johnson to publicly back the US with troops. He resisted, perhaps because he recognised the potential political consequences and that may well have been related to the strength of opposition to the Vietnam War in the UK.

Wilson also, at least up to the Tet Offensive in Spring 1968 when it became clear that the US was in any case losing the war, associated himself very closely with international negotiations to secure a ceasefire and peace in Vietnam, albeit essentially on US terms.

As ever, protest and survive