I have some ideas on how this could play out. More to come…
'k, now I'm curious.
So, going with a simple PoD that Stalin keeps the leash held tight on Kim Il-Sung and there is no Korean War starting in June 1950, the CCP-KMT maritime war of Nationalist blockade and air raids, and Communist small island seizures continues uninterrupted by US intervention into summer 1950.
I think, with Mao's spy and agent ring on Taiwan busted, and the weather turning worse, heavy losses from the Hainan campaign, and a lot of work still to do on the Navy that the "window" for doing an attack on Taiwan in 1950 likely could be closed already, and PRC invasion planning is focused on spring 1951. This does not rule out possible preliminary ops to seize Quemony/Jinmen and Matsu during 1950.
The PRC was building its Navy off of defected KMT personnel and ships, and at the same time getting Soviet naval hardware and pushing people through Soviet naval training. Besides the formal foreign training and taking deliveries and practice on new hardware, the Chinese will be studying the heck out of their island-seizing campaigns so far, from the absolute failures like Quemoy/Jinmen, to successes to Zhoushan, to costly successes like Hainan, as they shape plans for ops to finish off Taiwan, the Penghus and Quemoy/Jinmen and Matsu by no later than early summer 1951.
The Chinese Nationalists aren't idle, they are bombing and mining southeast China's ports, trying to disrupt any invasion preparations and keep the PRC off balance and generally remind the world they still exist and can cause pain.
The PRC has options to try for an assault on Taiwan either with or without having done a preliminary operation to clear Quemoy/Jinmen. It is more ideal to have it cleared as it allows full use of of Amoy/Xiamen harbor, the closest major port to Taiwan, without close KMT observers and harassment, but it is not absolutely vital, and a Taiwan invasion coming without this preliminary op may catch defenders more by surprise.
Regardless, let's say D-Day for the Chinese Communist invasion of Taiwan is April 1951. On some invasion beaches the ChiComs do poorly, on some they do well. Generally, the world in the initial days is surprised at how good the Chinese Nationalist resistance is and the slow pace of ChiCom progress. The act of invasion, and initial ChiNat resistance, only boosts up Republican and US China Lobby calls for US intervention. Truman, based on his still sour feelings about the KMT and Chiang Kai-shek, and the advice of SecState Dean Acheson, is not quite ready to change policy and get involved.
The next developments hinge on choices the US make:
Door #1 The Truman Administration finds its earlier preference to ‘let the dust settle’ and let Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists ‘wither on the vine’ and fall to the Communists, thus allowing, by default, US-PRC diplomatic relations, becoming less and less viable, once the Chinese Communist invasion has started and the Nationalists do *not* promptly fold.
Internationally, the Chinese Communists have not softened their harsh anti-American rhetoric, nor their pro-Soviet “lean-to-one-side” rhetoric, despite alleged overtures from Zhou Enlai through members of Beijing Yenching University faculty to US interlocutors. DoD, CIA, and journalists observe the PRC using some Soviet air and naval hardware in their Taiwan operation.
In domestic political terms, non-intervention in Taiwan begins to appear like a ‘lose-lose’ proposition whether the Communist invasion succeeds or fails on its own.
If the invasion succeeds and the Communists win, Truman’s domestic critics and the China Lobby will castigate his failure to stand by an ally and up against Communism and argue he missed the last chance to do it. If Chiang or his wife get out of the island alive, they would amplify that message personally. MacArthur, and even some Administration officials like SecDef Louis Johnson may go rogue with public statements about how they personally and professionally recommended US intervention.
If the Nationalists repel the Communists on their own, the China Lobby and its anti-Administration supporters will have an alternate way to say “I told you so” about the worthiness of Chiang Kai-shek and “Free China” as an ally. Taiwan would become Congress’s new darling, with irresistible pressure to provide it aid for defense and possibly even a counterattack against the mainland.
The stark military fact of the Taiwan struggle being in the balance, but certainly still “winnable” by the Nationalist side incentives Truman to seriously listen to pro-intervention military advisors.
A prompt US intervention, even with the limited US forces in the Far East region, appears to be something the Communist invasion force would be unlikely to be able to overcome. 7th Fleet elements, plus aircraft from Okinawa and Japan and the Philippines, can be engaged almost immediately in support of the Nationalists. These can be followed up by Marine forces from Okinawa, and 8th Army forces from the Army of Occupation in Japan. By openly intervening, Truman can claim some credit for a probable ChiCom defeat, and immediately dampen Chinese Communist forces’ and leadership morale, and take the geopolitical initiative.
