Humphrey wins in 1968
- Thread starter Taunay
- Start date
One interesting point that should be kept in mind is that by October it seemed very likely that Hubert would win the election, however, due to the failure of peace talks (And Humphrey's refusal to release the information blaming Nixon for the failure) Nixon ended up winning, although he won the popular vote by just 0.7% . Flipping 5 states (Illinois, Alaska, Ohio, New Jersey and Missouri) who were won by a margin of less than 3% would've been enough to result in a Humphrey victory.
Aside from his handling of Vietnam, the big question is healthcare. Ted Kennedy proposed a single-payer universal healthcare bill in 1970 after becoming the leader of the Committee for National Health Insurance, which took the founder of the committee (Walter Reuther) dying and Ralph Yarborough losing his re-election. I'm actually not sure how Yarborough fares if Humphrey is Democrats are the incumbent because he lost re-nomination to Lloyd Bentsen who then defeated the Republican challenger George H.W. Bush. In this timeline, I'm not sure if Yarborough is a weaker or stronger candidate for re-nomination or re-election. The biggest difference this time is that a President Humphrey is likely to campaign for him, which again might be a help or a drag on his chances. It's just hard to imagine Lloyd Bentsen having the support of a Democratic President Humphrey. I'm inclined to say that Yarborough likely holds onto his seat, and so the question becomes what kind of healthcare bill does Yarborough put forward and does Humphrey sign onto it before losses in the midterms. At this point, Yarborough is a much better legislator than Kennedy so it's possible he has more success getting it signed into law.
Another change is that we're less likely to see the Kent State shootings as Humphrey is unlikely to bomb Cambodia.
Another change is that we're less likely to see the Kent State shootings as Humphrey is unlikely to bomb Cambodia.
Interesting opinion, although I think Nixon's defeat could be a blow to the Southern Strategy of the Republicans and would have lasting effects on American politics. That's without mentioning the Supreme Court, desegregation busing could actually be upheld as constitutional, which would definitely affect American life and politics
Wow, universal healthcare could possibly have changed the US in many ways, politically, socially and culturally. And no Kent State shootings sounds pretty good!
I've thought about ATL 1968 a fair amount myself.
Given the OP premise, clearly this is a fairly late POD in the year of 1968, since LBJ pulling off such a coup as a peace treaty early in the year would probably mean he himself runs for reelection and I would guess, has a good chance of winning in his own name, albeit not the landslide victory he did win OTL in 1964.
Things changed fast that year and it is indeed realistic the opportunity for a peace treaty would only come too late for him to pursue the Democratic nomination. I am interested in ATLs where someone other than Humphrey wins the nomination, but again given LBJ's power in the Democratic establishment, such ATLs are long shots--only Humphrey would be acceptable to Johnson, and only after his own chances were torpedoed. So the POD has to be fairly late.
Now then, is it realistic for Hubert Humphrey to be the one to call out Nixon's quite illegal antics? I would say no, not at all. "The buck stops here" said Harry Truman, as elected President, it was Johnson's job to do this. The reason he did not OTL was that he was able to know what Nixon was up to by means that were illegal themselves. Johnson was playing the game of what passed for ethics in the Cold War era. To state the credo as I understand it, it was, among its believers, that the government of the United States was fundamentally and axiomatically legitimate because it stood for the true interests of the democratic public that elected it, and as it was engaged in an existential struggle against a ruthless enemy with no regard for human rights or fairness, it was often necessary and thus proper for these officials entrusted with advancing and protecting American interests to do things that conflicted with the more high-minded statement of the principles we were supposed to be for. The President had to have the free hand to do stuff that was in fact illegal, if they did it in defense of fundamental American and human freedoms. But this meant keeping official silence about such maneuvers, and that gave Nixon the cover he needed; calling Nixon's foul would also disclose the foul of the administration spying on private citizens by means that had no legal defense. If Johnson had judged that it was necessary and proper to blow the whistle on Nixon's maneuver, he surely would have taken doing that on himself, especially in a situation such as late 1968 where he was already going down in flames personally--better to keep his proxy candidate's hands clean, as well as the Constitutionally straightforward thing to do.
I think Nixon most certainly should have been blocked somehow, and perhaps there is another way it could have happened. Nixon's scheme depended on a critical number of South Vietnamese officials uniting to telegraph they would not cooperate in supporting a treaty hashed out between Johnson on one side and Hanoi and Moscow on the other, and figuring they would get a better deal if Nixon were elected to better defend their interests as future US President.
Rather than exposing Nixon (which would certainly be the moral high road to take, and perhaps as I believe, better for the nation to shine a spotlight on the degree to which the practice of "defending freedom" involved the practical subversion of it) could Johnson have instead have played harder ball with the South Vietnamese politicians, and made it clear to them that on one hand, he would make sure the South would be protected and their personal positions secured no matter what the treaty said--but on the other hand if they did not cooperate with this political necessity, he would see them deposed as necessary? On paper, the United States was providing aid to a freedom-loving republican state that was being subverted by ruthless enemies of freedom, but in fact the whole Saigon regime was pretty much a construct of US power, and these privileged gentlemen owed their positions, privileges and safety to Yankee patronage. To purge them would be costly on many levels, but it would hardly involve a greater violation of such high principles as sovereignty or legitimacy than putting them there in the first place had!
If it had been easy for LBJ to take such a step, I suppose he would have OTL. It is thus clearly a long shot, but I think less of one than the bigger political risk of blowing the whistle on Nixon publicly and disclosing how he was aware of Nixon's (quite criminal to be sure) antics.
