Smoke and Daggers: a multipolar cold war

[mstross96]

1 Britain (with canada, australia, and south africa)
2 Free France (add ethiopia and somalia, its not especially powerful or centrelized but its a plausible (somewhat) african empire)
3 Germany
4 USSR (please guve USSR more than in the map, I agree with the idea of modern Russia's borders)
5 China
6 Japan
7 India
8 USA
9 Brazil
10 Pan Arab League (or Muslim league)

[Strategos' Risk]

I think the British and the French would go better together.

[mstross96]

Its your thread so if you decide that then its your choice, I just don't see who your tenth power block would be,
maybe North Africa has colonial revolts and Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt form an Islamic Africa Block?

[SpyCrab]

seeing as most spanish-speaking south american countries were fascist in one way or another, would it be too far-fetched for them to unite as a federation against brazil and the US?

[Strategos' Risk]

Nah, there were plenty of populist regimes and fascist movements around, but I don't think any of them were transnational enough to unite in purpose. A fascist bloc would be less an alliance of ideologues and more of a collect of satellite states dominated by Brazil or Argentina. Though in this timeline I am speculating of an Integralist movement that attempts to appeal to non-Brazilians.

[LeoXiao]

Argh I want to see this turned into an actual TL...

[Strategos' Risk]

What's this? Actual interest in one of my works I hear?

If people would actually read and review it, certainly I could work on turning this into an actual timeline. I'm just not too good at such things- I prefer the faux-encyclopedic style, because most of my works are really just about world-building. And this setting is more about a cool pulpy world than it is about plausibility, which is something I have to fake if I was to try to turn it into a coherent timeline.

For instance, earlier I was thinking about how having a white supremacist southern Africa movement could work as a growing tenth bloc. It makes no sense other than as a bit of a tribute to the Draka, and for the sake of having ten blocs. However, within the setting, I justify by saying they were at first very much supported by the Axis as their client in Africa, but over time divisions arose between the very Calvinist Afrikaaners and the Euros. For whatever reason, the South Africans managed to come up with some movement to reach out to the other whites in the area (namely the Brits in Rhodesia) to join together. Hm, I still need to figure out how this works, if they could appeal to some Portuguese in Angola/Mozambique as well who aren't aboard with the pan-racial Integralism that has spread to Lisbon via Brasilia. Maybe the South Africans become a pan-European movement in African dedicated to protecting the interests of the white race. European-Africanism? Eek. (However they are not exterminationists, because that would both be really unpleasant and impractical, and I need some way that could distinguish them from Nazis. Probably they're for some sort of unpleasant racial caste system. And it's justified by mythical white Christianity, not mythical white race destiny.) Maybe they even get action in other continents by say appealing to the Australians to break away from the decrepit old Empire, and join them as fellow powerhouses of the Antipodes.

Incidentally, this highlights the difference between four blocs. The Afrikaaners are trying to carve a new European colony out of Africa. The Entente (Anglo-French) are trying to preserve their old colonies by becoming more racial integrationists and egalitarian, out of necessity. The fascists are trying to expand their empire, and are far more genocidal. The Americans want democracy and decolonization for all, insofar it protects their national interests. American and Anglo-French interests do not converge quite so much in this world.

Long story short: given South Africa's isolated position and natural resources, as well as a desire to expand northwards, they become a new tenth bloc. They are loosely Axis affiliated (though division grows daily), and they come across the Portuguese colonies. That puts them into conflict with the Lusophones, who are vaguely allied to the Americans. Hence, we see a new flashpoint there. And a new front for the global shadow war.

This is the sort of nonsensical rule of cool world-building involved in this setting, a lot of it is basically me thinking of an idea kernel and typing up a few paragraphs and putting it here, much like how I did the Crimson Dynasty idea in the last page. Very little actual timeline writing. However, I think I'll try my hand at making a coherent timeline

...if I can get enough interest. That would be the payoff.

Additionally, I can't help but to think that this is barely more plausible than Stuart Slade's TBOverse, what with the randomoid post-WWII Caliphate and Chipan and all that nonsense. (For instance- am I right to have a Pan-Arab bloc develop in this timeline as in OTL?) But I don't care, having a randomid Draka against super-Brazilians and Nazis in Africa is way more cool than dry technical manuals about planes. However, if anyone has good ideas for tweaking the blocs, I'm open to it. Having 10 isn't a requirement. I just don't see how a neo-Garveyist pan-African bloc of Ethiopia to Liberia is more likely than psuedo-Draka.

[Strategos' Risk]

Example of my mad ideas: due to reasons to make the timeline slightly less of a downer, for whatever reason the Axis ends up expelling many Jews instead of exterminating them (maybe because the war effort is rougher and such expensive schemes are dismissed). What we end up is multiple Hebrew homelands-

Territory of New Mainz: American state for Jewish and other European refugees, located in Sitka, Alaska.

Jewish Autonomous Oblast: Soviet oblast in Birobidzhan, as per OTL.

Zion: With mainly Entente (specifically Anglo-) support, as well as some clandestine help by both the Americans and the Soviets, many Zionists have been fighting a guerrilla war in the Levant to create a Jewish state there. The Pan-Arabs, of course, are not amused.

There's also other ones, including the Jewish quarter of Shanghai within the East Asian CoProsperity Sphere, and curiously there is a sizable Jewish population in Johannesberg, one of the reasons for animosity between the Volk in South Africa and the Nazis.

[Roisterer]

Surely the main prerequisite for cold war is nuclear weapons, otherwise it becomes a hot war quickly.

So when and how do each of these blocks become nuclear powers?

Regards

R

[Strategos' Risk]

One more difference between a South Afrikaaner bloc and the fascists- the former, for whatever Calvinist reason, was quite congenial to Jews, or at least to Israel in OTL, and so perhaps that wouldn't change in this timeline either. We can have both Draka and Nazi.

[Strategos' Risk]

Now that I think about it, what would be more interesting- South African Calvinist apartheid Volk, or the Pan-African sub-Saharan idea?

Currently, the blocs are:

United States (bastion of liberal democracy)
Brazil (Integralism International, non-racial fascism for the global south)
Anglo-French Federation (last gasp of the old constitutional empires)
New Europe (the Reich and champion of fascism)
Soviet Union (reduced herald of Marxism-Leninism of the Slavic nations)
East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere (the militarist empire of the East)
China (seat of the Crimson Dynasty, mixing Confucianism with communism)
Hindustan (bringer of anarcho-syndicalist to the Third World)
Pan-Arab League (the oil states from the Maghreb to Hormuz band together against foreign encroachment)
Greater Afrikaner Volk (scourge of sub-Saharan Africa, Boer supremacy rampant)

[Tamandaré]

The idea of a insane ten-way cold war is pure genius.

Your problem, IMHO, is to restrain yourself to a PoD after 1900, or even after 1800.

Push the PoD back (say, 1850, or 1800), start In Media Res (say, in 1950, or 2050), think up some weird ideologies (and use ones that failed in OTL), play with colonization, mix the ingredients, and BAM, INSANE TEN-WAY COLD WAR! MWAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!!

Hell, you don't even need to have nukes to have a cold war. Just a WMD. How about a world more advanced in genetics and chemistry (Mendel gets his work noticed earlier?), so that we have a bio-chemical weapon scare and nukes are at best a possible, but too expensive weapon?

Also, I suggest to push the PoD back to weaken and strengthen certain choice players - Say, redirect some USA's catholic immigration to Brazil and Argentina, divide China into two or four countries, make some places more economically sucessful and others less.