Conventional Thai involvement in Laos?

The Ho Chi Minh trail through Laos was obviously essential for Northern victory in the Vietnam War; the conventional forces that conquered South Vietnam needed extensive logistical support, and and probably wouldn't have been able to penetrate a deeper, narrower front [i.e. Annamite mtns or the Mekong river to the coast, vs the entirety of the Laotian/Cambodian and Vietnamese border]. The North Vietnamese invested extensively in developing their supply route along the Annamite mountains, with paved roads, truck relays, and oil pipelines.

However, air campaigns against the HCMT were mostly insufficient, and the main group based attempt to cut it, Operation Lam Son 719, was a failure, as the ARVN column was outnumbered three to one, and the airmobile forces were a bridge too far, and were defeated separately. Still, I think the South Vietnamese would have been in a much stronger position had the Allies cut the HCMT and shortened the front.

Is there any PoD after 1954 where a joint operation between Thailand and South Vietnam or the U.S. to cut the HCMT in Laos would have been possible? Thailand definitely had an interest in keeping RVN from falling to communism, and I've heard the Royal Thai Army was considered quite an effective fighting force. They deployed a bit under two divisions in South Vietnam OTL; would they have been better used blocking the HCMT? I've been imagining something like Lam Son 719, but with a similar strength Royal Thai column coming out of the west, with the two pincers converging on Tchepone.
 
So after doing some research, turns out the Thai army in the Vietnam War was overall quite small; about three infantry divisions plus one raised and deployed to Vietnam plus change. With a population of over 20 million in the 60s and upwards of 40 million by 1975, only about 200,000 were in the military, compared to South Vietnam's 13 divisions plus change (~600,000 standing troops plus a million militia) from 20 million people.

US aid over the Vietnam War period was also quite small, at about a billion dollars in total spread over a decade. This is compared to annual aid in excess of a billion dollars for South Vietnam. The military budget for Thailand in this period was 200-250 million; using US aid to bring this up to 1 billion annually could potentially allow them to quadruple the size of the military, and allowing them to field somewhere around 13 divisions (out of an army of ~600,000, and total armed forces of 800,000), assuming a division slice of ~38,000. With 500,000 reservists available, as well as annual classes of almost 500,000, this expansion, while extreme, doesn't appear impossible.

Obviously, the necessary preparation for the expansion is going to take some time and thus money, so it's not like flipping a switch, but having two large, well equipped allied armies that can operate on exterior lines [the angle formed by the Mekong/Annamite mountains against Route 9 and the DMZ, plus Allied naval superiority allowing for amphibious envelopment] would leave the Allies in a much stronger strategic position if the U.S. left, compared to OTL where the US left despite there being enemy troops still inside South Vietnam. Aid could be conditional on a bilateral treaty of alliance with South Vietnam.

Ultimately, there might be a permanent army group of ~16 divisions able to contain North Vietnam. Eight divisions on the DMZ/Route 9 line, from the sea to Savannakhet, five along the Mekong/Annamite valley (three+ Thai plus the two Laotian Strike Divisions), and an amphibious corps of three marine divisions. As the interior is pacified, the RF/PF can be converted into manpower reserves for the divisions along the Northern border, in addition to any ARVN divisions kept in reserve. Behind this shield, the RVN can develop its economy, become an Asian Tiger, while the Le Duan faction in the DRVN neglects domestic development and lets the country slide into destitution.
 
For context, it was estimated that China and North Vietnam together could only field about ~20 divisions in the Vietnam theatre, regardless of how many men the Chinese had overall, and that a line of eight US divisions would be enough to hold them off without resort to nuclear weapons.

Backed up with US financing and firepower, there would be little for China or North Vietnam to do against the US's allies in Southeast Asia; Burma would be the only neutralist SE Asian state left if Laos, Cambodia, South Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia committed themselves firmly to anticommunism after seeing its defeat in South Vietnam. China would have to fight to reestablish its prestige as a potential leader of global communism, or else see the Soviet Union triumph as the undisputed leader of the global communist movement.
 

raharris1973

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Might the strain and exertion of an anticommunist effort subjectively far from home for many Thai villagers make draft evasion and Thai Communist insurgents *popular*?
 
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