Vietnam an Unwinnable War?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ก.ค. 2024
- Disclaimer: I received a complementary copy of The U.S. Naval Institute on Vietnam: A Retrospective by Naval Institute Press for content production.
www.usni.org/store/books/holi...
Was the Vietnam War unwinnable in general? Or was the issue that the US government and/or the military failed? Usually, some blame the government, whereas others blame the military, yet, there are also some that note that the war could not be won at all, since the resolve of North Vietnam was too strong and South Vietnam too corrupt. Others point out the failed attrition strategy, the weak combat to support ratio (foxhole ratio), the willingness to limit destruction, rotation policies, etc.
Thank you to Ken, Phil & Jack for sending me books from my wishlist that were used - yet not harmed - during the production of this video.
»» SUPPORT MHV ««
» patreon - / mhv
» paypal donation - www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr...
» Book Wishlist www.amazon.de/gp/registry/wis...
»» MERCHANDISE - SPOILS OF WAR ««
» shop - www.redbubble.com/people/mhvi...
»» SOCIAL MEDIA ««
» minds.com - www.minds.com/militaryhistory...
» facebook - / milhistoryvisualized
» twitter - / milhivisualized
» twitch - / militaryhistoryvisualized
» RallyPoint - www.rallypoint.com/organizati...
» tumblr - / militaryhistoryvisualized
Military History NOT Visualized is a support channel to Military History Visualized with a focus personal accounts, answering questions that arose on the main channel and showcasing events like visiting museums, using equipment or military hardware.
» SOURCES «
Disclaimer: I received a complementary copy of The U.S. Naval Institute on Vietnam: A Retrospective by Naval Institute Press for content production.
www.usni.org/store/books/holi...
Cutler, Thomas J. (ed.): The U.S. Naval Institute on Vietnam: A Retrospective (Chronicles). Naval Institute Press: Annapolis, Maryland,2016.
www.usni.org/store/books/holi...
Thayer, Thomas C.; Daddis, Gregory A.: War Without Fronts - The American Experience in Vietnam. Naval Institute Press: Annapolis, Maryland, 2016 (1985).
Tucker, Spencer C. (Ed.): The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A political, social, and military history. Second Edition. ABC CLIO: Santa Barbara, California, 2011
Herring, George C.: America’s Longest War. The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975. Fifth Edition. McGraw Hill Education: New York, NY, 2014. (Thank you to Ken for sending me this book from my wish list!)
Citino, Robert M.: Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm. The Evolution of Operational Warfare. Kansas University Press: US (2004). (Thank you to Phil for sending me this book from my wish list!)
Black, Jeremy: Land Warfare since 1860. A Global History of Boots on the Ground. Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham, Maryland, 2018.(Thank you to Jack for sending me this book from my wish list!)
» TOOL CHAIN «
PowerPoint 2016, Word, Excel, Tile Mill, QGIS, Processing 3, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premiere, Adobe Audition, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Animate.
» DATA CHAIN «
Made with Natural Earth. Free vector and raster map data @ naturalearthdata.com.
» CREDITS & SPECIAL THX «
Song: Ethan Meixsell - Demilitarized Zone
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 71 วันนี้!! คู่เอก "ทรงชัยน้อย vs รักษ์"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/_AGPnq2p6Js/mqdefault.jpg)
"Strategy without Tactics is the slowest route to Victory. Tactics without Strategy is the noise before Defeat." - Tzun Tzu, The Art Of War
"Start off with an uncontroversial topic" :-) That was a very subtle joke, but much appreciated!
mensch1066 lol. When I was a kid we were forbidden to ask about Vietnam in my house... Having 3 members served there and one who protested it. A little contentious.
A major problem with fighting a counterinsurgency war in South Vietnam was the strategy of body count. They thought holding ground in that kind of terrain was useless, so they just airlifted troops to kill a bunch of people and left. The problem was without holding ground they just played VC whack-a-mole continuously, so people didn't see any progress being made doing to same thing over and over again.
True. Second issue on that was that it alienated the population. If you measure success by dead bodies your soldiers start to kill everyone. I'm still amazed how less General Westmoreland understood of strategy and leading men.
True, but was holding territory a viable option?
The Green Berets had an interesting strategy with the Montagnards, creating village based defensive forces, but it wasn’t scalable-MACV tried and failed with the model hamlet program.
The underlying problem for counter-insurgency operations is political, the relationship between the government and the people. The insurgency had popular support for the most part (and would ruthlessly eliminate those who didn’t support them). The SVG lacked this support mostly because it’s leadership was so corrupt, going back to Diem.
Well you say that but the British and Japanese didn't have a problem in 1945-46.
Torin Jones good point, but also the British strategy there was to GTFO as quickly as they could hand indochina back to the French.
@@MarcosElMalo2 As far as I know(and correct me if I'm wrong), the British did a fairly good job in Vietnam against the commies. They managed to secure the support of the local population, for the most part. The population was not in favor of communism. However, after the French arrived, they managed to fuck things up...and the population turned to the commies....who were sneaky enough to tell them they were fighting for Vietnam, and not communism.
Your beard just keeps getting more and more majestic
He must adapt to the new German caliphate or germanistan ;-)
@@zepter00 Austriastan.
no difference ;-)
Submariner :)
@emosh73 >>> You *beardist...* 😊
The problem with the Idea of the US fighting the Vietnam war like WWII was fought was that there never was a vital US interest at stake in Vietnam, and the US would not have been willing to make the sacrifices necessary to fight a total war.
Naa-ah - the problem is that the US public(represented by the Congress) didn't get to decide to get involved. A small number of US Navy officers staged an incident in the waters off Vietnam, because LBJ had made known that he would retaliate if attacked. The US Navy resented the North Vietnamese taunting them and "provoking" them by holding fleet exercises near the US Navy formations. In fact, if you research the "Gulf of Tonkin" Incident, the North Vietnamese WERE conducting an exercise when it occurred. The tragedy of the beginning of the US involvement in Vietnam is that the public really weren't aware that the US had been involved there for 20 years by the time of the Tonkin Gulf affair. The same lack of public involvement as their country has a breakdown is not so much a tragedy as "business as usual."
@@DavidSmith-ss1cg Yup, USA in a nutshell.
There are a couple of points about how the war in Vietnam was "lost" from the POV of the Americans:
- The air war over North Vietnam. Initially, the USAF developed a restraint on attacking North Vietnamese air bases, air defense sites, etc ... They also drew a circle around Hanoi and declared it a no fly zone, for US Aircraft; this was probably to prevent a really hot Cold War. The reason was the concept of "signalling". Post-WWII American wargamers fighting against other wargamers developed the "signalling" concept of a limited attack, a demonstration of force to tell the other side "I have the force needed to do serious damage, but I will not be using it, but I'll use a small portion to show you that I am ready for an attack; you should back off". BTW, that's why when tension rises, there are so many military exercises happen: that's "signalling". The idea was the USAF had the capability destroy air defenses of North Vietnam, but would not do it, so the North so back off, stop delivering aids to South Vietnamese insurgents, or build up air defense capabilities.
- The problem of "signalling" is when the other side don't understand or don't care. Eventually, North Vietnamese sky was one of the most heavily defended sky in the world at that time. The no-fly zone around Hanoi served as a sanctuary for Hanoi's fighters. The fighter tactics of the USAF also did not help. F4s were armed with missiles only, with the belief that missiles would win, only for MiG to sneak up on the rear of F4s and shoot them down. North Vietnam also had a lot of SAMs which it could afford to salvo against small strike packages. Dodging one SAM is not that hard, but a salvo isn't easy. Eventually someone figured out that the USAF and USN need to teach basic fighter combat again and do a serious air war; then it was somewhat more successful; but not before lots of pilots like McCain were shot down and captured.
- The situation in the South was also complex. The government of the Republic of Vietnam was not just fighting communist insurgents. President Ngô Đình Diệm was a Christian in a Buddhist majority region. He was fighting organised criminal groups, religious fanatics (the Cao Đài, Hoà Hảo, anh a bunch of others), long before he was fighting Communists. He initially refused the presence of American combat troops, limiting American helps to materiel supplies and advisors. Just as any modern despots: there were nepotism, fear of coups, corruption, etc... you name it. He was deathly afraid of coups and like other modern dictators, the best trained troop formations were usually kept near the capital as an anti-coup measure instead of actually fighting. His fear was correct, since he was overthrown in a coup, shoved into an armored carrier, and shot in the head. His death led to American combat troops involvement, which like in modern day Iraq and Afghanistan, had careless disregards of local population lives ("we had to destroy the city to save it"), and fueled the insurgency.
