Why didn't the world save Vietnam?

[Rich2018]

Are you serious??

Yes...I did, however, say might.

 

[Cordelier]

No

The USA spends more on defense than the rest of the world combined.

Fair point... so how would you reduce it?

 

[Cordelier]

Yes...I did, however, say might.

Is it your experience that negotiating on bended knee from a position of weakness tends to yield positive results?

 

[Rich2018]

Is it your experience that negotiating on bended knee from a position of weakness tends to yield positive results?

Well it worked for the Russians.


What did Ho Chi Minh want ?

He wanted a unified and independent Vietnam.

He was also a communist.

The USA's biggest weapon the Cold War was always its economy. The USA is super-rich.


Be Ho Chi Minh's friend not his enemy.

As time has shown, Vietnam isn't too bad at capitalism. So build some factories, build some hospitals and schools, build them a railway and a dam. All good stuff.
No war needed, far cheaper and USA gets a source of cheap labor.

 

[Cordelier]

Well it worked for the Russians.

How so?

What did Ho Chi Minh want ?

He wanted a unified and independent Vietnam.

He was also a communist.

The USA's biggest weapon the Cold War was always its economy. The USA is super-rich.


Be Ho Chi Minh's friend not his enemy.

As time has shown, Vietnam isn't too bad at capitalism. So build some factories, build some hospitals and schools, build them a railway and a dam. All good stuff.
No war needed, far cheaper and USA gets a source of cheap labor.

Ho wasn't interested in "making a deal"... he just wanted us out. Period.

Now if we had obliged in 1964-65 - just pulled out of Vietnam - what kind of a message do you figure that would have sent? Do you figure the Indonesian military would have felt confident enough to act against the PKI in 1965 if it couldn't count on US support?

 

[Rich2018]

How so?

They gained Ho Chi Minh as an ally...same tactic worked across the globe.

...Ho wasn't interested in "making a deal"... he just wanted us out. Period....

Of course he wanted the USA out


He wanted all colonial powers out of Vietnam


I didn't mean make a deal that would allow to USA to exercise proxy rule in Vietnam


But make a deal to make Ho Chi Minh the USA's ally


Ultimately the USA had far more to offer. But instead of offering Ho Chi Minh hospitals and schools and factories...the USA offered bullets and bombs.

...now if we had obliged in 1964-65 - just pulled out of Vietnam - what kind of a message do you figure that would have sent? Do you figure the Indonesian military would have felt confident enough to act against the PKI in 1965 if it couldn't count on US support?

Vietnam wasn't winnable.

Who had the most support in Indonesia ?

Back winners not losers.

 

[Cordelier]

They gained Ho Chi Minh as an ally...same tactic worked across the globe.





Of course he wanted the USA out


He wanted all colonial powers out of Vietnam


I didn't mean make a deal that would allow to USA to exercise proxy rule in Vietnam


But make a deal to make Ho Chi Minh the USA's ally


Ultimately the USA had far more to offer. But instead of offering Ho Chi Minh hospitals and schools and factories...the USA offered bullets and bombs.





Vietnam wasn't winnable.

Who had the most support in Indonesia ?

Back winners not losers.

Le Duan was Pro-Soviet.... Ho Chi Minh leaned more toward China.

I think the only time your option of "buying off" Ho Chi Minh would have been viable would have been in the immediate aftermath of World War II.... but then it would have come at the price of alienating both France and Nationalist China, and it probably would have resulted in a Communist Government coming into power in Paris.

I think saying Vietnam wasn't winnable is a case of hindsight being 20/20... if you look at it from the context of 1964, I'd have to say that it looked very winnable.... and maybe it would have been with the right leadership in Saigon.

 

[Rich2018]

Le Duan was Pro-Soviet.... Ho Chi Minh leaned more toward China....

I'm not sure he did


How do you explain so much Soviet assistance to Vietnam ?

...I think the only time your option of "buying off" Ho Chi Minh would have been viable would have been in the immediate aftermath of World War II.... but then it would have come at the price of alienating both France and Nationalist China, and it probably would have resulted in a Communist Government coming into power in Paris....

I think Ho Chi Minh could've been brought in from the cold as it were any time up to the late 1950's

Don't support the French

...I think saying Vietnam wasn't winnable is a case of hindsight being 20/20... if you look at it from the context of 1964, I'd have to say that it looked very winnable.... and maybe it would have been with the right leadership in Saigon.

No, the Vietnam War wasn't winnable

It was obvious to any right minded politician or general


Sadly the USA had neither....and the French War became the American War


(the French didn't have anyone in power with enough brains to see the future either...)

 

[Cordelier]

I'm not sure he did


How do you explain so much Soviet assistance to Vietnam ?

Let's explore that.... North Vietnam had two main avenues for foreign assistance to reach it - overland rail from China and maritime traffic via Haiphong. When the US started it's bombing campaign over the North, it devoted a substantial portion of it's targeting to cutting off the railway ties to China.... but nothing at all against Haiphong, despite the fact that Haiphong was a much more vulnerable target. If they wanted, the US Navy could have mined the approaches to Haiphong or even instituted a maritime quarantine and cut off the supplies entirely. Why do you figure the Johnson Administration made this decision?

