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HOLY FALSE DILEMMA BATMAN
The US didn't stop fighting the cold war when China became the PRC, or when Cuba fell, or when Vietnam did in fact fall. Why would the US have suddenly given in because Vietnam went Red?
The time to make a decision in Vietnam was before Dienbienphu. After that Vietnam was always going to be united under a Vietminh regime.
Not expending national credibility on that lost cause would have made the Capitalist American system more attractive on the global stage, not less. We can tell because US prestige declined after the defeat in Vietnam!
The Sino-Soviet split was already happening before the US entered Vietnam.
What would have helped Vietnam develop significantly would have been ending the destructive war earlier, so they could have gotten along with the industrialization process and started selling me cheap workout clothing. You can tell because Vietnam today is where South Korea was 30 years ago, and Vietnam fought a series of destructive wars for 30 years longer than South Korea did.
No, you approaching it with the wrong end. The US that would willingly give up Vietnam to the reds, without trying to do anything, would also give up without trying Poland, Afghanistan, and many other things that together brought the Cold War to victory. By itself, the loss of Vietnam obviously weren't fatal - obviously! - but becoming a type of country that doesn't even try to fight may be fatal for the chances to ultimate victory.
You are comparing it to the situation where US won in Vietnam. Compare to situation where it didn't even try.
The US DID give up Poland without trying! That's a thing that really happened! Not ten years before the Gulf of Tonkin, the US failed to help the Hungarians who were ready to stand against the USSR. During the Vietnam War the US would abandon the Prague Spring to its fate. The ding to US prestige from failing to aid the Hungarians or the Czechs was small, in fact it was probably less than the debit to USSR credibility worldwide resulting from those invasions. In fact the damage done to the US was so small, you don't even remember it! The ding from losing in Vietnam was large, and the damage done by the United States' behavior in Vietnam (and the rest of Indochina) was even larger. From this we can deduce that US global prestige suffered less from scenarios in which they didn't try than scenarios in which they tried and lost.
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