How did North Vietnam win the civil war (American Phase)?
My Lai as a massacre was, from its beginning, the target of a cover-up operation that was successful for several months. The Modern War Institute makes a clear case against the narrative about communist bias in American media during the war which would have supposedly incurred defeat.
No ammount of Cold War jingoism would have changed the fact that South Vietnam was an unpopular, corrupt and arguably illegitimate regime or that the north had the backing of both major communist powers in this conflict.
Rather, what dampened the public's excitement about the Vietnam War was accurate reporting on the battleground situation. This was even despite the priority given to American military voices instead of native Vietnamese ones for the majority of the war -- rising casualty counts are rather hard to ignore, and a lack of clarity in regards to the point of the US being in Vietnam made it easy for spectators to question the usual narrative.
Contrast this situation to the Gulf War and subsequent conflicts under the two Bushes in which war footage was heavily censored, leaving a shallow spectacle of pyrotechnicals and infrared AC-130 footage to fill up the public's mind -- war had changed by the 90's as less personnel are now required on the ground, stripping away the "visceral" feel that most soldiers had experienced in earlier 20th century conflicts. It also helped that the wars against Iraq were rather quick affairs with the exception of the aftermath.
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marathag
Banned
1959, Cuba was the richest country in the Caribbean. 2020, after all those years of Revolution, is richer than Haiti
Success!
marathag
Banned
Because they didn't want to enjoy Uncle Ho's Land Reform
| North Vietnam (1954-75): 50,000 [make link] |
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Of course, it makes sense that Cuban supermarkets would be frequently empty after all these years, considering how the US still maintains a general trade embargo on the island...
While North Vietnam's land reform process did have its own deplorable excesses of violence, it cannot be understated how much it actually improved the peasant situation in Vietnam. Breaking up large agricultural estates and redistributing them among the lower classes endeared these to the North Vietnamese communist regime and by extension encouraged South Vietnamese peasants to support the communists. Contrast this to the big, pseudo-feudal landlords of the south who routinely extorted their subjects and refused to give up their political power.
When you're a peasant whose produce is often extorted by your landlord, without favorable avenues of flight or debt paying, news of a nearby movement intent on seizing his land and giving it to you for your own gain end up incensing you.
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You know, by the 1950s (when the land reform started), escaping is basically impossible. My great-grandfather was lucky in that he's just lost his land not his life. But at least Ho admit the land reform was wrong (unlike Mao or Stalin):
As soon as the reform was completed by 1956 and the so-called peasants’ authority well-established in the villages, the party quite unexpectedly admitted to having made many serious mistakes during the reform when the “masses” had been “given a free hand”.[46] VWP developed a campaign called "Rectification of Errors" from January 1957 till mid-1957. This campaign was divided into three phases. The first phase was a crash operation to survey the damage done and release from prison incorrectly classified peasants and falsely accused cadres. The second phase, more deliberate and the real heart of the campaign, was divided into two steps. Step I was the re-classification of peasants, and step II was the restitution of property erroneously expropriated or else making suitable compensation. The third phase of the mistakes correction was to be a review, inventory and concentrated re-indoctrination of local personnel.[47]
Not to mention is that South Vietnam is the successor state to the French puppet-regime "State of Vietnam", along with the fact that Diem refused to held election to re-unify the country.
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Not only that, but the US media also had no regard for OpSec. Operation Lam Son 719 (the 1971 South Vietnamese invasion of Laos to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail) was perhaps the most egregious example of journalists getting """their""" side killed.
Political ineptness on the US part. Putting a "foreigner" in charge of South Vietnam when the war was being fought to expel all outside control of the country from Vietnam.
I'd also say that the US created the Civil War after the French left and did not let Vietnam self determine. Even if they did want to be communist.
So long as the US is unwilling to reunify Vietnam by force and risk escalating the conflict with China as they did in Korea, there's really no way for South Vietnam to survive, much less win. It can possibly wait out until relations deteriorate between North Vietnam and China, thus crippling its main lifeline. But that really only happened after reunification under the North became a fact, and tensions between China and Vietnam over Pol Pot's Cambodia and South China Sea claims came to the fore in the absence of an American threat.
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If the US really wants an anti-communist bulwark in SEA. Thailand or Indonesia can fill that role better than South Vietnam ever could.
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marathag
Banned
Because there is no other country on Earth that they can buy from, right?
Or maybe because it's a non functioning economy, one that relied on the USSR for 30 years of subsidies , and Chavev in Venezuela for another 15 before that Marxist Economy ran off the rails as well.
The restrictions established for the US embargo on Cuba stipulate that no foreign company that does trade with Cuba can also do trade within the US without severe restrictions. The intent of this is that companies will choose the US, a large and thriving market, over the comparatively tiny economy of Cuba. The embargo has been relaxed occasionally, but it remains.
1. The United States were fighting a conventional war while the North Vietnamese/Viet Cong were fighting a insurgency. One of the best ways to militarily crush a insurgency is to become ruthless. South Korea put down communist insurgencies by carrying out massacres of suspected Communists. The US was not willing to take the gloves off.
2. The Soviet Union and China continuously provided support to North Vietnam.
3. South Vietnam had no leg to stand on, especially with Ngo Do Diem at the helm. His overthrow and execution just made things worse. Say nothing about his crazy wife.
4. North Vietnam had a propaganda weapon in Ho Chi Minh, since he had been fighting for Vietnamese independence from France and Japan since the 1910s. Ngo Din Diem barely did anything of substance in his own campaign for Vietnamese independence. (Sidenote: Ho Chi Minh's Declaration of Vietnamese Independence quoted the US Declaration of Independence's opening stanza about all people being created equal)
5. The United States never dedicated any effort to blowing the dikes along the Red River. In fairness, they did determine that aerial bombing would not have been effective, but that doesn't mean there weren't other ways of blowing the dikes.
