Self explanatory, what if the Vietnam War never happened? What are the effects on US culture and world culture and politics in general?
One thing is that it might actually hurt the US military. Vietnam was vital to changing the US Army, Air Force and Navy. Add a slower development of weapon systems in the 80s.
The War ate more into NASA than the Great Society spendingNo vietnam war means the great society programs are supported instead. As the money that went to the war can be used for this instead.
Considering the war was a total loss for the US prestige, these factors are insignificant. In addition, fighting the war cost the US a tremendous amount of development money, which meant a lot of advanced systems were cancelled.
B. is the Diem regime is either waived away, or takes a course that does not enable the revival of the Viet Minh as the Viet Cong. Absent a revolt & a less dysfunctional government S Viet Nam turns into one of the Asian Tiger economies in the later 20th Century.
I don’t know why Diem gets so much blame when the situation in South Vietnam objectively deteriorated after his assassination. Before Diem, South Vietnam was run by crime syndicates and nefarious pro-French elites without an ounce of loyalty to the country. Private armies run by religious sects and crime syndicates roamed the land. Thanks to Diem’s efforts, the South Vietnamese state successfully established its full sovereignty and independence from France and also centralized power in Saigon, allowing the state to focus on fighting communists since all other threats had been handled.
After Diem, South Vietnam was run by a series of generals who only lasted a few years at most before being overthrown by a new set of generals. None of these generals accomplished anything except losing more ground to the communists and becoming more dependent on America.
nice graphics. vietnam war + man on the moon + great society = end of $-gold convertibility and big inflation of the 70's. Maybe without vietnam this would have been delayed some years....The War ate more into NASA than the Great Society spending
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nice graphics. vietnam war + man on the moon + great society = end of $-gold convertibility and big inflation of the 70's. Maybe without vietnam this would have been delayed some years....
How about alternate US brush fire wars in 60s if Vietnam was not invaded ?
US intervention in the middle east?
Well the problem is the difference is the Philippines dint have a large army on its northern border ready it invade to reunify the county, that was a bigger problem I think, one can fight a gorilla war, one can prepare for a conventional war, one can't do both at the same time.Kennedy's supporters in academia wrote the history books, but yes Diem was by far in away the least bad option we had and if we stayed with him we could and should have avoided Americanizing the Vietnam mission and kept it a lead from behind mission the public would have supported. He was doing more right then wrong in terms of his learning curve he was actually improving with time. Bribe the relatives State was unhappy with to vacation a few years in Europe at the beaches, but the coup was madness.
The NY Times and certain other papers weren't happy with the situation and if anything overplayed the crisis in the South and directly linked them all to Diem in their own bid to try to right the ship, but there was no obvious replacement and they really turned things to hell and pushed Johnson to Americanize the war which Westmorland had the entirely wrong idea on how to fight.
Someone really should have sent all America's top generals in Vietnam books for Christmas on how MacArthur's father spread out his troops in jungles of the Philippines and worked with locals and built up paramilitaries. Much of the problems of the insurgency in the late 50s and early 60s was even at the start we were advising the ARVN to do all the wrong things when it came to waging the war of the flea because they were treating the conflict as Korea or WW2 only on a smaller scale and that is not hot to fight an insurgency.
Since the US skipped militarly intervening in South and Central America from Eisenhower til Reagan did in Grenada, don't see why anything more than OTLs supporting Rightist Dictators would be needed in that time frame.Colombia
[ "Monkey paw, I wish the US had stayed out of Vietnam..." ]