alternatehistory.com

Jean-Baptiste Ngo Dinh Diem. President of the Republic of South Vietnam from his "election" in 1955 to his assassination in the back of an APC in early November 1963. Hard-working, meticulous, energetic. Celibate, passionately patriotic, an ardent Catholic. Ferociously anti-Communist, sharply bigoted against Buddhists. Arrogant, stubborn, reflexively authoritarian. Diem's virtues were the obverse of his vices; the same stubbornness that let him crush the Binh Xuyen and the sects led him inevitably into lethal confrontation with the country's Buddhist majority.

Okay, so [handwave] SuperDiem. Postulate a *Diem who is as tough as ours, but smarter, more flexible, and infinitely more cunning. This one uses his Catholicism but is never used by it; is perfectly willing to switch positions as necessary; is not emotionally engaged with anti-Communism (though, of course, he resists Communists who are trying to take over his country); and is, if not a man of the people -- that's probably too great a stretch -- is at least a competent judge of the public temper. (So, if nothing else, no self-immolating Buddhist monks in this TL.) He's like the Diem of OTL, except much better! He's... SuperDiem.

SuperDiem also has some notion of economic development (which Diem sort of did) and a strong interest in it (which Diem seems to have utterly lacked). He's no more interested in human rights than Diem was OTL, but he lacks Diem's vindictive streak, and he does not consider civil society to be an actively bad thing -- journalists, lawyers, NGOs, whatever, they can do their silly things as long as they don't make any serious trouble. (Which would be, by the standards of Southeast Asia c. 1960, about as good as it got.)

SuperDiem is cunning enough that he won't easily be blindsided by a coup. He can be overthrown -- he's clever, not superhuman -- but he's not going to charge blindly into a trap, nor fall as Diem did to the likes of Big Minh. Overall, think of him as something like a tougher, meaner Lee Kuan Yew.

SuperDiem faces the same challenges as inOTL. Presumably he'll deal with the Emperor, Binh Xuyen and the sects just as well as Diem did. But still: the North, the Viet Cong, the Americans, the big landowners, the Buddhist-Catholic split, yadda yadda.

So then: what seems the most likely outcome for SuperDiem? Assume that he'll want to stay in power indefinitely. Where is he in, say, 1968? And does the course of the war change by much? or does that river of historical inevitability roll, roll darkly on?

Thoughts?


Doug M.
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