Soviets win Cold War

[tom]

Can you do it? Or is this ASB?

[LDoc]

If people can unite Germany in the 12th century then i think theirs away to have the soviets win the cold war. The one that would have the biggest effect would be the soviets getting the bomb first. Maybe have FDR say no so some of the scientest approch the russians and are accepted? This could give the USSSR a led in the nuclear race and allow them to capture more German scientest if the use the bomb on German armies.

[Otis Tarda]

What do you mean by winning Cold War? United Peoples Republic of America :D ?

[tom]

That would be good. Or at least give them the upper hand like OTL America.

[Xen]

It would have to be something in the immediate aftermath of World War II, beginning of the Cold War era. Perhaps Italy votes on a Communist government, the Greek Civil War turns out to favor the Communists there, Charles De Gualle is killed in 1945 and a Socialist government takes power in elections there, eventually going Communist. Sometime in the late 40s early 50s a Second Spanish Civil War ousts Franco and reinstates the Republicans, same with Portugal. The French, Spanish and Portugese colonies become Communist as well at independence in the 1950s.

When North Korea invades the South in 1950, the US has lost intrest and has too few allies to really care and lets the North take complete control, as long as Japan remains untouched. Chinese troops with Soviet air support invade Taiwan uniting all of China. The Soviets now have considerable influence. The United States forms an alliance with Britain, West Germany, Denmark, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands and Belgium.

As the years pass the US begins to view its roll as the western leader as a burdern and withdrawals from the alliance in the mid 60s in favor of isolationism. Britain steps up and fills the abandoned roll, expanding the alliance to include countries in the Pacific as well, most notably Australia, New Zealand and Japan. The alliance eventually falls apart as Britain cant afford to keep the roll of world leader.

[Faeelin]

Easy. America also goes Socialist in the 1900's.

How that happens is left as an exercise to the reader.

[Melvin Loh]

How about in the 1970s after the US is war weary and despondent post-VW, and the Reds launch their massive armoured invasion of Western Europe a la RED STORM RISING/TEAM YANKEE etc and just overrun the underequipped, low morale US and NATO forces in Germany who are also hamstrung by US and British political reluctance to utilise nuclear weapons ? At the same time, Socialist govts in most continental Western European countries, fearful of nuclear war, agree to cessation of hostilities, accept the forceful importation of Communism, and hand Moscow a fait accompli. Communism reigns supreme in Europe, enabling the Soviets to also have a greater hand in facilitating their continued influence elsewhere, and the US, Britain and remaining Western allies are then put well and truly on the back foot thruout the world.

[Otis Tarda]

well, it won't be Cold War anymore. IMHO, Cold War is Cold War, as long as:

1) Is carried in symbolical (ideolgical, economical, political and so on) sphere
2) Military actions are lead only between "third-line-countries" (for example Vietnam, Chile, Kuba, Korea, Nicaragua and so on.)

[Adamanteus]

I don't know if this would let them WIN the cold war, but at least fare far better.

The Soviet Union's economy was, of course, a command economy led by a series of "5-Year Plans." Most of the time, the focus of these plans was the development of heavy industry to the exclusion of just about everything else. The Soviets didn't seem to have much of a clue that you can't just keep doing that without some economic repercussions. The problem was that they had essentially no formal education in economics. Education on economics was tainted by communist propaganda as well as the Soviet foreign policy of outdoing its Cold War rival, the United States, in terms of military production (hence, heavy industry was emphasized). In later years, every 5-year communist party Congress led an announcement that stated that the previous 5-year plan had carried out its projections, even when it did not. This was simply for the purposes of propagandist grand-standing, such that no one outside the inner circle of the party could judge the Soviet Union as weak in any respect.

So my solution is simple: have Soviet scholars attend universities outside of the Soviet union, as a kind of cultural exchange. They should do it in a country with a strong background in economics. Probably the best would be Switzerland. It's a neutral state, so there would be little fear by the KGB of being spied on by a Swiss student in Moscow. If enough of the communist party executives get a decent economic education, there could be gradual reworking of Soviet 5-year plans into more realistic molds. This would allow the USSR to survive the Cold War longer, although I'd guess that it would turn more into a China.

As I recall, during détente, there were some exchanges like this but they never really amounted to much, perhaps because the communist party chiefs of the time were already well entrenched and it was too late to change much.

[David Howery]

I don't think it's so much a matter of what the USSR could do, it's more what the US will or won't do. The best bet the Soviets have to win is to have the US essentially forfeit... maybe extreme isolationism can break out in the US after WW2 for some reason....

[Adam Parsons]

Well, there's no magic bullet, short of an ASB, but a few things could be helpful.

1) Get rid of Mao. He was more a nationalist Chinese leader than a Soviet puppet, and likely wouldn't help no matter what.

2) Break Wall Street. Have the USA overspend on the military during the 1950's or something.

3) Reform the USSR. Remember, if it's going to rule the world, people have to LIKE it.

[Xen]

Getting rid of Mao would be the end of the early Communist Party in China, espeically during the Civil War.