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What would have happened if the United States invaded North Vietnam in either 1964 or 1965, with 1965 being the more likely date?

I'm midway through Thomas Ricks' "The Generals" where he discusses the Vietnam War. According to the book, in 1965 the advice the Joint Chiefs of Staff was giving Johnson was essentially "go all out and invade the North or withdraw completely".

Johnson rejected this for obvious reasons, but one thing that struck me is that actually trying to invade North Vietnam was more likely for the US government to actually decide on then not fighting the war, or not fighting the war with ground forces, for reasons that Ricks describes in the book. One reason for this is that US policymakers did not yet have the negative experience of the Vietnam War itself, so they were going to try to prop up any allied state facing a communist takeover. Second, the US military-industrial complex described by Eisenhower seems to be a real phenomenon and ti really seems they are going to be fed a major open ended war every few decades. Third, and here Ricks is strongest in describing this, the US army and the rest of the military was really geared to aggressively defeating an opponent in a conventional war, so invading North Vietnam was something they could actually accomplish but they couldn't do counter-insurgency without a top-to-bottom overhaul.

So what if the hawks had gotten their way?
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