Ok here's a good POD: It takes place during the Korean War where the US wins the war, but at a terrible price. The Sino-Korean border is very heavily armed with the occaisonal shooting back and forth.
After Korea, Eisenhower knows there is no possible way to get the US involved in another war in Asia so soon and lets the elections go unhindered in Vietnam. As expected Ho Chi Minh takes it in a cakewalk. Due to his roll in World War II, Eisenhower is able to get by with it with very little criticism. (Eisenhower takes one for the team in other words)
The Democrats bring it up again in 1960 during the elections which helps JFK defeat Nixon. During the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy is informed there is no room for failure and he must do everything his power to assure victory. His advisors continually point out we dont want another Vietnam (which has a totally different meaning). Kennedy orders the air strikes, which eventually topples Castro. US Marines occupy Cuba throughout most of the 1960's.
Civil Rights is THE issue of the 1960's, combined with music from the British Invasion, and American artists such as Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison the sixties gives way to flower power and the hippie movement. Kennedy is enormously popular and wins re-election in 1964, in spite of allowing construction of the Berlin Wall. The Soviet-Sino conflict, Israeli-Arab War, dominates the news of the late 1960's.
Vice President Johnson gets the nod over RFK in the 1968 Democratic Primary, and becomes the next President when he defeats Nixon. Johnson loses the 1972 election to Reagan and dies in 1974. In 1971, due to the butterflies, the USSR and China exchange blows. President Johnson works the phone to keep the two nuclear powers from starting a nuclear holocaust. Reagan comes to power in 1973 elated of the war between the Communist powers, when the USSR begins to call on troops from the Warsaw Pact in 1974, Reagan begins to push the USSR in Europe, making it seem the US was siding with China, when in fact Reagan wanted nothing to do with either communist nation. The Soviets ended the war by nuking Beijing in 1975, turning around and tried to keep up with the west in another arms race.
There was no invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, but a small scale war between the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact caused the world to watch as the United States supported the WarPac in 1980. The Soviets after the bloody war with China could not afford, nor had the man power to fight the US.
Reagan sent the US Army into Afghanistan in 1979 to prop up the Shah, the Persian War ended with the loss of 2000 American lives and 25,000 Iranian lives in 1982. In spite of Reagan's record in the 1970's, the country couldnt trust his VP (unknown in OTL) as he appeared corrupt and dangerous when compared to the more stable Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale and his Vice President nominee Jimmy Carter of Georgia. Mondale was sworn in as President in 1981 and worked to bring the Persian War to a close. Persia was the dominate issue of the Mondale administration, when the Shah died in 1983, his son became the ruler of a constitutional monarchy.
The Cold War ended in 1986 when the Soviet Union collapsed in anarchy and Civil War, a year later in China the same happened when soldiers were told to crush a protest at Tinanmen Square and instead joined the protesters.
Former Soviet States in the Balkans were occupied by the nations of the former Warsaw Pact. Hardline communists seized control of the Ukraine. The central Asia seperated with either hardline communists in charge, or other dictators. The Russian Civil War lasted until 1992 but the country was left in ruins, with pockets of ethnic groups controlling various area's, and demanding to be recognized as independent nations.
China was taken over by the military and became a rightwing dictatorship.
Mondale was President until 1989 when Jimmy Carter lost to Bob Dole. Dole served one term before losing out to Paul Tsongas. Tsongas died of a stroke in 1998 making Geraldine Ferraro the first female President of the United States. The 2000 election pitted Ferraro against Republican John McCain.
