Was it possible for the United States to have definitively won the Vietnam War?

What this evidence goes to show us is that the United States could have never won the Vietnam war; the South Vietnamese government completely lacked the leadership or legitimacy among the people to even build sufficient popular support; and the fact that the South Vietnamese were purely reliant upon the support of the …

Was the Vietnam War conventional warfare?

To learn from the American experience in Vietnam one must understand the nature of the war that was fought there. At no time was it a conventional war; from beginning to end it was a people’s or revolutionary war in which both irregular and conventional forces played important roles.

What would have happened if the US won Vietnam?

So if the US had won, the Cold War would probably have ended a little sooner and the dawn of that unilateral superpower controlling things would have come quicker. In Southeast Asia, everything would be radically different – including a faster and more thorough confrontation between the USA and China.

Was Vietnam victory possible?

America did not experience a “lost victory” in Vietnam; in fact, victory was likely out of reach from the beginning. There is a broad consensus among professional historians that the Vietnam War was effectively unwinnable.

How could the United States have won the Vietnam War?

In an utterly banal sense, the United States could have won the Vietnam War by invading the North, seizing its urban centers, putting the whole of the country under the control of the Saigon government and waging a destructive counterinsurgency campaign for an unspecified number of years.

What was North Vietnam’s only hope for victory in Vietnam?

Thereafter, North Vietnam’s only hope was to conquer South Vietnam by means of conventional military campaigns, which the United States successfully thwarted. In the United States, public opinion grew opposed to the costs in blood and treasure of the controversial war.

How did China get involved in the Vietnam War?

It is now known that in a secret meeting between Ho Chi Minh and Mao in the summer of 1965, China agreed to enter the war directly if the United States invaded North Vietnam. As it was, China’s indirect involvement in Vietnam was its greatest military effort after the Korean War.

What happened to the US commitment to defend South Vietnam?

The American commitment to defend South Vietnam, described as unequivocal by Nixon and Kissinger, had been vitiated by the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s subsequent resignation. By that time, the Paris Accords seemed memorable only as the vehicle on which the United States rode out of Southeast Asia.