A question for those knowledgeable about Vietnam & general military matters

Hey y'all,

I'm currently working on a TL in which the proxy wars between East and West in SE Asia take place a decade later. Since there's a lot of military & 'Nam buffs on this forum, I was wondering if anybody knows if/thinks that the new developments in the field of military technology and/or doctrine between 1965 and 1975 would benefit one side (a modern army far from home) or the other (local guerillas - maybe supported by an already Communist rump state, a la North Vietnam). Or did conflicts like the Vietnam War shape military science to such a degree that the fighting would essentially be the same if done ten years later?

Thanks in advance for any ideas and insights you might have to offer.

(Sorry if the question's fuzzy, too little sleep.)
 
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The thing is, the Vietnam war was a continuous process starting in 1945--or earlier, considering that Ho Chi Minh built up the Viet Minh as a patriotic Popular Front movement to combat both Vichy French and Japanese control of Vietnam during WWII. (And to be sure, had been trying his best to oust the French before that; the war was his opportunity to expand his revolutionary movement into a broad patriotic one). The next decade was the French of the postwar Fourth Republic attempting to hold their Indochinese colonies, an attempt that eventually failed. OTL the Americans stepped in to prop up a new South Vietnamese regime the instant the French left; insofar as the war was a "proxy war" against the Soviet/Chinese alliance, the US was already involved even before the French left. First of all we provided the transport of French troops back to Indochina immediately after WWII; toward the end of the French attempts to hold, Eisenhower offered the French the use of nuclear weapons.

On the other side of the "proxy war" equation, that was largely projection by the Americans and other Cold Warriors--the Viet Minh was overwhelmingly a homegrown, do-it-yourself movement, like pretty much all successful Leninist governments that formed after WWII. Indeed both Stalin and Khrushchev, for somewhat different reasons, often found their ideological "allies" to be embarrassing loose cannons and had they followed the directions of Moscow--probably there would be no Communist regimes in Hanoi or indeed in Beijing!

So it is not at all clear what is meant by suggesting the war is delayed by a decade. We could hardly have French Indochina at peace for a decade and then suddenly the Viet Minh start an insurgency out of a blue sky in 1955! OTL they were fighting the returning French the instant they disembarked and indeed lobbying the USA not to help them come back in the first place. The movement was continuous with wartime resistance; putting it on holiday for a decade makes no sense.

Nor is there any sort of space for a decade's respite between the French withdrawal and Americans ramping up serious levels of "aid" to the Saigon government--indeed, without massive US interventions immediately in the mid-1950s, there would have been no Saigon government, no Republic of South Vietnam. If anyone was a "proxy" in this war it was the various shadowy regimes that called themselves this government! Everyone assumed--certainly the American establishment quickly accepted--that had general elections been held across Vietnam as stipulated in the peace treaty under which the French withdrew, Ho Chi Minh would have won hands-down, across the entire country. Therefore it was vital that any regime the Americans propped up would see to it no such elections were held in the South. From the beginning, the government of South Vietnam, such as it was, was utterly a creature of Western intervention--first as an extension and continuation of the French colonial regime, then as a project of American cold warriors. Without Americans already knee-deep in that particular Big Muddy, no South Vietnamese state would even exist.

And the idea that perhaps the Viet Minh would give what was from their point of view essentially just a continuation of the French regime they'd been fighting since 1940 anyway a decade's respite to find its bearings is just silly.

I just don't see any way to insert the sort of interval of a decade in the process your question requires; there was no stasis to maintain, no peace to extend; every year that passed between 1940 and 1975 was a year in which Ho Chi Minh's movement was fighting to, as they saw it, liberate their homeland from foreign rule, and on the other side of it, if the South Vietnamese government ever acquired any sort of legitimacy and credibility, it was toward the end, and after well over a decade of massive American involvement in every aspect of South Vietnamese society.

Had there ever been a stable, established alternative to either foreign rule or the Viet Minh in Vietnam, the whole thing would have been a war of an entirely different nature. Had either the French colonial regime or the American project of building a brand-new puppet state enjoyed a decade's worth of extra success, postponing the equivalent of say 1963 to 1973, the whole dynamic would have been very different--and indeed a different set of options than the best French and American efforts to come up with OTL would have to have been forthcoming as it was not; then again the whole nature of the war would have been completely different. Say the French managed to buy themselves an extra 5 years or so and didn't get routed at Dienbienphu or some equivalent fiasco until 1960 or so--to have held out that long they'd have had to have more success at winning over more Vietnamese to their side, meanwhile on the stages of world politics, instead of a Soviet Union just coming out of Stalin's rule and still fighting the Korean War, alongside a China still apparently joined at the hip to Moscow, presumably at least some of the fragmentation apparent in the Communist Bloc by then OTL would be showing. This might help Americans secure another 5-year extension on their nation-building project in the South, by weakening and isolating the new government in the North.

