The Presidents: The Vietnam War Edition

[El Pip]

Blimey, that looks awful. I never quite understood the support Diem got (OTL and TTL), the contortions required to match up him being 'America's guy' with his clear contempt for the values America proudly claims to stand for always confused me.

Plus shouldn't America have higher standards and demand that 'their guy' at least be a competent autocrat, propping up a thugish dictator is one thing. Propping up an inept thugish dictator is clearly asking for trouble.

 

[Nathan Madien]

J.J.Jameson: I have considered it.

H.Appleby: Well, that's what he gets for choosing the wrong side.

I have bad news. Vang got executed for not swearing loyalty to the Laotian Quisling.

Kurt_Steiner: Yes it does. Finally I'm living up to the title of this AAR.

That gets the Understatement of the Year Award.

AbeLincoln1865: I’m afraid I haven't the foggiest idea. :huh:

H.Appleby: You advertise my AAR in your sig, which I have always appreciated.

El Pip: I think it was John Foster Dulles, who was Eisenhower's Secretary of State, who explained that the United States supported Diem because they couldn't find anyone else to support.

You mean have a foreign policy that isn't short-sighted? Are you crazy?

So what's next? The summit meeting I referred to in the last update will be the subject of the next update. Korea will get its' own update sometime afterwards and an update about Jackson's dealing with Congress during the fall session will probably come somewhere in between. I also want to touch briefly on the pop culture scene because we get some pretty good stuff in the fall of 1961 including the year's biggest film.

 

[Andreios II]

Nathan's comment about what Dulles says regarding supporting Diem reminds me of a book I read during my University studies. The writer posited that the USA during the Cold War was so powerful that its foreign policy could sustain contradictions with other parts of its policy. In this case the USA stands for freedom of religion etc, but supports a Catholic dictator who mercilessly represses other faiths. This is possible because it is the supreme power and no one can really challenge them. Also it is, as Nathan puts it, incredibly short-sighted! I can see that in Scoop's black-and-white world of us against them, he will probably be prone to making rash or absolute decisions, where he will support an anti-communist leader regardless of the contradictions that support would throw up.

Really looking forward to the summit meeting, be good to see how the other states aside from the US/USSR try to make their independant (or not) voices heard.

Also, just saw a very interesting TED talk on youtube about OTL China's spread of political and economic power throughout the Pacific Rim. It seems that without Mao's catastrophic rule, TTL is beginning that process much earlier and its cause will thus become much more advanced by the time we hit a hypothetical 2013. The link is below and covers a few other interesting geo-political issues http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRWTyUVh0BQ

 

[Nathan Madien]

Andreios II: Jackson was very much a Reagan Democrat when it came to foreign policy and national defense. He agreed that the Soviet Union was the Evil Empire and that in order to win the Cold War, the United States had to view the Soviets that way. He opposed detente and fought against the Salt II Treaty, believing that both underminded America's hand. Like Reagan, Jackson also believed that in order to make the Soviets take the US seriously, the US military had to be as strong as possible.

I originally planned to do one update about Europe, but as I write the update, the material I'm covering (England, the stragetic importance of Denmark, Germany, and pissing off the French) is pushing the summit into the next update. My plan now is to make the summit meeting the second next update, using the Chinese invasion of Laos as a backdrop leading into the summit. Did I mention I'm pissing off the French in the next update? For some reason, that seems to bear repeating. :laugh:

My thinking about China is inspired in part by an essay written by a Chinese expert named Arthur Waldron who argued that had Chiang been in control of the Chinese mainland instead of Mao, China would have become an surging economic power by the 1970s. It makes sense. Chiang after all isn't a Communist and therefore wouldn't take the kinds of destructive actions that Mao took. He wants China to be a strong power. I think that once Chiang is forced to accept the fact that the United States and England (whose position in Hong Kong, Malaya, and Singapore would naturally draw them into the Asian power struggle on the side of the US) isn't going to allow China to dominate her neighbors militarily, he's going to turn to developing the economy as the new path forward. I picture China in 2013 being an economic superpower competing with the United States for the leadership of the world's economy.

There's a lot of alternate history in this AAR and I think it's safe to say that nowhere is that more obvious than in Asia.

