lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Aug 3, 2016 18:16:28 GMT
Well i can wait for the map, just would like you to know its a good universe building, but one question, what happen with Netherlands East Indies, did it still get its independence like OTL or was it differently here. Islamism to become a serious global problem (a stronger West can easily crush the likes of Nasser and Saddam in the bud, but this has nasty unforeseen consequences). I have been unfortunately unable to create a world map of TTL, because of my uncertainty of the exact course decolonization of Sub-Saharan Africa would take ITTL. Is this going the route of ISIS because that would be nasty. |
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eurofed
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Post by eurofed on Aug 3, 2016 18:17:30 GMT
Yep, Soviet control of Turkey and Iran, and their unrestricted access to the Med and the Persian Gulf, are a big reason why ITTL the Allies throw the Sykes-Picot agreement in the dustbin and rewrite the political map of the Middle East. However, there are still the effects of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Arab resentment for Western colonialism and support of Isreal, and the Western powers not reacting nicely to anti-Western Arab nationalism to complicate things. The Arab world probably gets to be one of the areas where things turn less optimal for the West, notwithstanding the general pro-Western bent of the TL. Middle Eastern events shall get covered in the second next update. So a much more screwed up Middle East then. Perhaps just as screwed, if with different borders. Apart from that, Islamism probably gets to be just as big an headache, but Western Europe does not have a large and poorly integrated Muslim immigrant minority. Its role gets filled by Chinese and to a lesser degree Eastern European immigrants because of circumstances, so security concerns for TTL Europe in the face of the Islamist threat are substantially lessened and more or less the same as for the USA and the other Western countries. The partition of India does not happen, in this regard things for them may vary. |
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Aug 3, 2016 18:19:02 GMT
So a much more screwed up Middle East then. Perhaps just as screwed, if with different borders. Apart from that, Islamism probably gets to be just as big an headache, but Western Europe does not have a large and poorly integrated Muslim immigrant minority. Its role gets filled by Chinese and to a lesser degree Eastern European immigrants because of circumstances, so security concerns for TTL Europe in the face of the Islamist threat are substantially lessened and more or less the same as for the USA and the other Western countries. The partition of India does not happen, in this regard things for them may vary. Is Israel a major power in you universe. |
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eurofed
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Post by eurofed on Aug 3, 2016 18:23:47 GMT
The Cold War unfolded in Europe with increasing intensity as growing evidence of the tyrannical, aggressive, and genocidal nature of Stalinism made the Western bloc more and more afraid of the Soviet threat. Antagonism with the USSR quickly made the Anglo-Americans bury their tentative plans for a global peace-keeping intergovernmental organization to replace the failed League of Nations. They instead set up the Atlantic Treaty Organization (ATO), a collective defense system and integrated military alliance of the USA, Britain, and the Dominions. It was soon expanded to include the Western European countries (except neutral Ireland and Switzerland) as their reconstruction and rehabilitation progressed. The defense pact also came to include most Latin American states, but they did not join the integrated military structure due to their peripheral position in relation to the Soviet threat and their marginal role during WWII. After the Sino-Soviet War, the organization grew to include Japan and Korea, which remilitarized under the control of the alliance. As a recognition of the growing role of Australasia and East Asia in the alliance, it changed its name to Global Security Organization (GSO).
The outcome of WWII and the pressure of the Cold War, with a widespread perception of the severity of the Soviet threat, caused the European integration process to take an accelerated and vastly successful course. A widespread consensus arose that European integration would be the best way to deal with the lessons of the World Wars, achieve lasting reconciliation between the European peoples, and withstand the existential threat of Stalinism. The process started in the late 1940s and early 1950s with the establishment of a common market; a pan-European military divided into national components at the battalion level with centralized military procurement and a common budget, arms, and institutions; and a supranational parliamentary government to give democratic oversight to the various components of European integration. The latter included a directly elected assembly ("the Peoples’ Chamber"), a senate appointed by national parliaments, and a supranational executive accountable to the parliament.
Creation of a common European army provided an adequate way to reconcile the need of adequate continental defense with the controversial rearmament of Germany and the other Axis countries. Creation of a single-market area considerably boosted the postwar economic boom triggered by reconstruction and US aid. Prosperity and awareness of the Soviet threat supported consensus to the European integration process until its apparent benefits caused it to develop a self-sustaining momentum. By the 1960s, the process had grown successful enough that it started to include free movement of people between member states; police, judiciary, and intelligence integration; an economic, monetary, and fiscal union; and an European Court of Justice. This second-stage development got finalized in the 1970s. At the same time, the originally distinct component organizations of the process, the European Economic, Defense, and Political Communities, were merged into the European Union (EU), which took an increasingly federalist character. The founding members of the three European Communities and later the EU were France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia. They were later joined by Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Romania, and Albania after the fall of their Communist regimes.
The four Nordic countries (Iceland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) opted out of the European integration process and instead chose to pursue a parallel effort of their own. This eventually grew into the Nordic Union, a confederation that managed security, economic, and foreign policy matters of member states while leaving them autonomy in domestic affairs. Finland joined the NU after its liberation from Communism. Over time, however, economic, security, and judicial cooperation between the EU and NU intensified, affinities between the two systems increased, and a joint single market and open borders area was established. By the last quarter of the 20th century, the EU and the NU remained formally distinct but were usually seen and often worked as the sister halves of a greater whole. All EU and NU states were also ATO/GSO members; the pan-European army, navy, and nuclear deterrent grew into a second main pillar of the alliance alongside the US military, of broadly equivalent power.
