Modern militaries vs (relatively) primitive guerrillas

[Istakhr]

If that was the plan, then I fail to see how the U.S. invading North Vietnam or not is particularly relevant.

US had the effective nuclear arsenal that chinese didn't and NATO armies in Europe were a danger if USSR got bugged down in China. Soviets didn't want to start WW3 with US siding with China and wanted at least a US nonintervention guarantee before going ahead.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

US had the effective nuclear arsenal that chinese didn't and NATO armies in Europe were a danger if USSR got bugged down in China. Soviets didn't want to start WW3 with US siding with China and wanted at least a US nonintervention guarantee before going ahead.

But a large scale nuclear strike initiated by the Soviets would be a game changer regardless of what was occurring in Vietnam. Don't really see that as being much of a factor either way.

[Lummel]

...The internal political situations in North and South Vietnam were largely irrelevant. If one side had a superpower's backing and the other didn't the winner and loser were a certainty. The best South Vietnam imaginable would lose to a Soviet backed North and a North would lose to a US backed South of the worst possible political makeup absent Soviet interference. I also think I'm using a distinction in the word "political" that I didn't make sufficiently clear. There are always politics attached to the prosecution of war, but there are also unrelated political decisions largely or entirely detached from the politics of executing warfare...

I disagree, largely completely, quite possibly because we are approaching this from irreconcilable angles.

Although again it is quite likely I'm also being simplistic, but when people take up arms in guerilla warfare or an insurgency they are doing so to achieve a political result that they believe that they can not achieve through the conventional political means possible in their society.

If you are going to deploy purely military means against those people you are looking at either destroying them, or containing them in such a way as to restrict their ability to operate. For a long term resolution then you are reliant upon either destruction, exhaustion or unforeseen change making the struggle unpalatable or irrelevant to those who were taking up arms.

The third is unpredictable, the first two require an input of resources considerably greater than that of the insurgents over prolonged periods of time. Overall military means alone are inefficient in resolving these kinds of conflict, ie they cost a lot and take time.

In the specific case of Vietnam if the desired end state objective for the USA is to have a non-communist state of South Vietnam, separate from and not in any form of political union or association with North Vietnam then local political considerations, the internal political and social dynamics of Vietnam are hugely important in determining if that end state is either a viable or impossible objective. Further, such an objective can't be achieved by military means alone (so the war by definition is unwinnable from the start), because simply fighting North Vietnamese incursions doesn't make the South Vietnamese state a more attractive proposition for its population, it is at best a precondition for a state attractive to its citizens to flourish, at worse large numbers of foreign troops, with bases, their requirements, their spending habits, their behaviour are destabilising and a further source of weakness and unpopularity for the local government - in which case you get a situation where the increase in effort to achieve a military resolution makes the end state goal progressively more difficult to achieve, hence the war becomes to all intents and purposes unwinnable if the more resource you deploy, the more the local situation deteriorates.

Of course within that situation the military can be deployed with great skill, aplomb, technical and tactical innovation and what have you, but it is a Humpty Dumpty situation - the means employed can't achieve the desired objective.

[Istakhr]

But a large scale nuclear strike initiated by the Soviets would be a game changer regardless of what was occurring in Vietnam. Don't really see that as being much of a factor either way.

Well, if US and China were already at war over Vietnam as people suggested here, then I doubt any US president could justify siding with Chinese against Soviets.

Also as far as I understand, USSR didn't plan a large scale nuclear attack, only a limited strike to take out the chinese nukes (which were extremely limited at the time) and possibly northern army commands before moving in with their conventional military.

[RWHamel]

Is there any such thing as a limited nuclear strike? It seems to me, this was one of the BS thoughts put forth by the pseudo-intellectuals during the Cold War. In my opinion it doesn't work.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

Well, if US and China were already at war over Vietnam as people suggested here, then I doubt any US president could justify siding with Chinese against Soviets.

Yeah, I strongly doubt that. WWIII is going to take precedence over some third world backwater. Especially a WWIII sparked by nukes. If The U.S./NATO preset response was to back China against the Sovs in such a situation, I doubt a sideshow like Vietnam would preempt that reaction.

