Avoid Vietnam war: ideas?

I am considering a timeline where Cuba has not become communist,and the Vietnam war never happened.
Now, the first thing is simple: Fidel and Raoul Castro are died July 26, 1953 in the attack to Moncada Barracks,and Ernesto "Che" Guevara is died in 1951 during the motorcycle journey through South America for a car accident.
For Vietnam is more difficult.
How avoid at all the war?
All ideas are welcome, Ho Chi Min die in WW-II,all Vietnam become communist in 1954,Ike helps the French at Dien bien Phu...
all for avoid the war.
I ask that the POD be post 1945.
thoughts?
 
I am considering a timeline where Cuba has not become communist,and the Vietnam war never happened.
Now, the first thing is simple: Fidel and Raoul Castro are died July 26, 1953 in the attack to Moncada Barracks,and Ernesto "Che" Guevara is died in 1951 during the motorcycle journey through South America for a car accident.
For Vietnam is more difficult.
How avoid at all the war?
All ideas are welcome, Ho Chi Min die in WW-II,all Vietnam become communist in 1954,Ike helps the French at Dien bien Phu...
all for avoid the war.
I ask that the POD be post 1945.
thoughts?

Ho Chi Min, working as a waiter at the Waldorf Astoria in New York (actually happened), is walking home one rainy night and is hit by a taxi. He is wounded on impact. While in the hospital, he maintains his socialist leanings, but also becomes much more respectful and loving of America. During his leadership of the Viet Minh, as the French retreat from Indochina, he offers the United States and French a joint naval base in the north of the country, as well as a trade partnership. This bring socialist Vietnam under the wing of the USA, and avoids the Vietnam War. However, this leads to the Sino-Vietnamese Wars of 1965 and 1976, drawing in thousands of Western troops and culminating in the use of nuclear weapons by the Americans, with the tacit acceptance of the Soviets, on a major Chinese fleet in the South China Sea
 
Without Changing Uncle Ho but the US

One sure way would be if the US continued to support Uncle Ho after WWII and told the French to take one for the (West) home team by sticking to the letter concerning UN Resolution 1514. I don't think it would have prompted France take a hiatus from NATO any later then it did OTL since they crashed their venture along with Britain and Israel on taking the Suez earlier.

The question is if that could be done despite the McCarthy era and the kind of foreign policy the US stuck to concerning certain central Asian countries.
 

RousseauX

Donor
Ho Chi Min, working as a waiter at the Waldorf Astoria in New York (actually happened), is walking home one rainy night and is hit by a taxi. He is wounded on impact. While in the hospital, he maintains his socialist leanings, but also becomes much more respectful and loving of America. During his leadership of the Viet Minh, as the French retreat from Indochina, he offers the United States and French a joint naval base in the north of the country, as well as a trade partnership. This bring socialist Vietnam under the wing of the USA, and avoids the Vietnam War. However, this leads to the Sino-Vietnamese Wars of 1965 and 1976, drawing in thousands of Western troops and culminating in the use of nuclear weapons by the Americans, with the tacit acceptance of the Soviets, on a major Chinese fleet in the South China Sea
The problem with this is that this is something like what Ho Chi Minh wanted OTL. It's just that the Americans have no interest in picking him over the French.

The POD would be US telling the French to go screw themselves and recognizing Vietnamese independence: Vietnam becomes an American aligned Yugoslavia of Southeast Asia.
 

Solroc

Banned
The problem with this is that this is something like what Ho Chi Minh wanted OTL. It's just that the Americans have no interest in picking him over the French.

The POD would be US telling the French to go screw themselves and recognizing Vietnamese independence: Vietnam becomes an American aligned Yugoslavia of Southeast Asia.

This. And TBH, I thought I was the only one who held this belief.

The U.S. really fucked up in choosing France's colonial empire over a potential ally in Vietnam, regardless of Ho Chi Minh's brief stint in the USSR. IIRC Ho Chi Minh's first declaration of independence was based on the US Declaration of Independence.
 
In http://www.1940lafrancecontinue.org/ it looks like there won't be an Indochina War in that TL due to the French holding out until the end against the Japanese in Indochina, which leads to a combined Franco-Vietnamese-Laotian-Cambodian resistance force based from Laos and northwest Vietnam.

So therefore another idea: have France fight on from Algeria in 1940.
 
I was looking about getting this book, and it may help.

http://www.amazon.com/Choosing-War-Chance-Escalation-Vietnam/dp/0520229193/ref=pd_sim_b_7

In short, it's easy to avoid Vietnam. You don't need to change this and that in the 40s or 50s, though you are free to do so for your solution if you wish. All you have to do is change this and that in 1964 and 1965. Vietnam is quite easy to avoid. 37% of people in the US paid any attention to it (that's quite the minority), and of that, most of that number expected ceasefire or the fall of Saigon shortly. The United States' alternative to Americanizing the war would simply be to remove advisers, and continue aid and supply, allowing the South to win or lose dependent on themselves.
 
How much was Ho Chi Min important for communism in Vietnam?
If had died young would have existed a communist north Vietnam?
 
Top