The year is 1964 you are in charge of the US administration, in hindsight how can you win Vietnam?

Tovarich

Banned
Well, I remember a documentary where Aussie soldiers set up livelihood projects in some South Vietnamese villages.

As for the NVA, well, they should understand about the needs of the rural villages across the country.

Well, that's them told, eh?

Bloody regular armies, fulfilling orders of battle rather than considering the locals' needs.

Why, you could almost imagine it's the same as US forces disregarding their right to life because it's inconvenient when US Forces feel the need to dump a load of poisonous & flammable petrochemical products on their homes & children :rolleyes:

("Hey, if I need to call airstrike to save my buddies and she's in the way, too bad!", when discussing Kim Phuc is the most despicable thing I ever heard an AH.Commer say; and that includes Nazi-fanboys, who are least just moronic would-be child-killers in uniform, instead of actual experienced child-killers in uniform!)

Frankly, 1964 is too late.

The US will lose because they haven't had their own internal (still ongoing!) tackling of internal racism unfinished yet, barely begun in fact.
Nevermind racism as 'conveniently' applied to foreigners.

Koreans were 'Gooks'.

Vietnamese were 'Gooks'.

The US is actually lucky to have had its arse so comprehensively kicked by Vietnam; otherwise they wouldn't have forgiven you by now, been gracious winners, and there'd be Nork2: Electric Boogaloo on the world stage.
 

Nick P

Donor
They should have followed the British experience in Malaya and gone for a Hearts and Minds approach. Fortified villages where those outside get no help, financial support for local farmers, introduce and provide better equipment, improved transport links between villages, deny the Viet Cong access to food supplies making them dependent on supply missions.

Combine that with the OTL war on the North and the NVA with constant air strikes on military targets and you might have a better outcome.
 
IIRC, there has never been a modern insurgency defeated when:

1. It had significant popular support, and
2. It had a safe haven from enemy attack across some border.

I mean, this is in the COIN handbook! You have to eliminate these advantages. (This is why allowing the Taliban to live in safety across the border in Pakistan was so annoying to the US military, and thus why drone strikes have become so incredibly popular.) As others have mentioned the British won in Malaya precisely because the insurgency lacked either of these advantages.

So, assuming you're getting involved at all for whatever reason, just to even have a shot:

Yes, a real hearts and minds campaign is needed including a massive education effort aimed at the troops in general and junior officers in particular in how to not piss off the locals, and legitimization of the South Vietnam government including land reform. That last is a tough one. Further, you have to be able to strike VC concentrations in Laos, Cambodia and (though less politically possible) North Vietnam with relative impunity... but this is a hard political sell, so again maybe not possible. Really, the best way would be to invade the North, but that was evidently a non-starter, unless you mean specifically how to win militarily rather than worrying about political realities.
 
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Greenville

Banned
1. Remove American air bases from South Vietnam itself and move them to either South Korea or Japan. The Vietcong attacking them is how the Marines Americanize the war. Maybe provide air support when its necessary with fighters and bombers when requested. Keep American helicopters out of combat. The physical presence of Americans also antagonizes the Vietcong further.

2. Provide massive aid packages to South Vietnam and keep it going indefinitely.

3. Begin talks for neutralization with the Soviet Union and China.

4. Don't support the South Vietnam government at all. Let it collapse to the North and don't look back.
 
Try to make make Cambodia and Laos the focal point of combating the Communists, instead of making RVN the focal point. That almost gave the Communists more of the initiation to attack by having Cambodia and Laos as their standing ground and sanctuaries. This also gives you better a PR advantage of saying you are defending a country from foreign aggression since there is much better and clear line between the natives and the Communists.

Most of all, have no freaking plans of measuring success with ''body count''. That was dumb and bought little success and burn lot of good time that could have been used for better plans.
 
Laos might have worked. Vang pao, who was not a drug dealer, had the ear of the King. No large Christian Buddhist split.t
Cambodia is tricky because Prince Shianouk was bouncing back and forth like a tennis ball.
 
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