Interesting AH ideas that aren't commonly used

Happy New Year! (Soon) but I had to share this as an "alternate-history" thing as well as gaming:
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McPherson

Banned
One POD concerns Ronald Reagan and PATCO. Remember that labor union actually supported Reagan in 1980 because he promised to have a better relationship as management than Carter had. I wonder what it would have meant for the labor movement if Reagan had carried over his 1980 stance on at least some unions, instead of the mass firings which he did do (which OTL made it clear that much of organized labor was not going to find a good faith partner where the Government, or management generally, was concerned.)

When has Labor ever found a friend in a government anywhere? Not even in France where the 1936 sit-in strikes were serious attempts at labor reform.

Happy New Year!

P.S. Those Marvelous Tin Fish take a turn for the Better with the next installment in the Eastern Solomons. The war game results (10X) turned our disastrously for Orange. Poor Japan!
 
1962 Goa War between the United States and India: POD United States obtains Goa from Portugal in 1901 as a naval base in the Indian Ocean.
In 1947 Goa as a full fledged territory of the United States overwhelmingly votes to remain an American territory instead of becoming part of the newly independent nation of India.
 
1962 Goa War between the United States and India: POD United States obtains Goa from Portugal in 1901 as a naval base in the Indian Ocean.
In 1947 Goa as a full fledged territory of the United States overwhelmingly votes to remain an American territory instead of becoming part of the newly independent nation of India.

Oh, that sounds interesting. Good call!
 

McPherson

Banned
1962 Goa War between the United States and India: POD United States obtains Goa from Portugal in 1901 as a naval base in the Indian Ocean.

In 1947 Goa as a full fledged territory of the United States overwhelmingly votes to remain an American territory instead of becoming part of the newly independent nation of India.

Just how does that work?

It sounds like the Djibouti problem that France used to wargame. Surrounding hostiles with an impossible to defend enclave.
 
How is OAS (a resourceful but extreme anti-establishment org whose interests were almost exclusively related to the colonies) related to French national attempt (a militarised EEC according to the 1950 Pleven Plan) to expunge UK influence over continental Europe? .
Hmm, well: OAS assassinates De Gaulle, the main obstruction to UK memthership of EEC. With DG gone, UK joins EEC much earlier than IOTL and the significantly well organised British civil service plays a much great role in setting up what will become the Commission. UK now plays pivotal role long before enlargement with a civil service ethos providing greater transparency and efficiency and independence from vested interests - especially the ENARC graduates and the German practice of entanglements between banking/finance/industry and the civil service. A very different EEC so presumably an equally different EU where 'ever closer union' is a long way down the track.
 
1962 Goa War between the United States and India: POD United States obtains Goa from Portugal in 1901 as a naval base in the Indian Ocean.
In 1947 Goa as a full fledged territory of the United States overwhelmingly votes to remain an American territory instead of becoming part of the newly independent nation of India.

How would the us get goa in the first place? After the shock of the pink map ultimatum there is no way Portugal will give away a colony unless they get some huge compensations (as in, Philipine sized, which is ASB) or a Portuguese default, in which case the likely buyer would be the U.K. and germany, not the US, certainly not in the Indian Ocean... if the U.K. get it it will be integrated in the raj and Germany gets it it will also be once they have to give it away after ww1
 
How would the us get goa in the first place? After the shock of the pink map ultimatum there is no way Portugal will give away a colony unless they get some huge compensations (as in, Philipine sized, which is ASB) or a Portuguese default, in which case the likely buyer would be the U.K. and germany, not the US, certainly not in the Indian Ocean... if the U.K. get it it will be integrated in the raj and Germany gets it it will also be once they have to give it away after ww1
Which is why this is a seldom used idea in AH.
The only way this works is that Portugal needs money fast and Great Britain makes an insulting low offer, Germany makes an offer but Portugal realizes that if they make a deal with Germany, Great Britain will move in to Goa before the ink is dry and before Portugal can cash the metaphorical check.
The United States is the only one that will pay the asking price and as a bonus will grant American citizenship to all "Good Christian People" (at that time Goa was over 50% Roman Catholic ).
 

McPherson

Banned
TheKutKu said:

How would the us get goa in the first place? After the shock of the pink map ultimatum there is no way Portugal will give away a colony unless they get some huge compensations (as in, Philipine sized, which is ASB) or a Portuguese default, in which case the likely buyer would be the U.K. and germany, not the US, certainly not in the Indian Ocean... if the U.K. get it it will be integrated in the raj and Germany gets it it will also be once they have to give it away after ww1

Which is why this is a seldom used idea in AH.

