Westmoreland invades the North

Essentially, it boils down to this: North Vietnam is in no shape whatsoever to continue with the war when this campaign ends.

This requires a 1941 solution due to the mass character of the VWP and the mass support of its programme. Such a solution, as I've said, is not within the morale compass of the United States armed forces (and probably not within their competence). It certainly isn't in the ARVN's competence. When, in 1945, the VWP faced a situation similar to the one that you propose they continued fighting. Your proposed outcomes of the United States permanently cutting the trail are improbable and act upon a facile caricature of the actuality of VWP party life.
 
Explain this: How can NVN continue with the war when (a) the ports are all mined and no shipping traffic in or out; (b) the rail lines from the ChiComs are cut (bridges and tunnels bombed out, rail lines cut in many, many places; (c) the sea supply line to the VC in the south is cut by the USN's MARKET TIME coastal interdiction-which, btw, happened in real life-hardly anything went south by sea after early '67; (d) the Ho Chi Minh Trail is cut with U.S. and Thai forces sitting on it and the NVA has seen its best divisions shattered trying to reopen it; (e) At least a USMC division and an Army airborne brigade sit on the trail's northern terminus at Vinh, and the NVA's forces in the two southern NVN provinces cut off from any supplies, and the NVA north of that has also been shattered by air and naval gunfire as they try and reopen the trail; (e) the supply line via Cambodia is also cut-not by military action, but diplomatic pressure (Siahnaouk would know which way the wind's blowing now and won't want to antagonize the U.S. and SVN). and (f) every major military and transportation target in North Vietnam has been bombed-repeatedly (think LINEBACKER I and II).

Any other country, under those circumstances, would be looking for a way out. And if that means the NVN government having to swallow its pride and accept the U.S. goal of an independent, noncommunist South Vietnam, they have no choice.
 
Any other country, under those circumstances, would be looking for a way out. And if that means the NVN government having to swallow its pride and accept the U.S. goal of an independent, noncommunist South Vietnam, they have no choice.

Because the VWP isn't a country, the VWP isn't a state. It is a nationalist political party with considerable experience at surviving and operating at village level underground. This is the fallacy of COSVN writ large, all over the DRVN. Forces aligned with the VWP are not fundamentally reliant upon a central state apparatus in a capital city.

How did the PRG local forces survive subsequent to 1968? Because there was a massive gap in the policing capacity of the occupying troops. You get a freebie on the military operation, but the stress of doubling the occupation zone in combination with the absence of an ARVN to take up the slack in the North stretches the occupying power.

While the provincial and mainline PLAF, and the PAVN as a whole are reliant upon supply lines for non-food logistics, they demonstrated a historical capacity to control the strategic pace of their engagement, including strategic concealment, withdrawal and what amounted to cantonment. Stretching the resources available to Westmoreland in 1967 doesn't change this. Mobilising the US military so as to provide equivalent occupation forces in the North to those in the South still doesn't solve this.

You can't "kick the front door down" and watch the whole structure collapse with Vietnam. 1945 demonstrates this.
 
Once again, you're not answering the question: how does NVN continue with the war under the circumstances outlined? And you're also ignoring the premise: North Vietnam is not occupied except for the trail terminus around Vinh. It's cut in half, basically, with a Marine Division, an Airborne Brigade, and maybe an elite ARVN division (the Vietnamese Marine Division is a likely candidate in this situation) sitting on the Trail's northern terminus. There's 1st Cav, 4th ID, 3rd Marine Division, and maybe elements of the 101st Airborne sitting on the Trail in Central Laos, along with a Thai division, and they've destroyed the base camps, supply dumps, and trail infrastructure, and oh, btw, they've shattered several of the NVA's best divisions that have tried to retake the Trail. Equally, the bridgehead at Vinh has also shattered a number of NVA divisions thanks to superior air power and naval gunfire. The VC and NVA in the south have been shredded (similar to Tet '68, with 50,000 KIA even by NVN sources). All of NVN's ports are mined, and every major military and transportation target in the North has been bombed to rubble, with the likely exception of the Hanoi and Haiphong urban centers. The rail lines to China have been cut-in multiple sections (bridges down, tunnels blown, rail cuts blown away. NVN is cut off from outside supply-as it should have been early on. Under those circumstances militarily, there is NO WAY that NVN can continue with the war.

The campaign is fought with the forces in-theater. No additional mobilization in the U.S. is needed. What part of that don't you get? Westmoreland said in his memoirs that it could have been done. All he needed was the OK from three people: LBJ, Rusk, and MacNamara. All three are petrified to the extreme of provoking Soviet or ChiCom intervention (a legacy of the Cuban Missile Crisis), so no-go. But, if intelligence arrives that indicates that there is no chance of either Moscow or Beijing intervening to save NVN (no reason for the Soviets, and the Chinese have their own internal problems to contend with), this operation can go ahead. The war ends sometime in the Spring of '68. And it ends on U.S. terms, not Hanoi's. Something that makes the '68 election much more interesting....Johnson might run again, the Doves are discredited, and Nixon remains an enigma.
 

bguy

Donor
The campaign is fought with the forces in-theater. No additional mobilization in the U.S. is needed. What part of that don't you get? Westmoreland said in his memoirs that it could have been done. All he needed was the OK from three people: LBJ, Rusk, and MacNamara. All three are petrified to the extreme of provoking Soviet or ChiCom intervention (a legacy of the Cuban Missile Crisis), so no-go. But, if intelligence arrives that indicates that there is no chance of either Moscow or Beijing intervening to save NVN (no reason for the Soviets, and the Chinese have their own internal problems to contend with), this operation can go ahead. The war ends sometime in the Spring of '68. And it ends on U.S. terms, not Hanoi's. Something that makes the '68 election much more interesting....Johnson might run again, the Doves are discredited, and Nixon remains an enigma.

