That was literally the case for Vietnam. They already hated the Chinese, we just needed to invest in industry for them and they would have been our allies.
The only problem was that France didn’t want that. They were too busy throwing a tantrum over losing their colony
Hell, we trained Ho Chi Minh in guerilla combat against the Japanese. The US was sympathetic to the independence of the old European colonies after the war. If it wasn’t for the cold war and trying to woo France into NATO we likely would’ve sided with Vietnam.
I always wondered if it would’ve been cheaper in Iraq and Afghanistan to just pay everyone to hand over their weapons and leave.
That was literally the case for Vietnam. They already hated the Chinese, we just needed to invest in industry for them and they would have been our allies.
The only problem was that France didn’t want that. They were too busy throwing a tantrum over losing their colony
Hell, we trained Ho Chi Minh in guerilla combat against the Japanese. The US was sympathetic to the independence of the old European colonies after the war. If it wasn’t for the cold war and trying to woo France into NATO we likely would’ve sided with Vietnam.