A Presidency focused on Human Rights protection, RFK perhaps, could move into a destabilized Congo to try and help and then get quagmired into a very long ordeal?
 
Going back to the original question, here's an idea. The US recognizes Vietnam as an independent country in 1945 after the Japanese surrender.

Ho Chi Minh was first and foremost a patriot. He joined the Communists because he felt that they were the best chance for Vietnam to gain independence from France, except the Soviets weren't interested in Vietnam. Forget going to Communist China because those two countries had been enemies for two millennia. So even though he was a communist, he was a "good communist" as described by Achimedes Patti, an OSS agent who worked in Vietnam during WWII. (Think someone who's registered as a Republican but votes Democrat in every election.) Unfortunately the Truman administration felt that France was needed more as a friend so they gave the French their colony back, forcing Ho to agree to Chinese assistance.

If the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was granted autonomy (or even just promised that the French won't return to oppress them), Ho would have felt obligated to maintain an alliance with the US, if only to keep the French out. With Ho officially being a Communist, and as long as he doesn't seek territorial expansion. China will be satisfied. If China does try to move in, Ho's forces would fight them with US aid.

The French would most likely refuse to support the rearming of Germany due to sulking about losing their colonies. While this would make the Cold War more difficult, the US can focus entirely on the Soviet Union. France might try to retake Vietnam but they'd be doing it on their own without US assistance, and look what happened at Dien Bien Phu. Overall, a peaceful Vietnam leads to a peaceful Southeast Asia. Prince Norodoum Sihanouk of Cambodia doesn't get caught between North Vietnam and the US and isn't overthrown, which prevents Pol Pot from coming to power. By not going to war in Vietnam, the US has $120 billion to spend on modernizing its forces. Lyndon Johnson can focus on his "Great Society" and civil rights, and while the civil rights movement would still take place, you wouldn't have the anti-war protests going on as well.
 
I can't see America caring enough about Africa to send actual American troops into a Vietnam-style conflict there. More likely they'd just do what they did IOTL, prop up corrupt, sociopathic puppets and proxy armies.

Why did the Americans care enough about Asia to send troops there?

I don't see Africa being that much different.

Could we have a POD where US tropps get involved in Angola? US troops fighting alongside troops from apartheid South Africa wouldn't fly politically, but if we get rid of SA (or have an SA that is more politcially palatable) that could work. But having no apartheid in SA could easily butterfly away the Angolan war.
 
Have South Africa collapse into a state of civil war in the 1980s. With no central govt. the United States works with local forces (i.e. moderate ANC+whites) to establish a national unity govt. on the southern tip of the African continent. ANC hardliners, the SACP, and the white supremacitst fight back in a tri-lateral civil war.

Angola, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique (even perhaps Namibia) serve as communist bases.
 
Have South Africa collapse into a state of civil war in the 1980s. With no central govt. the United States works with local forces (i.e. moderate ANC+whites) to establish a national unity govt. on the southern tip of the African continent. ANC hardliners, the SACP, and the white supremacitst fight back in a tri-lateral civil war.

Angola, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique (even perhaps Namibia) serve as communist bases.

Perhaps with South Africa divided into a US-backed Cape State (comprised of Northern Cape, Western Cape and parts of Eastern Cape) with the rest largely falling into anarchy or under the rule of warlords from various hardliner groups (who along with fighting each other also target or forcibly recruit vulnerable groups within South Africa such as the Coloureds, Asians and Indians, etc that seek to escape to the US-backed Cape State).

Have always envisioned an ATL scenario where a nationalist China also finds itself involved in a similar conflict.
 
Why did the Americans care enough about Asia to send troops there?

I don't see Africa being that much different.

Could we have a POD where US tropps get involved in Angola? US troops fighting alongside troops from apartheid South Africa wouldn't fly politically, but if we get rid of SA (or have an SA that is more politcially palatable) that could work. But having no apartheid in SA could easily butterfly away the Angolan war.
Americans cared about Asia due to the Domino Theory.

The fall of such a large state as China to communism alarmed the United States, a county who had invested a lot into Japan and had a historical interest in China. Asia seemed closer and much more relevant to Washington when compared to Africa, which was usually treated a solely European debacle.
 
Perhaps with South Africa divided into a US-backed Cape State (comprised of Northern Cape, Western Cape and parts of Eastern Cape) with the rest largely falling into anarchy or under the rule of warlords from various hardliner groups (who along with fighting each other also target or forcibly recruit vulnerable groups within South Africa such as the Coloureds, Asians and Indians, etc that seek to escape to the US-backed Cape State).

Have always envisioned an ATL scenario where a nationalist China also finds itself involved in a similar conflict.
The problem with that is that the main reason the US has for propping up SA, strategic resources found in industrial quantities only there and in the USSR. The Cape is not where those resources are located, mostly they are located inland in Transvaal, with others in Orange Free State and Natal. US won't settle for a Cape State, doing so gives the USSR far too much leverage
 
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