Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Was Vietnam winnable?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Was Vietnam winnable?

    My reading on topics goes in spurts, and right now, I've picked up two books on Vietnam that I plan on reading by the end of my Christmas vacation:

    A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam

    On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War

    While I think that I will really enjoy the book on John Paul Vann, one of the early themes that has emerged within the first ten pages is that Vietnam was "unwinnable."

    So, my poll question is whether Vietnam was "winnable" or "unwinnable"? For those that answer that it was winnable, could you please describe what courses of action should have been taken and how feasible your course of action would have been (e.g. a land invasion of North Vietnam would have likely drawn a Soviet response, making the Cold War hot, especially after the declaration of the Brezhnev Doctrine). Thanks.
    177
    "winnable"
    59.32%
    105
    "unwinnable"
    40.68%
    72
    "So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

  • #2
    I had read that there were accounts from North Vietnamese military and government officials after the war that the NVA was very close to facing defeat during the invasion of Cambodia in 1970 (?), but for political reasons the US limited the invasion to within 25 miles of the border, whereas if we had gone just a bit further we would have all but wiped out the NVA's ability to continue to conduct the war.

    If this were true, there would still be a threat from the Viet Cong, but their capabilities would be reduced, as well as support from the NVA would be vastly diminished.
    "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

    Comment


    • #3
      Viet Nam could have been won rather quickly if two factors were removed.

      The Senate and the House of Representatives.
      Able to leap tall tales in a single groan.

      Comment


      • #4
        rustybattleship,

        don't know about that. it was LBJ that was freaked out by the possibility of chinese intervention, and thus limited what the military could or could not do.
        There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

        Comment


        • #5
          I had always assumed that an all-out invasion of Nth Vietnam was never on because of likely Chinese/Soviet involvement, ala Korea. Therefore the Vietnamese war was based on a war of attrition, which Vietnam won.
          So without hotting up WWIII, no.
          In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

          Leibniz

          Comment


          • #6
            parihaka,

            well, i see where rustybattleship was going. abrams did a good job with what he had, with a far better model than westmoreland. the south vietnamese stopped the NVA in '72, for instance, with a lot less US assistance than in the past.
            There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

            Comment


            • #7
              If America had not gotten the hell out of dodge things would be remembered a lot different. From allowing the NVA to remain in SVN after 1973, to cutting off much of the aid while the Communist world was feeding the NVA. The Easter Offensive was an SVN/USA victory and the NVA were on the ropes but they were allowed to rebuild and stay in SVN.

              And that's just looking at the last couple years.
              Last edited by troung; 12 Dec 06,, 04:40.
              To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

              Comment


              • #8
                If we had truly unleashed our might on North Vietnam like we did for linebacker II we would have won. That single bombing campiagn wrecked their country anf force dthem to the peacetable, make it 6 or 7 times longer and they would ahve folded. The USSR would not have gone in, they punked out in 67 and in 73. The only nation to willingly throw itself in the way of the nuclear bullet is the USA, and Russia knew we would (Berlin airlift, Cuba, Israel 67 etc)

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by parihaka View Post
                  I had always assumed that an all-out invasion of Nth Vietnam was never on because of likely Chinese/Soviet involvement, ala Korea.
                  Likely? PLA Engineers built over half of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. PLAAF AD units engaged the USAF throughout the LINEBACKER campaigns.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Here's my two cents.

                    1) Our advisory effort sucked for over a decade. We tried to tool the ARVN to fight a battle against a conventional force, when the problem was an internal insurgency with only minor to moderate support externally. We focused out instead of in. Additionally, our strategic hamlet program was a disaster in implementation. A NLF goldmine of an operation.

                    2) Our strategy of tactics - attrition, blew. We wasted the better part of three years using heavy handed tactics that was a recruiting dream for the NLF. Sure, we attrited many NVA regiments and NLF units, but that was treating the symptom, and not the problem. More importantly, we squandered three years of American support, and history has demonstrated that democracies (yes, I know, we are a constitutional republic, but a democracy in spirit) are fickle.

