Was Vietnam winnable?

**Shek** · 07 Nov 09,, 02:09

Originally Posted by zraver

That did them little good in 72 when the US was willing to support RVN. A hundred thousand or so losses and 500 or so armored vehicles destroyed gutting the best units for the gain of 10% of RVN.

Soviet support to NVN did them a heap of good - it drained US resources and broke the US military as drained our NCO pool in Europe to man MACV. The Army that emerged from Vietnam was a skeleton of itself. Their goal was less revolutionary than it was proxy.

Originally Posted by zraver

I think that is a bit unfair, the ARVN fought well in 72 and fought as best it could in 73 short as it was on stores and knowing there was no hope of Uncle Sam even sending more bullets, let alone air power.

My comments were directed just as much at our advisory effort, which was second rate until 1969/1970, and was off the mark for many of those years, trying to build a force that looked exactly the US Army and was prepared to fight South Korea again.

**zraver** · 07 Nov 09,, 03:23

Originally Posted by Shek

Soviet support to NVN did them a heap of good - it drained US resources and broke the US military as drained our NCO pool in Europe to man MACV. The Army that emerged from Vietnam was a skeleton of itself. Their goal was less revolutionary than it was proxy.

That is a double edge sword on their part. While the army did miss a complete modernization cycle. The army as a whole gained a great deal of combat experience and several new technologies. The USAF came out of Vietnam with an even better jump in to the new paradigm of high tech warfare.

My comments were directed just as much at our advisory effort, which was second rate until 1969/1970, and was off the mark for many of those years, trying to build a force that looked exactly the US Army and was prepared to fight South Korea again.

I think you meant North Korea, but yes, our efforts at the beginning especially with the main force units was a failure. Mostly because we failed at building a good officer corps and didn't understand their patronage system. Once units got good officers, that were warriors, not political appointees they did rather well. This was especially clear with the "elite units" like the seals, marines, paratroopers, rangers and cavalry soldiers. We also failed in properly equipping them early on. We often gave them weapons that were ill suited to them like the M-14 or that was obsolete. Again, that was early-middle of the war, by the last years of the war the ARVN was a very different creature.

**Shek** · 07 Nov 09,, 03:38

Originally Posted by zraver

That is a double edge sword on their part. While the army did miss a complete modernization cycle. The army as a whole gained a great deal of combat experience and several new technologies. The USAF came out of Vietnam with an even better jump in to the new paradigm of high tech warfare.

I think you meant North Korea, but yes, our efforts at the beginning especially with the main force units was a failure. Mostly because we failed at building a good officer corps and didn't understand their patronage system. Once units got good officers, that were warriors, not political appointees they did rather well. This was especially clear with the "elite units" like the seals, marines, paratroopers, rangers and cavalry soldiers. We also failed in properly equipping them early on. We often gave them weapons that were ill suited to them like the M-14 or that was obsolete. Again, that was early-middle of the war, by the last years of the war the ARVN was a very different creature.

The Army didn't kill the ghost of Vietnam until the mid-eighties. We were lucky we didn't have to fight the Soviets in the 1970s, as we were an organization struggling to put things back together. Even by the end of the 1970's, the CSA testified to the "hollow" Army.

I did mean South Korea as in where we had fought, so we were on the same sheet of music. As far as the ARVN, it was still spotty by the 1970s, although we had overcome some of the political appointee mess of an officer corps and had managed to get some competent ones promoted into the right spots, but loyalty to regime was still a requirement that was a stumbling block and left performance uneven.

**zraver** · 07 Nov 09,, 09:18

Originally Posted by Shek

The Army didn't kill the ghost of Vietnam until the mid-eighties. We were lucky we didn't have to fight the Soviets in the 1970s, as we were an organization struggling to put things back together. Even by the end of the 1970's, the CSA testified to the "hollow" Army.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. After Stalin's death the only time the Soviets really had a chance to roll west was the early to mid 70's while the US Army was in shambles the USAF had not yet made the transistion to a mostly 4th gen air force.