Now, if we can suppose that one way or another Johnson can counter Nixon's move and thus get the treaty signed before the election, or even after it, I do think that while clearly this would not truly end the conflict in Vietnam, it would change the terms of it drastically. OTL the treaty achieved by Nixon was a step on the road to the total defeat of US intervention in southeast Asia and the victory of Hanoi, but I think it would be different if accomplished earlier.
IMHO and understanding, the treaty Lyndon Johnson was apparently near finalizing with the North Vietnamese government and their Soviet patrons, was essentially identical with the treaty Nixon agreed to in 1972, so if the latter is deemed acceptable in any sense, the former would be equally so, whereas anyone denouncing LBJ's version as a joke or the like (essentially surrender of the Southern Saigon regime, "Republic of Vietnam" to Communist rule) would be admitting Nixon made the same surrender, ultimately. I actually think that the overall situation depended very strongly on shifting attitudes in the USA as a whole, and that the same treaty agreed to effective the start of 1969 might give the Saigon government better odds of long term survival.
Basically, already by late 1968 the Vietnam war was widely unpopular in the USA as a whole, but stretching the war out another 4 years, despite the fact that Nixon did lower the rate of specifically US force casualties by various stratagems, greatly deepened and broadened the unpopularity and led to a Congress more deeply opposed, with both newly elected Members and long-term incumbents looking at constituencies more strongly opposed than ever. Whereas in 1969, in the wake of a treaty and sudden and major drop in US losses, old school Cold War mentality might have better prevailed, if not in the general populace, at least among their incumbent Congressional representatives, while Johnson managing to accomplish this diplomatic coup would go a long way toward redeeming the general reputation of the Democratic led bipartisan establishment. Of course among hard-core anti-war activists this would not make a big difference, but the difference between 1969 and 1973 in terms of the more widespread and deep US mentality and their Congressional representation is a matter of deeper fatigue of the segments of the population that supported the war in the first place. A certain core of various segments never wavered and even doubled down in the face of popular rising skepticism, but what mattered I think was the erosion of support in the middle ranges.
Thus, in the event that the outcome of a treaty essentially identical to the OTL one being identically violated by the Northern PDRV forces making a conventional military invasion of the South, it would be possible for any US President of either party to call for emergency reinforcement of the Southern RVN forces. Any treaty provisions forbidding Uncle Sam to aid the South overtly would be out the window with Hanoi violating the treaty so egregiously, so it came down OTL to the US establishment being unable to muster any credible commitment to defending the South in this manner by 1975. If the same thing were to happen in 1971 with Hanoi and the Kremlin having signed off on an end to the conflict in '68, vital support that OTL was eroded by what IMHO can be described as 4 years of bad faith by the OTL Nixon Administration would be on hand--a segment of the population would still be dead against re-escalation, while meanwhile the danger of the conflict triggering global thermonuclear war would be a chilling factor to be sure--but against that, the Soviets would not look very credible diplomatically arguing that the oppressed people of Vietnam were being bullied by the Western capitalists, if in fact it were the Northern forces who attacked the South openly. The Soviet regime was at the end of the day rather risk-averse and first of all I think they'd have strongly discouraged gung-ho factions in Hanoi from proposing such a move, encouraging their clients to think of the treaty as a win allowing them to go about building up the North on their own terms without devastating costs from Western strikes against them, and clandestinely maneuver for influence in Laos and Cambodia as well as in the South as best they could. And while we can't dismiss the possibility the Northern rulers would disregard Soviet urgings as they had done before and make an impetuous move anyway (considering Southern weaknesses, more below!) I do think it might be in cards for Moscow to disown them, or anyway limit their demands to restoration of status quo ante, with the North remaining Communist, but voice no opposition to Western allied forces (mainly US, but with considerable aid from Australia as well as what remains of RVN domestic force, and nominal support of SEATO--Australia, but also Thailand, the Philippines, Taiwan (assuming the US has not as OTL shifted to recognized the PRC, which we still hadn't OTL as late as 1971), Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore) concentrating to clean the clock of any intruding Northern forces and even pursuing them past the border into the North, as long as when the dust settles the North gets back control of its pre-invasion attempt territory. And perhaps Moscow would sign off on the North losing some territory in the middle too.
Even with nominally no US forces in South Vietnam whatsoever, I think there would be a fair number in the region, largely in the Philippines and perhaps in Thailand, and given a major diplomatic shift, perhaps Cambodia and maybe Laos, as well as in Taiwan and Japan. US air support of an initial ARVN defense of the South could be authorized in a matter of hours and deployed to RVN bases in not much more time, considering that Yankees had constructed these bases and that the Southern Vietnamese air force would be operating pretty recent US models donated to them. Therefore I think that, given US willingness to defend the South against such an overt invasion as prevailed OTL, the North would not calculate a good chance of victory by such means and would not commit to such a foolish venture.