[Istakhr]

Is there any such thing as a limited nuclear strike? It seems to me, this was one of the BS thoughts put forth by the pseudo-intellectuals during the Cold War. In my opinion it doesn't work.

When you don't nuke cities? :dunno:

Without today's GPS controlled bombs and cruise missiles, making sure you destroy a vital hardened target (your enemies nuclear missile silos, nuclear equipped bombers in air bases, etc) means either a huge conventional bombing raid or a nuke?

[Mazigh]

I suppose it is then. Of course this does not explain how the actions of one person make the Syrian rebels cannibals.

They certainly don't disapprove of it The huge crowd of rebels just cheered him on chanting Allahu Akbar No matter if they ALL eat humans or not they are still going around massacring entire villages raping little girls and nuns beheading priests and Alawites The only "secular" rebels (terrorists) are pan Arabist chauvinists who want to annihilate the Kurdish and Assyrian minorities in Syria

[Istakhr]

Yeah, I strongly doubt that. WWIII is going to take precedence over some third world backwater. Especially a WWIII sparked by nukes. If The U.S./NATO preset response was to back China against the Sovs in such a situation, I doubt a sideshow like Vietnam would preempt that reaction.

Maybe, I don't think we can be sure about how far USSR wanted to go in China, what they told the US government about their plans and what was the US response and plans in this case until all documents related to those year become declassified, I guess in 50 years or so?

[aceluby]

They certainly don't disapprove of it The huge crowd of rebels just cheered him on chanting Allahu Akbar No matter if they ALL eat humans or not they are still going around massacring entire villages raping little girls and nuns beheading priests and Alawites The only "secular" rebels (terrorists) are pan Arabist chauvinists who want to annihilate the Kurdish and Assyrian minorities in Syria

I find it interesting how quickly people can get the label 'terrorist'. Farmer can't farm his land anymore because of severe drought, the govt refuses to do anything about it, the farmers protest, the govt try to squash them... now the farmers are 'terrorists'. All because the job their family has done for generations no longer exists due to severe weather changes and the govt refuses to help them.

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

I find it interesting how quickly people can get the label 'terrorist'. Farmer can't farm his land anymore because of severe drought, the govt refuses to do anything about it, the farmers protest, the govt try to squash them... now the farmers are 'terrorists'. All because the job their family has done for generations no longer exists due to severe weather changes and the govt refuses to help them.

Yeah, that's not very similar to the Syrian rebels at all. Many of them are foreign fanatics that are funded, armed and transported to Syria by other Middle Eastern regimes to destabilize the country, and calling those terrorists is entirely appropriate.

[Mazigh]

I find it interesting how quickly people can get the label 'terrorist'. Farmer can't farm his land anymore because of severe drought, the govt refuses to do anything about it, the farmers protest, the govt try to squash them... now the farmers are 'terrorists'. All because the job their family has done for generations no longer exists due to severe weather changes and the govt refuses to help them.

It is more like all is going well for the farmers and then they get tired of having a Alawite for a leader and that religious and ethnic minorities (kurds christians shiites alawites assyrians etc) are allowed to live in what they perceive should only be a Arab sunni country

[Ragnorak]

I disagree, largely completely, quite possibly because we are approaching this from irreconcilable angles.

Although again it is quite likely I'm also being simplistic, but when people take up arms in guerilla warfare or an insurgency they are doing so to achieve a political result that they believe that they can not achieve through the conventional political means possible in their society.

If you are going to deploy purely military means against those people you are looking at either destroying them, or containing them in such a way as to restrict their ability to operate. For a long term resolution then you are reliant upon either destruction, exhaustion or unforeseen change making the struggle unpalatable or irrelevant to those who were taking up arms.

The third is unpredictable, the first two require an input of resources considerably greater than that of the insurgents over prolonged periods of time. Overall military means alone are inefficient in resolving these kinds of conflict, ie they cost a lot and take time.