Although that is not entirely the fault of Vietnam. Funding is a big factor as well. The Democrats didn't want to fund the military and a lot of money was wasted on immature technologies like the Commanche, MBT 70 and M60A2. However, the mess the Army was in does not take away from the fact that the leaders were combat vets. I am not claiming that the combat lessons of Vietnam are as important as the fact that the leaders knew they could handle being under fire and knew how to motivate men while under fire.

I did mean South Korea as in where we had fought, so we were on the same sheet of music.

I disagree, our ops in Vietnam may have had a superficial resemblance to Korea but I think the sheet music was WWII where the senior leaders learned their trade. For all the jungle, fire bases and insurgents we kept trying to find a destroy a non-existent center of gravity. aka clearing missions- forcing the VC/NVA out of an area meant little since soon as we left they'd move back in. We never managed to create a Rhur or Faliase pocket type of scenario that would cripple the enemy, but we kept trying.

As far as the ARVN, it was still spotty by the 1970s, although we had overcome some of the political appointee mess of an officer corps and had managed to get some competent ones promoted into the right spots, but loyalty to regime was still a requirement that was a stumbling block and left performance uneven.

Agreed, I was just saying the ARVN wasn't the same in 70-72 as it had been in the mid sixties.

**Bigfella** · 07 Nov 09,, 09:58

Originally Posted by zraver

Agreed, I was just saying the ARVN wasn't the same in 70-72 as it had been in the mid sixties.

Z,

I'm planning a proper reply to Xuan when I can, but there is a crucial point about the ARVN that it has recently become fashionable to overlook (not counting you in this). The only time the ARVN was able to hold its own against the enemy it faced (first the NLF then regular PAVN) without massive US intervention was the 73-74 period, when the PAVN was rebuilding from the pasting it took in '72. The ARVN fought well in parts in '72, but without US intervention I suspect the whole thing would have collapsed '75 style.

While some of these problems related to US domestic politics, mostly they were to do with the politics of the RVN & the culture of the ARVN. In the end it all comes back to that. The best strategy the US could devise was never going to win the war for the RVN. I think there are still more than a few Americans who just don't get this.

**zraver** · 07 Nov 09,, 18:46

[QUOTE=Bigfella;690303]Z,

I'm planning a proper reply to Xuan when I can, but there is a crucial point about the ARVN that it has recently become fashionable to overlook (not counting you in this). The only time the ARVN was able to hold its own against the enemy it faced (first the NLF then regular PAVN) without massive US intervention was the 73-74 period, when the PAVN was rebuilding from the pasting it took in '72. The ARVN fought well in parts in '72, but without US intervention I suspect the whole thing would have collapsed '75 style.[/quite]

yes, but the ARVN was built from the ground up to rely on US air power. The RVNAF was a joke. It had some F-5 freedom fighters and A-1 Skyraiders. While the A-1 had a good loadout, when the Sa-7 Grail made an appearance the planes days where numbered.

72 shows that when properly supported, the ARVN could not only defend, but also counter attack and retake ground.

While some of these problems related to US domestic politics, mostly they were to do with the politics of the RVN & the culture of the ARVN. In the end it all comes back to that. The best strategy the US could devise was never going to win the war for the RVN. I think there are still more than a few Americans who just don't get this.

My problem with your argument is that it ignores the progress made by the ARVN. It went from a force that was almost worthless in the field to one that had several units that could and did hold their own under a variety of combat missions and situations. I dare say the ARVN was closer to standing on its own feet in 72 than the Iraqi army is today and the ARVN is light years ahead of the Afghans.

**Bigfella** · 07 Nov 09,, 23:09

Originally Posted by zraver

yes, but the ARVN was built from the ground up to rely on US air power. The RVNAF was a joke. It had some F-5 freedom fighters and A-1 Skyraiders. While the A-1 had a good loadout, when the Sa-7 Grail made an appearance the planes days where numbered.

