This is Dougie we are talking about.
True, but the history of man is often times built upon people doing something either unexpected or totally out of character.
All Mac needs is one seed of doubt, one inkling that the FPO is not the whole of the PRC's offensive operational plan on the Korean peninsula and that a second MUCH larger offensive is coming and he may very well do the unexpected/uncharacteristic and halt and dig in.
IDK. I can't see Stalin letting his minions (as he still thought Mao to be at this time) be so brutally trounced like this. And the Mig-15 does represent as much a game changer in Korea as the P-51 did in WWII USAAF strategic bombing.
From what I read, while Stalin requested PRC intervention, he refused to commit any Soviet forces to the effort. At the same time, while Mao and Zhou Enlai were eager to intervene, they were in the distinct minority among the CCP leadership in that opinion. Not only that, but the PLA wasn't eager for a war either. Lin Biao only got out of having to lead it by citing his 'poor health'. (Biao's go to for much of the decade to avoid assignment.)
So it fell to Peng Dehuai, one of the few marshals that wanted to go to war.
Had the SPO ended up a disaster for the PRC, Stalin (being Stalin) would have withheld the MiGs (and their pilots) either totally (if the SPO got utterly annihilated) or until he'd found a suitable ('competent' would have been the word he'd used) replacement for Mao and possibly also Zhou.
And THAT is where things will really start to get complicated.
Mao's position regarding the Soviets will be changed to his own detriment. China going its own way will take perhaps quite a few years longer. IDK enough about Mao's political position in China at this time. None at all, really

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Stalin, as mentioned above, would treat him like all other subordinates that 'failed him'. While I don't see a direct Soviet hit, I wouldn't put it past him to try and get someone from within China to get rid of Mao and Zhou.
There's where Stalin runs into a problem: Mao and Zhou were in the minority about getting involved directly in Korea.
The SPO fails- and fails badly -I think they're goners, the CCP not even waiting for Stalin to approach them about it.
Here's Stalin's problem though, a really BIG problem: Mao and Zhou pushed for the direct intervention at Stalin's behest. They bucked their fellows in the CCP to do it, and, if it fails badly, their fellows will look at the pair of them as Stalin's lackeys, rather than leaders of the Chinese people.
I think the CCP gets rid of Mao and Zhou on their own (making sure the failure of the SPO falls squarely on their shoulders, along with all the blame), but now, Stalin's got a new problem: A hostile CCP that blames not only Mao and Zhou for the intervention, but Stalin for pushing them for it.
When things succeed, everything looks different; mistakes are glossed over (or swept under the rug) because, even though there were mistakes, hey, we won anyway! When things fail (and fail badly) the guys who were against it in the first place are the ones who were right. The more people there were who were 'right', the worse it's going to be for the guys who were 'wrong'.
Expect Mao and Zhou to be eliminated quickly by the majority (the guys who were 'right') and the new leadership to make sure that, to discredit Mao and Zhou, they paint the two as 'lackeys for foreigners', the foreigners in this case being Stalin and the Soviets.
I think it makes for a potential Sino-Soviet Split right then and there.
Butterflies off would be huge.
Kim OTOH will probably be left with training border crossing guerrillas while making radio speeches from Harbin as "Great Leader In His Great Redoubt".
Possibly, unless the new leadership sees Kim as a liability and eliminates him as a step towards trying to normalize relations with the west. ("Look, we don't like the Soviets either, we got rid of Kim, we're all reasonable people here! We won't invade Korea, BUT, we need something in return. A good start would be recognition of our government as the legitimate government of China. Also, how about normalized relations?")
That, of course, depends on how smooth the transition of power goes in post-Mao China.
Maybe the casualties of the failed intervention are enough to cause the Chinese public to turn on Mao...if it's not, however, things could get REALLY ugly in mainland China...for a while.
If things get out of hand, you might see the CCP split (or even fracture), PLA officers either seize the initiative (and power) themselves, or, worst case scenario, they splinter too and it's a full blown civil war in China again, with factions of the CCP and PLA fighting each other and a whole lot of misery in China.
A complication for the U.S. in the event of a total PRC collapse: Chiang starts demanding massive U.S. support to help him 'return to power', and that ain't gonna happen...but it won't stop Chiang from bitching to the point where [insert PoTUS here] finally gets sick of his shit and has the CIA cultivate an alternative, after which they dispose of 'the irritant'.
BTW? China's losses in the whole of the Korean War were proportionally equal by national population to those of the United States in WWII. Not bad? It was a foreign war of choice (see Iraq), not a civil war/revolution (See KMT vs. CCP), nor a war against a genocidal invader (see Imperial Japan).
If the casualty counts end up substantially higher, as they would in the event of a failed SPO and no Soviet support, I can't imagine anybody in China being able to swallow it without somebody losing their job.
And by 'their job', I mean their lives.
Senator Tydings crushes Tail-gunner Joe



in 1951.
Possible, perhaps likely.
THAT will change things quite a bit.
Without McCarthyism, what will political illiterates accuse people who don't agree with them of?

