diff --git a/lib/ansible/module_utils/basic.py b/lib/ansible/module_utils/basic.py
index 582aa35e3b..0995fdd758 100644
--- a/lib/ansible/module_utils/basic.py
+++ b/lib/ansible/module_utils/basic.py
@@ -73,6 +73,22 @@ try:
 except ImportError:
     imap = map                      # Python 3
 
+try:
+    basestring
+except NameError:
+    basestring = str                # Python 3
+
+try:
+    unicode
+except NameError:
+    unicode = str                   # Python 3
+
+try:
+    bytes
+except NameError:
+    bytes = str                     # Python 2
+
+
 try:
     import json
     # Detect the python-json library which is incompatible