72 shows that when properly supported, the ARVN could not only defend, but also counter attack and retake ground.

Yes, but that is the point I'm making. It was a fatal flaw that dogged the RVN from start to finish - reliance on foreign combat forces to keep it afloat. The ARVN was always one or more steps behind its enemy, even on home ground or against lightly armed infantry where it should have held an advantage

My problem with your argument is that it ignores the progress made by the ARVN. It went from a force that was almost worthless in the field to one that had several units that could and did hold their own under a variety of combat missions and situations. I dare say the ARVN was closer to standing on its own feet in 72 than the Iraqi army is today and the ARVN is light years ahead of the Afghans.

Not at all. The ARVN did eventually become a competent military force (overall). In parts it was excellent. My point is that it was too little too late. Ten years into the life of the RVN it still struggled to match light infantry that was often operating at the end a tenuous supply line. Further, the PAVN & its southern allies were consistently able to produce this sort of quality despite taking horrific losses over an extended period of time. However it selscted its officers & trained & motivated its troops it was much more effective than the ARVN.

My point is that it was symptomatic of much wider problems & illustrative of some of the problems that I believe decided the war. The real problem wasn't the ARVN, but the government that created it. Whenever people discuss the war & why it was lost so much revolves around America & its strategy & tactics. I think this largely misses the point.

**gf0012-aust** · 07 Nov 09,, 23:54

BF, curious as to whether you've read Hams treatise on Vietnam?

**Bigfella** · 08 Nov 09,, 00:01

Originally Posted by gf0012-aust

BF, curious as to whether you've read Hams treatise on Vietnam?

I have a copy on my shelf, but I have only skimmed it GF. It is the wrong size for me right now. Too big to knock over quickly & too general to mine for obscure PhD related stuff (I have a more or less complete set of 'Official history of Australia's involvement in SEA 1948-75 for that).

What little I read seemed good, and I suspect it will become the standard one volume narrative of the Australian experience of the war. I did recommend it for the WAB bookstore, but it is hellishly expensive on Amazon. Have you read it?

**gf0012-aust** · 08 Nov 09,, 00:20

Originally Posted by Bigfella

I have a copy on my shelf, but I have only skimmed it GF. It is the wrong size for me right now. Too big to knock over quickly & too general to mine for obscure PhD related stuff (I have a more or less complete set of 'Official history of Australia's involvement in SEA 1948-75 for that).

What little I read seemed good, and I suspect it will become the standard one volume narrative of the Australian experience of the war. I did recommend it for the WAB bookstore, but it is hellishly expensive on Amazon. Have you read it?

Just bought it. Angus & R have a sale on. Buy 2 full priced books and get a third for free.

so I bought Daley's "Beersheba" and Ewer's Forgotten ANZACs (Greece 1941).

The latter made me want to undig Churchill and punch him on the nose.

**Bigfella** · 08 Nov 09,, 00:41

Originally Posted by gf0012-aust

Just bought it. Angus & R have a sale on. Buy 2 full priced books and get a third for free.

so I bought Daley's "Beersheba" and Ewer's Forgotten ANZACs (Greece 1941).

The latter made me want to undig Churchill and punch him on the nose.

Yes. I'm afraid Uncle Winston treated his antipodean cousins pretty shabbily. Didn't help that our PM was in the UK playing footsie with his political enemies & harbouring delusions that he might replace him (for gods sake don't tell Aussiegunner, he'll have a fit

). Still, no excuse for the way our blokes got treated. Winnie always reminds moe of the 'girl with the curl' - when he was good he was very very good, when he was bad he was awful.

Love to hear a review of Ham's book when you finish.

