Was a North Vietnamese victory in the Vietnam War inevitable?

[ObssesedNuker]

Ok, so my wider point that America was already exhausted by the time Tet came still stands?

Yes.

Easier said then done. Every RVN government from Diem on had land reform on the agenda. The issue was that the South had a far stronger land owning class than the North did (and even there Land Reform ended up being a messy affair). Any alternative to the DRV/NLF would need to court this faction or simply implode from lack of support.

Hence why the government had to be written off and the US would have to support it's own popular revolutionary group that offered an alternative to the VC and displaces it. As the Americans are not necessarily beholden to South Vietnamese landlords, simply shooting those who object is an option... an unsavory option, but still an option.

EDIT: Found it. It's a bit different then how I remember but largely follows a similar track:

So how would you win as a military commander?

Well, you have to stretch your authority a bit. Two key things have to be realized: the first is that no matter the rhetoric, the Government of South Vietnam (GVN) is not in fact a legitimate body nor is South Vietnam a truly legitimate nation, and the Communist insurgency is more an indigenous than an external phenomenon. The other is that only when the South can stand on its own two feet do you have a chance of winning the ultimate objectives of the war.

So, your objectives are to turn the GVN into a legitimate body in the eyes of the people; to give it the military might to defend itself, and, more importantly, the political will to resist popular Communist encroachment. Along the way you need to weaken the Communist threat enough to buy the time needed to strengthen the GVN.

By 1965 Diem has already been killed (I don't think he could have pulled it off anyway), and you're stuck with a Junta of increasingly corrupt and ineffectual generals cum politicians. Also American regular forces are starting to arrive in numbers.

Firstly we need to halt the entry of regular troops, keeping numbers relatively low - no more than 100,000. Instead of conventional battle, the focus would be on special forces to hunt the insurgents on their own terms. Large scale military options would be kept as rare as possible, with small teams of elite US and ARVN soldiers hunting down VC and VPA bands the preferred methods. Massive aid would be diverted to the countryside, particularly education and land reform. If we need to get rid of the landowners, so be it - arrest them on bullshit charges, or bribe them with houses in Hollywood, or whatever. Every effort would be made to undercut the leaders of the GVN (a paradox given the goals, I know) and subvert their control of the populace. Why? Because at this point we'd consider them a lost cause. Similarly American units would be attached to ARVN formations and GVN control would be routinely subverted, with the US even paying ARVN soldiers and promoting new commanders. The government would be kept as pliable as possible by having the strongest American units around their homes in Saigon and the CIA keeping a close eye on them. Basically we're turning them into puppets in fact - out right threatening them at times if need be and even, hey, a few more accidents.

Meanwhile, we'd seek authorization to bomb not South Vietnam, but North Vietnam, hitting them hard enough to keep their involvement in the South to a minimum and make the Chinese and Russians seriously consider just how much they were willing to commit to all this. Bombing would not be unrestricted, but it would focus on key things like transportation routes and centers to slow the movement of supplies south.

Now, in a few years the Communists will hopefully have been forced to keep involvement fairly low, the ARVN will be conditioned to be an effective fighting force rather than a political tool and will be essentially under the control of American leadership. American troops will mostly be small special forces teams, with the regular units bulking out ARVN formations and keeping the South's leaders nicely in hand. Meanwhile the peasants will have been increasingly educated and enfranchised, and - and this is very important - offered another option to that of either Communism or corruption. In essence we'd have undercut the GVN and hijacked the Communist land revolution.

Then we get the CIA to spur increasing calls by the peasants for government reform. Given the undemocratic nature of the GVN this means a lot of increasingly loud and violent protests. We keep the ARVN from interfering and hamstring any efforts by the junta and the elites to crush the peasants, and then help them usher in a new government. Now, while we don't overreact to any socialist elements in the new revolution obviously the Communists will try to influence it in some manner and we keep a close eye on that. However, if we've done our job properly the people shouldn't see a radical change to Communism as an attractive option (different from if they're being oppressed by a corrupt bunch of oligarchs and have no better choices) and should turn away from it on their own. If we can nurture it properly, we should be able to end up with a popular and (fairly) democratic government that is (moderately) anti-communist, and has a (US led) professional and non-political army at its command.

