AHC: A non-Communist Vietnamese nationalist movement:

[Snake Featherston]

The problem I find in almost all the Vietnam threads where there's a POD on how the USA "wins" the war is that they invariably almost always assume Saigon has to require foreign aid directly fighting for it to win. At that point in what's a glorified civil war Saigon is dead, because its soldiers will never do the dirty work of fighting and dying if they can get someone else to do it for them. I believe the sole and only way to change this is to create a second, anti-Communist nationalist movement, a Chetnik to Hanoi's Titoists. It would seem to me that the best POD to achieve this is during the Japanese occupation, where just having the IJA bring the Three Alls approach to Indochina could start that process, and allowing the French to overreach might complete it.

I think at the point where Saigon is transparently the product of white, European influences it's not a state so much as a sockpuppet for Europe in an international sense. For it to be a state means it has to have a Vietnamese base to represent Vietnam. Your thoughts?

[NothingNow]

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

I think at the point where Saigon is transparently the product of white, European influences it's not a state so much as a sockpuppet for Europe in an international sense. For it to be a state means it has to have a Vietnamese base to represent Vietnam. Your thoughts?

Have the US not reject Ho Chi Min at every every possible opportunity, and not fall into the idiocy that was Containment.

[Killer300]

I don't think its possible, at all. Or rather, not with PODs within any reasonable timeframe for most timelines. Additionally, it's unnecessary for a reason I'll get to.

For why it isn't possible, it's because any Anti-Communist Nationalist Movement has to explain why it is supporting former Imperialists, therefore significantly damaging it as a popular force. Even with the POD with the Japanese, why would this change? Why would the populace of Vietnam forget what occurred with the French?

Now, you do bring up France gets overextended, and therefore perhaps kicked out, however this brings me to a question.

Why not just get Ho Chi Minh? After all, wasn't he willing earlier to ally with the United States? Yes, this would require the US refusing the French, however that's a POD more doable than trying to create a non-Communist Nationalist movement without him.

Edit: Okay, Ninjaed, but still.

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by NothingNow

Have the US not reject Ho Chi Min at every every possible opportunity, and not fall into the idiocy that was Containment.

Unfortunately that needs the USA to treat Asians like Europeans. In which case Ho might well have been an Asian Tito, a bastard, but he'd be the West's bastard. Making the USA be not-racists is not a simple task.

Originally Posted by Killer300

I don't think its possible, at all. Or rather, not with PODs within any reasonable timeframe for most timelines. Additionally, it's unnecessary for a reason I'll get to.

For why it isn't possible, it's because any Anti-Communist Nationalist Movement has to explain why it is supporting former Imperialists, therefore significantly damaging it as a popular force. Even with the POD with the Japanese, why would this change? Why would the populace of Vietnam forget what occurred with the French?

Now, you do bring up France gets overextended, and therefore perhaps kicked out, however this brings me to a question.

Why not just get Ho Chi Minh? After all, wasn't he willing earlier to ally with the United States? Yes, this would require the US refusing the French, however that's a POD more doable than trying to create a non-Communist Nationalist movement without him.

Edit: Okay, Ninjaed, but still.

Primarily because the POD here is cultural, requiring the USA to view Asians as human beings able to make decisions without reference to one foreign backer or another.

[Killer300]

Then there isn't a way that doesn't make the timeline virtually unrecognizable, because again, the populace isn't going to support a movement that works with former imperialists.

Really, this is a Catch-22 situation in regards to foreign policy for NATO, because France and Containment policy destroyed any chance for a credible Non-Communist Nationalist Movement.

[rcduggan]

POD: 1930, no Yen Bai mutiny. The Viet Quoc (Vietnamese Nationalist Party) thus survives and becomes the dominant anti-colonial party instead of Ho Chi Minh's faction. Someone like Nguyen Thai Hoc could take his place, and the end result is a firmly nationalist (and pro-Chiang Kai Shek!) revolutionary movement in Vietnam.

