Western vs Eastern warfare

[DreadCthulhu]

In the case of Vietnam, the US had to fight with one hand behind its back; the US had to limit its level of conflict to prevent the Soviet Union and/or the PRC from directly entering the war, which would have led to a third world war. Which nobody wanted.

Had China or the Soviet Union not had the ability to back up North Vietnam, the US could have launched a full scale invasion of the North, occupied it; the occupation would have been bloody, but without being able to get extra supplies from China, eventually the communist wouldn't be able to fight.

 

[Bugfatty300]

It wasn't tactics that lost Vietnam, it was the fact that the VC refused to give in.

The VC was a secondary independent fighting force. They were pretty much wiped out when the NVA used them as cannon fodder durring the Tet offensive.

America technically did no loose the war. America did not start or finnish the 2nd Indo-China war. South Vietnam lossed the war.

America failed in containing communism in Cambodia and Vietnam but the other smaller actions as well as the massive reduction in NVA military stregnth by the U.S. forces helped save Tailand, Malaysia, Burma and possibly India from simular fates.

And America did not run away thanks to Nixon. America began slowly withdrawing its troops by 1969. Then America bombed Hanoi to the point that North Vietnam was forced to signed the Treaty of Paris in 1973 and that was the end of American involvement in the 2nd Indo-China War. It was clearly a stalemate as far as U.S. intervention went.

The war went for 2 more years with out American involvement and finally in 1975 Saigon was captured and more Vietnamese and Asians were killed in those two years than durring the entire U.S. involvment.

The Vietnam War has got to be the most misunderstood action in history.