2. The Soviet Union and China continuously provided support to North Vietnam.
3. South Vietnam had no leg to stand on, especially with Ngo Do Diem at the helm. His overthrow and execution just made things worse. Say nothing about his crazy wife.
4. North Vietnam had a propaganda weapon in Ho Chi Minh, since he had been fighting for Vietnamese independence from France and Japan since the 1910s. Ngo Din Diem barely did anything of substance in his own campaign for Vietnamese independence. (Sidenote: Ho Chi Minh's Declaration of Vietnamese Independence quoted the US Declaration of Independence's opening stanza about all people being created equal)
5. The United States never dedicated any effort to blowing the dikes along the Red River. In fairness, they did determine that aerial bombing would not have been effective, but that doesn't mean there weren't other ways of blowing the dikes.
Side note, but Venezuela is not a "marxist" economy. The country is governed by nationalist regime intent on modernization and increasing productivity to form a competitive regional bloc. Chavez' and Maduro's talk about "socialism" is merely an useful discourse point taped on top of that -- the Venezuelan working class has its own interests and grievances independent of the ruling party. Such can also be seen in the PRC where the local labor movement frequently goes on strike in conflict with the party apparatus.
The mining of Haiphong Harbor was a very important way to cut off vital fuel supplies arriving from the Soviet Union by sea, the problem was it happened way too late in the war and didn’t stop supplies coming over the Chinese border. Nixon was actually the one to give the order and it was more political theatre than actual strategy. At the time Nixon was trying to de-escalate the conflict and turn over the responsibility for fighting to the Army of the Republic of (South) Vietnam (which given the corruption, incompetence, and inexperience of said army was a terrible idea). Basically Vietnamization was giving the South even more equipment (which the U.S. had been doing for about a decade with no success), giving them some American assistance (such as mining Haiphong Harbor and keeping American air power in place) while withdrawing U.S. troops. Nixon also had pretty good relationships and understanding of both China and the USSR (which is kinda strange and amazing if you think about how anti-communist he was) and knew just how to poke them without getting bit. In the end the actions that Nixon undertook was not going to change the war and the Watergate Scandal is probably what put the final nail in the coffin of South Vietnam, as Congress was not about to keep the promises (which Nixon personally gave to Nguyen Than Thieu, the South’s last real leader) or agendas of a disgraced president.
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Canadian companies have ignored this for decades and faced no repercussions.
I mean, the reason the North Vietnamese won against the South Vietnamese is because the latter proved to be a completely inept kleptocracy with no legitimacy, which is how you get scenes like Hue and Da Nang, defended by hundreds of thousands of troops, taken by much smaller, more poorly equipped PAVN forces as the defenders surrendered after only desultory resistance. Only the very best units of the ARVN fought well, but these units were so glaringly the exception that they strategically amounted to pebbles trying to hold back the tide.
Now North Vietnam won against the US because in the end, Vietnam just wasn’t worth it to the US. The primary reason for the pullout was that the costs had reached the point where the US couldn't afford to stay in Vietnam indefinitely and contain the USSR in Europe at the same time without mobilizing. Since the economic mobilization for a war of choice against a country so self-evidently not worth such an effort would be political suicide, that left pulling out from one of the theatres... and no policymaker in their right mind was going to trade Europe for Vietnam. Hence, the decision to draw down was actually taken before the peace movement really got going. Rather than being the primary cause of the withdrawal as the common myth goes, what the movement actually did was make recommitment impossible once the drawdown had started. But in the end, the reasons for the drawdown were as much military as they were political.
Despite that, most whining over the loss seems to come off more as butthurt nationalism with a paper-thin leaf over supposed concern about Communist atrocities. These come off as more then a little disingenuous given that many of those atrocities are predictable consequences of a prolonged, brutal multi-decade conflict that likely would not have occurred had the Americans not acted in contravention to the Geneva Accords and tried to set-up an illegitimate puppet state.
In terms of actual consequences for the United States, the results of losing in Vietnam amounted to little more then self-inflicted damage upon it’s national pride and social upheaval. The balance of power in Asia remained largely in America's favour, and a Communist Vietnam did not lead to a monolithic Communist march of conquest.
Now North Vietnam won against the US because in the end, Vietnam just wasn’t worth it to the US. The primary reason for the pullout was that the costs had reached the point where the US couldn't afford to stay in Vietnam indefinitely and contain the USSR in Europe at the same time without mobilizing. Since the economic mobilization for a war of choice against a country so self-evidently not worth such an effort would be political suicide, that left pulling out from one of the theatres... and no policymaker in their right mind was going to trade Europe for Vietnam. Hence, the decision to draw down was actually taken before the peace movement really got going. Rather than being the primary cause of the withdrawal as the common myth goes, what the movement actually did was make recommitment impossible once the drawdown had started. But in the end, the reasons for the drawdown were as much military as they were political.
Despite that, most whining over the loss seems to come off more as butthurt nationalism with a paper-thin leaf over supposed concern about Communist atrocities. These come off as more then a little disingenuous given that many of those atrocities are predictable consequences of a prolonged, brutal multi-decade conflict that likely would not have occurred had the Americans not acted in contravention to the Geneva Accords and tried to set-up an illegitimate puppet state.
In terms of actual consequences for the United States, the results of losing in Vietnam amounted to little more then self-inflicted damage upon it’s national pride and social upheaval. The balance of power in Asia remained largely in America's favour, and a Communist Vietnam did not lead to a monolithic Communist march of conquest.