This idea started life with the question of "What if South Africa and Yugoslavia switched fates in the 1990s?" and kind of went all over from there.
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POD: 1945
The Western Allies successfully secure all of Austria in 1945, which leads to the country joining NATO and being fully involved in the Western Bloc during the first Cold War. From there, history progresses similarly, but nonetheless differently, to the OTL Cold War. Eventually, by 2020, the world is embroiled in a Second Cold War, not unlike the tense relations we are seeing today involving the United States, China, Europe, and Russia.
The ideologies, however are muddied. The US and its allies parrot the 'Freedom, Prosperity, and Democracy' line, though there is something about it now that seems to ring hollow. A history of supporting dictatorships and predatory multinationals tends to do that.
For Russia, China, Egypt, and Indonesia, all have more to gain from challenging the US-dominated world order than following it. Russia demands the US respect the sovereignty of nations while helping its puppets put down popular protests in the Baltic States and Romania. China calls American 'prosperity' a joke while half the population endures extreme poverty. Egypt calls for pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism, but only if the Arab Socialists are in charge.
It's a war waged by hypocrites, and the only thing that makes it somewhat tolerable is neither side has nuked each other. Yet.
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MAJOR PLAYERS
The United States is whiter and more conservative than OTL, but with similar problems. Nixon is elected president from 1960-1964, and actually does quite a bit of good with Civil Rights reform. Race relations ITTL are more like they were in the 1980s, however, and social integration of black people remains a serious moral and social crisis in the country. The Drug War never happens, and drug use is considered a health issue instead of a crime problem. Immigration reform and some final civil rights legislation pertaining to women occurs in the 1970s. The immigration reform is more about re-balancing quotas for Europeans and Latin Americans to make them fairer, and a lot of visas are made available for skilled labor. Immigration isn't as hot of topic in the year 2020 ITTL. Economically, most outsourcing goes to Mexico and hasn't been as drastic. Foreign policy-wise, Americans are waking up to Cold War II cranky about having to fight for hegemony again. Lots of isolationism, even if the elites demand more defense spending and acceptance of the possibility of foreign wars.
The Soviet Union's collapse in 1993 came as a product of compounding economic and political problems in the USSR. However, unlike OTL, the Russian elite designed their institutions to create a stronger Russian military and economy. This prevents the demographic problems of OTL Russia from manifesting as badly as they have today. These reforms and their aftermath have been termed 'The Russian Miracle' by observers. Chechens still fight for independence, but geopolitically Russia is surrounded by a network of friendly and puppet states which are called the Russian Shield, as they provide a layer of protection from direct invasion. Keeping those states friendly is incredibly important for the Russians.
Western Europe is united under many trade and other agreements like OTL, but nothing like the EU exists. Concerns from Britain and France over Germany's reunification seem to have been placated, in the meantime, by how much money reunification has cost and how much leftist violence re-incorporating the DDR caused. The Germans are conservative and keep their tanks ready to march on Moscow. One of the post-Soviet agreements made was that NATO wouldn't expand at all. So Poland, Hungary, Czechia, and Slovakia formed the Visegrad Group, which may as well be NATO Jr., complete with adoption of almost all NATO Standardization Agreements and an anti-Russian position for foreign policy. Demographic problems are starting to hit Western Europe, however, and the governments of most countries have been pushing for citizens to have more children.
China is much poorer than OTL, but has begun to see some modernization from foreign investment. The country's leaders live better lives than most of the populace, but the gap between the elite and the masses is not as wide as it is between today's western Chinese farmers and coastal Chinese urbanites. The main thrust of China's leadership planning is 'sustained development' to produce home-grown industries and an economy that doesn't destroy the country's environment. This policy is helped by the One Child Policy equivalent, which started in 1980, which will help reduce the country's population to stabler levels in the future.
India joined up with the Americans because of Pakistan switching to China as its patron. Originally a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement equivalent in Cold War I, the nuclearization of the two major powers on the Indian Subcontinent caused the Indians to re-examine their alliances and priorities. Border disputes with China and a less supportive Russia caused the Indians to change patrons, though they remain the odd man out in American geopolitical considerations as they tend to take a more independent view of foreign policy.
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MINOR PLAYERS
Yugoslavia does manage to assert its geopolitical independence under Tito, but when he finally dies the country doesn't go through 15-20 years of ugly ethnic politicking. Macedonia and Slovenia do get independence after plebiscites, but the Serbo-Croatian core does remain unified.
Korea and Vietnam are both unified and brought into the Western and Eastern camp respectively, and neither the Soviet Union nor the United States get involved in their famous quagmires (Vietnam for the US, Afghanistan for the USSR). However, South East Asia becomes a site of Communist unrest, leading to the fall of Laos and Cambodia and a lot of violence in Thailand.
Indonesia invades North Borneo and Brunei during the 1960s under Sukarno. Think of Sukarno as a Tito-type of leader: he is socialist but not quite in the Soviet camp, but with a lot more anti-Western policies and diplomatic conflicts.
Israel, much like OTL, narrowly avoids getting piled on by surrounding Arab powers. The Israelis do develop nukes as a deterrent, but are less tied to America than ITTL.
Egypt is a leading pan-Arab socialist state, think of something between Nasser and Baathism, and is not very pro-Western. Began embracing some pan-Islamist rhetoric in the 90s, and has been regretting it ever since because of the terrorism it inspired.
Iraq under Saddam is as repressive as it was OTL, and they even take over Kuwait with no response in the early 2000s.
Saddam is the one thing keeping the country together, as the same sectarian and ethnic tensions we've seen in OTL are only worse. When he dies, Iraq goes up in flames, and the Americans, Russians, and Egyptians are preparing for this.
Latin America goes the same way as OTL: American interventions, Communist guerrillas, and brutish dictatorships. Cuba never gets taken over, and multiple insurgencies actually leads to an ambitious plan by the Americans to modernize the country and integrate it with the U.S. economy. Cuban mercenaries are a favorite of the CIA. Peru goes Communist in the 1970s, but not Shining Path crazy, and resists American efforts at regime change.
South Africa and Rhodesia go down violently. The Rhodies lose much more quickly due to more aggressive Soviet and Chinese support for the ZANU/ZAPU equivalents, and most whites flee to South Africa. The fall of Rhodesia basically puts the South Africans into panic mode. Wars with their neighbors in Mozambique and Namibia are much more brutal, and the Whites draw up a plan to split the country in two: they'll take the Cape with the Coloureds, and the Black majority can have the rest. Of course, this doesn't go as planned. Hardliner Afrikaners moved into the Orange Free State province, while the Cape remained majority Coloured. As growing protests and economic instability mounted, the government collapsed. A bloody race war broke out, with expulsions and massacres by white and black South Africans permanently scarring the country. When the dust clears, the country was split into four: the Coloured-majority democratic Cape Republic, the Afrikaner-run Orange Free State, the Zulu state of KwaZulu (which took a more independent socialist stance) and the pariah Republic of South Africa (also called Azania) which demanded reunification and the expulsion or extermination of the white minority.