From there on we continue the transition of real power to the new government. If the new GVN are truly competent they won't want us controlling the armed forces and we have to facilitate a smooth transition. They'll also probably want to come to terms with the North. Again, no panic. Let them. So long as they have an independant streak and a strong military we shouldn't be overreacting to compromises with Communists. Instead we give them plenty of financial aid, and keep a low key but pervasive level of support in country.

Now, with a great deal of work, huge dollops of deviousness, and not a little luck we should have been able to create a free and stable non-Communist South.

Anyway, that's the bones of my master plan.

Basically, in order to ensure the independence of South Vietnam the country, first your gonna have to crush the independence of South Vietnam the Government...

 

[Protagoras]

It seems clear that South Vietnam's biggest problem is that while plenty of people hated the Communists (especially as many anti-Communist types had moved south with the partition), the various anti-Communist factions still spent more time working against one another than confronting the Communists. Some examples of this have been mentioned; I don't know why nobody has brought up one of the biggest, the tension between the ruling Catholic minority and the Buddhist majority. I don't know of any single, simple change that would have fixed this, but it wouldn't have taken impossibly better leadership of the various factions to have done well enough to hold the country together. It just would have taken better leadership than they had.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

It seems clear that South Vietnam's biggest problem is that while plenty of people hated the Communists (especially as many anti-Communist types had moved south with the partition), the various anti-Communist factions still spent more time working against one another than confronting the Communists. Some examples of this have been mentioned; I don't know why nobody has brought up one of the biggest, the tension between the ruling Catholic minority and the Buddhist majority. I don't know of any single, simple change that would have fixed this, but it wouldn't have taken impossibly better leadership of the various factions to have done well enough to hold the country together. It just would have taken better leadership than they had.

Honestly, it could probably be at least mitigated fairly easily. If you're able to track down Edward Miller's Religious Revival and the Politics of Nation Building: Reinterpreting the 1963 ‘Buddhist crisis’ in South Vietnam give it a read. It gives a far more nuanced summary than the traditional "monks didn't like religious apartheid" narrative, and it really points out how many miscommunications and last minute fumbles were involved in the creation of the 1963 Buddhist Crisis.

The Engaged Buddhism movement and Diem's cronyism were likely to clash, but cooler heads could very well have prevailed before people started dying.

 

[BigBlueBox]

On the contrary, a coup against beloved Uncle Ho would be poison to Le Duan's reputation and northern unity. A spiral into a RVN-style coup cycle is unlikely, but far more defectors could be expected.

If Le Duan was able to pull off a "coup" then he must have had the support of Giap and key members of the VCP's leadership. As such, Ho Chi Minh's removal from power would be rather similar to Khrushchev's ouster - it would be a quiet, internal affair and the official story would be that Ho Chi Minh voluntarily retired due to age and health. It would be very unlike Diem's ouster - there would be no tanks driving through Hanoi.

 

[marathag]

The core military problem from the US side is they neither built the ARVN to fight a counterinsurgency nor did they build up the SV paramilitaries to fight an insurgency nor did the US military leadership know how to fight an insurgency.

It wasn't an insurgency that took over the South in 1975, it was a conventional blitzkrieg.

And the North had a far higher percentage of mechanization than the Heer did in 1940 France.

They weren't pushing bicycles over fresh chopped jungle trails like in 1965. Plenty of Warsaw Pact provided vehicles, armored and otherwise in 1975

 

[ObssesedNuker]

It wasn't an insurgency that took over the South in 1975, it was a conventional blitzkrieg.

Ignoring the exaggeration of the nature of the 1975 assault, the insurgency was a important component in preparing the ground for said assault. VC/VPA guerrilla operations sapped the South's will, drained its resources, and muddled its focus. Had South Vietnam been a healthy state not beset by such a continual internal challenge to its legitimacy, the results the North Vietnamese managed to gain in their 1975 assault would have been impossible given the material and numerical imbalance of forces.

