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Some truth to that, but remember that despite terrorist attacks on (off the top of my head) the World Trade Center (not 9/11, the 1993 one), the Khobar Towers (1996; this one was probably Hezbollah, not Al Qaeda), the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (1998) and the USS Cole (October 2000...

And in a no 9/11 timeline, foreign policy expertise is much less important. OTL everyone had to deal with the aftermath of 9/11 by claiming to be able to deal with the challenges of terrorism. In the period between the collapse of the Soviet Union and 9/11, neither the 1996 nor 2000 elections...

Alternatively, the occupation turns out disastrously, much like OTL's occupation in 2003 on, and the US populace (which hasn't undergone 9/11 in this history, and is thus much less tolerant of casualties in overseas operation (remember Somalia at roughly the same time), and the news focus on...

This. The "No New Taxes" bit gets remembered because it plays into a Republican talking point (that you should never raise taxes); the Democratic takeaway from the same election was "it's the economy, stupid." As others have noted, it didn't even allow Buchanan to win the state he targeted with...

Yep. I have no doubt that if, say the UK wanted to pick a fight over US activities in Hawaii or Samoa in the 19th century, they could bottle up the US and bring them to the table. But any attempt to conquer parts of the mainland would be seen as cause for total war by the US. If a sufficiently...

Sure, but they tended to react by throwing money at the problem whenever a war scare popped up; presumably they'd do likewise in the leadup to this invasion, as it seems unlikely anyone would be able to keep it a secret or would want to without a period of rising tensions. Even mediocre...

Sure, but "along the east coast or just below the Great Lakes" is a huge area in and of itself, and with a large population to draw on (and in the case of the east coast, at least, gun emplacements already built and armed). American militia and hastily mustered troops may not be great, but they...

I assume the idea behind this is to compare differences in defensive doctrine and equipment between the Germans and Japanese? If forced to defend France, the Japanese would do poorly. They don't have the equipment for major land battles against armored peer competitors (as opposed to e.g. the...

French policy after WWI was based around basically doing whatever the UK wanted in order to keep them happy and on-side. As part of this, they willingly sold out the Spanish, the Czechs, and anyone else the British weren't willing to support. If the UK isn't going to support Poland, France isn't...

Except Taiwan is vastly smaller than the PRC, and separated by a strait (which the Taiwanese Navy is strong enough to prevent the PRC from crossing). The US has a lot of countryside, and for the period in question, it's where most people lived (half of the population was rural as late as 1920...

I'd say (A) isn't really an option; China was a rich market for exports and had wealth and exotics tht could be taken back as loot; the US is neither, so there's no way to defer the cost of the occupation. (B) might work (with the note that "knock out" doesn't necessarily mean militarily defeat...

Note that a lot of people seem to be assuming that a war breaks out and the invading troops automatically teleport into invade. In reality, any invasion is going to be preceded by (1) rising tensions and (2) a military buildup (there's a reason Germany considered the French mobilization in WWI a...

Bill Clinton was still extremely popular among both Democrats and the public at-large. "Clinton's third term" would be seen as a good thing by most of the Democratic base. She was absolutely seen as the candidate-in-waiting; if she wanted to run in 2004, a lot of the people who threw their hats...

The 2004 primary was largely shaped by 9/11 and Iraq, though. A lot of John Kerry's support came from the idea that a war veteran would be more electable in the national security climate, a lot of Dean's support came from younger liberals mobilized by opposition to the Iraq War. Both of those...

The conquest required a solid base to start from; remember that Pizarro made several failed expeditions to Peru before the conquest, and that he was following in the footsteps of other explorers in the region. And once the initial victory was won (which is far from guaranteed ITTL; if he hadn't...

Not especially; Romanness isn't inherited that way, and Byzantine succession wasn't strictly hereditary anyway. The Russians claimed to be the "Third Rome" on the basis of their Byzantine marriage, but no one other than the Russians took that any more seriously than they took the HRE. Which gets...