At the risk of sounding like an ignoramus, I have to confess that I know little to nothing about the Vietnam War except that it was messy and unpopular and that the US lost.
Why exactly did the US become involved? Was it just to prevent Communist North Vietnam from taking over South Vietnam? Was is to send a message to the USSR that the spread of communism would not go unchallenged? Was it for some other reason that had nothing to do with Communism?
And *how * the hell did the US lose? I understand that the Viet Cong used guerilla tactics to some effect, but how effective could such tactics be against what was arguably the single most powerful and well-armed nation on earth? Shed a little light on this for me guys, and help fight a little more ignorance…
Let me ask a question (which may be considered a hijack of this thread). Is there any way in the political climate of the 1960s that the US could have not become involved in Vietnam?
Being the most powerful nation on earth only counts if there is a definite target full of bad guys, and you’re willing to blow the bejesus out of it. In Vietnam, friend and foe were in the same places, so massive firepower was often not feasible (not that it didn’t happen a lot, US soldiers were not experienced in jungle warfare, the VC had the numbers, the supply chains were long, and it was simply a matter of being on their turf. Conducting a war on the other side of the world is never easy (Iraq, etc). ON the other hand, the Viet Cong wouldn’t have been able to successfully invade Ohio either.
One could even point at Truman, who originally started providing material support to the French effort to re-establish their pre-WWII control of the country.
The US got involved as deeply as it did in Viet Nam for the same reason it fought in South Korea: to stop the march of “Communism.” Unlike Korea, however, this was not a traditional land war, fought between opposing massed armies. And, unlike the situation in Korea, the people of the southern portion of Viet Nam were not massively opposed to being ruled by the regime that existed in the North. This allowed the North to wage a very successful guerilla war, where the lack of identifiable targets, combined with the unwillingness of the United States to risk a nuclear showdown or another full-scale land war with the PRC (resulting in the US never dealing with the North militarily in an effective fashion), made winning the war damn near impossible. As we found out.
Not that we learned a damn thing from it, as evidenced by our current military adventure in Iraq. :rolleyes:
Why did the US feel that they had to stop the march of Communism in some tiny country in the Far East? Why should they care whether or not the South Vietnamese decide to become Communist? Was Communism itself such a dire threat that it had to be stamped out at all costs, no matter where it appeared in the world?
As a Brit I hate to get involved in any discussion of Vietnam - and I am ready to be corrected by any experts in the field - but from what I have read South Vietnam did not fall because of the guerrilla tactics of the Viet Cong – although they are what get the publicity and form the mythology of the war. South Vietnam fell to the biggest conventional armoured assault since the Eastern Front in World War 2 during the 1975 Ho Chi Minh Campaign, the third such conventional assault following the Tet Offensive in 1968 and the Spring Offensive of 1972.
The ever-popular (in the 50s) Domino Theory. The belief was that if you allowed a communist government to survive, it would spread communism to neighboring countries and eventually the communist countries would dominate.
It was not that an unreasonable thing to believe back then, given the examples of Hitler’s and Stalin’s expansionism. You could easily point to Eastern Europe as an example to prove your case. Remember, until the Sino-Soviet break, communism was seen as a monolithic enterprise.
The problem was that there were other factors. The issue in Vietnam was the fear the Chinese communists would dominate. However, a better reading of Vietnamese history would indicate this was unlikely: Vietnam looked upon the Chinese warily, since China had often been their conqeror (See The Fog of War for this and other issues).
David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest is also an excellent source of info, focusing on decision-making in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Halberstam, who was a correspondent for the NYT in Saigon, argues that a dominant Cold War/Domino Theory mentality, as well as the hubris of the leaders of what was, after all, still an undefeated superpower, led to the escalation of U.S. involvement. It was a perfect example of asymmetrical (sp?) warfare, as just about all of the U.S. military advantages were nullified or made irrelevant by the kind of conflict it was.
My own view is that the U.S. could have “won,” or at least protected South Vietnam from a Communist takeover, only if it made a serious and sustained commitment to smart, flexible counterinsurgency efforts and the strategic hamlet program, and if the South Vietnamese government actually reformed and provided a more appealing alternative to the Vietcong. Very big “ifs,” obviously, and probably unrealistic.
The roots of the conflict go back way further than anything that’s been stated so far, in my opinion, which deal narrowly with US involvement. Here’s my very brief and simplified timeline:
19thC French occupy Indochina.
1910s Ho Chi Minh, a Soviet admirer, asks for help with independence movement (notably at Treaty of Versailles, 1918).
1920s Ho travels to, and is turned down by, various countries, seeking help with independence movement - Brits, Yanks, etc.
Ho helps form French Communist party.
Ho travels to Russia and China, working as a “fellow traveller”.
1940s Japanese invade Vietnam.
France surrenders.
Ho forms/joins Viet Minh; fights against Japanese.
1945 Japanese retreat.
1946 French re-occupy Vietnam.
Viet Minh movement gains ground against French.
1950 Ruskies and Chinese recognise Viet Minh movement - becomes Viet Cong (“Vietnamese Communists”).
1954 Dien Ben Phu firefight.
France surrenders.
1955 Viet Cong take over north Korea. South remains US/western-propped.
1960s American military “advisers” start pouring into South Vietnam - see Domino Theory above.
Carpet bombing, napalm, nasty business in the jungles. Thousands killed and maimed on both sides.
1975 America surrenders.
One “amusing” sidenote that I have read (no cite as I can’t remember where I read it) is that in the early 60s, the US asked for support from allies. A few troops were sent in from Australia et al (though not the Brits, the only time our foreign policy has ever been ethical), but Taiwan gleefully started embarking ships with up to 200,000 troops on them, that the Americans had to turn back en route: they were hoping to defeat the Viet Cong, march up through Vietnam, over the Chinese border, and retake Beijing.
The Government of South Vietnam really wasn’t intrested in Democracy, just power & wealth.
The Government of North Vietnam really wasn’t intrested in Communism, just power & ethnic nationalism.
No matter who won, the Superpower that back the winning side was in for a rude postwar shock.
And Russia got one. North Vietnam voted in its own intrests in the UN. And when Russia set up a Naval Base there, it was a hardship posting, due to hostility from the locals.
Nobodywon the Vietnam War. But a lot of non-Vietnamese lost it.
It is a (common) mistake to assume that John F. Kennedy was against a major US involvement in Vietnam. Quite the contrary-both he (and his brother) were spoiling for a fight! To quote Kennedy (at a cabinet meeting, sometime in 1963) “we need to make our power credible…and Vietnam looks like the place”.!
With those words, Kennedy began a war that would last 12 years and take over 60,000 American lives (and God knows how many Vietnamese). That was what always bothered me about the man-he didn’t care about all those coffins that would (shortly) be coming home from Vietnam. The only member of Kennedy’s cabinet to protest this show of braggadocio was the Secretary of the Treasury (Henry Fowler)-he (correctly) predicted that the cost of this war would wreck the US economy-anybody know if Fowler ever wrote his memoirs? If a hardheaded banker is against something, I’d say-watch out!
