# What would have been required to win in Vietnam? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 12, 2014, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466 "2014-11-12T18:06:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2014, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/41 "2014-11-13T13:32:05Z")
As others are saying, our only chance for victory was to back the right side in the first place. We had the ability to tell France to get the hell out of there after WWII, we should have done it then. The South Vietnamese government barely represented a majority in the south, if a majority there at all, so we were supporting a string of military dictators who wanted to maintain a minority rule of a nation, primarily for their own personal benefit as far as I can tell. ---
**Author:** ![notquitekarpov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71c47a/32.png) [@notquitekarpov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/notquitekarpov)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2014, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/42 "2014-11-13T15:20:49Z")
As a side issue, can anyone else think of another Head of Government, apart from Lon Nol, whose name is a palindrome? ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2014, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/43 "2014-11-13T16:13:29Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > What the OP describes is the American version of the stab in the back myth. It indeed sounds _exactly_ similar. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2014, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/44 "2014-11-13T16:16:40Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > We dropped 7 million tons of bombs on Vietnam. That’s more bombs than were dropped during World War II by everyone. We used carriers, B-52 bombers, fighters, tanks, helicopters. > > You seem to suffer from the same sort of mistaken line of thinking of folks like Westmoreland and McNamara in that we could “win” by continuing to double down on brute force. Well, except that the US was fighting in Vietnam longer than WWII lasted. Also, the US started off with limited bombing and gradually built up the force used in an effort to get the North (and the Soviets behind them) to negotiate a peace. This had the side effect of allowing the North (and the Soviets and Chinese) ample opportunities to build up defenses and reinforce the Viet Cong, as well as adapt tactically and even strategically to the slow escalation and stretch out the war indefinitely. The thinking on the side of we could have ‘won’ in Vietnam through pure military force is that had we gone in full bore right from the start and used all of the conventional force at our disposal we could have either destroyed North Vietnam’s ability to fight or forced them to the negotiating table from a point of strength and negotiated at a minimum a halt in hostilities including the North’s support of the Viet Cong. Now, I don’t believe this would have happened without those goals and a fixed definition of what winning would be, but you are strawmaning the position and handwaving it aside without addressing it’s actual meat. A valid counter argument would be to point out that the Soviet and Chinese response to this was unknown. ---
**Author:** ![BOOM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c4cdca/32.png) [@BOOM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BOOM)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2014, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/45 "2014-11-13T16:48:07Z")
If you fight wars in other countries, you need to be doing it on behalf of - and with - the peasantry. ‘South Vietnam’ was a pretty disengenuous concept from the start, at least from a non-US perspective. Problem for the US in all its imperial wars is the side it supports is generally self-selecting (not of the peasantry). The Mujahideen of the late 80s would be an exception for obv reasons. ---
**Author:** ![shiftless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@shiftless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shiftless)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2014, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/46 "2014-11-13T17:43:21Z")
> [@XT](#): > > A completely different mindset and political reality. Basically, you’d need to define what winning actually was, then come up with a plan of action and strategy/tactics to move towards that goal. Is having a unified Vietnam the goal and definition of victory? How about having a politically stable and economically successful South Vietnam a la South Korea? What WAS the goal, exactly? No idea…and, that’s the problem. The folks at the time didn’t really have one, instead they were reacting and making things up as they went along. Which is why we failed on all levels, despite basically winning all the military battles. Yeah. You can’t win at something until you’ve defined what winning is. This is a political failure, IMO, rather than a military failure. There was never a question of whether the USA could have defeated North Vietnam militarily. We’d just finished kicking the collective asses of German and Japan (with help) on a world wide front. We had the means to do any job, just no idea what the job was in this case. ---
**Author:** ![dofe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7ba0ec/32.png) [@dofe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dofe)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2014, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/47 "2014-11-13T18:16:31Z")
> [@shiftless](#): > > Yeah. You can’t win at something until you’ve defined what winning is. This is a political failure, IMO, rather than a military failure. > > There was never a question of whether the USA could have defeated North Vietnam militarily. We’d just finished kicking the collective asses of German and Japan (with help) on a world wide front. We had the means to do any job, just no idea what the job was in this case. But the US and its Allies won in such an unequivocal way largely because the German and Japanese militaries engaged in conventional warfare and their leadership surrendered unconditionally once they saw the writing on the wall. This was not the case with Vietnam, where the US had to deal with an insurgency campaign. Even if the US had captured and physically held North Vietnam, the insurgency would have continued because the VC would simply have retreated to the Chinese border. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2014, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/48 "2014-11-13T18:56:22Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > We would have had to conquer North Viet Nam, not just try to kick them out of South Viet Nam. Or we could have done what we promised, and supplied arms to the South Vietnamese after we pulled out. > [@Melbourne](#): > > Without disagreeing with anything else, the South fell because the money was withdrawn, not because the soldiers were withdrawn. All the money in the world wasn’t going to help. The South Vietnamese government was incredibly corrupt, a great deal of the money was essentially lost to corruption, and the money was never withdrawn. Congress cut funding in fall 1974 for the upcoming fiscal year from $1 billion to $700 million. The US left the ARVN with a huge arsenal of weaponry, and did continue to supply them after we left. The Air Force of the Republic of Vietnam was the 4th largest in the world when we left in 1973. All the money and equipment in the world wasn’t going to produce an army that wasn’t corrupt, incompetent, poorly motivated, poorly led, and largely unwilling to fight. [For example](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh_Campaign): > [@](#): > > The South Vietnamese army had always had problems keeping men in the ranks, but during 1973–1975, the problem reached epidemic proportions. During 1974, for example, only 65 percent of authorized manpower was present for duty at any one time.