                    3) While GEN Abrams made a tremendous effort to bring the "other war" under the wings of a "one war" concept, this was an uphill battle all the way. The NLF helped us by impaling their formations on our phalanxes during the Tet offensive, and this created the breathing space for us begin pacifying the countryside. Thieu finally got around to making some important land reforms in 1971, I believe. While the NLF wasn't totally dead, they were on life support, and the COIN was, if not a win for the SVN/US, it was definitely in the "winning" column.

                    4) Vietnamization was bearing fruit. As troung pointed out, the Easter Offensive was a loss for the PAVN. However, the denial of the ability to bomb supply lines in Cambodia, Loas, and NVN, and the slashing of funds to SVN following our pullout, and the total cutoff in 1975 meant that Vietnamization was doomed to failure. A fully funded ARVN and the means to deny resupply in the South could have resulted in a stalemate, one that would have eventually have led to a decision by Moscow to stop supply a non-success.

                    In the end, I think that US strategy was fatally flawed except for the Abrams years, when a winning strategy was implemented, but because of its linkage to a domestic situation that prevented the threat of aid ad infinitum, it was a strategy that was too little, too late that nearly suceeded, nonetheless.

                    So, the arguments that I have found most compelling to date on Vietnam are from the following books:

                    The Army and Vietnam
                    A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam
                    Last edited by Shek; 12 Dec 06,, 05:24.
                    "So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Shek,
                      I'm one of those hopeless romantics who believes that there is no such thing as an "unwinnable war". I certainly think, however, that the will to pay the price in treasure and blood, and the intellectual dexterity necessary to fight certain conflicts can be lacking (see OIF). That being said, the war as WE fought it was unwinnable, practically from the beginning.

                      I've gotta go with John McCain, who described our problem as shackling ourselves to a venal, corrupt, and unrepresentative government. Actually several governments. These governments did not exactly engender a patriotic fervor to die for the patria, although many ARVN troops certainly did. We got it wrong from the beginning. Iron Mike O'Daniel may have been a hell of a division commander in WWII, but he built an army to refight the Korean war, not to chase bad guys through the bush, and provide the human security necessary to disburse effective government services and thus seperate the insurgent from the populace(again, see OIF). Ap Bac showed us that as early as 1962-3.

                      I would also oncur with your assesment of the early advisory effort. A great piece of narrative about the advisory effort ca. 1965 is In Pharoe's Army, by Tobias Wolf. Anybody who thinks that Iraq's difficulties can be remedied by an expansion of the advisory program would do well to check out the book. Besides, believe it or not, it is one of the funniest pieces of war literature I've read. I don't need to enumerate the gross errors in the use of unrestricted free-fire zones, indescriminate use of aerial firepower, search and destroy zippo raids, and the understandable resentment they caused.

                      I'm actually surprised that people are advocating an American invasion of the North. Isn't invading a nation sized arms cache, peopled by tough, rescourceful, nationistically motivated, and well trained folks, out of favor these days. Besides, what were we gonna do? Invade China next?

                      Lastly, we were never going to win or loose Vietnam. It was arrogance on our part to believe that the struggle was ours. It wasn't. It was the RVNs.
                      So, Cato's recipe for victory? IMHO, early on, as early as post partition, our strategy sould have been to strengthen the state, and begin serious efforts to help democratically minded SVNs build the institutions that could withstand communist assault. This, of course, means building an appropriate ARVN, designed to do the things I enumerated earlier, but also reining in the more extreme Catholic elements in the government, and encouraging participation by Buddhist and Cao Dai. This was was really a competition between ideas, and we and the SVN gov. offered the average SVN citizen little other than not being communist. That don't feed the kids.
                      We should have seen after Diem that the," he's a son of a *****, but at least he's ours" was a bankrupt philosophy.

                      As to what we and our allies could have done? Well the Anzacs did well, and I wouldn't have wanted to be captured by the ROKS. Perhaps if we followed the political path I described above, we could have gotten much greater international participation,e.g the Limeys, Canucks, Turks, more Thais (sounds like Korea, huh?), but maybe not.

