I hope this update makes sense. My entire vision of an alternate approach to the Vietnam War rests on this.
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Vietnam Intervention
In June 1950:
-Boeing unveiled America’s first Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM)
-Admiral Arleigh Burke developed Early Cold War Blue Water Tactics for the United States Navy
-The Commando V-100 Modern Armored Car entered service
-The Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii erupted
-A French expedition became the first to reach the summit of Annapurna I (26,545 feet) in the Himalayas
-In Turkey, the Arabic Adhan (the Islamic call to prayer) was legalized
-In South Africa, the Communist Party was formally banned
-In the FIFA World Cup, the United States defeated the United Kingdom 1-0
-Rowan Williams, the future Archbishop of Canterbury, was born in Swansea, Wales
-Kazys Grinius, the third President of Lithuania (1926), died in Chicago, Illinois at the age of eighty-three
On the 25th of that month, a very important guest arrived at Dapplemere (the President’s large farm in Pawling, New York).
The person in question was Jean de Lattre de Tassigny. A French military hero, Tassigny was the General in charge of his nation’s forces in Vietnam. Visiting Dewey at his beloved estate, Tassigny’s mission was to make an eloquent appeal on behalf of his government for American aid. Portraying Vietnam as a war against Communism, Tassigny warned that without American support, Vietnam would fall to Minh. If that happened, it would trigger a domino effect of Asian countries toppling one-by-one: Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, the Malaysian Peninsula, Indonesia, and Nationalist China would all go to Hell in a hand basket. If they all went, there would be nothing to stop the remainder of Asia from bending to this new
“east wind”.
It was a terrifying scenario that Tassigny painted…and it was one Dewey took quite seriously. He told Tassigny that he would accept the appeal, having been convinced that Vietnam was a black-and-white case of Communist aggression. The General returned to Paris with his mission accomplished and the French waited for the promised American help to arrive. After gaining bipartisan approval from Congress, the Dewey Administration opened a supply line to Southeast Asia as summer faded into fall. French soldiers were soon being armed with American weapons and U.S. military observers arrived to watch them fight the Viet Minh. Although America wasn’t yet putting her own soldiers on the ground, the presence of napalm (a gel mixed with gasoline for the purpose of starting fires to flush out the enemy) sent a loud message to Minh and Giap: the United States was officially involved in Vietnam.
When 1951 began, a disturbing fact emerged that had the French and American governments equally scratching their heads. Reports were coming in from across Vietnam that the Viet Minh were increasingly attacking with Soviet weapons and supplies in their hands. Looking at the geography of Asia, it didn’t make any sense. Vietnam was cut off from the Soviet Union and Red China by Nationalist China. How were the arms getting through? The Nationalist Chinese Ambassador to the United States reassured the White House that his government was doing everything in its’ power to make sure that Communist aid wasn’t somehow flowing into North Vietnam through his country. So far, no one in the Dewey Administration had a reason to doubt the Ambassador’s sincerity. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (established in 1949), was ordered to personally investigate the baffling matter.
That spring, keeping the arms mystery in the back of his mind, Dewey traveled to Asia – the first sitting President to do so – for a diplomatic (as well as cultural) tour. He made stops in the Philippines, Japan, Korea, Nationalist China, Tibet, and India. While in Nationalist China, the President and his wife Frances dined with Kai-shek and his wife May-ling at the Presidential Palace in Nanjing (the nation’s capital). During their after-dinner conversation, the President of the United States casually mentioned to the President of Nationalist China that Communist aid was somehow finding its’ way to the Viet Minh. What happened next struck the American leader as odd:
“Given that the Vietnamese were practically fighting on his doorstep, I assumed the Generalissimo would be concerned about this. Instead, he reacted as though the problem was taking place on the other side of the world. The Generalissimo didn’t seem to be taking the fighting in Vietnam very seriously. Instead, he waved it off as someone else’s problem.”
For the rest of the tour, Dewey couldn’t understand why Kai-shek acted so detached on the subject of Vietnam. Why didn’t he care that people were fighting and dying right on his Southern border?