**gf0012-aust** · 08 Nov 09,, 00:58

Originally Posted by Bigfella

(for gods sake don't tell Aussiegunner, he'll have a fit

yes, well discussing the political process with AG can be interesting at times. it seems that age and actual experience count for nought when it comes to others opinions

.

Originally Posted by Bigfella

Love to hear a review of Ham's book when you finish.

in mid stride on 4 others at present, it may be a while...

**Bigfella** · 08 Nov 09,, 01:03

Originally Posted by gf0012-aust

yes, well discussing the political process with AG can be interesting at times. it seems that age and actual experience count for nought when it comes to others opinions

.

he does get him some strange ideas.

in mid stride on 4 others at present, it may be a while...

trust me, you'll beat me to it.

**phoggy** · 08 Nov 09,, 16:43

My uncle was ex-commanding officer of an SAM-unit of the NVA´s Air-Defence Division 341 Hanoi (F-361) during the operation LINEBACKER 1972 had admitted – only within our family after 1975 – that at that time Hanoi would have stand short in front of a collapse !
The intensive pounding by B-52s during 12 days of December 1972 (18.-29.12.1972) had nearly broken the willingness of fighting of Hanoi´s people !
His SAM-unit had no more SAM-2 for further defending the sky over Hanoi !
The northvietnamese people didn´t believe more about the propaganda of Vietnamese Communist Party that USA would only be a paper tiger !
Therefore, I, ex-officer of ARVN´s Airborne Division, believe, that the Vietnam War could be winnable, if:
● a very clear definition of war management of US-government;
● US-civilian administration didn´t intercept into the military business of MACV in Vietnam
(let the military experts doing their jobs!);
● didn´t support the corruptible and incompetent southvietnamese politicians and
generals !

**xuan** · 11 Nov 09,, 19:45

Originally Posted by Shek

Xuan,

Sorry, but I really don't follow your argument in your previous post.

1. Kennan was framing the problem, and in doing so, creating the philosophical underpinnings of a strategy of containment. He wasn't framing a particular strategy of containment. Thus, we shouldn't expect to see a particular and specific mix of the DIME within the Foreign Affairs article (also, he submitted it with the pseudonym so that it couldn't be seen as official policy of the State Department).

I have no general disagreements there, however, I do disagree with the idea that somehow Kennan was advocating a purely non-military philosophical stance, especially when the world was just beginning to rebuild from a world war and when prominent actors from that war were jockeying for advantageous positions. Totalitarian states like the USSR and Maoist China are not interested in isolationism and neither should the US and allies, that is the essence of the 'X' article where in Part IV he advised that the US should view the Soviets 'as a rival, not a partner, in the political arena.' and if we are to accept the rule that political goal determine military objectives, then it is not possible to remove the military component from the equation when that rival is determined to engage its own military whenever an opening present itself.

Originally Posted by Shek

2. Creating wedges within the communist movement, which was greater than just within Soviet borders and had been ongoing for decades, points to a non-ideological approach in the sense that it recognized the difficulties of ever creating and sustaining a monolithic interpretation of communist ideology. Framing it as a 'bloc' is different as framing it as a movement. The latter implies cohesiveness and a homogeneous entity, while the former indicates a more heterogeneous entity. Furthermore, framing it as a movement does lead one towards a non-ideological approach of divide and conquer when possible, while bloc leads one towards a more ideologically approach that treats it as a single entity.

Why not view communism as both 'bloc' and 'movement' and respond appropriately? Yes...We had fissures in the communist world, such as China versus the USSR and yes, we did exploit that fissure and brought China just a little closer to US than before. But unlike that political fissure between the USSR and China, democracy and communism are ideological opposites. Coexistence by opposites is possible only if each side is capable of defending its interests.

Originally Posted by Shek

3. Your last statement appears to run counter to what you've been arguing:

The Soviets backed down in Cuba, but would they do it in Viet Nam? The US could not take that chance, if anything, the US would have been foolish to roll that pair of dice.

