Vietnam war, The Vietnamese

For the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong, the U.S. presence was just another imperialist enemy more than they could overcome, as they had done twice already, and get not only the country’s reunification, but the unity of the entire Indochina peninsula. It was this spirit of nationalism in a Third World country, according to authors such as Maria Teresa Long Alonso, that the Americans failed to understand and ultimately another reason for their defeat.

The Vietnam War has been compared and is likely to be further compared with any other dispute where the U.S. did not win with the clarity you expect from their equipment, such as Somalia or Iraq. However, Vietnam has two differences that were not repeated again since then:

Americans and other coalition forces fighting against a regular army that was invading the country and also against the guerrillas. The EVN primarily used guerrilla tactics and the training was aimed primarily at creating what might be called irregular forces. But he was a regular army in recruitment, organization, armament, etc. North Vietnam also had no enemies, you should monitor neighboring units, so they could spend virtually all their resources to infiltrate the South.

The army and the country that had sent them the help of a superpower, as with the Soviet Union, which facilitated the acquisition of modern weapons and training. Certainly the amount was similar to that delivered by U.S. allies, but it was a help not comparable with the other forces that have confronted the United States since.

This statement does not mean that without Soviet aid the North would not have gotten the victory, but it accelerated it markedly. About 11,000 Soviet troops fought in Vietnam, most of them pilots, technicians and specialists in defense.