Vietnam- until Iraq and Afghanistan there was no bigger quagmire in US history. Fraught with
misconceptions, mistakes, and outright blunders, Vietnam remains unique as a war where America
snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. But these are the ways the US could have won Vietnam.
1. Fight For The Right Side
Vietnam was a very profitable French colony until France's defeat in World War II,
sparking an invasion by the Japanese. Seeking to end the shipment of war materials into China,
whom Japan was also at war with, and securing naval basing rights in the region,
Japan strong-armed the colonial French government into allowing an occupation force in the country
until Japan's defeat at the end of the second world war.
France was severely weakened by the war, and seeing French troops
routed by invading Japanese forces gave new strength to the Vietnamese people who had
been waging a guerrilla war of independence nearly since being subjugated by the french
in the 19th century. Upon the withdrawal of Japanese forces at the end of the war,
Ho Chi Minh launched a bid for independence. This created a crisis for France, as Vietnam was not
just strategically important for South Asian trade, but also a source of easily exploitable
wealth for a France struggling to recover from the ravages of the second world war.
US involvement in Vietnam began in 1954, financing almost the entire cost of the French effort in
the nation. The US already feared the spread of communism, and this fear was exploited by
Britain to seek US intervention in Iran, and by France to gain its aid in Vietnam.
The European powers helped sell the political fear of the 'domino effect' to the United States,
painting a grim future where the US was an island surrounded by
communism. This alone was enough to encourage the US to enter the war.
Upon news of US involvement in the war, Ho Chi Minh was personally devastated. Not
because he feared facing a global superpower in battle, but because he had been an avid
student of the American independence movement, its constitution, and its declaration of independence.
Minh was actually convinced that if the US did intervene, it would surely do so on the
side of the fighters seeking to end their colonial oppression, not on the side of the colonial power.
Vietnam was not a domino that threatened to topple the region and fuel Soviet influence,
it was a nation tired of being exploited by European powers and simply sought independence.
If the United States had acted true to the ideals it claimed to hold dear- liberty,
independence, and freedom- then it would never have entered the conflict in the first place,
thus 'winning' a war that it never fought.
In order to oppose the communist north, America also hugely blundered in who it
supported in the South. South Vietnam may have been friendly to US interests,
but it had little interest in becoming a western-style democracy. Instead,
a series of dictators took power for themselves in coups that came in rapid succession- to the
point that the lack of cohesion actually hurt the South's own armies from being able to fight.
The US failed to understand that the reason the Viet Cong movement became so large and so many
Vietnamese people supported the communist north, was because they were tired of being oppressed by
dictators- whether their own or those installed by colonial powers. With the South Vietnamese
government brutally oppressing its people with mass arrests, torture, censorship, and other human
rights violations, tens of thousands of civilians were driven straight into the arms of the north.
With communist forces being supported- or at least being tolerated- by the people,
they were able to routinely win strategic victories against the US,
even as the US won the entirely meaningless 'body count war'.
Perhaps the US's greatest mistake was
being on the wrong side of people seeking freedom from oppression.
But US fears about Vietnam were sadly based on America's next biggest mistake.
2. Know Your Enemy
America has been- and largely still is- a nation with a myopic view of the world. It is
a country used to, and still expecting, to fight conflicts such as World War I and World War II,
with clearly defined good guys and bad guys. Falling prey to European-fueled communism fears,
the United States saw North Vietnam as communists no different than the Soviets
it saw as a threat to western democracy. Americans couldn't have been more wrong.
In the late 1950s, America painted all communists with the same brush- a fatal mistake which would
lead to one of the US's most catastrophic wars. If the fear was that the fall of
Vietnam to communism would lead to increased influence from the Soviet Union and China,
then the United States poorly understood the relationships between these three nations.
Historically, Vietnam has been involved in a thousand years of ongoing conflicts with China.