In the specific case of Vietnam if the desired end state objective for the USA is to have a non-communist state of South Vietnam, separate from and not in any form of political union or association with North Vietnam then local political considerations, the internal political and social dynamics of Vietnam are hugely important in determining if that end state is either a viable or impossible objective. Further, such an objective can't be achieved by military means alone (so the war by definition is unwinnable from the start), because simply fighting North Vietnamese incursions doesn't make the South Vietnamese state a more attractive proposition for its population, it is at best a precondition for a state attractive to its citizens to flourish, at worse large numbers of foreign troops, with bases, their requirements, their spending habits, their behaviour are destabilising and a further source of weakness and unpopularity for the local government - in which case you get a situation where the increase in effort to achieve a military resolution makes the end state goal progressively more difficult to achieve, hence the war becomes to all intents and purposes unwinnable if the more resource you deploy, the more the local situation deteriorates.

Of course within that situation the military can be deployed with great skill, aplomb, technical and tactical innovation and what have you, but it is a Humpty Dumpty situation - the means employed can't achieve the desired objective.

Definitely coming from different angles and our premises are a bit off as well. I'm coming from the US military involvement in South Vietnam is a prerequisite for its continued existence in the face of a Soviet backed North premise while you're approaching it from the next step of looking at the impact of that involvement and military involvement in general.

I also think we may also have a different premise regarding North and South Vietnam. South Vietnam was a separate political entity from the northern part of the peninsula since the mid to late 1800's. It was French Indochina. I get the sense that you see an internal problem related to sustainability represented by the Viet Cong that I don't think we agree on. The Southern government wasn't ideal but it wasn't repressive either. Was it unpopular? Maybe. Hell, the US Congress has about an 11% approval rating today so "popular" and "unpopular" are odd terms when applied to governments. The people of South Vietnam were not clamoring for freedom or petitioning to be part North Vietnam. Some two million people fled in the years after Saigon fell which is roughly 10% of the entire 1975 population and refugees are typically a minority of the unhappy.. Quebec has a secession movement it just doesn't have a superpower arming it or importing French speaking AK-47 wielders to hide behind bottles of Molsen.

In almost any insurgency you're looking at a minority of the population. Even our two century old bitter dispute was not one that had majority support at the outset (though I'm not entirely sure of the polling methodology there.) Insurgencies have to be fought at least in part by military means because the enemy, the insurgency, gets a vote and voted to use guns--- Here let me cheat and plagiarize Wikipedia. David Galula was a French officer who wrote about counterinsurgency theory based on his own experiences as well as historical research. Here are his rules which I suspect we may agree on even if not in how they would or did apply to Vietnam.

1. The aim of the war is to gain the support of the population rather than control of territory.

Most of the population will be neutral in the conflict; support of the masses can be obtained with the help of an active friendly minority.

Support of the population may be lost. The population must be efficiently protected to allow it to cooperate without fear of retribution by the opposite party.

Order enforcement should be done progressively by removing or driving away armed opponents, then gaining support of the population, and eventually strengthening positions by building infrastructure and setting long-term relationships with the population. This must be done area by area, using a pacified territory as a basis of operation to conquer a neighbouring area.

A victory [in a counterinsurgency] is not the destruction in a given area of the insurgent's forces and his political organization. ... A victory is that plus the permanent isolation of the insurgent from the population, isolation not enforced upon the population, but maintained by and with the population.

[Ramsay Gimp]

I find it interesting how quickly people can get the label 'terrorist'. Farmer can't farm his land anymore because of severe drought, the govt refuses to do anything about it, the farmers protest, the govt try to squash them... now the farmers are 'terrorists'. All because the job their family has done for generations no longer exists due to severe weather changes and the govt refuses to help them.

What does this have to do with the jihadists in Syria?

[Horza]

I also think we may also have a different premise regarding North and South Vietnam. South Vietnam was a separate political entity from the northern part of the peninsula since the mid to late 1800's. It was French Indochina. I get the sense that you see an internal problem related to sustainability represented by the Viet Cong that I don't think we agree on. The Southern government wasn't ideal but it wasn't repressive either. Was it unpopular? Maybe. Hell, the US Congress has about an 11% approval rating today so "popular" and "unpopular" are odd terms when applied to governments. The people of South Vietnam were not clamoring for freedom or petitioning to be part North Vietnam. Some two million people fled in the years after Saigon fell which is roughly 10% of the entire 1975 population and refugees are typically a minority of the unhappy.. Quebec has a secession movement it just doesn't have a superpower arming it or importing French speaking AK-47 wielders to hide behind bottles of Molsen.

