The Vietminh powerbase is in the north, British forces are mostly in the South, and Japanese military officers were crucial in establishing the Quảng Ngãi army academy which produce many Vietminh officers.
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Vietnam, a unwinnable war?
- Thread starter Luciano7477
- Start date
Talking about Ho being a communist. He was, but I don't see a reason why he couldn't have been persuaded to adopt Titoism neutering his utility to the eastern block. I think the fact that the North Vietnamese adopted economic reforms within ten years of winning the war shows that while being communists they could be pragmatic.
I do think the US could have won but it would have required a clear strategy from the begining and a lot of people from the Johnson administration including him. If it was Nixon running the war from the begining it could have been done. Early land reform and Vietnimization are key though.
I do think the US could have won but it would have required a clear strategy from the begining and a lot of people from the Johnson administration including him. If it was Nixon running the war from the begining it could have been done. Early land reform and Vietnimization are key though.
the problem here is that even in a world where the US persuaded France to give up the ghost and let Vietnam go, that immediately frees up the ancient Chinese-Vietnamese rivalry again; the Chinese put that on hold IOTL in the name of communist solidarity but even in 1973 Beijing wanted the North to stop fighting as to get a North Korea situation going on, which would ensure Northern compliance with the rest of the communist bloc (and by extension Beijing) because an extant south would always threaten the north. When the north, with Soviet support, told China to screw off and unified the country anyways that led up to the 1979 war
In a scenario where HCM gets his wish list fulfilled the only real power that could back Hà Nội against China is the Soviets. (US was the premier anticapitalist power besides, both sides were using each other) Recognizing HCM and letting him take Vietnam would be from Washington’s point of view, a major bruh moment
Although in this scenario you are probably somewhat right that the country would be somewhat like Tito’s Yugoslavia- having gotten everything they wanted in one to, they would do enough to retain the promise of Soviet help over their backs but not really be inclined to be (oh fuck what’s the word oh nvm “dependent”)on the soviets as they were OTL due to the war
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Ah, bilingual problems
I tried to say something like “dependent” or “overly reliant” but the only word I could think of was lệ thuộc which means the same thing in Vietnamese
I tried to say something like “dependent” or “overly reliant” but the only word I could think of was lệ thuộc which means the same thing in Vietnamese
Ok I'm off the soapbox. I suggested that the way to win the war was to look at a map, and cut the HCM Trial, with ground troops.
Special forces, or a full expansion of the war into Laos & Cambodia?
Again look at your map. The DMZ along the 17th Parallel, start there, and drive west into Laos, until you reach the Thai border. Form a line along defensible terrain, and that blocks the North Vietnamese from reaching the South, or Cambodia. Your right holding South Vietnam's 800 mile borders with Laos, and Cambodia is impossible, and raiding into the border areas is futile, but creating a 150-175 mile defensible line is a long term solution. As for destabilizing Laos, and Cambodia they had already been invaded by the North, keeping them from falling to Communist forces would've been far better for them then what happened to them in the OTL. Nothing could have been worse then the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the Communists almost destroyed the Khmer People, and culture.To those who are comparing South Vietnam to South Korea and claiming the former could have been put into a similar situation, i'd like to dispute the issue through maps:
Korea is peninsula. The only land border they had with another country, North Korea, was and is still a heavily fortified demilitarized zone. Any guerrilla fighters that would want to bypass the DMZ to infiltrate the country would have to do so by boat, which is a tall order considering you'd be exposing yourself and your party to the open skyline, air and naval patrols. The country is also not that underdeveloped, having inherited many Japanese industries that the government seized, done land reform successfully through the 1950's, diversifying its economy, and competently handling a steady stream of western investments. Geographically equal urbanization, with numerous urban centers (Taegu, Taejeon, Busan) peacefully developing alongside Seoul also helped.
Compare this with Indochina:
This is a huge place. To the west of South Vietnam is some quite ideal guerrilla territory in the form of jungle forests, mountains, riverside communities, rice fields, etc, into which rebel bands can easily escape to and hide in when an attack goes sour. This was the rationale behind napalm usage; to destroy the foliage, potentially burn any VCs hiding in it, and leave the area an open, scarred field, risky for a soldier to walk across. At the same time, though, it came with its own downsides in the form of collateral damage to farmers' crops, fishing and hunting grounds, and massive ecological damage, which hampered efforts to gain the goodwill of the rural population. What could be passed for a large city was Saigon, and it was surrounded by a large countryside, with war sometimes flaring just a few kilometers from the city suburbs.
If Vietnam was a peninsula and Cambodia and Laos were instead underwater, perhaps the US and SV could have beaten back the northerners and the VC, but overall, i feel like geography is an overlooked factor in influencing the outcome of the war. The intervening forces were faced with the dilemma of either keeping counter-insurgent operations limited to South Vietnam proper or expanding the war into Laos and Cambodia to pursue insurgent armies and infrastructure which would destabilize the region and require even further reinforcements and escalation.
