WI: Kennedy Lives and Tries to Settle Vietnam Through Nuetrality

What if instead of continuing to send advisers to defend South Vietnam, President Kennedy seeks to acquire a peace like in Laos during 1961. He tries to get China and the Soviet Union to sign a neutrality accord regarding Vietnam.
 
The thing is, given the de facto failure of Laos, would he even attempt such?

I do know that the Soviets weren't really invested in Vietnam, and would have been content with a partition. It was only after escalation that they saw the use in backing Hanoi.
 
The Quick Explanation:
Kennedy was interested in detente with the Soviets. Kennedy had a headache with Vietnam. The Soviets had a headache with Cuba, and the ever bombastic Mr. Castro. Castro was getting disillusioned with the Soviets and was interested in reestablishing normalized relations with the US. Kennedy and Castro were communicating about said thing through back channels. There were proposals to neutralize Vietnam in exchange for neutralizing Cuba.
 
The Quick Explanation:
Kennedy was interested in detente with the Soviets. Kennedy had a headache with Vietnam. The Soviets had a headache with Cuba, and the ever bombastic Mr. Castro. Castro was getting disillusioned with the Soviets and was interested in reestablishing normalized relations with the US. Kennedy and Castro were communicating about said thing through back channels. There were proposals to neutralize Vietnam in exchange for neutralizing Cuba.

Well there you go! I never knew they were willing to offer neutralizing Cuba as a trade for Vietnam.
 
Well there you go! I never knew they were willing to offer neutralizing Cuba as a trade for Vietnam.

There was a proposal. I don't know how immediately aware of it Kennedy was, but I'd argue it was a plausible concept that it would have been part of the administration's thinking going forward into 1964/1965. I don't know if the Soviets made overtures regarding such a thought, but I'd argue they'd be open to it. Vietnam was a headache. The Soviets were getting weary of having to deal with and prop up Castro (the man who wanted limited range nuclear weapons left in Cuba after the Crisis). And Kennedy was talking with Castro in back channels about normalizing relations. There is a French word for that, which slips my mind and starts with an "r". It all forms an interwoven tapestry of events that Johnson didn't take advantage of, all against the backdrop of an overall effort towards detente.
 

Cryostorm

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Man, I am trying to imagine a world where Vietnam never happens and Cuba and the US have relations again in the sixties. I mean the US does not spend money on that war, the left in the US does not get fractured by the anti-war movement, something that still colors people's perception of the Democrats, and Cuba gets to be much more prosperous.
 
1961. He tries to get China and the Soviet Union to sign a neutrality accord regarding Vietnam.

Who says China and the Soviet Union have a say?

While the NFL was nominally a coalition of bourgeois-style parliamentary parties, and most people know that one of its actualities was that the VWP synchronised a majority of these "parties," the NFL was fundamentally dependent upon local non-VWP leadership. Think of the woman whose husband was murdered in 1958 under the 1956 laws over, let's make her hate the RVN, the salt tax. She is not going to want to back down. She was the kind of woman forcing the Southern VWP to take an independent line in 1959 on restarting the war. Let me reemphasise that to you. The NFL and VWP in the south were so dependent upon local rural proletarians that they were forced to take an independent political line from the VWP in the North.

This is not a party that can (prior to a Tet style apocalypse of putting the cream of NFL/PLAF forces in front of US guns) control its rank and file. Rather, and while the processes are labrynthine and pressure politics rather than democratic, this is a party that is controlled by its rank and file through synchronisation.

Even if the DRVN and VWP in the north agree, they cannot make the political base of the NFL/PLAF agree.

yours,
Sam R.
 
If all went well according to plan including the final withdrawal from SVN by the end of 1965, we could even see a JFK trip to Beijing in 1966-67 ( the Cultural Revolution never happens in OTL).
 
Man, I am trying to imagine a world where Vietnam never happens and Cuba and the US have relations again in the sixties. I mean the US does not spend money on that war, the left in the US does not get fractured by the anti-war movement, something that still colors people's perception of the Democrats, and Cuba gets to be much more prosperous.
And maybe there's energy, money, and attention to talk about loss of manufacturing jobs (both from overseas competition and because manufacturing becomes more efficient) and what else might be a good source of middle-class jobs.

Maybe we skillfully and artfully attempt affirmative action during a time of a growing economy, rather than a stagnant economy. Maybe we avoid the politics of scarcity.

The whole political history of the U.S. through the '70s, '80s, and beyond may have been very different.
 
It all forms an interwoven tapestry of events that Johnson didn't take advantage of, all against the backdrop of an overall effort towards detente.

Could he have though? The Soviets turned down his offer to stand by JFK's joint moon mission proposal, which according to Sergey Khrushchev, they had been seriously considering saying yes to prior to November 22. He might have wanted to offer a Cuba-for-Vietnam neutrality trade, but might not have been able too.
 
