Can the US win the Vietnam War

Hearts and minds campaign couldn't hurt matters... The Hamlet program was an unmitigated disaster that drove the civilians further toward the Vietcong and north Vietnamese. When you go burning people's houses down and destroying their food reserves they tend to become slightly pissed.

Stay away from Mcnamera, keep the military honest about field reports, don't inflate kill counts/ dont make the entire war about kill counts, and find one competent leader in the entirety of South Vietnam and then keep him stabilized.

The route to winning Vietnam appears to me to be more of a public relations and marketing solution rather than any one military solution.
 

Deleted member 94708

Can the US win?

Probably not, unless you consider modern-day Afghanistan to be “winning”. An all-volunteer force would be able to hold on longer but if South Vietnam becomes as reliant on them as happened IOTL and again in Afghanistan, then it won’t matter in the end as they’ll implode whenever we do throw in the towel just like Afghanistan is going to.

Can South Vietnam win?

Possibly, with more actual help and less US meddling in favor of the most kleptocratic idiots their political spectrum had to offer. There were opportunities to help them grasp some low-hanging economic fruit and cement the loyalty of the populace to a greater extent than actually happened. With that and continued training and arms sales it would have been relatively easy, actually; even as mismanaged as the war was IOTL the South was still only a hair’s breadth away from hanging on after we withdrew.

The end result would have been more Malaysia than South Korea but even the former is a fair sight better than OTL Vietnam. Trust me, I’ve seen both.
 
It's entirely possible with enough effort and enough handwaving to construct a scenario where the US wins the Vietnam War. Or where Germany beats the Soviet Union and wins WWII, or operation Sealion actually works, or where the Confederacy wins the civil war. Such scenarios either involve vast amounts of careful research and the assumption of luck and fortune, or various categories of divine intervention.

There are challenges.

The first and foremost was that the South Vietnamese government was a corrupt, incompetent kleptocracy under the control of urban elites who made no real investment in their legitimacy and were more interested in grabbing everything that they could steal. There's some argument that maybe some parts of that government got better towards the end, but no, never really changed in the important particulars.

Another is the geopolitical situation where the Chinese were not seen as willing to let the Americans march to the Chinese border, and were possibly willing to invade. They did in fact invade a decade earlier in Korea. China had not gotten weaker or less radical in the intervening period. The era of the Vietnam War was also the era of the cultural revolution. So you can't just assume that the Chinese were going to sit on their hands.

Same with the Russians, who had militarily intervened in Hungary in 1956, in Czechoslovakia in 1967, the Berlin Blockade in 1960, stood off in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and were a serious challenger for legitimacy in the third world.

Bigger, harder, faster scenarios tend to overlook the literally incredible scale of deployment that took place OTL.

So..... It can be done, but you need to work for it.

Amen!

The only other scenario is backing Ho Chi Minh at the very start. But given the political climate at the time, that seems almost as likely seapuppies swimming the English Channel.
 
Probably not, unless you consider modern-day Afghanistan to be “winning”.

It should be noted that the security in South Vietnam after 1972 was far better than Afghanistan at it's best. VC threat was over and gone. It was a Blitzkrieg that did them in.

RVN would still be here today, had the US upheld it's Treaty obligations and repeated it's airpower performance of 1972. If there was one thing the USAF and USN was good at, was smashing Soviet style conventional forces in the field, even in the malaise era.
 
So like South Korea, where there is a small US presence?
I think there are important differences. The RoK armed forces are respectable in their own right, and while for a long time the government wasn't exactly free or fair it also didn't cause massive disaffection amongs the populace - they could see things were improving, after all.

Unfortunately, both those things are much harder to achieve in Vietnam. I think a US presence in South Vietnam would have to be both larger and more active than in South Korea, essentially doing the heavy lifting in terms of providing security against the North. I suspect US voters would get sick of that eventually.
 

Deleted member 94708

It should be noted that the security in South Vietnam after 1972 was far better than Afghanistan at it's best. VC threat was over and gone. It was a Blitzkrieg that did them in.

