Why did America decide to invade Vietnam and then lose?

Question

Why did America decide to invade Vietnam and then lose?

Answer 1

They didn't invade,they intervened militarily on the side of South Vietnam.I



The major reason was part of the US foreign policy of Containment (the cornerstone of US foreign policy throughout the Cold War).



Reasons for defeat:

Complaceny from senior military and political leaders



The US nevrv fought the Vietnam War a outrance



Ho Chi Minh and the North Vietnamese had the political will to take as many casualties as it took to win the war.25% of the North Vietnamese populatioon was killed during the war.That would have been the equivalent of 50 million Americans at the time;The American government and people lost the political will to fight on after less than 60,000 US deaths.

Answer 2

It was their country and they had something to fight for. We went in because we thought China was interested, which they so were not; we had no idea of jungle warfare and nobody trained these kids we sent - so we got back way too many damaged veterans who were addicts. The North Vietnamese made sure they got all the smack they wanted, and that is one of the reasons, among many others, why they won the war.

Answer 3

What many fail to grasp about this conflict is the determination and skill of the NVA and Viet Cong in conducting this war. They realized that South Vietnam and its allies, although technologically and militarily superior, could be worn down both physically and psychologically, which is exactly what happened.



They were an almost superhumanly tenacious and resourceful enemy. Their extensive system of underground tunnels, supply depots, and living spaces were so well hidden that one of them lay directly under a U.S. base for the entirety of the war without being discovered.



South Vietnam was a divided nation, as can clearly be seen by the influence and power of the Viet Cong. The US and other allies were clearly frustrated by this sort of war becuase it was so difficult to tell friend or neutral from foe. This also caused support for the war to wane, as many atrocities and civilian casualties occurred due to such confusion.



One of the most famed and touted offensives of the war, Tet, was a military failure for the communist forces. It was, however, a great psychological success, as it made it appear that the communists were doing more damage than was the case in reality. During this offensive the U.S. embassy in Saigon was overrun. Although it was retaken and secured in a very short time, the damage on the collective U.S. psyche was done.



The tenacity of the communist forces in Vietnam had endured for over twenty years. Can you imagine being involved in a bitter war for two decades? Neither could the American people. Although the U.S. and its allies could have won, as they did with nearly every major engagement in the war, the human and economic cost was something the country was not willing to bear. The communists were willing to fight to the last person.

Answer 4

There are many errors in your logic. The first and foremost is you believe the American's would have done exactly what the French did but that is nonsense. It is a bit like saying in 1991 the U.S. could not beat Iraq because Iran had been unable to do so. If the U.S. invades the North it does so in large numbers on a broad front with massive support, not fighting isolated peacemeal battles. It cuts off the VC supply chain in the south meaning they can not continue to fight. In the north you have a large conventional army not unlike that of the United States. It would be a different war altogether from the one the French fought. So yes, if we had invaded and successfully conquered the north the war would effectively have ended.

Answer 5

America would never have won the war ,it was an impossible war and they were marching slowly to their own demise . once they had EVENTUALLY reached north vietnam ,china had promised to join the war effort ,and you can take those casualties and multiply them by the millions apon millions of US troops that would have died. luckily the hippies saved your pasty white asses and got you the hell out of there before it was too late!

Answer 6

Wrong - it cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.



The US did not invade. After WWII the US adopted the Truman doctrine - that communism was going to be contained to the places where it had taken root, but would not allow it to annex any new nations. This meant that the US would offer military, diplomatic and economic assistance to any nation facing a communist insurrection or takeover. After WWII France resumed control of what was called French Indochina - Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia but they retreated after a heavy defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. They realised that they were never going to be able to defeat the Vietcong and were struggling to recover from the ravages of WWII on their homeland as well as maintain a military presence in places like North Africa. The US stepped in after that and supported the South Vietnamese government under Diem. This was notoriously corrupt and cronyist and hated by many Vietnamese people, especially the peasantry.



For the next decade after Dien Bien Phu a low level guerrilla war was fought with the US acting as "advisors" to the South Vietnamese. After Kennedy's death and Johnson's ascendancy to the White House the "Tonkin Bay Incident" and the following Tonkin Bay Resolution gave the US and the hawks in the military the excuse they needed to up the ante and take a more active military involvement - rather than advise they were now authorised to fight.



The VietCong though fought a classic guerrilla war - using hit and run tactics, landmines and the like to inflict small numbers of casualties on the US and then they would withdraw. By this time they had carved out a number of trails through the Vietnamese jungle (called the Ho Chi Minh trail) and had established a network of willing supporters in the South who aided and abetted them. In essence they had won the hearts and minds of the SV people who detested the now dead and overthrown Diem government and its replacements. The US by using their superior military hardware made things worse - they used napalm and defoliants such as Agent Orange to destroy the jungle cover but that killed a lot of Vietnamese people and destroyed their homes and means of living.

Answer 7

The Americans decided to invade because they THOUGHT they could win. They are a very arrogant people.



They were proved wrong, and have spent the last four decades in denial.

