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WI the South Vietnamese Army leader, Nguyen Van Hinh, who vocally criticized Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem in his early months in office, executed a coup d'etat to oust Diem between 1 and 20 August 1954.

PoD is that the French commander in Indochina, Raoul Salan, tells Hinh in August to go forth with the coup he was publicly bragging about doing against Diem.

Here's wiki on Diem's assumption of power:

On 16 June 1954, Diệm met with Bảo Đại in France and agreed to be the Prime Minister if Bảo Đại would give him military and civilian control. On 25 June 1954, Diệm returned from exile, arriving at Tân Sơn Nhứt airport in Saigon. On 7 July 1954, Diệm established his new government with a cabinet of 18 people.[38] On 21 July 1954, the Geneva accords resulted in Vietnam being partitioned temporarily at the 17th parallel, pending elections in 1956 to reunify the country.

...and here's wiki again on the threatened coup:

In August 1954, Diệm also had to face the "Hinh crisis" when Nguyễn Văn Hinh launched a series of public attacks on Diệm, proclaiming that South Vietnam needed a "strong and popular" leader. Hinh also bragged that he was preparing a coup. However, in the end of 1954, Diệm successfully forced Hinh to resign from his post. Hinh had to flee to Paris and hand over his command of national army to general Nguyễn Văn Vỹ.[48]

---On 20 August the US decided to support Diem and soon communicated to Saigon that it would only provide aid to a Diem government.


....so what I'm positing here is that the French and Hinh make a bolder play before the US position is made so clear.

In OTL, remarkably, there was a proxy struggle between the US and France over South Vietnam, that did not see France totally checked until mid-1955.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saigon_(1955)

So, the French and Hinh win the struggle against Diem before he even has a chance to compete. Hinh and the Binh Xuyen gangsters are the predominant forces on the ground in South Vietnam.

What happens with France and Hinh's "victory"?

A) France directs Hinh to carry out the Geneva Accords in full, including the holding of reunification elections in 1956, and Hinh complies, resulting in an early Communist dominated united Vietnam. He and other senior pro-French officials are compensated for their surrender with asylum and a pension.

"Boat people", lower level refugees from Communism end up resettling in other part of Southeast Asia, France and the rest of the French Union in large #s

B) France, with its own factions in charge, tries to keep South Vietnam as a proxy state, and stalls on the reunification elections as long as possible.

France at this time had no appetite to lose French lives to uphold their influence in Indochina and only a limited appetite to spend money to uphold their influence. The French assumed US funding to noncommunist Vietnam. Their willingness to invest effort in supporting their influence would shrink further as the Algerian War got worse.

However, they had some sort of interest in the area, and plausibly could have been interested in upholding Indochinese proxy states on the cheap, unless and until force majeure from the communist side called their bluff.

C) As elections approach in 1956, upon being encouraged by the French to hold elections that will end his own political power, makes a timely move to switch loyalties to the US from France, and the US accepts him as their only option.
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