The only way this works is that Portugal needs money fast and Great Britain makes an insulting low offer, Germany makes an offer but Portugal realizes that if they make a deal with Germany, Great Britain will move in to Goa before the ink is dry and before Portugal can cash the metaphorical check.
The United States is the only one that will pay the asking price and as a bonus will grant American citizenship to all "Good Christian People" (at that time Goa was over 50% Roman Catholic ).

The Pink Map (1888), Cecil Rhodes politicking and the British Ultimatum (1890?) present effective RTL and ATL roadblocks to any American presence in India.

The only way the US gets into India is via some chicanery early or spoils of war late. The two effective windows are prior to the War of 1812 (~1803) and/or 1919.

Now to chase away some alien space bats and decrease the intellectual prowess of Napoleon and the Portuguese, French and British governments of 1919 respectively is terribly difficult. I prefer to handwave Jefferson into being smarter than he actually was. It still takes some really peculiar PoDs. I prefer the 1804 window as it permits some conjoint outcomes that fits a known RTL pattern, I mean typical actes de folie diplomatique Français et de démence géopolitique qui s'inscrit dans le mode de fonctionnement de Napoléon.

He just might do it to annoy Great Britain. Whether the British let it stand (Remember the 1890 Ultimatum?) is questionable given a little thing called The War of 1812, but if by some miracle, that does not happen and the US peacefully, somehow, skates into the 20th century and has this setup in 1961, suddenly India's military problem becomes much harder. The Americans can make it stick or make it cost too much for India, politically, to attempt armed incursion.

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And of course, of interest TO ME (my specialty is the Pacific War) all of a sudden WW II becomes a LOT more interesting against Japan.
 
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Which is why this is a seldom used idea in AH.
The only way this works is that Portugal needs money fast and Great Britain makes an insulting low offer, Germany makes an offer but Portugal realizes that if they make a deal with Germany, Great Britain will move in to Goa before the ink is dry and before Portugal can cash the metaphorical check.
The United States is the only one that will pay the asking price and as a bonus will grant American citizenship to all "Good Christian People" (at that time Goa was over 50% Roman Catholic ).

Kudos for fast thinking on your feet! The British of course are about as plausibly tolerant-they will sneer at non Christians but probably treat them less terribly than Yankees actually would. But the thread that prompted me to attempt to join this site many many years ago was one where I tried to make a case for the USA acquiring Ireland as an eventual state, or set of states...I certainly tried to make something of USA Constitutional separation of church and state as a factor in quelling sectarian conflict on that island, the idea being that Catholics could feel secure by being the local majority on the island as a whole while Protestants would feel protected by the Anglo-American majority being Protestant overwhelmingly, so they could share state institutions without animosity or mistrust. Not too much anyway. Of course this abstracts away from major actual roots of social discontent! And from British perceptions of core interests.

Realistically the British will not make an insultingly low offer, though I suppose it is not inconceivable they would as a precursor to a more or less desired war on Portugal for all the marbles, in Africa mostly but picking up Goa and Macao on the side, and Timor as well, why not?
 

McPherson

Banned
Kudos for fast thinking on your feet! The British of course are about as plausibly tolerant-they will sneer at non Christians but probably treat them less terribly than Yankees actually would. But the thread that prompted me to attempt to join this site many many years ago was one where I tried to make a case for the USA acquiring Ireland as an eventual state, or set of states...I certainly tried to make something of USA Constitutional separation of church and state as a factor in quelling sectarian conflict on that island, the idea being that Catholics could feel secure by being the local majority on the island as a whole while Protestants would feel protected by the Anglo-American majority being Protestant overwhelmingly, so they could share state institutions without animosity or mistrust. Not too much anyway. Of course this abstracts away from major actual roots of social discontent! And from British perceptions of core interests.

Realistically the British will not make an insultingly low offer, though I suppose it is not inconceivable they would as a precursor to a more or less desired war on Portugal for all the marbles, in Africa mostly but picking up Goa and Macao on the side, and Timor as well, why not?

The Irish do/did not think or behave that way. Neither did the United States.
 