And the North had a far higher percentage of mechanization than the Heer did in 1940 France.

They weren't pushing bicycles over fresh chopped jungle trails like in 1965. Plenty of Warsaw Pact provided vehicles, armored and otherwise in 1975

The 1975 Spring Offensive was conducted by a VPA force with 679 trucks and 270,000 soldiers. By comparison, the German thrust through the Ardennes fell upon a force of less then half that number of men (130,000) and more then 57 times the number of trucks (39,000). The number of trucks used by the VPA weren't enough to equip a single armored division. Suffice to say, the 1975 Spring Offensive was in no conceivable way a mechanized assault.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

If Le Duan was able to pull off a "coup" then he must have had the support of Giap and key members of the VCP's leadership. As such, Ho Chi Minh's removal from power would be rather similar to Khrushchev's ouster - it would be a quiet, internal affair and the official story would be that Ho Chi Minh voluntarily retired due to age and health. It would be very unlike Diem's ouster - there would be no tanks driving through Hanoi.

In a scenario resembling OTL yes, but with a PoD further back tensions and divisions in the Worker's Party could be ramped up to where a coup against the old guard is on the table. I'm not sure how much further back would been needed, but I think a botched handling of the fallout from the Land Reform efforts could create a very different political climate come the 60s.

EDIT: Found it. It's a bit different then how I remember but largely follows a similar track:

I'm not so sure it does. It posits its revolution following the military defeat of the NLF and DRV, rather than it being the means to beat them. That's not all that novel. It's basically just Diem's plans, but replacing the end point of a personalist revolution with an actual armed revolution.

Basically, in order to ensure the independence of South Vietnam the country, first your gonna have to crush the independence of South Vietnam the Government...

Problem is that if this is done while the NLF is still strong, then the US just ends up courting NLF members wearing trench coats and fake moustaches. Additionally, 1960s American intelligence were terrible judges of character (see: all of OTL's attempts to "upgrade" the Saigon government) so, even if by some miracle they keep the NLF out of the loop, I doubt the revolutionaries would be free from corruption and incompetency.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

I'm not so sure it does. It posits its revolution following the military defeat of the NLF and DRV, rather than it being the means to beat them. That's not all that novel. It's basically just Diem's plans, but replacing the end point of a personalist revolution with an actual armed revolution.

No? The plan involves military actions against the Vietcong and DRV as fundamentally a holding action while the North Vietnamese Government are politically maneuvered, and if necessary outright broken, into a position of total subservience from which it could then be overthrown via a staged revolt. Once a genuinely legitimate and stable government is put in place, then that political alteration would rapidly deprive the Vietcong and VPA forces of the popular support infrastructure they used to infiltrate the south and stage military operations from within the country. The Vietcong's defeat would be inevitable under such conditions while the VPA would have to revert to more traditional cross-border conventional invasions that the US and ARVN (the latter of whom would likewise be rejuvenated by the prospect of fighting for a genuinely legitimate government) could easily smash.

Problem is that if this is done while the NLF is still strong, then the US just ends up courting NLF members wearing trench coats and fake moustaches.

...

Additionally, 1960s American intelligence were terrible judges of character (see: all of OTL's attempts to "upgrade" the Saigon government) so, even if by some miracle they keep the NLF out of the loop, I doubt the revolutionaries would be free from corruption and incompetency.

Well, the entire plan is based on the assumption that the Americans are coming into this with clear eyes rather then misjudging it due to some hideous Cold War blinders as was actually the case (and which is something the author of that post acknowledged a little bit later). That view deeply influenced American intelligence agencies into their horrible judgement of the overall situation in Vietnam generally and judgements in character specifically. So when that is considered, the whole thing is probably a non-starter outside of purely academic considerations. Whether the revolutionaries prove any better then the historical South Vietnamese Government would, of course, depend on what sort of leadership emerges, so there is a bit of a "luck" element in there which the plan acknowledges.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

No?