But if the big, publicly embarrassing interventions the USA had to carry out to protect their investment in Saigon had been postponed a decade, to the early 1970s, they'd be considered in the light of a completely different political landscape. Perhaps if there were no Vietnam War in the 1960s, at least not on a scale like that of OTL, American and international politics would have been more like it was earlier, but this seems unlikely to me. Time and various shifts in the basic structure of things would go on.

A North Vietnam and southern Viet Minh insurgency delayed a decade is essentially a major defeat for those movements, sapping their credibility and depriving them of both domestic and foreign support. It may be interesting to try to imagine WI the war had happened a decade later, but it will require either very intricate and imaginative time-line crafting or sheer ASB fiat to set up that situation! I can't see it; it seems to me that the other sides were trying their best to delay, indeed defeat, Ho Chi Minh as much as they could; if we can imagine more success on their part we might as well imagine the Viet Minh crushed completely. I don't see how to get the same players but delayed a decade.
 
Perhaps if France managed to prop up a Nationalist (but still France-friendly) regime around the Emperor Bao Dai in 1948-1950. The early "asiatization" of the Indochina war at a time when Vietnamese Nationalists (like the Daiviets) would certainly slow down the Viet-Minh progress, and prolong French presence in South-East Asia, particularly if Paris and Bao Dai played on Vietnamese fears of Chinese hegemony.

Ultimately, though, the nationalist government itself would resent French presence and ask for the repatriation of the Corps Expéditionnaire units. Geopolitical realism would also draw the Nationalist Vietnamese government closer to the US, through convergence of interests (containment of the Communist ideology, bases in South-East Asia,

So, you might have Vietnam a few years later - and possibly with France deploying along with the US, depending on the circumstances French units get to leave Indochina - but I'm not sure you'd have different tactics. The 1965-1975 Vietnam war shaped up tactics. if you take that experience out, why would the armies intervening in Vietnam in the mid-1970s have a different approach than the ones deployed in 1965?
 
Perhaps if France managed to prop up a Nationalist (but still France-friendly) regime around the Emperor Bao Dai in 1948-1950. The early "asiatization" of the Indochina war at a time when Vietnamese Nationalists (like the Daiviets) would certainly slow down the Viet-Minh progress, and prolong French presence in South-East Asia, particularly if Paris and Bao Dai played on Vietnamese fears of Chinese hegemony.

Ultimately, though, the nationalist government itself would resent French presence and ask for the repatriation of the Corps Expéditionnaire units. Geopolitical realism would also draw the Nationalist Vietnamese government closer to the US, through convergence of interests (containment of the Communist ideology, bases in South-East Asia,


Would Bao Dai be a viable alternative? I have my doubts. After 1945 the Vietminh had plenty of experience organizing and running parts of the country, and they were far and away the largest political party.
 
Damn, Shevek23, you make some outstanding points.

See, one of the central features of this TL would be a prolonged and considerably more intensive Sino-Indian War in the '60s, albeit one between the PRC and a militant India run by Subhas Chandra Bose, ending in a limited nuclear exchange using Soviet nukes supplied to India. I can't push that conflict into the '70s, because by then the Chinese will have developed their own nuclear bomb and the whole thing starts resembling WW3 way more than I like. At the same time, I wanted to have a basically recognizable SE Asia conflict, which as you rightly pointed out would be impossible since the local communists/nationalists aren't going to sit on their hands for a decade while the big boys fight it out.

But while we're on the subject, what's your opinion on Lt. Col. Vuong Van Dong, the leader of the failed anti-Diem coup in 1960? This juicy little tidbit caught my eye in particular:

"Later trained at Fort Leavenworth in the United States, Dong was regarded by American military advisers as a brilliant tactician and the brightest military prospect of his generation and he served in the Airborne Division." (from Wikipedia)

Would a successful coup against Diem in '60 have been able to make a substantial difference? Be able to, as Atlantic Friend (thank you!) pointed out, Vietnamize the conflict much earlier by building a more effective ARVN? And would Dong be able to hold the Republic of South Vietnam together? From what I gather Diem was corrupt and had a detrimental effect on the war effort through his meddling with the armed forces, but was nonetheless instrumental in keeping everything running smoothly, since I've read posters here point to the murder of him and his brother as a major turning point that sealed America's fate. But the notion of a fresh-faced, highly talented military officer like Dong taking over the country as early as 1960 does IMHO have a lot of potential for changing the overall course of the war, so...thoughts?
 