In my opinion, LBJ knew there wasn't going to be a military solution to the conflict. He wasn't prepared to invade North Vietnam and risk another Korea... or worse. So he knew the only way to end the war would be through negotiation. Every action he took in Southeast Asia was calculated to bring Hanoi to the bargaining table. But the US alone didn't have the power to compel Hanoi to negotiate. He tried the carrot with the Johns Hopkins speech and he tried the stick with bombing. He tried bombing pauses, peace initiatives, and dozens of other different ideas to try and get Hanoi to negotiate... all to no avail. If Hanoi was going to come to the table, one of it's two main sponsors - either the USSR or China - would have to lean on them to negotiate. The US had no diplomatic relations with China, so that was a dead-end from Johnson's point of view. His only option was to work with the Soviets to try and get Hanoi to negotiate... and the only way for the Soviets to get that kind of leverage was for the pro-Soviet faction within the North Vietnamese politburo to gain dominance. The more Soviet aid that got through, the more leverage it gave Le Duan and his faction. Similarly, the less aid that came through from China, the more it weakened the pro-China faction. Ho Chi Minh and his "old guard" and worked with and fought beside Mao going back to the Chinese Civil War.... Ho and Mao were both revolutionaries - they understood each other. The pro-Soviet "young Turks" in Hanoi didn't have this connection - they saw closer links with the Soviet Union as a means of countering undue Chinese influence.

Food for thought here... if you doubt all that I just posted, just look at how things actually turned out - look at the timing of Nixon's opening of relations with China and how closely it was followed by the decision to mine Haiphong in 1972.

 

[Rich2018]

Let's explore that.... North Vietnam had two main avenues for foreign assistance to reach it - overland rail from China and maritime traffic via Haiphong. When the US started it's bombing campaign over the North, it devoted a substantial portion of it's targeting to cutting off the railway ties to China.... but nothing at all against Haiphong, despite the fact that Haiphong was a much more vulnerable target. If they wanted, the US Navy could have mined the approaches to Haiphong or even instituted a maritime quarantine and cut off the supplies entirely. Why do you figure the Johnson Administration made this decision?

In my opinion, LBJ knew there wasn't going to be a military solution to the conflict. He wasn't prepared to invade North Vietnam and risk another Korea... or worse. So he knew the only way to end the war would be through negotiation. Every action he took in Southeast Asia was calculated to bring Hanoi to the bargaining table. But the US alone didn't have the power to compel Hanoi to negotiate. He tried the carrot with the Johns Hopkins speech and he tried the stick with bombing. He tried bombing pauses, peace initiatives, and dozens of other different ideas to try and get Hanoi to negotiate... all to no avail. If Hanoi was going to come to the table, one of it's two main sponsors - either the USSR or China - would have to lean on them to negotiate. The US had no diplomatic relations with China, so that was a dead-end from Johnson's point of view. His only option was to work with the Soviets to try and get Hanoi to negotiate... and the only way for the Soviets to get that kind of leverage was for the pro-Soviet faction within the North Vietnamese politburo to gain dominance. The more Soviet aid that got through, the more leverage it gave Le Duan and his faction. Similarly, the less aid that came through from China, the more it weakened the pro-China faction. Ho Chi Minh and his "old guard" and worked with and fought beside Mao going back to the Chinese Civil War.... Ho and Mao were both revolutionaries - they understood each other. The pro-Soviet "young Turks" in Hanoi didn't have this connection - they saw closer links with the Soviet Union as a means of countering undue Chinese influence.

Food for thought here... if you doubt all that I just posted, just look at how things actually turned out - look at the timing of Nixon's opening of relations with China and how closely it was followed by the decision to mine Haiphong in 1972.

What you say is correct but I'm not sure what conclusions you're trying to make.

Ho Chi Minh certainly was aware of Chinese domination. I was in Vietnam in 2000 and saw a few roads named after Lenin. I didn't see any named after Mao.


But anyway, are you saying that Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson took the only path available to the USA ?

 

[Cordelier]

What you say is correct but I'm not sure what conclusions you're trying to make.

Ho Chi Minh certainly was aware of Chinese domination. I was in Vietnam in 2000 and saw a few roads named after Lenin. I didn't see any named after Mao.


But anyway, are you saying that Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson took the only path available to the USA ?

The conclusion I'm trying to make is that North Vietnamese politics - just like the politics of any nation... totalitarian or democratic alike - is more complicated and nuanced than we tend to think. There are always competing factions operating under the surface. There's always a dominant faction and at least one opposition - even (especially even) in a single-party State. Hard-liners and moderates. There is no way any faction of the North Vietnamese politburo could have accepted a "deal" with the US on any terms short of unconditional victory without being attacked for doing so by the other... in the same way that Mao constantly criticized Khrushchev for being too conciliatory to the West.

I wouldn't say that Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson took the only path available.... there are always alternatives. The question is were there viable alternatives that wouldn't have ended up making the situation even worse? Broadly speaking, we could have been even more Hawkish and risked healing the Sino-Soviet split - maybe even sparking World War III?..... Or we could have been more Dovish, and risked having the Domino Theory become a self-fulfilling prophecy (I don't think for a moment that China would have been reluctant to capitalize on our Dovishness to make gains in Indonesia and Thailand).