Now on the other hand, OTL the 4 years of delay before Nixon agreed to essentially the same treaty Johnson was seeking did make a difference in terms of the Saigon RVN regime consolidating political control of the South, largely due to massive attrition of activist pro-Communist forces among the Southern citizenry itself. Now this was due in large part to means I cannot agree were what I would call legitimate, involving as it did police state terror and ruthless violence--which is not to say I think Northern methods were less so, but it does render the notion that we Yankees were there to protect the freedom and human rights of the South Vietnamese rather hypocritical to say the least. And this police state portion of achieving Southern "security" and "legitimacy" was very much something Uncle Sam was involved in, being essentially a CIA project. In 1969, much of this political "cleansing" was yet to be accomplished, and so with a treaty identical to OTL in place, the North would be pursuing aggression counter to the spirit if not the letter of said treaty by means of continuing to seek to support subversion in the south, rather than considering overt military invasion--though to be sure, if anything I suppose the forces Saigon controlled on paper were less reliable and less competent than they proved to be in OTL 1975! The crucial difference is that the South would remain under Yankee protection on similar terms to the North being under Soviet (and to an ambiguous degree, PRC) protection--playing a war game on paper with Vietnamese forces only would be a fantasy in the ATL 1969-72 period, as it was not in OTL '75.
But certainly overall Saigon was weaker by itself in 1969. There were other factors besides the general political cleansing practiced so ruthlessly OTL during the Nixon years. South Vietnamese society was transformed over that time to be much less centered on traditional rural villages, much more concentrated in urban areas which in turn were subsidized by Yankee "aid" in various forms, which to be sure primarily enriched just a stratum of the national population directly, but anyway did change the overall social calculus to undermine the channels whereby the combined domestic grassroots and Northern cadre resistance opposed the factions the US favored in Saigon. If the North could invade with a free hand as OTL, their victory would be more assured earlier than later I suppose.
This is academic though if in fact US leadership would assuredly sweep in to defend the South; perhaps considerable territory might be lost before American and allied forces could stop an invasion, but having stopped it, US forces in 1970 or so would be competent to wage and win a conventional set-piece ground war of the WWII type, without even having to resort to threats of nuclear strikes-indeed air power alone, using conventional bombs but much augmented by Cold War era technology, would be far more effective (whereas the Soviets, willing as they were to supply Hanoi with defensive arms and even some clandestine Soviet personnel perhaps, would I predict wash their hands of invasion--domestic PDRV airmen were competent and devoted, but in the air I am confident that the combination of US sophistication and material resources would rapidly secure Southern airspace and put the North on defensive fast). To inject a personal note, my own father flew F-105 fighter-bombers, in a bomber role, out of Thailand in 1968, and remarked that this "light" supersonic jet bomber carried more tonnage of ordinance than any "heavy" bomber of WWII could. More infamously, overall the tonnage of bombs dropped by US forces on Vietnam and neighboring countries once the war spread to Cambodia and Laos did indeed exceed that dropped by all sides in World War II, OTL.
Given such air cover, I suspect the ARVN would rally and do much to blunt the Northern strike, and soon after major US and allied forces would arrive to reinforce them and drive back the invaders--whether they would stop at the nominal border is a question to game out in detail, but I would think by then the post-war treaty would already be hammered out and signed by both Washington and Moscow, and Hanoi would know they had best agree to a truce or be cut to ribbons when left out to dry by a Soviet regime with no interest in World War Three.
So IMHO, it comes down to US resolution, and avoiding 4 years of bad faith carnage (however mitigated in terms of US force loss rates) and political hypocrisy would make a big difference in outcomes. Indeed I think the Northern regime would wisely avoid the path of overt invasion, whereas no treaty would prevent the US from shoring up Saigon in ways that do not translate directly into countable deployed military force but do manage to secure the southern regime (in ways I personally think would be deplorable and worse, with effects I don't think would be very nice on the southern population overall, to be sure) politically against domestic insurrection.
It is conventional wisdom that the domestic southern opposition was largely decimated by their failure to take over in the Tet Insurrection--OTL this proved a Pyrrhic victory for the US/Saigon side because in context of the war going on another half decade, it undermined the "light at the end of the tunnel" mentality of the powers that were in Washington. In an ATL where a treaty of peace is signed within 12 months it would be different I think. Popular culture portrayals of the shifting political sands in the USA point to the discomfiture of these authorities at that moment, but in context of a diplomatic victory soon after I think it would be different in the USA. In such an ATL, the fact of decimation of genuine Southern domestic opposition would offset the weakness of the Saigon government in the context of ongoing resolution by US authorities to prop them up. As noted I don't think the necessary means to prop them up would be what I would call legitimate but they'd pass political muster despite an energized countercultural opposition in America denouncing them. End the involvement of drafted US conscripts being sent into South Vietnamese villages to conduct terror campaigns, preempt such iconic events as My Lai (never mind such things had already happened--the politically if not morally important thing is to prevent more of them in the context of ongoing US grassroots skepticism worsening), end escalating bombing campaigns, leave the ongoing war to be what the North could clandestinely orchestrate versus what the ruthless if not very well politically grounded Southern authorities, with clandestine US backing via CIA volunteers and purportedly civil and peaceful aid to the South economically continuing to counter it, and the RVN could stand, and the North would not dare their OTL victorious endgame of overt invasion.
Seeing that others have responded to the OP in the time I have been writing this, I will pause speculation on how this impacts US and world society and history generally outside of the narrow matter of the situation in Vietnam itself to see what others have to say about it. These are the terms in which I see a form of the OP stipulation being realistic and the immediate bearing getting the treaty passed in 1968 (or very early '69, before Nixon takes office) would have on the Southeast Asian front. Even if LBJ could not pull it off before Humphrey loses the election as OTL, getting it passed before Nixon takes the helm would change many things, all for the better from Johnson's point of view.
Given the OP premise, clearly this is a fairly late POD in the year of 1968, since LBJ pulling off such a coup as a peace treaty early in the year would probably mean he himself runs for reelection and I would guess, has a good chance of winning in his own name, albeit not the landslide victory he did win OTL in 1964.