                      Keeping a large, conventional army in SVN was a recipe for disaster. As we have recently seen, despite the best intentions of our soldiers, cultural affinity cannot be trained into a 19 year old kid, especially a conscript in for his 2 and out. Army SF was doing good things with the ethnic minorities, and the Marines CAP yielded good results. Make both of them bigger. Help secure the populace against PAVN and VC reprisals and "educational efforts". Firepower should be judiciously applied, and preferrably when the ARVN requests it only (remember there would not be a large American ground presence to protect with that firepower).As for bringing the war to the north, well, I think that by the time we got to Linebacker, it was WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too late in the game. It would have been too late in 1966. IMHO, the war was won or lost in the Eisenhower-Kennedy period, and Willy W, simply made our hole deeper.

                      Vietnam is not exactly my baliwick, so I have made factual as well as intellectual errors in my analysis, please correct me . It may have been the best choice to simply fall back on the only reliably anti-communist bulwark in the region, Thailand, and let the dominoes fall. What the hell we did it any way, just twenty years too late. So I've gotta vote "NO". We could not have won in Vietnam.
                      Cato the Defeatist
                      Last edited by cato; 12 Dec 06,, 18:09.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by cato View Post
                        It may have been the best choice to simply fall back on the only reliably anti-communist bulwark in the region, Thailand, and let the dominoes fall.
                        It's worth noting that the Thais were facing a very serious Communist insurgency at about the same time, which they were initially losing (largely by fighting it in the same way the US was fighting Vietnam, with a lot of US advice). When they woke up and realised what they were doing, they radically improved things and won pretty rapidly.

                        I'd also note that even if the US took a radically different approach in Vietnam, the chances of getting many more allied soldiers weren't all that good. Europe was preoccupied with the Cold War at the time and the huge number of Soviet soldiers just over their border. The US had that as well as a similar insurgency in Malaya to deal with (we won that, eventually). That really just leaves Canada, possibly South America and various South-East asian countries that had similar problems themselves in addition to what you got already.
                        Rule 1: Never trust a Frenchman
                        Rule 2: Treat all members of the press as French

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by cato View Post
                          Shek,
                          I'm one of those hopeless romantics who believes that there is no such thing as an "unwinnable war". I certainly think, however, that the will to pay the price in treasure and blood, and the intellectual dexterity necessary to fight certain conflicts can be lacking (see OIF). That being said, the war as WE fought it was unwinnable, practically from the beginning.

                          I've gotta go with John McCain, who described our problem as shackling ourselves to a venal, corrupt, and unrepresentative government. Actually several governments. These governments did not exactly engender a patriotic fervor to die for the patria, although many ARVN troops certainly did. We got it wrong from the beginning. Iron Mike O'Daniel may have been a hell of a division commander in WWII, but he built an army to refight the Korean war, not to chase bad guys through the bush, and provide the human security necessary to disburse effective government services and thus seperate the insurgent from the populace(again, see OIF). Ap Bac showed us that as early as 1962-3.

                          I would also oncur with your assesment of the early advisory effort. A great piece of narrative about the advisory effort ca. 1965 is In Pharoe's Army, by Tobias Wolf. Anybody who thinks that Iraq's difficulties can be remedied by an expansion of the advisory program would do well to check out the book. Besides, believe it or not, it is one of the funniest pieces of war literature I've read. I don't need to enumerate the gross errors in the use of unrestricted free-fire zones, indescriminate use of aerial firepower, search and destroy zippo raids, and the understandable resentment they caused.

                          I'm actually surprised that people are advocating an American invasion of the North. Isn't invading a nation sized arms cache, peopled by tough, rescourceful, nationistically motivated, and well trained folks, out of favor these days. Besides, what were we gonna do? Invade China next?

                          Lastly, we were never going to win or loose Vietnam. It was arrogance on our part to believe that the struggle was ours. It wasn't. It was the RVNs.
                          So, Cato's recipe for victory? IMHO, early on, as early as post partition, our strategy sould have been to strengthen the state, and begin serious efforts to help democratically minded SVNs build the institutions that could withstand communist assault. This, of course, means building an appropriate ARVN, designed to do the things I enumerated earlier, but also reining in the more extreme Catholic elements in the government, and encouraging participation by Buddhist and Cao Dai. This was was really a competition between ideas, and we and the SVN gov. offered the average SVN citizen little other than not being communist. That don't feed the kids.
                          We should have seen after Diem that the," he's a son of a *****, but at least he's ours" was a bankrupt philosophy.

