invade and wipe Hanoi off the map. That's it. What could China (embroiled in Maoist chaos and retardation) possibly do?
>>18538776>invade and wipe Hanoi off the map. That's it. What could China (embroiled in Maoist chaos and retardation) possibly do?Perhaps not much if their performance in 1979 is any indication, but the cost and resources needed to invade the DRV exceeded what LBJ was willing to put in.
>>18538776what would that do that "bombing them into the stone age" didn't. Real war isn't just a game of hearts of iron where if you capture their capital you win. It goes on until one side's willingness or ability to fight is destroyed. The North Vietnamese were fully committed to victory at any price.
>>18538783Bombing was never going to defeat them. You can't occupy cities and land from the air
>>18538788Like Iran?
>>18538776they outright simulated a possible invasion of North Vietnam and came to the conclusion that not only would it be a logistical nightmare but it would require removing assets from other theaters leaving them vunerable to Soviet influence, Vietnam already took up a large portion of US military focus, trying to escalate it would leave other areas vunerable to unacceptable degrees, and thats without considering the inevitable political push back
>>18538782I disagree, the sheer size of the resources that LBJ put in by 68’ would have been put to better use with an invasion instead of remaining sitting ducks. Especially post Tet Offensive with the Vietcong of the South spent. LBJ simply had a deep fear of China intervening, and thought he could keep it a contained police action war. In the end giving the strategic initiative to the North Vietnamese.
>>18538871>LBJ simply had a deep fear of China intervening, and thought he could keep it a contained police action warI don't think anyone was afraid of China's World War I military, but the cost of invading the north was prohibitively too high. They never had more than 25k US combat troops in Indochina and it would require a significant expansion of the draft he didn't want to do. The Korean War after all drafted a lot more men than Vietnam.
>>18538880I wonder if in terms of intervening it would have been the better move to force an earlier confrontation instead of a slow bleed. It’s true America only had 70k max combat troops, but Vietnam War’s costs dwarfed Korea due the sheer length of it. Between escalating it or choosing not to intervene/shoring up Thailand, LBJ chose the worst possible middle ground that played to none of America’s advantages.
>>18538871China gave permission to NVA pilots to use Chinese bases as inviolable sanctuaries that couldn't be attacked by US planes. America got cucked and was forced to admit they had no plan of starting a war with China
>>18538782in the strange economy of things, China really did not want Vietnam united under either government and preferred it remain divided, as a unified Vietnam could become a regional power/threat to them, and exactly as expected, the two countries immediately were at each other's throats after the South's fall.
uh oh 50 cent army time
>>18538914>as a unified Vietnam could become a regional power/threat to themreally? Vietnam today is just China's Mexico. they make cheap shit like T-shirts and that's pretty much it.
>>18538926>b-but there's a mcdonalds in Tehran so we win
>>18538935In a '60s context Beijing certainly could have believed a unified Vietnam would be an aggressive regional power. It wasn't until the post-Cold War 90s that the situation in the region calmed down.
>>18538935and china was the USSR's mexico
>>18538776>Chinese are killing each other out of pent-up frustration>quick, let's give them an alternative enemy to unite against!
>>18538953they had the USSR for that, this was when the Sino-Soviet split was happening
>>18538954Ironically it was Ho Chi Minh's death that got them talking again but by then the USSR was the North's primary supplier, not China. North Vietnam often found that Soviet supplies sent to them via China wouldn't get there in their entirety because China was offloading some of it for themselves
>>18538788you never said anything about occupying a city, you said wipe it off the map. How is that different from bombing it to rubble, which is what the US did?
>>18538905>America got cucked and was forced to admit they had no plan of starting a war with ChinaThey did nothing when the Paracel Islands were invaded. So much for freedom?
>>18538776China still had a billion soldiers and the U.S. didn’t want another Korea situation.
>>18539331>China still had a billion soldiers and...a Ghana-tier economy that could barely feed or equip them
>>18538960Most NVA equipment came from USSR because China was backward and could only offer some food and light infantry equipment, they had no aircraft, tanks, missiles, radar, etc.
>>18538880A low level war served as a great economic stimulus and the US economy was absolutely soaring during the 60s in part due to all the jobs created supporting the war effort in Indochina, but LBJ didn't want to escalate it to the point where it would requiring rationing of consumer goods or large scale mobilization.
>>18539393originally Soviet gear was transported through China but after relations between the two became hostile that ceased and the Soviets instead used the water route from Vladivostok to North Vietnam, which was why the US Navy mined Haiphong Harbor, to bar the entry of Soviet supply vessels.