The British - and by extension the Irish due to the Northern Ireland issue - decided not to join either project because of their increasingly federalist character. They instead deepened their ties with the USA and the Dominions, eventually leading to the establishment of a free trade area (the Atlantic-Pacific Trade Agreement, or APTA) between the USA, Canada, Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Korea. By the 1980s the EU underwent a further stage of integration that turned it into a federal union in all but name. It developed an European Constitution with a Chart of Fundamental Rights; an unified foreign policy; complete economic integration; a common European citizenship; standardized European welfare services; and a semi-presidential supranational government with a president directly elected by European citizens. A set of Pan-European political parties took shape that were organized on a continental scale on the basis of ideological affinity and common interests, dominated EU politics, and regularly contested European elections on the basis of supranational platforms. United Europe got widely recognized across the world as the sister superpower of the USA.
Further support to reconstruction of Europe according to the Western model and its supranational integration came from the utter discredit that Communism increasingly suffered after the war. Its causes were the USSR’s role during WWII, its aggressive actions in the Balkans, growing evidence of the Soviet purges and genocide thanks to refugees and defectors, and eventually the devastation of China. Just like Nazism and fascism, Stalinism and Marxism-Leninism came to be irrevocably identified in the Western collective consciousness with tyranny, aggression, and mass murder. Within a couple decades since the end of the war, pretty much all mainstream left-wing public opinion in Europe shifted to support democratic socialist parties and movements. The unions expelled communist sympathizers from their ranks and realigned with the social-democratic drift. Even in the surviving far-left fringe, support for various forms of anarchism largely came to prevail. Communists became as loathed and marginalized as neo-Nazis across the Western world.
In Asia the Communist victory in China initially helped the spread of Communist and radical-nationalist insurgency to Southeast Asia, greatly complicating its decolonization, but the Sino-Soviet split and war reversed the tide. Collapse of China deprived the Southeast Asian Communists and leftist nationalists of a vital source of support, and the fratricidal Sino-Soviet war discredited them. So the Western powers were eventually able to wipe them out and keep the region bound to their bloc through a mix of deal-making with moderate nationalist leaders and military and economic support to conservative forces. However elimination of Communist sympathizers in certain cases escalated to large-scale purges that caused considerable loss of life, such as in Indochina and Indonesia.
After decolonization, the region got divided in the states of Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, the Malay Union, the Indonesian Federation, and the Philippines. Thailand formed a confederation with Cambodia, Vietnam absorbed Laos, and Indonesia formed from the fusion of the Dutch East Indies, British Borneo, and Portuguese Timor. Collapse of China however brought a different source of instability, as millions of Chinese refugees flooded the Southeast Asian countries. Their relief severely strained the economy and public order of the region, and in most cases they got forced into slums, with anti-refugee violence becoming a common occurrence. To help combat the threats of Communism, regional instability, and China’s disaster, the Western powers sponsored the creation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a political and economic organization of Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
Over time, however, the Chinese refugees problem considerably ameliorated since a sizable portion of them were gradually allowed to resettle in the Western countries. Over the next few decades, several millions Chinese immigrated to the Western world. Although their arrival did arouse some nativist backlash, general prosperity allowed their gradual integration, and the Chinese community largely developed a positive reputation as a hard-working, law-abiding, and well-educated ‘model minority’. Their presence turned out important for Europe also because in combination with immigration from Eastern Europe after the Revolutions of 1962 and the Eight-Week War it acted as a barrier to help prevent large-scale immigration from the Muslim world. If it had been allowed to form, a large Muslim minority in Europe could have quite possibly turned into a serious security issue for Europe once Islamism became a serious global problem in the last quarter of the century.
In comparison, Japan and Korea were spared the worst of the backlash from the devastation of China, mostly because Soviet Manchuria acted as a barrier. Their postwar reconstruction and development largely followed the successful European pattern, although it was significantly slower because of the damage caused by the American conquest. Nonetheless US aid and the drive of reconstruction fuelled a gradual but robust postwar recovery and economic boom that established them as industrialized powerhouses. The looming Soviet threat, prosperity, and the sobering example of China gradually helped both peoples to bury resentment for the past and achieve reconciliation and a friendly relationship with each other and the rest of the Western bloc. Both countries joined the GSO, rearmed under its aegis, and eventually became an important part of the APTA. They cooperated with the USA, Australia, and New Zealand to contain Communism and help the RoC in its Herculean effort to stabilize mainland China.
Soon after the end of the war, India achieved independence. Wartime Japanese and Soviet invasion of northern India and the persistence of the Soviet threat looming from Iran and Afghanistan persuaded the Muslim Indian leaders to give up their calls for a separate homeland of their own and partition of British India. Instead they made themselves content with a special autonomy statute for the Muslim-majority lands that largely contained sectarian conflicts within acceptable limits. Nonetheless, the northwestern areas always remained one of the most instable and lawless areas of the Indian state. At independence, British India absorbed the princely states and Ceylon.
Independent India established a secular, socialist, federal republic with a multi-party democracy, strived to establish a mixed economy with an agrarian reform and rapid industrialization, and sought to abolish the caste system and increase the legal rights and social freedom of women. Its foreign policy pursued ‘non-alignment’ between the Western world and the Soviet bloc. The Indian leaders balanced a strong condemnation of Stalinist policies with a fierce criticism of Western colonialism and imperialism. After the Sino-Soviet conflict, however, India came to seriously fear it might be next on Stalin’s hit list and grew closer to the Western bloc, although it remained officially neutral.
