One of my “covers”: based on a map by the sadly dragged-away-by-real-life Uriel (a creative chap), it is a world divided between four different major power blocks.
The TL diverges from ours when Mussolini, suspecting he will get nothing but scraps from Hitler, as in the last war, decides to bide his time and not attack the allies even when France falls. This annoys Hitler a great deal, but he has bigger, Soviet-type fish to fry. [1]
A second divergence occurs when a drunken post-dinner Stalin attempts to mock Kruschev’s dancing skills on a freshly waxed floor in front of a massive old piece of Czarist furniture with very solid wooden edges. The entire cleaning staff was executed on suspicion of being foreign assassins, but there was nothing to be done: the country was thrown into political turmoil only a week before Hitler’s invasion. (Conservative Soviet historians still argue Stalin of course had some sort of Master Plan to trap the German attackers he would have revealed if he had lived longer). [2]
Under the circumstances, organizing a defense was even harder than OTL, and the Germans took Moscow: the Soviet Union was not knocked out of the war, but was in no shape to organize major offensives for a while – the best they could do through 1942 was to just survive.
The US still managed to force a foothold on the European continent, but with more Germans available to fight in the west, it was a longer, harder slog, and the Germans were still fighting when the first nuke landed on Berlin. The Soviets, on the other hand, were only just clearing the last German troops from their pre-invasion borders, although they had a good foothold in Romania. With few troops in Eastern Europe, heavier losses, and the US with the nuke, the Soviets were forced to accept a division of Europe distinctly less favorable than OTL. Meanwhile, Musso had declared war on Hitler at the last minute, and joined the UK in liberating the hell out of Yugoslavia before the local Communists could.
Another butterfly was President Wallace as Roosevelt’s successor: his creation of the UN as a truly international, all-nations-get-an-equal-say arrangement was very idealistic, but not very practical: the lack of an equivalent of Security Council or great power veto made it politically unpalatable to both US conservatives and Soviet realpolitik thinkers. His strongly anti-colonialist policies alienated England, France, etc., not to mention pissing off the Italians. And his economic policies were denounced as the wildest sort of socialism on the right. (The important foundations they laid for the economic boom of the 1950s would still be denied by this world’s Republicans as late as 2012). He was also condemned as the man “who would lose China”. [3]
(Mao did not get Manchuria and its weapons depots essentially dropped in his lap by withdrawing Soviets in this TL, so started out at a disadvantage compared to OTL. Still, the Kuomintang remained a feckless bunch, and Wallace was distinctly reluctant to help out the Generalissimo: by the time he left office, Red guerillas were active throughout northern China).
Unsurprisingly, his Republican successors turned to dismantle his legacy: abroad, the US got involved in a major and costly intervention in China which eventually stabilized the situation, although the South would remain plagued with Red terror until the 1970s, withdrew from the UN, and threw in the towel on large-scale rebuilding in Europe, since the French and British seemed to be back on their feet, the Italians were doing OK, the Soviets were still licking their wounds, and the Germans were quite thoroughly crushed.
(Germany was broken up into several smaller states and something along the lines of OTLs theorized Morgenthau plans was put in place. Eventually, the Starving Germans thing got too embarrassing, and the Germanies were allowed to rebuild its industry, but not before millions of Germans migrated abroad: a great many to “white” Africa, with unfortunate future consequences.)
The bloodier invasion of Europe and the long and bloody struggle in China discouraged further adventures abroad, and with no Korean war and no Soviet bomb until 1953 (the Soviets had other priorities in the meantime), there was no great panicky “red menace” shock. The Cold War never got going, and Europe was largely left to sink or swim.
The Soviets, too, pulled out of the UN in the 50s when it became clear that it would not be a very effective tool for Soviet power, and condemned it as a “tool of the bourgeoisie.” Their influence in the third world was in any case weaker: the Soviets didn’t look like winners, and they were in any case short on cash to bail out new regimes.
The UN should have collapsed, but an odd thing happened. The Left in England and France embraced it as a truly international organization, one free from either the troubling Soviet far left or the crushing economic power of the US. It was a forum for the small and middling powers, and possibly an agent of genuinely progressive internationalism. Right-wingers scoffed and called for its abandonment, especially as it filled up with representatives of the newly independent poor and humble of the earth. But those who saw no hope for a better world from the standoffish US or the paranoid, inflexible Soviets kept the system alive, and as an international forum and deal-making organization, it slowly grew in importance.
