# What strategic value did Vietnam have to be worth a significant effort to defend it? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 11, 2018, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-strategic-value-did-vietnam-have-to-be-worth-a-significant-effort-to-defend-it/824345 "2018-11-11T06:06:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2018, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-strategic-value-did-vietnam-have-to-be-worth-a-significant-effort-to-defend-it/824345/21 "2018-11-13T05:13:29Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > I have no idea if the US tried to make that a policy in its fight against communism though. There was a program of sorts in South Vietnam. But the Viet Cong tended to kill the locals who participated. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2018, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-strategic-value-did-vietnam-have-to-be-worth-a-significant-effort-to-defend-it/824345/22 "2018-11-13T14:12:54Z")
On the US side, the main thing that was considered valuable about Vietnam was Presidential ego. Seriously, there are recordings from both LBJ and Nixon making it clear that their decisions were driven by not wanting to be the US President that “lost” Vietnam. The Pentagon Papers drove that home. Thousands were dying to prop up the egos of US Presidents. On the Vietnamese side, the main issue for the _average_ person is “The foreign people need to go away now!” They had fought off the Kampucheans, the Chinese, the Japanese, the French, etc. for centuries. The US were just foreigners to them. Communism vs. Democracy meant squat to them. The stupidest thing the US could do was send in troops. That was the losing move. My plan was to send in transistor radios, motorbikes, etc. Flood the country with capitalist goods. It would have cost a tiny fraction of the amount the actual war cost and would have created an unbelievable amount of goodwill towards the US. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-strategic-value-did-vietnam-have-to-be-worth-a-significant-effort-to-defend-it/824345/23 "2018-11-15T00:03:22Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > The Pentagon Papers drove that home. Thousands were dying to prop up the egos of US Presidents. Have you read the Pentagon Papers? Or are you relying on your own memory of the rather misleading press reporting? The Pentagon Papers are available on the internet in image form now. I’ve read most of it. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-strategic-value-did-vietnam-have-to-be-worth-a-significant-effort-to-defend-it/824345/24 "2018-11-15T00:05:20Z")
nm ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2018, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-strategic-value-did-vietnam-have-to-be-worth-a-significant-effort-to-defend-it/824345/25 "2018-11-15T12:42:03Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > Have you read the Pentagon Papers? Or are you relying on your own memory of the rather misleading press reporting? > > The Pentagon Papers are available on the internet in image form now. I’ve read most of it. From a 2001 OP-ED by Daniel Ellsberg in the New York Times > [@](#): > > But Johnson didn’t want to get out either. We now know from memoirs and documents declassified after the Pentagon Papers that a number of his people, not only George Ball, were urging him to do just that, to extricate us by a disguised withdrawal. But Johnson couldn’t face being accused of losing a war. Instead, he stayed in and lied about the prospects. And that made for a prolonged war, an escalating war and essentially a hopeless war. [https://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/29/opinion/lying-about-vietnam.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/29/opinion/lying-about-vietnam.html) This particular source seems quite trustworthy to me. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2018, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-strategic-value-did-vietnam-have-to-be-worth-a-significant-effort-to-defend-it/824345/26 "2018-11-21T10:02:30Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > From a 2001 OP-ED by Daniel Ellsberg in the New York Times [https://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/29/opinion/lying-about-vietnam.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/29/opinion/lying-about-vietnam.html) > > This particular source seems quite trustworthy to me. Right. But it’s not the Pentagon Papers. It’s stuff “released after the Pentagon Papers” Now that the PP are freely available, it’s possible for ordinary people to actually go and read them. I _think_ that if more people read the PP’s, fewer people will refer to them as source documents, but I may be wrong. I read that stuff many years ago and I may have missed the point: in any case I think it would be interesting to have a discussion of the actual content, not references to ?? half remembered press reports ?? [Pentagon Papers](https://www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers) ---
