The Nguyễn dynasty at that point was tainted by its association with being the toadies and puppets of the French, but a republican administration under a popular individual igure like the former emperor Duy Tân could do well to provide an alternative unifying front of leadership to the Northern communist government
With hindsight, what should have been the US strategy in Vietnam?
- Thread starter Gukpard
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I've recently finished reading Max Hastings book 'Vietnam: an Epic Tragedy' and i'd like to weigh in here. Because it sounds to me this scenario of "gung ho" is like a typical Westmoreland and even Abrams type of response to the question they themselves were asked by US presidents. And its wrong. How many US soldiers casualties are we talking about here if thats the game plan? "Go big" is what both generals did, they used airpower and search and destroy(later, clear-and-hold, essentially the same), in WW2 mindsets. Think of operation rolling thunder, what did that do? Nothing, unless the US has so many boots on the ground it would make operation overlord look like a training op. and what would be the casus belli?
Vietnam didn't work like that, it wasn't occupied France or fascist Japan. The US was fighting communism, essentially fighting China and the USSR, on vietnamese territory, a proxy war. But the vietnamese were fighting an independence war, a nationalist war. They'd do anything. They did anything and everything. Its brutal, criminal even, but they did what won them the war, the US and south vietnam, did not. And it was not having superior forces, firepower or control. It was spirit.
The biggest issues i think the US had was thinking they were fighting 'just' an army and 'just' a guerrilla movement. But they were not, they were fighting all of vietnam. Because even the south vietnamese were part of the movement moving towards independence, a way to be rid of the overbearing foreigners in their country, wether it be French, Japanese, Chinese or Americans. They hated communism, more and more as the war progressed, but in the back of their head they still dreamed of independence, South Vietnamese are not a different people from the North, only in location. And at first they believed that the American were going to be able to give it to them, with a lot of costs they were willing to accept, to be independent and not under the opperssion of Stalinism. But eventually, as is with all violence, there is limit. That limit was already reached in OTL, imagine what will happen in your scenario.
You might think that the North isn't prepared for something as big as your plan in 1959, that it will collapse because, firepower. Well, tell the French that. And what did the US learn from the French experiences fighting? Nothing.
Thinking bigger in such a situation would only cause more casualties, on both sides but mostly amongst the civilian population, because that is what you are fighting, it is a civil war. Fighting like that would simply empty the country, deplete it of a fighting, governing and producing population leaving only old people and children behind. and about ten times more US casualties.
And not only Vietnam if you gonna do what you are suggesting. you'd have to do the same to Laos and Cambodia.
What is then the ultimate goal? You'd have a free, independent Vietnam? Or are Americans just the new French? or Japanese? Or Chinese? Just the same oppressors in a new uniform. Vietnam won't accept that, it won't be over.
Not even going to argue the point, my best solution is to stay out of the quagmire, but the OP hasn’t allowed that choice. End state has to be the Republic if Vietnam surviving.
that being the requirement what is your solution?
Basils
Banned
Esp since they wouldn’t be a minority ruling group.
Another issue was corruption. That made it hard for ARVNs to believe in the state they were fighting for.
the US had three options.
1) Stay out. only a fool gets involved with someone else's civil war
2). Try to get popular support and run with that (good luck)
3) pick whichever side is most politically useful for you and push it until it drops.
3b). same as 3 but you TRY to get popular support from the locals.
Note the US did #3 by far the worst choice available. Mostly because the US didnt thunk about it and just sort of let it evolve.
1) Stay out. only a fool gets involved with someone else's civil war
2). Try to get popular support and run with that (good luck)
3) pick whichever side is most politically useful for you and push it until it drops.
3b). same as 3 but you TRY to get popular support from the locals.
Note the US did #3 by far the worst choice available. Mostly because the US didnt thunk about it and just sort of let it evolve.
Politics. There has to be true democracy in Vietnam. That means Diem needs to fall(best in 1955, but whatever). The country needs to be able to build its own economy. This all includes the US not interfering of course, no boots on the ground either.
In order to show the weakness of the North, they have to show the strength of southern democracy and freedom. Hearts and minds, but by Vietnamese, not US.
The North is focussed on conflict. If they don't get it, they will try and find it. But, if the south is showing strength, showing freedom for real, the VC will not grow, earlier diminish and any infiltrations into the south by the north will be met with desertion or imprisonment/death.
What the US can do is reveal the true nature of the North and Uncle Ho, Le Duan, Giap, etc. Intelligence, break the propaganda.
Can't conquer the north. Like with Korea, by 1959 the chance for reunification are gone. But you don't need to in order for the south to survive.
I'm sure a lot more things are needed, but it doesn't involve big guns.
Should be noted that South Vietnam can survive with just US air support and not ground support.
So just avoid Watergate and keep air support going permanently. South Vietnam will lose bits and pieces of the countryside, but it will remain alive and over time develop and gain the experience nessecary to permanently secure their country.