[Sam R.]

Originally Posted by rcduggan

POD: 1930, no Yen Bai mutiny. The Viet Quoc (Vietnamese Nationalist Party) thus survives and becomes the dominant anti-colonial party instead of Ho Chi Minh's faction. Someone like Nguyen Thai Hoc could take his place, and the end result is a firmly nationalist (and pro-Chiang Kai Shek!) revolutionary movement in Vietnam.

One of the problems with this is that a Vietnamese "Nationalist" movement is going to be a movement for a nationalist bourgeoisie. This means that it is going to have massive problems recruiting.

One of the key reasons for the success of a leftist Nationalist movement in Vietnam, was the radical transformation of agricultural peasants into agricultural proletarians under the French. Convincing the French not to smash land occupancy structures, or the peasantry itself is going to be hard. For example, without the Fish Sauce tax, how is France going to exploit Vietnam as a colony?

Any pro-capitalist nationalist movement is going to want to continue the basic structural of French imperialism: exploitation of the agricultural proletariat, as seen historically in the south after 1954.

If you can find a way out, then I'd congratulate you, but I honestly can't see it. Changing the nature of French exploitation in Vietnam isn't really going to happen, France is not going to invest in producing an industrial proletariat (thus producing the possibility of cross class collaboration around a "developmentalist" model of nationalism). Reducing the exploitation of the rural proletariat isn't going to happen. And any member of the bourgeoisie who suggests this is going to get it in the neck from the rest of his class (though there is a current time line speculating about this post 1954, the first coup has been overcome).

yours,
Sam R.

[Karelian]

POD: Zhōngguó Guómíndǎng becomes a left-wing agrarian populist party instead of the historical development, absorbs the fledling CCP and fights on against Japanese through WW2 to emerge as the sole internationally recognized government of Republic of China.

Thus Việt Quốc of this TTL is established following this example, and as a result it has more success and a distinct nationalist character despite the popular policies of land reform and support for agrarian smallholders. They also receive more support from China, and at the end of WW2, KMT-occupied parts of Indochina become a safe haven of Việt Quốc, setting a pretext for humiliating guerrilla campaign that ultimately forces the French colonialists out in early 1950s.

[Faeelin]

Originally Posted by Karelian

POD: Zhōngguó Guómíndǎng becomes a left-wing agrarian populist party instead of the historical development, absorbs the fledling CCP and fights on against Japanese through WW2 to emerge as the sole internationally recognized government of Republic of China.
.

GET OUT OF MY MIND.

[Karelian]

Originally Posted by Faeelin

GET OUT OF MY MIND.

Old habits die hard...I had a few premonitions about the events of Legacy of Sun Yat-Sen back in the day as well.

[Fredrick II Barbarossa]

Maybe have Ho chi min adopt social democracy rather than communism?

[Sam R.]

Originally Posted by Fredrick II Barbarossa

Maybe have Ho chi min adopt social democracy rather than communism?

By "social-democracy" you mean of course, reformism, rather than the more radical social democracy that has at times existed in Austria, Hungary or Italy.

One problem is that the reformists are happy to let capitalism percolate on until the "final crisis," as opposed to the anti-reformists (the Bolsheviks, Wobblies, Syndicalists, Left-Wing Communists, etc. of the 1919 period) who actually want to discover immediate crises and end the thing.

On top of this, reformism suited the needs of metropole proletarians, who were being "bought off" in relative terms by imperialism. Reformism was generally comfortable with the day to day political reality formed by imperialist capitalism. In contrast to this Ho Chi Minh, or rather, Vietnamese radicals looking to ride a wave of rural proletarian outrage, need an anti-imperialist programme.

Social democracy just ain't the ticket here. Left wing populism in the form of land reforms is viable—but given that it is external to the working class and promises continued capitalism, Vietnam would need a neighbour with a left-wing populist movement / state. And here there's the suggestion about regarding changes in Chinese politics.

yours,
Sam R.