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Aug 3, 2016 18:30:59 GMT
The Cold War unfolded in Europe with increasing intensity as growing evidence of the tyrannical, aggressive, and genocidal nature of Stalinism made the Western bloc more and more afraid of the Soviet threat. Antagonism with the USSR quickly made the Anglo-Americans bury their tentative plans for a global peace-keeping intergovernmental organization to replace the failed League of Nations. They instead set up the Atlantic Treaty Organization (ATO), a collective defense system and integrated military alliance of the USA, Britain, and the Dominions. It was soon expanded to include the Western European countries (except neutral Ireland and Switzerland) as their reconstruction and rehabilitation progressed. The defense pact also came to include most Latin American states, but they did not join the integrated military structure due to their peripheral position in relation to the Soviet threat and their marginal role during WWII. After the Sino-Soviet War, the organization grew to include Japan and Korea, which remilitarized under the control of the alliance. As a recognition of the growing role of Australasia and East Asia in the alliance, it changed its name to Global Security Organization (GSO). The outcome of WWII and the pressure of the Cold War, with a widespread perception of the severity of the Soviet threat, caused the European integration process to take an accelerated and vastly successful course. A widespread consensus arose that European integration would be the best way to deal with the lessons of the World Wars, achieve lasting reconciliation between the European peoples, and withstand the existential threat of Stalinism. The process started in the late 1940s and early 1950s with the establishment of a common market; a pan-European military divided into national components at the battalion level with centralized military procurement and a common budget, arms, and institutions; and a supranational parliamentary government to give democratic oversight to the various components of European integration. The latter included a directly elected assembly ("the Peoples’ Chamber"), a senate appointed by national parliaments, and a supranational executive accountable to the parliament. Creation of a common European army provided an adequate way to reconcile the need of adequate continental defense with the controversial rearmament of Germany and the other Axis countries. Creation of a single-market area considerably boosted the postwar economic boom triggered by reconstruction and US aid. Prosperity and awareness of the Soviet threat supported consensus to the European integration process until its apparent benefits caused it to develop a self-sustaining momentum. By the 1960s, the process had grown successful enough that it started to include free movement of people between member states; police, judiciary, and intelligence integration; an economic, monetary, and fiscal union; and an European Court of Justice. This second-stage development got finalized in the 1970s. At the same time, the originally distinct component organizations of the process, the European Economic, Defense, and Political Communities, were merged into the European Union (EU), which took an increasingly federalist character. The founding members of the three European Communities and later the EU were France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia. They were later joined by Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Romania, and Albania after the fall of their Communist regimes. The four Nordic countries (Iceland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) opted out of the European integration process and instead chose to pursue a parallel effort of their own. This eventually grew into the Nordic Union, a confederation that managed security, economic, and foreign policy matters of member states while leaving them autonomy in domestic affairs. Finland joined the NU after its liberation from Communism. Over time, however, economic, security, and judicial cooperation between the EU and NU intensified, affinities between the two systems increased, and a joint single market and open borders area was established. By the last quarter of the 20th century, the EU and the NU remained formally distinct but were usually seen and often worked as the sister halves of a greater whole. All EU and NU states were also ATO/GSO members; the pan-European army, navy, and nuclear deterrent grew into a second main pillar of the alliance alongside the US military, of broadly equivalent power. The British - and by extension the Irish due to the Northern Ireland issue - decided not to join either project because of their increasingly federalist character. They instead deepened their ties with the USA and the Dominions, eventually leading to the establishment of a free trade area (the Atlantic-Pacific Trade Agreement, or APTA) between the USA, Canada, Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Korea. By the 1980s the EU underwent a further stage of integration that turned it into a federal union in all but name. It developed an European Constitution with a Chart of Fundamental Rights; an unified foreign policy; complete economic integration; a common European citizenship; standardized European welfare services; and a semi-presidential supranational government with a president directly elected by European citizens. A set of Pan-European political parties took shape that were organized on a continental scale on the basis of ideological affinity and common interests, dominated EU politics, and regularly contested European elections on the basis of supranational platforms. United Europe got widely recognized across the world as the sister superpower of the USA. Further support to reconstruction of Europe according to the Western model and its supranational integration came from the utter discredit that Communism increasingly suffered after the war. Its causes were the USSR’s role during WWII, its aggressive actions in the Balkans, growing evidence of the Soviet purges and genocide thanks to refugees and defectors, and eventually the devastation of China. Just like Nazism and fascism, Stalinism and Marxism-Leninism came to be irrevocably identified in the Western collective consciousness with tyranny, aggression, and mass murder. Within a couple decades since the end of the war, pretty much all mainstream left-wing public opinion in Europe shifted to support democratic socialist parties and movements. The unions expelled communist sympathizers from their ranks and realigned with the social-democratic drift. Even in the surviving far-left fringe, support for various forms of anarchism largely came to prevail. Communists became as loathed and marginalized as neo-Nazis across the Western world. In Asia the Communist victory in China initially helped the spread of Communist and radical-nationalist insurgency to Southeast Asia, greatly complicating its decolonization, but the Sino-Soviet split and war reversed the tide. Collapse of China deprived the Southeast Asian Communists