Things changed fast that year and it is indeed realistic the opportunity for a peace treaty would only come too late for him to pursue the Democratic nomination. I am interested in ATLs where someone other than Humphrey wins the nomination, but again given LBJ's power in the Democratic establishment, such ATLs are long shots--only Humphrey would be acceptable to Johnson, and only after his own chances were torpedoed. So the POD has to be fairly late.
Now then, is it realistic for Hubert Humphrey to be the one to call out Nixon's quite illegal antics? I would say no, not at all. "The buck stops here" said Harry Truman, as elected President, it was Johnson's job to do this. The reason he did not OTL was that he was able to know what Nixon was up to by means that were illegal themselves. Johnson was playing the game of what passed for ethics in the Cold War era. To state the credo as I understand it, it was, among its believers, that the government of the United States was fundamentally and axiomatically legitimate because it stood for the true interests of the democratic public that elected it, and as it was engaged in an existential struggle against a ruthless enemy with no regard for human rights or fairness, it was often necessary and thus proper for these officials entrusted with advancing and protecting American interests to do things that conflicted with the more high-minded statement of the principles we were supposed to be for. The President had to have the free hand to do stuff that was in fact illegal, if they did it in defense of fundamental American and human freedoms. But this meant keeping official silence about such maneuvers, and that gave Nixon the cover he needed; calling Nixon's foul would also disclose the foul of the administration spying on private citizens by means that had no legal defense. If Johnson had judged that it was necessary and proper to blow the whistle on Nixon's maneuver, he surely would have taken doing that on himself, especially in a situation such as late 1968 where he was already going down in flames personally--better to keep his proxy candidate's hands clean, as well as the Constitutionally straightforward thing to do.
I think Nixon most certainly should have been blocked somehow, and perhaps there is another way it could have happened. Nixon's scheme depended on a critical number of South Vietnamese officials uniting to telegraph they would not cooperate in supporting a treaty hashed out between Johnson on one side and Hanoi and Moscow on the other, and figuring they would get a better deal if Nixon were elected to better defend their interests as future US President.
Rather than exposing Nixon (which would certainly be the moral high road to take, and perhaps as I believe, better for the nation to shine a spotlight on the degree to which the practice of "defending freedom" involved the practical subversion of it) could Johnson have instead have played harder ball with the South Vietnamese politicians, and made it clear to them that on one hand, he would make sure the South would be protected and their personal positions secured no matter what the treaty said--but on the other hand if they did not cooperate with this political necessity, he would see them deposed as necessary? On paper, the United States was providing aid to a freedom-loving republican state that was being subverted by ruthless enemies of freedom, but in fact the whole Saigon regime was pretty much a construct of US power, and these privileged gentlemen owed their positions, privileges and safety to Yankee patronage. To purge them would be costly on many levels, but it would hardly involve a greater violation of such high principles as sovereignty or legitimacy than putting them there in the first place had!
If it had been easy for LBJ to take such a step, I suppose he would have OTL. It is thus clearly a long shot, but I think less of one than the bigger political risk of blowing the whistle on Nixon publicly and disclosing how he was aware of Nixon's (quite criminal to be sure) antics.
Now, if we can suppose that one way or another Johnson can counter Nixon's move and thus get the treaty signed before the election, or even after it, I do think that while clearly this would not truly end the conflict in Vietnam, it would change the terms of it drastically. OTL the treaty achieved by Nixon was a step on the road to the total defeat of US intervention in southeast Asia and the victory of Hanoi, but I think it would be different if accomplished earlier.
IMHO and understanding, the treaty Lyndon Johnson was apparently near finalizing with the North Vietnamese government and their Soviet patrons, was essentially identical with the treaty Nixon agreed to in 1972, so if the latter is deemed acceptable in any sense, the former would be equally so, whereas anyone denouncing LBJ's version as a joke or the like (essentially surrender of the Southern Saigon regime, "Republic of Vietnam" to Communist rule) would be admitting Nixon made the same surrender, ultimately. I actually think that the overall situation depended very strongly on shifting attitudes in the USA as a whole, and that the same treaty agreed to effective the start of 1969 might give the Saigon government better odds of long term survival.
Basically, already by late 1968 the Vietnam war was widely unpopular in the USA as a whole, but stretching the war out another 4 years, despite the fact that Nixon did lower the rate of specifically US force casualties by various stratagems, greatly deepened and broadened the unpopularity and led to a Congress more deeply opposed, with both newly elected Members and long-term incumbents looking at constituencies more strongly opposed than ever. Whereas in 1969, in the wake of a treaty and sudden and major drop in US losses, old school Cold War mentality might have better prevailed, if not in the general populace, at least among their incumbent Congressional representatives, while Johnson managing to accomplish this diplomatic coup would go a long way toward redeeming the general reputation of the Democratic led bipartisan establishment. Of course among hard-core anti-war activists this would not make a big difference, but the difference between 1969 and 1973 in terms of the more widespread and deep US mentality and their Congressional representation is a matter of deeper fatigue of the segments of the population that supported the war in the first place. A certain core of various segments never wavered and even doubled down in the face of popular rising skepticism, but what mattered I think was the erosion of support in the middle ranges.