- An example of how the political situation in the South hampered the military effectiveness was the battle of Ap Bac 1963. American SIGNINT effort detected a Communist transmitter and troops were called in. In previous encounters, the insurgents dismantle their radios and flee the scene. That time, they fought. Arrogant American helicopter pilots touched down within small arms range of the enemy position, despite warnings of air observers, and were greeted with withering fires that killed several men and crashed several helicopters. A detachment of M113 carriers were ordered forward to rescue the downed troops and helos. Except the problem is that this unit was mostly used as anti-coup measures and had no intention to fight. They advanced towards the enemy position, attempting to bailout the pinned troops, only to also come under small arms fire. The insurgents could not destroy the carriers outright, but the fires were enough to kill/injure the mounted gunners, panicking the rest. The formation then retreated.
- An American advisor by the name of John Paul Vann then advised the paratroopers to land in a position to cut off the insurgents retreat. It was obvious that the insurgents intended to wait for nightfall and slip out through an open flank. The paratrooper commanders decided to drop behind the armoured formation, in a "show of force". They really did not want to fight. Arguments were made and John Paul Vann was outranked by ARVN generals. Then the insurgents slipped out.
- The ARVN did improved. American combat troops and the ARVN threw back the 1968 offensive, which decimated the insurgency base in the South. However, after that offensive, the US lost its taste for war and withdrew the troops. If you read The Pentagon and the Art of War: The Question of Military Reform by Edward Luttwak, he painted the picture of people like McNamara as a slice used car salesmen who sold people the idea of technological solutions to an intensely human activity. He also lambasted US officers for losing the hearts for hardship, war, and bloodshed; preferring to stay in safe bases instead of sharing the hardship with the men. Still, the weight of material did helped staunched the 1968 offensive.
- The ARVN did threw back the 1972 offensive, By this point the war has become conventional. The US, however, taught the ARVN to be a copy of the US Army. Post WWII US Army has always been relying on overwhelming firepower (as opposed to maneuvers) to win battles; the so-called "Revolution in Military Affairs". It worked well, as long as you have the shells to do it. In 1975, once the aid to the South Vietnam government slowed, the ARVN did not have the power to stop the North anymore.
- It should be noted that even in 1972-75, the North Vietnamese conventionally military was still a volunteer force. They had not run out of men, yet. Materially, it was practically unlimited, with Chinese and Soviet supplies. The only way to stop the materiel flow was to engage diplomatically with the Soviet Union to do that; but war hawks in the US simply won't take any of that. Worse was Kissinger's stance on detente on the Soviet Union: good relation, etc ... He would sold out the South Vietnamese for that. Ronald Reagan was the one who started the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union by luring the latter into an arms race which the US could afford but bankrupted the Soviet Union.
- The irony of a North Vietnam victory was within a couple of decade, Vietnam would be fighting other Communists in the regions. We invaded Cambodia then parried a Chinese counter-invasion. The latter was possible thanks to the Soviet Union (a better friend with Vietnam then than with China) pointed around 30 Tank Divisions at Beijing from its Siberian region. A lot of economic hardships resulted from Soviet-style economy followed the war. Still, if you fast forward to today, Vietnam is fast becoming America's new friend in the effort to contain China. Hell, we are producing Israeli-designed small arms locally and certain parts of the military are using 5.56s.
- In any case, I'll recommend this lecture by Stephen Biddle ( watch?v=rJH_1CBDYGM ) of the problems common in trying to stabilise an unstable country. In Biddle's words: "The local security forces Afghanistan can probably hold on to what they still have right now. The war in Afghanistan is being fought Capitol Hill. As long as American aid: money, weapons, training can keep up, the Afghan government can hold on". It's almost an eternal war.
Every Chinese I meet say they win the war against Vietnam
@@MrRedsjack and so do almost every single Vietnamese living in Vietnam.
Supposedly the goal of the invasion was to "teach the Vietnamese a lesson" and to induce them to withdraw from Cambodia (main forces of the PAVN was in Cambodia). It taught the Vietnamese how to fight in the North, and it wasn't until years later that Vietnam pulled out of Cambodia.
@Akin Khoo if you take that position as "the goal" (which I doubt it was), is even a war with Vietnam needed?
Vietnam had sanctions imposed on it from the invasion of Cambodia to around 1989 or so. The sanctions plus wartime leaders' antiquated thinking extinguished any prospect of quick industrialisation. If that's really the goal, a Chinese attack, 30k dead, and lost vast quantities of materials weren't needed. The Vietnamese leaders would do it by themselves to their country.
This is the most thorough crash course I read about the logistical failures in Vietnam. I wanted to also add that the Soviet Union on top of dealing with China and the US arms race as well as Afghanistan, was that after the Vietnam war not only did they have to supply a battered North Vietnam they also have to supply the other half of South Vietnam. The soviets and Chinese actually liked it when the US was in South Vietnam because it dragged the US resources down there while keeping the Soviet solidarity up and their enemy at bay.
1. How can we win the war and what do we need to do it?
2. Is it really worth it, doing what we need to do to win?
That’s the American experience in Vietnam in a nutshell. To win outright meant destroying North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces and possibly inviting China and maybe even the USSR into the fighting. Is that risk worthwhile for a corrupt, rickety, divided South Vietnamese state, which itself was considered a temporary situation by western powers and the UN.
Thank you for your valiant effort to put such complicated and controversial topic into 14 minutes clip. I disagree with some points made but they were presented clearly and logically (as always on this channel), so kudos to the speaker.
Another one well done.
One of the reasons that McNamara & Johnson micromanaged the war was because of the Cuban missile crisis. What McNamara found then was the the joint chiefs had no plan for war that didn’t result in total nuclear devastation. He felt (possibility rightly so) that you had to reign in guys like Curtis Lemay or you’d have no planet left
interesting point!
Nah... they were just scared that China would enter the war like they did in Korea. Witch was incredibly ignorant. Vietnam and China have allways been the most bitter of archenemies and the Vietnamese would NEVER have allowed chinese troops in Vietnam..
They we're stupid if that was their thought process. Just say no nukes, no invading and bombing China, no invading Laos unless we say so, and happy Commie hunt.
Not a point but a fact. It was a political loss on many level. But we may have called a bluff by nuking Hanoi. Soviets were terrified. We are the only country to drop nukes on foreign populations. We could have nuked our way to Moscow easy company.
Not to stay, not to invade, but eradicate. I'm glad that didn't happen. You can thank both Truman and Eisenhower for that mission creep.
@@badlaamaurukehu agreed. Vietnam was a political loss.
The Vietnamese fought a 1000-year war of liberation against the Chinese and multiple "shorter" wars (50, 100 years...). The heroes and heroines of those wars were venerated in Vietnamese culture. This should have been a warning about the toughness and resilience of the Vietnamese and that they would not be a client state of China (contrary to a common justification for the war). The Pentagon Papers revealed that the US government was clueless about this -- they regarded the Vietnamese Communists as yet-another generic Communist Party trying to take over a country.
I encountered this personally. I was in high school in the late 1960s and had done independent reading on Vietnam. At a wedding, I encountered a high-ranking official in the US Embassy in SVN and found him to be unaware of Vietnamese history, include the war against the French. All he had to say were trite anti-Communist bumper sticker style slogans.
So true. The lack of understanding of Viet history was appalling on the part of repeated american administrations. Especially after the expulsion of the French colonials. Ho was in fact a Nationalist first and a Communist second. He approached the USA for assistance following WW2 but was rejected because he was a Communist. Big mistake. He would have supported a pluralistic state if given encouragement at the time from American allies I believe but fell under the "Stalinist/Maoist" spell. All this to say, what a waste the Vietnam war was but then every war is a waste is it not.
But it's often forgotten that the South where really the ones on the defensive, and they wanted to be free too, so the idea of inherent Vietnamese resilience should really go both ways here.
@@benettwillbanks5868 It is also often forgotten that South Vietnam was born in a stuff ballot election.
@@huy1k995 didnt the north say they were okay with the division while sending people down south to be insurgents later?
That's a very interesting point about unit cohesion and the consequences of constantly rotating out unit members instead of whole units. I never thought of that before.
Look into 'Shake N Bake': www.shakenbakesergeant.com/ReviewDavidHackworth.htm?gallery/Fgallery1-5.jpg (the first quote, I mean - I do like Hackworth and he might have a point, but what I learned from several 'memoirs' is the fact that those NCO's were hated - and endangered their men) - the experienced, trusted guys were sent home, only for an incompetent NCO to come in.
Note also, they were trained the 'traditional' way in the US: little jungle, guerrilla war training (even when the experienced guys were returning!), mainly 'big war' (presumably in Europe, blocking the Russian invasion).
Also, look into 'fragging': officers being wounded or killed by their own troops. The White House might have lost the war, but the Army for sure contributed in a big way - Westmoreland was just a lackey - as in 'lacking' skills (stubborn and ignorant), bowing to the politicians - Hitler messed up his army, so did Johnson and McNamara...
I would argue that the RVN was so unstable politically, and the RVN's armed forces being of such varying quality, that the war goal of sustaining South Vietnam was unlikely.
