To what extent did U.S. involvement in Vietnam reflect lessons reflect lessons l

Question:to what extent did U.S. involvement in Vietnam reflect lessons reflect lessons learned in other twentyieth-century wars (including the Cold War)

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: to what extent did U.S. involvement in Vietnam reflect lessons reflect lessons learned in other twentyieth-century wars (including the Cold War)

At the beginning of the conflict the US military tried a strategy that had been successful in Greece - military advisers. These advisers were supposed to train and guide indigenous forces to fight on their own. It was widely sucsessful in Greece because the local population was very supportive of any help they could get to fight the Communist uprissing/invaision. In Vietnam this tactic was largely unsuccessful because most of the population really didn't care who ruled the country - communist, religious, or whoever.

The US also copied the strategy of interdiction. In Greece "Allied forces" (a mix of US and Greek Personnel) set up fire bases along routes through the mountains, destroying/blocking minor routes and generally cutting of the insurgents main supply route. In Vietnam, the Vietcong simply moved their supply routes into neighboring Laos and Cambodia.

Vietnam was also the first use of Air Mobil Divisions. During WWII Airborne Infantry was used to great effect in the European Theater by all sides. The draw backs were the high causality rate, the unreliability of mass parachute drops, and resupply/evacuation. During the Korean War helicopters were first used as air ambulances. Designers had warned against this believing that the weight would unbalance or overload the aircraft. However the idea worked and with the advances in technology and experience larger helicopters were envisioned and added to the "Arsenal of Democracy". The US military now had the ability to move mass quantities of troops with rapidity around large area irregardless of terrain.

Reflect lessons?

The lesson we should have learned from Viet Nam is don't get involved in other countries' civil disputes. We obviously did not learn this. But your question (with its odd double phrasing) isn't that, is it? You are asking what things we did in Viet Nam were reflections of what we had learned elsewhere. Um, nothing comes to mind. We should have learned from Korea that Orientals fought hard and intensely... but that seemed to surprise us. We should have learned that jungle fighting requires different skills than other fighting... but we never really got much better at it, choosing instead to simply bomb the crap out of everyone, friend and foe...

Sorry, I find this question almost meaningless. We learned nothing from Viet Nam, and we learned nothing from other experiences that showed itself in our policies and strategies there.

Is there a right answer to your question?

Not sure how much on the politcal level but as far as air to air combat goes we did relearn that our fighters need to have a cannon which the F-4 at the time did not. Even today the brand new F-22 Raptor has a 20mm cannon on it.

Secondly even though I am not sure this is what the question asks, in large part we owe our convincing victory in Desert Storm to the lessons learned from Vietnam. The big one being the politicians stayed out of military decisions. We went in with overwhelming force, we had a very specific goal, and we achieved it.

Third we learned that air power in itself can not win a war. You need to have a ground option. See above on Desert Storm. We dropped more bombs on Vietnam than we did Japan, and Germany.

Finally we learned that the Domino theory did not hold true. Granted Laos, and Cambodia fell to the communists but overrall the flag of Marx did not swallow up all of Asia.