An event in this article is a April 30 selected anniversary may be in HTML comment A question has been bugging me From the time the first US military advisors stepped in to Vietnam in the early 60s to the final withdrawal of all US troops in 1973 the USSR and China repeatedly warned Kennedy Johnson and Nixon NOT to cross the DMZ and directly invade North Vietnam That seems simple enough that we were not allowed to go in to the North BUT my question is were the South Vietnamese Forces allowed to go on the offensive and invade North Vietnam Did USSR and China ever warn the South not to invade the North Considering the U S s coordination with and funding for ARVN I m sure that they would take South Vietnamese ground forces in North Vietnam much the same way they d take Marines The only crossing of the DMZ that occurred was American bombing raids Probably not but it is doubtful that such an operation could have been pulled off 23 July 2005 It s hard to imagine what further threats the major communist powers could have used to dissuade S V from doing anything But I agree with CJK the limited competence of the ARVN in offensive operations seems well established in the historical record e g the offensive in Laos talk 03 04 2005 July 24 UTC The forgotten factor in this little chat is the fact that the South and its dissident South Vietnamese were often the target of U S bombing Keep in mind that the terms North and South were circumstantial and not actually representative of the demographic split North and South often simply repeats the ideological and geographic claims about the nature of the war which American soldiers for example found to be not the reality Many perhaps most people in the democratic South were pro independence despite the Western allied ethnic Catholic elite Hence any use of North and South carries an inherent biased disparity with the facts t I don t know what you are talking about We were discussing whether or not the Soviets or Chinese would react if South Vietnam sent its forces to invade North Vietnam 24 July 2005 I do nt know what you are talking about Well it would really help if you did would nt it t Well maybe you shouldn t bring up unrelated issues in the middle of a specific discussion 25 July 2005 I d just like to commend the recent additions to the article Actually to my understanding there were still many rescue raids of captured POWs or commando attacks that were conducted by either U S commandos or the Biet Dong Quan the ARVN equivalent against the north during the war It s an honour to meet celebrities like you Trey and Parker Stone I appreciate your criticisms to my editions on the Vietnam War page well others watching this page are quite capable of RVing Marxist language and POV it seems And would RVing capitalist language and POV be ok with you t I don t know what capitalist language means but if it existed and was POV then I would have no problems with its reversion We were actually talking about a full scale attack by South Vietnam not a raid 24 July 2005 Let s assume the South Vietnamese Army without US troop support did gather a formidable invasion force and did cross the DMZ in to the North would the Chinese and or USSR intervene and play the defending an ally card for the North exactly like how we did for the South I know this is a hypothetical assumption but still it s irrelevant because the ARVN was never able to operate well without U S assistance So answering your hypothetical if that did happen active intervention in the form of Chinese or Soviet troops would probably not be necessary given the PAVN s superior capabilities if we had somehow managed to make the ARVN into a capable offensive force and we were able to take over North Vietnam then yes I d expect the PLA army in China to intervene just like they had in North Korea but American go