and leftist nationalists of a vital source of support, and the fratricidal Sino-Soviet war discredited them. So the Western powers were eventually able to wipe them out and keep the region bound to their bloc through a mix of deal-making with moderate nationalist leaders and military and economic support to conservative forces. However elimination of Communist sympathizers in certain cases escalated to large-scale purges that caused considerable loss of life, such as in Indochina and Indonesia. After decolonization, the region got divided in the states of Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, the Malay Union, the Indonesian Federation, and the Philippines. Thailand formed a confederation with Cambodia, Vietnam absorbed Laos, and Indonesia formed from the fusion of the Dutch East Indies, British Borneo, and Portuguese Timor. Collapse of China however brought a different source of instability, as millions of Chinese refugees flooded the Southeast Asian countries. Their relief severely strained the economy and public order of the region, and in most cases they got forced into slums, with anti-refugee violence becoming a common occurrence. To help combat the threats of Communism, regional instability, and China’s disaster, the Western powers sponsored the creation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a political and economic organization of Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Over time, however, the Chinese refugees problem considerably ameliorated since a sizable portion of them were gradually allowed to resettle in the Western countries. Over the next few decades, several millions Chinese immigrated to the Western world. Although their arrival did arouse some nativist backlash, general prosperity allowed their gradual integration, and the Chinese community largely developed a positive reputation as a hard-working, law-abiding, and well-educated ‘model minority’. Their presence turned out important for Europe also because in combination with immigration from Eastern Europe after the Revolutions of 1962 and the Eight-Week War it acted as a barrier to help prevent large-scale immigration from the Muslim world. If it had been allowed to form, a large Muslim minority in Europe could have quite possibly turned into a serious security issue for Europe once Islamism became a serious global problem in the last quarter of the century. In comparison, Japan and Korea were spared the worst of the backlash from the devastation of China, mostly because Soviet Manchuria acted as a barrier. Their postwar reconstruction and development largely followed the successful European pattern, although it was significantly slower because of the damage caused by the American conquest. Nonetheless US aid and the drive of reconstruction fuelled a gradual but robust postwar recovery and economic boom that established them as industrialized powerhouses. The looming Soviet threat, prosperity, and the sobering example of China gradually helped both peoples to bury resentment for the past and achieve reconciliation and a friendly relationship with the rest of the Western bloc. Both countries joined the GSO, rearmed under its aegis, and eventually became an important part of the APTA. They cooperated with the USA, Australia, and New Zealand to contain Communism and help the RoC in its Herculean effort to stabilize mainland China. Soon after the end of the war, India achieved independence. Wartime Japanese and Soviet invasion of northern India and the persistence of the Soviet threat looming from Iran and Afghanistan persuaded the Muslim Indian leaders to give up their calls for a separate homeland of their own and partition of British India. Instead they made themselves content with a special autonomy statute for the Muslim-majority lands that largely contained sectarian conflicts within acceptable limits. Nonetheless, the northwestern areas always remained one of the most instable and lawless areas of the Indian state. At independence, British India absorbed the princely states and Ceylon. Independent India established a secular, socialist, federal republic with a multi-party democracy, strived to establish a mixed economy with an agrarian reform and rapid industrialization, and sought to abolish the caste system and increase the legal rights and social freedom of women. Its foreign policy pursued ‘non-alignment’ between the Western world and the Soviet bloc. The Indian leaders balanced a strong condemnation of Stalinist policies with a fierce criticism of Western colonialism and imperialism. After the Sino-Soviet conflict, however, India came to seriously fear it might be next on Stalin’s hit list and grew closer to the Western bloc, although it remained officially neutral. Does the United Kingdom still have colonies left in this universe. Is Korea a republic or was the monarchy restored, also i would assume Japan is still a empire. Who controls Formosa. |
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eurofed
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Post by eurofed on Aug 3, 2016 18:37:29 GMT
Islamism to become a serious global problem (a stronger West can easily crush the likes of Nasser and Saddam in the bud, but this has nasty unforeseen consequences). I have been unfortunately unable to create a world map of TTL, because of my uncertainty of the exact course decolonization of Sub-Saharan Africa would take ITTL. Is this going the route of ISIS because that would be nasty. Due to TTL Arab world being much less fragmented, but sharing many of the same structural flaws, a takeover of most of it by an ISIS equivalent is a distinct, if unwelcome, possibility if things go bad with Islamist revolutions and/or the collapse of Communism in the Near/Middle East and Central Asia. On the other hand, TTL united Europe is a superpower just as strong and hawkish as the USA, and TTL America is not going to be burned by any equivalent of the Vietnam War in the foreseeable future. So it is quite possible and even likely the Western world is going to react to an emergent ISIS equivalent in a much more decisive and heavy-handed way. On the other hand, more or less in the same period they shall have to deal with the consequences of the violent collapse of the Soviet bloc, so their attention and energies may get divided. On the gripping hand, even if the USA and the EU intervene quickly and decisively to stomp out the equivalents of Khomeini, Bin Laden, and Al-Baghdadi, they may easily find themselves in the same situation as OTL Afghanistan, only spread out across most of the Muslim world. As I see it, TTL America and Europe are going to get stronger, less divided, and luckier in many ways, but they are still going to have to deal with an instable and screwed-up Russia, China, and Muslim world, as the nasty legacy of Communism and their own mistakes. |
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Aug 3, 2016 18:41:39 GMT
