South Vietnam wins

The Khmer Rouge were quite happy to kill any Vietnamese they came across: civilian, or Military from North or South. They were fairly racist on that. The KR had started purges in 1974, continuing what Lon Nol had started with his anti-Vietnamese pogroms. It was one of the few things that Lon Nol and Pol Pot shared belief in.

I don't think Pol Pot is insane enough to consider North and South Vietnam indistinguishable, or to not be able to pick a preferred enemy.
 
I don't think Pol Pot is insane enough to consider North and South Vietnam indistinguishable, or to not be able to pick a preferred enemy.
Saw them both as enemies,really. As soon as Lon Nol was out, the KR were already purging any Vietnamese, and even those in the KR seen as too close to their supposed Communist Brothers from the PAVN.

And Pol Pot, Nuon Chea and Leng Sary had crazy to spare
 
you want a conventional military option for America and it’s allies you have to minimally disorient the North Vietnamese war effort while giving free reign to forces in the South to deal with the tail. That doesn’t even necessarily mean occupy population centers of the North though.

I agree with your ideas. The north was a poor country and made major sacrifices to build up.men and material to invade the south. The aim of a spoiling offensive, like every other spoiling attack in history, would be to disrupt the enemy's offensive capacity. In the case of the north this would be the supplies accumulated in border sanctuary areas and the conventional forces deployed on the DMZ and in the north against air attack.

If the US went on the offensive over the border and with air and amphibious landings they would destroy the material used to defend the north and invade the south. Once this is completed the US can go back to COIN in the south and the north has to restablish its defences and offensive capacity.
 
I stand corrected. After 75 years, and several intervening wars, the Vietnamese have gotten over their dislike of the Japanese. But then again, there were intervening issues - the French re-invasion, the war against the French, the Civil War, the American War, the War with China, the War with Cambodia, the boat people expulsions.

You really figure that the US could use starvation as a weapon of war, and it'll all be good?
The modern Vietnamese are very forwards thinking, the mentality is that you must let go of the past to move forwards in the future. Except with China, it’s something that is ingrained in Vietnamese culture, (The Trung Sisters). Accepting Chinese intervention would just be out of character for the Vietnamese people.
 

thorr97

Banned
So, no Diem. Or at least a reined in Diem reign.

And how about no LBJ? Or one who listened to when his military guys told him that US led ground war would be a disaster?

Mind you, thanks to an endless amount of money we poured into fighting there in Vietnam - and no few Americans lives consumed there as well - it was a ground war we won anyway. Then we pitched our tent, went home AND then refused to honor our treaty obligations to help South Vietnam defend itself.

So having an LBJ who didn't start the escalation mess in the first place would probably have made a huge difference if there also wasn't Diem screwing things up.

Or perhaps Nixon managed to avoid Watergate and thus the political climate in DC would've allowed him the political leeway to run some Arclights on the PAVN's Spring Offensive. The North gave the US the exact sort of target it had been questing for throughout all the years the US had been in South Vietnam - Communist units out in the open fighting a conventional battle. Wiping out yet another PAVN army - like happened in '68 and in '72 - could very well have broken the back, politically, of the North. At the very least it might've set back the North for a long enough period that the South's economy could've taken off on its own and thus put paid to any further threat from the PAVN.
 

Mr. House

Banned
The easiest way to win Vietnam would be for drafted troops to never serve there. I am ignoring the idea of South Vietnam conquering the North because that wasn't going to happen in OTL. Instead if the U.S. just kept *just* enough forces to keep the North from conventionally invading and conquering say Saigon. That's it. My impression of the history of the Second Indochina War is that the U.S. could have kept the war going indefinitely if it weren't for the anti-war movement growing to the size it did. In an OTL where the U.S. never sends 500,000 troops to the South and maybe engages in a more genocidal air campaign as noted above it would hold onto South Vietnam until this day.
 

Marc

Donor
Unless I mistaken, the original proposition of this thread isn't a South Vietnamese victory with major troop/air/sea support from the US, but the South doing it with say no more help than what the Chinese and Russians gave the North.
The success of that occurring is, to use the great cliche, slim and none.
 
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