>>27676700American strategy in Vietnam
>Kill commies>??????>VICTORY!Basically they would have needed to make a serious attempt to invade North Vietnam to win.
But the experience of Korea taught them that they couldn't do that without risking China directly involving themselves.
And of course North Vietnam couldn't seriously invade the south either, they couldn't duke it out with the US in conventional warfare and win.
SO North Vietnam was incapable of successfully invading the south, and America wasn't unable to invade the North, but they were unwilling to risk the consequence of victory.
Where does that leave the war? We bomb you, you send insurgents at us.
But a Strategic air campaign was ineffective for several reasons, you can't bomb out an enemy's factories when all of their war armaments are made in China or the USSR, and in the age of the Guided Surface to air Missile the balance of power in that game is tipped towards the defender.
The US probably could have maintained the status quo indefinitely, but actually *winning* was beyond their reach. Naturally they eventually just gave up, even it took 20 years.
On the actual military side of things the US was really shitty at counter-insurgency tactics, which certainly didn't help. An army that had been built to fight The Big Tank Battle Against The Soviets In West Germany was suddenly thrust into lost small unit infantry engagements in conditions that made bringing heavy weapons like tanks and aircraft to bear difficult.