One concern Truman addresses before he issues the ‘go’ order is the risk of retaliatory Communist, especially Soviet, moves around the globe. Especially because the Chinese and Soviets have a formal alliance. No one in the Administration, even people inclined to be Doves like George Kennan, argues with any credibility or conviction that a US operation limited to Taiwan and its surrounding waters would be a trigger causing a Soviet offensive action anywhere in the world.
The US in late April begins its intervention. I suppose its more likely than not that MacArthur has overall command because of his control of the preponderance potential ground assets and bases for the air assets in theater in Japan and Okinawa. But I wonder if its possibility, in line with a navally dominant operation, for CINCPAC Honolulu to be put in overall command, in order to sideline MacArthur, and if there’s a sizeable enough complement of aircraft at Clark Field in the Philippines to do the needed air support if MacArthur causes difficulties at Japanese and Okinawan bases.
The US near simultaneously activates CIA, Naval and MEU and air controller operational liaisons with Nationalists, while 7th Fleet units enter the straits to hunt for Chinese transports and combatants, US aircraft begin bombing ChiCom beachheads, and an MEU from Okinawa lands on Taiwan to face ChiCom forces, themselves lightly armed, head-on.
The ChiCom “fleets” are savaged, sunk, and driven to port within a few days. Some junks are surprisingly hard to sink because of watertight compartmenting, but when boarded, no hands are in shape to fight, critically burned and wounded from HE and napalm.
ChiCom beachheads are mopped up in under two weeks fighting by combined US and ChiNat forces, with ChiCom infiltration groups and fugitives mopped up over the following six weeks.
In military terms, the first head-on clash between PRC and USA forces (yes, aided by ROC forces) are overwhelming, speedy, and low-cost US victories, and bitter disappointments to the PRC, and at a remove, Soviet naval designers and trainers.
Once the operation has started, Truman has to catch up with the issue of getting an alternative legal justification to fight besides a declaration of war. Given the lack of consensus on the US’s policy of non-recognition of the PRC among US allies, the UN route is not an option here, unlike in the Korean War. So in this ATL, Truman needs to go to Congress to get a sufficiently vague and broadly worded ‘Formosa Straits Resolution’ passed authorizing the use of military force to deal with Communist aggression and threats to shipping in this area. Truman’s biggest challenge in fact is not getting Congressmen to support authorization for using force, it is prevent language overcommitting the US to goals like all out war with China, the Soviet Union or ‘Communism’.
This ‘splendid little war’ gives Truman at least a short term popularity boost, and at least goes a long way to walk back some of the worst of the “Who Lost China?” criticism.
Critics will still criticize though. China Lobby figures will still argue, with some justification, when Truman notes the accomplishment of saving ‘Free China’ on Taiwan, ‘What about the rest of China? That big part?’
Without the OTL early Korean War disasters like the disintegration of Task Force Smith, the US will not have the same intense awareness of how far its tactical conventional warfare capabilities have decayed since WWII. The shortness of the active phase of the war, mere weeks compare to 3 full years, also provides less stimulus to the economies of Japan, West Germany, Western Europe in general, and the US military industrial complex.
However, US general officers and congressmen are a little too smart to let their complacency on conventional forces get even worse than it was, and the war still is part of an inflection point where conventional force cuts are halted and then reversed.
The utility of the Navy is demonstrated by the central role of 7th fleet units in counter-invasion operations. The utility of the Marine Corps is demonstrated by the ability to quickly and successfully throw them into battle in this contingency. SecDef Louis Johnson and airpower advocates had been trying to put the Navy Department and its two service branches on the chopping block, so in the lore of the American armed services, the Taiwan War (alternately called the Formosa War, but gradually corrected from the 50s on) is also nicknamed “the war that saved the Marines” and “the war that saved the Navy”
On the Communist side, Mao faces diminished personal prestige in the leading group, and China faces diminished prestige within the Sino-Soviet alliance, the Communist bloc, and the world at large. Mao, and other PRC spokespeople, and the USSR, rail on about the US “invasion” of Taiwan. China considers itself more reliant than ever on Soviet protection. The USSR commits to supporting Chinese military and economic modernization across-the-board, including modernization of the Chinese Navy and Air Force with Soviet gear and training. However, while assistance is provided, the Soviets unsubtly communicate to pride-wounded Chinese, “…and before you try anything big again, make sure you’re really ready…make sure conditions are right…and make sure to talk to us.” The Chinese don’t appreciate the condescension.
If such ambitions were not already long-since buried, the demonstration of US willingness to intervene in the Pacific Rim puts the final nail in the coffin of any chance that Stalin, or other Soviet leaders, would approve or support any request by North Korea to invade South Korea. The risk of US intervention is now considered just too high.
