Butterflies aplenty
I'm perfectly cool with it. In hindsight, the American efforts to placate French sensibilities did them zero good anyway. Part of that was due to CDG, part of it was the American response to Suez, part of it was the American inability to see the French as anything but a vain drain on their resources.
So, America actually answers the Vietnamese DOI with recognition and say, mediates an agreement with France about repatriation of profits from French-owned businesses, etc. French don't have to worry about their people or property being seized, a much more cordial divorce preserving French access and support for the Indochinese economy.
American engagement with HCM sparks a much more concerted diplomatic effort to engage the Communist Chinese once it is clear that the Nationalists are losing.
Say Chou-en-Lai has more of a voice in the discussion, securing American aid to reconstruct China, not even allowing the Nationalists to escape to Taiwan. They didn't have to be our best buddies, just assured we don't want regime change and might be of some help in putting things back together. You've butterflied away the tensions of the last sixty years.
In this case, China's neutral at worst in whatever Korean War results from Soviet adventurism. They don't want a messed-up Korea on their border with refugees fleeing an endless civil war. They want a friendly vassal state at best or neutral state that poses no threat to them.
I heard of a much saner North Korean alternative to Kim Il Sung who could have gotten and maintained power and established a neutral, social-democratic regime. Result, united, democratic Korea that hasn't been sundered in two for 50+ years and counting.
Imagine if you will, the Asian Tigers getting in economic gear twenty, thirty years earlier? America and China in strategic and economic partnership much earlier? Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos not bombed into a moonscape and defoliated? No huge refugee population due to the disruptions of the Vietnam War?
Think of an America that didn't fight in Korea or Vietnam. Korea made us worry about a monolithic world Communist movement that existed only in our heads. Vietnam showed us the limits of what our technology and money could accomplish and still haven't learned.
This raises all kinds of questions as to what else we and the rest of the world did with our time and money from 1945-1990? More space exploration? Less military buildups? Much worse environmental damage from much more affluent people consuming much more resources?