So just avoid Watergate and keep air support going permanently. South Vietnam will lose bits and pieces of the countryside, but it will remain alive and over time develop and gain the experience nessecary to permanently secure their country.
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the infamous dike and dam bombing plans yet. I personally don't endorse it as a good strategy since it'd cause an appalling number of deaths, but it might be something that would cripple the North enough to end the war on favorable American terms.
air support didn't do squad. airpower can only do so much, it can't singlehandedly win a ground war. You need capable troops on the ground. They bombed the shit out of Vietnam, most intense in the 70's, without any results(meant for pr anyway). More does not mean a win.
In hindsight? Not that much. Red China was in the middle of the cultural revolution and the Soviets knew they're still outmatched in the nukes department.
At the time? Anything from a rematch with the PRC to straight up WWIII.
Considering that the US didn't have ground forces from late 72/early 73 and South Vietnam didn't get overrun until 1975, and only AFTER the US decided to stop providing air support I think you're making giant generalizations.
The bold is extremely debatable. While by the mid-1960s the numbers may have still favored the US in the simplistic "count-the-total-number-of-warheads", when it came to the question of "the number of warheads the Soviet Union can throw at the CONUS" it had fundamentally reached the point where that 1953 Oppenheimer quote very much applies: “Our twenty-thousandth bomb, useful as it may be in filling the vast munitions pipeline of a great war, will not in any deep strategic sense offset their two-thousandth.”
Not supportable by the actual history. The reality is that post-Vietnamization and even with American air support, the ARVN was getting taken apart. Every bit of ground it lost for good served as a jumping off point for the PVA to take the NEXT piece of territory and the army did not gain the experience necessary to permanently secure the country, but instead continuously got weaker and less experienced as - absent the covering support of American ground forces - it grew more corrupt and lost experienced personnel. The 1973 campaign is a case-in-point: while the ARVN with American air support was able to eventually stop the North's assault, doing so still cost them irreplaceable casualties in experienced personnel and lost them swathes of land they never took back. The large swathes of the four northern provinces which the North Vietnamese were able to keep during the Paris peace accords would then later be used to stage their successful 1975 offensive.
The North Vietnamese in 1973 had intended to destroy the South in a stroke, and in that they failed, but the ARVN had succeeded only by a razor thin margin and was still unable to prevent the permanent occupation of a tenth of South Vietnam's territory nor use the reprieve to claw back any lost strength. Learning from the operation, the North planned to repeat the feat in 1975: seize the next series of key areas of the country - namely the Central Highlands - in the opening blow, then go to ground when the Americans intervened with airpower. Once the Central Highlands was in the north's hands, the rest of the country would be strategically indefensible to the next PVA offensive - planned for about 1976 or 77 - regardless of American air power intervention or not.
Instead, the ARVN just outright collapsed in the opening of the 1975 PVA offensive, which surprised the PVA as much as it surprised the Americans and ARVN.
So while it was better than total military collapse, all American air support did was result in the ARVN suffering a death by a thousand cuts, which isn't regarded as a successful military model either.
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10% of South Vietnam isn't much in the grand scheme of things. I'm not talking about success, I'm talking about survival for South Vietnam.
And I would argue that once the NVA capture the highlands, any conventional offensive after that outside the highlands will be more vulnerable to American air strikes then before.
It is when we're talking about some of the most important territory in Vietnam from a military standpoint.
No, the "survival for South Vietnam" is the measure of success you're talking about. A South Vietnam which see's it's army slowly dies to a Death of a Thousand cuts and slowly loses vital ground bit-by-bit until it has been fully conquered still has not survived.
And you'd be wrong. Any conventional offensive out of the highlands would have already overrun the rest of the country by the time air strikes could even be mounted in response. There would be no ARVN to benefit from such air strikes, no South Vietnamese government for them to save. All you'd be doing is pointless spite bombing for nothing.
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what air support can do is delay the inevitable. Was the air support going to keep south vietnam alive? Hell no. War is won on the ground.
There is a common claim that being shorted on ammunition/supplies from the U. S. is what insured the ARVN's fall. However that does not address most of the other fundamentals
This refrain mainly comes from the fact South Vietnamese were really only short on ammunition/supplies by American standards. By the standards of the PVA forces which defeated them, the ARVN was positively swimming in supplies and in fact it was mainly captured supply stockpiles from the south which fueled the bulk of their final offensive in 1975. The problem was that the ammunition in those South Vietnamese stockpiles wasn't making it to the actual fighting units, so the Communists would overrun ARVN artillery units with only three rounds for their 155mm guns, and then find that dozens of kilometers behind the guns was an ammunition depot stuffed with ten thousand unused shells. The South had plenty of ammo, they just never fired it. The failing was one of organization and distribution.