The ARVN was doing very well in the field until the Dems pulled the funding rug out from under them. Kinda hard to fight off the enemy when your rifle has an empty magazine.
"The ARVN was doing very well in the field until the Dems pulled the funding rug out from under them. Kinda hard to fight off the enemy when your rifle has an empty magazine."
Canard altert!!
The Paris Peace Accords were merely an attempt by the Nixon adminsitration to gain a decent interval between American withdrawal and the inevitable collapse of South Vietnam. $700 million in military aid was authorized for FY 1975 to South Vietnam (equal to about $2.8 billion in 2006 dollars). This was down from $2.3 billion (in 1973 dollars) for FY 1973, but was still substantial. Much of South Vietnam was communist occupied when the US pulled out in early 1973; the Ho Chi Minh trail had become a superhighway going from the North all the way to the Mekong delta. The only thing that would have stopped, or at least slowed, a North Vietnamese attack in 1975 would have been US air strikes, something the US electorate was DEAD SET against. Much like the dog that was sprayed by a skunk, the US was not about to go back for a second bite. Had the Saigon government been less corrupt and allowed most of the aid to actually go to its troops (doubtless one reason aid was cut back in the first place), ARVN might have been able to put up a stouter defense.