[Faeelin]

Originally Posted by Karelian

Old habits die hard...I had a few premonitions about the events of Legacy of Sun Yat-Sen back in the day as well.

One of these days I will try to revive it, but my problem (as in the Stresemannverse) is that Japan is... complex. And weird.

One day, I'd like to do a 1911 Revolution TL which establishes a stable and liberal, if not democratic, government. The knock on effects ensure Taisho democracy doesn't go anywhere, and Pan-Asianism takes off as the two states cooperate.

This is a bad TL to be gunning down Indians.

[SergeantHeretic]

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

The problem I find in almost all the Vietnam threads where there's a POD on how the USA "wins" the war is that they invariably almost always assume Saigon has to require foreign aid directly fighting for it to win. At that point in what's a glorified civil war Saigon is dead, because its soldiers will never do the dirty work of fighting and dying if they can get someone else to do it for them. I believe the sole and only way to change this is to create a second, anti-Communist nationalist movement, a Chetnik to Hanoi's Titoists. It would seem to me that the best POD to achieve this is during the Japanese occupation, where just having the IJA bring the Three Alls approach to Indochina could start that process, and allowing the French to overreach might complete it.

I think at the point where Saigon is transparently the product of white, European influences it's not a state so much as a sockpuppet for Europe in an international sense. For it to be a state means it has to have a Vietnamese base to represent Vietnam. Your thoughts?

I think you're right, the SOuth needs to be genuine Vietnamese Nationists, not just AMerican Sock puppets.

Maybe if We were backing a Nationalist Ho Chi Minh and China or Russia is back a Commie Sock puppet.

How would that alter the war?

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by SergeantHeretic

I think you're right, the SOuth needs to be genuine Vietnamese Nationists, not just AMerican Sock puppets.

Maybe if We were backing a Nationalist Ho Chi Minh and China or Russia is back a Commie Sock puppet.

How would that alter the war?

You need cultural PODs in terms of the USA to have that happen. The USA had some very strange ideas about Asia in the 1940s, and to a real extent it could be argued thanks to the China Lobby that US Cold War policy in Asia was simply imperialism opposing Soviet imperialism more than any strict adherence to what was good even for Asians (while the Soviets of course never pretended to be anything like that so....yeah). For the USA to treat Ho Chih Minh as an Asian Tito requires a USA that actually treats Asians and Asian societies as dynamic, individual forces it can manipulate against the USSR instead of buying into a notion that Asians were hive-minds who reacted instinctively to a powerful, determining force.

[SergeantHeretic]

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

You need cultural PODs in terms of the USA to have that happen. The USA had some very strange ideas about Asia in the 1940s, and to a real extent it could be argued thanks to the China Lobby that US Cold War policy in Asia was simply imperialism opposing Soviet imperialism more than any strict adherence to what was good even for Asians (while the Soviets of course never pretended to be anything like that so....yeah). For the USA to treat Ho Chih Minh as an Asian Tito requires a USA that actually treats Asians and Asian societies as dynamic, individual forces it can manipulate against the USSR instead of buying into a notion that Asians were hive-minds who reacted instinctively to a powerful, determining force.

Maybe a larger and more individualistic force of Chindits or a more openly non sucky South Korea.

[Kome]

Originally Posted by Fredrick II Barbarossa

Maybe have Ho chi min adopt social democracy rather than communism?

In that case he'll never rise to leadership in the Vietnamese revolutionary movement.

[Simreeve]

I wonder how differently things would have gone if the Vietnamese had become c.90% Christian & 10% Buddhist by WWII, rather than vice versa as OTL?

[rcduggan]

Originally Posted by Faeelin

GET OUT OF MY MIND.

And mine as well! This is roughly what will happen in my Liao Zhongkai timeline, if I can ever find time to plan it out past the Northern Expedition... though my China is going to end up a bit more left-wing than Sun's China in your TL, I think...