Is this going the route of ISIS because that would be nasty. TTL America and Europe are going to get stronger, less divided, and luckier in many ways, but they are still going to have to deal with an instable and screwed-up Russia, China, and Muslim world, as the nasty legacy of Communism and their own mistakes. Seems to are being kept busy, that is going to be a major shift for the them. |
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eurofed
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Post by eurofed on Aug 3, 2016 18:50:28 GMT
Perhaps just as screwed, if with different borders. Apart from that, Islamism probably gets to be just as big an headache, but Western Europe does not have a large and poorly integrated Muslim immigrant minority. Its role gets filled by Chinese and to a lesser degree Eastern European immigrants because of circumstances, so security concerns for TTL Europe in the face of the Islamist threat are substantially lessened and more or less the same as for the USA and the other Western countries. The partition of India does not happen, in this regard things for them may vary. Is Israel a major power in you universe. A major regional power certainly, because they have rather more territory and not much of a troublesome Arab minority in it thanks their successes in the Independence War and the Suez War. Moreover, they have a significantly bigger Jewish population, according to how I expect the average of the Nazi Holocaust of European Jews being stopped halfway by a successful Valkyrie coup and a longer-lived Stalin killing most Soviet Jews with his own Second Holocaust. Last but not least, TTL America and Europe are more or less going to have the same attitude towards Israel and the Arab world as OTL USA because of pro-Zionist sympathy created by the double Holocaust and the events of the Suez War. On the other hand, TTL Israel is going to face a substantially stronger Arab world, since the latter is going to be consolidated in a few large states. On the gripping hand, the United Arab Kingdom is going to have its attention and security concerns seriously divided because of Communist (and later, dangerously instable) Turkey and Iran (and ITTL Communism is seen by everyone as a more serious threat, with Stalin nuking and poisoning China into a new warlord era). |
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Post by lordroel on Aug 3, 2016 18:54:27 GMT
Is Israel a major power in you universe. A major regional power certainly, because they have rather more territory and not much of a troublesome Arab minority in it thanks their successes in the Independence War and the Suez War. Moreover, they have a significantly bigger Jewish population, according to how I expect the average of the Nazi Holocaust of European Jews being stopped halfway by a successful Valkyrie coup and a longer-lived Stalin killing most Soviet Jews with his own Second Holocaust. Last but not least, TTL America and Europe are more or less going to have the same attitude towards Israel and the Arab world as OTL USA because of pro-Zionist sympathy created by the double Holocaust and the events of the Suez War. On the other hand, TTL Israel is going to face a substantially stronger Arab world, since the latter is going to be consolidated in a few large states. On the gripping hand, the United Arab Kingdom is going to have its attention and security concerns seriously divided because of Communist (and later, dangerously instable) Turkey and Iran (and ITTL Communism is seen by everyone as a more serious threat, with Stalin nuking and poisoning China into a new warlord era). The United Arab Kingdom is located where exactly. |
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eurofed
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Post by eurofed on Aug 3, 2016 20:47:08 GMT
Does the United Kingdom still have colonies left in this universe. Is Korea a republic or was the monarchy restored, also i would assume Japan is still a empire. Who controls Formosa. The KMT controls Taiwan, just like OTL. The main difference is ITTL they have Hainan, too. Because of their greater suspicion of Communism, ITTL the Americans acted a little more quickly and decisively at the end of the Chinese Civil War (although not enough to save the Chinese mainland, due to their post-Downfall sense of exhaustion), allowing Chiang to keep both big islands (much the same way and for the same reasons the Americans seized all of Korea at the end of WWII). The KMT uses them as a power base to fuel its slow and painful reconquest of the mainland after the Sino-Soviet War. The RoC is the best available candidate to reunify and rebuild China (the other options are a PRC crippled and tainted by Mao's blunders and Stalin's atrocities, and a Taoist Taiping equivalent). However the Soviet WMD attack screwed up China so much, the RoC resources are limited enough, and the West wary enough of the USSR that even if successful, the KMT comeback is likely going to take decades to be fulfilled, even with generous support from the Western powers. Korea becomes a republic by default. After two generations, support for the Korean monarchy has dwindled to a fringe, neither the Americans nor Korean nationalists had much interest in a restoration, and the pre-colonial record of the Joseon dynasty was far from good if you ask my opinion. Theoretically speaking, I am a big fan of the benefits of a Japanese-Korean union, screw the Korean nationalists, so if there had been any politically feasible way to keep the pre-1931 Japanese Empire intact with this kind of PoD, I would have certainly preserved it. Nonetheless, ITTL the relationship between the Japanese, the Koreans, and the Southeast Asians is considerably less antagonistic and resentful than OTL (a crazier, genocidal Russia and its WMD devastation of China put the WWII misdeeds of Japan in a different perspective, apologies or no apologies), so it is entirely possible and even likely an East Asian equivalent of the federalist EU may arise by the end of the century with Japan, Korea, and the ASEAN countries (quite possibly ASEAN itself with a different name, and a closer, EU-like bond). TTL vast, unqualified success of the EU project certainly increases global interest and support for other continental/regional federalist integration experiments considerably. Besides non-Chinese East Asia, other good candidates seem the Anglosphere and/or the Americas. The existence of another sister superpower across the Atlantic very likely spurs the Americans into having less nationalist exceptionalism (although for various reasons ITTL the West as a whole likely has a greater sense of its own exceptionalism and less postcolonial guilt). So the USA is quite likely to try and set up its own federalist EU equivalent with Britain, the Dominions, and at least choice bits of Latin America, some kind of (North) American-Pacific Union. This kind of PoD is in all likelihood far too late to change the fate of the British Empire or the Commonwealth significantly. Post-WWII circumstances set up the USA and the EU as the main gravitational wells of the Western world, and any neo-British Imperial project simply does not have any remotely close to equivalent attractive force to compete for the Dominions' affections. Moreover, India