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How could a small country like North Vietnam defeat a large country like the United States?
Wiki User
∙ 7y ago
In the Vietnam War, the US was engaged in battle with the forces of North Vietnam and the guerrilla forces in South Vietnam. The North sponsored and supplied the Viet Cong guerrillas, and North Vietnam was in turn supplied by the Soviet Union and perhaps had the help of China. The US was fighting a "limited" war. The US was solid in its policy of "communist containment". There was no attempt to overthrow the government of North Vietnam. The US sought a war of containment to also prevent it from becoming a larger war that would more directly involve the USSR or China.
North Vietnam was not a threat to the USA. As with the US Civil War, all the South had to do was make the war unbearable and have the North quit.
This is what happened in the Vietnam War. The US quit. As the war dragged on, it was clear that the US public was getting tired of the US troop losses. Time was on the side of the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong guerrillas.
In a perfect world, the US could have easily been victorious in the war. The US had help defeat Hitler and Imperial Japan. North Vietnam was a small weak nation.
In limited wars, where the enemy will make any sacrifice to win, the weak has an advantage over the stronger enemy. North Vietnam could allow huge guerrilla losses and there was no "public opinion" allowed to express dissatisfaction with the communists.
The argument that the government of South Vietnam was corrupt holds no currency. The government of North Vietnam was also corrupt. One party communist governments are corrupt by their very nature.
The US lost because of the restraints it had on itself and the fears that a more aggressive war might widen the war.
It is clear now and then that limited wars are rarely successful.
Wiki User
∙ 7y ago
Wiki User
∙ 7y agoThe US decided to pull out of South Vietnam because the South Vietnamese government was not supplying an effective army of its own to protect itself from the guerrilla forces in South Vietnam and from the regular soldiers invading from North Vietnam.The US was fighting a limited war of containment against communism in Southeast Asia. When it became clear that a limited war effort by the US was not going to deter the North Vietnamese from its armed conflict in the South, the newly elected US President Richard M. Nixon had pledged to end US involvement in this limited war.
Clearly, the US was one of the two most powerful global powers at the time, the other being the USSR.
Nixon's decision to end the US involvement took several years. In terms of casualties, several million North and South Vietnamese were lost. The US had a Death Rate of approximately 60,000 troops.
Wiki User
∙ 14y agoNorth Vietnam...not Vietnam.
Vietnam didn't exist until 1975.
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