State of Asia if Russia remains fragmented

[Aluma]

It's a well known fact that during the russian civil war there was the rise of warlords such as Makhno and Ungern who temporarily carved their own fiefdoms for a variety of reasons after the collapse of the Russian Empire

This state of affairs would ultimately not last however, as the soviets would take power and soon the lands once ruled by the Russian Empire would become part of the Soviet Union

On that note, I think the impact of a weaker or balkanized Russia on Europe as result of WWI or WWII has been discussed before, but I've never seen the state of the pacific affairs being discussed

On the other hand something I often see being brought up is how the strenght of the Soviet Union ultimately forced Japan to focus elsewhere as the soviets gave them a bloody nose before and that one of the reasons Japan surrendered besides the nuclear bomb

Now, Im not endorsing or criticizing either point, but I'm curious - if for whatever reason the majority of Russia was not reunified by a state such as the Soviet Union(at least till the 40-50s) how that would have changed things?

Im not talking of just Japan of course, the impact on Mongolia, Korea and China also comes to mind which is why I'm asking about East Asia in general, as well as some *other* powers with an interest on the region(looking at you US & Europe)

As for a POD, I dont have anything in particular in mind because I dont want to limit the discussion on the subject, so whatever you feel like that would be the most realistic way to keep the warlording going for the first half of the 20th Century go for that

With all that clear, as the title says, what would be the state of Asia should the break up of the Russian Empire lasted longer?

 

[Mitridates the Great]

I would say the main problem facing this is population: too few people to cover too much territory, which is also too hostile to sustain prolonged warfare in modern warfare.

It also doesn't help that the vast majority of the resource deposits have yet to be discovered, making it difficult to use as an argument to support the existence of post-imperial states.

In fact, Japan tried to maintain a puppet government in the Russian Far East, but in the end they had to withdraw due to Western pressures (even when it was evident that the only thing that would happen was that the USSR would conquer the area, as indeed it did, they preferred that before to let Japan keep those lands).

The Central Asian Republics were in an even worse situation, since the only State that could project force in the region, and had the means and the will to do so, was... the Soviet Union. Essentially this was a repeat of the campaigns of the Russian Empire a century earlier.

China was far more concerned with its own Warlord Era than projecting power abroad.

I would say you would need more population and infrastructure in the area to viably maintain an independent state (or at least facilitate the establishment of a Japanese puppet).

As for the long-term effects if this happens anyway, it's possible that these states would have gone communist anyway because of Soviet influence plus the critical situation their own populations were in.

The West (the British Empire) would probably have desperately tried to prop up reactionary monarchies as part of its attempts to "contain communism" with varying degrees of success.

Assuming China stabilized, they would be the main competitor with the USSR and Japan for influence over these small states.