blazes its own opportunist trail to potential-superpower status that is a balance act between trying to be the leader of the Third World/non-aligned bloc by playing the anti-imperialist card and being a trade and strategic partner of America and Europe for economic benefits and protection from crazy Russia and the Chinese disaster. Basically OTL role of China but being nicer and easier to deal with because of its democratic character. Broadly speaking, by the 21st century Britain in all likelihood faces an unavoidable choice between being absorbed by the EU, the USA/NAPU, or less likely the NU. The alternative of England losing the United Kingdom and becoming one of most marginal, insignificant, and impoverished backwaters of the Western world is too stark for demagogues to obfuscate the issue and appeals to almost no one, xenophobia or not. The Nordic option would even exist only if we assume the NU wants the British and by the next millennium the Europeans and the Nordics still care to keep their 'separate but associated' special relationship and do not choose to end the charade with a full merger, since ITTL Euroskepticism is almost surely nutjob fringe stuff. There are certainly those within the European mainstream political spectrum that argue for a more decentralized system, but it is a political dynamic much similar to strong federalism vs. states' rights in post-ACW USA. ITTL the equivalent of the Brexit debate is likely an interesting hard choice with funny AH echoes: Do you prefer the "As if Rome/Charlemagne/Napoleon had been successful, but with liberal democracy" option or the "As if we had won or prevented the ARW, but the Empire became a Republic dominated by the American colonies" option ? Perhaps possibly the "As if Cnut the Great had won" third option, but maybe not. Given the greater strength of the Western world, and the weaker and more tained status of Communism, it is entirely possible decolonization gets to be somewhat slower and more ordered - although probably the PoD is far too late to change the outcome of sub-Saharan Africa substantially. OTOH, the time schedule of decolonization for Southeast Asia and the Arab world was not significantly different, although the borders it created were. Perhaps there are a few more regional unions (e.g. in East Africa) and less artificial states with screwed-up borders. Quite possibly political butterflies may let South Africa avoid Apartheid, keep its borders wide open to European immigration, absorb the rest of British Southern Africa, and evolve into a reasonably nice and stable regional power. In this context, Britain may or may not keep its extra little bit of colonial territory here and there, but it would basically be a few islands at most. |
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eurofed
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Post by eurofed on Aug 3, 2016 21:09:43 GMT
TTL America and Europe are going to get stronger, less divided, and luckier in many ways, but they are still going to have to deal with an instable and screwed-up Russia, China, and Muslim world, as the nasty legacy of Communism and their own mistakes. Seems to are being kept busy, that is going to be a major shift for the them. Very much so, although in all likelihood the effort of being world policemen is going to be less exhausting for the Western powers than OTL, because the USA and the EU may carry an equal share of the burden and they may co-opt their stronger, less isolationist East Asian allies and to a degree the other potential superpower, India, as well. Although the Indians are likely going to fill much of the role of OTL China and Russia, they are just as likely going to do it in a less antagonistic and passive-aggressive way, because of their different history and democratic character. Not to mention the beneficial effects of a less fragmented world: by the end of the century, any major policy issue of international relevance is likely settled for the Western bloc as a whole with a consensus between the US/NAPU and EU leaders - and quite possibly their counterparts in the East Asian Union (which would be a third Western-aligned potential superpower if it does form). Possibly enlarge the consensus to the leaders of India, Greater South Africa, and one or three of the most important South American nations in a G-20-style framework (not to mention the likely possibility of a more integrated South America as well), and it gets reasonably close to global agreement in practical terms, even if Russia, China, the Muslim world, and/or most of Africa remain big trouble spots, rogue powers, or sources of instability. TTL world does not really need the UN, and good riddance to that expensive soapbox for Third World tinpot dictators. Its role may be much more efficiently filled by a combination of the GSO and a G-20 equivalent. ITTL historians may well conclude America won the war and the peace, Russia and China won the war and horribly screwed the peace, and the Axis powers lost the war but won the peace. Germany is inevitably the leader of united Europe, even more so than OTL - although France, Italy, Spain, and Eastern Europe balance it well enough and have good enough of a deal for the federal system to be stable for the foreseeable future. Much the same way, if the EAU forms, Japan would inevitably be its leader, but industrialized Korea and Southeast Asia would balance it well enough for the system to work. In both cases, instable, screwed-up Russia and China would be the square peg, too big and proud to be safely absorbed, ignored, or dominated. It is an open question if they may be rehabilitated with enough Western help and effort. |
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eurofed
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Post by eurofed on Aug 3, 2016 22:10:54 GMT
A major regional power certainly, because they have rather more territory and not much of a troublesome Arab minority in it thanks their successes in the Independence War and the Suez War. Moreover, they have a significantly bigger Jewish population, according to how I expect the average of the Nazi Holocaust of European Jews being stopped halfway by a successful Valkyrie coup and a longer-lived Stalin killing most Soviet Jews with his own Second Holocaust. Last but not least, TTL America and Europe are more or less going to have the same attitude towards Israel and the Arab world as OTL USA because of pro-Zionist sympathy created by the double Holocaust and the events of the Suez War. On the other hand, TTL Israel is going to face a substantially stronger Arab world, since the latter is going to be consolidated in a few large states. On the gripping hand, the United Arab Kingdom is going to have its attention and security concerns seriously divided because of Communist (and later, dangerously instable) Turkey and Iran (and ITTL Communism is seen by everyone as a more serious threat, with Stalin nuking and poisoning China into a new warlord era). The United Arab Kingdom is located where exactly. More or less everything between Egypt-Sudan, Greater Israel, Turkey, and