On a side note, I found this video on YouTube about the 1940 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia which nominated Wendell Willkie for President. I find it interesting to watch because it either shows or mentions Joe Martin (who will become Speaker of the House), Thomas E. Dewey (who will become President), Robert A. Taft (who will be nominated for President in 1952), Charles A. Halleck (who will become Speaker of the House), Willkie (the first OTL loser to become an TTL winner), and John Bricker (who will become Vice President).

Speaking of losers, poor Alf Landon. He doesn't get much electoral love either OTL or TTL. I wonder where this AAR would have gone had I made Landon the winner in 1936 (the first US election HOI allows you to change the outcome of). Storywise, I would have pulled that off by having Huey Long's Share Our Wealth Party suck enough votes away from FDR to have Landon win narrowly in the electoral vote count.

 

[H.Appleby]

I wonder if our situation with China will be more like our situation with Japan in the 90's, rather than our current situation with China.

 

[Nathan Madien]

H.Appleby: I'm afraid I don't understand.

 

[jeeshadow]

I wonder if our situation with China will be more like our situation with Japan in the 90's, rather than our current situation with China.

I doubt it. Since shortly after WWII Japan and the US have been friends. Nathan has already inferred with his post on Chinese Olympics that it is doubtful that China and America will become super buddies. I expect the two nations will be rivals, but I doubt they will be hostile. Especially as Nathan has stated that China will become democratic.
(Correct me if I remembered some of the facts I stated wrong)

 

[H.Appleby]

I doubt it. Since shortly after WWII Japan and the US have been friends. Nathan has already inferred with his post on Chinese Olympics that it is doubtful that China and America will become super buddies. I expect the two nations will be rivals, but I doubt they will be hostile. Especially as Nathan has stated that China will become democratic.
(Correct me if I remembered some of the facts I stated wrong)

Oh no, I don't think that it'll be exactly like Japan in the 90's, but I do think it'll be more like it than now (they'll be a bigger strategic rivals, but the manifestations will be Micheal Crichton novels and books about "The Coming War With China" and not plane shootdowns and nuclear threats)

 

[unmerged(55197)]

Will we also get an update one day about Eastern Europe?

 

[Nathan Madien]

jeeshadow: My thinking about China is that it will be like Spain post-Franco. After Chiang dies in 1975, I think there will be a push inside China to move the country towards a more open society and away from the way Chiang did things. China in 1961 has a socially conservative government in which people are granted a certain amount of freedom but at the same time the government keeps them contained in a box so-to-speak. The media is controlled by the government in order to control what the people are told and there is a police presence inside the country to make sure the people don't stray too far from what the government considers to be acceptable behavior. As limited as TTL life is under Chiang's rule, it's nowhere as bad as OTL life was under Mao's rule.

One lasting legacy of Chiang's rule is that the Chinese people are instilled with this belief that they are the dominant people in Asia. It's Chinese Exceptionalism. Just as there is this feeling in America that we are exceptional because of who we are, the Chinese feel the same way. Thus, as jeeshadow said, the United States and China will have this rivalry of "Hey! I'm better than the other guy! Follow me!" China post-1975 will continue to hate Japan (I doubt the scars from a decade of brutal occupation and oppression would fully heal), continue to embrace Russia (unlike OTL, there's no Sino-Soviet split), and openly engage the United States in a rivalry for the leadership of the world's economy.

H.Appleby: I have never read a Micheal Crichton novel.

NickRooz: Sort of.



(I know what some of you are thinking. “Those borders in Eastern Europe look weird.” The map reflects the postwar borders in my HOI game after I won the war in Europe in 1944. "Why is Finland red?" It’s because of an event in HOI which allows the Soviets to install a Communist regime in Finland.)

 

[J.J.Jameson]

I'm surprised there hasn't been any uprisings in the part of Greece unconnected to Athens.

 

[El Pip]

I picture China in 2013 being an economic superpower competing with the United States for the leadership of the world's economy.

Hmm, not sure I can match that up with Chiang's regime. Certainly I can see China doing better than OTL, just avoiding such horrors at the Great Leap Forward will do that, but I think all that means is they fall into the Middle Income Trap faster. Economic growth up to a certain point based on 'borrowing' technology from others and rapid industrialisation/exports is relatively easy, going beyond that is much, much harder and very few large countries have managed it, hence the trap.

