Did Vietnam prevent more action from Reagan?

After the Vietnam War, the American people were scared of entering a new war.

Carter refused to attack Iran, and the public was scared of going into the Persian Gulf War.

The First Gulf War brought back military confidence, which gave the military a victory disease that brought it into the Balkans and Somalia.

And Iraq, but since we lost the moral fight Americans will not want to to go to war for many years.

With Reagan being such a hawk, would he have did more military action if the public wasn't so scared from Vietnam?
 
After the Vietnam War, the American people were scared of entering a new war.

Carter refused to attack Iran, and the public was scared of going into the Persian Gulf War.

The First Gulf War brought back military confidence, which gave the military a victory disease that brought it into the Balkans and Somalia.

And Iraq, but since we lost the moral fight Americans will not want to to go to war for many years.

With Reagan being such a hawk, would he have did more military action if the public wasn't so scared from Vietnam?

Well, one could argue that with Vietnam not being the embarrassment it was, the whole chain of events catapulting Reagan into to White House is butterflied away in the first place.
Otherwise, assuming for the sake of the argument that you have no "Vietnam" (I mean, no traumatizing US experience in Vietnam ending in abject failure) and Reagan is still winning in 1980 with an international context otherwise similar to OTL, I think that you are correct. He could possibly do something stupid like invading Iran or getting sucked into somewhere messy and bloody. Nicaragua, Lebanon, Angola, you name it.
There's a fair chance that this sort of policy could either trigger a major conflict with direct Soviet intervention, and/or give the US a later version of the Vietnamese lesson, only probably worse for all the parties involved.
It's hard to see how anywhere could get much worse than the bloody disaster zone the Cold War had turned Indochina into, but the Middle East for example may offer a suitable place to screw up majorly. Which is indeed where the Reaganian line of "strategic" thinking has actually led the US, except it happened far past Reagan's presidential tenure.
Otherwise, it looks like that what kept the American willingness to do stupid things across the board in check was the continued existence of the Soviet Union. Frex, invading Iran would bring large American occupation forces into a country that directly border the Soviet Union, which is likely to be going to be taken as an unacceptable affront in Moscow.
So maybe the US can be convinced to tread lightly in the Middle East in the end. However, the didn't give a fuck about Central America, so you might have a version of "Vietnam" there (one that receives a lot less Sino-Soviet support though, so maybe the US can come out of it with less collective scars - mind you, it would still be an immensely bloody affair where morality has very little room).
 
'no Vietnam war' is quite a POD in itself. There's a lot of possibilities. The USA might get involved in some hopeless war somewhere else, in it's anti-communist fervor. If it doesn't, and we still have a President Reagan, it's hard to say what he'll do. Without Vietnam, the Soviets may not be so emboldened as to meddle much in C. America, etc. As for attacking Iran... well, Reagan sorta did that in OTL, with the whole Tanker War thing. I doubt he'd do anymore than that... if history goes like OTL, the hostage crisis is over, there's not much reason to monkey around there. But with no Vietnam war, it's hard to imagine that the history of the 70s and 80s would be anything like ours...
 
'no Vietnam war' is quite a POD in itself. There's a lot of possibilities. The USA might get involved in some hopeless war somewhere else, in it's anti-communist fervor. If it doesn't, and we still have a President Reagan, it's hard to say what he'll do. Without Vietnam, the Soviets may not be so emboldened as to meddle much in C. America, etc. As for attacking Iran... well, Reagan sorta did that in OTL, with the whole Tanker War thing. I doubt he'd do anymore than that... if history goes like OTL, the hostage crisis is over, there's not much reason to monkey around there. But with no Vietnam war, it's hard to imagine that the history of the 70s and 80s would be anything like ours...

Soviet meddling in Central America was negligible anyway. Local insurgencies etc. were largely homegrown. Without Vietnam, however, it is possible that more self-secure US won't feel the need to intervene so heavy-handedly.
 
I always wonder, without Vietnam would the USA react more harsh, if something like the Oil-price-shock of 1973 happend. Even IOTL was talk of intervention.

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Well, 1970s are only post-WW2 decade where US didn't get in a new war and next two ones were pretty minor affairs so think about that what you will....
 
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