Vietnam "Surge"

What if after Richard Nixon had taken office he ordered "Surge" like tactics and strategy implemented in Vietnam in accordance with General Creighton Abrams? Perhaps cause a "Mekong Awakening" by allying with the local villiages and their leaders.
 

Deleted member 5719

What the US really didn't want at that point was more conscription, and what the Vietnamese really didn't want was more Americans.

Fail.
 

Deleted member 1487

The "surge" was how we got involved in the first place. They called it escalation then, but everything we tried was the same. The conditions are radically different between Vietnam and Iraq. In Iraq we left a power vacuum when we tried to occupy the country with too few soldiers, which meant that gangs picked up the slack and took over. These morphed into ethnic militias and it went to pot after that. In Vietnam we walked into a civil war with established sides, funded by super powers with the latest in technology. Vietnam was much more of a stand up fight, as the north had regulars, while in Iraq there are no such thing. They are funded to fight a guerilla war by a regional power and it is a religious rather than colonial struggle.
 

Bearcat

Banned
Sorry

The VC isn't the problem. They eat the big one, for the most part, in Tet in 1968.

Its the NVA. And no matter how times you curbstomp them, they will keep coming until the US gets tired of the game and goes home. We beat the hell out of the NVA in the Easter Offensive in '72, and by '75, with Soviet and PRC help, they were back to play another round.

The fat is, Vietnam was not the center of gravity of the Cold War - that was Germany - and we were not going to 'pay any price, and bear any burden'. Sooner or later, the NVA wins... and it doesn't do the Soviets a bit of good fifteen years later.
 
The VC isn't the problem. They eat the big one, for the most part, in Tet in 1968.

Its the NVA. And no matter how times you curbstomp them, they will keep coming until the US gets tired of the game and goes home. We beat the hell out of the NVA in the Easter Offensive in '72, and by '75, with Soviet and PRC help, they were back to play another round.

The fat is, Vietnam was not the center of gravity of the Cold War - that was Germany - and we were not going to 'pay any price, and bear any burden'. Sooner or later, the NVA wins... and it doesn't do the Soviets a bit of good fifteen years later.

Unless of course in my opinion the United States invades North Vietnam and militarily occupies it.
 

Keenir

Banned
Its the NVA. And no matter how times you curbstomp them, they will keep coming until the US gets tired of the game and goes home. We beat the hell out of the NVA in the Easter Offensive in '72, and by '75, with Soviet and PRC help, they were back to play another round.

I read a quote from one of the North Vietnamese military leaders saying that "I would rather smell French shit for ten years than Chinese shit for a hundred years"....was that feeling widespread?

and if it was, and we could somehow convince the Soviets to leave Vietnam alone...would that help? (since they'd rather not owe many victories to China)
 

MacCaulay

Banned
The VC isn't the problem. They eat the big one, for the most part, in Tet in 1968.

Its the NVA. And no matter how times you curbstomp them, they will keep coming until the US gets tired of the game and goes home. We beat the hell out of the NVA in the Easter Offensive in '72, and by '75, with Soviet and PRC help, they were back to play another round.

The fat is, Vietnam was not the center of gravity of the Cold War - that was Germany - and we were not going to 'pay any price, and bear any burden'. Sooner or later, the NVA wins... and it doesn't do the Soviets a bit of good fifteen years later.

Unless of course in my opinion the United States invades North Vietnam and militarily occupies it.

But Mung, that's not a surge. That's an invasion. And those are two different things.

Sure: you could send more troops into South Vietnam. It's always possible. The troops were there. EUCOM never gave troops out to PACCOM through the 50s, 60s, or 70s.
EUCOM never gave troops out, in fact, until Desert Storm. Then, because the Wall had fallen and Communism had drank the Kool-Aid, NATO felt sure of itself and could afford to let European Command give troops out to CENTCOM (in the form of VII Corps) for the offensive into Kuwait and Iraq.

If America were to be reverse the convention of the time and take regular troops from EUCOM, then they could certainly get the manpower. But when Nixon put Vietnamization into place, that also affected which troops (on a man-to-man basis) could be rotated to Vietnam.

Once you were rotated out of Vietnam after the beginning of Vietnamization, you couldn't go back. So any troops sent to Vietnam in a surge pattern would have to be from units that had never gone before, and filled with folks who hadn't been to Vietnam in their last tour.

Believe me, man: I spent a good 3 pages on a whole other thread hashing this out. And that thread was about an honest to god incursion into North Vietnam through the DMZ.
 

Keenir

Banned
But when Nixon put Vietnamization into place, that also affected which troops (on a man-to-man basis) could be rotated to Vietnam.

Once you were rotated out of Vietnam after the beginning of Vietnamization, you couldn't go back. So any troops sent to Vietnam in a surge pattern would have to be from units that had never gone before, and filled with folks who hadn't been to Vietnam in their last tour.

so...no Vietnamization, and the US has a chance at winning the war?

Believe me, man: I spent a good 3 pages on a whole other thread hashing this out. And that thread was about an honest to god incursion into North Vietnam through the DMZ.

I would like to read that thread if I may. please?
 

MacCaulay

Banned
so...no Vietnamization, and the US has a chance at winning the war?

Well, that's the thing. It's all about what the US people would consider winning. I actually toyed with the idea of writing it out as a story, to try and make a point about what America sees as "victory," and what's willing to walk away with and still tell itself that it's won.

I would like to read that thread if I may. please?
The Invasion of North Vietnam, 1970

Ignore all the "i think it wud be super irak cuz i didnt red the rest of the postes".
 
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