Decide what a claim means by success: holding territory, ending American combat, or achieving a government's political aim. Then compare that aim with what actually happened.
Choose the claim and test it against the outcome.
Tet: who held the ground?
- Communist attacks were repelled.
- Communist forces suffered major losses.
This supports a military assessment of the offensive's failure to achieve its immediate objectives.
It does not show that confidence in American policy was unaffected.
1973: had the whole war ended?
- American combat forces withdrew.
- Vietnamese parties continued fighting.
The agreement ended the main American combat commitment but did not secure a durable Vietnamese peace.
Do not substitute the end of one participant's role for the end of the conflict.
1975: was the American objective achieved?
- The South collapsed.
- Communist forces controlled the country.
The aim of preserving a non-communist South ultimately failed, while the North's reunification project prevailed.
Military victory did not remove the immense human and economic damage.