Thus, in the event that the outcome of a treaty essentially identical to the OTL one being identically violated by the Northern PDRV forces making a conventional military invasion of the South, it would be possible for any US President of either party to call for emergency reinforcement of the Southern RVN forces. Any treaty provisions forbidding Uncle Sam to aid the South overtly would be out the window with Hanoi violating the treaty so egregiously, so it came down OTL to the US establishment being unable to muster any credible commitment to defending the South in this manner by 1975. If the same thing were to happen in 1971 with Hanoi and the Kremlin having signed off on an end to the conflict in '68, vital support that OTL was eroded by what IMHO can be described as 4 years of bad faith by the OTL Nixon Administration would be on hand--a segment of the population would still be dead against re-escalation, while meanwhile the danger of the conflict triggering global thermonuclear war would be a chilling factor to be sure--but against that, the Soviets would not look very credible diplomatically arguing that the oppressed people of Vietnam were being bullied by the Western capitalists, if in fact it were the Northern forces who attacked the South openly. The Soviet regime was at the end of the day rather risk-averse and first of all I think they'd have strongly discouraged gung-ho factions in Hanoi from proposing such a move, encouraging their clients to think of the treaty as a win allowing them to go about building up the North on their own terms without devastating costs from Western strikes against them, and clandestinely maneuver for influence in Laos and Cambodia as well as in the South as best they could. And while we can't dismiss the possibility the Northern rulers would disregard Soviet urgings as they had done before and make an impetuous move anyway (considering Southern weaknesses, more below!) I do think it might be in cards for Moscow to disown them, or anyway limit their demands to restoration of status quo ante, with the North remaining Communist, but voice no opposition to Western allied forces (mainly US, but with considerable aid from Australia as well as what remains of RVN domestic force, and nominal support of SEATO--Australia, but also Thailand, the Philippines, Taiwan (assuming the US has not as OTL shifted to recognized the PRC, which we still hadn't OTL as late as 1971), Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore) concentrating to clean the clock of any intruding Northern forces and even pursuing them past the border into the North, as long as when the dust settles the North gets back control of its pre-invasion attempt territory. And perhaps Moscow would sign off on the North losing some territory in the middle too.
Even with nominally no US forces in South Vietnam whatsoever, I think there would be a fair number in the region, largely in the Philippines and perhaps in Thailand, and given a major diplomatic shift, perhaps Cambodia and maybe Laos, as well as in Taiwan and Japan. US air support of an initial ARVN defense of the South could be authorized in a matter of hours and deployed to RVN bases in not much more time, considering that Yankees had constructed these bases and that the Southern Vietnamese air force would be operating pretty recent US models donated to them. Therefore I think that, given US willingness to defend the South against such an overt invasion as prevailed OTL, the North would not calculate a good chance of victory by such means and would not commit to such a foolish venture.
Now on the other hand, OTL the 4 years of delay before Nixon agreed to essentially the same treaty Johnson was seeking did make a difference in terms of the Saigon RVN regime consolidating political control of the South, largely due to massive attrition of activist pro-Communist forces among the Southern citizenry itself. Now this was due in large part to means I cannot agree were what I would call legitimate, involving as it did police state terror and ruthless violence--which is not to say I think Northern methods were less so, but it does render the notion that we Yankees were there to protect the freedom and human rights of the South Vietnamese rather hypocritical to say the least. And this police state portion of achieving Southern "security" and "legitimacy" was very much something Uncle Sam was involved in, being essentially a CIA project. In 1969, much of this political "cleansing" was yet to be accomplished, and so with a treaty identical to OTL in place, the North would be pursuing aggression counter to the spirit if not the letter of said treaty by means of continuing to seek to support subversion in the south, rather than considering overt military invasion--though to be sure, if anything I suppose the forces Saigon controlled on paper were less reliable and less competent than they proved to be in OTL 1975! The crucial difference is that the South would remain under Yankee protection on similar terms to the North being under Soviet (and to an ambiguous degree, PRC) protection--playing a war game on paper with Vietnamese forces only would be a fantasy in the ATL 1969-72 period, as it was not in OTL '75.
But certainly overall Saigon was weaker by itself in 1969. There were other factors besides the general political cleansing practiced so ruthlessly OTL during the Nixon years. South Vietnamese society was transformed over that time to be much less centered on traditional rural villages, much more concentrated in urban areas which in turn were subsidized by Yankee "aid" in various forms, which to be sure primarily enriched just a stratum of the national population directly, but anyway did change the overall social calculus to undermine the channels whereby the combined domestic grassroots and Northern cadre resistance opposed the factions the US favored in Saigon. If the North could invade with a free hand as OTL, their victory would be more assured earlier than later I suppose.
This is academic though if in fact US leadership would assuredly sweep in to defend the South; perhaps considerable territory might be lost before American and allied forces could stop an invasion, but having stopped it, US forces in 1970 or so would be competent to wage and win a conventional set-piece ground war of the WWII type, without even having to resort to threats of nuclear strikes-indeed air power alone, using conventional bombs but much augmented by Cold War era technology, would be far more effective (whereas the Soviets, willing as they were to supply Hanoi with defensive arms and even some clandestine Soviet personnel perhaps, would I predict wash their hands of invasion--domestic PDRV airmen were competent and devoted, but in the air I am confident that the combination of US sophistication and material resources would rapidly secure Southern airspace and put the North on defensive fast). To inject a personal note, my own father flew F-105 fighter-bombers, in a bomber role, out of Thailand in 1968, and remarked that this "light" supersonic jet bomber carried more tonnage of ordinance than any "heavy" bomber of WWII could. More infamously, overall the tonnage of bombs dropped by US forces on Vietnam and neighboring countries once the war spread to Cambodia and Laos did indeed exceed that dropped by all sides in World War II, OTL.
