Hanoi’s Three Decisions and the Escalation of the Vietnam War

As the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese in 1975 launched their heavy assaults in South Vietnam, the world's attention was attracted once again to the temporarily forgotten but unsettled Vietnam problem. In historical perspective, the renewed fighting in 1974-1975 had a crucial connection with the past. That fighting was simply a continuation of the long-term Vietnam war that had been briefly deescalated after the 1973 Paris cease-fire accords. Many books have been published on the roots of the United States role in the expansion of the Vietnam war, but not so much has been written on the origins of the North Vietnamese escalation.1 Insofar as Hanoi is