Thanks! I decided to keep the US out of the Great War ITTL because if it were to enter it would more or less guarantee victory for whichever faction it joins, especially once you get further and further into the Great War to a point that many of the major belligerents have become exhausted and could easily be overwhelmed by the entry of another major belligerent against them.Just checking out this timeline, and things look interesting! I didn't expect to see a version of history where the US allies with neither the Entente nor the CP, but stays neutral and secure.
Yeah, the Golden Twenties are definitely a lot better than OTL's Roaring Twenties, even if it does carry over a lot of historical flaws. The biggest issue at the moment is that the Democratic Party is becoming increasingly reactionary and tightening its grip on the Deep South, which means that any major national social reforms will start to increasingly face local resistance.To echo other posters, the Golden Twenties sound like a pretty good time for America (though let's not ignore the flaws, since there's no need for civil rights intellectuals unless African-Americans aren't getting their full rights). I'm also interested in the EU-like EACPS that seems to be forming.
The US and EACPS are increasingly powerful juggernauts that would easily turn the tides of the Great War should they ever intervene. Granted, no belligerent in the Great War is crazy enough to dare start a war with either power, knowing that it would basically spell doom for their efforts. They'd make for interesting opponents in proxy conflicts though.Given the mentions of a "Special Relationship" between the US and Japan in the future - maybe they'll end up on the same side in a later war? It's rather amusing to imagine some TTL dictatorship spewing propaganda about the Japanese, North Chinese, and Americans being "decadent peoples who'll collapse as soon as we strike them" a la the OTL Nazis, only to be confronted by TWO large, populous, and wealthy geopolitical entities who can turn out enough bullets, tanks, ships, and supplies to kill the enemy simply by dropping them all on his head.
Thanks, I'm glad that this latest update was an interesting read! As for your question, the Liberals are competitive in some parts of the Deep South, with them being most competitive in Tennessee, Texas, and Louisiana, however, for the most part the Democrats hold a monopoly over southern politics. This is in part because the Liberals are basically a splinter group of predominantly northern Democrats and therefore don't have too much influence in the south to begin with, but it's also because the Democratic Party has started to adopt a strategy of really honing in on maintaining a grip on the Deep South to hold some degree of relevance in American politics. They know that they're going to lose a number of races in the north to the Liberals and Republicans, so they're more invested into holding onto at least one region in order to remain a prominent force. Granted, there's not a lot you can do with the south alone, so the Democrats will have to start finding other ways to maintain and expand their power sooner or later.Excellent post. There's a sense of foreboding, knowing that all the progressive reforms and achievements of the Johnson administration, as well as the Socialist surge, will likely face a backlash once the war arrives to North America, but it's still very nice to read. The East Asia section is... interesting, I suppose, but unfortunately I don't have much to say because of my lack of knowledge on the subject. It's fascinating to see the new Party System form and the Democrats slowly fall into irrelevance - speaking of which, have Liberals made state elections in the South competitive, and do any of them hold Southern seats in Congress?
I haven't put a ton of thought into specific states, but I'd imagine that a lot of the Democratic-controlled Deep South prohibits trade with a number of Great War belligerents, both as a sort of protectionist program and to avoid financing the Third International. I kinda like the idea of Ohio prohibiting trade with the Third International but otherwise being pretty lenient, and I feel like Socialist-controlled Minnesota wouldn't be enthusiastic about war profiteering practices in general. Same goes for Indiana. Northern states than can really make a big profit off of war profiteering, such as much of the Mid-Atlantic region and Rust Belt would be pretty hands-off with trading policies, and I think it would be interesting to have the Great Plains realize that they can make a decent amount of money off of selling grain to nations stretched pretty thin when it comes to supplying food.HMMM.
What states specifically?
Now that you mention it, a sort of "municipal decentralist" candidate would definitely be fun to work with, and I'll keep that in mind going forward. Dever may or may not be elected president, but making him a senator would be pretty easy to do.Honestly, I feel like such a candidacy would be pretty interesting in the Roaring Twenties, particularly given the increasingly conspicuous cultural and economic distance between the cities and the countryside that was prevalent during that era as well as the American government recusing itself from world affairs.
Yeah, a lot of immigrants are coming in from Europe. With that being said, however, leaving Europe is becoming an increasingly difficult thing. The French Commune, which is stretched really thin on manpower as it is, has banned emigration altogether (that doesn't stop people from leaving, but immigrants arriving from France in the US have become increasingly rare as a consequence) and just about all belligerents heavily discourage emigration. I'd imagine that a lot of immigrants from occupied territory, where there's a much bigger incentive to get out and laws and anti-emigration campaigns are a lot more ambiguous, arrive in the US, which means that by the 1920s the United States already has a number of large Belgian, Polish, Serbian, and Ukrainian communities among others. I also think it would be ironic to have illegal immigration from Canada (and by extension the wider British Empire-in-exile) cause American conservatives ITTL to call for upping Canadian border security....I take it USA took a lot of immigrants fleeing the war in Europe, huh?
Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if some conservatives in Congress (particularly from the Democratic Party) would call for placing restrictions on international brigade volunteering, all while conservative pundits and newspaper owners spin the issue into, quote, PRESIDENT JOHNSON AND HIS RED COHORTS SENDING AMERICAN BOYS TO THEIR DEATHS.
As for regulations on the International Brigade volunteers, yeah, a number of conservatives have supported measures to prevent the formation of American volunteer forces, but they have obviously been unsuccessful. I think it would actually be pretty interesting if that caused the powers of the Second Amendment to be called into question a lot earlier ITTL, with Republicans, Liberals, and Socialists all arguing that prohibiting the creation of volunteer militias is a violation of Second Amendment rights.
Probably a few, particularly wealthy Europeans that were already living in that area via nearby colonies or the legation cities, but European immigration to North China or East Asia in general would be pretty rare due to the distance from Europe and East Asia. Immigration to the United States would obviously be a lot more practical for Europeans, and the only European nation that borders North China (Russia) would have the bulk of its immigrants to East Asia settle down in the RDFR instead. I'd imagine that a number of Americans, particularly richer ones, would move to North China and Japan though.Did any Europeans settle down in North China?