DBWI: The US intervenes in Vietnam

But yet in the end, Vietnam didn't exactly stay "Communist" for long. When China liberalized its economy under Deng Xiaopeng in starting in 1979, Vietnam followed in China's footsteps soon after, especially when influential people in that country like Vo Nguyen Giap wanted Vietnam to be like the reforming China. As such, Vietnam turned into to huge agricultural exporter, especially coffee, rice and sugar cane. Yeah, Vietnam and Thailand have been arguing back and forth in the World Trade Organization over rice exports, but then, some of the best long-grain rice in the world come from the Mekong Delta, comparable to Thailand's "jasmine rice."
 
We might be able to push back economic globalization another decade ? ?

Although I still think the '70s was shamefully late. It's twenty years after Stalin's death for crying out loud! Of course the two super powers are going to compete for allegiance among Third World nations and compete on who can do a better job at genuine trade and helping with genuine economic development. We're not going to just jockey with propping up dictatorships and supporting rebel armies.

But if someone is feeling ambitious and wants to write semi-dystopian, recent-past / near-future guitar riff of fiction . . please be my guest. :)
 
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longsword14

Banned
One critical detail - Ho Chi Minh. He may have been a communist, but he was until his dying day in the mid 70s a complete fanboy of America's ideals and culture.
OOC: Do people even know anything about Ho Chi Minh ? He was not some pragmatic looking for support thst he found in communists, he was a true believer to begin with.
This nonsense about him turning to communism as a resction is just wrong.
 
What if we had intervened in Vietnam just like we did in Korea?

Difficult/impossible.

State department, British and the CIA were screaming "DON'T!" at the top of their lungs ever since 1946, event the French warned directly against this after their defeat. Therefore Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson were all making vague noises towards Saigon government and sent a few dollars to whoever seemed to be at the top for the moment, but this was more to appease the anti-communist loony factions in the congress than stem the "red tide".

So for this to happen in the first place, you need to de-capitate the state department or at least their Asia desk, let the intelligence agencies run amok in the area and make the President hostage to the far right in the Congress so he ignores European allies completely. It would be a fsck up of epic proportions and lead to absolute chaos.

But if it did happen it would be more expensive than WWII, more lethal than Korea and would probably destroy the presidency of whoever makes the decisions to send in the troops, in the end Vietnam would end up permanently divided like Germany and Korea.
 
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