If there's no Vietnam War, could there be some future war that would become a Vietnam equivalent for the US? If so, where?

If there's no Vietnam War (meaning no US escalation of the Vietnam War in 1965, such as due to JFK living, for instance), could there be some future war that would become a Vietnam equivalent for the US? If so, where? For instance, could the US have gotten involved somewhere like Angola and/or Ethiopia in order to fight the spread of Communism there? Also, were any other locations plausible for a large-scale Vietnam-like US military intervention in this TL--albeit not necessarily under JFK's Presidency?

Any thoughts on this, @Circle of Willis @stevep @Skallagrim @Zyobot @History Learner @sillygoose @raharris1973?

Some other domino in Asia or Africa.
I'd say the order will be something the lines of:
Cambodia.
Laos
Indonesia.
Malaysia.
A few of the African countries with close ties to the USSR or China.

Historical precedent and allohistorical irony both dictate that it must be Afghanistan.

Agent23 said:

Some other domino in Asia or Africa.
I'd say the order will be something the lines of:
Cambodia.
Laos
Indonesia.
Malaysia.
A few of the African countries with close ties to the USSR or China.

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A US that gives up on South Vietnam likely gives up on both Laos and Cambodia as well. As for Indonesia and Malaysia, they didn't need US help to avoid becoming Communist in real life. Well, not on any massive level like South Vietnam needed.

Skallagrim said:

Historical precedent and allohistorical irony both dictate that it must be Afghanistan.

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Sending US troops into Afghanistan to fight the Soviets would certainly be interesting, but possibly rather dangerous due to the risk of a nuclear war, no?

WolfBear said:

Sending US troops into Afghanistan to fight the Soviets would certainly be interesting, but possibly rather dangerous due to the risk of a nuclear war, no?

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Exciting.

WolfBear said:

A US that gives up on South Vietnam likely gives up on both Laos and Cambodia as well. As for Indonesia and Malaysia, they didn't need US help to avoid becoming Communist in real life. Well, not on any massive level like South Vietnam needed.

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I don't think so, if the USA did not intervene on South Vietnam's behest some more diplomatic solution between the two sides might have been reached and they might have become a non-aligned country once forcibly reunified.
Ho Chi Minh was far more of a nationalist than he was a communist.
However, the likes of Pol Pot will still be around, and if Vietnam becomes a non-aligned country thre might be attempts to capture other parts of the Indo-China peninsula by other forces, like China, which means that they might try to take Laos or Cambodia.
There was never any love lost between Vietnam and China, and the Chinese might want to grab those countries via local proxies to make sure Vietnam doesn't take them, which means communist insurgencies and a revanchist US warhawks wanting the USA to stick its nose into one of them.
Also, an early "victory" for the north might provide stiffening for the various Communist insurgencies in places like Malaysia and Indonesia.

WolfBear said:

If there's no Vietnam War (meaning no US escalation of the Vietnam War in 1965, such as due to JFK living, for instance), could there be some future war that would become a Vietnam equivalent for the US? If so, where? For instance, could the US have gotten involved somewhere like Angola and/or Ethiopia in order to fight the spread of Communism there? Also, were any other locations plausible for a large-scale Vietnam-like US military intervention in this TL--albeit not necessarily under JFK's Presidency?

Any thoughts on this, @Circle of Willis @stevep @Skallagrim @Zyobot @History Learner @sillygoose @raharris1973?

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Without Vietnam the Communists will take the country, which will validate the idea of domino theory, so I'd say yes. I suppose though if the US had competent leadership/advice about the history of China-Vietnam they could wait for the inevitable Vietnamese/Chinese falling out and cut a deal with Hanoi to be their proxy in the region and keep out the Chinese from the region. So then the proxy battles would still be in Southeast Asia, but with Vietnam onside this time. Thailand is still there, so until and unless that happens I'd imagine China would keep pushing to extend their influence in the region in that direction.

Maybe even another Korean war if the US doesn't play its cards right.

Skallagrim said:

Exciting.

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Imagine US troops drinking beer while Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar right next to them drink some Coca-Cola!

Agent23 said:

I don't think so, if the USA did not intervene on South Vietnam's behest some more diplomatic solution between the two sides might have been reached and they might have become a non-aligned country once forcibly reunified.
Ho Chi Minh was far more of a nationalist than he was a communist.
However, the likes of Pol Pot will still be around, and if Vietnam becomes a non-aligned country thre might be attempts to capture other parts of the Indo-China peninsula by other forces, like China, which means that they might try to take Laos or Cambodia.
There was never any love lost between Vietnam and China, and the Chinese might want to grab those countries via local proxies to make sure Vietnam doesn't take them, which means communist insurgencies and a revanchist US warhawks wanting the USA to stick its nose into one of them.
Also, an early "victory" for the north might provide stiffening for the various Communist insurgencies in places like Malaysia and Indonesia.

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@History Learner has previously challenged the assumption that Ho Chi Minh was more of a nationalist than a Communist:


At the very least, he was both. As for Vietnam becoming a non-aligned country, I'm not so sure. It might depend on just how much aid the US would be willing to offer it relative to the Soviet Union.

Would Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge have gotten anywhere near as much support in Cambodia if it wasn't for the US bombing of Cambodia?

Were the Communist insurgencies in Malaysia and Indonesia to intense for those countries' governments to handle by themselves? Or anythnig close to this? The Fall of Indochina in 1975 did not result in Communist victories anywhere else in Southeast Asia, after all.