While the NFL was nominally a coalition of bourgeois-style parliamentary parties, and most people know that one of its actualities was that the VWP synchronised a majority of these "parties," the NFL was fundamentally dependent upon local non-VWP leadership. Think of the woman whose husband was murdered in 1958 under the 1956 laws over, let's make her hate the RVN, the salt tax. She is not going to want to back down. She was the kind of woman forcing the Southern VWP to take an independent line in 1959 on restarting the war.
I'm not familiar with all the abbreviations, but your point is well taken. Once a war starts, often it's very difficult to bring it to a stopping point.

And I think the communists and Ho Chi Minh did engage in a purge of 'class enemies' in the North in '56(?). This is something they should be held to account for, and I say this as someone who is very open-minded to ideas of socialism, anarchism, participatory democracy, etc.

On the positive sides, wars do get brought to a close. Maybe if more of these examples were taught in school, the average citizen would have a broader set of skills. So, the question is how to respect family members of those lost while still bringing the war to a close? And not by preaching, I suspect. In many cases, the less said the better. My own Uncle's funeral, who served honorably stateside and lived a long life, one of the young soldiers at his military funeral simply stated, 'We will now pay military honors. Be advised, there will be rifle fire.' That is, they kept it short and sweet. I think the young man did a fine job. There had also been deer running across the large cemetery when we first arrived. That's another memory I will keep.
 
JFK can't really do anything in 1964--he has to win re-election. And in January 1965 the South Vietnamese government will be on the verge of collapse, so really JFK's only options will be (a) escalating a la LBJ, and (b) withdrawal of the remaining troops. At most a coalition government could provide a temporary fig leaf for defeat. There is no reason for the DRV and NLF--or Moscow or Beijing--to settle for a genuinely neutral non-Communist South Vietnam with total victory in sight.

Of course the resulting government might be "non-aligned"--so was Cuba! https://books.google.com/books?id=esRje8Jo3LMC&pg=PA239 Indeed, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam itself became a member of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1976...
 
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Kennedy and Johnson had a lot of bad advice from the State Department, have less gentlemen in there and instead have people who know that area of the world (not M. Butterfly know it but really know it!) and have them advise on the subject.
 
It should also be noted that a good number of the top Asian experts in the State Department were initially purged in the Joe McCarthy Red Scare in the 1950s. I mean, those who really knew China and Indochina. So by 1961, Foggy Bottom ended up with a bunch of guys who were really not that experienced or knowledgeable about SE Asia....
 
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JFK can't really do anything in 1964--he has to win re-election. Andin January 1965 the South Vietnamese government will be on the verge of collapse, so really JFK's only options will be (a) escalating a la LBJ, and (b) withdrawal of the remaining troops. At most a coalition government could provide a temporary fig leaf for defeat. There is no reason for the DRV and NLF--or Moscow or Beijing--to settle for a genuinely neutral non-Communist South Vietnam with total victory in sight.

Of course the resulting government might be "non-aligned"--so was Cuba! https://books.google.com/books?id=esRje8Jo3LMC&pg=PA239 Indeed, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam itself became a member of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1976...

Well, any POD that would be feasible would have to be before Diem's assassination. Otherwise ARVN is going to be consumed with purging loyalists, leading to a lack of junior officers leaving them in such a fragile position.

If RVN looks like it's still a somewhat functional anticommunist state, then the Soviets are more likely to tell Ho to cut his losses and accept partition.
 
I think a coalition government has some real potential.

Fo example, the North wants to do land reform, the South's worried it will be done in abusive fashion. So . . . the South is the one to implement and the North monitors and spot-checks to make sure it's good enough.

Or, the traditionalists want partnerships with large oil companies and want to believe the promises of economic development and educational and managerial opportunities for Vietnamese citizens. The communists aren't believing the promises at all. So, on this occasion, the communists are the ones who monitor and spot-check. And maybe they're the ones who hit upon the idea of educational opportunities for older persons who already have some life experience and can more quickly move into the management positions.

And yes, this kind of thing needs some luck along the way and it's easy to paint scenarios of it not working. I'm more interested in the scenarios where it does work out pretty well.
 
If all went well according to plan including the final withdrawal from SVN by the end of 1965, we could even see a JFK trip to Beijing in 1966-67 ( the Cultural Revolution never happens in OTL).

Vietnam didn't cause the CR, and better US relations wouldn't stop it, either.

Mao thought control was slipping away, and the CR was the way to rein in Party Members, by enlarging the Cult of Personality

I don't even see Mao warming relations with the USA in the mid '60s, either.
Only after the CR wrecked things, was there a benefit of doing better US relations
 
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