US intervention in South East Asia after the domino theory goes into full effect?

What if the whole of SouthEast Asia goes ''red'' and are ruled by communist governments? This happens before US can intervene or can intervene in the region? Now the US must intervene to eject communist influence from the region. Can it be done or will be an even bigger fiasco than the actual Vietnam War for the United States.
 
it'll just end up being a bigger mess. it's one thing using your conventional military against an odd 40 million people spread across 170,000 km2 let alone over 300 million spread across 4,000,000 km2 (most of which is jungle).
 
If the SEA dominos fall then the US will deploy troops to NATO member Portugal's colony of East Timor and SEATO members Australia (and mandate territory Papua New Guinea) and East Pakistan. India will not invade East Pakistan in 1971, Indonesia will not invade East Timor in 1975 and northern Australia will get significant infrastructure development to support whatever forces the US has in the NT.
 
If the SEA dominos fall then the US will deploy troops to NATO member Portugal's colony of East Timor and SEATO members Australia (and mandate territory Papua New Guinea) and East Pakistan. India will not invade East Pakistan in 1971, Indonesia will not invade East Timor in 1975 and northern Australia will get significant infrastructure development to support whatever forces the US has in the NT.

This could be an very interesting scenario. OTL, when the Portuguese left East Timor in 1975, the leftist FRETILIN came to power. No matter how small East Timor is, This spooked the hell out of Indonesia, whose under Suharto, already became a rabid anti-communist. So Indonesia invaded East Timor (under the blessing of US and Australia, of course:p).

If Indonesia went fullcommunism and FRETILIN still came to power in East Timor, ironically we could see an East Timor fully supported by Jakarta. Although if the US actually deploy troops there, they could prop-up anti-communist faction (could be the UDT, which ironically IOTL many of its leaders supported Indonesian annexation of East Timor ) as the legitimate government there once the Portuguese left......which could give us an even more interesting probability, that is, Indonesian support of FRETILIN against US and Australian backed government.
 
This could be an very interesting scenario. OTL, when the Portuguese left East Timor in 1975, the leftist FRETILIN came to power. No matter how small East Timor is, This spooked the hell out of Indonesia, whose under Suharto, already became a rabid anti-communist. So Indonesia invaded East Timor (under the blessing of US and Australia, of course:p).

If Indonesia went fullcommunism and FRETILIN still came to power in East Timor, ironically we could see an East Timor fully supported by Jakarta. Although if the US actually deploy troops there, they could prop-up anti-communist faction (could be the UDT, which ironically IOTL many of its leaders supported Indonesian annexation of East Timor ) as the legitimate government there once the Portuguese left......which could give us an even more interesting probability, that is, Indonesian support of FRETILIN against US and Australian backed government.

The UDT only became pro-Indonesia after being defeated by FRETILIN. I'm a good way through a TL where Australia and FRETILIN supports the UDT coup, taking away some of the support for the Indonesian invasion.
 
What if the whole of SouthEast Asia goes ''red'' and are ruled by communist governments? This happens before US can intervene or can intervene in the region? Now the US must intervene to eject communist influence from the region. Can it be done or will be an even bigger fiasco than the actual Vietnam War for the United States.

So what causes Washington to not act while South Vietnam collapses far earlier OTL, and drags down Laos and Cambodia? This is a big issue first of all, because lot of planners saw South Vietnam as the best ally possible in SE Asia fighting Communism. There was no illusions that Laos and Cambodia were nothing more than secondary players, even before the Viet Cong began entrenching themselves to bypass the DMZ. From what I recall, there was talk of what would happen if South Vietnam was neutralized or collapsed and many people were not enthusiastic of having to rely on Thailand as holding the line as a backup.

Also, if Indochina does collapse, then there also has to be a major reason why the US would once again dither while Thailand falls to a Communist invasion.
 

raharris1973

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So what causes Washington to not act while South Vietnam collapses far earlier OTL, and drags down Laos and Cambodia?

Getting all of Southeast Asia "Red" without the US having fought seems hard. But Red gains, especially on the mainland, are plausible.

1) Many of the territories were under the control of non-American colonial powers, the French in Indochina and the Dutch in Indonesia. If either of them concede effective control to communist factions, there is little opportunity for to interfere, in the early Cold War years.

2) Another option is to have a later atomic bomb, earlier Soviet entry into war against Japan or both. If MacArthur discourages major American campaigns in the mainland, arguing they are not an efficient path to victory, and his superiors agree, the Soviets could occupy most of Japanese occupied mainland Asia themselves, with armored spearheads and airborne troops eventually reaching through South China, Indochina and Thailand chasing the Japanese.

Now the US must intervene to eject communist influence from the region.

Answering the OP, if the Communists do gain early control of Southeast Asia through a perfect storm of faits accompli, I do not think Washington will have a compulsive urge to win back the territory by using military force. It was able to resist any such urges in relation to Central Europe, which has arguably more important territories. The US would probably leave Communist states in the region alone, except for some lightweight subversive efforts where this appeared to be possible. Invading objectives in Southeast Asia probably would not be much of a part even for US planning for WWIII. [maybe Australian WWIII plans would feature it]. The only military objectives for the US in a Communist Southeast Asia would probably be destruction/neutralization/mining of Soviet naval or airbases in the region and maybe limited objective operations to seize key straits in Malaysia and Indonesia.

---About the only way I can see the Americans making a major commitment to rollback of a Communist Southeast Asia is if Communist governments end up taking over territories there as a result of perceived Russo-Japanese collusion late in WWII (think CalBear's "Pacific Ordeal") or a leftist/communist coup among the Japanese armed forces during the war.
 
How does this affect American politics on the side? Would we have a Second Joe McCarthy Red Scare or an earlier Reagan presidency?
 
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