AHC: Win the Vietnam War

In that case its easy as pie.

1966 or early 1967 (i.e. before public opinion swings against the war)

Fortify the DMZ, pending a free and final vote on a new Vietnamese government. Make use of the UNSC veto as needed.

Settle in for a fairly brutal three-five years of bug hunting. Spend some money on a "mini-Marshall Plan" across the entire country. Get some light industry/manufacturing/investment (both from the U.S. and from the IMF) and reduce the amount of grinding poverty. This might turn around and bite at some point, since the U.S. is effectively setting up another Asian Tiger, but people who have money, food, and shelter tend to be less likely to go hide in the jungle as VC.

Easy?

South Vietnamese (and Americans) were not outfought as much as out-administered. Unless GVN/USA is able to destroy FNL political and administrative structure and replace it with their own then invasion of the North would result in never ending guerrilla war ála First Indochina War. China and USSR still have every incentive to provide NVA/FNL with safe areas, supplies and training.

If there is an effective popular government in Saigon, then there is no need to invade north, if there is not then it doesn't help. Best bet? Have USA join the French in 1955 and support a coalition government with Buddhist, Hoa Hao, Cao Dai and Bình Xuyên. Abolish tenant farming with land reform, develop infrastucture and industry. Basically hijack Viet Minh political program minus the communism and maybe, just maybe South Vietnam can go along with the Malaysia, Korea and Thailand
 
There is some logic to this, and perhaps if dealing with a somewhat coolheaded, rational statesman on the other side this would have worked. That statesman is NOT Mao Zedong. This is a leader who had already gone all in against a nuclear armed US in Korea, let 40mil of his people die in the Great Leap Foward, built a cultlike religion around himself, and decided to let a bunch of fanatical kids with AK 47s run rampant. I feel like if we threatened to nuke some cities of his he would say something like "Go Ahead! we have too many people anyway!" and perhaps not even be kidding. Basically, trying to out-mad man a person like Mao seems like a losing bet.



See, I think this is where we disagree. I think he might very well have been insane, or at a minimum he could have convinced the US side that he was.
Mao was, for lack of a better word, stupid. He wasn't downright insane, but outside of his poetry, caligraphy, and ability to get a couple million peasants to worship him, he was really, really, really fucking stupid. The Great Leap Forward was what happens when you let him run a country. The Cultural Revolution, on the other hand, was an attempt at seizing back power.

Now, if you were to threaten to nuke China? He wouldn't be stupid enough to just let China be nuked without question. He'd lose much in the way of legitimacy, and open himself up for attacks by his enemies (Aka get stabbed to death in his sleep).
 
Now, if you were to threaten to nuke China? He wouldn't be stupid enough to just let China be nuked without question.

You are PROBABLY right. However, that is a key word. If you are President Johnson and considering invading North Vietnam and Mao threatens to respond and perhaps go nuclear, the question you have to consider isn't "what WILL Mao do?" but "what MIGHT Mao do?."

Mao's track record isn't exactly encouraging. Sure, you MIGHT be able to sell that threat and your chances may even be better than 50% that he buys it, but he has gotten involved before (in Korea) AND he is stronger now (in particular now he has the bomb). Sure, maybe he can't hit America but he CAN hit Seoul, Tokyo, and (perhaps most importantly) Saigon. Also, there is the Soviets to think about. You JUST won the presidency by convincing America that your opponent was an apocalyptic maniac whereas you are the sane one, and now you are going to try to convince Mao that you are willing to kill hundreds of millions, and risk ww3, just to save South Vietnam. I think EVEN IF you are serious it would be quite difficult to convince Mao that you are.
 
I'm not super informed of internal US Army politics in the 50s-60s, but I think that if the ARVN was trained, equipped, and structured to fight a COIN war, instead of trying to prevent the next Korea, the Communists would have a much harder time operating. When South Vietnam experimented with making regular infantry battalions organic to specific districts (making the commander the chief of the district), they had some great success smothering the VC infrastructure. The problem was that this kind of counter-insurgency operation didn't produce a lot of body-counts, so the high command put them back on Search and Destroy missions. I just don't know if there was a critical mass of officers in the US army that could see the true course.

So maybe make each ARVN battalion organic to a district, working in the peoples' fields, living with them, drawing their manpower form that area, etc., and as districts are pacified, leave behind a depot company and shift the unit into a mobile reserve to meet conventional attacks-in-force. The U.S. can provide financial/materiel support, as well has huge amounts of mobile firepower; you'd want to fund land reform pretty generously, and make sure soldiers are payed well.
 

CalBear

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Easy?

South Vietnamese (and Americans) were not outfought as much as out-administered. Unless GVN/USA is able to destroy FNL political and administrative structure and replace it with their own then invasion of the North would result in never ending guerrilla war ála First Indochina War. China and USSR still have every incentive to provide NVA/FNL with safe areas, supplies and training.

If there is an effective popular government in Saigon, then there is no need to invade north, if there is not then it doesn't help. Best bet? Have USA join the French in 1955 and support a coalition government with Buddhist, Hoa Hao, Cao Dai and Bình Xuyên. Abolish tenant farming with land reform, develop infrastucture and industry. Basically hijack Viet Minh political program minus the communism and maybe, just maybe South Vietnam can go along with the Malaysia, Korea and Thailand
You misunderstand what I mean as it being easy.

The utter destruction of the North as a useful political construct will cease to exist. No question, none. The U.S. of 1966-67 was far better suited to deal with the underlying economic issues that caused the Colonial war. You may have note that part of the scenario was the introduction of a "mini-Marshall" Plan. That would address much, not all, but much of the economic issues that fed the initial revolt. The U.S. is also vastly more able to deal militarily with any insurgency than the French in 1954.

The combination of a major improvement in the economy, the isolation of any insurgency from heavy weapons, and the far more capable 1967 U.S. military (both in equipment and training compared to the early 1950s French, who were still licking their wounds from WW II) would create a much different scenario than OTL 1954.
 
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