I suspect that even a token British and Commonwealth troop commitment would have been sufficient. Sometimes it is less important how many troops as much as there are other countries. Britain would need to the cost covered and generous debt relief.

What is important for the Americans to understand that this was not like WW1 or WW2 with large battles. Instead it is more like the Philippines insurrection, the Central American and Caribbean interventions. Another examples was the Indian campaigns in the Southwest which if my memory was right had weeks of patrols with suddenly ambushes followed by weeks of patrols. There will not necessary be one battle that you could point to to say this when we won.

The long term key is recruiting the local people to fight on your side.
 
Adding more naval supremacy doesn't help - the French and their allies can still move all the troops and implements of war they want into Vietnam.

Though as 1972 showed, a near absolute closing of ports by mining and destruction of coastal traffic did make a large impression. But is 1954, and the French controlled the major Northern Ports

For all the talk of moving stuff by hand over rough hewn trails and some railroads from China, unloading ships at Haiphong was key for being able to try and export the Revolution South over the next 20 years

Had the French been able to keep it as an enclave, filled with North Vietnamese Catholics, that would have severly hurt the North long term. A French Hong Kong, as unlike DaNang, Haiphong was well developed.
 
Malaysian style tactics would have altered the outcome. Australia and New Zealand understood gurrliea combat better than the us did.
Sir gerAld templer, would have out thought Giap drunk and asleep .

The Americans were aware of these tactics and did try to apply them. British success in Malaysia had far more to do with exploiting ethnic tensions between Malays and Chinese than any particular military brilliance.

I'm not aware of any equivalent divides that could be exploited in Vietnam, possibly the religious divide but that doesn't like it would work as needed.
 
I'm not aware of any equivalent divides that could be exploited in Vietnam, possibly the religious divide but that doesn't like it would work as needed.

There was similar historical&cultural differences in areas of Vietnam to that of Great Britain or other European states.
Annam Gate, a major mountain pass near the 17th Parallel where the DMZ was located, was both a political and territorial divide over prior centuries.

There are over fifty ethnic groups in Vietnam.

The one thing that the people in the area could agree on, they didn't want to be under Champa, Khmer or Chinese control. That's how the French were able to slide in during the 19thC
 
There was similar historical&cultural differences in areas of Vietnam to that of Great Britain or other European states.
Annam Gate, a major mountain pass near the 17th Parallel where the DMZ was located, was both a political and territorial divide over prior centuries.

There are over fifty ethnic groups in Vietnam.

The one thing that the people in the area could agree on, they didn't want to be under Champa, Khmer or Chinese control. That's how the French were able to slide in during the 19thC

I've no doubt this is true but, without wishing to minimise the differences between Vietnam's ethnic groups, it seems by '54 the Viet Minh had a fairly widespread base of support among the Vietnamese population as a whole, whereas in Malaysia support for the insurgents was concentrated among the relatively small and somewhat historically unpopular Chinese minority.
 
I suspect that even a token British and Commonwealth troop commitment would have been sufficient. Sometimes it is less important how many troops as much as there are other countries. Britain would need to the cost covered and generous debt relief.

What is important for the Americans to understand that this was not like WW1 or WW2 with large battles. Instead it is more like the Philippines insurrection, the Central American and Caribbean interventions. Another examples was the Indian campaigns in the Southwest which if my memory was right had weeks of patrols with suddenly ambushes followed by weeks of patrols. There will not necessary be one battle that you could point to to say this when we won.

The long term key is recruiting the local people to fight on your side.

The U.S. military has suffered since WW1/WW2 of seeing all wars though the conventional lens. It turned around Iraq in the insurgency phase pretty quickly when it finally stopped thinking with that mindset and got out of their bases to live with the locals.

If we waged Vietnam as a COIN campaign in the 50s or 60s it would have worked very well. But, instead same as Iraq we concentrated most of our troops to bases and let them out every so often to patrol before heading in.

Just the completely wrong way to think about how to fight a unconventional opponent.

Churchill did cost himself later support over Suez in the U.S. administration and with it any semblance of the British Empire as a global power for not accepting an even token force to Vietnam.
 
Which, for a start, would mean they are busy.

Except the conflicts are to an extent interconnected and the possibility of British involvement is then higher. Especially with Churchill, who was a committed imperialist, in charge.
 

Ian_W

Banned
Except the conflicts are to an extent interconnected and the possibility of British involvement is then higher. Especially with Churchill, who was a committed imperialist, in charge.

Yes, and that means British resources that go to bail the French out in Vietnam aren't going to Malaya.

What are the British sending ?
 
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