Here's a little article from 1970 that illustrates my point more eloquently.
No half way measures, do it right, and follow through with it. Laos & Cambodia had already been invaded, and it's territory was being used as enemy base areas. You can't be a little bit pregnant, they were parties to the war already.
tbf gauchobadger isn't wrong
Garrisoning the entirety of the south's borders would be a very long-term task and would require the US to commit a lot of resources- and I'm not sure the US would be willing to commit that kind of monumental effort in the 60s and 70s...
true
but again, this would require the US to want to expand the war into Laos and Cambodia, a broader Indochina war
which would open up a whole new can of worms
Your not understanding what I'm saying. Form a line along the 17th Parallel, from the SCS to the Thai border, not all the borders of South Vietnam. That will cut the North's lines of communications with the South.
Ho was far more radical than his successors. He engaged in a class extermination campaign in 1958, going after priests, landowners, independent peasants, and what passed for the intelligentsia, as well as ethnic minorities in a dispossession campaign similar to what was happening in China around the same time with the Anti-Rightist campaigns
He also insisted upon collectivization of agriculture despite opposition inside the party
The fact that he got his start as a nationalist didn't mean he didn't imbibe the dogma to an extreme extent. His successors were willing to be more pragmatic, on some things. The repression of the Southern Buddhists after 1975, for example, was because his model of co-opting faith leaders failed due to a stronger tradition of independent religious practice in the south. But the village headman decapitation strategy, along with the reeducation camps, those were standard practice in the North in the late 50s-early 60s.
I disagree certainly they become that but it was not inevitable. There were opportunities for the west to be the helping hand and we squandered them (generally in favour of maintaining colonialism),
Also socialism =/= communism. (certainly not as in we must fall under International communism's umbrella of influence). However I do agree that many in the west saw any ideas along the lines of socialism as having to be red blooded communism and drew lines accordingly, but that was half the problem, we drew lines and forced some groups to be on one side of them or the other. Unsurprisingly those groups given few other options end up making the most of the options they are left with on the side of the line they were on. Plus of course the USSR and Chinese were more than happy to step into the gap we left!
Because yes if you have been a colonised people, the basic ideas of socialism do sound kind of attractive, but frankly the "OMG reds under the bed" attitude drove a lot of people who really just wanted a fairer society than the colonial one they had started off with (and ironically they often saw the US model as the goal) to say OK fuck in then I'll have an AK not an M14 because if I'm going to be hung I might as well be hung for a wolf as a sheep, and at least if I have the AK I might not get hung at all.
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I disagree that he was a communist through and through, at least not for long periods of time or that he could only have been a communist given other options. The problem is with the whole HCM and Co. were inevitably going to bring about a violent communist regime, is it's working backwards through history.
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I presume we are not talking about bent pipe shaped cigarette holders and being fabulous.
For Ho to preside over a complex federalist socialism which more cleverly used more formally intermediary ownership systems across a mis weighted multi national federation dominated by two related yet mutually loathing ethnic bases he’d have to presided over a successful Indochinese communist party.
Also Yugoslavia had a better material base and there were more peasants in Serbia/Croatia: Vietnam proper had in its rural sphere been highly proletarianised by Franco and Catholic-Viet enclosures.
I remember a funny excerpt from a transcription of an interview with a US diplomat for the Khmer Republic/Cambodia about he had once met a Vietnamese man dressed in an all white suit who introduced himself as the last Trotskyist in Indochina. The rest had all been purged.
Your correct, we fought the war on the enemies terms, we should have fought it on our terms. Land reform, anti corruption, along with civil defense programs were the key to pacifying the countryside. by 1973 the VC were effectively gone, the South was conquered by the NVA. By then it was too late, the U.S. Congress had cut off aid to the South, and left them to their fate. The Left in America had determined the Vietnam War was a morality play, with the U.S. as the bad guys, so the South had to lose.
That's the whole point. When the U.S. first intervened with ground troops in 1965, they should've pushed up the A Sau Valley, and then into Laos, to cut the HCM Trail. Military leaders wanted to do just that, but the theoretical neutrality of Laos prevented them from doing it. The U.S. fought hard to hold onto that area during the war, in the hope they could use it as the jumping off point for that war winning offensive. If they had done that the insurgency in the South would've dried up in 1966. That's what the NVA feared the most, so they deployed their strongest forces there. In 1971 when the ARVN pushed into Laos during Operation Lam Son 719 the NVA used everything they had to stop them, because they realized that was their strategic point of vulnerability. They understood if the HCM Trail was cut the war would be lost.