[Politics] Vietnam War: why the United States lost the conflict despite its overwhelming military superiority

[@CharliAviless]

The Vietnam War (1955-75) was one of the bloodiest in recent history, with more than 2.5 million deaths.

But, above all, it is remembered as the biggest defeat for the United States in a war.

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the departure of the last US troops from Vietnam on March 29, 1973.

The withdrawal order by then-President Richard Nixon was decisive, as the weak peace process that accompanied it paved the way for the victory of the North Vietnamese army two years later.

When war broke out in 1955 between communist North Vietnam, with Hanoi as its capital, and capitalist South Vietnam led from Saigon, the latter began to receive US support in the form of logistics, training, weapons, and ammunition.

 

 

 

In 1965, the North American country sent its first troops and entered the conflict fully, confident that its overwhelming military superiority would bring it a quick victory.

Equipped with modern aircraft carriers, fighters, bombers, helicopters, and missiles, it was up against the rifles, grenades, tanks, and flak artillery of the much thinner North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong forces.

The United States dropped some 7.5 million tons of bombs in North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, more than those detonated in all of World War II by both sides and the largest amount recorded to date in a conflict. armed.

To these were added some 400,000 tons of napalm, 75 million liters of Agent Orange and other herbicides, and hundreds of millions of artillery rounds, according to estimates.

Against all odds, however, the communists led by Ho Chi Minh - and, after his death in 1969, by his successor Ton Duc Thang - emerged victorious. How could this happen?

Ruthless leadership and determination
"You can kill ten of my men for every one of yours we kill. But even so, you will lose and we will win."

Ho Chi Minh's omen would come true, although he was never able to see it when he died of heart failure at the age of 79 in the middle of the war.

 

https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-internacional-65059687