Then what else would you call:

Now, in a few years the Communists will hopefully have been forced to keep involvement fairly low,

In my reading that pretty clearly sets their elimination in so far as they are an immediate threat as a prerequisite.

Well, the entire plan is based on the assumption that the Americans are coming into this with clear eyes rather then misjudging it due to some hideous Cold War blinders as was actually the case (and which is something the author of that post acknowledged a little bit later).

So we need a US that is anti-communist enough to intervene, but moderate enough to keep a level head while doing so?

 

[ObssesedNuker]

Then what else would you call:

In my reading that pretty clearly sets their elimination in so far as they are an immediate threat as a prerequisite.

That isn't forcing them into a military defeat though. Merely a suspension of major offensive operations, which is something the US managed to do multiple times as it was.

So we need a US that is anti-communist enough to intervene, but moderate enough to keep a level head while doing so?

Yeah, pretty much. Difficult balance to strike.

 

[marathag]

The 1975 Spring Offensive was conducted by a VPA force with 679 trucks and 270,000 soldiers.

Nice of you to leave out all the trucks operating along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, that was fully surfaced by 1975, and had pipeline system similar to PLUTO in 1944 France to feed all the trucks moving supplies south, all the way to Loc Ninh in South Vietnam's Bihn Phuoc province.

It's dishonest, really.

It would be like not including the trucks in the Red Ball Express in the Breakout from Normandy for the number of trucks Hodges used.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

Nice of you to leave out all the trucks operating along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, that was fully surfaced by 1975, and had pipeline system similar to PLUTO in 1944 France to feed all the trucks moving supplies south, all the way to Loc Ninh in South Vietnam's Bihn Phuoc province.

It's dishonest, really.

It would be like not including the trucks in the Red Ball Express in the Breakout from Normandy for the number of trucks Hodges used.

I figured we were talking about the degree of mechanization among the actual attack forces which is why I counted only the 270,000 men in the operation rather then the 1 million men in the whole VPA, partly because I can't find figures for the total number of trucks in the VPA at the moment*, only those among the attack forces, and partly because such a tiny quantity of vehicles among the attack force still nicely contradicts your original claim that the 1975 campaign was a mechanized one regardless of the motorization state of the supply lines. Nice try at goalpost shifting though.

*American intelligence estimates on the matter are wildly contradictory, with the claims on the number destroyed often exceeding estimates on how many the VPA have and have received. Probably a function of typical kill overclaiming but VPA records on truck totals don't appear to be available. Or at least, I haven't yet found them.

 

[Aloha]

So. The NFL wasn't a unitary movement. It was an achievement of the Vietnamese Workers Party to mould the positions of a bunch of partially independent proxy parties and movements behind the general VWP position. Yes, of course, this was the traditional four parties of the fraternal states: Workers, Peasants, Intellectuals and tamed National Bourgeois. But at the same time these were semi-independent sentiments that had to be massaged by VWP moles into supporting the general VWP line in the NFL.

That is a lot of work for an underground illegal movement forming armed units and a counter state and tax regime. And remember that the VWP and NFL are both independently inflitrating the RVN.

And this is of course neglecting three divisions inside the VWP itself. A northern and southern perspective. A development and a war line. And personality politics around Duan and Ho/Giap.

Leninist parties aren't static. They develop situationally based on the concept that if they don't they fail. Even in comparison to other Leninist parties which achieved state power, the VWP is by far and away more pragmatic and efficient. The Red River Offensive died, fast, when it failed. Giap was elevated despite being on the wrong side of the line in 1967/8, and then was allowed to modify the line in 1968 as a result of Tet-1's failure. Fools weren't tolerated.

Neither was the Northern line's pacifism. The VWP in the South independently renewed struggle in 1958/9 as a result of the RVN's blood persecution. The VWP in the North was forced by the Southern VWP to tail end the Southern VWP's line.

