Question about Vietnam war

[Jovec]

The best, and perhaps only, way to win a war is to define the terms of the victory. The US, for a variety of reasons, has been defining unachievable victory terms since Vietnam.

 

[werepossum]

Isn't this exactly what you are doing by saying we weren't defeated in Vietnam?

It was a defeat. 50,000 americans dead, nothing gained.

Well, it WOULD be, if I had been saying we were defeated in Vietnam. You are once again confused. I'm the guy saying we lost the war AND some of the battles. (And I see no shame in that.) Yes, we won most of the battles; most of the battles only wins the war if you are willing and able to occupy your opponent's base, or if you can destroy his forces or his lines of communication to the point he becomes unable or unwilling to prosecute the war. I'm not even claiming that we forced North Vietnam to the bargaining table, as we left South Vietnam very much on North Vietnam's terms. I think I have been very clear on that.

Many people like to pretend that we won Vietnam militarily by forcing the North to sign a peace treaty, then lost it politically when the Democrats cut off the aid we had promised under the Paris accords. While it was a national embarrassment and the South might or might not have been able to resist the North had we kept up our end of the bargain, such a position ignores that we left because we were beaten. As Ho Chi Min had promised, we killed (at least) ten of theirs for every one of ours lost, and yet we tired of it first. He would sign any peace treaty to get us out, with no intention of abiding by anything in it, and we absolutely knew it. The Democrats cut off the aid we had promised simply because the nation had lost its will to fight, seeing nothing we could gain worth the price we'd have to pay. That was actually smart for us, even though it was brutal on the South Vietnamese who were slaughtered by the hundred thousands; having reunited their nation under self rule, the Vietnamese showed no inclination to help spread Communism. Therefore the treasure invested by Red China and the Soviet Union came to little. As Vietnam remained a backward nation with little purchasing power, even the trading partner advantage came to little.

Amusingly, today Vietnam looks like we won. 95% of Vietnamese believe that people are better off under capitalism and free markets than without. Then again, maybe it looks like they won even more; only 70% of Americans say the same. http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/10/09.../#free-market-seen-as-best-despite-inequality

Much like the Germans in WWI, the cause of our 'defeat' was getting involved in somebody else's war in the first place.

Setting aside that most wars are somebody else's wars at first, I don't think that's true of the Germans or of us. France wanted restored the lands (particularly Lorraine) that it had lost to Germany in the Franco-Prussian War; Germany wanted to keep those lands, which had long been disputed and whose rule had switched many times.

For ourselves in Vietnam, the Soviet Union was making no bones about its plan to unite the world first under Communist rule and then specifically under the Soviet Union. Each nation that fell to Communism strengthened the Soviet Union. Even backward nations like Vietnam, because in order to conquer their non-Communist neighbors (or protect themselves from them, depending on your political bent) they needed to buy Soviet-made armaments and to build up their heavy industry (a major tenant of Soviet-style Communism) they needed to buy Soviet tools and equipment. Nations directly controlled by the Soviet Union became vassal states, used not only to loot and build up the Soviet war machine but also as a base from which to levy troops. Therefore every nation that fell to Communism made it more likely that America too would one day fall to Communism. We didn't win in Vietnam and consequently lost Cambodia and Laos, but we did blunt the force sufficiently that Thailand and Malaysia remained free.

 

[Genx87]

The Sino-Soviet split during the 60s reduced Chinese role in the war right when we were ramping up troop levels. After the war the Chinese and Vietnamese fought a series of battles which left China bruised while letting the Soviets know Vietnam was really out of their sphere of influence.