MacCaulay
Banned
Okay, I think that this is sussed out.
Conclusion: It was possible to win the Vietnam War by a direct land invasion of North Vietnam in 1970, rather than piddling around with Laos and Cambodia.
Okay...perhaps I need to explain exactly what this whole premise has turned into.
We need to define what "win" means. I'm not talking about the 1st Armoured Division rolling into Hanoi while playing the theme from Team America.
I am talking about a calculated effort by the Nixon Administration in 1970 to force the North Vietnamese into a standup fight (probably just north of the DMZ) on it's own soil, where they could engage and destroy the very units that would be used in any future invasion of the South after a peace treaty was signed.
This is not an ending with a united Vietnam. This is ending (the Nixon Administration hopes) with two Vietnams, one allied to the West and one in the Soviet camp, and with no Americans in the country, preferably in time for the next presidential election.
Well...we probably have some differences as to the combat performance of the US Army on the ground in Cambodia and Laos, but Linebacker I and Linebacker II were both used to destroy strategic targets in North Vietnam two years later. These were all using assets (B-52s from Guam, fighter-bombers in the South and in Thailand) that were in the South for years before that.This conclusion is based on the following premises:
1) The same bunch of soldiers that got themselves beaten like rented mules by crazy incompetent lunatis in the Khmer Rouge would have manned up righteously and sorted out the NVA on their home ground. Gotcha.
And no matter what the combat effectiveness of the US troops was, Nixon still ordered them to go over the Laotian/Cambodian border at the behest of Creighton Abrams.
You were asking if there were resources available. I pointed out that there were, not only in Vietnam, but also untapped in EUCOM.
Also, in his book Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia, William Shawcross makes a credible argument that the Arclight B-52 raids across the border into Cambodia were in fact destroying what passed for "moderates" in the Khmer Rouge regime by taking away any reason not to fight every bit of law and order in the country, both government and US military invading from the east.
You're preaching to the choir.2) The Soviet Union would not have escalated or provided any sort of coherent or significant response.
3) The Chinese under Mao hated the Soviet Union and Vietnam so much that they would make no opposition, and that they would have practically held our coats for us.
I think...you're misconstruing what I'm pitching here. Like it's some sort of Toby Keith wetdream.4) The North Vietnamese, faced with being confronted mano el mano, would not have had a response, counter or any way to deal with this and would have folded under our steely American glare.
They would've had a response, and that would be to throw everything they had at us on the the other side of the DMZ. The North Vietnamese Army never really faced us in conventional combat. They saved that until we left.
The ARVN had reliable forces, among them the South Vietnamese Marines. The South Vietnamese government...that was always a problem. There was a series of coups during the American involvement. You are correct in pointing that out. The majority of the time, the South Vietnamese government wasn't much better than any of the other governments in the area, they just happened to be "our bastards."5) We'll just ignore that 75% of South Vietnam that was under communist control in 1970, and we'll assume that the South Vietnamese forces could actually stand up on its own hind legs. We'll also assume a relatively functional government in South Vietnam.
Again, that's not what I'm saying. I don't have a political ax to grind. We shouldn't have been there anyway, just like we shouldn't be there now. But that war made Americans look at something we haven't had to look at before: just what we're willing to walk away with and call a victory. Are we willing to pat our troops on the back and say "Good job," then call that a victory?6) We actually won Vietnam anyway, doncha' know. Or we won it on points at least. And its all the fault of those dirty stinking hippies.
Myself, I'd like to be able to say we could. But Nixon seemed to have a hard time walking away. Even when he said he was, he wasn't. America has had a very bipolar relationship with foreign policy and especially with it's dealings during the eventual pullout from Vietnam. And this is one way to look at it.
This is not a "better" way to end it. People are still dying. They're dying no matter what.
Now, I suppose that if we go with all these assumptions, the scenario will work out quite nicely. I can't argue with that.
I dunno, I'm thinking this is alien space bats country.[/quote]