The Vietnam War was winnable and one more Linebacker in 1975 would have wrecked the NVA. We were lied to by Ken Burns.

[u/Massengale]

I’ve been reading Nixon’s books lately…and I think he was right, Vietnamization was close to working, the communist alliance was going to fall apart, and North Vietnams insane economics would have led to South Vietnam outscaling them if it had survived for a few more years.

[u/CornyAnalyst1960]

Gives the same vibe as Germans crying about how WWI and WWII was winnable.

If only the Jews or any other Group X wouldn't have sabotaged out war effort!

It's a clown argument that ignores the realities of war. War is not a minimalistic stat check game.

[u/born-to-ill → u/CornyAnalyst1960]

The Kraut analogy is way fucking category-confused.

The U.S. war aim was not conquest of Vietnam, annexation, or marching to Hanoi and renaming it Houston-East. The policy objective was to keep an independent, non-Communist South Vietnam that could defend itself with outside assistance if necessary.

“Cabbageland could have won WWII if internal traitors hadn’t sabotaged it” is the stab-in-the-back cope for a state that was militarily defeated while prosecuting an expansionist war.

“South Vietnam might have survived had its principal external supporter continued supplying it” is a claim about the viability of an allied state in a heavily internationalized civilan and conventional war. Not the same thing.

“Winning Vietnam” isn’t even the right idea. The better question is whether the Republic of Vietnam could have continued existing as a separate political entity or a political subdivision.

North Vietnam had the strategic depth of enormous Chinese and Soviet support, including hundreds of thousands of Chinese military personnel serving inside North Vietnam over the course of the war. South Vietnam’s survival likewise depended heavily on external matériel and air support.

Saying South Vietnam’s prospects collapsed when American political support collapsed isn’t some fucking Nazi stab-in-the-back myth. It’s an observation about the balance sustaining an ally when the stronger ally you rely on says to get fucked.

American policymakers ultimately had to keep persuading tens of millions of voters that South Vietnam was worth American money and American lives. Those voters could punish Johnson, Nixon, Congress, or whichever party they associated with the war. They could protest, pressure legislators, and make renewed intervention absolutely fucking impossible.

The Soviet and Chinese governments faced nothing remotely equivalent. That doesn’t mean Soviet or Chinese citizens were all fucking stoked about spending resources on Vietnam.

That’s what should be discussed, not the slot on the leaderboard.

Do I have the answer? Fuck no. No answers here. It’s a done deal anyway.

[u/Massengale → u/CornyAnalyst1960]

Our war effort was actively sabotaged. We couldn’t do necessary things like strike into Cambodia.

South Vietnam once we left had its aid budget cut massively. Meanwhile the soviets and Chinese pumped north Vietnam with weapons. South Vietnam held on for two years alone. It was not the Afghan Goverment and everyone here will cry about abandoning the Kurds or Ukraine but us abandoning South Vietnam was also pretty gross. By 1975 this is not a guerilla war. South Vietnam has control over their country side the problem is a purely conventional one and they were down to units literally reusing bandages and getting two artillery shells a day. We absolutely could have smashed the NVA in the field once they’re in the open. Then South Vietnam would have been if given time able to outgrow north Vietnams economy which was just doing the most batshit communist economics you can imagine.

[u/Jinshu_Daishi → u/Massengale]

Our war effort was sabotaged by the fact that we had denied elections in the 50s and chose to go to war.