Thinking about it some more, I think if Americans could buy just one territory from Portugal, they'd be torn rather between Macao and Timor. The latter is more apt to the Mahan doctrines of control of straits, and indeed the waters near Indonesia are today the most strategic in the world; obviously Manila served the purpose pretty well, but arguably Timor might have advantages. Best is to control both of course!

But aside from generic Mahan theories, the particular prize Yankees whose imperialism was most aimed at wealth to be had rather than abstract global gaming was China. The Spanish conquered the Philippines with the same goal in mind, get as close to the source of the China trade as the Papal mediated Treaty of Tordesillas allowed. When American imperialists resolved that our intervention in the Philippines would be more than just kicking sand in Spain's face and we would in fact seize the archipelago as a colonial territory, it was proximity to China that was most central in their thoughts...exploiting the Philippines themselves was largely an afterthought and largely left to native patronized cronies. The main thing was to get close to China. What could be closer than Macao?

I could see Goa perhaps falling into Yankee hands via a grandiose package deal in which Portugal cuts its far eastern ties for a lot of money and concentrates on holding the nearer African territories...but I do wonder about the economics of the far east trade for Portugal, conceivably it could outweigh the African profits despite the much vaster territorial extent of Mozambique and Angola. There is also cultural attachment to consider; no European colonies are older than Portugal's after all, and the people of Macao, Goa and Timor all reached some kind of cultural equilibrium of a sort with the Portuguese and the Catholic Church centuries ago. These little outposts were quite distinct from their hinterlands after all those generations. American possession could be a strong guarantee of the line being maintained between them and the larger polities threatening to swallow them up, but it also would tend to subordinate Portuguese expatriates settled there and people with more ancient roots in each alike to arrogant and (until the middle of the 20th century) overwhelmingly Protestant (with a strong disrespect for even Anglo-American Yankee Catholics, let alone swarthy foreign ones) American military, diplomatic and corporate elites. By the 1930s at the latest I'd say US Anglo Catholics had come close to winning cultural parity and of course this happened via dominating large and important territories--rather, mostly urban centers, but powerfully there.

But then there is the racist dimension to consider. This would be bad enough under British rule but the British at least would tend to create and maintain relations with subordinated but respected in their spheres "native" authorities...American style racism would just run roughshod over the whole lot, lumping Portuguese in with the Asians like as not. Or seeing two strata, on lines as invidious as the old Spanish Empire of the Indies privileging of Castilian Peninsulares over anyone born in the overseas provinces and in turn holding such "criolos" of "pure blood" above anyone with any taint of native mixture. I imagine American "one drop rule" racism as normalized for Africans in America (with exceptions some acerbic commentators have noted on other threads, pace) would just be carried over to Asians. I may find the example of the Philippines might somewhat restrict this, perhaps; I gather Douglas MacArthur for instance was very close socially to lots of well off Filipinos before WWII (which was embarrassing after the war as these classes, having much to lose, tended to collaborate with the Japanese occupation).

The exact form of Yankee racism in South Central and East Asia might be quite different than I imagine perhaps, with exceptions and loopholes. God knows intermarriage between Americans (male ones anyway) and East Asians was less of a racist battle cry than with African Americans--when I say less I hardly mean it was not problematic of course; all children would be regarded as Asian first, I think the "one drop rule" did in fact carry over OTL. All three of the Portuguese holdings discussed, Goa, Timor and Macao would be quite small demographically in the US sea. What contact there would be would tend to be via limited diplomatic/administrative, corporate, and military personnel of all ranks; none of these outposts would appear to be appealing places for Anglo colonization!

So there is a question of how the Portuguese in Lisbon would regard how Americans are likely to handle the peoples of the colonies if they take possession--even if we assume no one in the capital making decisions cares about the Asian majority population one way or the other (which is not going to be entirely true; I imagine the Portuguese Catholic Church hierarchy will have some concern at least, and it might be a lot more widespread than that among Portuguese bureaucratic and military ranks as well) they will care about what happens to Portuguese born people who are settled there.

