Was The Vietnam War Unwinnable?

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 5 November 2024

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s been fifty years since the end of the Vietnam War, yet the memory of the war lives on, the nationwide protests of the 1970s mirroring ones happening on college campuses today. In today’s episode we take a panoptic overview of the political debates in Washington, the ground and air operations in Southeast Asia, and the shocking erosion of American defense capabilities. We also dive into the five-decade-old question of whether the Vietnam War could have been won (proponents say victory could come by such strategy as Americans invading Laos and Cambodia and cutting off the Ho Chi Minh Trail; opponents say such policies as “search and destroy” led to recruitment of more Viet Cong soldiers rather than reduce their numbers).

We’re joined by Geoffrey Wawro, author of “The Vietnam War: A Military History.” We discuss whether the American war in Vietnam was a war of choice, pursued for all the wrong reasons. Shedding light on the inner workings of three presidential administrations and their field commanders, we look at political power, its limits, and the devastation that arises when power is compounded by willful delusion and carelessness in the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Noble gold investments is the official gold sponsor of History Unplug, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.
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0:19.3	It's got to hear with another episode, The History and Plug Podcast.
0:22.5	Ever since the end of the Vietnam War, historians have argued whether or not it was possible for the United States to win if it had used a different strategy.
0:30.2	Proponents say that the U.S. had overwhelming military superiority, 500,000 troops at its peak, U.52 bombers, ICBMs, if the United States had committed
0:39.7	more resources, had a full-scale invasion of North Vietnam, or a more decisive bombing campaign,
0:44.6	it could have broken enemy morale.
0:46.6	A part would say that the war was fundamentally unwinnable because the United States didn't
0:50.7	have the resources for it at the time.
0:52.6	LBJ was launching the Great Society.
0:54.6	There were American troops still in Western Europe. And even if resources were available,
0:59.0	the Via Kong had the support of both China and the Soviet Union, making conventional military
1:02.8	success difficult. Plus, domestic support of the war created at home, with anti-war protests
1:08.0	growing over the 1960s. In today's episode, we're going to take an optic overview of the political debates in Washington
1:14.0	and look at the grounded air operations in Southeast Asia and the erosion of American defense capabilities.
1:19.9	We're joined by Jeffrey Warro, author of the Vietnam War and military history.
1:23.9	He argues that the American War in Vietnam was a war of choice, not a war of necessity for Cold War containment,
1:29.6	those pursued for all the wrong reasons, for showing American strength on an international stage rather than real domestic security threats.
1:36.2	We discussed the foreign policy of three presidential administrations and look at why wars succeed, why they fail, and lessons from Vietnam 50 years later.
1:44.9	Hope we enjoyed this discussion with Jeffrey Warwick. And one more thing before we get started with this episode,
1:51.1	a quick break for a word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Uncommon
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