Studied at Washington University in St. Louis7y
Did the north Vietnamese really win 3 wars (French, USA, China) like they claimed to have?
Since 1945, the Vietnamese defeated the French politically and militarily, overcame military setbacks against the United States to win politically and militarily and politically defeated U.S. ally South Vietnam, and fought the Chinese to a draw. It wasn’t a bad showing by Vietnam …
Yes, yes, and no …
With the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the Viet Minh beat the French and, after a nine-year war (1945–1954), re-established independence (Vietnam was briefly independent at the end of World War II). It was a clear and decisive military and political victory.
And, North Vietnam won the Vietnam War, a war that, for them, extended from the end of the French war in 1954/55 to the capture of Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City in 1975, or a period of 20 years. In fact, you could argue that the Indochina War lasted over 10,000 days and for more than 30 years as the Viet Minh (and later Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army) fought, in order, the French, the Japanese (and French during World War II), the French (again, after World War II and NATO allowed France to reoccupy its Indochina colonies), South Vietnamese, an Allied contingent (United States, South Vietnamese, South Korean, Australian, and a few other nations), and, finally, the South Vietnamese again. From the Communist point of view, this could be considered on single war lasting from the 1930s, when Ho Chi Minh was trained by the Soviet Union, to 1975.
North Vietnam beat the United States. Wars are more than military encounters. As a military encounter, the United States won most of the battles (defeats such as Landing Zone Albany in the Ia Drang Valley were very rare) and by 1968 it would be hard, with the failure of the Tet Offensive, Special Forces operations into Laos and Cambodia, heavy bombing by the United States, and a highly successful, though very ethically questionable, Phoenix Program, to say that the United States did not have the upper hand and would have militarily won the war, had it continued with the strategies of 1968, in five-to-15 years. However, wars are more than military exercises, they are also economic and political exercises as well. And losing any one of the realms — military, economic, or political — can lose the war. With Tet, the United States lost politically, and they lost politically in the one place they couldn’t afford to lose — Middle America. With body bags returning from Vietnam at the rate of 100-to-200 a week, people in Iowa, Nebraska, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Ohio, and rural Pennsylvania started questioning if the cost was worth fighting the war. And they started answering that question with nos. When conservative Republican Richard Nixon ran in 1968, promising peace with honor in Vietnam, they voted for Nixon to get us out of Vietnam. Regardless of all of our military “success” in Vietnam, we lost the war politically.
The Untied States withdrew its troops in 1973, leaving defense of South Vietnam to South Vietnam. When South Vietnam asked for United States help in 1975 with more supplies and air strikes, things that could have enabled them to hold off the North Vietnamese Army, they were ignored. And, South Vietnam fell. And, along with the fall of Saigon came the defeat of the United States. In war, a political defeat is as strong as a military defeat as the other nation still accomplishes its aims and goals and you don’t.
China, no. However, the war against China was not a defeat, either. When China invaded northern Vietnam in 1979 with over 200,000 troops. While the Vietnamese Army stopped China’s invasion, they couldn’t push the Chinese out of Vietnam, either. After being stopped by the Vietnamese, China made the decision to withdraw. China’s invasion didn’t result in Vietnam’s withdrawal from Cambodia, which is part of the reason the Chinese invaded. However, it did demonstrate to the Vietnamese that their new friend, the Soviet Union, wasn’t able to help them, either. So, diplomatically, it was a mixed bag for China.
So, since 1945, the Vietnamese defeated the French politically and militarily, overcame military setbacks against the United States to win politically and militarily and politically defeated U.S. ally South Vietnam, and fought the Chinese to a draw. It wasn’t a bad showing by Vietnam …
CVD 