Given such air cover, I suspect the ARVN would rally and do much to blunt the Northern strike, and soon after major US and allied forces would arrive to reinforce them and drive back the invaders--whether they would stop at the nominal border is a question to game out in detail, but I would think by then the post-war treaty would already be hammered out and signed by both Washington and Moscow, and Hanoi would know they had best agree to a truce or be cut to ribbons when left out to dry by a Soviet regime with no interest in World War Three.
So IMHO, it comes down to US resolution, and avoiding 4 years of bad faith carnage (however mitigated in terms of US force loss rates) and political hypocrisy would make a big difference in outcomes. Indeed I think the Northern regime would wisely avoid the path of overt invasion, whereas no treaty would prevent the US from shoring up Saigon in ways that do not translate directly into countable deployed military force but do manage to secure the southern regime (in ways I personally think would be deplorable and worse, with effects I don't think would be very nice on the southern population overall, to be sure) politically against domestic insurrection.
It is conventional wisdom that the domestic southern opposition was largely decimated by their failure to take over in the Tet Insurrection--OTL this proved a Pyrrhic victory for the US/Saigon side because in context of the war going on another half decade, it undermined the "light at the end of the tunnel" mentality of the powers that were in Washington. In an ATL where a treaty of peace is signed within 12 months it would be different I think. Popular culture portrayals of the shifting political sands in the USA point to the discomfiture of these authorities at that moment, but in context of a diplomatic victory soon after I think it would be different in the USA. In such an ATL, the fact of decimation of genuine Southern domestic opposition would offset the weakness of the Saigon government in the context of ongoing resolution by US authorities to prop them up. As noted I don't think the necessary means to prop them up would be what I would call legitimate but they'd pass political muster despite an energized countercultural opposition in America denouncing them. End the involvement of drafted US conscripts being sent into South Vietnamese villages to conduct terror campaigns, preempt such iconic events as My Lai (never mind such things had already happened--the politically if not morally important thing is to prevent more of them in the context of ongoing US grassroots skepticism worsening), end escalating bombing campaigns, leave the ongoing war to be what the North could clandestinely orchestrate versus what the ruthless if not very well politically grounded Southern authorities, with clandestine US backing via CIA volunteers and purportedly civil and peaceful aid to the South economically continuing to counter it, and the RVN could stand, and the North would not dare their OTL victorious endgame of overt invasion.
Seeing that others have responded to the OP in the time I have been writing this, I will pause speculation on how this impacts US and world society and history generally outside of the narrow matter of the situation in Vietnam itself to see what others have to say about it. These are the terms in which I see a form of the OP stipulation being realistic and the immediate bearing getting the treaty passed in 1968 (or very early '69, before Nixon takes office) would have on the Southeast Asian front. Even if LBJ could not pull it off before Humphrey loses the election as OTL, getting it passed before Nixon takes the helm would change many things, all for the better from Johnson's point of view.
Wow! Thank you for this elaborate answer, it's really good to see these alternate issues being discussed at such a level of detail
Deleted member 145219
Great Analysis. And to verify, you are arguing that a peace in 1969 would have given South Vietnam the time to reform in anticipation of further attacks by the NLF and North Vietnamese and that with the war over sooner, public opinion in the US is more willing to see money and weapons continuing to flow into South Vietnam, just as GI's are no longer being killed?
I think in most cases, Humphrey wins if the Chennault Affair comes to light, he achieves peace in Vietnam. He might win reelection in 1972, but if he does, he likely dies of cancer in his second term. On the other hand, could the exposing of Nixon's treason end up being to the Republican party what the Bork hearings are in OTL? What about the fact that Johnson obtained this information through wiretaps? And don't forget, Johnson and Humphrey did not have definitive proof that could be shared with the public. It could boomerang on Johnson.
Problem is Nixon and his defenders could claim that Johnson was in the wrong for trying to cut a peace deal before the election. And that Nixon was looking of to make sure another Asian country wasn't "Lost," by the Democrats.
Though, Johnson did indicate in his announcement of his retirement he was doing so in large party to pursue peace in South East Asia. Johnson felt he could not run for reelection while at the same time pursuing peace. And of course he knew he had lost control of the Democratic party, had passed all of his legislative goals, and knew he would likely die during a second full term.
Post Script:
Could you imagine a scenario where the optics of the Tet Offensive are better than OTL, Johnson runs for and wins reelection, defeating Nixon, cuts a Peace Deal in South Vietnam, which holds, leaves office in 1973 after an okay second term, only to die a month or so after his retirement. I call this scenario, "Never Call Retreat: Johnson v. Nixon, 1968."
well, the other interesting thing in the "Chinese" sense about '68 was the Wallace campaign. Quite a lot of people voted for the infamously segregationist Dixiecrat renegade, many of them well north and west of traditional Dixieland. Overall it seems a bit gloomy to me for a liberal-stance Democrat to be honest.
An October Surprise treaty is hardly a slam dunk for Humphrey. Many people who voted for Nixon OTL might still do so because they doubt the treaty has any worth, given that it requires a major pullout of American forces from the rickety South Vietnam; Nixon, immune to public denunciation for his violation of legal as well as moral norms in meddling with US foreign policy because Johnson only knew about it by equally illegal and arguably (I'd argue it!) immoral means, could double down on that narrative.
