[vundercind]

The question doesn’t make much sense because “stopped bothering with it” is how rich foreign states meddling in colonized territory usually lose wars. It’s not like Vietnam was gonna invade the US, or like we couldn’t have stuck around indefinitely if we’d really wanted to.

This is just what losing looks like in that situation. Yes, we lost.

[bawolff]

Even in wars between peer-level nations, it doesn't end with total destruction.

Did Germany lose world war 1 or did they just decide to stop bothering with it? I think the answer is clearly the former, but in the end they still kept an independent state, weren't occupied, etc.

[vundercind]

Absolutely right, negotiated peace in some fashion is common even then. But either side might be able to follow through and entirely subjugate the other, or at least dismantle their state. That’s not on the table with very-unequal combatants. The only plausible outcome (barring expansion of the war into something more like a world war, anyway) of the Vietnam war that was a victory for north Vietnam was “the US gives up and leaves”. That’s the only way a US loss was ever gonna look—there weren’t (realistically) other ways to lose.

[edit] my point simply being that yes, that’s a loss, and in fact it was the only real way a loss could have looked, so if that’s not a “real” loss then I guess we “couldn’t lose” that war, which is plainly a strange way of looking at it.

[cthalupa]

> if that’s not a “real” loss then I guess we “couldn’t lose” that war, which is plainly a strange way of looking at it.

Well, I think the entire reason the US has been so quick to insert itself in situations like this is because there's a very real feeling that the US can't really lose these wars, because the consequences of failure are very different from, say, WW2.

If the stakes were higher for America as a nation we'd probably be significantly less likely to enter into these sorts of conflicts to begin with. And if the stakes were higher for America in the conflict for some other reason - say it was Mexico instead of Vietnam - there'd probably be significantly more political and public support for continued action and additional resources being thrown at it. But it's hard to do that when it's for the more nebulous idea of keeping the foreign power most aligned with US interests in the region in power.

Which isn't to say I disagree with the general idea - Vietnam was a loss by any reasonable sense of the word - but that I think there is a certain amount of truth to the idea that people in power really did look at Vietnam as a war that couldn't truly be lost.

[bawolff]

I mean, i guess the other way to lose is like the soviet union in afghanistan, depending on how directly you think that lead to its collapse. But yeah, i agree with you.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Did Germany lose world war 1 or did they just decide to stop bothering with it?

Germany and Japan unconditionally surrendered.

[bawolff]

Pretty sure germany did not unconditionally surrender in world war 1. Japan was on the winning side so they definitely did not surrender.

World war 1 is not the same as world war 2.

[JumpCrisscross]

Yup, misread.