The conditions of the POD lead to only one plausible outcome, the Communist forces are defeated decisively.
What if the United States had not given up in Vietnam?
- Thread starter Luciano7477
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Is it? The USSR was basically a military police state with no concern for public opinion but they didn't win in Afghanistan.
The war in vietnam was lost well before the general public turned against it. it was lost because of lack of intelligence and knowing what you are facing. It was not a political war. For the American it was a fight against communism whilst not understanding that it was a civil war that started as an anti-imperialism war. The Vietnamese were fighting for independence, both sides were. Thats a way diferent manner of fighting that the Americans never got wind of. They had lost before they began.
You can't compare Germany's situation at the end of WWII with the Vietnamese, at all. The Americans had fully commited a total war against Germany, Vietnam was a proxy war. Their population compared to eachother is totally different.
You're right, I did misunderstand your metaphor. Still, I don't think it's quite relevant, as the American military had a level of commitment and flexibility dealing with the Germans that they simply didn't have with the Vietnamese. Even a military junta would understand the risks of, say, a total invasion of North Vietnam. Those risks were not there when contemplating action against the Germans, and it's that increased ability to act (among other factors) that led to German manpower being worn out in a way I think it would be very difficult to do in Vietnam. The rationing was an example to say that Americans wouldn't accept the sacrifices they did in Germany, which you can see in terms of troop casualties. A failed German offensive that killed a few thousand Americans wouldn't cause the slightest stir, while the Tet offensive totally turned American politics on its head.
Sure the coronavirus killed more people, but I don't think that's as viscerally emotional to the American people as deaths in a foreign war. Public opinion does still matter in a military junta, plenty of dictatorships have been overthrown in the past as a response to a failing war abroad. Even suppressing anti-war protests (which every dictatorship does) doesn't stop people from knowing that their kids are dying for no reason.
Also, I'm not sure where you got this faith you seem to have in the policy of Vietnamization, considering how much of a failure it was in reality. The only way that North Vietnam is going to be restrained for any length of time is to have enough American soldiers there to essentially fight them alone. It's also odd that you seem to think "compel[ling] the North Vietnamese to negotiate" is a viable strategy, given that that's what we were trying to do for years and got nowhere. The only scenarios where North Vietnam will negotiate are if it's being given the whole of South Vietnam, if it goes in bad faith to try to buy time, or if they think they can better their position to come back for South Vietnam in a year or two. They WILL NOT accept South Vietnamese independence as long as they have a nation to send soldiers from, and they'll always have that because every general in the US had the sense to not invade the North.
What you seem to think is that the status quo of the late '60s (which did, in the narrowest possible tactical sense, favor the Americans) could've been sustained forever if not for the goddamn college students protesting and the media covering it negatively. I can hardly fault you for that, considering how deeply that American dolchstoßlegende is embedded in the way a lot of people talk about Vietnam, but it simply isn't true. Americans had simply reached their breaking point with a war that they didn't really understand the point of.
You were finding my scenario too unrealistic, so I made some edits to the main post.
I have two videos talking about the war:
I have two videos talking about the war:
There is no comparison. The Communists won the war because they could freely use Laos, and Cambodia for logistical bases. The front line in Vietnam was 800 miles long, which is almost twice as long as the Western Front in WWII. The NVA could cross into South Vietnam anywhere, and anytime they wanted to. After defeat they would retreat back into a safe zone, to regroup, resupply, and start all over again. They used the same routes to supply, and reinforce the VC inside SV. If the American Army moved into Laos they would cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail at it's base along the 17th Parallel, extending the DMZ Westward. The Communists also moved supplies into Cambodian ports, that the USN could block, by searching incoming ships.
This is called isolating the battlefield. With their supplies cut off the VC could only count on what they could capture, or buy though corruption, which would be far more limited. The ARVN could then concentrate most of their forces on counter insurgency, rather then fighting the NVA. The Americans, ROK's, and Australians would deal with the NVA in the North, fighting a conventional war. No GI's burning villages, herding peasants into Strategic Hamlets, or the dropping napalm on kids.
The Soviets lost in Afghanistan, because their use of geocidal tactics turned the population irrevocable against them, along with most of the Islamic World. The Mujahidin had safe havens in Pakistan, and Iran, with supplies, weapons, and volunteers from Muslim Countries, and sophisticated weapons from the CIA. China also supported anti Soviet factions in the NE part of the country. The Soviets never had the option of invading Iran, or Pakistan. That would be beyond their military capacity, and would only multiply their problems. Both China, and the United States would intervene to defend Pakistan, and potentially start WWIII, with the USSR & India vs. USA & China. invading Iran would only create another quagmire.
So the junta-run US gains another ally that it must permanently base forces within so as to defend it against a rematch. Not a great win that one. A better what if is what if the US had shown foresight and a little understanding and bought Vietnam to its side of the Cold War ledger without conflict. More plausible than this scenario.
First, posting PragerU videos probably isn't going to convince anyone of anything around here.
