re: Could any strategy have worked in Vietnam?

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Was there anything we could have done other than not getting involved at all?

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Just 1 thing; go into with the goal of winning, as in annihilate North Viet Nam

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It will be interesting in 20 years to compare/contrast what happened in Iraq to vietnam.

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Pretty simple IMO; Vietnamese wanna work for shite, Iraqis don't

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My best hindsight, and I've studied this for all of my adult life, is more or less based on Harry Summers book, On Strategy.

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Thanks for the recommmendation. I am plowing through part I right now. Incredible read and very easy to understand. Cannot believe this is not part of SSC curriculum. Smaller active military and larger reserve component leads to less inclination for interventionism. The necessity for a declaration of war. No deferments. Get the Nation behind you. Should have declared war on the root cause (North Vietnam). Excellent, excellent book.

Many thanks

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Incredible read and very easy to understand.

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I only go back to 3 books on Vietnam over and over - On Strategy, Stanley Karnow's excellent Vietnam and We Were Soldiers Once ... And Young. I read all of them during ROTC, although Karnow's book was assigned reading for a 4000-level history course on the Vietnam War. That experience, plus having 2 ROTC senior NCOs with significant combat experience in Vietnam changed my perspective on the war forever.

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IMHO, yes, BUT, pursuing such a strategy might have been beyond the capabilities of the "reigning" US military and political leaders of that time.

The first phase of The Strategy would involve direct negotiations between US political leaders and China, the Soviet Union and even North Vietnam. At those talks, the USA could have made its war aims clear -- independence and peace for the two separate nations of South and North Vietnam. The USA would inform all parties that the USA would wage Total War to achieve its war aims, and that North Vietnam's entire infrastructure would be targeted in this war -- to include all of its industrial and maritime infrastructure, such as port facilities and railroads.

Second Phase: Fulfill the promises made at the talks, should North Vietnam persist in its conventional and unconventional efforts to conquer the Republic of South Vietnam.

Third Phase: Ongoing throughout US involvement -- shape the nascent South Vietnamese nation-state to shape and improve develop its methods of governance -- give it a sort of crash course on civil rights, a judicial system, etc.

Of course, this Strategy might have provoked China and the Soviet Union into a wider war. Low risk of that happening, IMHO, so, that's why IMHO, this Strategy could have worked.

The KEY to the Strategy would be to make it clear to North Vietnam that the USA would guarantee it's sovereignty AND would make North Vietnam a trading partner, should that some day be mutually beneficial. At some point, my guess is that North Vietnam would have chosen peace, because we would have been killing so many millions of those people that they would be running out of men and women.

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On Strategy.

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Cannot believe this is not part of SSC curriculum

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I can believe it. Army is not fond of items that are critical.

I came across that book at Ft. Knox. It was on the shelf because one of the commanders there recommended it. But he was a an anomaly. He'd once referred to the garrison staff there as 'insurgents' and he did it with a microphone in his hand, not as an aside during a training meeting.

Another good read is the article from Yingling, "A Failure in Generalship". There were some CGSC students that went after him/it, of course.

Also, the book "The Path to Victory: America's Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs" by Don Vandergriff, is one of those that more people should read.

You can also get with the pubs officer in your unit and order a tremendous number of books through that route - lots and lots of history books, not just FMs. Army bundles them up and sends them to the pubs office on post, they put them on the shelf and your pubs officer just picks them up. Regular historical accounts, and others more like vignettes are available, like 'Seven Firefights in Vietnam'.

It's a shame the Army doesn't push a better reading list and doesn't push it down to all ranks and encourage more consumption of reading material.

When the British went to Afghanistan, some of their officers wrote lessons learned and various accounts. Stuff like that is commonly found at Leavenworth, at the Foreign Studies Office(?).

When the Soviets went to Afghanistan, after they got beat up a bit, some of their officers discovered these texts from the British. They found that the same tactics used against the Brits were being used against them, on the same exact terrain. These items and books that captured them, such as 'The bear went over the mountain' and 'The other side of the mountain' were all there, known about, and institutionalized knowledge that just never happened to leave Leavenworth.

We went to Afghanistan just after 911. And we faced the same tactics, at the same time of day, on the same terrain as the Brits and Soviets before us - and we were completely surprised by it - and that is ridiculous. Finally the Army's CALL put out little booklets on common TTPs used against us. I don't recall those ever being available before 2008 or perhaps 2007 - which is mindnumbing.

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The war itself. We didn’t need to get involved.

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If we hadn't gone to Korea, if we hadn't gone to Vietnam, if we hadn't helped in Afghanistan, there would still be a USSR, we would still be on the brink of nuclear war, and we would be outnumbered in the world by communists.

My only complaint was we went in with half-hearted commitment and no resolve to destroy the enemy. Giving communism a foothold in North Korea and Vietnam not only lead to the deaths of millions of people, but also prolonged the cold war another decade.