WI: America assists France in First Indochina War

Using any POD imaginable, what would occur if the United States fully committed to assisting France (as in, sending massive amounts of ground troops) in crushing the Communist Viet Minh in the First Indochina War? How would the Cold War be different without massive American involvement in the Second Indochina War since the Communists would be defeated in the First?
 
We would still lose because the US military (from 1946 the mid-1950s) was fully invested initially after WW2 to demobilization and then fully invested in the Korean War at that time. Additionally, our government was trying to support the rebuilding of Western Europe. We had no time nor the inclination to do much else than the support we did have for the French.

The better question would be, what would happen if the US used their political will to support Ho Chi Minh and force the French to pull back from Indochina. The French thought they were doing well through 1947 until French General Valluy failed. He could have negotiated at the height of the issue (using USA as an intermediary) but instead like all great powers who used colonization they lost.

In order for the US to help the negotiations, it would have to happen before the catastrophe's on RC4 and the loss of Nationalist China...after the PLA won, they then turned South to support Ho Chi Minh and that support in separately linked China and Viet Nam to the Western World. This link caused the misconception of the Western World that it was one big domino effect of Communism rather than a nationalist struggle.
 
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We would still lose because the US military (from 1946 the mid-1950s) was fully invested initially after WW2 to demobilization and then fully invested in the Korean War at that time. Additionally, our government was trying to support the rebuilding of Western Europe. We had no time nor the inclination to do much else than the support we did have for the French.

The better question would be, what would happen if the US used their political will to support Ho Chi Minh and force the French to pull back from Indochina. The French thought they were doing well through 1947 until French General Valluy failed. He could have negotiated at the height of the issue (using USA as an intermediary) but instead like all great powers who used colonization they lost.
Please note I don't care about the POD; it can be no Korean war. The US isn't going to back Ho because he had expressed socialist and communist sympathies as early as the 1920's, and backing Ho could lose a critical NATO ally. Even if it's the smart thing for the US to do, it's ASB. The US IOTL didn't invade North Vietnam because it was a sovereign country, ITTL it's a French colony and the US would be able to crush the Viet Minh, that is if there's enough military force for it to happen (which is why I said the POD can be no Korea).
 
Lot's of the tactics America used in Nam were developed in Malaya (like Agent Orange). As Malaya is ongoing at this point, the war is going to be very different. Also, there will be no anti-war protests and TV won't be as big of a thing so it would be easier to win on the PR front
 
Large scale ground deployment is going to be difficult to pull off. I think what would be more useful from the French perspective is material and possibly air support. The US Navy would probably be enough to give the French a decisive advantage. However, in order for the French to gain a long term "victory" there will need to be a political solution, which the US can help oversee and give the French some level of leverage greater than that which they had OTL.
 
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