Indeed, the whole reason that conventional US forces were ever sent to South Vietnam was because ARVN was incapable of holding more than the cities. There was much change in leadership in the RVN politically, because no one emerged as being competent and effective enough to actually instill any confidence in the people or the US military and Diplomatic circles that they were capable of fixing the country.
The "best case" scenario was probably a redo of the Korean War, with two hostile governments separated by a heavily fortified border. Except, as corrupt and brutal as the early ROK governments might have been, they did have a measure of control over their country and could legitimately claim as such. The Republic of Vietnam did not.
Plus in Korean you only had the north/south border to fortify and defend. In South Vietnam there were the open and easily infiltratable borders with Laos and Cambodia.
No, the RVN could have been a stable country, and could have managed its army right, giving the instance that Americans didn't coup off Ngo Dim Dzien. The United States made a terrible ally both in 1960s Vietnam and in 1940s China.
L Coobs What you wrote is from American point of view. American government was looking for a scapegoat to blame. Try reading war stories and war biographies of RVN for better explanation. RVN veterans settled quite a number in US,why don't you go talk to them?
@mxt mxt My 2 brothers were officers of South Vietnamese army. This is what I know: back in 1966 SVA was still equiped with WW2 weapons carabin M1, M2 compared to NVA with AK47. After Paris agreement, US cut enormously support aid to South Vietnam to 300 million/year compared to 3 billion/year as before. President Duong Van Minh surrendered because he knew South Vietnam couldn't fight due to insufficient military supplies and support. He did sent someone to France to financial aid to buy weapons but France government refused. Those kind of facts, US government refused to admit as well. All they said was SVA was incapable, South Vietnam government was corrupted, soldiers refused to fight bla bla...
@@thumtlnguyen3626 I have uncle who serve ARVN. Two of them actually. While they were not combat unit, one of them just deliver food and supplied to the troop, they both pretty much tell me the same thing. All the tale of ARVN were highly glorified and propagandized. While it true 1975 ARVN lost due to insufficient supplied and ammunition, they wont be able to put up a real defensive force.
There once instace of the war where 300 vietcong took on 1500 ARVN and won. ARVN were highly incompetent. Their only success was Easter Offensive where they claimed to hold back communist even though they lost more men in one week than american in 20 years and still lost 10% of territories. The fact that is consider their "greatest" achievement for entirety of the war show you how effective the ARVN was. And this was with American support. I read this on vietnamese newspaper in america. And looking back it almost sad how all ARVN keep referencing back this as their greatest achievement almost everywhere.
Tet offensive was only possible due to how many Vietcong within South Vietnam. My uncle once said Hue was South Vietnam in morning but North at night because vietcong pretty much run the country.
South Vietnam government was straight up corrupted or incompetent on all count.
Even CIA reported show South Vietnam Army was highly incompetent. Most of their general were there because of their loyalty to president not because of their ability in warfare.
Just to add a couple of caveats to this:
On the one hand, people often forget the tactical, operational, and to a certain degree strategic successes in Vietnam by the US/RVN. Numerous North Vietnamese offensives were defeated decisively - whether the '65-66 campaign (which culminated in the Ia Drang battles), the Tet Offensive in '68, or the Spring Offensive in '72. People often forget that those were massive defeats for North Vietnam. US forces did figure out a very effective approach to counter-insurgency as well - and applied it to the Mekong Delta, where it was outstandingly successful when you look at the data. Not without cost, but the Delta was essentially cleared by mid-1968 - but the success there did not get the chance to be replicated elsewhere in Vietnam following the decisive turn of the US public against the war. The NLF (aka Viet Cong) had de facto ceased to exist - and was from that period onwards just an arm of the PAVN. North Vietnam also suffered another sort of decisive defeat - Linebacker II in December 1972 had completely dismantled and paralyzed their air defenses within the space of just a few days of determined action, at a cost that was by US measures very light indeed, and collateral damage that for a campaign of that scope was not significant. All of this certainly demonstrated that the US had effective ways for fighting the war - but for political or strategic reasons, was not in position to sustain it.
On the other hand, one of the major US failures that is rarely discussed in regards to Vietnam is the massive failures of intelligence - embarrassing as it may sound, North Vietnamese intel was far more effective during the war overall, despite their extremely limited resources. Technically, it wasn't even the absence of intel, but poor critical analysis of it, problems in cooperation between sources and services, and as you said - the fixation on "fighting the war they wanted to fight, not the one they had". One example of this is the ridiculous analyses of Operation Commando Hunt, the bombing of the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos during 1968-1972: US intelligence, particularly the Air Force, stuck to the idea that the bombing was working despite all the signs to the contrary (main one being that the Ho Chi Minh trail was still running). The kill claims in the "war on trucks" were completely ludicrous - but were taken at face value. We won't know the extent of the overclaims until and unless North Vietnam opens their records regarding the Trail, but basically the number of trucks claimed destroyed month to month exceeded all the trucks that the North, China, and the USSR could produce together - and yet there's no evidence that the flow of supplies was ever actually seriously hampered by the bombings, so we can only conclude that the claims were inaccurate by orders of magnitude. It's not really the fault of the pilots who were filing these claims - interdiction bombing in the jungle is incredibly difficult to assess. But those analyzing the intelligence should have taken this into account. Instead, they allowed a completely ineffective and costly campaign to continue for 3 and a half years, when it should have been obvious very quickly that something was not adding up. It's a really great example in (failure of) critical thinking to learn from, even in retrospect.
So, not disagreeing with anything said in the video - just adding some extra food for thought :)
I'm not the most well read on Vietnam, but one of the big problems with looking at military success in Vietnam was that what was the stop Vietnam from becoming another Korean War? China had no interest in seeing a neighboring country abandon Communism, so any aggressive attempt to overthrow North Vietnam could see over a million of Chinese soldiers joining the fight. If the US failed to take down North Korea, then why expect a different result in North Vietnam? Ultimately China wants a Communist buffer zone more than the US wanted a distant country to remain Anti-Communist.
@@Edax_Royeaux Actually that brings up a whole different dimension to the Chinese involvement in the conflict that is very little talked about today: far from being about simply communism vs. capitalism, for China their far more important rival in Vietnam, more even than even the US, was Soviet Union. You have to look at it in the context of the time - by the 60s the USSR and China were no longer on very friendly terms, and pulled quite far apart ideologically even within communist doctrine. They fought several major border clashes during the 60s, often involving tens of thousands of troops on both sides. In Vietnam, the Soviets and China were in competition for the role of Asia's and perhaps even the world's dominant communist power - and it was not a friendly competition. Meanwhile, North Vietnam happily encouraged this rivalry, as they stood to benefit from it most. The Soviets ultimately "won" - in the sense that they managed to keep North Vietnam's favour, and receive base rights in return for their troubles, something they'd wanted in that part of the world for their ships. China invaded Vietnam barely 4 years after this war ended - and, shockingly, lost to the Vietnamese communists (and quite badly, too). However, China perhaps "won" in the bigger picture - after Nixon's successful detente with China, it was clear that the communist block was going to be divided, and indeed it never recovered - or at least the Chinese-Soviet partnership never did.
So in short, it was not a simple case of China wanting Vietnamese communism as a counter to the US - it had far more to do with China's rivalry with the Soviets.
@@otohikoamv Even so, the US's had less motivation in Vietnam then China which was my original point. Once the US was winning the Korean War, China committed to the war and drove the US & allies back. Is there any reason the same thing wouldn't happen in Vietnam had the US military not been "held back"?
@@Edax_Royeaux Oh, I agree with you on that! I think the only thing we have to be careful about is definitions.
One thing that is absolutely true is that China made a guarantee to intervene if North Vietnam was invaded, so the war was "unwinnable" in the sense that there is no possible scenario where the war could have ended with the destruction or even defeat on that side (without turning into a massive and likely nuclear war with China). But that doesn't mean that the inverse was inevitable - yes, the war had to end on a truce, but it did not have to be on the terms that it was, nor did it have to inevitably lead to the defeat of South Vietnam (though blaming that on the US pullout is also not entirely fair. It could have survived, much like the Koreas ended up; in fact there's good evidence that China may have even preferred that outcome.
The other thing we have to be cautious about is portraying the communist side from a simplified "proxy war" mentality, which looks at North Vietnam as a puppet exploited by a unified international communist agenda, led by China and the USSR - when in reality, the war was almost as much driven by hostility within the communist bloc, as between them and the US/allies. It's tempting to use "domino theory" to explain Chinese/Soviet motivations in Vietnam, but that's a very American concept and doesn't necessarily apply to them. Meanwhile, far from being a puppet, North Vietnam's Politburo was masterful at exploiting divisions between their larger allies for their own benefit, pulling them into their own war way beyond what they would have committed if only keeping the US in check was at stake. It was very much their own war, and they played their cards extremely well.
