Would North Vietnam be like North Korea today if it lost the Vietnam War?

CaliGuy

Banned
Had North Vietnam lost the Vietnam War--for instance, had there been no Watergate Scandal and thus the U.S.'s commitment to South Vietnam wouldn't have wavered--would it be like North Korea today?

For instance, would North Vietnam have a nuclear weapons program, a ballistic missile program, a bombastic leadership, et cetera in this TL?
 
Would North Vietnam even survive if it would lost? In South Vietnam government was so hated that Commies would have quiet difficult to lost. Probably you would need early 1960's POD before North Vietnam can lost and even then I am unsure can it survive as nation.
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
Unlikely. Juche and the Kim family personality cult is uniquely North Korean. Sure, there's no guarantee that it won't happen, but there are so many butterflies that nobody can say with any certainty how a North Vietnam that lost the war would end up.
 
I'm not sure that the United States can support RVN against three year general offensives to 1989.

Yours,
Sam R.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Would North Vietnam even survive if it would lost? In South Vietnam government was so hated that Commies would have quiet difficult to lost. Probably you would need early 1960's POD before North Vietnam can lost and even then I am unsure can it survive as nation.
Failing to unify Korea didn't result in the Kim Dynasty being overthrown in North Korea; thus, I doubt that failing to unify Vietnam would result in the overthrow of the Vietnamese Communists.

Unlikely. Juche and the Kim family personality cult is uniquely North Korean. Sure, there's no guarantee that it won't happen, but there are so many butterflies that nobody can say with any certainty how a North Vietnam that lost the war would end up.
So, you think that North Vietnam would be more moderate and more well-behaved than North Korea due to its collective leadership?

I'm not sure that the United States can support RVN against three year general offensives to 1989.

Yours,
Sam R.
Would North Vietnam have either the money or the resources for that many offensives, though?
 
It would probably be closer to a modern day version of Laos. A semi- isolated South East Asian country unable or having troubles making economic progress. A surviving NVA would be too focused on keeping military to defer any ARVN forces for invading for make economic inroads. There can be a strong cult of personality around Ho, but I doubt it will reach North Korean forms of craziness. NVA isn't isolated enough for that to happen.
 
Unless it became a Chinese puppet, which might happen, I personally can't see North Vietnam surviving post-1991. Between the political isolation, deteriorating economy, the collapse of it's closest ally and the encroaching Chinese whom they most likely have bad relations with; North Vietnam is in a really bad spot.

Reunification will happened sometimes during the 90s though how well that will worked out is up for debate.
 
The Chinese and Vietnamese have a long and very difficult history. I can't see there being any long term relationship between the two peoples the same way that the Soviets and Chinese Communists had a falling out.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
It would probably be closer to a modern day version of Laos. A semi- isolated South East Asian country unable or having troubles making economic progress. A surviving NVA would be too focused on keeping military to defer any ARVN forces for invading for make economic inroads. There can be a strong cult of personality around Ho, but I doubt it will reach North Korean forms of craziness. NVA isn't isolated enough for that to happen.
Please keep in mind that North Vietnam probably wouldn't be as much of a rural backwater as Laos is, though.

Unless it became a Chinese puppet, which might happen, I personally can't see North Vietnam surviving post-1991. Between the political isolation, deteriorating economy, the collapse of it's closest ally and the encroaching Chinese whom they most likely have bad relations with; North Vietnam is in a really bad spot.

Reunification will happened sometimes during the 90s though how well that will worked out is up for debate.
North Korea managed to survive the collapse of its Soviet patron as well as a subsequent famine, though.

The Chinese and Vietnamese have a long and very difficult history. I can't see there being any long term relationship between the two peoples the same way that the Soviets and Chinese Communists had a falling out.
So, do we eventually see a North Vietnamese version of Juche?
 

thorr97

Banned
Okay, so, the POD here is the North's 1975 invasion of the South fails. This, due to the US upholding its treaty obligations to provide material support to the RVN's forces. Thus the North's invasion force is obliterated by Army of the Republic of Viet Nam's ground forces and the US's aerial attacks.

This gives the South the time it needs to grow its economy without the constant threat of invasion by the North. By the time the US had withdrawn its military from South Vietnam the North's insurgency there had been shattered. The Tet Offensive was essentially the death knell for organized Communist activities in the South and it only got worse for the Communists after that. So the day to day security threat was reduced to the point of no longer being daily chaos and violence. That, in turn allowed politics and daily life in South Vietnam to start becoming "normal."

Without a Northern invasion in '75 putting an end to all that, the South could begin to grow its economy. That would be the real key to putting an end to the North's threat. A vastly stronger South could then soon enough handle its own security needs without American intervention. The US would still be deeply tied to South Vietnam however. The military bases alone would've been of exceptional value for our strategic presence in the region. This, especially as the leases on the Philippine base leases began to expire and we started handing those over to that country. South Vietnam would benefit enormously from that.

North Vietnam would, in all likelihood, NOT become a puppet state of China. The antipathy between those peoples goes back centuries. And so long as there was some alternative to China, the North would choose it instead. Thus you could expect to see an even greater Soviet presence in the North. The Soviets would not want to lose their basing in that region, the Soviets would want some place to keep the Chinese contained, and the Soviets wouldn't want to see one of their client states implode and fail before the Capitalist onslaught.

So the Soviets would do whatever they could to keep their Communist allies in North Vietnam propped up and functioning despite their having lost yet another army in '75 trying to defeat the South.

In all likelihood, this added expense would probably hasten the demise of the USSR. Perhaps not by much in terms of time but it would be cited as a factor.