                          As to what we and our allies could have done? Well the Anzacs did well, and I wouldn't have wanted to be captured by the ROKS. Perhaps if we followed the political path I described above, we could have gotten much greater international participation,e.g the Limeys, Canucks, Turks, more Thais (sounds like Korea, huh?), but maybe not.

                          Keeping a large, conventional army in SVN was a recipe for disaster. As we have recently seen, despite the best intentions of our soldiers, cultural affinity cannot be trained into a 19 year old kid, especially a conscript in for his 2 and out. Army SF was doing good things with the ethnic minorities, and the Marines CAP yielded good results. Make both of them bigger. Help secure the populace against PAVN and VC reprisals and "educational efforts". Firepower should be judiciously applied, and preferrably when the ARVN requests it only (remember there would not be a large American ground presence to protect with that firepower).As for bringing the war to the north, well, I think that by the time we got to Linebacker, it was WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too late in the game. It would have been too late in 1966. IMHO, the war was won or lost in the Eisenhower-Kennedy period, and Willy W, simply made our hole deeper.

                          Vietnam is not exactly my baliwick, so I have made factual as well as intellectual errors in my analysis, please correct me . It may have been the best choice to simply fall back on the only reliably anti-communist bulwark in the region, Thailand, and let the dominoes fall. What the hell we did it any way, just twenty years too late. So I've gotta vote "NO". We could not have won in Vietnam.
                          Cato the Defeatist
                          Cato,

                          Thanks - I was whipping up my post quite late last night and neglected to emphasize the legitimacy of the government enough, especially since to win a COIN, you need to have a legitimate government. An oversight on my part.

                          While I think that Thieu held a fair amount of legitimacy, I haven't done enough research in this area to weave through how widely the vote rigging was done in his favor during the elections in 1971, and so I can't present a scholarly opinion on what his true base support was. However, he was shades better than the prior regimes. Thus, I think that we had a regime that had the ability to reform and move forward to increase legitamcy over time.

                          Maybe there's some out there that can trace the evolution of the South Korean government and how it evolved over time as it was clear that it safe from communism. I'm curious if there are any parallels that could serve as a potential "what if" analogy?
                          "So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by pdf27 View Post
                            It's worth noting that the Thais were facing a very serious Communist insurgency at about the same time, which they were initially losing (largely by fighting it in the same way the US was fighting Vietnam, with a lot of US advice). When they woke up and realised what they were doing, they radically improved things and won pretty rapidly.

                            I'd also note that even if the US took a radically different approach in Vietnam, the chances of getting many more allied soldiers weren't all that good. Europe was preoccupied with the Cold War at the time and the huge number of Soviet soldiers just over their border. The US had that as well as a similar insurgency in Malaya to deal with (we won that, eventually). That really just leaves Canada, possibly South America and various South-East asian countries that had similar problems themselves in addition to what you got already.
                            PDF,
                            Nice tab in your avatar!
                            "So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              shek,

                              Maybe there's some out there that can trace the evolution of the South Korean government and how it evolved over time as it was clear that it safe from communism.
                              hmm, perhaps. anti-communism was a central part of south korean ideology all the way up until the mid-late 1980s, when it was becoming clear from the kwangju massacre that merely propounding economic growth and anti-communism was not enough to keep the government legitimate. a pan-korean nationalism didn't develop until the 90s.

                              in south vietnam's case, had the war had ended in a stalemate or even a formal withdrawal of the north vietnamese, SV would have to contend with a pretty high level of infiltration from the north. it would also have to work against a pan-vietnamese nationalism that had been floating around since the french colonial era. in short, thieu and his successors would probably need to demonstrate a greater sense of legitimacy and leadership than the korean presidents had to.

                              and from the way quite a few units folded up in '75, i'm not sure thieu had it in him to do so. perhaps if the US gave large amounts of financial and military aid continuously, as it did to Korea...
                              There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X