Certainly if the deal waits until after the Spanish American war and the Portuguese have the example of how the peoples of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines are treated, they will either have bad consciences and feel they have done a deal with the devil (and therefore drive a hard bargain) or else will insist upon, and perhaps get, very explicit and elaborated assurances; a hell of a lot more than "no worries, we Yankees don't discriminate by religion!" would be needed. In fact of course one of our Presidents was elected under the banner of an anti-Catholic bigoted party, so such assurances would ring hollow even before the "Splendid Little War." Ask the Francophones of Louisiana, the long established Spanish-speaking population of New Mexico, the fates of the Tejanos and Californios what US takeover meant to them!
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If we just stipulate that somehow or other the USA acquires Goa sometime between the mid-19th century and say the Great War, it is entirely unclear to me a war in the 1960s is at all likely. I daresay the USA would be under some moral pressure to let Goa join India in 1947--we were in fact selectively strongarming the European colonial powers to decolonize (or not, at our discretion--if we seriously wanted to systematically undermine colonialism at every possible turn we'd hardly have facilitated the return of French power to Indochina immediately after the war, even as we backed the Indonesian nationalists despite their being compromised with Japanese collaboration during the war--we really fell between stools in our inconsistent policy in that part of the world, backing the collaborationists in one colony and the colonialists cracking down on the pro-Allied native resistances in others!) It would have looked very very strange for Britain to be under pressure to back out of India while we hung on to Goa allowing no questions.

OTOH a free and fair plebiscite of the Goan population might well have voted strongly for continued status as a US territory; with that in hand I think the USA would simply stare down the Indian republic and the latter would restrict itself to verbal and diplomatic denunciations.

I suppose the point of Americans purchasing Goa would be as a naval base, as mentioned. In the run up to the Cold War, with India taking a strongly non-aligned position while the USA at some point (I am not sure just when) courted Pakistan as a Cold War anti-Soviet and anti-Chinese ally, the diplomatic dance would get complicated to be sure. India and Pakistan have been at war quite a few times, and if Pakistan is a US ally, Goa being a US base could get very very ugly indeed.

Nevertheless, though I suppose the Indian military, if push came to shove, could indeed liberate Goa by force even from the maximum levels of fortification the US military even of the Cold War era with nigh unlimited budgets and the highest technology could muster, I don't believe India would ever go so far as to act in overt war directly against the USA. They might double down on giving Pakistan, and later Bangladesh, military hell, and perhaps the confrontation would drive India into a strong alliance with the Soviet Union, to the point of Soviet supplied shipyards and other munitions works in India effectively making Indian ports ports of the Soviet Navy and Soviet merchant shipping as well. FWIW, I do not believe this would lead to Kremlin-aligned Communist takeover of India. I gather the stronger Communist movements of India have tended to be more Maoist despite the geopolitical animosity between India and the PRC--this factor is why I am pretty sure the Indians would align specifically Soviet-allied. But not Communist! Perhaps a Moscow-oriented Party would as part of the general diplomacy be given a special junior partner status in India's governments, given considerable concessions--but also tightly restricted to just those concessions and no more, in a manner humorously mirroring how East European Warsaw Pact "fraternal socialist nations" would have puppet parties with reserved junior roles as window dressing to belie the fact of Communist unilateral rule in these republics. Unlike the puppet parties of Eastern Europe a Soviet aligned Indian Party would be autonomous with respect to the Indian government--whether it is at all autonomous versus Moscow and the KBG is another story of course, it might start out as a reliable puppet party of the Kremlin but turn independent at some point, which might or might not lose it its protected status in the Indian system.

But even if quite militantly aligned with the Soviet Union, I don't see either Stalin or Khrushchev or any Soviet successor cabal in the Kremlin urging the Indians to take Goa by force, not while the nuclear balance of terror held. To be sure, I don't think Stalin was as scared of the Bomb as many of us in the West assume he must have been, perhaps less than he should have been. It wasn't the Bomb so much as the entire package of Western liberal alliance logistic and strategic capability he feared and moved cautiously in the face of. I think he felt secure as long as the diplomatic game was played normally, and felt honestly that if the imperialists moved unilaterally the proletarians of the West would undermine them with various levels of class resistance. But if he were the one perceived as overly and crazily aggressive, as a worthy successor to Hitler in the geopolitical role, then western proletarians would be more easily bamboozled into warring on the Socialist Motherland and the Soviet bloc would be in for another battering worse than Barbarossa. He may have believed that the Russian people would endure and triumph in the end, but no one wanted a round two of WWII, let alone with nuclear bombs spicing it up. In Stalin's day, he may have been right to think the Bomb was a risk he could face, because it would have to be delivered by aircraft Soviet airpower might hope to interdict, so that damage would be peripheral and not in the heartland of his power--heavy, but not unbearable. The gradual introduction of ICBMs on a scale sufficient to wreck both sides' heartlands marks the move into balance of terror proper and that was not really underway until after Khrushchev had been ousted from power.

