It only had value in displaying that the US would fight for a client, no matter how odious.
Through Vietnam Communism spread to Laos and Cambodia, though Cam Ranh Bay the Soviet Pacific Fleet was able to massively expand and better support its Indian Ocean Squadron, and Vietnam's pro-Soviet stance forced China to shift its attention away from the Sino-Soviet border.
agree, but this is one of those things that would look bad at the time and much better to future generations. It might have gone over better if the US had gotten out of Vietnam even earlier than 1965, maybe right after LBJ takes over after JFK's assassination...
For less than 4 years, then the PAVN rolled in and Cambodia was a Soviet aligned Vietnamese puppet.
Cool. Already covered that with, "they just failed to properly take advantage of it."
underlined: assets that could have been pointed literally anywhere else but now had to be wasted on a former USAF base.
Quick reminder, it wasn't "former" at the time.
I'm well aware of that. Accordingly I never said anything to the contrary.
You're right! I will be sure to add the Vietnamese instigation of and intervention in the Laotian Civil War, and Vietnam's 1978 invasion of Cambodia, and the Vietnamese sponsored Communist Insurgency in Thailand to the list of myths. After all they clearly didn't happen.
It's a small planet and almost every scrap of land has some theoretically strategic "significance". The long term impact of Vietnam on the Soviet Bloc was probably the fact that it was a financial drain - like Cuba, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, etc. - and hastened the ultimate decline and fall of the USSR.
When did I suggest that the USSR should treat Vietnam as a colony rather than an ally? Be less blatant with your straw man attacks.
On the contrary the military and economic cooperation between Vietnam and Russia remains quite strong to this day.
If a neutral country can't control it's borders and prevent combatants from moving through or setting up bases then the Hague conventions allow combatants to enter the country for that purpose.
The problem was LBJ was neither willing to mobilize the necessary men and deal with the political fallout, nor distract from his domestic agenda (Great Society programs), so split the difference. Until 1968 it looked like the war was being won, so it was unnecessary anyway, but by then it was too late for LBJ. Then it was on Nixon, who still was hampered by fear of sparking another Korean war or even WW3.
At every step of the way, there were 3 choices - get out, dramatic escalation, or keep making incremental changes to the same strategy. Because the first two would have serious short term political costs, the choice was always the third. The path of least resistance was to keep on doing what we had been doing but to do a little more of it.
Absolutely, you either go all in or don't bother. I don't think win was doable but a Korean style armistice and halt in place might have been pulled off but it would have required ongoing US security guarantees that I don't think the US would want to make.
I agree - either go big or go home. I would not gradually start the bombing but I would hit them hard from day one. Take out all air defense all the way up to the Chinese border, hit the dykes, hit the major cities, bomb the docks in Haiphong. On the ground, enter Laos and cut the HCM trail. Bribe the Cambodians to stop infiltration through that vector and if they don't agree, blockage Cambodia.
Problem is the politics of it; it was at it's core a political conflict, so you can't just nope out of it without basically handing the next election to the Republicans. Kennedy fucked up royally with how South Vietnam was treated and trained by MACV and LBJ didn't really improve things until he was already a lame duck president. The war was still winnable even after, but politics got in the way again; I'm really starting to think if Nixon hadn't gotten caught or didn't try Watergate South Vietnam would have survived and effectively won the conflict. After all they effectively defeated the NVA's Eastern Offensive in 1972 virtually on their own on the ground (the US only suffered 300 dead during that, ARVN something like 25k KIA, and the NVA 100k at least). Final defeat was only because Congress cut off funding for South Vietnam after Nixon was finished based on the faulty perception that the NVA was winning rather than wrecking itself (after 1972 it couldn't replace losses and lost nearly all their AFVs) while ARVN was getting better every year.
en.wikipedia.org
If you want to get technical then we may as well accept that the entire Soviet economic model was unsustainable at best and that the Cold War was, from the outset, basically a death sentence for the Soviets.
The USSR's treatment of its European hostages =/= its treatment of states it couldn't roll an armoured column into.
Or rather treated them the same as everyone else as per their Three Nos Policy. And now China's making noises and Russians are back (in a quite limited capacity) in Cam Ranh.