But - I think it's important not to look at them as unbeatable and guaranteed to win in South Vietnam. They were not - the war was theirs to lose, and in military terms they were far less successful than the mythical image of them often gets credit for. Sadly for the historiography, North Vietnam's own takes on the history are heavily propagandized, while the vast majority of their wartime records remain completely sealed - so all we have to go on are sensationalist quotes from Ho Chi Minh etc., which claim that they would fight on no matter the cost, even if they lost 20, 50, 100 times more than the enemy. It's a nice thought (or not), but at least indirectly we know that the war in the South was an immense strain and it is not a given that they would have been able to sustain it had the US counter-insurgency efforts remained on the same trajectory, or if crucial pieces of their system (particularly Laos and Cambodia) had been taken out.
So again - I don't think there was ever any chance that the Vietnam war could have ended with US troops marching through Hanoi. But that doesn't mean that it had to end with communists in control of Saigon either.
That was of course one of Johnson's and McNamara's greatest fears, and one of the main reasons for doing as little as possible north of the border.
Russian experience in our civil wars says that to win a civil war, you need to find a political solution. You cannot do it with just military means if people do not support you.
The Bolshevik method to win public support is by identifying those who do not support you and killing them.
Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster. - William Tecumseh Sherman
Love your videos, thank you.
Wish that beard-man was my neighbour, just imagine the conversations over the fence. Older mans role model.
'Fighting with compassion' could've been a quote from Orwell
@Jose Raul Miguens Cruz The video creator meant that the United States politicians held back the military thinking it was compassionate. In reality instead of ending the fight quickly this compassion caused the war to drag on for years unnecessarily until the US withdrew.
Super analysis of that War.
Outstanding video!
Brother, you are the best thing on TH-cam.
Just looked up the battle of Dien Bien Phu, and it's very interesting! It would be great if you did a video about the French war in Indochina.
To my knowledge, there was one major military engagement in which the US Armed Forces were defeated. "Ripcord," which occurred in the spring of 1970, resulted not only in the failure of the US Army to achieve its defined objectives, but the NVA forced our withdrawal from the area, therefore securing their own objectives. This seems a pretty good definition of defeat. This battle was classified for decades. I know of one veteran of the battle, and I recall his shock and bewilderment when he discovered that he, and his unit, were part of a battle, "We always knew this was something much bigger." I recommend Keith W. Nolan's "Ripcord, Screaming Eagles Under Siege, Vietnam 1970." Presidio Press, 2000. (Keep up the good work.)
Decisive defeat, not just defeat
if they were just push out of an area that is not a major defeat
@@elmascapo6588 More die no mean is not decisive.
@@elmascapo6588 War ain't a COD lobby
Very well presented explanation of how a technological super power helped defeat itself. The fighting men did their job but the leaders military and civilian failed them.
Good video!!
Have you read Summer: On Strategy, a critical summary of the Vietnam War? Stumbled across it and found it fairly interesting and a different view on why they lost. Would be interested in your thoughts on it.
Since I came of draft age in 1970, I can't believe it took me so long to click on this. You have just scratched the surface of this topic. The most important question in war is "what would victory look like?" If you ask that about either Korea or Vietnam you end up having to consider the defeat of other, nuclear armed, nations. That is why victory was not possible.
Teach someone the whole of global military history -- but don't mention nuclear weapons -- and it would be inexplicable why there wasn't a war between the USA, the USSR, and China. after WW2 It would have been inevitable. But now that is not quite possible, and these limited wars are the result.
The saddest thing about the Vietnam War is that even the Kennedy administration knew it was pointless, but there were political reasons to keep fighting it regardless. I'm tempted to compare it to the War on Drugs, which was also political posturing.
Getting into this discussion I am reminded of MacCarthur's old edict: "Don't get into land wars in Asia." In other words this topic is difficult.
Speaking to Dr. Fabros, he shares the experience of American efforts in the early 1970s of training Vietnamese forces on counter insurgency and switching to a focus more on holding hamlets and towns. On how the move away from seeking a large engagement of battalion v battalion led to more success in creating stability.
Great channel. Wow - with that beard you could have helped win the U Boat war.
When trying to understand this chapter in history we must first accept the US war aims had little to do with Vietnam. They were trying to stop Indonesia and perhaps the Philippines becoming socialist or communist. Once this had been achieved, US involvement in SEA was purely to save face. Indonesia was 'secured' by 1968. The Philippines became a dictatorship in 1972 and had long been run corruptly by Marcos. Chomsky nailed it when he said the US achieved 90% of their war aims in Vietnam, only failing to meet their maximal war aim of an 'independent' south Vietnam. This would have been a cherry on the cake, but was never very important. US losses rather got out of hand but 50% were 'after' Nixon took over by which point they could have walked away with under 30,000 killed and the same result as they finally had to accept anyway. We tend to have a very simplistic view of 'winning' based on WW2. That degree of victory had seldom before been achieved. Forcing unconditional surrender and reshaping the post war world to the victor's liking. The public expectation was that Vietnam would be an easy win. They should have known better but it's hardly surprising they did not.
Lat to the party. I'm a Vietnam vet, the more I learned of Vietnamese history while I was there and afterward it became clear the US and Vietnamese where fighting totally different wars. The US cold war realpolitik assumed the Vietnamese were dumb puppets of Communism while the Vietnamese were fighting to throw off the shackles of colonialism. In addition the government in the south was corrupt and never engendered widespread support. It is important to remember in the aftermath of French withdrawal elections were scheduled. When it became apparent Ho Chi Ming would win in a landslide Saigon and Washington prevented to election, thus setting the stage for the conflict and ultimately costing millions of lives.
Interestingly now long after the war the US and Vietnam enjoy a good relationship. If only the US had stood by the goals of the Atlantic Charter FDR strong armed Churchill in accepting many lives would have been saved.
Thanks for your service. That said, one thing that I think many people forget is that this wasn't a war between the "US" or even the "colonialists" and he "Vietnamese" but between Indochinese; sort of a civil war with both sides propped up by either sides (though not equally). But the North was able to successfully sell itself as the legitimate, true voice of the Vietnamese people (with some legitimacy sure, but I still remember studying about Uncle Ho's purge of the non-Communists in the Hanoi Coalition Government).
And yeah, the government in the South was tyrannical and corrupt, but the North was also quite so too. And while Diem was quite the scumbag and was probably already committed to rigging the elections, Ho was ultimately struck from the ballot for masterminding a violent terror campaign in order to intimidate voters into giving him the office like he had in the North (while ignoring both how Diem probably would rig the elections anyway and how he couldn't exert the same kind of control as he had over the North, where "Land Reform" was already killing dozens of thousands). So Diem's actions to strike Ho from the ballot cited a legitimate grounds, even if it was for an illegitimate reason.
And it was also probably one of Ho's great missteps, since it cost him a lot of Southern popular support he and his heirs had to painstakingly regain.
apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a032416.pdf
And it didn't set the stage for conflict; even before Diem rigged the election Viet Minh cadres (Already being turned into the Viet Cong) were planning violent revolution (I can't say I blame them given the nature of the government, but it goes to show Ho was already committed to seizing total power by force). As the man himself said, "All those who do not follow the line which I have laid down will be broken.'"
RVN corrupt his, incompetent that. More US BS to cover up the fact that they sold out an ally. No wonder no one trusts the US these days.
@@vandeheyeric Also, hundreds of thousands of Catholics had fled the North - their future under Ho looked bleak and dark (being 'French-oriented', or whatever paranoia the commies came up with), as the progroms were real - so they opted for freedom in a (Catholic governed) South - it was a clear indication not everyone supported Ho, despite his highly efficient propaganda-machine...
Both of my grandfather's served in Vietnam. One was air force, the other army.
Does anyone know what word he is saying at 3:10?
"... it's frankly (in) North Vietnam" (according to CC, which is not 100% accurate - and yes, he's hard to follow, at times).
You sir are a Military genius!! I am a proud subscriber to your channel!! General Douglas MacArthur quoted "it is fatal to enter a war without the desire to win it". Politicians usually get into wars for one reason, to stuff their money bags and to collect from their lobbyists!! Ironically, General MacArthur also warned JFK not to get involved into Vietnam!! He knew it would only be a second chapter of the first Indochinese War!!
The first American General that knew about a total war was General Sherman!! General Sherman knew that the only way to win was to bring the war to the heart of the Confederacy and this was proved right as by the point you made!! Great video sir, keep up the great work!!
The Vietnam War would always be a limited war. It was limited because the countries backing North Vietnam were China and the Soviet Union. China has a 800-km common border with North Vietnam. Even if US troops conducted a total war by marching north and took North Vietnam, North Vietnamese troops could retreat to China and struck out from China. What then ... American troops marched further north to take China as well? If America attacked China, would that need another 'total war' in order to win? No one in Washington with any sense would want a limited war in South Vietnam degenerating into a world war.
When we studied the Vietname War inn ROTC back in the early 80s, we talked about it in terms of doctrine at the time.
