The year is 1960, you are now in charge of US Army

>The year is 1960, you are now in charge of US Army.
Attack USSR and force them to nuke America until it's completely gone

Demand that Ngo Dinh Diem pull all of his anti-Buddhist laws and permit free elections unless he never wants to see another American-made gun in his life. Restrict military use to major cities, only let humanitarian missions go to the villages. Don't implement the draft, give incentives to volunteer. DON'T LET A SINGLE GODDAMN CAMERAMAN GET IN THE COUNTRY. If any bullshit on the level of My Lai happens, roll out the firing squads to send a message.

Travel back in time and prevent FDR from dying until well after the war is done, allowing him to pursue his policy goal of an independent Vietnam free from French colonialism. Boom, the US now no longer feels compelled to help because the North doesn't need to turn to the Communists for assistance in the first place.

>Make the South hold free elections
>stick to it
>If the South wants to go Communist, let them
>Tell North we'll give them $1 Billion US currency if they just break with Russia
>They don't even have to actually stop being communist, just fuck with the Russians
>Open Vietnam to the West
>wait til Capitalist revolution happens
>laugh forever

This. The US policy for the previous century was to never land an army in Asia, and we broke that policy.

>The US policy for the previous century was to never land an army in Asia
Uh no, there was never a US policy like that and US forces were liberally used all over Asia from early 19th century on.

Yes, that's why we forced China and Japan to openly trade with our military

Bribe those zippereyes with cold hard American dollars so they abandon the commies. Vietnam had no real interest in communist ideology, they just wanted support.

Ban the press from involving in army's issues

You can't hide the draft from a bunch of hippies

side with vietnam army

>they accept the 1 bil
>implying they wouldn't still meet with Russians in secret

Keep in mind that the VietComs did more to remove Chinese puppets than the US by removing the Khmer Rouge which actually was a Chinese puppet, unlike the Vietnamese who BTFO the Chinese after the Vietnam War.

What is the Korean war?

this
based user dropping truth bombs so the soviets can drop real bombs

Nuke Russia
Nuke China

My man, it's nothing if you're not going for MAD and destroying China in the process.

this

this, partly.

not this

Cleaning up corruption a bit in the south and buying up land to give to the peasantry would have helped. It's a myth that the US were mostly fighting a popular insurgency though - all that crap about Diem and the US causing discontent, while true, is a secondary cause. The Viet Cong were only 30k people out of a country of 20 million. The peasants, by and large, didn't care about politics, and the support the guerrillas got came more from the terror tactics they used to keep the countryside in line rather than any anti-US sentiment.

The US's real problem were the North Vietnamese. They supplied the Viet Cong, and they backed them up with North Vietnamese troops. Without North Vietnam, the communists in the south didn't have a chance in hell of overthrowing the government. Especially after the Tet Offensive, which was a massive strategic failure for the communists and wiped out the core of the South's home-grown communist forces. Indeed, when the final blow came, it didn't come from a communist rebellion in the south. The communists won when the North launched a conventional invasion of the South.

So the answer? The US had to be willing to invade north vietnam. Not just bomb it, not just special operations raids. Full on invasion to take and hold ground. Of course, the problem with this was that it might have led to nuclear war with Russia and China. But that isn't an insurmountable problem. The answer would have been to wait until North Vietnam's relations with China soured - which frequently happened - and then take portions of the country slice by slice so that China didn't feel threatened. Throughout the war 'losing' for the north North only meant being forced back to its own borders; they never had to worry about losing what they had. Change that, and serious negotiations might have happened.

Okay, great, you just start WW3 stupid general

Probably just push the NVA back into Laos with all we got and take the north that way and if that don't work than idk what.

Yeah, there definitely weren't any US troops in Siberia during the Russian Civil war. That certainly never happened.

Train and supply the ARVN to the point where they're as capable as the US forces. Kick out the top leadership and make it a military meritocracy. Do it all from the start, not when we're considering leaving.

You can't make good soldiers out of unmotivated undisciplined nobodies. Its the same problem the US had using ROK troops in the Korean War and Iraqi troops in the occupation of Iraq.

The US managed it with their own conscripts. In both cases the ROK and ARVN were pitifully equipped with corrupt leadership. The latter point is more relevant in Iraq, they had Abrams ready to go at Mosul then the army brass fled. Of course a rout would follow.

Don't forget the USSR were supplying the absolute best they had. The latest fighter jets, anti-aircraft missiles, small arms, artillery etc. America tended to give hand-me-downs. That lesson was learned after Vietnam but the US still made the mistake of filling leadership roles with local yes-men, we did it in Iraq after kicking out anyone who'd had any affiliation to the ba'ath party.