America’s defeat in Vietnam offers a game plan for Ukrainian victory
Ukraine and its Western allies should look to the Vietnam War for successful strategies to end the conflict, a security expert argues.
Ukraine can defeat Russia if it and its Western backers learn from America’s failure in the Vietnam War, a Ukrainian security expert argues.
That war has parallels with Ukraine’s fight today. The North Vietnamese thwarted vastly superior American firepower with strategies backed by massive Soviet and Chinese military aid. They are a playbook for how Ukraine might compel Russia to make peace within two years, argues Oleksandr Danylyuk, a former top Ukrainian security official and now an analyst for the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank.
“The example of the Vietnam War is important primarily because victory for Ukraine is possible only if Russian troops are withdrawn from its territory,” Danylyuk said in an essay for RUSI. “The creation of conditions under which Russia cannot and is not willing to continue the war, and therefore is forced to leave Ukraine, should be the strategic goal of the pro-Ukrainian coalition.”
Danylyuk attributes America’s failure in Vietnam to a “protracted multi-dimensional strategy by the Soviet Union, on whose help it was completely dependent.” The Soviet Union and China supplied Hanoi with ample weapons and other aid, including anti-aircraft weapons to neutralize the US’s airpower advantages. The Soviets sent 15,000 military specialists such as air defense experts, while China dispatched 320,000 personnel who mostly handled combat support tasks such as logistics, freeing up North Vietnamese manpower for combat duties.
Meanwhile, the burden of the war US economy became intolerable, as the Johnson administration refused to raise taxes or cut social programs, leading to deficit spending and inflation. Anti-war protests — some incited and financed by the Communist bloc — and war-weariness among the general public led the Nixon administration to withdraw American troops. By the time North Vietnamese tanks entered Saigon in 1975, the US was reeling from recession and high oil prices, with no more appetite to aid South Vietnam.
Danylyuk admits that Ukraine’s situation differs from North Vietnam’s in many aspects. “It does not need the presence of allied troops to repel aggression, is not a technologically backward country, and has proven that it cannot only use, but also produce the most modern types of weaponry.”
Yet, ironically, Danylyuk believes that the keys to defeating Russia’s invasion now can be found in the Soviet Union’s multi-pronged strategy in Vietnam.
Crucial ways to defeat Russia’s invasion can be found in the Soviet Union’s multi-pronged strategy in Vietnam, analyst Oleksandr Danylyuk says. Here, US Marines wade through a rice paddy in an assault on Viet Cong positions in 1965.
The first prong of this strategy would be to “stabilize the frontline and to render any successful offensive actions by Russian troops impossible.” This would require stopping the Russian glide bomb attacks that are devastating Ukrainian frontline positions. Rather than trying to stop the bombs themselves, Danylyuk suggests the West provide more fighters armed with long-range air-to-air missiles — in particular Sweden’s Gripen jet with Meteor missiles — to shoot down Russian aircraft before they can release glide bombs. His paper notes that the Soviets provided Vietnam 155 MiG fighters in three years alone.
Or, if the West is willing to provide “several billion dollars,” Ukraine can produce enough long-range Neptune cruise missiles to destroy the Russian airbases and aircraft from which the bombing runs are launched. These weapons would also force Russia to redeploy air defense systems, such as S-300 and S-400 anti-aircraft missiles, from Ukraine back to Russia. In addition, Ukraine should also try to kill as many Russian troops as possible to force the Kremlin into another mobilization likely to be deeply unpopular. “Accomplishing this task directly depends on Ukraine’s ability to achieve fire parity on the contact line, which requires the West, in turn, to produce a sufficient amount of artillery ammunition,” Danylyuk said.
In 1965, when major US combat operations in Vietnam began, the majority of the American public backed US intervention. But a US commitment that swelled to 543,000 personnel by 1969, along with growing resentment over the draft and 58,000 American personnel killed, eroded that support.
On the economic front, Danylyuk urges the West to bankrupt the Russian war effort by seeking to lower the price of oil, which provides much of Russia’s revenues. He points to the collapse of the Soviet Union, caused in part by falling oil prices in the 1980s. This would require other nations to boost oil production to depress prices.
“It must be recognized that attempts to apply restrictions on the price of Russian oil alone have not worked, and without replacing Russia’s share of the world market by increasing production elsewhere, the situation will remain favorable for Moscow,” said Danylyuk. Indeed, Saudi Arabia and some of its OPEC allies plan to produce more oil and cut prices.
Psychologically, the West should tap into Russian anti-war sentiment — heavily suppressed by Vladimir Putin’s government, but still simmering. “The only explanation for the lack of a mass anti-war movement and large-scale protests is the absence of an organized and popular opposition in Russia,” Danylyuk said. “Under such conditions, there is no alternative to providing organizational and financial support for such a movement from the outside.”
Danylyuk’s plan is ambitious, to say the least. Compelling Russia to make peace on the battlefield seems unlikely at least in the short term, as Russian forces advance slowly, painfully but inexorably. Whether Saudi Arabia and other oil producers would choose to depress oil prices in the long term remains to be seen. Banking on the Russian public’s anti-war sentiment is chancy, given the intense repression and propaganda of Putin’s government.
But the alternative is even worse, Danylyuk warns. Without a strategy to force Russia to end the war, the outcome will be to “exhaust Ukraine and the West and allow Russia to implement its own multidimensional plan to end support for Ukraine, according to which Kyiv would be added to the list of cities that have become symbols of the West’s geopolitical defeats: Kabul and Saigon.”
