However, China was a bottomless resource for Hanoi. Geographically, the whole thing was a loser from the getgo.
Point well taken. If the South Vietnamese people had jettisoned their puppet government and then shown more interest in defending themselves - they might not have been 're-united' with their Komrades to the north The point still stands for the South Koreans.
China is testing the US using North Korea. China does not like the US near or around territories they consider area of their influence. The real rival is China and military build up is already happening around that area for years. If this is not serious now it will be serious later. Similarly the US did not fight Vietnamese but rather Chinese and USSR.
Wow someone can think for themselves what a nice change. NK has been doing this nonsense forever......they are a paper tiger.
In Vietnam, they call it the American War....which makes sense. Anyhow...OK, we LOST. 58,000 troops + died, who knows how many injured and who knows how many had mental issues and drug problems. we had soldiers killing our own officers at times... they lost over 1,000,000 people. who knows how many tried to leave by water and killed by pirates, killed in Cambodia, died of that napalm stuff afterwards, etc.... I forget, but I think we went in to suppress communism and something about Indonesia or something was also part of the equation.....sorry, no time to check now. ho chi min was in china supporting the north.... and the genocide in Cambodia was shortly thereafter.....and they tried to blame us because of the bombing....another story. get out of the city and run into the countryside....25% of the entire population killed. so, yes...if China gets involved and helps NKorea....we have a problem, even if we send 100's of thousands of troops.....but if china doesn't get involved and let's us attack......that is different. we had very little troops over in Korea in the early 50's and still kept the north from taking over the SE part of S. korea. we lost another 50,000 men there. I think.
blah blah blah... listen, US has military power because of technology... take away the tech, we would not necessarily make it in the world... in any event, a small group of operators with knowledge and control of the terrain can easily control any large army (that is just the rule of war guys)... to all those that yap about the chinense being the enemy, etc... do you even realize that they own the majority of our worthless debt outside of the US TREAS? I mean, there are better ways to break us, and is not with war... but rather financially.. anyhow... as usual, all this stuff is posturing... no-one is nuts enough to drop another bomb or declare war to a superior war power that can strike without ever setting foot on land with soldiers...
The Domino Theory. Given that we'd been through a decade of Duck And Cover drills, fall-out shelters, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the erection of the Berlin Wall and the assassination of our president, it wasn't difficult to sell the idea. And we fell for it all over again when Dubya decided he wanted to invade Iraq. Memories are short.
Its not going to happen, but it would be a just war for once. I would assume it would be comparably cheap too, a few decapitation strikes and mission accomplished. The whole thing would fall apart rather quickly. Worst case, Seoul would get wasted with these short range missiles they have a shitton of. There will not be a whole lot of guerilla warefare, the only reason for NK soldiers loyality is that they get paid fairly well and the consequences of disloyality. If both goes away, their army implodes. There will be no insugency. And there is a clear post-war scenario, unlike in Iraq or Afghanistan, so a prolonged occupation is not necessary. But, its not happening, i dont see a real upside for the usa in this. OTOH, there was no obvious upside in Iraq #2 either.
NK has ~30 days in fuel reserves and shit for air-power. Regime change and millions of NK dead if the worst-case scenario of NK lobbing a small nuke at Seoul. MAD doesn't apply here. Take out 300-500k in Seoul and they would lose millions in NK. They can move on Seoul, but we would obliterate Pyongyang. This is a game of "Risk" that they simply can't win. A unified Korea would be a huge boost due to reconstruction and global growth. Look at Germany, post-reunification.
What does NK have to bring to the table with reunification? My German friend said the same about East Germany and the answer was not much. My friend didn't like his taxes going up for about a decade to finance the reunification.