A Peoples History of the United States - Howard Zinn
There was nothing, militarily, keeping the US from executing a full scale ground invasion of Hanoi and decapitate the North Vietnamese regime. It’s likely the US would have succeeded in that effort, much like it had 20 years earlier with invasions into German and Japanese held territories in WWII.
Why then did the US not invade North Vietnam? The last major conflict the US took part in was the Korean War. When the US pushed far enough above the 38th parallel, 700k Chinese troops entered the country and put the war into a stalemate.
The risk of the US putting full effort into the Vietnam was not that the US would lose, it was that US would find its self in a direct armed conflict with other nuclear equipped powers, and this would have set off events leading to a global nuclear war.
The bind the US was in was that it couldn’t commit to winning, but it couldn’t lose either. The US tried to outlast an enemy, which was defending its own home turf, which was an awful strategic mistake and lead to millions dead and the trauma associated with the war. Eventually the US government came to its senses and left the situation.
That didn't happen. That's a militaristic fantasy. What Zinn is describing actually happened. This isn't a debate.
> The risk of the US putting full effort into the Vietnam was not that the US would lose, it was that US would find its self in a direct armed conflict with other nuclear equipped powers, and this would have set off events leading to a global nuclear war.
Mutually Assured Destruction isn't "winning". Luckily that didn't happen either. We lost.
hmmm, but then you say:
> When the US pushed far enough above the 38th parallel, 700k Chinese troops entered the country and put the war into a stalemate.
Sounds like a military impediment to me.
> made a maximum military effort
USA did NOT make a maximum military effort in Vietnam.
If USA ever made a "maximum military effort" then the war would have been over in 3 months. That was the whole problem. They never did.
It doesn't matter what your imagination wants to have happened. It didn't. Why are you trying to put up your revisionist fantasy against a historical fact? We lost. Zinn's description is perfectly accurate.
Chest thumping about a war you lost 50 years ago...
That book is extremely pro communist (hence the title). This is a pretty poor take on the war for several reasons, not least of which "maximum military effort" and didn't use most powerful weapons are somehow in the same sentence. They literally did not use their maximum military effort (not just on the atomic bomb front). It was a political war full of mishaps that were capitalized on by North Vietnam. I also thought PRC and Russia backed North Vietnam which seems relevant. The general point that military might isn't the sole determinant of a wars outcome is true and important -- and also pretty obvious.
If the aim of the US was to ensure that Vietnam did not end up being communist, then they had to convince the people not to become communist. What they did, in some of the most horrific ways possible, was to convince the Vietnamese people, and a lot of those in neighbouring Cambodia and Laos that the western democracies didn't care about them as people, they were just playing politics with their lives. This left the Chinese backed communists and easy road to winning the hearts and minds.
The US lost the military war because they lost the public relations war, both at home, and in the country they were trying to liberate.
If you look at later wars, Gulf War 2, Afghanistan, you could argue that they have learnt nothing. You will never win people over to your way of thinking by dropping bombs on them, that just ensures that they will never bow to your will.