WI: NATO backs the Portuguese in the Colonial War?

[Zachariah]

The Portuguese Colonial War, also known in Portugal as the Overseas War and in the former colonies as the War of Liberation, was fought between Portugal's military and the emerging nationalist movements in Portugal's African colonies between 1961 and 1974. This war was a decisive ideological struggle in Lusophone Africa and the surrounding nations, and in mainland Portugal. The prevalent Portuguese and international historical approach considers the Portuguese Colonial War as a single conflict fought in three separate theaters of operations; Angola, Portuguese Guinea, and Mozambique. The majority of these nationalist movements were Communist or Socialist movements, backed by the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, and which openly received military support from the Soviet Union, China and Cuba. And Portugal was a founding member of NATO.

So then, what if Salazar and the Estado Novo government had managed to successfully convince the Americans, and the several of its NATO allies, to treat the conflict in a similar manner to Vietnam- one in which their intervention was required to prevent a communist takeover of Sub-Saharan Africa as part of the domino theory of a wider containment policy, with the stated aim of stopping the spread of communism worldwide? If NATO had taken the side of one of its founding members, Portugal, in its Colonial War, and if the conflict had become a Cold War-era proxy war in the same manner as the Vietnam War did IOTL, then how much different would the war, the result, the death toll and the repercussions of it be ITTL? And might this conflict have had the potential to blow up into WW3?

 

[James G]

I don't understand your comparison to NATO and Vietnam.
Portugal bringing NATO member states into its colonial wars isn't impossible just not under the NATO banner. There was a geographical area defined in the treaty and those colonies were located outside of it.

 

[Zachariah]

I don't understand your comparison to NATO and Vietnam.
Portugal bringing NATO member states into its colonial wars isn't impossible just not under the NATO banner. There was a geographical area defined in the treaty and those colonies were located outside of it.

Well, I didn't literally mean doing it under the NATO banner. It was just the easiest, most straightforward way to word the title.

 

[Lusitania]

The problem was that the US wanted the Portuguese out of Africa. They had huffed and puffed until the British and French along with Belgians all hightailed it out of continent. By mid 1960s only the Portuguese refused the American demands.

Portuguese also faced major military equipment restrictions from rest of NATO members so for the west to support the Portuguese they would of needed to believe that Portuguese not only had a chance of winning but that the Portuguese were the best option to keep the soviets out of these countries. We know that the US was already supplying different rebel groups prior to 1975.