In short: the Party was capable of local differentiation on the basis of the concrete nature of the struggle.

The struggle in the south required high levels of engagement from rural proletarians. This could (and did) convert Southern VWP activists and the NFL/PRG towards a line far closer to proletarian self-governance than, say, being a Political Bureau member in the DRVN did. There's the material and social space for a conflict between the NFL/PRG and the DRVN.

Leninist "unity" is almost always a hard fought and often bloody achievement. In the case of the Vietnamese party the comparative pragmatism and the highly proletarianised countryside made for a potentially far more workers-democratic leninist party than in other situations. Compare and contrast to the Yugoslav party where geographically fractionated peasantries had a similar effect on party life.

In short: the NFL/PRG saw the VWP in the DRVN as betraying the revolution historically in 1958/9. There are real grounds for their opinion to be replicated at a later point if the VWP from the DRVN doesn't cater to the southern demands.

yours,
Sam R.

I didn't know American football was a thing in Vietnam.

 

[Dave Howery]

a more stable South Vietnamese government

this is the key... the SV government has to one that does good for the people who live there; they have to have something worth fighting for.

 

[bobbobbins3]

Well there is one method that I assume our friends Curtis LeMay, Douglas MacArthur, and Bomber Harris would support, but I doubt the South Vietnamese would support any use of nuclear weaponry on any part of Vietnam...

 

[Mackus]

If South Vietnam were to have chance win, Diem would have to go.
Diem allied himself with Americans because they believed his supposed anti-communist credentials. Well, he was a fraud. He purged a lot of conservatives, creating vacuum that opened south Vietnam to communist infiltration, and generally acted as if he was more afraid of Bao Dai taking over than Ho Chi Minh.
If he fought Vietcong with half the zeal he fought Buddhists, South Vietnam wouldn't end up falling apart.

 

[BigBlueBox]

If South Vietnam were to have chance win, Diem would have to go.
Diem allied himself with Americans because they believed his supposed anti-communist credentials. Well, he was a fraud. He purged a lot of conservatives, creating vacuum that opened south Vietnam to communist infiltration, and generally acted as if he was more afraid of Bao Dai taking over than Ho Chi Minh.
If he fought Vietcong with half the zeal he fought Buddhists, South Vietnam wouldn't end up falling apart.

Diem was killed by his own officers with Kennedy's approval. Then South Vietnam became even worse. And if Diem hadn't removed that incompetent emperor South Vietnam would have had even worse leadership. Most of those "conservatives" he purged were collaborators with the French anyways. He did South Vietnam a service by getting rid of them.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

If he fought Vietcong with half the zeal he fought Buddhists, South Vietnam wouldn't end up falling apart.

Are you implying Diem conducted a genocide of Buddhists and family members of Buddhists? Or are you implying that his actions against the NLF amounted to only riot control, a handful of police raids, and some unofficial hiring biases?

Either one is wrong because he absolutely was stomping down on Communism far harder than he was on (mainstream) Buddhism.

 

[History Learner]

On paper, the ARVN had far more then enough logistics to beat off the VPA assault. They had large stockpiles of American aid still sitting around, which the North Vietnamese used to fuel their campaign as they captured them, so lack of American material support cannot be the reason for their deterioration. The problem was that the ARVN logistics were totally mismanaged, with the people whose job it was to get that ammunition and fuel from the stockpiles to the frontline were instead too busy trying to be sure they were on the first choppers out of Saigon. Which goes back to issues of politicization and corruption within South Vietnam that the Americans had zero control over even back before the embargo. Given their massive paper numerical and material superiority, air support should have been completely unnecessary for ARVN, seeing as the VPA didn’t have it either.

And the VPA’s offensive was a far cry from a mechanized one. It has mechanized elements, but like all previous VPA offensives the main brunt of the effort fell on their foot infantry.

On paper, the Soviets had enough on hand for Icebreaker; we both know that's a false myth. In reality, the oil embargo had largely left the South Vietnamese without mechanized support and, perhaps more critically, their own air power. Adding to this was the decline of American aid, particularly in terms of spare parts which further hindered their Air Force as well.