Thus the Communists in the North would be in one helluva jam once their patron had fallen. With no Evil Empire™ to keep 'em propped up and with the People's Republic of China's economy booming in the 90s and the Republic of Vietnam's economy having been booming since the 80s, I'd imagine the North would be a pretty impoverished and dreary place indeed.

I can't see the US letting the North alone in all this. There'd have to be espionage and subversion efforts going on constantly to try and bring that regime down.

Perhaps once the wartime leaders had either all died off or gotten so old they could be otherwise put to pasture you might then see some sort of reunion between the North and the South. The constant pressure from China would be a good motivator for both sides to achieve this. For the North it'd mean avoiding coming under Chinese domination. For the South it'd mean avoiding having Chinese troops suddenly manning the DMZ between North and South Vietnam.

When that reunification comes I think they'd find the North to be far more impoverished and desperate than the East Germans were in comparison.
 
Juche was an artificial creation of a random, underachieving soldier being put in charge of North Korea by Stalin. There was nothing artificial about the North Vietnamese. They were not a personality cult. They were fanatical nationalists. Heck, Ho Chi Minh was sidelined in power long before the end of the Vietnam War.
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
So, do we eventually see a North Vietnamese version of Juche?
I feel that it would be more likely to seek some form of detente with South Vietnam and the West. Assuming the Soviets still fall, I see no reason why they wouldn't adopt the same economic liberalization policies that they did OTL.
 
Wouldn't the failed unification force them to be dependent on China for military and Economic aid against the american backed south irregardless of historical feelings , Also China would not want US troops on its southern border
 
on the question of the 1978 1981 1984 and 1987 general offensives I can have a quick look at GDP. But honestly the Vietnamese military involvement in Kampuchea makes me think they're viable offensives. This means three seperate presidential term reactions with a sustained policy of keeping the basketcase whorehouse of the RVN afloat, and in two elections disproportionately having conventional air assets in the pacific theatre during the US military's worst malaise ever. (Carter/Reagan bipartisanship on rearmament means the 1984 and 1987 offensives might just be doable if the foreign policy on Asias brothel can change)

Yours
Sam R.
 
>the Republic of Vietnam's economy having been booming since the 80s,

Thailand, Malaysia and the Phillipines economies weren't booming in the decisive early 1980s and all three had arguably more competent ruling classes.

Yours,
Sam R
 
>the Republic of Vietnam's economy having been booming since the 80s,

Thailand, Malaysia and the Phillipines economies weren't booming in the decisive early 1980s and all three had arguably more competent ruling classes.

Yours,
Sam R

ROC got thrown into a single off-shore island under a dictatorship while South Korea was left devastated after the war with very chaotic politics. Look at them now.

IMO, it really depends less on who's the leader and more on how much are the US willing to props up the RVN, which owning to communists and possibly Soviet presence up north, will be a lot.
 
US efforts to prop up the RVN 1954-1975 were grossly ineffective. In part because of US incompetence, in part because of RVN elites incompetence, in part because the unreformed semi-proletarianised agricultural system left a large resentful rural labouring population capable of supporting on going revolution and liberated areas, and in part because the urban war economy developed in the wake of war was a basket case.

The benefits of the war were precisely felt in ROC, ROK and Japan.

Another bunch of go arounds of US air intervention is not going to result in a viable RVN economy or ruling class, nor will it roll back the liberated areas.

Yours,
Sam R.
 
I would argue the main issue is how rare North Korea as an entity is. There is really only one. Stalinist Russia and Maoist China had similar situations, but they were situations that gave way to reform and change. Put it down to the size of those nations allowing for the inability for total, perpetual indoctrination of such massive and diverse populations, allowing for contradiction and contrarian thought which undercut the authority of the personality cult dictatorship, and lead to change. Whatever the reason, they gave way in a decade to several decades period to change. North Korea has been iron clad brainwashed for over half a century, through multiple rulers of a Kim regime that has not and will not likely give way. North Korea is Oceania, and Big Brother will not die. That said, you can create a scenario where North Vietnam goes that way. But it is not an issue of that being the case of what would unfold normally.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
I would argue the main issue is how rare North Korea as an entity is. There is really only one. Stalinist Russia and Maoist China had similar situations, but they were situations that gave way to reform and change. Put it down to the size of those nations allowing for the inability for total, perpetual indoctrination of such massive and diverse populations, allowing for contradiction and contrarian thought which undercut the authority of the personality cult dictatorship, and lead to change. Whatever the reason, they gave way in a decade to several decades period to change. North Korea has been iron clad brainwashed for over half a century, through multiple rulers of a Kim regime that has not and will not likely give way. North Korea is Oceania, and Big Brother will not die. That said, you can create a scenario where North Vietnam goes that way. But it is not an issue of that being the case of what would unfold normally.
A distinction between North Korea and the Soviet Union/China is that North Korea has remained under one-family rule. Indeed, this would almost certainly not have been the case with Vietnam.

However, it is worth noting that the Soviet Union and China also successfully built nuclear weapons and had huge militaries.

US efforts to prop up the RVN 1954-1975 were grossly ineffective. In part because of US incompetence, in part because of RVN elites incompetence, in part because the unreformed semi-proletarianised agricultural system left a large resentful rural labouring population capable of supporting on going revolution and liberated areas, and in part because the urban war economy developed in the wake of war was a basket case.

The benefits of the war were precisely felt in ROC, ROK and Japan.

Another bunch of go arounds of US air intervention is not going to result in a viable RVN economy or ruling class, nor will it roll back the liberated areas.

Yours,
Sam R.

Why was South Korea's elite much more capable of running their country?
 
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