In general, scenarios posted on this board tend to be US or Anglocentric, or revolve around the First or Second World Wars. And they're often focused on fairly extreme opposite alternatives to OTL. IE it's common to speculate on a right-wing nationalistic dictatorship in Russia, rather than other alternatives to the Bolsheviks. Scenarios about X country being more powerful or better off also almost always seem to focus on territorial gains rather than differing economic, diplomatic, or political alignments. Regarding territory, posters often ignoring both the enormous practical, legal, and diplomatic hurdles to territorial acquisition by force in the postwar system and relying on weirdly old-school tropes about territory as strength while ignoring the logistical and practical problems that arise from forcibly integrating new territories. (The world isn't a giant game of Risk.)
Having made that general point, here are some ideas that aren't commonly used:
- An Iranian Revolution without the Hostage Crisis and where institutional arrangements go differently. Initial proposals even under Khomeini didn't call for the full-on clerical system that developed. Relations with the US early on were hostile but not implacable. At points early on, there were people close to Khomeini pushing him to just become president rather than Supreme Leader. Any of those might have drastically changed US/Iranian relations and changed dynamics in the Middle East more broadly, where the US and Iran weren't locked into a quasi-Cold War.
- A scenario where the Central Powers wins but things don't turn into some kind of Pax Germanica; and that, rather, the German victory leads to its own destabilizing effects both domestically and within Europe that cause future conflicts (even if not alt-WWII level) erupt.
Having made that general point, here are some ideas that aren't commonly used:
- An Iranian Revolution without the Hostage Crisis and where institutional arrangements go differently. Initial proposals even under Khomeini didn't call for the full-on clerical system that developed. Relations with the US early on were hostile but not implacable. At points early on, there were people close to Khomeini pushing him to just become president rather than Supreme Leader. Any of those might have drastically changed US/Iranian relations and changed dynamics in the Middle East more broadly, where the US and Iran weren't locked into a quasi-Cold War.
- A scenario where the Central Powers wins but things don't turn into some kind of Pax Germanica; and that, rather, the German victory leads to its own destabilizing effects both domestically and within Europe that cause future conflicts (even if not alt-WWII level) erupt.
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