The ‘International Solidarity’ and ‘payback’ against the western imperialists that Moscow can support and facilitate Beijing’s support of, is aid to the Viet Minh’s protracted guerrilla campaign against France in Indochina, which looks like a long-run good bet. It’s also a ‘twofer’ for the Communist giants. While it advances Communism in Asia, it puts France under political stress, providing Moscow with leverage it could use to get its way on European security concerns.
Therefore, the level of Chinese, and Sino-Soviet, aid and training and advisory effort provided to the Viet Minh will be at least as high as OTL’s was.
It might be higher, even much higher, given China’s lack of time and resources commitment and sacrifice to the Korean War. While the Taiwan war was a total failure, it was mercifully short, involving only a small portion of the armed forces.
A higher level of aid may advance the point where France feels compelled by exhaustion to throw in the towel, or suffers a Dien Bien Phu-like defeat, forward to 1952 or 1953.
A compromise settlement like OTL’s Geneva Accord of 1954, leading to an armistice, “temporary” partition of Vietnam, with the promise of later elections, and a neutral Laos and Cambodia is very, very unlikely for a variety of reasons.
These reasons are almost all related to the USA and China not experiencing the Korean War, not tiring each other out with a protracting ground war, and not developing a well-honed aversion to fighting each other.
The Chinese got beat certainly, but they can honestly tell themselves it was very special, technologically and geographically disadvantageous circumstances. A rematch with the Americans almost seems more like the perfect opportunity for revenge and recovery of China’s honor and prestige than it is a cause for alarm.
The Americans have not learned how well the Chinese can endure when facing a modern military, nor have they even seen the Chinese intervene outside what they claim are their own international borders in the first place. The prospect of a direct Chinese intervention in Indochina is highly speculative.
The Viet Minh have not seen the US endure a protracted ground war in Asia, or devastate the DPRK, so have no reason to worry the Americans are anything more than Frenchmen who talk a little different. The Viet Minh want their whole country darnit.
On the US side, probably only a President Eisenhower (or another Republican, if that Republican wanted to) would have the political chops to accept a compromise settlement outright yielding Communist control over northern Vietnam, or yielding to some process that allowed Communist control over all Vietnam. And Eisenhower or this Republican will only be in power in a relevant timeframe if, a) Truman is not reelected, and b) matters on Indochina do not come to a head until at least 1953 or 1954.
It’s extremely, vanishingly, unlikely that a reelected Truman would like to tarnish his final term, or, if Indochina matters come to a head and he is running for reelection, ruin his reelection in 1952, by being the President who lost Indochina in addition to the one who lost China. So when the French communicate that one way or the other, they are going to bail out, the US will likely send in its own forces, throughout Indochina, to take up the life support of France’s puppets and fight the Viet Minh.
China will gleefully continue to back the Viet Minh, so Vietnam War, 1950s-style.
A relative advantage to the US compared to OTL’s 1960s Vietnam War would be US freedom of maneuver over the whole Indochina geographic space. Viet Minh may suffer from relative fatigue from non-stop war without a break as the US tags in while France tags out. (but at the same time, their fighters’ experience is fresh and relevant)
Another relative advantage to the OTL 60s Vietnam War is that US society is in a more conformist mood. But a few years of this Indochina War might start to change that. Might.
A relative disadvantage compared to OTL is that this is a smaller cohort of draft eligible young men in the early and mid-50s compared with the 60s. The Baby Boomers are still in grade school. A war at this time will weigh heavily on the Silent Generation. Another political, PR disadvantage is that it is harder to distance the effort from its colonial roots, with the US literally being handed the keys by French troops and for at least a short overlapping period, fighting with them side-by-side.
Helicopters are less advanced along with PGMs and fancy motion-detecting devices. At the same time, there might be some benefit to having a few more slower prop planes in service doing patrol duties in the bush over high-performance jets going too fast to observe anything on the ground.
A relative advantage for the Communists is that the Soviets and Chinese at this stage should have an easier time remaining on the same page.
However, aside from the difficulties of fighting a counterinsurgency, another potential complication looms. On learning of US intervention, the Chinese could preemptively, or at any later time cross the border for a mass intervention into Tonkin, northern Vietnam, and Laos to overwhelm noncommunist outposts.
[Before anybody says – ‘could never happen, because the Chinese and Vietnamese hate each other, and always have, for thousands of years’ – I’m going to call bullshit. Hatred between the two is political, and has always varied by political context and by who they, especially the Vietnamese, see as the highest priority enemy at the time. If Vietnamese think or say a statement like the above it’s just because they haven’t taken a recent mouthwash/brainwash since their most recent war, which happened to be against China, in 1979. There were other 19th and 20th century and earlier time periods when there some tight Sino-Vietnamese alliances, intermixed with times of conflict.]