Meanwhile, the Italians, who were working hard to wash the stink of Nazi off fascism, formed a “Mediterranean alliance” with the Iberians and the Greeks against Communism and troublesome independence movements, to which the South Africans signed on. Eventually kicked out by an increasingly anti-colonialist UN, the now expanded and renamed “Sovereignty Pact” thumbed their noses at democracy and multiculturalism as well as Socialism, and embarked on their own reactionary path.
Japan, which like Germany was given a rawer deal by the conqueror than OTL, (also, the monarchy was abolished)also missed out on the economic shots in the arm provided OTL by the Korean and Vietnam wars, not to mention open access to US markets. In the end, the coming to power of a hard-left government with a mandate to truly reshape the nation led to a right-wing revolution in which one Yukio Mishima played an important role; the country became a sort of proxy battlefield between the Communists and the Sovereignty Pact, both of which helped their clients obtain nuclear weapons. Japan is considered the place in the world “most likely to go boom.”
In 2000 AD, the rather uneven four-sided balance does not promise to last much longer. The UN has actually turned into a (rather weak) international government of sort: UN joint military forces are fairly formidable, and as a system for economic development and mutual aid it has proven quite successful. It has been on a steady upswing since the late 70s, when the Soviet economy started running out of inputs again, and the development of the ICBM made the maintenance of world peace through international cooperation look a hell of a lot more vital. (There was a bit of a panic in the US at the time, and an alliance with the UN states was contemplated, but US assumptions of its own superiority and UN nations desire to bring the US fully into the structure of the UN organization led to mutual suspicion and a breakoff of negotiations). Increasingly, more nations are becoming tied into the UN structure, even ones whose primary allegiance is to the US or to the Communist Block: so far, only the Sovereignty Pact nations remain clearly hostile to the UN and what it stands for.
And the Sovereignty Pact is fraying around the edges. The Italians, who have dumped the most troublesome of their colonial territories and worked to reconcile with at least their whiter subjects (some not unimportant government posts are reserved for Albanians), are getting a bit sick of propping up South Africans and helping to run the Portuguese Empire. Some nations in the Pact not burdened with large numbers of Ungood Peoples to keep oppressed are edging towards democracy.
In the meantime, the US notes its allies increasingly become involved with the UN, and the notion that the US should at least have observer status has been publically mooted once again. The US has a large navy, airforce, and atomic missile arsenal (if not as big as OTL: there was a bit of an arms race after the Soviets went nuclear, but nothing as intense as our Cold War), but a fairly small army: it’s principal “areas of interest” are Latin America and East Asia, and military intervention beyond local gunboat diplomacy is not expected: the arsenal is meant to deter, to warn foreigners “do not tread on me.” Bringing democracy at gunpoint is an alien concept to the inhabitants of this US in 2000.
The Soviets, meanwhile, have been struggling with economic reform for a couple decades, and have drifted a long way from standard Marxist practice in the process: they are increasingly alienated from their Chinese allies (which in this world did receive material assistance from the Soviets from the late 40s on, and have stuck with their alliance in the face of the US-backed south), who have remained more solidly Stalinist (avoiding the insane excesses of Mao, who died in an air raid in 1951, helped keep Marxist economics from being discredited, and the Chinese haven’t quite run out of inputs yet). Romania’s recent joining of the UN as an observer is seen as a cautious signal from Moscow: Romania, unlike Burma or south Japan, is a closely controlled puppet and its leaders won’t go to the bathroom without an OK from the Kremlin.
It remains a tense and troubled world, with ongoing bloody conflict in Africa, South America, and elsewhere, and has no less than 20 acknowledged atomic powers. Currently, the messiest situation is in the Arabian Peninsula. In this world, the Baath party succeeded in unifying Iraq and Iran: managing to miss out on Saddam, and too pissed over the ethnic cleansing of fellow Arabs from Libya to join up with the Pact, they became a UN member in good standing and by the 90s were a successfully modernizing regional power with an only mildly authoritarian government (currently, to become full members that can actually vote on UN policy, UN members must meet certain basic minimums of human rights, and can be reduced to observers by majority vote: these are not onerous conditions, but shit like genocide of minorities will get you ash-canned).
Unfortunately, a civil war between Islamic fundamentalists and even more fundamentalist Islamic fundamentalists broke out in the mid- 90s in Saudi Arabia: Arabia being an essentially neutral nation and a UN observer state, the Arab Federation invaded with UN backing after massacres of gulf Shi’as brought south Iraq to a furious boil and the government decided it must be seen as Doing Something.
