Inquiry into the bombing of the Red River dikes (Vietnam in summer 1972). Method of analysis and general reflections

Abstract

By means of a series of arguments and specifically geographical reasoning, the article lays bare the strategy and tactics practiced by the United States´ General Staff during the Vietnam War against the Red River dikes, with the purpose of provoking a “natural” disaster during the flood season. All measures were taken in order to being able to deny the deliberate character of those attacks and to rendering the demonstration of the intent of genocide impossible. It reconstructs, thanks to essentially geographical data, the reasoning elaborated by other geographers for the Pentagon so as to carry out this “geographical war”. The practical use of geography for war gives evidence of both its political and military functions, which have always been its primary meaning.