DBWI: WI the Ho Chi Minh offensive had succeeded?

As we know, the 1975 offensive was repulsed by coordinated assaults from VNAF and ARVN. Thieu had originally planned to retreat from the Central Highlands, which would probably have led to a rout resulting in South Vietnam's demise. WI things had turned out differently? Would Reagan still have won in '76?
 
You forgot to mention the USAF in the mix. US air support was critical. If it's not there then the South Vietnamese have problems.

But the US commitment in 1975 was firm. Nixon won't abandon the South. The only way to get a North Vietnamese victory is to have Nixon lose and put McGovern in the Presidency. That is the definition of ASB.

1975 was the North's last shot. While they maintained lip service to "recovering" the South up until the fall of communism in 1992. It was rhetoric. After that point the South grew too fast and too rich for the North to keep up.
 
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Yes, USAF support was crucial in the mix. Fortunately Nixon had elected enough GOP members to Congress in '72 and '74, thus all the peacenik attempts to cut off aid to SVN were defeated. I still remember 1985 when Thieu announced a constitutional convention and voluntarily stepped down from the presidency. Many thought he'd go the way of the man many thought was his "mentor", Ferdinand Marcos. Yes, dying in office, but not exactly peacefully.
 
On Reagan, somehow I think that the last American effort to save South Vietnam, IE the intervention of the AAF, actually hurt his chances in 1976. True, SV would likely have collapsed without said intervention. But by 1975, as I understand it, the American public was largely sick of Vietnam, and Nixon and the GOP more generally took a brief public support dive afterwords. Also, speaking cynically here, the fall of SV would likely have triggered a kind of conservative reaction in the United States that Reagan would likely benefit from.
 
You forgot to mention the USAF in the mix. US air support was critical. If it's not there then the South Vietnamese have problems.

But the US commitment in 1975 was firm. Nixon won't abandon the South. The only way to get a North Vietnamese victory is to have Nixon lose and put McGovern in the Presidency. That is the definition of ASB.

1975 was the North's last shot. While they maintained lip service to "recovering" the South up until the fall of communism in 1992. It was rhetoric. After that point the South grew too fast and too rich for the North to keep up.
Didn't the USN dispatch a couple of carrier battlegroups to the area to help pound the North Vietnamese Army?
 
We're also forgetting one other elephant in the room. China. When the offensive into the RVN fell apart in '75, the PRC told the North, "Um, guys...we're not sending you anything more if you're just going to keep provoking a US reaction". Their turning off the taps (coupled with US promises of financial aid to the PRC and investment if they did) cut the legs out from under the PAVN. This was, of course, after Nixon's visit to China and what we now know about Sino-US cooperation during the Cold War. There was also the fact the Chinese knew the North was a lot more cosy to the Soviets and were not happy about the prospect of a Soviet military presence in Vietnam post-war. The US would, at least, give lip service to Chinese concerns, the Soviets would not.
 
Unfortunately with both Vietnams being reduced to destitution in the north’s case by the fall of the U.S.S.R and bad relations with the PCE and the south after decades of misrule by a string of corrupt and illegitimate governments. It all makes you wonder, just what the point to those 20+ years of western interface were in aid of.

It’s quite clear whatever the Cold War paranoia of US right-wingers the Viet-Minh were nationalists first and Marxist second. With little interest in expanding beyond Vietnam's borders and possessing stronger popular support at the time than they various SV junta’s, which still need constant support from the US up to the present day.

It also seems the US took it’s eye of the ball in Cambodia, leading the Khmer Rouge to seize power. That regime is still stirring up trouble in eastern Thailand, which is highly dangerous in light of the recent military coup in Bangkok.:(
 
Perhaps if the Hi Chi Minh offensive had succeeded, we might have avoided the massive collapse of the South Vietnamese state through its own incompetence and corruption, and the systematic starvation of so much of the population.

South Vietnam, after 1975 continued to be a corrupt basket case, lurching from failure to failure. Despite many extravagant claims about its military forces, they seldom fought and only rarely fought well. The South Vietnamese economy was entirely dependent upon American aid, and the South Vietnamese elites looked exclusively to that aid rather than to their own country. Land speculation resulted in many South Vietnamese being dispossessed of lands, entire regions of villages were abandoned, with a population residue remaining as landless tenant farmers for cash crops and the cities absorbing large populations of landless migrants. As the local agrarian economy collapsed, and populations shifted, the remnant Vietcong withered on the vine in the country, but found new strength in cities.

The South Vietnamese government responded with new waves of repression and pogroms, but riots, particularly food riots broke out. The South Vietnamese government had the US bombing its own cities.

By 1982, massive numbers of refugees were fleeing South Vietnam for Indonesia, North Vietnam, China, Thailand, Cambodia and any other country which would have them.

After this, the South Vietnamese state essentially ceased to exist in any meaningful sense. The US maintained a peacekeeping function in Saigon, and successfully excluded the North. But by 1987, after the Marine Corps bombing, even Reagan had had enough, and begun phasing out.

It was replaced by a multinational peacekeeping force, including North Vietnam. However, one by one, the peacekeeping forces dropped out. By 1992, with the collapse of communism occupying US attention, North Vietnam emerged as the de facto ruler of the south.

The price for these decades of 'freedom' was a legacy of unending misery and horror, thousands of American lives wasted, hundreds of thousands or millions of dead Vietnamese, and billions of dollars abandoned.
 
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