AHC: Is it possible to have Vietnam fight its own ''Vietnam War''?

In which Vietnam is ''humiliated'' by a much lesser power with ''inferior technology''? In an odd way, they sort of did in Cambodia by fighting the remnants of the Khmer Rouge insurgency in the 80s, but they decidedly won the conflict and the Khmer Rouge never threaten the VPA forces seriously. It will probably be a small nation in South East Asia. I can't see them having the power go somewhere else. Maybe, getting caught up in the Soviet war in Afghanistan. But, that's probably far-fetched.

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Well, I can't really see them getting into a war with a country they don't border, so by my map, that leaves China, Laos, and Cambodia. China certainly wouldn't count as "inferior technology", and, depending on what exactly you think happened in 1979, the Chinese were arguably the "USA"(ie. the humiliated party) of that little melee.

I'm not really aware of how the Vietnamese people felt about their status relative to their Khmer Rouge rivals. Was the ongoing warfare in the 1980s and early 90s regarded as a humiliation for Hanoi? I dunno, as you say, they WON, and considering that the Khmer Rouge had China, the USA, and the UK in their corner, I'd say the Vietnamese(granted with some Soviet support) put on a pretty impressive show.

Don't know anything about Laos. For now I'll assume that their relative obscurity indicates that they're probably not much of a military power, so if Vietnam got its ass kicked by them, yeah, it probably would be a humiliation. But of course that has to be balanced off with the possibility of Laos beating Vietnam to begin with, which seems pretty remote to me.

One thing I'll say is that I think a big part of the reason the US in Vietnam lost was because the American people(not without justification) had simply given up on wanting to fight the war. Yes, the North Vietnamese fought with great tenacity, but that had to combine with an unwillingness of the American public to continue facing that tenacity, in order to produce the end of American involvement. If someone had been able to sell the public on "Sure, the Vietnamese are tough, but we'll just keep bombing the hell out of them until there's no one left", it probably could have worked.

What sort of attitudes toward foreign wars you had among the Vietnamese in the the 70s and 80s, I don't know. Obviously, it wasn't much of a democracy, so the government didn't have to worry as much about elections or protests in the street.
 
Amazing points. I can't see them losing to Laotians. Considering the fact, Laos is sparsely populated and if the Vietnamese really wanted they could put a force there larger than the entire population of that nation.

And, I'm not too familiar with Sino-Vietnamese war in 1979. I always thought the Chinese were the ones that they had inferior weaponry. Since Deng Xiaoping saw it as proof that the People's Army needed to seriously modernised.
 
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In which Vietnam is ''humiliated'' by a much lesser power with ''inferior technology''? In an odd way, they sort of did in Cambodia by fighting the remnants of the Khmer Rouge insurgency in the 80s, but they decidedly won the conflict and the Khmer Rouge never threaten the VPA forces seriously. It will probably be a small nation in South East Asia. I can't see them having the power go somewhere else. Maybe, getting caught up in the Soviet war in Afghanistan. But, that's probably far-fetched.

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What kind of Vietnam? A Vietnam from the 50's or the Vietnam from the 70's? IE, communist or nationalist Vietnam?

Because the commie Vietnam from the 70's couldn't even feed its own people whilst the nationalist Vietnam didn't have enough equipment available to industrialize properly and have something to give.
 
Amazing points. I can't see them losing to Laotians. Considering the fact, Laos is sparsely populated and if the Vietnamese really wanted they could put a force there larger than the entire population of that nation.

And, I'm not too familiar with Sino-Vietnamese war in 1979. I always thought the Chinese were the ones that they had inferior weaponry. Since Deng Xiaoping saw it as proof that the People's Army needed to seriously modernised.

IIRC, the PLA won most of their battles tactically. They could've tried to take Hanoi, if they wanted. It's just that the PAVN (and affiliated militias) made them pay too high a price to make continuance of the war worth it, especially since the strategic gamble of the war (get the Viets to panic and withdraw from Cambodia) failed miserably. It's a bit comparable to the Red Army performance in the Winter War. Technically, the Soviets "won", but by all other measures, it didn't look like it.

As far as the main topic goes, Cambodia typically is referred to as Vietnam's Vietnam. The Vietnamese weren't humiliated and, in many ways, were quite successful, since they were able to permanently replace a hostile Cambodian government with a friendly one (some would go as far as to say a client state). They did pay a huge price for it though in terms of time (they didn't withdraw until 89), casualties, and international reputation (for instance, many thought that the Vietnamese would eventually go to war with Thailand and minor military conflicts along the border did occur). It was a bleeding wound and a money pit, in the same way the American-Vietnam War and the Soviet-Afghan War was. It's just that the Vietnamese managed to navigate their exit much more cleanly and accomplish many more of their political goals.

Modern warfare-wise, I could see a bad military/political situation for the Vietnamese if any of their neighbors somehow became destabilized.
 
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