Doug out Dougie's sins are forgotten until the founding of AlternateHistory.com

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He'll have been the guy who beat Imperial Japan AND Red China in two wars roughly five years apart.
Remember what I said about 'when things succeed'...
Mao's Great Leap Forward is delayed. His Cultural Revolution fails badly, leaving him with little power as his once allies now enemies wait for him to die.
That assumes Mao survives so long.
Personally, I think he's a dead man if the SPO fails.
Eisenhower is still elected, but he is strong and sure enough with a less fearful Cold War to name someone else as his VP (anyone come up with a name?)
Ike in '52? Yes, still happens.
Less fearful Cold War? Possible, but if China falls back into a state of chaos and civil war, the world will see a level of scary in the Cold War we NEVER saw in OTL.
Different VP? Hard to say. If the fear is more external than internal, Ike probably taps someone with some foreign policy experience for Veep. Without a red scare and McCarthy and HUAC...I think Nixon doesn't end up with much of a political career and eventually returns to private practice as a lawyer, or, maybe he pursues his one true passion and gets involved in professional sports in some capacity; perhaps as a sports writer (Hunter S. Thompson hated the guy, but he did say Nixon was quite knowledgeable when it came to sports) or part of a baseball or football team ownership group, OR, my personal favorite AH claim to fame for Dick: President and Commissioner of the American Football League.
I think Nixon would have made a good commissioner of either the AFL, NFL, or, failing that, Major League Baseball.
Only major change otherwise that I can see is Vietnam going from a quagmire to a black hole.
Depends.
If the PRC fractures, Uncle Ho's going to have to find someone else to work with to get the French to leave.
Being that, above all else, the Viet Minh were a nationalist group, I think they'll take help from wherever they can get it and say whatever their benefactor wants to hear, if it'll get them the support needed to drive out the French.
If the Vietnamese nationalists can all stay on the same page, you don't end up with two Vietnams, you get one, and while there may still be a civil war, I don't think it'll be one that anybody will jump into the middle of; it'll be one that competing foreign interests fight by proxy.
In America, with a win in Korea, I think it goes a long way towards assuaging fears from the second red scare.
Without McCarthyism, an out of control HUAC and communism looking like a losing proposition, I think the New Right and New Left develop with greater focus on domestic issues within the U.S., but with the New Right becoming more libertarian, the New Left becoming less radicalized.
I like to think that, with a blunted second red scare, Truman wouldn't recognize the Batista regime after the '52 coup. Ike wouldn't have backed the 1954 coup in Guatemala. MAYBE the U.S. doesn't get involved in Boot/TPAJAX (Admittedly, that
might be stretching it, but my God, if a win in Korea could blunt it by keeping the U.S. out of it, or butterfly it away completely, by Britain canceling it for lack of U.S. support, the world would be a better place for it.).
Best case scenario (at least with Cuba), perhaps the U.S. not only doesn't recognize Batista's regime as legitimate, the U.S. government's big covert operation of the 50's is training, equipping and advising/assisting pro-U.S., anti-Soviet revolutionaries in Cuba. Ernie Guevera will need to be eliminated, but I think the Castro brothers will adopt whatever ideology gets them an army to remove Batista. I mean, just how 'socialist' are a couple of guys who horde the lion's share of their country's national treasury in their own bank accounts?
A whole lot of what the world looks like going forward after a U.N. victory in Korea that eliminates N. Korea completely and causes the PRC to split with the Soviets and possibly even fracture/implode depends on a lot of variables.
A whole
LOT of variables.
There's one thing I know about China though: The solutions to their problems will be Chinese solutions, not Western or Eastern Bloc solutions.
If nothing else, that's one lesson history has taught me very well.
Personally, I kinda like the idea of China going technocratic in the sense of becoming a genuine
Technocracy...
That could make the 20th century (and beyond)
very interesting.
