Could the Vietnam War have been won?

But, its also true that even in wars with low U.S. deaths like Afghanistan if they go on too long Americans forget why they ever supported the war and just get annoyed by it and start calling for the troops to come back.

But again, that's because the war isn't being won. It's a lot easier - speaking as someone just outside draft age now - to support effort that you believe is accomplishing something other than stalemate. Otherwise, why should we throw good money after bad, however small the cost compared to other wars?

You need to fix the stalemate, not popular enthusiasm.
 
But again, that's because the war isn't being won. It's a lot easier - speaking as someone just outside draft age now - to support effort that you believe is accomplishing something other than stalemate. Otherwise, why should we throw good money after bad, however small the cost compared to other wars?

You need to fix the stalemate, not popular enthusiasm.

You are right about that, but Afghanistan is not fixable like Iraq was. Afghanistan is only a manageable conflict unless you are willing to invade Pakistan and/or fight the war like Alexander the Great did using modern weapons.

Obama still cut off his half hearted negotations with Iraq months before the deadline which would have left a few troops behind which would have greatly helped things over the past year in order to announce he ended the war in Iraq even though the public stopped focusing at all at it as it was in American's minds a won war after the Surge... he was hoping it would give him a bump and didn't get it. sigh.

By the time he made the announcement he was ending the war in Iraq and pulling out everything nearly 70% believed things were going well for us in Iraq (the one below was from 2010) hence the public didn't give a damn about his announcement.

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If America believe a war is being won or that we are winning they are willing to support a mission even if they don't exactly agree with the reasons the country got into the conflict in the first place. This matters in the context of Vietnam because the public had both turned against the rational for war and believed it was a stalemate by 1968.
 
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I never said Diem was a statesmen for the history books either, but he at least was somewhat competent enough to prosecute the war.

He used the guise of communism to destroy political revivals, he appointed generals based on favors, he frequently sabotaged his own generals for the fear that they become popular/revolt, he pissed off everyone with things from corruption to land reform to religion. Those were among the many reasons that the US services just stood by to let him die. Now that being said it's only with hindsight that we'd see his predecessors as more or less the same, the required institutions and reforms needed for a consenting government was one the French never considered.

...So if you want to beat a modern liberal democracy, don't lose the freakin' war.

Minor problem with that, the United States was fighting hard-line nationalists who had already fought for decades against the French, Japanese, and French again: they lost millions and were prepared to lose more. Even if the Americans keep winning engagements, how can they claim victory when the DRV wasn't willing to give up? People's attention spans are limited and so is their money.
 
If America believe a war is being won or that we are winning they are willing to support a mission even if they don't exactly agree with the reasons the country got into the conflict in the first place. This matters in the context of Vietnam because the public had both turned against the rational for war and believed it was a stalemate by 1968.

And thus the question we need to ask is "How do you make the war not a stalemate by 1968?"

Unconsensual said:
Minor problem with that, the United States was fighting hard-line nationalists who had already fought for decades against the French, Japanese, and French again: they lost millions and were prepared to lose more. Even if the Americans keep winning engagements, how can they claim victory when the DRV wasn't willing to give up? People's attention spans are limited and so is their money.

"Winning engagements" isn't in and of itself "winning the war" whether you're fighting the Viet Cong, 13th century Scotland, or Nathaniel Greene.

But that doesn't mean they were invincible.

So the question should be, how do you find something that will make them give up, rather than how can you pin the blame on the American will drying up?

Because people keep bringing up popular lack of will/interest/enthusiasm as if that was compromising an effective campaign, as opposed to the consequences of one not taking place - whether from bad counter-insurgency, the fact that South Vietnam was both sucky and a foreign puppet, logistics not being (under)mined . . . variety of things going on here, but all of them lead to "Why should we continue to spend blood and treasure when you can't win this one?" - you being the people in charge because the US is not winning.
 
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It is good to see several threads on South East Asia in as many days with intelligent comments.

Fundamentally for South Vietnam to be considered a success you will require a stable political structure to exist. Often even in ATL most posters ignore the civil / economic / political aspect to concentrate on the military response.


The Republic of Vietnam needs to secure its land and maritime borders with their neighbours. Pacify an internal insurgency, grow the economy and combat corruption, while restoring confidence in the system by their citizens.

So not impossible, but it requires a couple of things to go right which historically did not. Obviously I believe that it could have, but it the difficulties were large.
 
One thing that would be interesting would be if there was a way for it to be seen as something where the Communists as the ones who were foreign puppets, whereas the US was supporting nationalism in Vietnam.

But how you do that - when the US's original investment is to prop up France - is a question beyond my ability to answer. Doesn't mean it can't be solved, but it would take some incredibly adept leadership.
 
