China goes full bore in the Sino-Vietnamese War

Just as the title says. What happens if the PRC puts everything into crushing Vietnam in 1979, instead of going at it half-assed as OTL, engaging only border militias and withdrawing after a short time?
 
Well, Chinese casualties mount, Hanoi might be threatened, but in the end, China's power projection abilities weren't near enough to get or supply enough troops to really conquer Vietnam.
DRVN's army was quite well-equipped and experienced enough to make China pay bitterly in blood for every klick they advanced into Vietnam.
LSS, even more a squalid waste of resources and lives than OTL to as little
effect. Thumb wrestling that wrecks DRVN's northern provinces and bleeds PLA dry.
China wasn't going to conquer DRVN or even make it far enough into Vietnamese turf to be more than a regional threat. Vietnam wasn't going to march north and conquer Beijing. Best the DRVN could do is send the Chinese expeditionary forces packing and convince Beijing to clean house as they did OTL.
 
The question is how far the PRC dares to push, the Soviets are the closest alllies of the DRVN and have vested interest in rhe country
 
What does America do here, does it just sit back and let events play out, or does it covertly aid one side or the other?
 
I imagine the US response was similar to the Iran-Iraq War, hoping they both lost.:(

Neither side really lit the US on fire as far as being the "good guy", nor IMO, was there much reason to get involved.

Do you back the Chinese and thus underwrite genocide in Kampuchea (IMO good economic and geopolitical move, but morally bankrupt and politically radioactive) OR back the very folks you've spent the last twenty years, 300 billion dollars and 60,000 lives from taking over SE Asia?

Selling Vietnam a bunch of surplus US arms and economic reconstruction funds in exchange for guaranteeing Vietnam's integrity could seriously repair relations and give them a reason to boot the Soviets.

OTOH, the US could tag along with the PLA and get all kinds of SIGINT and info on Soviet systems and help them break SAM defenses, give the PLAAF some deeper-strike capability, maybe mining Haiphong harbor or somesuch.

LSS, the US has no dog in the fight nor much will to be there.
 
IOTL Deng Xiaoping visited Washington and Tokyo and received their political support for a strike on Vietnam, so if Deng decided to escalate it further, the west will covertly support him. The Chinese leadership was seriously pissed that after supporting Vietnam during its war with the American imperialists, Vietnam drifted into the Moscow revisionists' orbit.

And anyways, Deng Xiaoping never planned to escalate the war further, and had no plans to install a puppet government in Hanoi. He made a limited invasion primarily to consolidate his power in order to proceed with his economic reforms.
 

NothingNow

Banned
The question is how far the PRC dares to push, the Soviets are the closest alllies of the DRVN and have vested interest in rhe country

Yeah, and the Soviet Union does have a very large garrison on it's border with China, plus the Pacific fleet.
And the Sino-Soviet border war was only a decade before. Sino-Soviet relations haven't improved much since.

What does America do here, does it just sit back and let events play out, or does it covertly aid one side or the other?

Stay the fuck out for fear of accidentally starting WW3. PACCOM goes on high alert.
 
The Vietnamese had a lot of guerrillas from the war against France and the USA. Plus, there's the old historical enemy factor. I have mentioned General Giap authorizing the printing of an old guerrilla war manual detailing various boobytraps the Vietnamese used in their fight against foreign invaders. Said manual was written to aid the fight against...the Mongols.
And the US did back Pol Pot against the Vietnamese, at least diplomatically...
 
What do you mean by everything? Are you including or excluding chemical, biological or nuclear weapons?
 
Going all in could lead to American support and a closer Chinese-American cooperation. It might even lead to a more democratized Vietnam if China permits it. It could save Carter or make Reagan even more popular, depending on whose administration does it.
 
IOTL Deng Xiaoping visited Washington and Tokyo and received their political support for a strike on Vietnam, so if Deng decided to escalate it further, the west will covertly support him.

Post-Mao Meets Nixon, Chinese and American foreign policy were pretty closely synchronized. In addition to being on the same side in Angola, the Chinese Communist Party instructed its satellite parties in NATO countries to endorse the NATO alliance. To name just a couple of examples.

So, it would be highly improbable for the US to back Soviet-allied Vietnam against the Chinese. It would be a major stab in the back to the Chinese, and defeat the whole anti-Soviet purpose of the Sino-American alliance.

RxCoatl wrote:

Selling Vietnam a bunch of surplus US arms and economic reconstruction funds in exchange for guaranteeing Vietnam's integrity could seriously repair relations and give them a reason to boot the Soviets.

In order for this to happen, the US would have to have a 100% ironclad guarantee from the Vietnamese that they would switch sides. And the US would have to be willing to toss their alliance with China completely out the window. But, even then, I just don't see that as being in American interests. They'd be taking one ally from the Soviets, but that would still leave the USSR with all of Eastern Europe and Cuba in its column, and China goes back to being an American enemy. Not worth it from the USA's perspective.
 
Publicly helping communists kill communists to spread their version of communism isn't a good idea for the U.S.

Like someone else said, the U.S has no dog in the fight.
 
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