WI/AHC: US aligned Asia, USSR aligned Europe.

So OTL, the US dominated western Europe, but the USSR tended to do better in Asia. What if this was reversed?

My idea is that TTL Warsaw pact would extend all the way to Brittany and Northern Italy, maybe via numerous bungled offensives by the Western Allies?

This scares the US, who then heavily supports the KMT to prevent the Soviets from gaining traction outside Europe. With China as a US ally, Korea and Vietnam are guaranteed US victories.

With mainland Europe under Soviet domination, the US decides that a "North Atlantic" Treaty Organization is basically pointless, and thus goes for a Pacific Treaty Organization, including Japan, KMT China, united Korea and united Vietnam. Britain may be in it too, since there is no way the Soviets could or would take the Island, though they may not want to join for fear of being pulled into an Asian conflict.

Is this scenario even possible? If so, how would this affect the Cold War? Could it help the Soviets last longer, possibly even keep the Cold War going indefinitely, or would it hasten their fall? How would this effect the economies and politics of the US and Asia?

Apologies if this is ASB or poorly thought out, this is my first post.

EDIT: When I say Asia, I mean East and South-East Asia.
 
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Italy turn Communist in the 1946 election. Meanwhile, the KMT wins the Chinese Civil War.
I didn't think about that, but you're right. Italy doesn't actually have to be conquered by the USSR to be communist. I think France could go communist the same way.

The question is if Italy and France would align with the USSR. Tito didn't, and Yugoslavia was in worse shape than Italy and France. Any idea how much authority Moscow had over the Communists in Italy and France? Also, maybe a larger Red Scare in the US would cause the Italian and French Communists to be driven into the Soviet camp.
 
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Nationalist China should be a monster with US help. It would have thr same economic boom as PRC but 25 years earlier
Definitely. IIRC, the Chinese economy was already starting to grow prior the Japanese invasion. Unless Chiang goes full white terror across the country, and corruption runs rampant, China will grow rapidly. Incidentally, China will almost certainly break from the US just as they did OTL with the USSR.
 
think its possible that the Cold War ends sooner.

Combined population of Germany, France, and Italy in 1989 was some 180-200 mln. China in 1937 had already over 500 mln.

with no Europe to prop up, UD and UK should pour much more money to the Middle East, and Africa. Probably no Ba'athist coups in Iraq, Syria and Egypt, decolonization handled much more competently, the region should be more prosperous.

India may end up either in either block, dunno.
 
think its possible that the Cold War ends sooner.

Combined population of Germany, France, and Italy in 1989 was some 180-200 mln. China in 1937 had already over 500 mln.

with no Europe to prop up, UD and UK should pour much more money to the Middle East, and Africa. Probably no Ba'athist coups in Iraq, Syria and Egypt, decolonization handled much more competently, the region should be more prosperous.

India may end up either in either block, dunno.
The biggest problem with keeping the Cold War going in any TL is that the USSR's problems were internal. Their economy was just in a state of decay. I was wondering if the Communist Western European nations would be enough to keep the Soviet economy afloat, but it seems like the USSR needs to reform somehow.

I'd imagine India going Soviet aligned. They already leaned towards the USSR OTL, and TTL they have the same reasons alongside a resurgent US-aligned China breathing down their necks. I could also see the US trying to interfere with India politics to keep them out of the Soviet bloc, only to have the exact opposite effect.
 
I didn't think about that, but you're right. Italy doesn't actually have to be conquered by the USSR to be communist. I think France could go communist the same way.

The question is if Italy and France would align with the USSR. Tito didn't, and Yugoslavia was in worse shape than Italy and France. Any idea how much authority Moscow had over the Communists in Italy and France? Also, maybe a larger Red Scare in the US would cause the Italian and French Communists to be driven into the Soviet camp.
The Italians Communist Party relied more on Moscow than any other Communist party
 
with no Europe to prop up, UD and UK should pour much more money to the Middle East, and Africa. Probably no Ba'athist coups in Iraq, Syria and Egypt, decolonization handled much more competently, the region should be more prosperous.
I am not entirely convinced that communist France and Belgium would be all that much competent in decolonizing...
(The phrasing in opening post implies the Pyrenees as another border, so presumably still whatever-you-define-Salazar-as
Portugal.)

