This thread is for the long-term effects of America having used atomic bombs against North Vietnam. We’ll assume that because of this usage, the NVA and VC were defeated. But what of the longer term?
Would America have set a precedent? Would the Soviet Union have used nukes against the Afghans? What about Britain and the Falklands? Would Britain have used nukes against Argentina? Or would the willingness to use nukes have prevented these events from happenning at all? If so, would the Red Army still have the image it lost in Afghanistan and so would we still have the Soviet Union today?
I think the general concensus would had been that it was a barbaric act of unnecessary destruction.
If anything the Soviets wouldn´t have jumped on the wagon so as to be able to point out how evil the US is. anyway I don´t know how useful nukes would had been in Afghanistan, seems a wildly exagerated and inefficient way of adressinga a guerilla war.
The same for the Falklands, now matter how the Argentinians huffed and puffed, they never stood a chance against England, no nukes needed at all.
I agree. The major effects would be a large, long term blow to America’s reputation, lots of dead Vietnamese, and a nation full of survivors who want us all dead. We’d probably be fighting Vietnamese terrorists/guerillas to this day.
I think you first have to ask WHERE would the bomb have been used. Large explosive devices work best to destroy facilities that are concentrated in a relatively small area. Unless you are talking about saturation bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, they would have had little effect on the Viet Cong, which was spread out.
Although they would have made a mess out of the Haiphong Harbor or Hanoi areas.
I think we would all have lived to reget it, and the possibility of more nuclear use by other countries since then would have increased, as the taboo would have been broken.
I’m sure casdave will be along shortly: he was there.
But really, I’m wondering if, had America used nukes in Vietnam, it would have set a precedent that others would have followed, and what effect that would have had on the world today.
Dude, I was 3 years old back then, whatever I remember from those days is not related to the Falklands war.
From my knowledge of the conflict I agree that the situation was tough for Brittain, after all the Argentinians had a hell of an advantage with the rather surprise attack and the nearest English task force half a world away. If that task force could had been stopped or destroyed maybe they stood a chance.
But however dire the initial situation was still Argentina had no chance at all of succeeding against England, none at all; unless you want to argue that the Argentinan navy could best Englands. Not bloody likely Id say.
Their only real advantage was the Exocet missiles, and they were running out of them; no way the could keep the pressure on the Royal Navy. And even when they were sinking British ships still didn´t venture to reinforce the troops on the island, they didn´t dare to face the RN blockade; the sinking of the General Belgrano was enough to get the message across.
Frankly the British could have just starved the poor conscripts to death and send in undertakers instead of paratroopers.
In the long run England had the upper hand as long as it wished to press the conflict.
I just watched a documentary on the Falklands war. Britains navy certainly had the upper hand so long as they had air supperiority over the island. If one of those Exocet missles were able to damage either of the two Brittish carriers so they couldn’t conduct flight operations things might have turned out differently.
“The war would have lasted for years, and more would have died if we hadn’t used nuclear weapons. Ending the war this way will actually benefit the Vietnamese in the long run because there would have been more devastation if we had stuck to conventional weapons.”
Wouldn’t a nuke attack in mainland Vietnam have been awfully close to China? Mightn’t they have reacted to that? I mean, when we nuked Japan, only we had nukes. Wasn’t that not the case during Vietnam? (My history is so rusty it has holes in it.)
Godwin’s law would state that in any heated discussion the probability of someone bringing up Americans approaches one. The corollary: The first person to bring up Americans loses the argument.
That’s pretty much the use that was proposed at the time. But even dropping tactical nuclear weapons on the trail itself was estimated to be of limited effect. The US would have to have dropped bomb after bomb on the key passes to continue disrupting the North Vietnamese supply lines - a one off attack wasn’t going to work. The “cleverer” version was not using the nuclear weapons to attack the trail directly, but using them to blow over trees that would block the roads. But even those could be cleared quickly.
By contrast, the US’s own operations in Vietnam - a limited number of concentrated, densely populated military bases - would have made a much more tempting target for a nuclear response from either China or the USSR.
That was the conclusion of a contemporary Jason study, conducted for the Pentagon by the likes of Freeman Dyson and Steven Weinberg, into the use of nuclear weapons in southeast Asia. The story’s told in Ann Finkbeiner’s recent The Jasons (Viking, 2006).
Basically, however much some people would like them to be, nuclear weapons aren’t a “miracle device” that amazingly solves all hard military problems.
Actually I recall popular opinion at the time being that it was jingoistically obvious that we would win.
More to the point, I recall John Nott being interviewed during the 2002 anniversary round of TV documentaries and claiming that, while initially daunted, he’d been massively impressed by the pitch to himself and Thatcher from the defence chiefs proposing the task force. While there were still significant risks, Nott claimed that, from that early meeting on, he was confident that Britain would prevail. That suggests that the war cabinet didn’t see the situation as specifically “dire” for most of the war.
I’m surprised to be the first to say this, but using nuclear weapons very likely would have started World War III and, very shortly if not right away, global nuclear war and the destruction of human civilization.
So, no, it wasn’t a good idea.
The Argentines had just six Exocets at the beginning of the war, and simply ran out; the French refused to sell them any more when hostilities broke out. Of the six they had, they fired all, and sank two ships (Sheffield and Atlantic Conveyor) and seriously damaged Glamorgan. (The British also lost the destroyer HMS Coventry, but it was sunk by bombs, not a missile.) The British did not have particularly effective defenses agains the Exocet or the Super Etendard planes that fired them (since they could fire them from a substantial distance.)
If Argentina had had a substanial reserve of Exocet missiles, they would have won the war. There’s simply no way the British fleet could have sustained operations in the face of a weapon that disabled or destroyed a ship at least half the time it was fired, given enough of those weapons.
We had the moral ascendancy in that war; they attacked us. We didn’t have that in the Vietnam War; we were clearly the aggressors. Nor were the Japanese supposedly being liberated/protected by us, while we claimed we were in Vietnam. Nor was it the same time or culture in general.
It’s become pretty clear that WW II was an abberation.
I was rather thinking of bombing NV cities. Not nice.
The Sun and the Express (whose Falklands stories I collected at the time) weren’t exactly paragons of intelligence. Many of my schoolmates had close relatives in the military and while the younger ones were most enthusiastic, the older ones were a lot more sanguine. You need to realise the enormous distance.
It was do or die for the Thatcher government. With millions unemployed and the economy in a terrible state, had they let the Falklands go, they’d have lost power. There were many in the Party just waiting for her to slip.
The Argentines made a number of key mistakes. I’m sure casdave will be along to give us chapter and verse, but one that immediately springs to mind is not extending the runway at Port Stanley so more of their aircraft than just the Pukaras could use it. But the Argentine Junta was just as politically driven as the British.
My uncle returned from the Falklands a very changed man: he caught ‘Falklands Flu’ and shortly thereafter invalided out and was very sick for many years. He’s not worked since.
Back to the original query. Suppose the US had won the Vietnam war by using nukes, do you think that this would have set a precedent that would have meant that the USSR used nukes in Afghanistan? And supposing they did, do you think that the British government would have used nukes against Galtieri & co?
My guess: if the US used nukes in Vietnam, the NPT would have collapsed and a lot more countries in the world would have had developed nukes a lot earlier. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that some Latin American countries could have developed nukes, which would have made it much more difficult for the British to use a nuke in the Falklands.
And without an NPT, maybe Pakistan develops nukes much earlier, and maybe the Iranians develop them in the 50s. That too would limit the Soviets ability to deploy nukes.