Still I think even if India were to align with the Soviets strongly, with or without coming under Communist rule, the Soviet bloc would avoid such a causus belli as invading Goa would be. Given the track record, one might lay the blame for an impetuous move not on Moscow but on the "client" power. Soviet client states had a tendency to jump the gun and be loose cannon. It is not entirely clear to me whether it was north or south Korean regimes that started the Korean War for instance--what is clear to me is that neither Stalin nor Truman wanted it. Perhaps Mao did, but the North Koreans answered more to Moscow than Beijing. Certainly Khrushchev and his successors wanted to be freed of the various Indochinese crises; these were the doing of Ho Chi Minh and other Vietnamese Communists. The story of Fidel Castro's reactions and statements during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when revealed in full at a post-Soviet conference of former US and Soviet officials, were quite hair raising and alarming to both American and Russian "hegemons" there! Again and again, the Third World client tails wagged the Soviet dog, and the Kremlin had little recourse but to race to the head of the parade to continue to appear to be leading it. Surely without Soviet resources these small powers would have been in much more dire straits but the point was, the Soviet leadership had little choice but to supply them and diplomatic cover as well. The reality of the Soviet bloc (outside of the continental reach of the Red Army--Eastern Europe was quite a different story of course) was far less of the top-down neo-Hitlerian masterminding from the Kremlin Western anti-Communists liked to assume it all was. Everyone fights the last war, and it fit American and other anti-Communist ideologies better to view them as a sinister monolith ruled by the immortal ghost of Stalin than to face the nationalist realities on the ground.

So as far as that goes, Red India might appear to have the potential to start a hot war with Uncle Sam no matter how little Stalin or Khrushchev wanted one.

But first of all, I would think India would not be Red as such, just kind of pink. It would remain a democracy, a ramshackle and often authoritarian one to be sure, but fundamentally a multi-party republic, albeit one channeled to one set of policy choices. That could make its adventurism even worse I suppose but I think on the whole the Indian ruling elites would be pretty sober about going straight to war with the USA in the Cold War era.

Indeed Soviet alignment is hardly inevitable either. From 1947 until I'd say sometime in the 1990s, India was definitely regarded as so backward per capita it was a lot weaker than its population would warrant...but it always had tremendous population. There was no question India was a major regional power from the moment of its formal inception as an independent republic, and perception of Indian strength has only grown over time, as general levels of industrial development have slowly risen to multiply her population's effective military and thus diplomatic and economic weight. Already by the later '40s, I think the USA too would be quite reluctant to fight in India if it could possibly be avoided.

The fight over Goa would then be diplomatic, and conducted probably directly between New Delhi and Washington, not via Moscow or in a weirder realignment, Beijing.

I think a plebiscite would have the Goan majority, not just the more elite ones but the base of the population too, preferring to stay a US territory under US protection in 1947. At that time the Indian republican experiment was brand new and Goans could well be glum about its prospects for themselves as semi-Westernized Catholics who might well suffer gross discrimination. However, to win the plebiscite handily and avoid controversy, the US administration would probably have to agree to a whole boatload of deep reforms. One can hope that most of these were pioneered during the WWII years as wartime expedients anyway, and that Harry Truman in particular would see the justice of them and aggressively back comprehensive autonomy and a truly democratic and fair system there. Truman also favored great liberalization and rectification of the status of Puerto Rico, despite some PR nationalists trying to assassinate him. I think he'd be quite a positive force for a much better system of American possession of Goa (and any other former Portuguese territories we hold in the ATL) going forward. He'd also be somewhat conciliatory, up to a point, with India, and offer quid pro quos to compensate somewhat for the irritation of continued American holding of Goa.

At this point options open up, depending on diplomacy. Probably Americans could finesse the relationship with India, balancing American Cold War concerns and resentment of Indian "nonaligned" stances as well as the kind of bureaucratic protectionism managing Indian economic policy so easily castigated as the kind of dysfunctional notion of socialism common in the anti-Communist ruling circles of the West, notably in the USA, against the desire to keep the situation in Goa from spinning out of control.

Depending on how that goes, probably if OTL is any guide, at least substantial minorities if not outright majorities in Goa might start thinking they might do better to make a secured, guaranteed place for themselves in the Indian system than continue their status as a largely forgotten stepchild of the USA. A plebiscite held in the mid-60s might deliver far less of a mandate for continued US rule.