1. There were two related wars going on in Vietnam, an internal civil war in the South and an external invasion from the North. This was similar to what happened in Korea.
2. US involvement began as a contact battle with US troop defending bases. This pattern continued through the war; albeit a highly mobile contact battle with maximum firepower.
3. We talked about "battlefield isolation." A line across Vietnam along the DMZ through Vietnam, Laos, and into Thailand. This would have allowed isolated the battlefield allowing US forces to deal with Northern aggression while South Vietnam dealt with the internal Viet Cong. It should be noted that there were extensive US and applied incursions into Laos.
4. US doctrine and political concerns prevented battlefield isolation.
Just some things we learned back in then day. The textbook for that class was a book written by an LTC at the War College. I don't seem to have the book anymore, but I will look.
Love all your suble jokes and irony, something to include more?
Currently reading the excellent "Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy: 1945-1975" by Max Hastings, highly recommended.
hastings is an idiot.
Would be interesting to see you compare the Malaysian emergency to the Vietnam war, i.e a successful counterinsurgency war against an unsuccessful one.
Different war the Malaysian communists where mostly ethnic Chinese a minority group , easy to know who they are , easy to cut off from their support
11:40 hey maybe you could add a card for your video(s) with Prof Neitzel about the cohesion of military units
Win the battle but loses the war
I didnt realize Hannibal was American
Vietnam war was a war that never won a battle, but win the war. A true guerilla war.
The Viet Cong and Northern regulars definite won some battles, not many but still
You don't win unless the other person quits or is unable to fight. unable or unwilling.
Illya Lypyak yes they win for a little battle but it's the most important battle
A great video.Too bad you did not start with a short history of Vietnam (1940-60)What did you say at 6.21?? Would you say Stalingrad was also an example of overwhelming fire power not working?
Changed how I view Vietnam, ty
Interesting points about ratios. You didn't mention the order of battle after the Try Offensive.
From the American perspective they were fighting to stem the Communist tide, while from the Vietnamese perspective they were fighting an independence war against the American colonialists who had simply replaced the French, Japanese, Chinese, etc..
These political foundations were the primary impediment to "winning" the Vietnam war.
The US did not understand how the Vietnamese people thought and lost the popular support to the North
Theirs actually a fun anecdote that I remenber hearing. That when the first US troops landed on Vietnam and where moving to the air bases an old Vietnamese man stood up, waved and 'cheered' them in French thinking that France had come back.
damagejackal: At one point in late 45 - early 46 the Vichy French holdouts with US support using the stranded remains of Japanese troops worked together to try and re-establish French administration in the cities. A unholy alliance indeed.
*North Vietnamese perespective. Don’t forget the millions of Vietnamese who didn’t support communism.
@@JurzGarz: We are fortunate to understand now that whoever runs Vietnam is none of our business. Millions of Americans don't support Trump, but if the Vietnamese tried bomb any of our cities flat, I would unite with the resistance as the Vietnamese did. It is a natural response of a people sharing a language and culture. Of the 16 corrupt leaders in the short life of the US military theme park called "South Vietnam" none are revered. Ho is rightly seen as the father of Vietnamese independence.
You make a curious mention about needing to be committed on a World War II level. General Matthew Ridgeway (of World War II and the Korean War) was credited as the reason the US didn’t directly join France in Vietnam in 1954. He laid out the commitment to President Eisenhower the extent of commitment (almost the same force sent to Korea) and the requirements of victory, and Eisenhower considered it too costly a commitment.
The problem with Vietnam was it was a long way away, Enoch Powell (a British politician) who was a brigadier during WW2 noted the inverse square rule of power over distance. Here we could imagine a war between US and UK, the UK would have no chance of fighting the USA abroad but over time we should be able to fight them well locally in the UK. He questioned whether the British reliance on its empire, to hold India we needed to be a power in the med, africa and far east. In a sense we were safer in the UK during the Napoleonic wars when we just had the main priority at home rather then spreading our forces.
The realpolitik solution would have been to notice that "vietnamese communist" has the word "vietnamese" in it. By siding with the north, US might have been able to pry apart any potential communist alliance (by USSR or China) turning Vietnam in to a Yugoslavia of the east.
Turning an European nation who already had cleansed all Stalinists in 1948 (brutally so) and who had broken with the Comintern in 1948 on its own accord (Tito didn't like Stalin very much and certainly wasn't keen to turn his people into some vassals after having been ruled by others for centuries, Ottoman Turks and Austrians) is one thing. Turning an Asian country who distrusted all European colonial powers - and those who picked up the baton to seemingly do their bidding is quite another.
While Yugoslavia allowed its citizens both to work abroad and save their income in banks in hard currency D-Marks (west-German money) I'm not sure how much faith the Vietnamese put into the French franc or even the US Dollar. French post WW2 foreign politics certainly were brutal - Algeria is but one example.
I understand your angle though. Siding with the South Vietnamese was a mistake. Even though reports kept coming in about the brutality and harsh treatment of people at the hands of the South Vietnamese very little was made to antagonize them for the sake of a better good. While they could have been astute enough to see that the North had very little sympathy for neither the Chinese nor the Soviets (basically imperialist nations in a "communist guise" in the eyes of many Vietnamese) they just basically decided the war wasn't for the independence of the Vietnamese people rather than another proxy war against the Soviets and China.
From the viewpoint of most Vietnamese people it made little sense to side with the regime in Saigon. It was excessively brutal and trying to be brutal with a starving people out of options is never a very good idea.
@ McToaster:
This seems especially plausible since the very same ideological approach already had failed in China in 1944 when the recommendations of the Dixie-Mission to support the communist 'remnant' Mao Zedong as the 'heir apparent' of Sun Yatsen (founding father of a Republic of China in 1911) were dismissed in favour of the 'Peanut' - as General Stilwell bitterly mocked the longstanding leader of the Guomindang.
th-cam.com/video/I5cl0GjPjy4/w-d-xo.htmlh22m55s
(After Kissinger's covert 'Ping-Pong-Diplomacy' and Nixon's visit in 1972 'Red-China' became an informal ally versus a 'revisionist' Soviet-Union and was rewarded in 1979 with the very seat in the UN Security Council that was originally designed for a post-WW II nationalist China)
th-cam.com/video/Lnz7Ze71Pc0/w-d-xo.html
That the Americans went through the very same counter-productive motions in the very same region within only two decades is..., for lack of of a better term, remarkable...
Considering that Ho Chi Minh was a US ally from 1941-1945, it would have been possible to get him to agree with a Yugoslavia-type deal. Something like:
You don't allow any foreign troops in your country and we give you some Foreign Aid.
Considering that Ho really didn't want to trade in French colonials for US or USSR colonials, this is probably something that would have worked. Why did we not do this? Stupidity, it looks like.
As the *Dixie* *Mission* (1944-1947) to *China* failed due to the ignorance of the US adminstration towards the competent judgement of the - VERY few - qualified *'China* *hands'* , specialists in US diplomatic or military service who had some *understanding* *of* the *Sinosphere* , including the *local* *languages* (John Service, Col. David Barrett, Sgt. Koji Ariyoshi) and were *persecuted* *by* *McCarthy* after their reports turned out to be correct ("Mao will win the civil war due to popular support") - so did the US bureaucracy depend on the judgement of individuals like Albert Peter Dewey, veteran operative of the OSS, inadvertently killed in an ambush of 'French imperialists' by the nationalistic Viet Minh in 1946.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9d/JPDmemo.jpg/451px-JPDmemo.jpg
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/89/Ho_Chi_Minh_%28third_from_left_standing%29_and_the_OSS_in_1945.jpg/800px-Ho_Chi_Minh_%28third_from_left_standing%29_and_the_OSS_in_1945.jpg
*"Cochinchina* *is* *burning,* *the* *French* and the British *are* *being* *destroyed* there *and* *we* *are* *forced* *to* *get* *out* *of* *Southeast* *Asia"*
(Dewey in: Logevall, Fredrik: Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam. New York 2012. P. 117.)
So why is the leading economy and last global power incapable of stabilizing the Greater Middle East?
th-cam.com/video/4yzxkE72vkA/w-d-xo.html
And how could it have been handled since 2001? Dropping the utopian, technocratic theories of 'modernization' and 'rational choice' and return to proper *'area* *studies'* .
th-cam.com/video/wuT9M48TQb0/w-d-xo.htmlm04s
th-cam.com/video/__vRMIfcAWM/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/1CIIpPUJAqY/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/5DYn2RVq6nk/w-d-xo.html
@@christophmahler . . . the Dixie Mission (1944-1947) to China failed due to the ignorance of the US adminstration towards the competent judgement of the - VERY few - qualified 'China hands' , specialists in US diplomatic or military service who had some understanding of the Sinosphere , including the local languages (John Service, Col. David Barrett, Sgt. Koji Ariyoshi) and were persecuted . . .
Yeah, that Right-Wing Nut factor was a major issue during the Cold War.