To foreign surprise, the sizeable Saudi armies turned out to be not much good save for internal suppression and fighting eachother, and before long the Feds found themselves in charge of the entire country. In a mood of hubris, they set about incorporating Saudi Arabia into their union, only giving the Hejaz an autonomous status to minimize hostility on the part of other Muslim states re their hogging the Holy Cities (the Saudis had been in for a lot of criticism due to this). Yemen, in a burst of Arab nationalism, actually joined up in a sort of loose association. Unfortunately, although more moderate Sunnis and the Shia’ were happy enough with the change of government, the Wahabi were not. Nor were the reactionary, Sovereignty Pact-aligned gulf monarchies. Nor were the Israelis. Heck, even the US, which had been buying a lot of Saudi oil, were not happy indeed. So in 2000, the Arab(ian) federation faces a rapidly expanding Wahabi insurrection, which, it is widely believed, is receiving a great deal of outside support on the sly. The UN, many of whose members are very doubtful about the invasion and annexation of other states, even for the best of reasons, is largely paralyzed. The Soviets, who worry about Islamism and are historically hostile to theocratic movements, watch closely…
A few other notes of interest…
Northern Irish Protestants, fearing a sell-out to the Irish by the UK, revolted successfully against British rule with Sovereignty Pact aid and set about crushing the Catholics with maximum prejudice: even in the context of the generally despised Pact nations, the Ulster Republic is a pariah state. Within the Pact, it has a curiously close relationship with Rhodesia.
The Soviet Union had recovered to the point where it probably could have launched a serious military assault on Western Europe by the 60s, but by that time both the UK and Italy had nukes, there was a lot more Europe to conquer than OTL, and European efforts to engage the Soviet Union economically with loans, special trade deals, etc. made much of the Soviet leadership reluctant to end the relationship by, say, conquering Poland. After all, many of them probably knew the joke:
Do you know what happens after the Soviet Union conquered the Sahara desert?
No, I do not. Enlighten me.
Well, nothing at first. But after a couple decades, sand shortages set in…
(It is probably fair to say that Europe was to some extent “Finlandized” in the 60s and 70s, but as the Soviet economy went increasingly dysfunctional while European economies slowly converged on OTL living standards, European self-confidence and willingness to call Soviet bluffing grew in parallel to growth in UN power and influence).
With even more displaced Palestinians pushed onto their soil, in this world a successful Palestinian revolt against Jordanian minority rule led to the establishment of a Soviet-aligned “Palestinian state” in Jordan and the rump of the West Bank. Of course, this has given the Israelis the “well, now you have a state, there’s no reason for us to give anything up” argument.
The three sub-states of the West Congo Federation (the Congo has had less kleptocracy, but more, er, excitements in this TL) each have their own political arrangement with the putative capital.
Katanga Free State is run by an odd mix of criminal organizations and mercenary adventurers, aided by Sovereignty Pact advisors, and is wonderfully corrupt, a major center of smuggling, and a place where one can get or do _anything_, as long as one has the money. It’s surprisingly non-racist, in that black crooks with money are just as welcome as white ones.
Bhutan is under occupation by Indian forces seeking to prevent it from falling to Chinese-backed Red guerillas the way Nepal did. Bhutanese claim they had the problem well under control and would like the Indians to leave, please. The Indians pretend they didn’t hear.
South Africa has been for some while the center of the Sovereignty Pact’s film industry, although the increasing violence is beginning to shift movie companies towards Italy and Brazil. The marvelously non-PC product enjoys a cult following in non-Pact nations.
There are a lot of overlapping claims in Antarctica, and things have gone as far as sabotage of foreign shelters unoccupied in the winter, although nobody has yet been shot.
There was no space race, and nobody has been to the Moon (although robots landed there), but there are plenty of satellites, and there are five little manned Skylab type stations floating around up there.
Scotland has gained greater regional devolution than OTL and is practically independent, but so far they have held back from fully breaking away from Great Britain (no longer the UK), perhaps for fear some people will make comparisons to Northern Ireland.
The North Japanese regime has kept the Emperor’s throne warm, but oddly enough none of the current heirs seem to want to move to North Japan and park their butt in it.
[1] Not in the original scenario, but I felt I needed to beef up the Sovereignty Pact a bit.
[2] Suicide just doesn’t seem in character for Stalin, IMHO
[3] Wallace rejects internationalism and leads the US back into isolationism because the UN doesn't work the way he wants? Hmmm.
Bruce
