Where OTL and a better solution Diverged -- Vietnam.

Being a simple foreign stooge isn't in itself the kiss of death, witness the survival of the Warsaw Pact dictatorships and the US-backed dictatorships that lasted through the Cold War. The USA's major weakness in the Vietnam War was in treating as the US War in Vietnam. The USA completely marginalized the Saigon regime in terms of meaningful influence and it languished in a sea of coup and countercoup, while the USA's tactics and strategy were never appropriate to the kind of war it was fighting.

The US concept of the war itself was also deeply flawed, strategic bombing didn't do much in 1940-44 to reduce German industry which kept growing in all those years, and against North Vietnam its effectiveness was even less. Added to this was that the USA kept trying to prop up a Saigon regime that was too strong to permit legitimate opposition but too weak to rule anything in its own right, with the result that the Saigon regime was caught in the worst of both worlds, so even if the USA had done nothing but ship guns and weaponry to it the regime would still have fallen.
 

stalkere

Banned
I go with TxCoatl1970. My dad was flying airdrop missions into Viet Nam in 1954, and all through the rest of his career, so I grew up hearing a lot about it.

His opinion was that we should have never let the French back in...and the americanization of the War was a total mistake. "People who wanted to be fighting WWII in Europe, so they tried to recreate it in Viet Nam" was his comment.

Years later, everything I've learned leads me to agree. It had to be the People's War. They needed to have a stake in it.

their saying, was, "when the water buffalos fight, the small animal get's trampled." - they saw themselves as the small animals in the fight between water buffalos - a fight that only concerned them in how they stayed alive.

If we can make it their fight - then we make it possible for RVN to survive.
 
Matt Wiser said:
Militarily, there's a few things that could've been done differently:

1) If Westmoreland is ComMACV, then give him free reign to act as he sees necessary. He had contingency plans to invade Laos as early as Jul '66 to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail and bring the NVA to a conventional main-force battle. Turn him loose and force the NVA to fight our way and not a guerilla war.

2) Mine the ports. Navy A-1 squadrons were practicing mine drops in the Philippines as early as March '65. Do in 1965 what Nixon did in May '72: mine all of NVN's ports and go further: declare a total blockade of the North. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out. Anyone who runs the blockade does so at their own risk.

3) Unrestricted bombing of all military targets in the North: including SAM sites, MiG airfields, and NVN's infrastructure. This includes targets within the Hanoi-Haiphong restricted and prohibited zones. (30/10 NM around each city for restricted, 10/4 NM for prohibited). The only "no-bomb" areas would be a 3 mile buffer zone near the ChiCom border.

4) Once the bombing starts, no letup. No pauses to "give the Northern leaders time to think" or any other such nonsense. Let the air commanders hit targets when and how they see fit-no micromanagement from D.C as to targets, mission planning, time-over-target, ingress/egress routes, etc.. (stuff that MacNamara and his Whiz Kids were so fond of, among other things)
I agree entirely, except on point 1. Given total blockade & all-out attack on bases (& rail links out of China, too, I presume?), closing the Trail is much less important: there just aren't the resources to send south.:eek:

One approach I've wondered about, but never seen discussed, is Vian's. (Which I understand he abandoned...:confused::confused: I should also confess knowing almost nothing about it.:eek:) Anybody think it could've worked?

TxCoatl1970 said:
As a liberal peacenik, I think Vietnam was a tragedy of wasted lives and resources.
Agreed. IMO, it could be avoided.
TxCoatl1970 said:
France wanted a lot after WWII to salvage their national pride, and nothing the US did was ever going to be enough. It's easy to see in hindsight sixty-odd years later but tell that to Dulles and Co during the Red Scare.
...
Now, we have Options One or Two, where the US doesn't get involved at all except possibly brokering Indochinese independence from France.
I'd suggest there's an Option 5: recognize a Viet nationalist in '45. Not a fascist (the usual U.S. response to Communism...:rolleyes:), but a genuine nationalist. There had to be a few in French jails... It need not be merely "independence", but creation of a Commonwealth, which would actually be better for France economically than colonies. As for Dulles' disciples, all they needed was to realize France needed the U.S. (at least:rolleyes:) as much as the U.S. needed France.:rolleyes: Not blackmail, exactly (tho if necessary...:rolleyes:), but a reminder of how things were in Europe. Or bribery ("foreign aid";)), if you prefer.
Marja said:
They won't have much choice but to continue, if Chinese troops enter Hanoi...
If there are PRC troops in Hanoi, Ho will be in DC pledging allegiance to the U.S. in a matter of days.:rolleyes: The Viets knew one thing above all else: the French would leave. The U.S. would leave. The Chinese would never leave.:eek:
Matt Wiser said:
ChiComs aren't getting involved in a land war in NVN unless NVN's survival is at stake. I'm not talking about occupying the country
With the experience of Korea, I'd say USG had figured out not to go north toward the PRC border...:rolleyes: I'd add State could send an explicit message to Beijing: "We have no intention of invading, but we're going to blow the hell out of NVN, so if you don't want your people getting killed, stay out." Same to the Sovs. (I'd send something like it if I were POTUS.)

As for the blockade, keeping neutrals (and allies:eek::eek::confused::confused:) from sending supplies would also be required...:rolleyes:
 
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