Cochinchina was the southern district of French Indochina that comprised the Mekong Delta region, which in the colonial period was under direct French rule as opposed to "guided" Imperial Vietnamese rule - French Indochina refers to the whole of French possessions in Southeast Asia. North and South Vietnam were compromise demarcations produced by the Geneva Accords that concluded the French withdrawal from Indochina, under the terms of which they were meant to function as states until national elections could be held. The actual historical precedents of the northern and southern dynasties are interesting but they weren't terribly relevant to mid-20th century Vietnam as the political elites of the peninsula as a whole were ardent converts to a vision of a united Vietnamese nation state, it was only a question of which set of them would be running it.

Both groups were quite repressive, the DRV plunged straight into a classic Maoist land reform with the usual results. The Ngo family's reign in the RVN was big on crushing organised resistance and reaping personal reward. Not many people mourn the Binh Xuyen, Hoa Hao or the Cao Dai as independent armed non-state actors but your formulation of "unpopular but not repressive" kind of runs into a brick wall when it comes to Madame Nhu vs Buddhism. What the people of South Vietnam wanted wasn't really of interest to the Ngos, the DRV leadership or their respective superpower pals, but if the South Vietnamese government thought it was on solid ground with them it sure had interesting ways of showing it.

[Wade1865]

I once caught a guerrilla -- some fucker.

On a dismounted patrol, south of Baghdad, we were sniped by this fucker. He put a bullet in the head of one of my terps -- wounding him only. The sniper was too far to run after -- we were heavily weighed down with body armor and weapons, and there were several impassible irrigation canals in the way. Like a good counter-insurgent, I MEDEVAC's the terp, and proceeded to spend several months doing policework trying to find him.

By way of influence, persuasion, coercion -- we eventually find his house. The first thing we noticed was all the high-priced consumer goods like a big-screen TV, a stereo, and good furniture. We destroyed it all, terrorizing the shit out of the fucker's mom and sister. The good thing about these guerrillas was that they fight on home territory, and so they usually go home to sleep and eat. Eventually we catch the guy, bring him back to my Patrol Base, and proceed to break his will while chained from the ceiling.

We broke his will. We came to an agreement. We reconciled. He never sniped us again, and I continued to conduct dismounted patrols along his dirt road whenever we chose to.

[Wade1865]

Sometimes, my most recent girlfriend was worse than the AQI (Iraqi) or the HQN (Afghani) guerrillas. She'd laugh whenever I told her this, thinking it was funny. She was cruel to me.

[Wade1865]

Ukrainian girl -- daughter of a communist. She was heartless. We're getting back together...

[The Notorious]

I once caught a guerrilla -- some fucker.

On a dismounted patrol, south of Baghdad, we were sniped by this fucker. He put a bullet in the head of one of my terps -- wounding him only. The sniper was too far to run after -- we were heavily weighed down with body armor and weapons, and there were several impassible irrigation canals in the way. Like a good counter-insurgent, I MEDEVAC's the terp, and proceeded to spend several months doing policework trying to find him.

By way of influence, persuasion, coercion -- we eventually find his house. The first thing we noticed was all the high-priced consumer goods like a big-screen TV, a stereo, and good furniture. We destroyed it all, terrorizing the shit out of the fucker's mom and sister. The good thing about these guerrillas was that they fight on home territory, and so they usually go home to sleep and eat. Eventually we catch the guy, bring him back to my Patrol Base, and proceed to break his will while chained from the ceiling.

We broke his will. We came to an agreement. We reconciled. He never sniped us again, and I continued to conduct dismounted patrols along his dirt road whenever we chose to.

Very fascinating Wade, look like you applied the technique of stress position there during interrogation .... tell us more on how you interrogated and broke the will of this insurgent.