RVN would still be here today, had the US upheld it's Treaty obligations and repeated it's airpower performance of 1972. If there was one thing the USAF and USN was good at, was smashing Soviet style conventional forces in the field, even in the malaise era.

Doesn’t conflict much with what I said, really. Even IOTL they came within a hair of managing to stand on their own, almost in spite of everything we did. Had we worked on state-building and given them support they probably could have won the internal conflict on their own, which would have left them and us both with the legitimacy needed to have the US intervene when the North, facing the defeat of the insurgency, inevitably decided to roll the dice and intervene conventionally.

Instead our constant meddling so hobbled them and so discredited our government that even when they finally were a functioning nation we couldn’t lift a finger to help.
 

longsword14

Banned
The answer is a US government that was pro Viet Minh and anti French colonialism in 1945.
Why would the US care about a small country about which it cared not a whit ? Even Korea was not on their radar until '48.
Why would the US care about an organization, that for all its claim, had not shown itself to be the nascent country's ruler ?
 
Short answer: no, only Vietnamese forces could have won. And the RVN/ARVN was incapable of permuting to win.

Medium answer: not within the parameters of the United States as we know it (chiefly mobilisation aversion, commitment to NATO). The plan of evacuating all loyalists to boats, nuking Vietnam, and then sinking the boats is a more rational plan to end the war than expecting the RVN to transform itself to control the political dynamic in Southern Vietnam.

Long answer: The RVN was a basket case from inception, the ARVN bore the brunt of conflict, the PLAF was significant to 1968, the NFL/PRG was politically significant until demobilised by the DRVN, and the United States showed an unwillingness to maintain strategic intensity within the envelope of not mobilising.

yours,
Sam R.
 

Kaze

Banned
The best way to have a win would be a UN monitored election where IF the communists win, you accept it and move on.
 
Instead our constant meddling so hobbled them and so discredited our government that even when they finally were a functioning nation we couldn’t lift a finger to help.

Nixon going out in disgrace had more to do with the Executive blocked by the new class of the Watergate Babies.
 
Doesn’t conflict much with what I said, really. Even IOTL they came within a hair of managing to stand on their own, almost in spite of everything we did. Had we worked on state-building and given them support they probably could have won the internal conflict on their own, which would have left them and us both with the legitimacy needed to have the US intervene when the North, facing the defeat of the insurgency, inevitably decided to roll the dice and intervene conventionally.

Instead our constant meddling so hobbled them and so discredited our government that even when they finally were a functioning nation we couldn’t lift a finger to help.

It's kind of the nature of things though.

1) Foreign Big dogs have a lot of weight and money to throw around.

2) Whoever the Foreign Big Dog favours is the winner.

3) The Foreign Big Dog favours whoever is nicest to the Foreign Big Dog.

4) People with local constituencies, local power bases, with local interests and integrity, inevitably, they got to cross the Foreign Big Dog.

5) People without local constituency or power, people without integrity or honour, they can align much more closely with the Foreign Big Dog, so the Foreign Big Dog is happier and chooses these guys.

6) The leaves other people on the outs, sharpening their knives.

7) When Foreign Big Dog goes home, the local big dog hangs on for a time, but then he goes down. Sometimes not right away, Najibullah in Afghanistan lasted three years. Come to think of it, South Vietnam lasted three years.

So the challenge is for Foreign Big Dog to figure out how to tolerate a local power structure and local players that don't do what they're told, don't act in Foreign Big Dog's best interests, have conflicts with Foreign Big Dog and are pains in the asses... but might actually build a sustainable government. As opposed to embracing puppet guys who spend all their time making Foreign Big Dog happy, because truthfully, they got no better options and can't build a sustainable government.
 
The best way to have a win would be a UN monitored election where IF the communists win, you accept it and move on.

like Czechoslovakia ended up? That's why the US had been blocking the vote after the French were done. Only way a Vote would happen was if the French allowed it in '46, and that wasn't going to happen
 
Yeah, those drafted in those two earlier conflicts were not rotated out, unless their whole unit was pulled from the theatre. That's the system to return to, rather than OTL's dim plan to get as many men into combat as possible, then rotate them out ASAP

Australia used unit rotation at the battalion and SAS Squadron level for its infantry units, although other smaller units used individual rotation. Battalions would form the better part of a year before it was due to deploy and by then it was a well honed, cohesive unit.