Answer 8

We didn't "invade" Vietnam. We were deployed to South Vietnam because North Vietnam--backed by the USSR and the PRC--were invading and trying to conquer the country. We were there at the invitation of the legitimate government of that part of Vietnam.



Why? The Vietnam War was part of the larger Cold War. Nothing more; nothing less.... If you do not understand this basic FACT, you cannot understand why we sent troops and opposed Communist aggression EVERYWHERE, not just Southeast Asia. Your "tutor" is ignorant and incompetent if he/she does not grasp this basic fact. But then, would suspect he/she does not understand the Cold War any better then he/she understands the Vietnam War.



The politicians (specifically Lyndon Jonson) thought that if he threw a few troops at the problem it would go away. But he didn't send enough, then he meddled in how the American military handled the war to a point he made it all but impossible for us to win a decisive (and quick) victory. In the end he botched the whole damn thing.

Answer 9

They say they were invited to support South Vietnam. It fitted their paranoia concerning Communism. Strange that when Soviet troops marched into Afghanistan the US laughed at the idea they had been invited by the Afghan government.

The US won't admit to losing. I think you'll find they made a strategic withdrawal. In spite of Agent Orange, the US couldn't cope with jungle warfare and the troops were demoralised by protests against the war, back home.

Answer 10

A bit complicated, so bear with me...



During the 1960s, American foreign policy was dominated by three unquestioned dogmas:



Containment, The Domino Theory & The Communist Monolith. These would combine to catastrophic effect...



Containment (articulated in the 1940s by George Kennan) maintained that the west could defeat the Soviet Union by countering their movements to expand. This manifested itself in a series of alliances designed to rein in the Soviet Empire (NATO, ANZUS, SEATO, etc).



The Domino Theory maintained that if one country in a region fell to communism the other nations in that region would all likely be threatened and would fall like a series of dominoes.



And finally, the Communist Monolith posited that international communism was a singular entity, all run effectively out of the Kremlin. It denied the overarching influence of historical, nationalistic and cultural factors which might make cooperation amongst communist nations difficult if not impossible to achieve and sustain in the long run.



An unquestioned acceptance of these three paradigms convinced Lyndon Johnson that American involvement in securing South Vietnam was imperative.



Initially, the USA became involved on the basis of Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara's rosy assessment that the war could be won by 1966. However, he hadn't counted on massive aid to North Vietnam pouring in from the Soviet Union. The Soviets actually wanted the USA involved in Vietnam in the same way that the USA wanted the Soviets to invade Afghanistan in 1979. (Zbigniew Brzezinski boasted how he euchred the Soviets into that war).



Why did the Soviets want this? Because since the late 1950s a crisis in foreign policy in China was threatening Sino-Soviet relations. There was a debate raging in Beijing over which course of modernisation to take. One group wanted greater ties with the Soviet Union, and one group simply didn't trust the Soviets (for historical reasons) and wanted to strengthen trade and cooperation with western nations. The Soviets wanted to stop this at all costs -- hence their increased aid to the North Vietnamese -- which killed two birds with one stone: it kept America busy and distracted, AND it drove a wedge between China and the West.



Meanwhile, Back in the USA...



Increased aid to the North Vietnamese, coupled with a severe underestimation of popular resistance from the NVA and VC, required a recalculation of victory on McNamara's part. Even with projected build ups to counter the North, McNamara calculated in late 1966 that the war could not be won until AFTER the 1968 presidential election. Lyndon Johnson only approved actions after he's been assured that victory could be achieved BEFORE 1968, and now he had to swallow the bitter pill. At that point, Johnson personally redirected American efforts away from victory and towards a negotiated stalemate.



America could have won the war, IF America had been willing to commit the resources and manpower necessary to see it through. They didn't do that, partially because victory couldn't be achieved before 1968, and partly because of the fear that an all out invasion of North Vietnam would have brought China into the war (Which it very well may have done).



There's actually more to this saga, but I think you get the overall drift... America was not willing to invest what it took to win, and the North Vietnamese were willing to risk everything to insure they didn't lose.

Answer 11

They didn't really invade as much as back up the non communist part of Vietnam, the south. There was a theory called the domino theory that fueled a fear of communism taking over all of Asia and Eastern Europe, making the influence of the United States and it's allies in the eastern world non existent or diminished. Basically during the Cold War the U.S would have sided with the devil himself if he wasn't communist. That same tenacity carried over into drawing out our conflict in Vietnam.

Answer 12

The USA did not invade. The war is a classic example of mission creep.

The USA wanted the South (capitalist) to bear the North (communist). The government of the South was in the hands of the Diem brothers (thieves, rapists, corrupt).

The people (overall) wanted unification with the North under the leadership of their hero Ho Chi Minh.

Ho had destroyed the French colonial powers and partition was supposed to be temporary pending elections. The South never went to election.

So the USA sent in political advisors, then a training mission, then protection for the trainers, then carrier bombing, then defensive patrolling etc etc etc - mission creep.

The cleaners, the cooks - all VC activists.