Iran. I am uncertain if it is also going to include Yemen and Oman at its birth, but it is most likely going to absorb Southern Arabia too, sooner or later. It is the union of the Mashriq and Arabia with the Hashemites on the throne, minus Mandatory Palestine and the assorted post-1967 border territories that the Zionists conquer and absorb with the first two Arab-Israeli wars. Basically what the Entente promised to the Arabs during WWI, fulfilled at last - of course, the bargain does not include an authorization to threaten Western strategic and economic interests for the sake of nationalism, as Nasser and the Baathists discover to their ruin during the Suez War. ITTL circumstances (Axis/Soviet occupation of the Middle East during WWII, Communist control of Anatolia and Persia, Allied distrust of the Saudis due to their ambigously collaborationist behavior, France's postwar status as a defeated enemy power) persuade the Anglo-Americans to throw the Sykes-Picot Agreement, Saudi Arabia, and the various tinpot emirates to the rubbish and set up Greater Egypt and Greater Syria-Arabia as a way to try and stabilize the Middle East and set it up as an anti-Soviet bulwark. The Maghreb takes a different, more tortuous but ultimately not so different path, because of its closer bond with Europe. The other big exception is Greater Israel, whose creation the Western powers sponsor because they decide the Jews deserve a sizable homeland of theirs after being screwed by two genocidal dictators and the two Arab kingdoms are so big and have so much free land (even if a lot of it is desert) that it is entirely petty and unreasonable for the Arabs to make so much of a fuss about Mandatory Palestine, if the Palestinian Arabs really don't like living in a Zionist state they can easily pack and go living into some corner of Egypt or the United Arab Kingdom. This pro-Zionist attitude of America and Europe only gets reinforced once Egypt and the UAK prove vulnerable to destabilization by pro-Soviet radical Arab nationalists and Israel helps the Western powers 'restore order' in the Middle East with the Suez War. Since you have so much heartwarming interest for the TL, I suppose I may immediately post the next update, precisely concerning postwar Middle East, and unlock the first map. |
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eurofed
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Post by eurofed on Aug 3, 2016 22:34:29 GMT
After the Arab world got liberated from Axis and Soviet occupation during WWII, the victorious Allies decided to discard the post-WWI political status quo of the Arab lands and enact their extensive reorganization in a few stronger states. Their motives included Soviet control of Anatolia and Persia and access to the Med and the Persian Gulf, the Allies’ wish to give some satisfaction to rising Pan-Arab nationalism, and their dissatisfaction for the ambiguously collaborationist stance of the Saudis during the war. Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the Trucial States, Bahrain, and Qatar were merged in the United Arab Kingdom, ruled by the Hashemite family. Egypt annexed North Sudan. The Maghreb lands (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya) were returned to the control of Spain, France, and Italy due to the presence of a sizable European settler community. Morocco was reunified, joined with Western Sahara, and turned into a French-Spanish condominium; Tunisia was likewise turned to joint Franco-Italian administration.
The Nazi and Soviet double Holocaust during WWII and the early Cold War claimed the lives of millions of Jews. Nonetheless, the overthrow of the Nazi regime and the Axis surrender stopped Nazi atrocities early enough to leave a sizable number of European Jews alive. Widespread sympathy for their plight, only increased once news of Stalinist postwar atrocities started spreading, provided strong international support for the Zionist cause. This persuaded the Western governments to allow free Jew immigration to Mandatory Palestine, ensuring the vast majority of surviving Jews resettled there, despite the fierce hostility of the Arabs. The Arab-Zionist conflict soon reignited and escalated into a bitter armed conflict with the forces of the Arab states. The Zionist militias won a decisive victory, and the vast majority of the Palestinian Arabs were expelled (if you listen to the Arabs) or fled (if you listen to the Jews) to Egypt and the UAK.
The European Jew immigrants, soon joined by their expelled Middle-Eastern kinsmen, established the Zionist state of Israel as a Jewish homeland across all of Mandatory Palestine. The shock of defeat in the First Arab-Israeli War, resentment for European colonial domination, and Soviet support were among the factors that fuelled the rise of the Pan-Arab nationalist movement across the Arab world. Prevalent ideology in the movement (sponsored by the Baathist party and nationalist cliques of officers in Egypt and the UAK) combined radical nationalism with authoritarian socialism loosely based on the Soviet model. In the Maghreb it took the form of an anti-colonial insurgency, while in Egypt and the UAK (renamed United Arab Republic) there were Pan-Arab nationalist coups and revolutions that overthrew the monarchies and set up Baathist regimes.
The new Arab regimes aligned with the Soviet bloc, nationalized the Suez Canal and the Middle Eastern oilfields, and sent support to the insurgents in the Maghreb. They also blocked transit in the Suez Canal and the Tiran Strait to Israeli shipping and supported guerrilla raids against Israel. The Western countries and Israel saw these actions of Egypt and the UAR as an intolerable strategic threat, and they started to plan a joint intervention to crush the Baathist threat. The USA, UK, and Europe sent support to a coalition of right-wing officers and Muslim conservatives that staged a rebellion in the UAR. Israel attacked Egypt and quickly overrun the Sinai. The UAR honored its alliance with Egypt and attacked Israel, despite being engaged in a civil war, but its forces were pushed back. The Western powers took the excuse of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the civil war in the UAR to enact an invasion of the Baathist countries to ‘restore order’.
An Anglo-American-European expeditionary corps landed in Egypt and Levant-Mesopotamia, occupied the Canal Zone, defeated the Arab armies, and pressed on to occupy the Egyptian and UAR capitals. The USSR had granted a military guarantee to the Baathist countries, and demanded a ceasefire and a Western-Israeli pullback from Arab territory. When the Western powers refused the Soviet ultimatum, Stalin was furious and put the Red Army on a war footing. The USA, UK, and EDC did the same and for a few days the world stood on the brink of WWIII. Fortunately, at the apex of the crisis Stalin’s health took a turn for the worse. Although he ultimately recovered, illness incapacitated him for several weeks. This utterly paralyzed the Soviet government, and its inaction was interpreted by the world as acquiescence to Western actions.
