I’m really curious about this popular perception that the Vietnam War represented the first time the U.S. Army had ever been “beaten.” The U.S. Army has suffered a lot of defeats throughout history, but has never actually been “defeated.”
An Army is beaten when it can no longer effectively fight the enemy, a country is beaten whenever they sue for peace or withdraw from the war in failure. I would argue the U.S. Army has never been defeated.
Examples of Armies truly being “defeated”:
Franco-Prussian War – After the victory at Sedan the French army no longer had the ability to defend France, the military effectiveness of France had essentially been “destroyed” and the civilian government was left in a position of having to sue for peace on terms favorable to the Prussians because they had no military with which to fight.
American Civil War – Major defeats left the Confederate military unable to defend their capital city, through repeated defeats in the field and inability to replace casualties the Confederate military had been reduced to a point where it could no operate with any real effectiveness.
World War II – Lots of examples, the Polish military was essentially wiped out by the Germans, the German military was reduced to extreme ineffectiveness by outright destruction in the field et cetera.
As a person who has studied a lot of military history I’ve always distinguished between a defeat in war which is because of the government’s unwillingness to continue fighting versus one in which one side’s military was essentially so completely defeated they could no longer effectively operate in the field.
I’m not at all someone who is saying these are cases in which the civilian government “lacked the will to fight” and thus “lost” a winnable war, I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying there is a big difference between a war where one side realizes it is going badly and decides to cut its losses, versus one where one side outright destroys the military of the other side. There is a big difference typically in how these wars end.
When one side has outright eliminated the opponent’s military there is a true possibility of actual conquest of the vanquished enemy’s country, at the very least there is usually deep territorial and other concessions made. In a war where one side simply has a slight upper hand, and the other side sues for peace, usually you see very minor concessions made or sometimes a return to the status quo ante bellum due to the fact that the superior side is not willing to invest any more resources in trying to continue the fight and gain more in peace.
Depending on the goals of the engaged parties, some types of wars can only end in victory for one side by outright destruction of the enemy’s military forces. For example in the American Civil War it became obvious that until the South lost the ability to field armies it was not going to accept willingly a return to the Union. Lincoln and his Generals thus had to pursue a strategy aimed at destroying the military effectiveness of the Confederacy to such a degree that they could no longer field armies. As a different example in the Korean War the original goals of the United States was to keep South Korea from falling to North Korea and becoming part of the Communist bloc. As happens in war, sometimes goals change. After initial dramatic successes against the North Koreans the United States decided to try and push its advantage and take North Korea out of the equation entirely (well, there is debate about this–we know MacArthur wanted to do this at least.) This worked initially but then the U.S. was pushed back, at this point the United States either could have continued fighting or accepted a return to the pre-war boundaries–which would wholly satisfy the original reason for getting involved in Korea while not satisfying the new goal that had arisen during the war itself.
Anyway, there was nothing unique about the Vietnam war in terms of American history to be honest. Probably the one aspect of it that was unique is that we actually did amazingly well militarily but still withdrew due to political concerns. (And I’m not someone who thinks the Vietnam War was winnable given the geopolitical realities, however from a strictly military perspective we essentially always performed very well, we consistently defeated the North Vietnamese in the field and effectively routed the Viet Cong. The problem was there was no real possibility of “permanence” to any of our military victories.) In other incidents in American history where things haven’t gone our way we’ve at least actually lost real battles in the field (several times in Canada, for example.)
