Ngo Dinh Diem stays in power

Nhu would have to be kicked upstairs. Could be either a 65 collapse or a south korea style stalemate. The chaos of the coup of the month between diem's fall and the rise of cao ky three years later, stimulated full fledged war on the part of the us and australia.
 
What if Ngo Dinh Diem was not killed in a CIA-backed coup in 1963? How would him remaining in power into the 1960's affect the Vietnam War?
To avoid simply having another coup at a later date things will have to change. Specifically his family needs to be moved out of their sensitive positions ASAP and Diem needs to ramp up his land reform efforts.

Otherwise, I think South Vietnam does a whole lot better: None of the chaos of coups against generals who came to power via coup, an ideological alternative to communism is presented and pursued, the administrative apparatus Diem was building up after shaking down the French colonial apparatus won't be itself shaken down to root out personalists, and with the ARVN not politicized past the point of no return, a semblance of meritocracy is maintained in the upper echelons.

Once the Buddhist crisis is settled and land reform (which was on Diem's agenda, just not as high as it needed to be) is underway, the NLF likely returns to the dark days of 1955-59, which has been described as more precarious for them than the post-Tet rut.
 
I thought you said you didn’t want a coup?
There was no coup when Thieu did it, and any attempt wouldn't be american-backed as the Americans had been telling him to hurry up with the land reform.

It would take a lot to convince me that an Ap Bac isn’t around the corner even with Diem alive.
Well it happened while he was still alive so no argument there.

However, I'm not sure why you're putting so much value in Ap Bac. Beyond proving that the NLF was capable of temporarily holding a tree line against a poorly coordinated attack by an overconfident enemy, it wasn't of much strategic importance. If all you're saying is that the NLF isn't going to immediately role over a die, I agree. But they definitely aren't going to be as successful as they were in OTL when the RVN government's primary concern was making sure its own military was too weak and disorganized to conduct a coup.
 
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