The central problem was that the McCarthy crowd just didn't want to hear anything that they didn't want to hear. I understand that this is still a problem in Washington. . .
Several times , the JCS suggested cutting the Ho Chi Minh Trail , and every time , it was rejected by Johnson and MacNamara.
Very interesting video, haven't seen it until today!
On topic of attrition warfare: when a single soldier is basically a guy with an AK-47 or an RPG-7, you can replace losses until you run out of men. Replacement costs are minimal. In such cases that strategy is hardly going to succeed and if it does, the human cost is just horrible.
What is worrying to me is that we had the same scenario in Afgahnistan and Iraq. Back in 2001 already it looked to me like officials seemed to not pay attention to this. We can see what has come from that now..
Fun questions on "War against Terrorism": How do you win a war against a method (terrorism is a method of achieving goals by violence)? What is the ultimate victory condition?
Thanks for the video. The reasons for us leaving South Vietnam would form a very long list. World War Two in Europe was a war of Attrition and I think the United States fought Vietnam in the same way.
6:18 made my day :D
"The politicians didn't let us win the war," seems like an excuse similar to Germany's stab-in-the-back myth.
But with Vietnam it makes sense, USA was was winning in the ait and on the land, and had total cotrol of the sea...
Also they could run this level of war effort indefinitely. North Veitnam could not sustain it for nearly as long as USA could
That's exactly what it was. Policy-makers and generals blame the home front for the results of their own bad or wicked decisions and misjudgments.
@@johnweigel9761 Apparently you have absolutely no idea about anything. Politicians and the media sold us out. Because of them, we couldn't do what needed to be done.
@Chas Maravel The US was a signee to the SEATO Southeast Asia Treaty Organization. The legal government of South Vietnam asked for help. As a member, the US was obligated to help. LBJ and the dumbocrats saw an opportunity to help the economy grow. So what if a few soldiers had to die.
Except for the fact that the politicians didn't let the military win the war.
Have you read "On Strategy - a critical analysis of the Vietnam war" by Harry G. Summers? Found it was a very interesting take on the strategic failure, especially with a different spin on why the politicians failed, basically because the military did not present clear strategic options for victory. Found it very interesting
I am curious how you feel about the limited nature of the Korean War and do you feel that MacArthur was right to want to attack China?
Brilliant. Like Barbarossa, but with an ocean, plus nukes. Russia would win that war no matter who lost.
I'm reading "This Kind Of War" and found some possible reasoning for the UN's inaction. The US training was substandard at best in the early stages of the war as well as being road bound and needing more supplies due to the civilianization (I just made that up) of the army, Compounded with the inhospitable terrain and obsolete equipment that was being used (M1 Garands, M14s, and ww2 radios) and the "they will see us and run" mindset caused major problems in the early war and were compounded when China entered the war. Combining this with the ROK troops having outdated weapons to fight with caused further problems. Simply put, invading china would have caused more strain on an already overtaxed system.
The U.S. didn't have the man power or resources to win a war againist China. It would have been disastrous with numerous casualties. There is no way the U.S. could possibly invade mainland China and if they did, you can expect Russia to intervene even further.
Scheiss Egal If Usa invaded china then intervention of Ussr would be certain and with plenty of firepower.Usa would have to face 2 Communist superpowers
MacArthur was an idoit, while full on war with China will give them the edge they need ib Korea, but what do you do after? transform a Korean war in to ww3?
The reason the US didn’t fight the war offensively was the fear of a Chinese intervention, as in Korea.
The other issue that needs to be addressed is the US failure to supply the ARVN, the South Vietnamese Army. The whole problem that a Vietnam intervention needs to solve is not necessarily to beat the NVA, but rather to strengthen the ARVN to the point where it can beat, or at least beat off, attacks by the NVA. The US needs to be able to leave, and if the ARVN remains weak, the US can never win, no matter how soundly it beats the NVA. Because the NVA can always reconstitute itself, and attack after we leave.
So, the issue is whether the ARVN could have been stood up. The South Vietnamese government was indeed corrupt, but the ARVN has sone effective units, and may well have been able to hold off the NVA, had they been adequately supplied by us, as the Soviets were for the NVA. This is the question that needs addressing by a video like this.
The ARVN was more than capable of thwarting any conventional invasion by the NVA on its own after 72 had it been properly supplied. But instead aid was pretty much all cut. By 75 it was a military out of ammo. But it still lasted far longer than what Kissinger expected. The US wouldn't last a couple months fighting with what the RVN was given, let alone last 2 years.
Eisenhower once said that: “...wars are stupid and they can start stupidly”, those words are worth keeping in mind before one talks about ‘winning’ a war and Vietnam was a war that fit Ike’s description very well. People keep telling me that if the US had only done Linebacker I and II at the start followed it up with massed armour etc.. and turned N-Vietnam into a moon landscape the war would have been ‘won’ within a year. The problem with fighting a WWII/Korea style total war total war is that is that gutting a country and turning it into pile of rubble with the consequent mountains of charred civilian bodies is that this may have been possible in 1940-1953 when reporting still consisted of reporters wiring in articles by telegram. It was not possible in the age of near live television broadcasts directly from the battlefield and into living rooms around the world. Then there is the question of what the Chinese and Soviets would have done if the US had gone Korea style total war on N- Vietnam? They had heavy bombers too, they had more sophisticated fighters than the Mig-21, they could have gotten more deeply involved, and now both sides had multi megaton nuclear tipped ICBMs ... escalation? ... anybody? Vietnam was a war you could not ‘win’ except conventionally, at fairly low intensity and most certainly not without the local population’s support and for the most part the US, did not have it.
Eisenhower got us into Vietnam, what an asshole!!!!
There’s a Vietnam era sick joke about how the war could have been ended.
1) Put all the friendlies (non-communists) on boats and ships in the South China Sea
2) Bomb the country until all the communists are dead and not a tree is left standing
3) Sink all the boats and ships
Was the Vietnam War an unwinnable war? It was won. By the good guys, at great cost.
The american one year rotation systems of individual soldiers goes back to the second world war. Martin van Creveld described this terrible system in his Book "Fighting Power", mainly based on research on the US-Army after the war. But the Army was unable to change their "civilian" system of replacement.
Will you talk about the Korean war soon?
My ex's father was an advisor to an ARVN unit and then a Col. In the Air Cavalry. After the war he wrote his Army War College thesis on the conduct of the war. His paper agreed that incrementalism and frequent rotation of conscripts were fatal errors. He described McNamara's strategy as send 1000 men, when 900 die, send 10,000 until 9000 die and so on. As to the latter, it undermined support at home because of the number of involuntary conscripts and, as you said, just when a man was nearly trained, he was leaving. Where my Chinese friends would disagree is that the 1.4 million Chinese in Korea were "Volunteers." That is an interesting turn of phrase to apply to Mao Zedong who killed and enslaved more people than Adolph Hitler.
The saying in my part of the world is, wanted as better, came out as usual...
The siege of Khe Sanh was not a major engagement?
It turns out all modern war revolves around one issue: supplies and the key one is ammunition. The supply of ammunition is the sole determining factor in all wars. However, in the modern idiom of warfare ammunition is never totally constricted to any of the participants. The result then turns out to be continuous warfare that simply is more or less intense shifting from one geographical location to the next. Therefore no modern war ever achieves victory. I believe that this well thought out and intentional.
We lost after the Tet offensive, public support dropped like a rock.
The peace movement at home in America is the reason the Pentagon is so involved now in how the military is portrayed in popular media like movies and television.
I suggest looking for the docu 'Enemy Image' here on TH-cam and checking that out. It's essentially a comparing & contrasting how war reporting has changed and evolved since the TV became a common technology right before the Vietnam war compared to current day reporting - it's well made and extraordinarily enlightening(it gets a little tin foil hat-ish on occasion, but the actual information presented is quite legitimate), namely in terms of how the media reporting had such a significant impact on the Vietnam war in specific, including the US public's opinion of the war as it continued. It includes interviews with multiple reporters who were originally present & reporting on the war, plus other wars and how the results of Vietnam lead to the current very controlled narrative/propaganda of modern day war reporting. Needless to say, spoon fed information comes from the reporters that seek to work with the US military(during Vietnam, reporters were allowed in to report on anything they wanted as they saw fit without oversight - this obviously changed significantly after), while the truth comes from those willing to take the risk of being independent reporters, at times even following enemy forces(since they don't have a planned, organized media campaign, and the soldiers of course want to tell their story, they're able to report from the other side with some level of factual accuracy).
Anyway, ramblings aside, the media certainly played a SIGNIFICANT role in the result of the Vietnam war, and so that documentary seems quite relevant to this piece.
5:17 reminds me of US Union General Sherman's words: "War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over", just before his 'March to the Sea' during the US civil war. I suppose the comparison is interesting, because Sherman was 100% committing to total war (arguably inventing total war) and non-defensively went out to break the enemy, both economically and militarily, in their own home turf.