In fact, today Vietnam is one of the US's strongest partners in containing
a modern China that consistently acts in bad faith in the region. Vietnamese
and Chinese animosity has simmered for longer than America has been a nation,
and yet this fundamental lack of understanding its enemy led the US to fear Chinese involvement
in post-war Vietnam. It also made American politicians terrified of Chinese influence
growing in the region should the south fall, or the country reunify as a communist power.
Understanding the difference between Vietnam and China would have led the US to fear less
the fall of the country to communism. Communism is simply a form of governance,
and yet the US myopically viewed communism as some form of supernatural binding power
that automatically made nations allies and enemies of the west. This is particularly sad
in retrospect because Ho Chi Minh had warm affections for the United States until the
start of the war. Had the North been allowed to unify the nation without US interference,
Vietnam could very well have turned into a strong American partner in the region, instead of the
feared and maligned communist stronghold with completely imaginary hatred of western democracy.
The US's fears of communist Vietnam, and its inability to differentiate a nation and its
own relationships from communism, is especially tragic in light of the China and Soviet Union
relationship. Despite both being nations modeled after authoritarian communism- which
basically isn’t real communism at all- a deep divide existed between the two powers.
Border skirmishes were not uncommon, and Chinese-Soviet relations would become so
bad that China would actually buddy up to the US eventually, leading to Nixon's famous quip
to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, “Now I have more communists on my side than you.”
A better understanding of Vietnam as a nation, and not as a Communist boogieman,
would have led to better choices about US involvement in the conflict,
and had the US exercised a bit of nuance, could have actually
led to a strong regional partner- even if that partner was a communist state.
3. There is no such thing as limited war
'Limited war'- a buzzword still used by some Pentagon insiders today.
The concept is simple: in order to minimize political fallout and reduce
risk, the United States engages in the practice of war with a limited scope.
In Vietnam, the US's greatest fear was once more embroiling China into an asian war.
China's interference in the Korea War had led to a near-defeat of the UN expeditionary forces,
and a hasty withdrawal back to the DMZ. Fearful of kicking off World War III,
the United States first engaged in limited war in the latter half of the Korean war,
with President Truman expressively forbidding the striking of targets inside China. Not wanting
to risk an escalation, and pulling the Soviet Union into the conflict, Truman did not allow
US bombers to strike at Chinese staging areas, supply depots, and most importantly- air fields.
There was just one problem with Truman's thinking-
China was already at war with the US and the Soviets were supplying everything from
weapons to fighter pilots. The conflict had already escalated.
The decision to not strike military targets in China was disastrous for the UN effort to defeat
the North Korean forces. It allowed Chinese and Soviet aviators to operate with impunity,
and for China to resupply its forces in Korea without fear of interference.
It also allowed China to prosecute the war in Korea without suffering any economic harm, about
the only thing that would have deterred China from continuing to support the North Korean effort.
In Vietnam, the United States would once more commit the grave mistake of believing
it could wage a 'limited war' and still achieve victory. With many Soviet observers and technical
advisors in the north, US politicians forbade the military from striking at specific targets,
and others could only be attacked during certain times. For instance,
North Vietnamese air defenses were the most formidable in the world,
and led to over half of US POWs being aviators. And yet, American pilots were forbidden
from striking SAM sites until they were fully operational for fear of striking Soviet advisors.
Attacking a SAM site when fully operational is pretty much the worst time to attack a SAM site.
Likewise, US forces were forbidden from holding territory in North Vietnam, for fear of a repeat
of China's interference in Korea. American conventional forces could have easily steamrolled
the North Vietnamese, and only by taking and holding North Vietnamese territory could they
have relieved the pressure in South Vietnam long enough for the government to establish legitimacy
with the people. Holding of North Vietnamese territory would have also disrupted the supply
routes and destroyed the resources necessary to arm the Viet Cong insurgency in the south.
Lastly, only by taking strategic North Vietnamese objectives could there have
been a political victory against the North. Despite being completely defeated,
Germany never surrendered until the Soviets entered Berlin.