The answer to that question awaited Dewey upon his return to the United States. Stepping off the plane at the airport in Washington, D.C., the President was greeted by his CIA Director. After shaking hands, Lodge escorted his boss to the car that would take them straight to the White House. Once settled in, the Director wasted no time in delivering intelligence that left Dewey speechless: Kai-shek had gone behind America’s back and cut a deal with the Communists. According to Lodge, it all started last year. When the Americans decided to arm the French, the Soviets and the Red Chinese reacted by secretly recognizing Minh’s government as being the “true” Vietnamese government. The big obstacle they then faced was how to extend outside support to a political ally isolated by neutral nations.
Meanwhile, ever since he returned to Nationalist China from exile, Kai-shek had been paranoid about his hold on power. One of the first things he did was to heavily militarize portions of his border with Communist China, Mongolia, and the Soviet Union. He was afraid of a sudden Communist invasion of his country and wanted to be prepared for war at a moment’s notice. With so many Nationalist forces sitting on the border, not surprisingly the Communist countries also lined their borders with military units. They were likewise afraid of a preemptive strike by the other side. As a result, this border became perhaps the tensest in the world.
With the Communists wanting to aid the Viet Minh and the Nationalists on active border alert 24/7, the two sides came to the conclusion that compromise was the answer. Although it wasn't clear to the CIA yet which side had made the first move, Moscow and Nanjing entered into secret negotiations in the fall of 1950. Even while assuring the Americans that he would never do anything behind their back, Kai-shek was doing exactly that. The deal that emerged was one that was mutually beneficial; according to the deal, the Soviet Union and Red China were granted military access in the Yunnan region in return for signing non-aggression pacts with Nationalist China. With the stroke of a pen, Kai-shek could now sleep easier at night not having to worry about any sudden invasions and the Communists could now establish supply lines through Yunnan that could endlessly feed Minh’s forces.
Of course, the secret deal didn’t remain secret once the CIA knew about it. Upon returning to the White House, Dewey ordered the information to be declassified and made public as soon as possible so
“everyone can learn about the treachery of our so-called Chinese 'friends'.”
The American people, from the leadership of Congress down to the Average Joe, were stunned by the revelation that Nationalist China – a nation that had enjoyed great sympathy and support on the home front – was aiding the Communists in their effort to spread their ideology abroad. Perhaps no was more surprised than that country’s Ambassador to the United States. According to the Ambassador, Nanjing had fed him nothing but misinformation and he knew nothing about the deal until the President summoned him to the Oval Office and angrily demanded an explanation. Consequently, diplomatic relations between the United States and Nationalist China took a heavy hit; furthermore, the Americans never again trusted Kai-shek…not that he really cared. For him, all that mattered was protecting his own power – even if it meant making an obviously self-serving move that destroyed an historic friendship and made him a widely-despised figure.
Decisions made in Washington, D.C., Nanjing, and Moscow transformed Vietnam from a colonial rebellion to a Cold War battlefront. The Soviet Union and the United States openly armed the Viet Minh and the French (respectively), testing the hardware and the resolve of the two superpowers in the jungles and rice fields of Southeast Asia. Thanks to almost unlimited Communist military supplies, Giap reorganized his local irregular forces into five fully-conventional infantry divisions and intensified the war effort. Starting in July 1951, he vigorously went after isolated French bases in Northern Vietnam. The garrison at Lai Khe fell first without much difficulty; encouraged by the victory, Giap next went after Cao Bang on October 25th. Unlike Lai Khe, Cao Bang was heavily defended by 4,000 troops and the Viet Minh were repulsed in their attack. Unfazed, Giap put Cao Bang under a long siege that lasted until March 1952. At the time the garrison surrendered, America’s attention was focused stateside on New Hampshire. People in the Granite State were preparing to cast their votes in the first-in-the-nation Presidential primary. Giap and his military campaign had taken a backseat to a political campaign that would decide who Dewey’s successor would be. Vietnam wouldn’t be much of a factor in the upcoming Presidential election, but the winner of that contest would have to deal with the war whose American presence had been Dewey’s doing.
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Quite an eventful update. The Americans get involved in Vietnam, the Communists get involved in Vietnam, Kai-shek proves once again that America really needs to put more thought into who they put in power, and we have an Presidential election coming up. But before we dive into the 1952 campaign, let's hang out for a bit with that suntanned Conservative whom people thought was "too extreme" in 1964: Mr. Barry Goldwater.