An issue sometimes overlooked is the overarching context of the Cold War and Korean War. Going on the offensive into the North was probably the only way to ensure the war in the south was won, but would the Soviet Union allow that? Would China? Less than 15 years before the Chinese intervention in Korea had turned the tide and inflicted the largest battlefield defeat the US Army ever had.
We can make arguments today that the USSR or China would have stood by if we had engaged in total war with the North, but *at the time* it wasn't clear that was the case.
Like always.. I like your evaluation and interest... even if I don't agree . Not suggesting I disagree here.... I was in the Army during Nam but did not serve there. Everyone's evaluation is based on their experience. .. so we may see it differently. Most everyone I knew thought the war was just like the Korean war at first. . It was winnable and the Vietnamese just needed help to win. As time went on and many soldiers came home ( sharing their experiences that underlined the corruption, greed and lack of desire to fight by the Vietnamese .. ( and our own) )we started to see the Vietnamese people were not as supportive of themselves fighting the war.. so many of us changed our view. It was their war they needed to fight it.
We did not know just how much the South was infiltrated by Communist, pro North and just corrupt military and government elements. We knew it was bad but my evaluation now it was way higher than we knew. That made the war unwindable in my opinion. If the South was more supportive ..I think it could maybe be possible but not for sure.. There were a lot of political things to consider.. like China.
The interesting thing is President Kennedy took action to get us out of Vietnam ,just before his death ,as he thought the war was unwindable because there was not enough support form The south. I don't know how he came to this conclusion but I think he was correct. Just after his assassination , his decision was reversed and we were in.( I suspect this is one reason why he was killed.)
I suspect One of The biggest negative things to come out of this war.... is the miss-reading of U.S. feelings... terrorist believe that terrorism was the key to the North's victory..
The Military learned a lot from this war.. and have determined not to be in that situation again.
There was huge communist infiltration in the South but the big difference with Korea is that the jungle terrain makes its much easier to conduct guerrilla warfare. When the US entered the war the South Vietnamese were right on the verge of losing it, so the low morale of the South was to be expected. A sustained effort to secure and build up the Southern population, not just kill VC/NVA, would have helped restore the morale and fighting capacity of the South.
I don't think difference between combat troops and support personnel (or tooth to nail ratio) matters _that_ much. The ideal tooth to nail ratio is determined by the technology you are using and the length of the supply chain. If you don't have enough support personnel, all your fancy vehicles can't be maintained, so retraining 2/3 of the logistical personnel into combat troops and then actually have them join the fighting probably wouldn't do too much good even if it enhances the numerical superiority of fighting men from a 1.6 : 1 ratio to a 5: 1 ratio
the opposite of well done is well intented..
Wise words.
We also did ourselves no favors by ignoring the experiences and advice of our Australian and New Zealand allies who were experienced in jungle warfare in the Malaysian Emergency.
That was a British led war. Australian and NZ only participated
@@damienpace7350 ‘experienced’ was the word used; not ‘led’; Uk was not in the American (Vietnam) War, but Australian and NZ troops were - compare like with like.
we lost more than dien ben phu in indochina. Look at the battle of the RC 4 (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Route_Coloniale_4), french troops were really outnumbered and fought a desesperate fight with huge losses. French forces (with many german in it) fought bravely but the task was an impossible mission. For frenchmen indochina was quite a disaster (france was bankrup at that time and not able to sustain a colonial conflict) but France won the military part of the conflict in algeria, but lost it finally because of political pressure internally and internationally.
Thanks for the info!
This has been our problem since 1945.....
The comments have been remarkably civil so far.
One should not forget that the antiwar fraction of the USA was the majority of the population at the end of 1972.
The counter insurgency tactics weren’t as developed back then.
I agree, I personally believe quite simply the idea of 'Limited Warfare' doomed the US to failure in Vietnam, you either go into North Vietnam as well as South Vietnam or you just don't go there to start with.
So why are thinking of the EU in this context?
Please clarify ;)
"The first, *the* *supreme* , the most far-reaching *act* *of* *judgment* that the statesman and commander have to make *is* *to* *establish* by that test *the* *kind* *of* *war* on which they are embarking; *neither* *mistaking* *it* for, *nor* *trying* *to* *turn* *it* *into* , something that is alien to its nature."
(Clausewitz. On war. 1833.)
In more than one occasion after WW II the US apperently mistook itself for 'gallant little England' in another 'Peninsula War' ('hit and run' tactics of guerilla warfare from a 'moral high ground') - while actually resembling Napoleonic supremacy ('search and destroy missions' in asymmetric/counter-insurgency warfare, inadvertedly fueling fervent de-colonization)...
Although it is a historian's privilege to select and order events, 'proving' the most plausible outcome...
(a fine illustration of *Corbett's* concept of *'Limited* *Warfare'* by maritime powers with some remarks on Clausewitz)
th-cam.com/video/be7IYWAvrYE/w-d-xo.html
No such thing as an “unwinnable war”.
Yep. Just lack of will and commitment.
I once heard an interview with an American strategist (from the mid 90s, I can't recall whom) that was party to delegation that asked the UK to join Korea & Australia in Vietnam, especially the UK as they'd sucessfully dealt with communist insurgents in Malaya & Burma. The UK looked into it & turned down on the basis "You are not going to be able to kill them fast enough.", meaning that the North could, through it's high birthrate, continue to supply enough fresh troops ad infinitum. Given the endless supply of weapons, money, food, technical support & manpower from Russia & China, coupled with endless new recruits & Hanoi's couldn't care less attitude to casualties on their own side, Vietnam was unwinnable.
The question of whether the US could have won the war really has more to do with South Vietnam than any other factor.
There's a case to be made that getting rid of Diem was a major mistake, that the succession of coups left the country badly destabilized (which was worse than simply leaving Diem in power), and that by the time another effective leader - Thieu - came to power, it was too late.
Of course, it didn't help that the guy in charge of the strategic hamlets program was a VC infiltrator who seriously undermined the program.
What about the Nuke factor? Total War most likely have led to WW3, just like with N. Korea. People tend to forget that.
That Vietnam - The Longest War may need to be changed to Afghanistan - The Longest War shortly... 18 years and still going strong
Will you do a video about the non major powers in ww1 like Italy, Bulgaria and etc?
Endermann22 you might have missed something, but nearly no-one watches my WW1 content. See the Austrian WW1 medals, which has less views than most of my debriefings. The other aspect is that views are decreasing more and more, I can't really afford doing less popular topics.
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized
I'm sorry to say that, but no one really cares about medals. WW1 may not be the issue here.
I am fascinated by Great War, but still I dont care about medals from it. Perhaps you could try something really basic, like why Schlieffen plan failed?
I did other WW1 videos as well, even some in collaboration with the Great War didn't do particularly well.
Thats a pity:-(. I really liked them
I feel like what happened to the us in Vietnam was very similar what happened to Germany during world war 1. The population at home lost the will, or was severely against it.
I don't think thats what happened in germany. The military leadership panicked and urged the political leadership to make peace quickly. AFTER the war the same general said the german army was undefeated but the politicians stabbed them in the back. But thats not what happened. Still many wanted to believe it. And even if the the german population would have lost its will it wouldn't have mattered because it was not a democracy and germans don't do revolutions :-)
von klausevich correctly stated that Conflict in fact does not start with an attack but with a defense, its the willness of defend and keep defending what keeps conflict going.
USA as a country lose the will to defend their global strategic position in IndoChina, despite winning all the major battles, the people of USA didn't want to go across the entire world to war and die in a little country who didn't actually meaned that much, and in fact didn't supported the massive war crimes against civilians portrayed by the military.
The Vietcong/Norvietnamese on the other hand keep the will to defend their ideals of a unified Vietnam despite major tactical losses and great human costs.
Lastly, South Vietnam had little support of the people, and it was not just the corruption but it was seen as a puppet government without self determination.
War it is not a matter of just guns and militar power, but a political matter. Industrial capacity can decide aeronaval conflicts and dominant positions, but ultimately even a "tactically defeated" country can achieve their goal of prevailing against a much greater military power. That was part of the reason why USA dropped the bomb in Japan, the willness of Japan people to keep the fight going could have ultimately produced a major political drawback to the USA position for what was going to come
Read Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam, a major reason for the defeat of the US was the misreporting of success back to the politicians back in the US by the military in Vietnam and in particular by General Westmoreland, this eventually led to the loss of trust of the US president and many other politicians back in the US.
The best summation vis-a-vis the Vietnam War I’ve come across was that ultimately “it wasn’t our war to win.”
The U.S. never had nor were they able to develop a reliable partner in the South. Given geography, North Vietnamese commitment and continual unending support by the Soviets and the Chicoms the U.S. enterprise in SEA, short of going Old Testament, was doomed from the start.
