Why didn't American troops invade North Vietnam?
1 Answer
Probably for fear of repeating what happened few years before in Korea.
Explanation:
In Korea the US forces invaded the northern part and basically reached the border with China...BUT at that point an army of "volunteers" from China attacked the US forces and forced them to retreat. At that point many US generals and "hawks" asked for deployment of nuclear weapons but this option (fortunately) was not chosen.
In Vietnam the situation was even worse because the north was backed by an even more dangerous superpower: the Soviet Union. They had and still have a huge arsenal of conventional and Nuclear weapons and an invasion would have probably resulted in WWIII....and probably the end of everything!
The Soviet Union would have probably intervened if an invasion was launched first with few "volunteers" and after the first losses with more men and more sophisticated equipment plunging the war into a new dimension and spiraling it into an open and total confrontation.
