possibility of a early victory in 'nam by use of nuclear weapons

China is driven deep into the Soviet camp, the war gets bloodier, and South Vietnam loses all legitimacy it may have once had. The USSR uses nukes in Afghanistan without fear of reprisal. The US gains enemies in the form of every vaguely nationalistic regime in the world. The Soviet Union and China paint themselves as liberators (to a greater degree than they did IOTL). Unless the US is willing to send soldiers and nuclear bombs into various parts of Africa and other parts of Asia, they'll go pro-Soviet soon.

All in all, pretty much the worst possible thing the US can do.
 
Their earliest production model carried a 3-megaton warhead. That seems more than sufficient to take out likely targets. Sure, if they were crazy enough to actually DO this,or if the US was crazy enough to provoke it, they'd probably use more than one delivery system. I was only pointing out that there was no need for them to do so.

I'll admit I'm not fully aware of the exact destructive extents of the atomic weaponry in play, but I believe limiting the extent is necessary. Which is why I think a tactical nuclear weapon or an SLBM (depending on their yield) who be the proper way to go, if there were any at all. Too strong of a weapon, and it risks many many aftereffects politically.
Also, an ICBM sends a bad psychological effect for the Cold War. A bomber or submarine launching a weapon is different, since it has to go into the field, get into position, and launch. With an ICBM, its a long arm reaching. They stay safe in Russia and go at it a million miles from home. And if they can do that with Saigon, they could do that with San Diego too. Bombers and Subs keep things on a limited scale. ICBMs make it a global affair. And that is very very bad.

Also, I'm not sure how the USSR will respond. The fact is, they are -as I said- not combatants in the Vietnam war. So a US attack on North Vietnam would not be a direct attack against either them or China. However, if a bomb were used on South Vietnam, then that would be a direct attack by the USSR or China upon the United States, which could lead to WW3.
 
3 Megaton nuclear bomb is not a tactical weapon. Thats for strategic purposes and would be dropped on a big target like Hanoi. killing millions. The result would be catastrophic on several levels.
 

NothingNow

Banned
3 Megaton nuclear bomb is not a tactical weapon. Thats for strategic purposes and would be dropped on a big target like Hanoi. killing millions. The result would be catastrophic on several levels.

And would result in a full scale Nuclear exchange, and sanctions against the US, since you just killed a fuck ton of foreign diplomats and POWs along with some of the North Vietnamese leadership, but not enough to buy you more than a couple of days.

Fuck, That would have likely pissed off NATO and South Korea, not to mention the Soviet Union.
 
The negation of higher firepower weapons is done through dispersal. You can't be more dispersed then the Vietcong.
 
The negation of higher firepower weapons is done through dispersal. You can't be more dispersed then the Vietcong.

The Vietcong were destroyed by Tet. After 1968, the war was fought against Northern Vietnamese forces plain and simple, with whatever remaining Vietcong there were working in conjunction. But the Vietcong as an operational force were gone.

A strike on North Vietnam would have been to either shock/knock them out of the war, or destroy them further to try to hasten them out of war (hitting the dams to flood the fields and destroy the food supply).
 
Historians would probably mark it as the point the US had no hope in winning the cold war, the USSR would gain the moral highground in the eyes of a lot of the world, the American public is even more shaken than in OTL, they receive massive sanctions from the UN and begin many small countries turn to the soviets in order to protect them.
 
Historians would probably mark it as the point the US had no hope in winning the cold war, the USSR would gain the moral highground in the eyes of a lot of the world, the American public is even more shaken than in OTL, they receive massive sanctions from the UN and begin many small countries turn to the soviets in order to protect them.
And this does nothing for the ticking time bomb that is the Soviet Economy, they can't afford to keep up with the US and now they will be forced to try even harder and burn out quicker

The US will lose the moral high ground, that is all, they can Veto any UN sanctions, assuming someone is that willing to screw the global economy
 
Historians would probably mark it as the point the US had no hope in winning the cold war, the USSR would gain the moral highground in the eyes of a lot of the world, the American public is even more shaken than in OTL, they receive massive sanctions from the UN and begin many small countries turn to the soviets in order to protect them.

Naw. They'd mark it either as the US having no hope of winning Vietnam (the nukes being a sort of cheat code) or hastening the end to a violent war if it indeed led to US victory.
 
Psychologically, this would have a few effects.

Firstly, it would feed into the idea of Ending Bloodshed/Staving off further Bloodshed/Preventing mass bloodshed with the Atomic Bomb. That was the reasoning for the A-Bomb in World War 2. And parallels could be drawn between the Vietnamese Communists and the Imperial Japanese; a violent enemy, barbaric in behavior, who would not surrender, and would fight on the scale of millions to the last man if necessary. The concept that the "Oriental" doesn't put the same value on life, as Westmoreland said.

Secondly, it would allow powers to get out of conflicts and quagmires by using the Atomic bomb. The Soviets could use it in Afghanistan, for example. They won't risk it with another nuclear power, due to the possibility of such conflict erupting into MAD. But against powers without Atomic weapons, likely.

What you've done, essentially, is removed the veil. Atomic weapons will lose a great deal of their taboo. They will maintain it insofar as not using them against other atomic powers, (because they can still destroy the world, and people will still fear them for that) and keeping their usage limited and tactical so it doesn't go too far and expand into a wider conflict. But the taboo of their use on a limited scale is removed.

Their continued use could continually make it so that the powers were looser about their use, which could slowly push towards being more readily willing to use them in a major conflict over time.
 
Last edited:
Top