What would be the political and economic impact of an "Idealistic Cold War"? And I am not only talking of US propaganda of them as the bastion of freedom during the Cold War, but what if the US literally acted upon the Cold War being "freedom vs. tyranny" instead of "everything that is not Communism vs. everything that is Socialism". Meaning that there will be considerably less support for authoritarian regimes worldwide and the domino effect is only applied to extremely authoritarian and Stalinist forms of Communism instead of "Communist, leftist radicalism and third world Democratic Socialism" as a whole. What would the world be like politically and economically?
IMO, possibly Iran stays a democracy, Latin America possibly respects US more as there wouldn't be attempts to replace leftist governments with authoritarian rightist ones, Vietnam is possibly averted, if US ends up throwing their lot with nat. China and South Korea they would have huge pressure to democratize or lose US support. Europe would probably be more conservative and more antagionistic to US and some European nations that looked to the US historically would join NAM. Wonder what happens to Spain and Portugal through.