Second, you're proposing that the U.S. just stay in until it has killed enough North Vietnamese that the North Vietnamese ability to fight the war dissolves. This overlooks that how ever fragile North Vietnam was, South Vietnam was so much more fragile than that. South Vietnam survived the Easter Offensive largely through overwhelming U.S. air support and then collapsed like a house of cards in 1975. That it couldn't muster up any significant indigenous defense despite all the materiel and manpower it had on paper and after 20 years of independence, shows how ridiculously fragile South Vietnam was.
Bottom line, whatever time the U.S. needed to kill enough North Vietnamese to "win the war," South Vietnam had less time because it was run by back-stabbing incompetents.
if you are going to take Nixon seriously, nobody is going to listen to you anymore.
We've got a junta. We've already bleached the US Army, Navy and Airforce. Isn't it the perfect time to add a dolchstoße legende isn't it?
I fucking hate "sink the boats" threads. Not only do they have a crime against humanity as the object of their desire, not always even undisclosed; but, they are grossly neglectful of the past as it was. The real crime against humanity was the history that was erased along the way.
I commend to you the history of the Americans, ROK's, and Australians and how they dealt with the DPRK, and KPA, and Korean civillians, while fighting in the North, fighting a conventional war. I think you'll find that GI's burnt villages, herded peasants, and that napalm sticks to kids. Of course Korea was far more efficient, to the extent that the DPRK was the perfection of Tokyo.
It wasn't a complete military failure. The PAVN, PLAF, PRG, DRVN and VWP still existed.
<cough>
1972.
1975.
China.
China.
Cambodia.
Most critically both the NFL/PRG and VWP(s) were intact. Yes the PLAF mainline forces were destroyed, to the point that their cadre were eliminated and they were essentially uniform swap PAVN forces. Yes the PLAF provincial forces were attrited down to their cadre and rendered useless. But the VWP(s) maintained control over the NFL and the PRG and their taxation systems.
Both you, and Giap, were right in that Tet-1 -2 and -3 were a cluster fuck of uselessness brought on by the Duan clique.
But it wasn't a complete military failure, nor a last roll of the dice. It was an attempt to force decision that failed. It was a monumental military failure. But the VWP managed to transform its line (cough, following Giaps, cough) and maintained this line even after Giap was sidelined after 1972.
…
But let's get out the bleach and the imaginary back knives and juntas. We're just one card away from completing the set and getting this sent to coventary.
not yours,
Sam R.
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Interesting.
Yugoslavia was valuable because it was positioned against the Warsaw Pact, and because it was a "free" division within the European "Communist" states. Tito had already went his own way. It was a low cost exercise.
Minh/Duan are too opportunist to split publicly.
You buy a hostile France.
You actually need to put dosh into Vietnam, it isn't free.
So how do you get a VWP hostile to the Soviet/Chinese bloc in 1954?
How do you get a France that isn't worth giving a handjob to for the United States?
How do you get VWP Vietnam perceived as "cheap" an exercise as throwing Tito gnawed bones?
And how do you get an American regieme intelligent enough to perceive these in a minor theatre of THE BIG BOARD?
The obvious answer is Giap taking control as an Imre Nagy of the South East in 1954, thus producing a latent severence of position with both the China and Soviet Union, to become actualised in 1956 depending on Poland or Hungary.
The obvious answer is Ike being shot in the head in Texas in 1955 and Nixon preserving his legacy as a 1.5 term war president.
Only Nixon can go to Hungary and Vietnam.
yours,
Sam R.
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Prager U is a laughable conservative propaganda source for the Vietnam War and nobody on here will take it serious.
I dunno mate. I've done enough history of ideas to be willing to gut Prager in public…
That's taking it seriously isn't it?
The civilians that the Americans killed in Korea died during the mobile phase of the war, and in the bombing of North Korea. Not many civilians were living in the Iron Triangle, sight seeing on Old Baldy, or drinking from the Punch Bowl. The DMZ in Vietnam didn't have many civilians, and the extended DMZ across Laos wouldn't ether. After the failure of the Tet Offensive the VC were progressively wiped out, by 1972 the countryside was largely pacified. The 1972, and 75 offensives were conventional NVA campaigns, but were fought in populated areas of South Vietnam, not in the DMZ, so again many civilians died.
The PRG was a constant blocking position in the chats. And it maintained its systems of government. It was limited, but not eliminated, particularly as comprador forces (such as the Australians) withdrew, and especially as Vietnamisation was politically ridiculous. The resilience of the PRG/NFL/VWP(s) state formation is *remarkable* in the history of both anti-imperialism and class war. Maybe this makes bourgeois US policy more rational, but I doubt it, I've read the conservative think tank anthro-socio village reports from 1966. What is does mean is that the US state refused to listen to its own advice on how "governance" worked, and horrifically for a state who planned a war of aggressive global annihilation, how wars of crimes against humanity level exterpitation work.
This is a "sink the boats" thread obviously, and only, now. I no longer will comment as I value my account being active.
Never yours.
Yeah, that's basically the american version of the Dolchstoßlegende.
Weak polliticians, leftist media and stupid hippies stabbed our glorious armed forces in the back, preventing our imminent, rightfull victory.
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Garrison
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Apologies for getting my Vietnamese factions wrong but my point wasn't that the US destroyed the Communists forces, its about controlling the media narrative so Tet isn't seen as proof that the US can't win but instead as a significant victory.
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