This goes back to the Clausewitzian calculus - what is the value of the object in view? Missiles with nukes 90 miles from the continental US is much different than a country halfway across the globe that has no value natural resources and doesn't control any critical sea lanes that would put Japan in jeopardy. You're example right - why should the US roll the dice and risk a conventional operation against North Vietnam to achieve the object of maintaining South Vietnamese sovereignty.

Because the US, by the mid 1960s, had substantial political, economic and military investments in Asia: South Korea and Japan. Viet Nam would offer the communist bloc a base from which the Philippines could be threatened and eventually to Japan and South Korea. If we posit that US refusal to get involved in Viet Nam via certain Clauswitzian calculus as 'rational' then we would have to characterize the communist bloc involvement in various places in the world as 'irrational'. By the 1980s, pro-Soviet governments were in Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique and many other in the African continent with East German and Cuban advisors. In the ME, Soviet support was obvious for the Arabs against Israel, a US ally. By the time of the Carter Administration, the communist bloc had dispatched about fifty thousand such advisors to places where your Clauswitzian calculus seemingly does not apply. If we ask why should Indochina be strategically significant to Western interests, then the next question is why should Japan and South Korea be significant but not South Viet Nam?

This begs the question of who misread and misunderstood Clauswitz. When the Soviets in 1957 proposed that both Vietnams be admitted to the UN with full membership standings, what was the rationale for that Clauswitzian calculus from the Soviet's side? Why the Soviets but not China? The Soviet proposal was one such fissure in the communist bloc so should it have been in Western interests to support such a nomination if we are to adhere to the idea that we should exploit every possibility of a splinter?

So why did the Soviets not stationed nuclear missiles in unified Viet Nam? My take is that the reluctance came from these main reasons:

- That unified Viet Nam was still too vulnerable to US air strikes. All the US had to do is another bombing campaign, this time with the justification thru those nuclear weapons being a direct threat to established US allies South Korea and Japan.

- That of Vietnamese nationalism.

- That of later Soviet economic decline and companion to this is Viet Nam began serious economic reform in 1981 where the leadership trends towards the West.

Originally Posted by Shek

I would, however, disagree, with your premise that the military owned the show. On the contrary, you can see a strong economical component to Cold War strategy, whether it was the Marshall Plan and foreign aid or the outsourcing of defense to the US so that Japan and Germany/Western Europe could focus on economic rebuilding/development, or diplomatic rapproachment with the Soviets to cool down the Cold War, which resulted eventually in freezing the active Cold War in Europe and pushing it to the peripheral battlefields of Asia and Africa where the stakes in terms of vital security interests were much lower, or to the informational component as evidenced by efforts under State such as Radio Free Europe. The military component waxed and waned, but you're giving short shrift to the other elements of national power that were exercised.

No...I do not believe that the military dominated the Cold War scene, but it is true that political maneuverings and economic pressures are much more subtle, whose effects are long term and generally unseen via mainstream media sources. Admit it, even though YOU may be sophisticated enough to recognize these subtle forces, nothing gets a man's attention like the roar of a jet fighter's afterburners, the sight of an aircraft carrier armada, or what a famous cinema character once said about the smell of napalm in the AM over a panel of talking heads debating economic figures, right?

But seriously...I disagree that the military component waxed and waned, as you said. Economic rescue and rehabilitation to any region would not have been possible unless there is a strong and persisent military presence to act as deterrence, the product of that deterrence is stabilization that would the decrease of conditions that would encourage an indigenous growth of communism or to allow the authority to deal with the existing indigenous communist force. The retention of the US military in strategic countries is always accompanied by a political presence and both forces can introduce new fissures, or exacerbate existing ones in the communist bloc by discouraging indigenous growth of communism or reduction of influence by the existing indigenous communist presence. South Viet Nam failed in this regard because of the failure of the RVN/USA alliance to stop the DRV's sustainment of the VC forces in the south.