I need some urgent Help from history lovers (Vietnam War)?

Question

so it goes why were the following two options not chosen during th Vietnam War?
1) Achieve total victory by using nuclear weapons on North Vietnam, floodinf the north or destroying all its food
2)Immediate withdrawal from Vietnam
and
why did Lyndon B Johnson chose to draft just enough men to fight so that south Vitnam didnt fall to communists

Answer 1

You have to understand Vietnam in context of the political climate. At a bare minimum, watch 'The Fog of War'.

The cold war began almost immediately after WW2. China fell to communists under Mao and the Soviets got the bomb in the same decade. In 1950-53 the U.N. saved South Korea from being gobbled up by the Communist North. Now, in the Korean War, North Korea was being directly aided by both Communist China and the Soviets. The war saw the first dogfights between jet aircraft - Soviet MiG 15s (with North Korean markings) were battling American F86s.

Vietnam began in a similar manner. Communist North Vietnam tried to annex the non-communist (but ineffectual) South Vietnam. But that's where the similarity ends. Helping the north were a bunch of armed communists guerrillas which kept attacking the South from within its borders -- the Viet Cong. The americans decided not to directly attack the north because it was afraid that, like korea, China and Russia would step in to help the North. American planes did bomb roads and bridges but avoided populated areas.


Withdrawl, like in Iraq, would be construed as defeat and yet another asian country would fall to the communists. It was a domino effect... one country went communist, then all of them followed suit. (The domino theory was American paranoia; reality was very different. Even though many countries were becoming communist, they were nationalist first. The Vietnamese still distrusted Chinese and the Chinese were drifting away from the Russians.)

In reality, the vietnamese saw the communists as 'freedom fighters' (N. Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh was also instrumental in kicking out the French) and the Americans as the imperial 'enemy'.

So to the average Vietnamese peasant, the Communists were really the same folks who liberated the country from France, and they were now fighting another imperial western army. Even if america destroyed N. Vietnam, there were enough communists with guns within S. Vietnam to topple the regime anyway.

The war was highly unpopular at home and money was tight as well. I'm guessing both of those factors had some bearing on why Johnson didn't draft more men. At any rate, the idea, like in Iraq, was to strengthen South Vietnam so it could fight its own war. The american military was supposedly there to 'advise' the S. Vietnamese. Like the U.S. is 'advising' Iraq. Clearly, it didn't quite work out that way. The S. Vietnamese government was never strong or influential enough to take on the fight without U.S. help. After america withdrew in 73, the south fell to the north in 75.

Answer 2

Just enough men were drafted, and nuclear weapons were not used in the war in Vietnam, because the United States of America never declared war on Vietnam. Each president - from Kennedy to Nixon - knew that immediate withdrawal from Vietnam would eventually lead to the military victory of North Vietnam over South Vietnam.