On that note (on the parenthesis) Spain and Portugal could probably need some propping up, and possibly Norway and Sweden
as well, depending on what happens at that end of Europe.
 
Might this scenario involve the US joining WWII later than IOTL? Or, at least, joining the European/North African theatre later?
Anything that keeps the US out of mainland Europe, really. I didn't consider the US joining Europe later, but that could work too. The trouble is, the US was going to declare war on Germany at some point, and, from what I've read, there was already major support for a declaration of war on Germany after Pearl Harbor.

I'm not sure the US could be kept out of Europe for much more than a year though. Would that be enough time for the Soviets?

The main idea of this thread was a US with a similar post-war hegemony to OTL NATO, but focused on Asia instead of Europe, which would be much harder without China, Japan and Korea depending on US aid for post-war and occupation recovery like OTL Europe did. Think the Marshall Plan, but it goes to Asia instead of Western Europe.
 
I am not entirely convinced that communist France and Belgium would be all that much competent in decolonizing...
(The phrasing in opening post implies the Pyrenees as another border, so presumably still whatever-you-define-Salazar-as
Portugal.)

On that note (on the parenthesis) Spain and Portugal could probably need some propping up, and possibly Norway and Sweden
as well, depending on what happens at that end of Europe.
The general idea is that most of Europe is a lost cause for the US. I don't see any reason for the USSR to go south of the Pyrenees, though, as I imagine they'll take their digesting their other gains, and I don't feel like Stalin would be willing to risk a direct war with the US at this stage, especially if the Soviets have already gained basically everything else and the only further possible gains are Spain and Portugal. Naked aggression wasn't really his style.

Iberia would probably play a role not too dissimilar to OTL South Korea, a US stronghold on the continent, but Norway and Sweden might just end up Finlandized if the US lacks any significant foothold on Europe.

Greece or Turkey might serve as an equivalent to OTL's Vietnam, with a US backed government eventually falling to a communist counterpart after the situation becomes a quagmire. How well does the terrain in Greece and Turkey lend itself to Guerilla warfare? Also, how was the communist scene in Turkey? I don't think it was particularly strong, but I don't know much about Turkey in the era either way.
 
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mial42

Gone Fishin'
Nationalist China should be a monster with US help. It would have thr same economic boom as PRC but 25 years earlier
I doubt that. The first few years post-war are still going to have to be spent winning the loyalty of the population and rebuilding. One thing that's often forgotten is that the PRC's economy policies were reasonably effective before the Great Leap Forward, with average standards of living spiking (not GDP per capita so much, but the expropriation of large land owners dramatically increased the living standards of the poor peasants that made up the vast majority of China's population) and industry growing at ~15% per year (from a VERY low base to be sure). The rivers of foreign investment and open foreign markets in the 1970s aren't there in the 1950s, so much more of China's growth will have to be internally based. I would actually expect worse economic performance from KMT China for the first decade or so due to no or less complete land reform, before the TTL ROC overtakes the OTL PRC during the Great Leap Forward and stays ahead after that. It will still experience a huge economic boom earlier than the PRC, but it won't just be the PRC's economic trajectory 25 years earlier; it will be more gradual.
Definitely. IIRC, the Chinese economy was already starting to grow prior the Japanese invasion. Unless Chiang goes full white terror across the country, and corruption runs rampant,
To be fair, this does describe the KMT pretty well in the 1940s, although they clearly had the potential to do better (see: Taiwan).
China will grow rapidly. Incidentally, China will almost certainly break from the US just as they did OTL with the USSR.
I doubt that, or rather, I doubt that it would occur with anything like the same severity or time table. China's growth is going to be dependent on US investment and trade, and China's defense against the USSR to its north (where most of the USSR's military will probably be concentrated TTL) is going to be dependent on the US military. It's easy to forget what with the modern-day PRC's (near) superpower status, but the gap between the superpowers and China during the Cold War was enormous. China arguably still hasn't reached the USSR's military strength thirty years of breakneck growth after the Cold War ended. KMT China is probably going to be significantly stronger than the PRC for the latter half of the Cold War, but it won't be until the 90s at the earliest (IMO, it would probably be until the early 2000s) that they'll be reasonably competitive with either the USSR or the US.