The GSO and Israeli forces crushed the Arab troops despite their valiant resistance, occupied the Egyptian and UAR capitals, and overthrew the Baathist regimes. Monarchies were restored in Egypt and the UAK and a mix of right-wing officers and conservative Muslims took power as their new ruling elites. The Arab oilfields and the Suez Canal were returned to the control of the Western companies, and the Suez Canal Zone was handed over to international (i.e. Western) control. Israel annexed the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, northwestern Jordan, the east bank of the Jordan Valley, and southern Lebanon up to the Litani River with the blessing of the Western powers. Most Arab inhabitants of these areas fled or were expelled. The humiliating defeat of Baathism in the Suez War discredited leftist secular nationalism in the Arab world, but it stoked resentment for Western imperialism in the Middle East. In combination with the authoritarian and corrupt character of the Arab regimes, these conditions created a political vacuum that the rise of Islamism was eventually to fill.
When Stalin recovered, he was furious for the humiliation the USSR had suffered and its loss of two valuable allies/clients, but the crisis was by then effectively settled with a decisive Western victory. He had to vent his rage and frustration by ordering a new cycle of purges and an intensification of Soviet military operations in northern China. He became obsessed with seizing a last great victory in China before he died, so he ordered a new row of WMD attacks on China. Renewed devastation persuaded the PRC leaders to depose the anti-Soviet faction and reluctantly surrender to Stalin who ruthlessly purged the Maoists. The PRC rump became a Soviet client. However the Chinese people remained strongly hostile to the Soviet invaders, extending their hostility to the CCP stooges. This tied down a sizable amount of Soviet troops in northern-central China to occupation and repression duties. The Red Army and the CCP tried to extend their control across the rest of China, but logistic difficulties, devastation of Chinese territory, and the amount of popular resistance they faced made their efforts less than successful.
Loss of support from Egypt and the UAR, as well as the discredit Baathism suffered in the Suez War seriously weakened the nationalist insurgency in the Maghreb. This helped the EDC military crush the rebellion in a bitter and brutal armed conflict, making a compromise possible with the moderate elements of the anti-colonial movement. Despite their military victory, the European governments reluctantly came to realize continuation of the colonial status quo was not sustainable in the long term and would eventually lead to new rebellions. So they negotiated a compromise that allowed the European states - and eventually, the EU - to keep various coastal cities and districts of the Maghreb with a significant European settler population and/or a special economic or strategic value. The rest of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya was merged into a North African Confederation with the Alaouite family at its head that got self-rule but kept a political and economic bond with Europe.
With the progress of European integration, this bond soon got a Pan-European dimension. One of its main manifestations was the establishment of the European Neighborhood Area, a free trade and economic cooperation system between the EU and the NAC that brought a significant amount of industrialization, development, and stability to the Maghreb. European-North African cooperation however maintained strict limits for Arab immigration to Europe even when the EU established free movement of people, since anti-Western Arab nationalism and the influx of Chinese refugees made the European leaders wary of uncontrolled Muslim immigration. This policy later got entrenched once the Islamism problem started surfacing. First established for North Africa, the ENA system was later applied to Eastern Europe after the Revolutions of 1962 and the Eight-Week War with considerable success. It helped the area stabilize, recover from the damage of Stalinism and become fit for integration with Western Europe.
The early phase of the Cold War, up to the death of Stalin, was a stable and prosperous period for the USA. Its economic, political, military, and cultural hegemony of the Western world and rise into superpower status thanks to WWII got entrenched, and the American people enjoyed the highest living standards in the world. The USA experienced the Second Red Scare that made all known or suspected communists or communist sympathizers subject to aggressive investigations and questioning, loss of employment, destruction of their careers, legal harassment, social ostracism, and imprisonment. The drive to return to normalcy after the upheavals of the Great Depression and WWII led to a time of conservative mores and social conformity that often felt quite oppressive for women and minorities. Nonetheless, the American socio-economic model typically registered as quite progressive and very desirable to the rest of the Western world. They perceived it through the filter of dominant US pop culture and zealously strived to imitate it.
1950s conformism however could not stop the beginning of racial desegregation for Southern Blacks. Despite the fierce resistance of Dixie White segregationists, the movement took wing thanks to the combination of a sympathetic federal government, anti-segregation rulings from a progressive-leaning SCOTUS, growing mobilization of the Black masses, and a supportive Northern public opinion. The movement won important successes in this period, such as desegregation of education and the armed forces, although its complete success was to occur in the future. Much the same way, powerful social forces were incubating across the Western world that were to stage a radical critique and transformation of the conservative norms of the time in the following decades. Industrialization was bringing more and more women in the workforce, and the postwar demographic boom was paving the way for the rise of youth as a separate and powerful counterculture.
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eurofed
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Post by eurofed on Aug 3, 2016 22:50:19 GMT
This map shows the political status of Europe during the first phase of the Cold War, from the end of WWII to Stalin's death (and its consequences). Germany actually owns the Sudetenland as well, and for this reason the 'federal' label of the Czech Republic is unnecessary and inaccurate, but it was different in the map I orginally used as base material and I'm not good enough of a mapmaker to redraw the post-Munich border accurately enough. Same reason why the Kalmar Union flag of the Nordic Union has an odd shape and orientation to fit available free space between the GSO, EU, and USSR flags.  |
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Aug 4, 2016 3:13:40 GMT
This map shows the political status of Europe during the first phase of the Cold War, from the end of WWII to Stalin's death (and its consequences). Germany actually owns the Sudetenland as well, and for this reason the 'federal' label of the Czech Republic is unnecessary and inaccurate, but it was different in the map I orginally used as base material and I'm not good enough of a mapmaker to redraw the post-Munich border accurately enough. Same reason why the Kalmar Union flag of the Nordic Union has an odd shape and orientation to fit available free space between the GSO, EU, and USSR flags. View AttachmentA nice map, it always help when somebody creates a timeline and you can look at a map to see what tthe timeline is about. What is the country that is located between Italy and Switzerland and who Slovenia is very small. |
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