Originally
posted by
Garry Owen:
No one really cared about Vietnam. How little yellow people in a remote and resource-poor part of the world live is easy to overlook. HOWEVER, the Soviets were pulling out all the stops to push communism there, as a foothold to spread across south-east asia. Yes, the Soviets clearly believed in the domino theory and so the west was justified in trying to shut it down.
That's not really a fair description. Both the Soviets and the US (/"the West", seeing as it was the French who were fighting there first) were vying for influence in the region, the US was propping up the Diem regime as well as other governments in the region.
On balance though I'd say the political situation in Vietnam and the internal divisions of power within Vietnam (ie military strength of South vs North) very strongly favoured the North. The US invasion and foreign aid to the communists distorted that greatly but in the end it was almost impossible for the US to win the war with the kind of popular support that the communists enjoyed within the country.
But here is the problem -- if we committed completely to VICTORY in Vietnam which included an invasion of the north, then we were concerned with what the Soviet reaction would be - in EUROPE. There was real concern for sparking a ground war in Europe -- the balance of forces there was very tight.... So all commitments to Vietnam had to first consider the defense of Western Europe. If we (USA) committed too much force to Vietnam then a surge of Chinese troops could tie them (and a significant portion of the US reserves and naval / air forces supporting them) into asia leaving Europe open for a full-scale Soviet invasion without the threat of massive US forces arriving.
Once again, false because it ignores the fact that the Sino-Soviet split. Chinese forces were not committed to tying the US down anywhere, they were funnily enough preparing for a war against the Soviet Union which never materialized (though some clashes occured). I suppose this could have been true for the early parts of the war (pre-1965) but even then the idea of a war escalating to Europe seems a bit extreme.