Fundamentally, the Sino-Soviet split was ideological; Mao believed that the USSR had been given over to capitalist-infiltrators-bureaucrats who were betraying the revolution. There's no comparable ideological impetus for an ROC-US split, the ROC will be dependent on (and much weaker than) the US for most of the Cold War, and they share common strategic interests. You'd probably see the ROC asserting its independence from the US a la France (which is the closest OTL comparison IMO), but nothing like threatening war or viciously condemning them (like the OTL Sino-Soviet split), and they'd probably remain allies for the duration of the Cold War at least (think US/Japan OTL; the US feared Japan as an economic competitor in the 80s but they still remained allies).
 
Interesting, I didn't know that the PRC did so well early on. I also thought that the Sino-Soviet split was more strategic than it was ideological, and I also had no idea it was that vicious.

Without the Maoist reforms and purges, would it be possible for the warlords and other prewar internal powers to stay in place, ultimately limiting China's growth in the long run? I've heard part of the reason for the success of the PRC starting with Deng has been due to them being able to start from a more or less clean slate following Mao.

Could KMT China become a democracy like modern Taiwan, or would it be more of an oligarchy?
 
The borders were already pre arranged so I do not see how that makes a difference
How the borders were achieved could affect the post war situation. A failed D-Day could be very different from a successful Soviet defense of Ukraine or Italy and France going communist via election.

I want to focus on the WI, but how we get there is also somewhat important, if only to ensure my general outline of the post war scenario isn't ASB.
They were under direct control of Moscow and took orders from Stalin directly.
I see. Then it seems like the Soviets wouldn't have to overstretch too much to keep Italy and France in line.
 
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Greece or Turkey might serve as an equivalent to OTL's Vietnam, with a US backed government eventually falling to a communist counterpart after the situation becomes a quagmire. How well does the terrain in Greece and Turkey lend itself to Guerilla warfare? Also, how was the communist scene in Turkey? I don't think it was particularly strong, but I don't know much about Turkey in the era either way.
I think Greece and Turkey may be a bit badly placed for Vietnam-expies if most of Europe is already communist, and from what little I
know about the Greek resistance during WW2 the impression is that the communists were a major part of it and the main reason
they didn't take over was that the Soviet Union and the western allies had already divided up Europe, with Greece going to the west.
Which seems unlikely here.
The place that immediately springs to mind for an alternative quagmire is Algeria, but the dynamics would be different.

I've been given the impression that the terrain of Greece lends itself pretty well to guerilla warfare.

Think the Marshall Plan, but it goes to Asia instead of Western Europe.
If continental western Europe are communist-run and the U.S. has to spend the Marshall Plan money, I have
difficulty seeing an Asia-focussing U.S. spending it anywhere other than (East and South-east) Asia.
 
I think Greece and Turkey may be a bit badly placed for Vietnam-expies if most of Europe is already communist, and from what little I
know about the Greek resistance during WW2 the impression is that the communists were a major part of it and the main reason
they didn't take over was that the Soviet Union and the western allies had already divided up Europe, with Greece going to the west.
Which seems unlikely here.
The place that immediately springs to mind for an alternative quagmire is Algeria, but the dynamics would be different.

I've been given the impression that the terrain of Greece lends itself pretty well to guerilla warfare.
My thought was that the US could supply Greece or Turkey from Spain, but Italy is right in the way now that I think of it. I do have to wonder how Communist France would handle Algeria. Would they give it up earlier, or would they try to retain it under the guise of some kind of "People's Union"? For that matter, I wonder how having colonial powers like France and Italy in their sphere would affect the foreign policy of the USSR. Could they decry colonial independence movements as being reactionary?

If continental western Europe are communist-run and the U.S. has to spend the Marshall Plan money, I have
difficulty seeing an Asia-focussing U.S. spending it anywhere other than (East and South-east) Asia.
I didn't specify enough in the OP, but I did generally mean East and South-East Asia, rather than all of the continent of Asia. Editing the OP now.
 
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