Yes. The deterioration of relations, and supplies, with China begin with Sino-Soviet border wars of ‘69, not with Pol Pot’s ascension to power. 1968 was the peak year of Chinese supply. By ‘75, though, overland supply from China had already largely (not entirely, but largely) been severed and even Soviet supply had been tapering off since the Paris Peace Accords (with the prospect of tying down American ground troops gone, they increasingly lost interest), to the point that the Vietnamese conducted the ‘75 offensive from a supply base smaller then that which they conducted the ‘72 offensive on. Given that context, loss of Chinese aid would mean nothing. Only when the Chinese actually come in and fight the North Vietnamese would that matter, but with possession of the Central Highland the four year period of time is far more then enough time for the VPA to deliver the final death blow (which was scheduled to come in ‘76 as it was). Not to mention the Chinese invasion of Northern Vietnam was in response to the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, which the North Vietnamese obviously won’t be doing before they reunify with the south.

The bottom line is that the best outcome for a bombing offensive repeat in '75 would would have still ended with the North in control of a huge chunk of the country that rendered the rest now strategically indefensible. Unless America recommitted ground forces, the fall of the South would only be a matter of another year or two.

1972-1975 was actually the peak of Chinese aid to North Vietnam, so I'm not sure where you got these numbers. 1973 was actually the peak year of supply and it was only because of said supply from 1973-1975 that they were even able to attack in '75; the PRC had to aid them in rebuilding their offensive capabilities. If Nixon were still in and used American air power to stop the NVA, the decline in relations with China means there won't be that aid for another try:

In addition to helping the DRV defend itself in the North, the Chinese Communists also provided the sinews of modern war that enabled the PAVN to launch two massive offensives against South Vietnam in 1972 and 1975 respectively. In the 1972 Easter Offensive, the PAVN were supplied enough first-class military vehicles and weaponry such as Chinese trucks, tanks, 130mm mortars, MIG jet aircraft, Surface to air missiles, 130mm artillery pieces and shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles to launch a large-scale 20-division offensive to South Vietnam. When the PAVN suffered a terrible loss in which around 450 tanks were lost and more than 100,000 troops were killed in the offensive, China, once again, continued to compensate for the PAVN equipment loss so that they could reform its units for another large-scale offensive that ended the Second Indochina War in 1975.

“It was having China as a secure rear and supply depot that made it possible for the Vietnamese to fight for 25 years and beat first the French and then the Americans”. The remark of Mao Zedong’s biographer sums up the truly crucial role of the PRC’s support, including a promise to step in with a massive numbers of troops if North Vietnam had been invaded by the U.S., to the final victory of North Vietnam against the two world powers. It was decisive!

 

[Mackus]

Diem was killed by his own officers with Kennedy's approval. Then South Vietnam became even worse. And if Diem hadn't removed that incompetent emperor South Vietnam would have had even worse leadership. Most of those "conservatives" he purged were collaborators with the French anyways. He did South Vietnam a service by getting rid of them.

So. Diem purged large numbers of people who were known to be amenable to colonial authority?
And then was surprised that those who replaced them sympathised with anti-colonialist crusaders of North Vietnam rather than with American stooge, allowing South Vietnam to be infiltrated by Vietcong.
Well.

Bao Dai's rule was ineffective because Americans wanted him gone more than they wanted to defeat Vietcong.
Diem got to power only because Americans were supporting him, and Vietnam needed American aid.
Americans wanted to dismantle colonial empires. They wanted them gone, even if it meant turning power over to people who hated America, as was often the case. They would overthrow moderates who colonial power left behind as they recognised independence of their former colonies. Those who replaced them ended up far more cruel, corrupt, and crazy than "colonial collaborators". Then those new leaders collaborated with the Soviets, or in rare cases, with Americans.

They put Diem in power. They don't get the credit for removing him after he's done all the damage.