The Little-Known Role of the Soviet Union in the Vietnam War
It’s something often overlooked
“We would like to carry on this mission together with the Soviet Union, because no one can do it without the Soviet Union.” — North Vietnamese General Võ Nguyên Giáp in a speech in Moscow, 1971
The Vietnam War is one of the most misunderstood, debated, and historically revised wars in our nation’s history, and this continues to be true nearly 50 years after the end of the conflict. When people talk about the Vietnam War today, opinions and emotions remain strong on both sides regarding everything from the truth about the Gulf of Tonkin incident to Walter Cronkite’s declaration after the Tet Offensive that the war was unwinnable to whether Jane Fonda is a traitor. All of these have been discussed and debated ad nauseum.
What is almost never mentioned is the role the Soviet Union played in helping North Vietnam win the war and the mistaken belief of most people that they never played an active part at all. In the Korean conflict a decade before America got deeply involved in Vietnam, there was never any question that a major communist power was involved. When it looked as though communist North Korea would fall during the American counterattack, the People’s Republic of China threw themselves fully into the fight, ultimately committing…