Meanwhile, whatever sanguine Mahanist strategists might have thought in the later 19th century, I think on the whole Goa will seem more of a liability than asset militarily. Ships and planes based there are kind of in the middle of nowhere in terms of preoccupying American strategic concerns between WWII and the collapse of the Soviet Union. True, they are kind of proximate to the middle of Soviet Central Asia--but such allies as Iran and Turkey are more proximate, not to mention Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Eventually we'd lose Iran of course but that would hardly be foreseen until late in the 1970s. Goa is not very handy to such hot spots as Southeast Asia--we again would do better to work with such client-allies as Thailand, the Philippines, or Indonesia, not to mention Airstrip Taiwan, Japan, Australia and Singapore. Goa is a white elephant militarily.

In terms of US domestic politics, a TL by Yes on a George McGovern victory in 1972 strongly suggests that John Kenneth Galbraith in particular was something of a bug for better relations with India, and Galbraith had major roles in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations OTL. I think if the TL does not butterfly away JFK, or some Democrat anyway, taking power in 1960, that the question of Goa would receive very careful and solicitous attention then if not settled back in the Eisenhower years.

There are several options. Simply handing Goa over to India, with various degrees of protective provisions perhaps, is in the cards for sure. I can't think the USA general public would have so much invested in it it would seem outrageous. It all hinges on what the people of Goa support really. If they very strongly want to remain under US protection then the Americans need only shrug and point out taking Goa against Goan will would be a poison pill for India, and Americans would then offer to sweeten the deal some other ways.

I've mentioned massive fortification of Goa but really that is hardly necessary! The trouble for India in taking Goa by force lies not in the task of doing that directly, but in the consequences that follow after. Even if one assumes no US President would nuke New Delhi or Mumbai in retaliation, and even if one assumes that after a fait accompli the Americans would agree to a truce, the consequences are more along the lines of more aggressive support for Pakistan and Bangladesh pursuing claims against India, and American maneuvering to hurt India economically on global markets. In reality Goa is safe, and mere tripwire defense is all it needs.

Instead I think if Goans want to remain under US protection, the general American reaction would be to conciliate the Indians other ways, to offer better trade terms, to mediate to damp down conflicts between Pakistan and India, to court India as an ally, especially in the Democratic administrations that must someday follow Eisenhower's ascendency. Indeed Ike himself is probably inclined to be very reasonable and generous, to win over the Indians or at least keep them truly neutral as opposed to veering into the Soviet camp.

The better American relations are with India, the more Goans are likely to think maybe they might as well go over to India instead of remaining under Yankee rule.

Thus even if I grant the notion that in some bizarre twist of fate American Goa becomes a thing, I don't think it would lead to actual war with India ever, and is most likely to end with the USA having better relations with India than OTL and Goa at some point being ceded, with popular approval in both the USA and in Goa, to India.

It occurs to me that the Portuguese might have included an absolute prohibition of any American option to alienate Goa as a condition of taking possession, precisely to protect the people of Goa from being absorbed into a presumptively hostile larger India, either one under some other colonial power's rule or a native one hostile to European and Catholic influence. A hard treaty obligation might prolong the alternative wooing of India indefinitely, or might be deemed offset by a suitably large supermajority in favor of union with India.
 

Deleted member 109224

William Koch, the third entrepreneurial Koch Brother, was considered the second most famous Kansan in the country in 1996 (after Bob Dole) and was pretty adored in the state. He dated the Democratic AG, flaunted his philanthropy, and had a great personal relationship with the Democratic Governor.

He was widely speculated as a potential 1996 Democratic Candidate for Senate in Nebraska. At this point he and Charles hated one another's guts too, so it'd end up being a Koch Civil war most likely.

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Despite the idea being talked about in threads, there's never been a good McCain-Lieberman 2008 TL. Gingrich heavily implied he'd have endorsed Barr that year if it'd have happened, so it'd be a GOP implosion.

Gary Johnson 2012, Bloomberg 2008, Bloomberg 2012 aren't really explored. There was a Gary Johnson 2000 draft movement too.

Trump 2000 hasn't been done.

McCain going reform in 2000, as was floated, hasn't been done.

Democrats splitting between Progressives and DLCers is a neat idea that I haven't seen done.



A mideast in which there's a Hashemite Greater Syria hasn't been done. The King of Jordan was scheming hard to take over Syria.
 
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