After General Abrams took over for Westmoreland at MACV, the war started to turn around for the South Vietnamese. There were huge improvements in counter-insurgency operations and much of the population was becoming securely under government control. Increased attacks on the Ho Chi Minh trail interdicted 90% of the manpower and materials sent from the north. Improved intelligence disrupted planned enemy attacks before they happened. All this happened while US forces were being drawn down. Even after the withdrawal of US and Free World ground troops, the ARVN was able to defend and defeat major NVA campaigns. One of the main contributing factors to the fall of South Vietnam, was that the US Congress refused to replenish ARVN equipments losses that was part of the US commitment in the Paris Peace Accord. South Vietnam didn't run out of willpower or manpower, they ran out of ammunition and weapons.
Hay Herman we didn’t lose the war in the field, we lost the war in the streets in the USA.
After all was done there, we did not win it. Don't shift the blame.
To clarify my previous point further, in a war there is really only one question: Is the war aim worth my life, or my family’s life?
If the president of the United States couldn’t convince Americans that the war was worth their own or their childrens sacrifice then it’s pointless. Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford couldn’t convince Americans, because South Vietnam wasn’t ever worth their sacrifice.
[~6:08] (German) "The opposite of well done, is well-intended."
The roughly equivalent standard Anglo-American aphorism would be, "Actions speak louder than words." No, that's not quite saying exactly the same thing... But I think that's largely due to the very idea of "Intentions" being an abstraction too opaque for the typical Anglo-American mind. And that's arguably the kernel of this whole discussion, even re. American self-analysis of our own goals. Let alone our appreciation for the real motivations of our enemies.
Think longer version of it is "road to hell is paved with good intentions".
RE: US didn't lose any major battles. Other than the Tet offensive -- which devastated the VC (intentional by NVietnam?) -- the VC/NVA didn't lose any major battles either.
Parallel: in the American Revolution, I can't remember the Continental Army under George Washington winning any major battles. The Battle of Trenton was a psychologically important victory, but small scale and Washington had to retreat before the arrival of British reinforcements. Yorktown was largely a French victory because it was a siege, which was outside the skill set of the Continental Army. Yet the Continental Army was essential to victory because it kept the main British Army fixed in small geographic areas, allowing other Rebel forces to take control of almost all of the colonies. Similarly in Vietnam, the vast majority of battles were initiated by the VC/NVA (discovered by John Paul Vann?) and they broke off battle as US forces concentrated. Westmoreland's (US Commanding General) strategy of Search-and-Destroy meant that once the VC/NVA broke off fighting, the US forces would also leave the area.
As this video states, the US strategy was one of attrition, so the only measure of "victory" for the US was body-count, and that was routinely highly inflated (a feature of many wars, as other videos on this channel have addressed).
What most assessments of the war miss is how thoroughly the SVN elite was riddled with Communists because this became visible only after SVN fell. These were not infiltrators, but members of elite families and they held high ranking positions in the bureaucracy, the military and various commercial entities.
Henry Kissinger - future National Security Advisor and Secretary of State in the Nixon presidency - had severe doubts about the winnability of the war in the early 1960s. After a visit in 1965, Kissinger judged the war to not be winnable by military means. There were many others with expertise who had already reached similar conclusions. So much of the arguments about military strategy, tactics, campaigns that came after the escalation by the US starting in 1965 may be irrelevant to the outcome.
One of the reasons I recommend this channel to others is its focus on underlying causes, such as logistics, industrial capabilities,...
There's an interesting alternate point of video on Johnson's War.
When LBJ was in power, the US economics policy was basically Kensyen. Keynes believed that the only healthy economy was one with a continuously increasing GDP number. If your GDP dollar value wasn't increasing, then your country was collapsing. He was quoted as saying that this requires constantly increasing production of goods. But if you make *useful* goods, you will eventually run out of a need for them, because you will have made all that are required. Then your economy and country will collapse. So the only way you can guarantee a constantly increasing GDP is to make something useless, so that you will never run out of a need to make it. According (again) to Keynes, the only thing that you can make forever and not "saturate the market" is destruction. He is quoted as claiming the Greeks realized this and sent gallions out to sea, full of gold, and sank them just so they would have a need to dig up more gold and keep their economy afloat. I think this is most likely BS, but he is quoted as claiming that. The LBJ government was concerned about economic collapse, and wanted to find a way to keep the GDP levels up.
At the same time we had a bunch of university social studies professors that had discovered the exponential rule, and applied it to population. If every couple had two offspring and nobody ever died we would populate ourselves off the face of the Earth in a few dozen generations. "Population explosion" became a popular new term in society. The university professions, who had apparently never taken a world history course, were terrified of this, and put great pressure on Washington to Do Something about this horrible nightmare disaster. They were recommending mandatory sterilization of some percentage of all females, picked by lot, to reduce this. That idea didn't go well with the general public. Then they demanded the government institute mandatory birth control. That fared a little better, and got the Catholic Church up in arms, big time. They still are, as a result of that. So what was Johnson to do? He needed to do something about the horrible threat of overpopulation. Well, if you can't give out birth control pills, you can see to it that some of the population of breeding age dies off. This eliminates some population right now (pleasing the social science professors) and eliminates their ability to breed, theoretically reducing the size of future generations. Great!
So now we have the set: we need some way to prop up the GDP by making something that nobody needs, like destruction. And we need some way to eliminate a sizable part of the population to remove the horrible threat of overpopulation. What can the Government do about this? I know, how about a war? We can make lots and lots of really expensive military equipment, and then lose it in fighting in a jungle somewhere, so we will need more. We can send soldiers Over There, and have them die. They can't breed while they are over there (at least not with females in the US, because they are elsewhere), and if they die, then they aren't going to come back to breed. And that is also a form of destruction, using up the GDP it took to educate and raise them before killing them off before they could do something useful.
So there it is: Viet Nam was the wonderful Forever War that was going to constantly need ever-increasing amounts of military goods (thus increasing GDP) while at the same time killing off ever increasing numbers of males, thus reducing Overpopulation. It was never intended to be won, because if it was won it would stop, and its whole reason for existence was continuous destruction of goods and people to meet the needs of the current economic and population theories.
By now you are saying that is crazy and stupid; it completely ignores limited resources, inflation, normal population curves, common sense, and just a boatload of other obvious problems with the theory. You will get no argument from me on any of those points. But I wasn't making policy during LBJ's reign. And if you go back and look at the social forces in the US at the time, I think you will find that those two points were remarkably strong social movements at the time. Just because it was insanely stupid doesn't mean it wasn't the reasoning behind the war.
Oh, and it didn't hurt that LBJ wanted to play checkers with live pawns.
"Oh, and it didn't hurt that LBJ wanted to play checkers with live pawns." - like any socialist/marxist/liberal government... "All for the greater cause". I never heard your 'theory' - it's extreme and... cynical - doesn't mean it is not possible...
As I understand it: after Cuba (and Carthyism), 'communism' was a real topic in the US: Cold war, nukes, WWIII etc. The Domino Theory made sense, as Eastern Europe was squandered away by a naive, ignorant and stubborn Truman (Churchill warned him...) to a masterminding, deceiving Stalin.
So, to Johnson, to not completely lose 'middle America', he needed to look tough on communism. What better way to fight it? But then not really fight it, because you don't really want war - so, you hire some incompetent, smart talking guys that can fight it the new way: with tools and toys, with statistics, looking 'educated' - and you keep the soldiers at a leash, so they don't do too much damage or make real progress - jeopardizing your 'nice, little war'.
Too bad the enemy didn't cooperate - they kept sending GI's back home - in bodybags. LBJ had hoped he could strike a deal with his fellow 'socialists', but they were not too loyal to his agenda. So, 30.000 KIAs later, he ran with his tail between his legs. Afterwards, the 'bright' guys felt guilty and sorry - mostly for themselves, because on paper their plan looked so truly clever...
@@ibubezi7685 Hum. I'm not sure I would classify LBJ as socialist and just barely as liberal, and certainly not Marxist or communist, at least not in the accepted senses. King Johnson I think closer fits his mindset. A Texas version of a Chicago gangland boss might be an approximation. Johnson wanted what was best for Johnson, and everyone else could go hang. Johnson is reputed to have won his election to the Senate by a few hundred votes out of tens of thousands. A recount was to be made, but the courthouse where the ballots were stored conveniently burned down the night before the recount was to be made, destroying the ballots. It kinda makes you wonder a little about JFK's assassination in Texas and LBJ becoming president as a result, since LBJ almost certainly would never have carried a presidential election by normal succession.
Same situation as Afghanistan at the moment
The main problem was topleing the souths government and failing to get a stable and popular government in the south
I think the civilian side: that is to say, how could you expect the South Vietnam goverment to reliably and stably govern the whole country, is under-discussed in this video.
i think its wasnt even a possibility considering the only strong leader was Diem who was offed by the US. Instead you get a bunch of warlords and incompetents who allow corruption to fester ever more so than it did before