Vietnam Wars elsewhere

Strategos' Risk

Where else can the United States get into a bloody 20th century insurgency against ragtag guerrillas, and be defeated?

Don't just look at the historical/political factors. I'm interested in geographical and military factors as well.

For example, could Cuba present enough of a challenge for the U.S. military in the '50s-70s? It has jungle. But then Iraq has deserts and Afghanistan has mountains. Think about the factors that lead to a dangerous insurgent movement.
 
iori

iori

Most likely South America.

Africa has/had the geography and unstable politics enough to provide a similar situation, but I don't think we'd really get involved directly in Africa.
 
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Plumber

Plumber

Iori said:
Most likely South America.

Africa has/had the geography and unstabe politics enough to prevent a siilar situation, but I don't think we'd really get involvd directly in Africa.
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Well THAT would be interesting in the Chinese sense... Speaking of which, Red China was a big complicating factor in the Vietnam War. There would be nothing like that here unless a Communist Brazil happened while nobody was looking or something.

But the "Domino Theory" based on Latin America would make the US even more determined to win, because they'll believe the last Domino to fall would be the US (well technically probably Canada, but yeah).
 

Mappa Mundorum

A big factor is that the insurgents receive technical and logistical support from a nation the US is unwilling or unable to go to war against. So you really need something bordering China or the Warsaw Pact, for that era. And it obviously has to be someplace that isn't so deep into the soviet sphere of influence that the US couldn't get in in the first place without triggering WWIII. So that should probably limit things to the same general area as Vietnam, (Burma, maybe) unless you change other things as well.

A Cuban Missile Crisis where the US blinks and the missiles stay could make a bunch of Latin America options viable. If you can get Yugoslavia to fall apart earlier and then somehow get US/NATO troops involved in the chaos in the first place without Russia being able to saw 'no' hard, that might work out as well.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
I always wondered what a flat-out American invasion of Cuba in 1961 would look like.

I'd assume a very swift occupation of all major urban centers and strategic positions, but heavy guerilla activity all over the island, especially in Oriente.
 
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RogueBeaver

RogueBeaver

Here's the Cuban Provisional Government with the Secretary of Defense in Washington, c. May 1965. PM Roberto San Roman is on far left. ;)

bay-pigs-10.gif
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Strategos' Risk said:
Cuba is much smaller than Vietnam, but could it still yield a challenge in terms of guerrilla warfare for the U.S. military?
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Well, Batista's American-equipped forces bombed the shit out of the Sierra Maestra and he threw 12,000 trained soldiers to wipe out a group of 300 rebels. It...didn't go as planned. In fact, within a year the rebels had taken Havana and Batista was on a plane to Spain.

Seeing as how basically every single Cuban is going to hate the US for invading and flagrantly installing a puppet regime, I think we will see an astronomical spike in the number anti-American guerrillas of all political and socio-economic stripes.

That being said, the Cuban forces will be "ragtag" since the Soviets have no way of supplying the insurgents as they did in Vietnam.
 
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CalBear

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Nowhere in the Western Hemisphere. The U.S. would fight to win in the Americas and would be backed by a solid majority of the population.

Viet Nam was a good place to politically defeat the U.S. It was too far away from anything that the average American saw as being important to them. The Americas are a whole different kettle of fish.

The Congo is a good choice.
 

King Thomas

Banned
Afganistan in the 1990s if the WTC plane attack happens before 2000.
Iraq in the 1990's if the first Gulf War is messed up as badly as the second Gulf war is.
Cuba perhaps if the US invade.
One of the countries near Vietnam,such as Laos.
 

pnyckqx

Banned
Strategos' Risk said:
Where else can the United States get into a bloody 20th century insurgency against ragtag guerrillas, and be defeated?

Don't just look at the historical/political factors. I'm interested in geographical and military factors as well.

For example, could Cuba present enough of a challenge for the U.S. military in the '50s-70s? It has jungle. But then Iraq has deserts and Afghanistan has mountains. Think about the factors that lead to a dangerous insurgent movement.
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Probably anywhere else in the world that we go. You can't expect the rest of the world to be as stupid as Saddam Hussein.

Expecting the opposition to be stupid is what gets the US into that kind of trouble.
 

Uxi

Nowhere in the Western Hemisphere. Even in the rest of SE Asia, if it doesn't have a land border with China or the USSR, it's likely to go much easier in terms of direct escalation.
 

MerryPrankster

Angola could be interesting, especially if the U.S. ends up allied to apartheid South Africa.

Thing is, a lot of the Marxists' fighting power was provided by Cuban troops, and Castro isn't going to be stupid enough to send Cuban troops to Angola if there are U.S. forces fighting there. Without the Cubans and other Eastern Bloc miscellany, the MPLA is going to be destroyed.

(Battles in the Angolan War, at least in the early stages, were often decided by who fired first because the various African armies' discipline was atrocious--the fired-upon forces typically broke and ran.)

What the war lacks in bloodshed in Angola could be made up for by bloodshed in America's inner cities. Many black Americans opposed the Vietnam War--a war that involves fighting fellow blacks allied to one of the most anti-black regimes in history is going to be much worse.

And the late AmInd seemed convinced that sending black draftees to fight blacks in Angola would cause "problems."
 
Ariosto

Ariosto

Wolfpaw said:
I always wondered what a flat-out American invasion of Cuba in 1961 would look like.

I'd assume a very swift occupation of all major urban centers and strategic positions, but heavy guerilla activity all over the island, especially in Oriente.
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The Cubans would be prepared as best they could, but most of their military was militia rather than good-quality regulars. Imagine the Viet Cong, but fighting an actual battle head on with the enemy rather than from behind bushes and rocks. In short, as you have said, the conflict would end fairly quickly despite preperations, and result in the development of an insurgency.

However, here is where it gets tricky. The insurgents would need supplies from a third party to keep themselves in operation, and there is only so much they can store beforehand or take with them into the countryside. The United States could simply quarantine the island and search all vessels moving in, preventing any effective shipments of supplies from reaching the rebels. Therefore, the insurgency would likely die off sometime in '63 when supplies begin to run out, and they develop into something along the lines of the FARC. Therefore, United States victory.

So we need a nation that is not in the America's, and is bordered by at least one Communist nation allied to the USSR. There are not many choices actually available that I can think of that are in some way possible.
 

tallwingedgoat

Iran. Think of how tough Iraq has been. Imagine three times the population, four times the landmass, mountainous terrain, combined with full Soviet backing.

The worse scenario would be if the British refused to leave India and use the same policy the French tried in Indochina and Algeria.
 

Draco

Iran would likely provide all the bloodshed and mayhem you could ever want especially if it gets support from the Soviets. Indonesia has potential as well but has the problem of being harder for a third party to support.
 
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