With hindsight, what should have been the US strategy in Vietnam?
- Thread starter Gukpard
- Start date
Honestly, the best winning move in regards to Vietnam is to simply not play. President Johnson should have pursued a strategy similar to the Eisenhower administration in addition to a more successful “Vietnamization” strategy. Both of these should result in the South staying strong up until the end of the Cold War - when the two Vietnams either reunify or the North goes full Kim mode and China uses it like a buffer state.
Without focus on the Vietnam War, it’s possible that President Johnson would’ve used all that government money to be used in the Great Society programs and Space Race. This could cause either one of them to be more successful than OTL. Also, even without Vietnam, there would still be something like the hippie movement as a backlash to the social conformity of the 50s. However, these alternate hippies could be less militant and revolutionary, and more practical and peaceful. A lot of the anti-war protestors could have also poured their energy into supporting the Civil Rights Movement, Environmentalism, Feminism, and Gay Rights instead.
TLDR: The Vietnam War and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
Without focus on the Vietnam War, it’s possible that President Johnson would’ve used all that government money to be used in the Great Society programs and Space Race. This could cause either one of them to be more successful than OTL. Also, even without Vietnam, there would still be something like the hippie movement as a backlash to the social conformity of the 50s. However, these alternate hippies could be less militant and revolutionary, and more practical and peaceful. A lot of the anti-war protestors could have also poured their energy into supporting the Civil Rights Movement, Environmentalism, Feminism, and Gay Rights instead.
TLDR: The Vietnam War and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
Maybe if SEATO survived and was more effective, the US could try to make the conflict not just on the US. I know other countries were involved, like the ROK and Australia, but I don’t think they were all in.
Though I know you didn’t ask for it, but IMO we shouldn’t have gotten involved at all. It’s funny when people talk about the Vietnam War they often say how they were attempting to stall the domino effect, but the US involvement in Indochina resulted in the region ( by which I mean Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia) going full red.
Though I know you didn’t ask for it, but IMO we shouldn’t have gotten involved at all. It’s funny when people talk about the Vietnam War they often say how they were attempting to stall the domino effect, but the US involvement in Indochina resulted in the region ( by which I mean Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia) going full red.
YOLO it and go all in (up to invading the north), and if that draws in red China then it just means they'll get another taste of the meatgrinder of the Korean war (except even worse because of their instability of the cultural revolution). It might even spook the soviets enough into keep WWIII from happening (and if they do, their nuclear capability to touch the US was still not that great during the first half of the 60s (hence the whole thing with Cuba in the first place))...
Basically like this guy:
Basically like this guy:
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Telling the Republic of Vietnam to reform itself from the corruption and purging of Buddhists because what Diem did only solidified the locals in South Vietnam to join the VC. The RVN was just corrupt and authoritarian as the KMT in Taiwan was. It took until 1996 for Taiwan to become a successful democracy.
Realising that the domino theory was flawed and that Vietnam was not comparable to Korea, that the people ulimately supported Ho Chi Minh. The death blow was when America realised they had been promoting an unsavory dictator in Diem and decided to topple him causing political anarchy in South Vietnam, creating the grounds for an overwhelming insurgency. You would need to shut up war hawks like McNamara and Kissinger.
Arm the vietcong, ensure Vietnam is an issue causing sino-soviet disputes to make the two powers busy fighting each other.
Arranging for a truck to be dropped on Pham Ngoc Thao would probably be an easy win in the struggle to preserve South Vietnam. Whether or not the Strategic Hamlet Program could have worked as hoped is a debatable question, but it's always going to be doomed when it's headed by a North Vietnamese double-agent.
Would this have changed the final result or just prolonged the war even further?
I wonder what the cutoff date would be and what it would take to get Ho chi Minh and America playing nice.
I imagine it'd have to be before or during the French Indochina war, so probably outside the scope of this question
I imagine it'd have to be before or during the French Indochina war, so probably outside the scope of this question
- Tell government that it must reform more democratic, remove corruption and begin to respect local faiths instead trying enforce Catholism. Otherwise they are let alone.
- If Southern Vietnamese government begin to do something send some advisors and educate Southern Vietnamese forces but don't send troops there.
- If Southern Vietnamese government begin to do something send some advisors and educate Southern Vietnamese forces but don't send troops there.
What happens if he is elected democratically to lead Vietnam and then still dies when he did IOTL?
SEATO specifically excluded Vietnam. When it was signed, they had the example of what happened to the French in Indochina so they specifically disallowed Vietnam. So, all attempts to claim that SEATO could do anything about the situation in Indochina is nonsensical.
Deny the enemy the means to "swim" amongst the "fish". Occupy the land surrounding the villages. Close the route from the North to the South, the Ho Min Chin track, and prevent the enemy from using it as freely as they did. Stop the endless war of attrition and protect the people from infiltration by the NLF forces. Do what the Australians did and make it harder for them to work amongst the people, prevent them from supporting the NLF. Stop flitting around the countryside in a chopper and get down there on foot and contest the country with the NLF. Create real civic action teams to win the peoples' "hearts and minds". Get rid of the corrupt Southern Government and replace them with a real, honest, government. Give the people something to believe in and want to support.
Somehow find the holy grail of all military operations.
A successful COIN policy.
But avoiding that, staying out of the country in a major way but supporting the ARVN while also making it clear that said support is reliant on the Saigon government being "stable and anti-communist" (a lá South Korea or Taiwan) and you maybe could wind up with a two-state solution that lasts long enough to not become a major issue for the US to deal with and potentially a peaceful unification further down the road.
The problem with that is you'd need to keep the people who think war is a strict numbers game out of the positions of power, and that's a whole other issue.
A successful COIN policy.
But avoiding that, staying out of the country in a major way but supporting the ARVN while also making it clear that said support is reliant on the Saigon government being "stable and anti-communist" (a lá South Korea or Taiwan) and you maybe could wind up with a two-state solution that lasts long enough to not become a major issue for the US to deal with and potentially a peaceful unification further down the road.
The problem with that is you'd need to keep the people who think war is a strict numbers game out of the positions of power, and that's a whole other issue.