Basically at some point the advantages of such a large population start to be outweighed by the corruption and nepotism that a Chiang regime will bring with it. Short of a very smooth, very stable transition to a more open and free style of government I think Chiang's China hits a glass ceiling. Sure it could do a USSR and heavily over spend on defence to compensate for having a fundamentally smaller economy, but that trick only lasts so long.

 

[J.J.Jameson]

Well China does have immense mineral wealth. That minus the great leap forward, plus probably some innovative people who aren't killed in the great leap forward leads to very interesting what ifs.

 

[Nathan Madien]

J.J.Jameson: There are tensions between Bulgaria and Greece over territorial disputes. I just haven't bothered to mention it yet.

El Pip: I understand your point, but there's thirty-eight years between Chiang's death in 1975 and 2013. Both South Korea and Japan saw their economies boom in the 1980s and I think it is reasonable to believe that China would also see an economic boom as well after spending the second half of the 1970s cleaning up whatever messes Chiang left behind.

J.J.Jameson: While I understand where El Pip is coming from, I disagree about the glass ceiling. Taiwan under Chiang saw a strong economic boom and there isn't any doubt in my mind that China under Chiang wouldn't also see a strong economic boom. Once OTL China moved away from self-destructive Maoist policies in the late 1970s and implemented economic reforms, the Chinese economy exploded. With the Maoist policies absent TTL, what would prevent the Chinese economy from booming in the 1960s?

 

[El Pip]

J.J.Jameson: While I understand where El Pip is coming from, I disagree about the glass ceiling. Taiwan under Chiang saw a strong economic boom and there isn't any doubt in my mind that China under Chiang wouldn't also see a strong economic boom. Once OTL China moved away from self-destructive Maoist policies in the late 1970s and implemented economic reforms, the Chinese economy exploded. With the Maoist policies absent TTL, what would prevent the Chinese economy from booming in the 1960s?

I'm not saying China couldn't boom earlier, just that there is a Middle Income Trap and it is hard to break out of. China is currently at or about the income level of the trap and the last few IMF reports are all very clear, there is no more 'low hanging' fruit, even if there were more cheap peasants to push into factories (and there probably aren't) the export boom is running out and China has to reform to keep up growth. This is essence of the trap, the difficulty of transitioning from cheap exports and mass industrialisation to the next level of development. China may do it, it may not, but it hasn't yet.

As for a 1960s China boom, that depends on the West tolerating having most of it's low end manufacturing done in China. That was acceptable OTL as there was a matching economic boom in the West and by the time it really kicked of the Cold War was over and national security arguments about losing industrial capability were less effective. With the USSR very much in existence and anything like the OTL 1960s/70s economy and Trade Unions in the West I just cannot see companies being allowed to ship all their manufacturing to China and shutting their Western factories, it would be political suicide. And any Chinese boom that isn't export led is going to be far slower and far, far less dramatic than OTL, if it's even possible, South Korea and Japan both depends on massive exports for their big growth, why would China be different? If anything China is worse, it needs to export much, much more in volume terms as the population is far larger. That's more factories shut, more jobs lost so even less acceptable to the West.

 

[Nathan Madien]

El Pip: I am curious to know where your arguments come from.

 

[El Pip]

El Pip: I am curious to know where your arguments come from.

Nowhere in particular, just things I've picked up from researching economic stuff for my own AAR, news I happen to see, talking with colleagues who've worked in Hong Kong and from a few blogs I on-off follow as time allows.

 

[Nathan Madien]

El Pip: I see. Having digested your arguments, I will definitely keep what you said in mind as I go forward with my depiction of China led by Chiang. I still think China's economy will be better off without the Maoist policies in place; but like you said, there will be "road bumps" (which is quite a popular terminology here in the US) along the way.

I'm almost done with the next update which covers part one of Jackson's Europe trip. In England, the absence of the 1957 Defense White Paper will lead to some interesting things.

 

[El Pip]

I'm almost done with the next update which covers part one of Jackson's Europe trip. In England, the absence of the 1957 Defense White Paper will lead to some interesting things.

Woot!

Unless of course, being topical, this is 'interesting' in the Chinese sense.

 

[J.J.Jameson]

Tsr?