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MacCaulay

Banned
So you're talking about an anti-insurgency war in the late-50s early-60s, then, right? Is that the kind of technology and warfare doctrine you're trying to zero in on?

I'm actually writing a story about an Alternate Kenya right now which is putting me in a similar position so I could actually name books and sources and what not.

Am I kind of on the right track?
 
Would Bao Dai be a viable alternative? I have my doubts. After 1945 the Vietminh had plenty of experience organizing and running parts of the country, and they were far and away the largest political party.

Most probably not, but he was the only card the French Governor-General could play in 1948 (the other option would have been to establish a Republic with the Cochinchinese bourgeoisie at the helm, but that would have meant granting Indochina full independence).

I think it would have been possible to prop up Bao Dai for a few years, though, after which it would have been necessary to switch to a Republican regime. Both regimes would ultimately fall out of corruption and lack of popular support of course, but they'd have bought a few more years. In the 1948-1953 period, for example, Nationalists fought French occupation in the South and were more a problem than the Viet-Minh. If part of these groups had been brought into the Vietnamese government, then the task of Pignon, Carpentier and de Lattre would have been easier.

In the end I agree, the regime in the South could not (and would not) match the Communists' implacable organization.
 
Can not remember if it was Col Hackworth's book or another, but there was a civilian caver (spelunker) who went up the chain of command with an idea of how to detect the Chi Chi tunnels, primarily that all caverns breathe due to changes of air pressure and to a lesser extent of temperature, circa 1966.

The idea was not in the book as detail, and the brass decided not to meet with him on a Cheif of Staff/comparible level and just trash the idea, but my guess is he wanted to put some radioactive or other highly detectable element in the air, disperse it by airplane on a colder night, and watch for trails afterwards from venting places after the airmass would have typically naturally passed on. Exact locations of trap doors and camoflaged exit vents (but not usually
intake vents) could have been noted for precise blocking off and detonations.

So instead of waiting till the B52s finally put a damper on the whole affair in 1969 carpet bombing it is recalled, the sapping strength is in theory met about 1967, a critical 2 years.

Harrier Jump jets were used towards the end, to good effect.

Draining the U Minh swamp before the 1969 drought would have changed the southern areas even more than took place. My favorite is some sort of method with the daily tides, with progressively larger channels which grow without collapsing, but this is of course speculative. More agressive draining with a mud covered barge which does not expose expensive, or inexpensive not easily replaced parts, while dredging would have been ideal and easily done.

U Minh was and is the remainder of an ancient log jam flood and notoriously difficult to dredge, so a -40 foot suction would be necessary to dislodge the accumulated old trunks.

There are others. Not one of these three would have truly tipped the balance but all add up. It was not the materiel that was lacking but an adequate leadership on GSVN, and US generalship, which truly lost the picture. This is an older thread. If the originator replies some more will be posted.
 
One detail change you could make is to station the Marines in the Mekong Delta and have them conduct the Riverine war, they'd do well fighting from the boats.

Different doctrines are available, I believe Abrams had a better way to fight the war than Westy did, and surely even his doctrines and methods could borrow good stuff from other countries like Britain.
 
Marines are fine in the Delta, Riain, but they are not a new method or technology. Instead, it was a great mistake to send Marines to do what the Army normally does, and not really part of the thread.

True enough, Marines are superb assault troops, and in the Delta they could probably made some pretty good assaults on the VC infrastructure along with SEALS and the USN riverboats. Or in CAP, using the method that brought a victory of sorts in Nicaragua and Haiti 50 years before.

Ramrod straight Westy should have been kept in the job he was best for, catching by the scruff of the neck pampered cheaters-with-well-connected-fathers and catapulting them out of West Point (1952 or so), which needed to be done again but was not until circa 1976. Abrams was a most excellent tanker. I would have kept him in tanking country, Germany Fulda Gap. Maybe John Vann, but he was out of the military.

Anyway, thanks for the input but the thread is really about new developments/tactics of the period making a difference.
 
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