So the protracted Vietnam war, with or without Chinese intervention, will end how it ends, certainly earlier and with a shorter life for the US non-communist clients in a scenario where China does intervene directly.
……but in the middle of our scenario, around June 1951, where I had the Communist invaders of Taiwan getting wiped out by US-ROC forces, there is a potential for in the road, one prong led us here, the other leads to…
Door #1.5 ….Mao would be extremely enraged and frustrated by losing his first or first & second-wave forces. He would be powerless to extract them, aid them, or reinforce them. But all told, they would probably be only some 10s of thousands of troops committed, a small fraction of the total PLA, and far from the majority of forces even along Fujian and the Southeast China Coast, who are standing guard, waiting to embark to serve as follow-on echelons and a Taiwan occupation force, who now have no hope of crossing the water.
He and his top operational commander may find a way to surprise the western imperialists as nastily as they surprised him. With a crossing impossible, rapid road, rail or foot movement by the bulk of follow-on echelon forces could commence to the southwest to Guangxi and Yunnan provinces. It could be masked to agree by leaving behind dummy encampments and supernumeraries in place of the combat troops.
Then, when properly positioned, this large force, infiltrating across the Chinese border and through Viet Minh held country, could launch an unprecedented mass assault on all French occupied positions in Tonkin, including Hanoi and Haiphong, and northernmost Laos.
The shock action, and sudden addition of manpower and firepower should almost certainly overrun most French positions in those northern portions of Indochina, netting tens of thousands of prisoners, with escape being generally impossible except for likely Haiphong and some coastal outposts.
This military and propaganda coup provides an offset to the impending, and inevitable, loss of the Taiwan invasion force and imprisonment of its members, allows the flying of the red flag over Hanoi, the liquidation of thousands of collaborators, the capture of numerous stores and weapons, enables the Viet Minh to expand their war on all fronts for the long haul.
Now this in all likelihood wouldn’t be the ‘last word’. The US would take counter-actions, at a minimum applying conventional airpower in Indochina, probably intervening with troops, possibly invading Hainan island or attacking the mainland, or ultimately going nuclear, but the last outcome is far from guaranteed given US global force posture (weak) as it would have been in this alternate 1951.
But even before the Chinese execute their April 1951 D-Day, as outlined in the scenarios thus far, in the nearly ten months since June 25th, 1950 when the Korean War did *not* begin, there were chances for intra-Truman Administration debate about the precise US defense perimeter and Taiwan’s role in it, or out of it, to take a turn, that could have led to…
Door #2
….Where the Truman Administration, by New Year’s 1951, or February 1951, declares a new policy, the “neutralization” of Formosa and the Formosa straits, proclaiming opposition to any attack across the strait, either way. And order the 7th fleet to patrol the area to this end.
Such a declaration, plus the beginning of 7th Fleet patrols, would set the bar for making a successful invasion plan too high for Mao’s planners, thus causing indefinite postponement of the Taiwan invasion for 1951, and then 1952 and beyond, while continuing long-term investment in naval and aerial capabilities.
This advancement of the so-called US ‘defense perimeter’ would imply enough US interest in the Pacific Rim in general that it would almost certainly encourage Stalin and any Soviet leaders thereafter to veto any proposals from Kim Il-Sung to invade South Korea.
Here the US ends up deterring a Taiwan War and the Korean War through judicious use of declarations and military/naval maneuvers.
At the same time, this success, and the lack of exposure to tactical combat weaknesses, does little to arrest to decline of conventional forces. (Although NSC-68 showed not everyone in the government was ignoring the problem).
The economies of Japan, and Western Europe, and the US military industrial complex are lacking stimulus from the Korean War.
Beijing and Moscow do continue to support the Viet Minh armed struggle, and DPRK industrial development.
Truman does not get the boost of a ‘splendid little war’, but at least he misses entirely the hemorrhaging of his approval ratings from the Korean War.
He may or may not get elected.
What happens in Indochina, and when it happens, may influence this.
However, here, without the US ever committing to actual US combat in Asia, chances are greater that any President, even Truman or another Democrat, ultimately avoids any deployment of US troops to fight in Indochina, once the French have determined they have to quit and will negotiate their way out. Whoever is President takes flack, at least if they are a Democrat, but whoever is President seeks to deflect blame and maximize distance by blaming pro-Communist outcomes on the French.
The Herblock cartoon reads:
White House mailroom instructions: All Indochina-related mail to be readdressed to:
Complaint Department,
Quai D’Orsay,
Paris,
France.
