In my timeline about the jet age I am considering having the United States fight a conventional war in the 1960s against a communist state as an alternative to the Vietnam War. This allows for aerospace technology to show itself solving a conflict in a decisive manner, avoiding strategic bombers being replaced by missiles and avoiding the economic problems of the 1970s that helped kill the SST.
I was thinking that a Second Korean War or an invasion of Cuba would allow for a conventional conflict to happen. The problem is that the timeline goes on to the present day and I am worried those conflicts would lead to at the very least a limited nuclear war. I also want to avoid damaging the American or global economy too much because the gold standard is going to play a major role in the timeline later on (as it avoids the inflation, oil crisis, and stagflation of the 1970s and early 1980s). If it makes a major difference in the events of the war, Nixon is president from 1961-1969 and his vice president (in this timeline Rockefeller) is president from 1969 to 1973.
Any suggestions for this?