However the important thing IMHO is to have the treaty, sham though it might seem. It is one thing for Nixon to argue that a firm conservative hand is needed at the tiller given how vulnerable South Vietnam is, but quite another for him to campaign to scrap it. He can win, even given the fact of the treaty, but the war is legally over (until the North makes a false move anyway) and he can hardly say he wants it to go into further innings as a good thing in itself! (OTL with it rolling on, he did later disclose this is exactly what he did think, and timed his own treaty for maximum political benefit as he reckoned it, never mind that that did in fact doom the South to eventual conquest--I suppose he didn't think it would, but he was not reckoning with the ongoing deepening and widening of anti-war sentiment his callous disregard for Peace Now did cause. But even painting him at the darkest, which frankly I think are the appropriate colors to paint him, given his overall track record, he'd hardly be fool enough to overtly say so, with future elections still ahead of him).
Even with Nixon in office, pulling the plug on the war would change things pretty drastically. Without the war, he'd have to trim his sails quite differently. And I'd bet Hanoi would not be baited into doing something that could give him any sort of plausible causus belli for another round either. Plenty of other trouble loomed elsewhere in the world but having been elected as the "Peace with Honor" candidate, and with a somewhat less energized but still extant counter-culture he has less probable cause to persecute on grounds of security necessity giving critical commentary in the wings, he has to proceed more carefully.
Returning to the election itself, I never think it is really kosher to argue an election swinging on just a few selected swing states swinging all by themselves. The United States, at least by the mid-20th century, is basically one nation. Different regions have different political leans, but to sway an election one needs a generic shift all across the nation. If something persuades 1 or 2 percent of Indianans to vote another way, the same thing will be happening in Hawaii and California and Maine and Florida. In many states it makes no difference to the electoral outcomes of course, but when we calculate how many voters in just the swing states need to shift, we should apply that rough percentage shift to the whole national popular vote, since there is little that ties together just those marginal states to each other more strongly than they are each tied to other states more firmly swung one way or the other. It might be different if the swing states all made up one specific region with one uniting set of interests or anyway conflict between interests.
Much less the former than the latter. The important thing is that OTL the USA could not, for domestic political reasons, respond to an open and shut overt invasion and conquest of one nation by another, which has not generally happened much since WWII in the context of the global balance of terror. And this was the case because of egregious bad faith by first one party's leadership than the other's and a complete failure of the national leadership to provide a narrative that confirmed a solid majority's confidence that the war was for something they ought to care about, whereas the costs of it were keenly felt.
The South being built up into something with coherence that could stand on its own might be something that would happen someday, as I suppose is the case for South Korea in recent generations. In the time frame of a half decade or so it was a wash I guess; by 1975 it was much more a nation, albeit a pretty corrupt one, but still not one that could defeat the North Vietnamese forces with their Spartan focus on victory at all costs. If the North were ever going to make such an overt move it would hardly be set in stone to happen in 1975, it would be a matter of opportunism of the moment, and they'd strike earlier--if the South were not under US protection. By 1975 OTL US resolve to defend the South was scuppered, but I am blaming that on 4 years of Nixon deliberately running out the clock while seeking to carve out a secure constituency of "Silent Americans" held up as the normal and real America while attacking a stigmatized radical bunch of long-haired hippies, and with them quietly and ambiguously but clearly legitimizing resentment against other "outsiders" such as African-Americans. Now this was clearly a winning strategy indeed, but it came at a cost of sowing dragon's seeds of general paranoia and distrust.
The Middle America Nixon proposed to champion was flattered indeed, but ambiguous because at the same time quite a few social shifts were going on. It was perfectly clear that major corporations were gaining power. The liberal narrative was that a fair check and balance between corporate interest and popular had already been achieved via New Deal era reforms and that now it was simply a matter of continuing these measures amicably, with foreseeable good results demonstrated by the track record of rising American prosperity since World War II--eliding over somewhat gloomier times immediately after that war and that much progress for common people had been a result of the war itself, which was very much in living memory and definitely cost something in lost lives, though of course far fewer per capita for USAians than most other powers in the Western coalition. And no one foresaw this, but an age of major disruption was coming in the form of 1970s "stagflation" which the traditional liberal wisdom had no remedy for. But the rising power of corporatism, which could be painted in rosy hues in the go-go 1960s, was a plain fact, and on the left, a faction that had placed itself at the microphone on the wave of anti-draft and anti-war sentiment, this trend was much denounced. There was no doubt the "American Dream" was paying off for most people at this point, but the questions of at what price were starting to intrude despite ongoing business prosperity and boom.
OTL of course stagflation hit well before Nixon's time table for agreeing to a belated peace treaty allowed for it, and with the prospects for ordinary working people deteriorating visibly month by month, the accuracy of leftist denunciations of the basic moral bankruptcy of the American way, and its prophecies of doom on the bread and butter and political dignity of ordinary folk fronts, along with ongoing awareness of other dark sides of the hitherto booming system such as pollution, had a bitter resonance with the tales of corruption and worse coming from the southeast Asian fronts along with such domestic affairs as Watergate. Plenty of people who could see no place to stand but with Nixon and his citadel of establishment power could also see they had been somewhat had and wonder how comfortable a place their President foresaw them having within his citadel of righteous power, or would they indeed be allowed to shelter there at all.
Leftist radicalism was not much accepted at face value though as noted, quite a disturbing lot of people were showing up espousing elements of it--indeed in France it looked like an actual Communist uprising might be happening. To oppose rather than go with this disturbing flow was probably the major emotional response; most people were not hippies or anti-war activists or liberal intellectuals, and Nixon, having gained power OTL, positioned himself as the strong leader who would check this scary and discomfiting trend. But I do think a lot of people who concluded, in small but crucial numbers in 1968 and much larger landslide numbers in 1972, that the sort of conservative stolidity Nixon chose to portray was necessary and good, also had some question in their minds about just where the leadership they were affirming was planning to take them--among other things, hence the popularity of the third way George Wallace proposed to offer as common sense despite the usual aversion American voters have to "wasting" their vote (and indeed given our mechanisms, no scare quotes are needed, that is the way it works) on third party candidates.
