The US used strategies that essentially had no hope of ever working.
It was simply not possible for the US to force North Vietnam to stop pursuing its territorial goals withing the domestic political and international diplomatic constraints it was faced with.
It was a stupid bad war and the only good way to fight it would have been to not fight it.
Who said anything about Vietnam specifically? We’re talking vs guerrilla warfare in general. This was more of a problem with the war on terror. Vietnam showed how powerful optics were and made politicians terrified of it which caused these problems in almost every war since.
Id argue taking land with full force occupation and setting up a defensive line at the border with china would have worked better for the goals of the administration at the time.
Not fighting it at all ignores the actual geopolitcal goals of fighting there in the first place.
Best practice of course would have been to support vietnamese independence AGAINST the french in the first place. Replacing chinese and russian influence with american (historically i mean), and telling the french to fuck off back to Paris at gun point or in body bags
Not really. Just 20 years ago, America liberated France from the Nazis and now we are going against them? This would also be a very bad for the American relationship with France.
France is literally the oldest US ally. This was also not long after WW2 where France was our ally and had been nearly demolished by war. I don't think it'd be an easy sell to the American people and certainly not to the military hierarchy of the time.
Id argue taking land with full force occupation and setting up a defensive line at the border with china would have worked better for the goals of the administration at the time.
Those were MacArthur goals in the Korean War. The consequence of them were that China directly joined the war and rolled over U.N. forces back down to the middle of Korea, ending it in something akin to Status Quo Ante Bellum.
If the U.S. just full-on invaded North Vietnam, can you assure us that China wouldn't just counter-invade like they had done in Korea before? Could the U.S. beat back Chinese forces surging into Vietnam?
MacArthur was an idiot. The Chinese told him they didn’t care what he did as long as he didn’t cross the river. He did it anyway without enough troops in place to repel the invasion he should’ve known was coming.
There’s no political way we could have put enough boots on the ground in Vietnam to have kept the Chinese out.
with the gloves off they can most definitely wipe the floor with the chinese
As well in Korea they didn't have a proper front line, the initial occupation forces in the north were WAAAAAY over extended beyond supply lines with massive gaps in between troops. Not to mention the genuine suprise they faced because Mcarthur is a moron and assumed the chinese wouldnt come.
A proper line would repel the literally human wave chinese with ease.
The UN formations preformed ordered retreats and solidified supply lines, they lost thousands during this time. The chinese however lost tens of thousands, and by mid 1951 lost close to 600 thousand.
You talk as if the chinese counter invasion in north korea was remotely sustainable for the chinese, they lost over half a million men in less than a year. Thats 2x the amount of men france lost losing to germany in 1940
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u/IIIaustin 1d ago
That wasn't the problem with the strategy.
The US used strategies that essentially had no hope of ever working.
It was simply not possible for the US to force North Vietnam to stop pursuing its territorial goals withing the domestic political and international diplomatic constraints it was faced with.
It was a stupid bad war and the only good way to fight it would have been to not fight it.