In addition these battalions traveled mostly together on the HMAS Sydney and upon arrival home in their base cities would parade through the streets and be met by various dignitaries.

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I don't think this would win the war for the US, but it would change its character for the better I think.
 

Deleted member 94708

It's kind of the nature of things though.

1) Foreign Big dogs have a lot of weight and money to throw around.

2) Whoever the Foreign Big Dog favours is the winner.

3) The Foreign Big Dog favours whoever is nicest to the Foreign Big Dog.

4) People with local constituencies, local power bases, with local interests and integrity, inevitably, they got to cross the Foreign Big Dog.

5) People without local constituency or power, people without integrity or honour, they can align much more closely with the Foreign Big Dog, so the Foreign Big Dog is happier and chooses these guys.

6) The leaves other people on the outs, sharpening their knives.

7) When Foreign Big Dog goes home, the local big dog hangs on for a time, but then he goes down. Sometimes not right away, Najibullah in Afghanistan lasted three years. Come to think of it, South Vietnam lasted three years.

So the challenge is for Foreign Big Dog to figure out how to tolerate a local power structure and local players that don't do what they're told, don't act in Foreign Big Dog's best interests, have conflicts with Foreign Big Dog and are pains in the asses... but might actually build a sustainable government. As opposed to embracing puppet guys who spend all their time making Foreign Big Dog happy, because truthfully, they got no better options and can't build a sustainable government.

DValdron’s guide to nation-building?

That said, I can’t find anything wrong with it.

We did a half-assed job of this in Iraq but it seems to have been enough, barely, coupled with the fact that ISIL was just so astoundingly horrible. We failed completely in Afghanistan and Vietnam.
 
DValdron’s guide to nation-building?

That said, I can’t find anything wrong with it.

We did a half-assed job of this in Iraq but it seems to have been enough, barely, coupled with the fact that ISIL was just so astoundingly horrible. We failed completely in Afghanistan and Vietnam.

Just the way things happen. Look at the French experience in Mexico. "The whole country hates us."

The USSR pulls out, all the Warsaw pact governments fall apart. Afghanistan, same result.

Europeans pull out of Africa and the middle east, and their handpicked successor governments fall apart left and right - how long did King Faisal last in Egypt, or the King in Libya, how long did the Hashemite King of Iraq last? Whatever happened to King Bao Dai in Vietnam after the French left. Whatever Europeans installed for their departure.... failed.

Governments which are imposed or supported by foreigners, de facto end up depending on those foreigners for survival - so they cater to foreigners, and often against their own interests. Rulers who don't cater to the foreign supporters, there's a tendency to replace them. Human nature.

You can follow it all the way back to the Romans and before.

Iraq survives as a ramshackle government because we didn't install it, it crept in on its own despite our best efforts to control the situation. The US didn't want elections. Sistani forced those elections. The parties that won weren't the parties we wanted, they were way too close/co-opted by the Iranians. Even so, it was a weak government, because it depended on the Foreign Big Dog.

It is simply really really hard for a Foreign government to stand up a local government and have it stand on its own. All the interests and incentives move the other way.
 
To elaborate - this is always the paradox of Kings. The problem of being surrounded by flatterers telling you what you want, rather than what you need.

It's especially bad when you have puppet governments, or things that evolve into puppet governments. Corruption follows automatically.
 
I think this is very unlikely. The United State and South Vietnam were largely viewed as just another imperial occupier by most Vietnamese, while Ho Chi Minh had been a constant advocate for independence, fighting the French, Japanese, and Americans. Even if the US beat North Vietnam militarily, guerilla warfare would continue, and the Vietnamese guerillas were among the most successful and skilled guerilla insurgencies in history. To be honest, it'd be similar to OTL, with American forces getting bled out by counterinsurgeny warfare, an anti-war movement cropping up, and eventually America pulls out, which would most likely eventually lead to the fall of the Republic of Vietnam.
 
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