On the Democratic side, the leadership of that party was clearly divided on how much distance they wanted to put between themselves and the left radicals; all I think would affirm the hippies and SDS types were too extreme and sold the virtues of the American way short, but not all could argue that they were completely wrong in good conscience either, just that their more moderate approach would be the better one. As things worked out OTL, Hubert Humphrey fell between stools, and as I noted it is not clear to me whether George Wallace just sitting it out and leaving it a straight D vs R contest would have been a Humphrey victory, because for quite some time certain Southern states had been deviating from the "Solid South" doctrines of always voting for the Democrat and various states south of the Mason-Dixon line had either delivered their EV to third party Dixiecrats who swept those states (just a few, and only when the Dixiecrat appeared on state ballots as the only Democrat) or actually voted for a Republican--Eisenhower as early as 1952 and again in '56, Nixon in 1960, Goldwater in 1964. Wallace sitting it out might in fact have led to a clearer Nixon victory.
I think I will return to the game of shifting electoral outcomes in 1968 concretely soon, perhaps, though I have other things I need to do with my time at the moment. But here I am trying to figure out what effects it would have on the national zeitgeist versus OTL to have a truce in Vietnam agreed to and signed as a treaty, assuming that the North Vietnamese do not in fact make a mockery of it at least not in terms of an open military invasion of the South as opposed to clandestine attempts at subversion continuing despite being plainly forbidden, under cover of plausible deniability. OTL I believe Nixon, playing an ambivalent game, greatly undermined confidence in the integrity of the American system and cultivated mass cynicism. That was good enough to discredit his domestic opposition, but not to build positive confidence. The subversive message the anti-war, hippie counterculture was sending, was reinforced and vindicated; people who at any rate agreed with Nixon that dirty hippies should not prevail would not therefore follow him blindly but wish a plague on both houses. Silent America did not appreciate a bunch of longhairs telling them they were suckers, but they didn't really trust the bosses the hippies denounced even so.
For me the salient thing is that whether the President is Humphrey or Nixon, it is much more possible, in 1969, to get support, as quietly as possible to be sure, for deterring an overwhelming open Northern attack on the South, and meanwhile more quietly prop up the Saigon regime with lavish means that do not include sending US troops openly back into that country, which would be a treaty violation anyway. Sending in volunteers who pretend not to be agents of US power openly would also be a violation but not as obvious a one, and if the North is still trying to foster subversion in the South as I figure they would, their complaints about Yankees doing the same sort of thing could be shrugged off, whereas if American help to Saigon is provided only by volunteers who believe in the mission for some reason or other, the mass support for pulling out completely would not develop. A lot of anti-war types are already radicalized and will point out, with plain truth, that the war is ongoing, but the mass basis of opposition in the USA is largely gone, it would be a marker of being a sophisticated, or "ivory tower egghead," liberal or worse, a pink or outright Red subversive, to keep denouncing it. Now I think the cultural space opened up for such leftism would not close off too tightly, not to McCarthy era levels surely, but a President of either party could and would keep on diverting tax money and volunteers, quite a few of whom would be doing quite questionable things, and enjoy consensus confidence in doing so.
So, the South would not fall to mere subversion, nor would Hanoi send an invasion force. It almost does not matter how weak the Saigon regime actually is, it is being kept on life support and under American protection, and so the RVN would limp on, however unimpressively, because the North has no opportunity to take it out with a swift blow. Given that, sooner or later all factions in the South would either fall afoul of the police state and be neutralized, or come to some kind of terms, and over generations I suppose it would become less ramshackle and enjoy more legitimacy by sheer default and gradually Vietnam would become as divided as Korea is OTL, with the idea of unification becoming increasingly quaint and irrelevant on both sides of the border.
I think in the outlier case that Hanoi's rulers, foreseeing this closure of their opportunity to control their entire nation, resolve whether we call it die hard patriotism, panic, greed or terror, to go for broke and act as swiftly and with as much force as they can muster to take the South--then first of all they will lose Soviet support they know they need. Even if the PRC under Mao, currently as per OTL in the throes of the Cultural Revolution, offers to take up the slack, the Vietnamese are leery of the Chinese holding a whip hand over them for reasons of long history, nor can China provide the level of aid the Soviets could. With Moscow telegraphing through back channels that opposing a Northern invasion will not irritate them, at least as long as there is no counter-invasion to remove the Viet Minh from power in Hanoi, any American President can act to rush in support for the south, and fighting set-piece open warfare combat as US forces are trained to fight with battle in Europe in mind, the North would be stopped in short order long before getting near Saigon, and trying to hold on to any territory they have taken will drain them and break them. They have no choice but to retreat back and hope the Yankees stop at the old border.
They aren't going to risk that, I think, it would cost them much credibility not to mention the material damage and loss of life, and beef up the credibility and morale of the capitalist-neocolonialist opponents. Much better for them to sit safe north of their border and continue to try to discredit the Saigon regime, which they will certainly do even if the outcome is that it stands--impeached.
Yeah. The US failing to get UHC and the resulting cultural/social effects downstream in OTL imo did as much damage to the west demographically/culturally as an extra world war would have.
This might not be in "germany without hitler" level changes but pretty big.