Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The problem was always to define "winning" in Vietnam.
Any strategy that required foreign troops to remain in Indochina was doomed to fail.
From a strictly military point of view, we did win the war. The Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973. Borders were status quo ante bellum. The U.S. military withdrew, leaving it up to North and South Vietnam to maintain the treaty.
As we know now, North Vietnam broke the treaty and Saigon fell in April 1975.
From a strictly military point of view, we did win the war. The Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973. Borders were status quo ante bellum. The U.S. military withdrew, leaving it up to North and South Vietnam to maintain the treaty.
As we know now, North Vietnam broke the treaty and Saigon fell in April 1975.
We won the war but lost the peace.
There is no 'strictly military point of view' concerning war, because wars are not conflicts between militaries. Wars are conflicts between political entities in which military force is but one of the tools used. To win means to achieve ones objectives. In Vietnam, the objective of the United States was to preserve South Vietnam's independence as a non-communist state. It wasn't to kill more of their guys than they killed of ours. It wasn't to drop more bombs or fire more artillery shells. War is not a game of Risk.
North Vietnam won by not losing until the United States decided that it was no longer willing to pay the price of not losing. Once we had picked up our marbles and went home, North Vietnam defeated and annexed South Vietnam. North Vietnam achieved its objectives. It won. The United States failed to achieve its objectives. We lost.
That's winning and losing when it comes to war - not some "My bombs are bigger and more plentiful than than yours!" pissing match.
From a strictly military point of view, we did win the war. The Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973. Borders were status quo ante bellum. The U.S. military withdrew, leaving it up to North and South Vietnam to maintain the treaty.
As we know now, North Vietnam broke the treaty and Saigon fell in April 1975.
We won the war but lost the peace.
The U.S. abandoned a war that it wasn't able to win, and threw money at its former allies as a sop to its conscience. It was a toilet paper treaty for the U.S.
The panic-stricken flight of the American diplomatic staff in Saigon beginning on April 29, 1975, while hundreds of hysterical Vietnamese who had worked for the U.S. poured into the embassy grounds desperate to be saved was one of the ugliest and most shameful sights of the war.
There is no 'strictly military point of view' concerning war, because wars are not conflicts between militaries. Wars are conflicts between political entities in which military force is but one of the tools used. To win means to achieve ones objectives. In Vietnam, the objective of the United States was to preserve South Vietnam's independence as a non-communist state. It wasn't to kill more of their guys than they killed of ours. It wasn't to drop more bombs or fire more artillery shells. War is not a game of Risk.
North Vietnam won by not losing until the United States decided that it was no longer willing to pay the price of not losing. Once we had picked up our marbles and went home, North Vietnam defeated and annexed South Vietnam. North Vietnam achieved its objectives. It won. The United States failed to achieve its objectives. We lost.
That's winning and losing when it comes to war - not some "My bombs are bigger and more plentiful than than yours!" pissing match.
Wow man. We seem to be saying the same thing, which I summed up as "We won the war but lost the peace". Thanks for the lecture about Risk and pissing matches, although I'm not sure who it's aimed at.
I may be one of the few that says "yes". By the late 60s North Vietnam was on the outs with Communist China and was no longer getting support from them, the Viet Cong insurgent elements in the south were militarily defeated (taking devastating losses in their Tet offensive that they would never recover from), and strategic bombing was taking it's toll. I submit we could have outlasted N. Vietnam and met them at the Paris Accords with a settlement by the early 70s if we stayed the course (that is, did not start withdrawing in the late 60s). Not a perfect one - picture the Korea border with 50,000 US troops stationed on a DMZ for decades, at least until the early 90s when the Soviet bloc collapsed and N. Vietnam moderated. Also the S. Vietnam government would not be stable.
But a democracy is not influenced by a war of attrition, totalitarian governments don't have this concern - but by the late 60s the people of the US had enough and as soon as we started a withdrawel and "vietnamization" of the war in the late 60s, the war was lost.
The support of North Vietnam was not from China but from the Soviet Union. China was never an ally of significance. The Soviet Union was nearly as involved in Vietnam as the US was, and for the US, the war was really about containing the influence of the USSR.
As it was, when the US pulled out of the South, the Soviets rolled back their support of the North (and only shortly later rolled back their support of North Korea as well).
Had the US remained in Vietnam it would have continued a resource drain on the USSR that may or may not have hastened the collapse of the Soviet regime...depending on whether they later invaded Afghanistan anyway, whether the US would have been capable of continued military growth in other areas, whether Reagan would have been elected president by the time the "old guard" in the USSR was passing away, et cetera other events.
Nixon was under a lost of pressure from the electorate , as He promised to pull out at the 1972 presidential campaign , so He pulled out and then a couple years later the communist walked in and took the South Vietnam..... See America was war weary , just Like Iraq today
Could we have "won"?
Possibly
However, that...victory...would have required our occupation of that country for...20?...30?...40? years in order to ensure our pacification of it, and to continue to neutralize dissident elements that would have remained in "Yuge" numbers.
All too often, politicians and simplistic citizens think only of the day of victory, without considering the decades of continued occupation and pacification that would be necessary after the victory. The ultimate question regarding that "victory" is...to what end?
So the question is did we win in Korea since we stayed long enough for a democracy to flourish?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