Even in the US's aim to defeat the North by bombing them though,
America hamstrung itself. Operation Linebacker and Linebacker II were extremely successful
bombing campaigns against the North, which were both immediately suspended the moment
that US politicians believed they could bring the North to the negotiation table.
The North, understanding fully that the US would only wage a limited war,
took advantage of these lulls in bombing campaigns to simply rebuild its infrastructure
and resources, preparing to wage total war the moment negotiations predictably failed.
US limited war philosophy was not only strategically doomed, but was a complete mismatch
against North Vietnam's waging of total war. Just like America feared a communist stronghold in
southeast asia, North Vietnam feared that South Vietnam would simply become a jumping off point
for colonial powers to once more exert their influence on the nation. In order to secure their
future, the North Vietnamese needed to achieve nothing less than total victory and reunification.
To this end, they engaged in total war, fully dedicating themselves and their society to
the defeat of the United States. This strategic mismatch left the US with little hope of winning
the war, as the communists were willing to sacrifice as many people as necessary to
win. In the face of such fanatical devotion to total war, a country waging limited war can
never hope to succeed- no matter how superior its firepower and technological advantages.
Sadly, this is a lesson the United States has still failed to learn judging by
the complete failure in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Perhaps the greatest blunder of waging limited war though was that it left US forces with no
clear military objectives to achieve, other than attrition of the enemy. Rudderless,
US morale plummeted and American units forfeited the initiative to the enemy at every turn. Viet
Cong insurgents used the circumstances to great effect, operating almost with impunity throughout
south Vietnam as America failed to eliminate its sources of manpower and resupply in the north.
4. Ho Chi Minh Trail was the key to victory
In a post-war interview, a North Vietnamese general was asked what
he had feared the most during the war. His response was immediate:
American ground forces attacking the Ho Chi Minh trail directly.
The HCM was a jungle superhighway through which North Vietnam replenished its forces in the south,
and brought in new supplies from China. It allowed supply convoys to completely bypass
American and South Vietnamese military units, with the only fear of attack coming from the air.
To be fair, the US dedicated an incredible amount of firepower in the aerial fight to disrupt the Ho
Chi Minh trail, but as the US would fail to learn repeatedly, the Air Force cannot secure territory.
Because the nations the HCM passed through were neutral, the US did not want to move forces into
those nations for fear of widening the war. Yet again, North Vietnam had already widened the war,
leaving the United States to refuse to accept this reality.
This isn't to say that American fears of widening the war couldn't have led
to Chinese or Soviet involvement, we are simply saying that America had no chance
of winning the conflict without waging total war. Widening the conflict may have led to
the involvement of Chinese or Soviet forces, but not widening the conflict guaranteed US defeat.
By shutting down the HCM supply lines with ground forces, the Viet Cong movement would
have slowly starved to death from a lack of basic supplies needed to wage war.
Without the disruptive force of the Viet Cong in the south, US and South Vietnamese troops
could have established a true war front to the north, rather than being stuck in a quagmire
of fire bases spread throughout a country infested with insurgents.
So could the United States have won Vietnam? Absolutely. Especially if it had never feared
a communist Vietnam and even fought in the first place. Once dragged into the fight though,
had the US accepted the reality that any war is a total war, it could have quickly
and decisively defeated the North. Limited war does not work, and we have Korea, Vietnam, Iraq,
and Afghanistan to prove it- if the United States is to go to war, it must do so with the intent to
achieve complete victory. Only then can a conflict be ended as quickly and humanely as possible.
Fears of Chinese and Soviet involvement were likely unfounded,
as the Soviets would have been incredibly unlikely to start a third world war against NATO
over a single territory in Southeast Asia. China may have become involved, but had total war been
applied in the Korean war as it should have, this too would have been incredibly unlikely.
What was completely certain is that the US was doomed to lose from the
start believing it could fight this- or any- conflict as a limited war.
Now go check out Why Vietnam War Tunnel Rat Job was So Deadly, or click this other video instead!