Two suggestions

The most critical need was a spy who had access to the innermost circle of the North Vietnamese leaders. If the US and South Vietnamese had known what the North Vietnamese were thinking, they could have devised a strategy that would work.

Throughout the Vietnam War, the South was always on the defensive. It's hard to believe that North Vietnam was some sort of earthly paradise; surely somebody up there hated that government. Therefore, could the South have imitated the North's strategy and created and supported an armed anticommunist underground in the North?
 
You'd need South Vietnam to address the corruption and land issues that led to the VC getting a toehold in the South in the first place for a start. Then you'd need stronger governments in Laos and Cambodia, a better commander than Westmoreland, a better strategy... the list is a bloody long one I'm afraid. :(
 
Step by step years ago I had a former officer who tought a history course on Vietnam show how Diem was very brutal, but no more so then the North Vietnamese, but he was also a very competent strategist who knew what South Vietnam needed to do to win the war. He was willing and planning to use South Vietnamese troops to invade Laos as he knew he could not win while endless supplies and troops got down to the insurgents. That defied our policy so we got rid of him.

The officer who fought there outlined step by step what we did wrong in Indochina and how we could have done things much better. And, not all of this is what we could have done in Vietnam. At home he believes Johnson had to decide between the War and his Great Society and he had to mobilize the country and put up war time controls of the press like was done in Korea so that Americans didn't watch dead Americans on the news each night.

He said America had many good generals at the time better then Westmoreland and even Creighton Williams who really understood how to deal with complex partisan conflicts, but they were passed over. He made clear how winnable the war was, but JFK and Johnson had to not just do things differently, but treat it as a real war and not just a limited helping hand police action we were half in and half out of even when we had hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground Johnson was still sending signals he was half hearted about his commitment as others have said.

In order to bring South Vietnam to the peace table by 1967 which was entirely possible the WH needed to treat it like a real war they were invested in winning, not a conflict they were invested in not losing. To be tongue in cheek about it quoting Paula Broadwell's book we needed to be 'all in' or not in at all when it comes to getting involved in a land war in South East Asia.

Nixon still could have pulled things out the officer said and was presented with seven options for Vietnam by order of how much he wanted the U.S. to do in Vietnam. The first option was an 'all in' option, the next was less 'in', and on and on to the bottom and Nixon choose the bottom option as it was the politically easiest route and still South Vietnam's Army with U.S. air support and almost no ground troops managed to beat a full invasion of the South in 1972 and it took them three years to be able to mount another one and at that point in time the Viet Cong was a spent force. But, by 1975 the U.S. politically wasn't willing to provide air support or real economic support to the South anymore while the North's allies were which is why the 1975 conventional invasion of the South by North Vietnam succeeded where the 1972 invasion failed.
 
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The North Vietnamese did not win the war in Vietnam - they won it in Washington.

Without Watergate Nixon may have been able retain enough support to recreate a division of Vietnam similar to Korea. Would that have been a good thing? I don't know. But it may have prevented the war from being lost.
Whether thats true or not, they still won.
 
Cash said:
Again, the issue is logistics, as it is in so many of the discussions here. If LBJ had agreed to mining the harbors and cutting every land connection with China, North Vietnam would have been willing to negotiate much sooner than it did. Warning the USSR that its involvement in setting up SAM sites would result in possible casualties might have helped as well. As it was, North Vietnam only became serious about negotiating when Nixon did exactly that, several years too late.
This is really, really important. It's not the only thing, tho: Britain & France, among other U.S. allies,:eek: were sending supplies to DRV. That should have been stopped in 1963.:mad:

One other thing would have been extremely helpful to the U.S. effort: start the bombing at max intensity, instead of gradually ramping up. The ramp-up gave the NVA a chance to adapt, which reduced the effectiveness of the effort.

Much as I hate to quote MacArthur,:eek: he was right on this one: It is fatal to enter a war without the will to win it. LBJ didn't have it. (He wasn't helped by McNamara thinking war could be run like a business....:rolleyes:)

I'm also wondering if Vian's initial plan couldn't have worked. (IDK anything like enough about it to say.)
 
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America's better prospect was really to keep doing what it did in the pre-Johnson Eisenhower/Kennedy

No, there was no Eisenhower/Kennedy era versus Johnson era in Vietnam policy, Norton; it's much more like this: "President John F. Kennedy transformed the 'limited risk gamble' of the Eisenhower Administration into a 'broad commitment' to prevent communist domination of South Vietnam."-- Hedrick Smith reporting on the conclusions of the Pentagon Papers. Or this; "If there had been any doubt that the limited risk gamble undertaken by Eisenhower had been transformed into an unlimited commitment by Kennedy, that doubt should been dispelled internally by [this] statement of objectives [under Johnson]"--The Pentagons Papers themselves. [NB: I've just posted a thread about this.]
 
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