Could We Have Won Vietnam?

[tame_deuces]

Grunching,

Counter-insurgency wouldn't have worked, even if following the british Oman model (which is the bomb) because you'd have the chinese and the soviets doing pretty much the same thing anyway.

Declaring war was not a viable solution in the beginning of the conflict, due to the international situation.

The change in military doctrines really came around when needed, it would be unrealistic to believe the US could have been prepared for all the eventualities in the vietnam, lending another reasons as to why early invansions could have been catastrophical.

The political gains from an American military victory are debatable, since ideally you would want the south vietnamese to win while you were there as advisors.

So all things considered the defensive line tactic seems like a good idea, the military tactics used throughout seems sound enough (the ratios are brilliant compared to anything of its time or before) and the political situation at home were out of control anyway.

So I'll end it by grunching that discussion if it could have been won is not really an issue.

The military certainly did a good job at the military bits and the political situation changed and the people didn't want to win nomore.

[Kaj]

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The military certainly did a good job at the military bits and the political situation changed and the people didn't want to win nomore.

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I disagree and so do many Vietnam war heroes and military analysts. Excerpt below from an excellent article on Vietnam's winnability, hosted on the US Army War College's site.

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<font color="blue"> Such military observers as Harry Summers, Jr., Andrew Krepinevich, Jr., David Hackworth, Dave Richard Palmer, Douglas Kinnard, and Bruce Palmer, Jr., are critical of the professional military's performance in Vietnam as well as that of civilian authority. Readers will discover among their writings[38] often brutal condemnations of professional hubris, the attrition strategy, excessive use of firepower, reliance on lavish base camps, self-defeating personnel rotation policies, command disunity and micromanagement, and an officer corps corrupted by careerism--none of which can be laid at the doorsteps of McNamara's whiz kids, David Halberstam, or Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda. These and other critics have properly concluded that no debacle as epic as America's in Vietnam can be ascribed solely to either military or civilian authority. Neither acquitted itself well, though ultimate responsibility for what happened to the United States in Vietnam rests with the White House. Harry Summers has observed that much of the criticism of political interference in military operations "is off the mark. Our problem was not so much political interference as it was a lack of a coherent military strategy--a lack for which our military leaders share a large burden of responsibility."</font>

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[sightless]

Highly unlikely that US could have won in Vietnam. Too much asymmetry in motivation.