Worst Vietnam War?

ThePest179

Banned
How badly could the Vietnam War have gone (for the US in particular)? How could it have been more destructive and/or deadly than OTL?
 

Realpolitik

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For the US? Depends if you mean militarily in Vietnam itself or in terms of domestic strife at home. The two are not always the same.
 

Realpolitik

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ThePest179 said:
Both, but preferably the former.
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From a geopolitical strategic standpoint, your best bet would be to get into the great powers behind North Vietnam as more than just patrons. What got the North Vietnamese to sign the deal OTL, more than anything else, was being "sold out" by their socialist brothers, leading to the failed Easter Offensive. The best way of doing that is somehow getting the administration to invade North Vietnam. I can't see LBJ doing that though, and I hold that a Goldwater victory is near ASB levels.

Another suggestion is to make the ground war even more of a quagmire. That's difficult, but possible suggestions are further infiltration from the North Vietnamese in tandem with a lack of a bloody military stalemate on the ground. No bombing would help, and no Tet Offensive would help so that the VC remains a problem. The North Vietnamese could mess with Sihanouk even further than OTL, prompting an earlier coup, prompting in turn a more serious Cambodian mess for the Johnson administration while Vietnam gets bad.

Or maybe you could have Thieu take a bullet so that South Vietnam remains in a permanent state of anarchy into 1968, or under the leadership of Ky. That's a true recipe for disaster.

EDIT:

All of this, if done correctly with the right parameters, can lead to the second condition as well. But that's a risky game if we are involving the Communist giants-an antiwar movement that is seen as a Moscow stoolie pre 1966 or so will harden the still relatively conservative in terms of foreign policy populace. 1968 is different, but you are gambling with the right wing backlash by then, assuming OTL parameters.
 
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ThePest179

Banned
Realpolitik said:
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Interesting. I like your suggestions, particularly the "kill Theiu" one, although Fear, Loathing, and Gumbo did the same, and despite it eventually the US won.

What about US troops themselves? From what I've read on Vietnam, their conduct was apalling, is it possible to make it worse?
 

TxCoatl1970

@ThePest179- Look up Backfire by Loren C Baritz.

Really, the US did everything it could to lose in Nam from 1965 on.

Barring letting Operation Vulture go ahead (nuking Hanoi) or physically invading DRVN- there's not much else the US could do to mess up worse.

The f'd up irony lately is all the things the US military's done since 9/11 in COIN and keeping folks there for extended tours and maintaining unit cohesion at all costs in Iraq and Afghanistan are attempting to address the mistakes in Nam Baritz enumerates at length.

IMNSHO the US had no decent COIN doctrine or interest in playing small-ball with the VC. The fact that the RVN government was a corrupt shitshow with 0% Approval Rating outside the incestuous Catholic mandarinate made it even more appallingly silly waste of time, $$$, and lives.

For maximum irony, by 1973, DRVN was forced to fight a conventional war with RVN that the US was totally disinclined to engage, or supply the ARVN with the gear, ammo, fuel etc that would give them a fighting chance against the PAVN.

Nixon did Nickel Grass for Israel. Why not a balls-out airlift/sealift of gear and supplies that could allow the ARVN to fight?

Thank Frank Church for basically cutting Nixon's nuts off. Right decision, wrong time. Congress should've done that ca 1964 when LBJ floated the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that turned Nam from a sideshow to a main-tent attraction.

The US is great when we set the tone and fight with firepower, technology, and room to exercise our logistical legerdemain in main-force engagements.
We'll light 'em up like a pinball machine.

Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap weren't dumb enough to fall for it completely, though they wanted Pleiku to be Dien Bien Phu- the decisive victory convincing the US it was pointless.
It showed trying to go toe-to-toe with the US military was bloody suicide.

Tet was a cute trick- a shoot-the-moon gamble that would demonstrate how little control the US had over RVN.

I'm your basic liberal hater of the whole Vietnam War, but it would've been interesting if the US and ARVN forces counter-attacked, formed a pocket and annihilated the PAVN invaders and struck deep into DRVN territory, straddled the HCM trail and basically dared Hanoi to do anything about it.

YMMDV.
 

Dave Howery

kinda hard to see how the US military could have fared worse... most times that it came down to a stand up fight, the US superior firepower made itself felt. Which makes me wonder if the north would have done better to go even more out for small scale insurgent operations to the max, something the US/RVN forces didn't handle very well. 'Death by a thousand cuts' I suppose. As for the home front... it could easily have gone worse. More Kent State type shootings, more paranoia about the protesters combined with harsher crackdowns on them, etc.
 

Kevin Renner

Prehaps a worst Viet Nam War would of been one where the US totally defeats the VC and the North leading to a more militarilly adventurous United States.
 

arrowiv

A worse Vietnam conflict would be the fall of Saigon during LBJ's term, resulting in a second Joe McCarthy Red Scare. This was something Johnson was so worried about during his administration. What would the results would have been if such an event happened? Who would lead it (Goldwater, Reagan, or Helms?) Who would have been purged or affected by it in its aftermath?
 

Richard V

The simplest scenario is just to have a longer war. If Tet plans were known ARVN and American forces would be on alert, the wily VC would likely cancel the operation. The war could last through the 70s with similar outcome.
 

Realpolitik

Banned
arrowiv said:
A worse Vietnam conflict would be the fall of Saigon during LBJ's term, resulting in a second Joe McCarthy Red Scare. This was something Johnson was so worried about during his administration. What would the results would have been if such an event happened? Who would lead it (Goldwater, Reagan, or Helms?) Who would have been purged or affected by it in its aftermath?
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This actually scared the crap out of Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon(!) alike, OTL. Each of them thought that if South Vietnam ingloriously fell-combined with the social turmoil for the latter two-the backlash would be tremendous.

Not to mention the fallout it could have with American allies in the region.
 

Realpolitik

Banned
ThePest179 said:
Interesting. I like your suggestions, particularly the "kill Theiu" one, although Fear, Loathing, and Gumbo did the same, and despite it eventually the US won.

What about US troops themselves? From what I've read on Vietnam, their conduct was apalling, is it possible to make it worse?
Click to expand...

Until Thieu took power in the fall of 1967 and sidelined guys like Ky while building a rickety base of support, South Vietnam didn't have any functioning government whatsoever, and controlled only urban centers-13 percent or so of its territory. Tet caused even greater destruction and loss of life, albeit while giving more support to the GVN government(attacking during the Tet holidays greatly angered many previously apolitical or slightly alienated traditional Vietnamese, and excesses in Hue increased that). The US was an ansatz for the ARVN and the life support for the GVN. Hence, if you could get rid of Thieu, this could get a lot worse. Either Ky takes over-and that'll be a horrible car crash-or we continue to have coup after coup. I'd suggest Nhu, but my guess is that would probably lead to a South Vietnam that the US really can't consider defending. He would be like Uday Hussein.

All wars are, as the good EN I noted. Compared to the Vietnamese themselves-North and South-and the Koreans though...

TxCoatl1970 said:
Nixon did Nickel Grass for Israel. Why not a balls-out airlift/sealift of gear and supplies that could allow the ARVN to fight?
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Because, as a pissed off Nixon noted repeatedly, Israel had a massive lobby, nukes, and the Senate was its most muscular base of support. For South Vietnam, it was the opposite. People weren't willing to throw down more money in the "hole", least of all with the economic crisis. And the Middle East had far more risk of a superpower confrontation than Indochina did, as well as a much bigger implications for the US. Bailing out Israel was a far bigger deal on the Richter scale.
 
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