Geopolitics and the Vietnam War: Pyrrhic Victory's Antonym

If pyrrhic victory had an antonym, it would describe a loss with dramatic yet unanticipated benefits, a victory disguised as defeat. This essay's central assertion is the Vietnam War was a geopolitical victory for the United States. The war was a victory disguised as defeat. Nicholas Spykman's analysis of the United States' geopolitical position in America's Strategy in World Politics is applied along with older and post–Cold War Vietnam War historiography. Saul Cohen's maritime conception of the Cold War is also employed. The 1965 American ground force intervention in Vietnam geopolitically secured Indonesia in the Western strategic-economic orbit in the Cold War. The unanticipated benefit, making the Vietnam War pyrrhic victory's antonym, is the intervention's role in the movement of the Sino-American relationship from that of enemy to rapprochement to tacit alliance in the 1970s. This movement illustrates a recent historiographical assertion the war intensified communist bloc fractures beyond repair, reoriented international politics, and made a major contribution to the US Cold War victory.