"The only problem with trying to execute a battle plan on the Ho Chi Minh trail which always ran into an algorithmic error created by the inversion of the 1962 Laos Accords. As a result of the Accords the United States and North Vietnam reached a "tactic agreement" that North Vietnam would not launch ground attacks against western Laos so long as the United States did not launch ground attacks against the Laotian panhandle. This provided to be a massive failure in logic. Western Laos was strategically insignificant, but because of the Ho Chi Minh trail which ran its length the Laotain panhandle was what the military would call key terrain-terrain so important that it conveys a major advancement to its possessor." With signing the Laos Accords one of the main tactics in the war was not allowed to take place, which was an error on the United States. This error not only guaranteed its own failure but also sealed the fate of its South Vietnamese ally as well.
American strategy within South Vietnam focused directly on and around the employment of the United States ground troops. Westmoreland had devised a plan that was known as the three stages of employment. Looking at the first stage the American combat units would secure coastal base areas; during stages two and three they would conduct increasingly more extensive ground operations from bases in the interior. In a sense they wanted to put the squeeze down on any Viet Cong in South Vietnam by coming from the shore and interior and basically make a sandwich with the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese as the meat. .
The United States number one or main mission is described by Westmoreland in these words, "The American objective, or ultimate aim, in South Vietnam was to pacify the Republic of Vietnam by destroying the V. C . while at the same time reestablishing the government apparatus, strengthening South Vietnamese military forces, rebuilding the administrative machinery, and re-instituting the service of the Government.