Why does Communist and Nationalist have to be a zero-sum choice for Ho Chi Minh. It clearly was not a zero sum choice. Stalin, Mao, and the Kim and Castro family dynasties all were capable of being ideological bigamists, ready to sleep with Maryanne (nationalism) *AND* Ginger (communism) for their own countries.

raharris1973 said:

Why does Communist and Nationalist have to be a zero-sum choice for Ho Chi Minh. It clearly was not a zero sum choice. Stalin, Mao, and the Kim and Castro family dynasties all were capable of being ideological bigamists, ready to sleep with Maryanne (nationalism) *AND* Ginger (communism) for their own countries.

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Agreed that Ho was both a Communist and a nationalist. And you forgot to mention Tito here. At the very least, he was nationalistic enough to personally fight for Yugoslavia in WWII--though he also subsequently repressed any nationalism that wasn't of the Pan-Yugoslav form due to his fear of ethnic tensions being stirred up again in Yugoslavia, as indeed eventually occurred after his death.

It's easier to think of potential early before Vietnam "Vietnams" than later after Vietnam "Vietnams". Examples of the former would include direct large-scale US intervention in the Chinese Civil War in the late 1940s, or large-scale, prolonged, and unsuccessful US intervention in the Russian Civil War in 1919-1921'ish era.

raharris1973 said:

It's easier to think of potential early before Vietnam "Vietnams" than later after Vietnam "Vietnams". Examples of the former would include direct large-scale US intervention in the Chinese Civil War in the late 1940s, or large-scale, prolonged, and unsuccessful US intervention in the Russian Civil War in 1919-1921'ish era.

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I wonder if the successful Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948 could convince President Truman that China is "too big to fail" and thus have him rally a lot of US support for a large-scale US military intervention in China in an attempt to try tipping the scales there? But it's still risky; Chiang's government is still very corrupt and inefficient, after all, like both the subsequent South Vietnamese and pro-Western Afghan (2001-2021) governments.

A large-scale US military intervention in Russia certainly does sound very interesting, no doubt. If there's anyone who might have done it, it might be a surviving TR who is somehow US President at that point in time. Or perhaps if Woodrow Wilson dies sometime before early 1919, the new US President Thomas Marshall might decide to do this. I previously read that Marshall apparently supported doing this. Though I do wonder if he could actually get a DoW for this from the US Congress. "He" meaning either Thomas Marshall or a surviving TR here.

@raharris1973 FWIW, I view the great four (semi-)superpower proxy wars as follows:

-Korea
-Vietnam
-Afghanistan
-Ukraine

The Americans helped Ho Chi Min during WW2, sending him weapons so he could fight against the Japanese. In 1945, he declared Vietnam's independence from France, which FDR had encouraged. In 1946, France tried reestablishing its Indo-China colony and made surprise landings and took control of several cities. This was opposed by Eisenhower. War broke out between the Vietnamese and the French. American views changed in 1950. The Americans preferred to have French presence in Vietnam to help oppose communist China, and so the US began funding the French war against Vietnam.

The Vietnamese could have been allies with the Americans against China, which was a traditional enemy of Vietnam. The Vietnamese were betrayed by the Americans, so they took assistance from the only other power they could: the communists. Vietnam accepted weapons from the Soviets and Chinese only after the Americans stopped providing them military supplies and set up a colony in the South. China was a traditional enemy of Vietnam and mistrust existed. The French eventually lost the war, but the CIA started trying to establish a puppet state called South Vietnam (headed by Ngo Dinh Diem, who lived in New Jersey). They began a propaganda campaign called Operation Exodus, telling people to flee South to avoid genocide, and to try to weaken Ho Chi Minh's popularity.

The Americans ignored the results of the 1956 Vietnam elections, in which Ho Chi Minh was overwhelmingly elected leader of Vietnam. The Americans created South Vietnam as a puppet state to legitimize their military base building. This was never accepted by the Vietnamese, so American ground troops were sent in to protect the bases.

There are plenty of places in Central and South America for the US to do something stupid?

edgeworthy said:

There are plenty of places in Central and South America for the US to do something stupid?

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You mean like Cuba? Or Nicaragua? Or Panama? Or Grenada? The US actually intervened in the last two countries in real life, FWIW.

@edgeworthy and @WolfBear - the problem with Central America, and much of South America, is that no matter how stupid America gets, the mismatch in power between America and its opponents in those areas means that the opponents can be made to pay pretty much the whole price of it, and the opponents won't have political, demographic, geographic, industrial, and logistic strength to cause the Americans the same difficulties it faced in Vietnam, or even Korea or the Middle East.

An exception might be if the US tries to bite of way more than it can chew geographically, like if it supports a coup attempt by a narrow, unpopular section of the right-wing in Brazil or Argentina that is broadly and and successfully resisted a clear majority of the population, left and center politicians and large parts of the military, but the Americans try to save the coup faction from defeat with an invasion.

I think Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, and Grenada are all too small to ever be "Vietnams".

Cuba is even too small to be a "Vietnam" even though it could be a tough nut of relatively shorter duration. Of course, ironically, although "too small" to be a "Vietnam", the substantial direct Soviet presence and commitment means it is also just "big enough" to be the flashpoint for WWIII anyway.

raharris1973 said:

Cuba is even too small to be a "Vietnam" even though it could be a tough nut of relatively shorter duration. Of course, ironically, although "too small" to be a "Vietnam", the substantial direct Soviet presence and commitment means it is also just "big enough" to be the flashpoint for WWIII anyway.

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Had Nixon won in 1960, he might have very well followed up on the Bay of Pigs with a US ground invasion of Cuba. Would the Soviet Union really be willing to risk WWIII over this?