[24] The nation’s officer corps still suffered from the promotion and retention of generals due to their political loyalties, not their professional abilities. Corruption and incompetence among the officers was endemic, with some “raising it almost to an art form.” The PAVN captured huge amounts of war materials when the Republic of Vietnam fell. The ‘shortages’ experienced by the ARVN in the final offensive in 1975 were the result of corruption and incompetence, not an actual lack of material. > [@SandyHook](#): > > To win, and this is just an opinion, it was necessary to invade the north, preferably close to Hanoi where they would be forced to stand and fight. Yes, I know, Russia and China and all that. But who knows if they would really have intervened to any extent. I do. See [post 18](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17894879&postcount=18), there were 320,000 Chinese troops in North Vietnam from 1965-69. There is no question about Chinese intervention; they were already there. And to repeat, unlike Korea in 1950, this time China had the atomic bomb as well. > [@SandyHook](#): > > There’s been a long history of animosity between Vietnam and China (they had their own war in 1977ish) and Russia is a long way off. A long history which they were able to entirely put aside and cooperate quite well together in order to kick first the French and then the Americans out of Vietnam. You’d do well to note the reason for the Sino-Vietnamese War also, it was a Chinese punitive expedition in retaliation for Vietnam’s invasion of China’s client Cambodia which Vietnam invaded to remove the Khmer Rouge from power (among the many, many, many groups of victims of the Cambodian genocide was the Vietnamese minority in Cambodia). Oh, and for the sake of accuracy, the war was in 1979. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2014, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/49 "2014-11-13T19:56:17Z")
> [@notquitekarpov](#): > > As a side issue, can anyone else think of another Head of Government, apart from Lon Nol, whose name is a palindrome? [Emperor Otto.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_I,_Holy_Roman_Emperor) ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2014, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/50 "2014-11-13T20:06:40Z")
> [@shiftless](#): > > There was never a question of whether the USA could have defeated North Vietnam militarily. We’d just finished kicking the collective asses of German and Japan (with help) on a world wide front. We had the means to do any job, just no idea what the job was in this case. The world has changed. Due to nuclear weapons, you can’t fight unlimited wars anymore because the upper limit has become everyone on both sides is killed. We could fight Germany or Japan all the way to their complete defeat in the forties. But we couldn’t fight China or the Soviet Union that way in the sixties. So we needed to ask ourselves serious questions. Could we stop North Vietnam from attacking South Vietnam? Could we defeat North Vietnam without occupying the country? Could we occupy North Vietnam without fighting a war against China and the Soviet Union? Could we defeat the Chinese and the Soviets in a limited war in North Vietnam? You can define this as a political failure or a military failure. But what it is is facing reality. ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2014, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/51 "2014-11-13T20:10:14Z")
What’s ironic is that most of the South Vietnamese government was derived from Catholic refugees who were from the North and evacuated after 1954 by the CIA, to the South, to take charge over a predominantly Buddhist peasantry, and who decided quite stupidly to oppressed the Buddhists. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/52 "2014-11-14T00:21:22Z")
What would have been required? What the side that won had. (And the right side won, I suppose.) Why assume that the USA has any business winning a given war of imperialism, or ability) to do so? ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/53 "2014-11-14T00:22:02Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > You can define this as a political failure or a military failure. But what it is is facing reality. But, if you “face reality” and do nothing, it could be perceived as giving _carte blanche_ to the ‘Commies’. I can almost hear the sound of dominos falling. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/54 "2014-11-14T01:28:30Z")
The reality is that the US could have kept North Vietnam from ever taking over South Vietnam, but didn’t have the will to pay that price. Which is why we should never have gotten involved in the first place. But the reality is our lack of will compared to the North Vietnamese Communists, not our ability to prevent them from taking over South Vietnam. LBJ’s biggest miscalculation was to think that he could make the war a test of wills between us and the North and actually win on those terms. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/55 "2014-11-14T02:03:59Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > The reality is that the US could have kept North Vietnam from ever taking over South Vietnam, but didn’t have the will to pay that price. Which is why we should never have gotten involved in the first place. But the reality is our lack of will compared to the North Vietnamese Communists, not our ability to prevent them from taking over South Vietnam. > > LBJ’s biggest miscalculation was to think that he could make the war a test of wills between us and the North and actually win on those terms. Don’t keep it a secret. Tell us what we could have done to win the war if only we had had the will. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/56 "2014-11-14T03:00:09Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#): > > But, if you “face reality” and do nothing, it could be perceived as giving _carte blanche_ to the ‘Commies’. > > I can almost hear the sound of dominos falling. Been taking their sweet-ass time to fall, haven’t they ? 🙂 Any day now… ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/57 "2014-11-14T03:41:47Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Don’t keep it a secret. Tell us what we could have done to win the war if only we had had the will. You have to keep the plan to end the war secret for it to work, just ask Nixon. Openly admitting to the public that all you are looking for in negotiations is a ‘decent interval’ between the withdrawal of US troops and the fall of South Vietnam to the communists in order to claim “peace with honor” is sort of self defeating. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/58 "2014-11-14T04:02:12Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Don’t keep it a secret. Tell us what we could have done to win the war if only we had had the will. As long as we were there, North vietnam couldn’t take over South Vietnam. Simple as that. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/59 "2014-11-14T04:16:01Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > As long as we were there, North vietnam couldn’t take over South Vietnam. Simple as that. So you don’t have a plan for winning the war. You think we should have just kept fighting the war indefinitely. We spend twenty years fighting in Vietnam. So I think we showed plenty of “will” doing that. What do you think we would have gained if we had fought for sixty years? ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466/60 "2014-11-14T04:22:35Z")
North Vietnam had the exact same plan. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-been-required-to-win-in-vietnam/704466.md?page=4)