In outlasting the USSR?
Some make the argument that the only importance events in the Third World had in how the Cold War ended was
by inducing the Soviet Union to allocate more of its resources to silly adventurism. So, assuming the USSR would spend as much on subsidies to prop up the economy of communist Vietnam as they did OTL to arm communist Vietnam, and so on; then one would, according to that theory, expect the result of the Cold War to be comparable to OTL.
Power is a relative thing, and all great powers from Ancient Rome onwards have had hard lessons taught to them about that:
- The United States and Soviet Union both learned the hard way (the US in Vietnam, the USSR in Afghanistan) that the desire of a people to resist a foreign occupier can blunt their power regardless of how great it is;
- The USSR learned in the 1980s with its inability to keep up with the West in its armed forces buildup that economics mean as much as military might in the maintenance of power;
- Many empires, including all of the colonial ones to some degree or another, were forced to learn at some point about the social and financial issues the colonialism can create with regards to the effects it can inflict on the metropole. The USA is having to think about this now, and this factor but the USSR hard in the 1970s and 1980s.
All of the above are related to a USA that chooses to think with its heart rather than its muscles during the post-war era. In 1945 the United States' ability to be the greatest power on Earth was unquestionable - the Soviet Union (like all of continental Europe) was ravaged by war, Britain was effectively bankrupt, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan lay in ruins, the latter having discovered for themselves the power of the United States' ultimate weapon in the Atomic Bomb. The Bretton Woods system allowed the United States to play a major factor in the economic prosperity of nations and their anti-colonial stance (combined with the costs of the War) basically allowed them to dictate the end of the colonial empires. Britain and France both attempted to extend it, with varying degrees of short-term success but in the long run their empires did indeed dissolve.
The question of whether the United States COULD behave in a better way to me isn't a question. As far as whether it would have costs, it would. And IMO, the world could have been a vastly different place if it had done so. It probably wouldn't be entirely for the better in some ways, rather like how the economic rebuilding of Europe and Asia ultimately created industries that put a lot of American workers in some fields out of work. But the benefit for Washington in a geopolitical sense (and benefit for its markets in that they avoid stagnation) gives the opportunity to shift these industries and the people who work in them a chance to shift to new careers or industries.
I am certain it would have failed in fixing the government failures, from corruption to dysfunctional education systems, which prevent countries from becoming developed; good government is not something easily exported.
Nonetheless, some nations, like, for example, Guatemala would be much better of.
That is to be expected, but few nations I feel don't have the ability to improve themselves given the ability to do so. The fact that there are cases like South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and South Africa that were able to trade tyranny for freedom (though none of the above is perfect in that regard, they have all improved enormously from where they once were) and better governance says a lot. Washington would do well both to encourage this AND (more importantly) to not cause issues for it when it results in electoral results they don't like, this most clearly seen with Salvador Allende in Chile.
If Mao still runs China they only need to wait till the PRC and India become rivals and then support India against China.
Wasn't that how India became a de facto Soviet ally in OTL's Cold War? Because both were rivals with Communist China.
It was part that. India's ruling elite after independence were heavily influenced by socialist thinking as a legacy of colonialism, from Gandhi and Nehru on down, and while India wasn't a fan of Communism (and fought a rather ugly insurgency with them for decades), the USSR didn't have the UK's or America's history and so the USSR was seen as an easier partner. The rivalry with China didn't hurt.