What's the latest the US could have still successfully pulled off that strategy? Could it have been done in '69 or '70?
 
Pre-Tet '68. Last week in January, '68 at the latest. And if a Tet-style offensive goes off anyway while the Trail's cut and NVN's cut off from outside supply? The VC is still destroyed in the South as an effective fighting force, and the NVA in the South whithers on the vine: they can't go North, and their supply lines are cut.
 
Some ARVN units didn't do so well: the ARVN 3rd Division was virtually destroyed in Quang Tri Province during the early days of the Easter '72 Offensive. U.S. TacAir and B-52 strikes helped in places like Quang Tri Province, Kontum, and An Loc. The VNAF just didn't have the firepower available that the USAF, Navy, and Marines brought to the fight. And they sure didn't have it in '75, though the VNAF in a number of places did put up a good fight (Phan Rang, Xuan Loc, and even on the final day-VNAF A-37s struck NVA armor rolling into Saigon, flying from Binh Thuy in the Delta. Then the A-37 drivers refueled their birds and flew off to Thailand). Even Marshal Ky acted as a Forward Air Controller, directing strikes on NVA positions near Saigon on 28 and 29 Apr 75, until he flew his own UH-1 to the carrier U.S.S. Midway.
 
Invasion isnt needed just remove the criminally stupid ROE for TAC/SAC and install 1 manager for all Air assets in theater, Coupled with a enforced blockade and harbor mining in 65 and it never spirals up to a level where invasion is necessary. Of course to achieve this LBJ and McNamara have to go in the 64 elections, As SecDef's insistence on numbers just screwed the Officer Corps and turned them all into liar's coupled with LBJ's outright refusal to make a decision or set objectives doomed any effort in SVN to failure.
 
Getting rid of the Edsel Mechanic (a term a lot of military personnel used to describe one Robert Strange MacNamara) certainly helps out at all levels. I'm actually wondering why LBJ didn't let him go after the '64 election and bring in someone else....
 
The only way the Soviets had to have their brutal fist felt against the US if they invaded North Vietnam, was to give green light for yet another attempt in Korea to Kim. This time, a comparatively far better armed shot - missiles, jet airplanes, chemical attacks. This, plus a renewed, airtight, and this time, permanent, land blockade of West Berlin, leaving only the airports to support the entire 2-million-mouth city.

China could react in different ways, but very likely, even after 1969's bloody confrontation with the Soviets, won't be exactly glad to see the Vietnamese overthrown. China might, I say might, simply watch fro the moment being, evaluating the Soviet reaction; and later decide what to do basing on that. In the end, it is likely that something will have to be done, as sending an army into Vietnam.

The only hope for the US is quick, lightining decapitation of the Vietnamee state. A feat that is unattainable short of detonating a nuke over Hanoi, or blitz-bombing it with B-52s carrying an overload of daisy-cutters and incendiaries, to be followed by the entire Airmobile US force from Hue and surroundings to rake and occupy the ashes. I prefer not to think about the consequences, anyway.
 
Kosygin, when he visited Hanoi, is said to have called the NVN leadership "first-class bastards" when he returned to Moscow. The Soviets may be willing to send military assistance and advisors to NVN, but doing anything else that might start a war-when their post-Cuban Missile Crisis military buildup is still incomplete? Not likely.
 
Kosygin, when he visited Hanoi, is said to have called the NVN leadership "first-class bastards" when he returned to Moscow. The Soviets may be willing to send military assistance and advisors to NVN, but doing anything else that might start a war-when their post-Cuban Missile Crisis military buildup is still incomplete? Not likely.

Why not? And would the US know this?

You're seeing a US invasion of an independent, communist regime by its own forces, after all.
 
At the time, the only way for the U.S. to know that the Soviets wouldn't intervene was through back-channel contacts. Does North Vietnam's survival directly impact Soviet national security? It may help with the Sino-Soviet Split, and tie down the U.S., but the Soviets never took advantage of that elsewhere (i.e. Europe) because it knew that meant WW III. Decision-makers in both Washington and Moscow still had memories of October 1962. In a way, that limited the U.S. in prosecuting the war from 1965-69, because everyone in a key position in D.C. was involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis and memories were still fresh.

Get rid of the Edsel Mechanic, McGeorge Bundy (National Security Advisor), and maybe Rusk (SecState) too, and have some advisors who weren't judging things by October '62, and a more aggressive strategy, such as cutting the Trail in Laos and NVN, becomes more likely.
 
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