Explain Why The Us Lost The Vietnam War Essay

The Vietnam war is an incredibly controversial topic; some say America won, while others say that they lost. The cold, hard truth is that America took a major loss in the approximately 20 year long war and were never winning at any point. The reason the Americans officially lost the war is because they were unable to achieve their goal ; the exact opposite actually happened. Once the American forces left South Vietnam in January of 1975 communism immediately overran it. There are 3 key reasons that will later on thoroughly explain exactly why America lost the Vietnam war. First of all the Americans lost because the North Vietnamese wanted to win more than they did. Second of all the American’s bombing strategies were horrendously ineffective

; they were choosing to bomb locations that would end up giving them no real advantage. Thirdly and quite possibly the biggest reason that lost America the war was their attempt to fight a war of Attrition against the North Vietnamese strategy of Guerilla warfare
The first, and most obvious reason the Americans lost the Vietnam war is that the North Vietnamese wanted to win exponentially more than the Americans.

It was crystal clear that the NVA were much more determined to win than the Americans ; you could tell from the actions of the North Vietnamese that they were willing to go all out to win whereas the U.S army was at times a bit reluctant to do everything they could to come out victorious. Some people might not think that the willingness to win can turn the tides of war, but the truth is that it plays a major role in determining who will come out ahead. The willingness to win plays a colossal role in helping to decide who will come out ahead because if one country is willing to do whatever it takes to win a war it means that they will use everything they got to make sure they win ; the U.S was not willing to do whatever it takes to win the war in Vietnam and that is huge factor of their

failure.
Secondly, the American forces were defeated by the North Vietnamese in a fashionable manner because the Americans were attempting to fight a war of Attrition while the NVA were fighting a Guerilla which was proven to be the dominant strategy of the two in this situation. Guerilla warfare worked so well for the NVA because the U.S army was so unbelievably foreign to the terrain in which they were fighting in. The U.S army’s lack of spatial awareness made Guerilla warfare that much stronger and Attrition warfare unimaginably weak. America’s lack of spatial awareness in Vietnam put their strategy of Attrition warfare in a worse spot than what it already was because it really only works if you know the land around you. The NVA’s seemingly endless line of supplies also played a big role in hindering America’s strategy of Attrition warfare because the U.S were expending a lot of their resources on trying to exhaust and demoralize the North Vietnamese but in the end only exhausted and demoralized themselves.
Lastly, the bombing strategies that were used by the American forces (i.e Operation Rolling Thunder) for the most part were unsuccessful.

For example the goals of Operation Rolling Thunder were to demoralize the North Vietnamese people and to undermine the power of the North Vietnamese government both of which failed to happen. America was unable to achieve its goals with Operation Rolling Thunder because the North Vietnamese leaders with some help from China and the USSR were able to set up an effective defense which rendered the American bombing raids useless. The North Vietnamese people also took a multitude of steps of their own to further reduce the impact of the bombing raids from the Americans by assembling a system of bombproof tunnels and shelters which were surprisingly

effective.
The 3 reasons which were stated earlier are the 3 key reasons that caused America to take a major loss in the Vietnam war. The Americans could have won, it was by no means an “unwinnable war”. The biggest reason out of the 3 key reasons that caused America to lose the Vietnam war is that they attempted to use the strategy of Attrition warfare against the strategy of Guerilla warfare. Hypothetically, the U.S should have been incredibly knowledgable on the tactics of Guerilla warfare because they have been against it before, but in Vietnam they struggled to find a way to deal with it. Their lack of spatial awareness played a big role in their struggle to find a way to deal with Guerilla warfare because they knew little to nothing about the area they were fighting in while the North Vietnamese had a great deal of knowledge of the area thus giving them a huge advantage.
On November 1, 1955 America decided to go to war in Vietnam with one goal in mind: stop the spread of communism. In January of 1975 after the Americans left Vietnam the North Vietnamese took no time to hesitate about invading South Vietnam. In just 3 months of relentless attacks the North Vietnamese were able to fulfill their goal of spreading communism to South Vietnam which America attempted to stop for approximately 20 years.. They gained nothing from the repugnant bloodbath known as the Vietnam war, but ended up losing a lot. That is ultimately why America lost the war.