**Author:** ![DinoR](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dinor/32/2821_2.png) [@DinoR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DinoR)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2018, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-strategic-value-did-vietnam-have-to-be-worth-a-significant-effort-to-defend-it/824345/27 "2018-11-22T01:50:00Z")
[Cam Ranh Bay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cam_Ranh_Bay) was, and continues to be, strategically important. From wiki (with their supporting cite being Encyclopedia Britannica: > [@](#): > > Cam Ranh is considered the finest deepwater shelter in Southeast Asia. Cam Ranh Bay is a warm water port. That is it’s a port that doesn’t ice over. That’s a [traditional weakness](https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/warm-water-port.htm) for Russia and the Soviets. The warm water ports they did have were constrained from easy access to the oceans. Their Black Sea fleet would have had to run the Straits of Bosporus held by NATO member, Turkey, just to get to the Med. The Straits of Gibraltar then presented a further choke point for access to the Atlantic. Their northern warm water access had to transit the confines of the Baltic to get to the Atlantic. Their major eastern ports for access to the Pacific weren’t warm water. Geography is not kind to the Russian/Soviet Navy. Soviet access to Cam Ranh Bay made a real difference in the strategic balance of power for the rest of the Cold War. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2018, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-strategic-value-did-vietnam-have-to-be-worth-a-significant-effort-to-defend-it/824345/28 "2018-11-22T02:30:19Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > On the Vietnamese side, the main issue for the _average_ person is “The foreign people need to go away now!” They had fought off the Kampucheans, the Chinese, the Japanese, the French, etc. for centuries. The US were just foreigners to them. Communism vs. Democracy meant squat to them. The stupidest thing the US could do was send in troops. That was the losing move. > > My plan was to send in transistor radios, motorbikes, etc. Flood the country with capitalist goods. It would have cost a tiny fraction of the amount the actual war cost and would have created an unbelievable amount of goodwill towards the US. Well, the radios and motorbikes apparently proliferated in Saigon but not elsewhere. In the end, the South did not have the “liberation movement” (VC) take over – it was conventionally conquered by the NVA upon their realizing the US were not going to go back in nor ramp up support back to full wartime levels. I suppose the best-case-scenario for the US would have been a Korea-style armistice leading to permanent entrenchment of the N/S divide, and everyone stays inside their lines. However unlike the case of Korea, the geography in Indochina did not lend itself to a clean frontline behind which to push all those on one or the other side. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2018, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-strategic-value-did-vietnam-have-to-be-worth-a-significant-effort-to-defend-it/824345/29 "2018-11-23T15:14:22Z")
Barbara Tuchman’s book _The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam_ mentions an agonizing process by which John F. Kennedy sent a trusted adviser to determine if we should intervene in Vietnam. That adviser returned with a sound “NO.” So he sent another, and another. In all, Kennedy sent SEVEN people to review the situation and _all seven_ advised against US involvement. So we moved forward inexorably and involved ourselves. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2018, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-strategic-value-did-vietnam-have-to-be-worth-a-significant-effort-to-defend-it/824345/30 "2018-11-23T16:36:21Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > Barbara Tuchman’s book _The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam_ mentions an agonizing process by which John F. Kennedy sent a trusted adviser to determine if we should intervene in Vietnam. That adviser returned with a sound “NO.” So he sent another, and another. In all, Kennedy sent SEVEN people to review the situation and _all seven_ advised against US involvement. > > So we moved forward inexorably and involved ourselves. I’ve just been watching the Ken Burns documentary on the war, and am up to episode 3, which goes to the end of 1965. Having lived through the period, what’s most horrifying was how many advisers told both JFK and LBJ that the war almost certainly could not be won (although a few insisted that it could). But they pushed on anyway, not wanting to be seen as the President who “lost” Vietnam. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2018, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-strategic-value-did-vietnam-have-to-be-worth-a-significant-effort-to-defend-it/824345/31 "2018-11-24T18:45:46Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > But they pushed on anyway, not wanting to be seen as the President who “lost” Vietnam. Indeed, a key element – that the US could not be seen as “backing down”, \*and \*must be enforcing containment. It was to be a signal to others to count on us when/if the commies came after them if they couldn’t deal with it themselves, AND a \*political \*domestic signal abouth strength and about how we would not be appeasers. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-strategic-value-did-vietnam-have-to-be-worth-a-significant-effort-to-defend-it/824345.md?page=1)