A Multipolar Cold War

How about this?

Allies vs. British Empire vs. Reich-led primarily Euro Axis vs. Japanese Empire vs. Soviet Union vs. People's Republic of China?

I think this is the last alternate cold war thread I'll be making in a while. So rejoice.
 
Are we looking at the present day? There doesn't seem to be enough power and wealth in the world to support that many first rank powers, especially with the US hogging about 1/3 of all world wealth and about 1/2 of its power.
 
How about this?

Allies vs. British Empire vs. Reich-led primarily Euro Axis vs. Japanese Empire vs. Soviet Union vs. People's Republic of China?

I think this is the last alternate cold war thread I'll be making in a while. So rejoice.

Pretty much impossible. No one of these powers could realistically stand against another two or three, and most of them have conflicts that would lead to the alliances that happened OTL. Add to the fact that many of these powers can only rise with the fall of another, such as PRC and Japan...

Japan, for example, is seeking Pacific dominance. That puts it in direct conflict with the US, which not only favors China and has trading interests across Asia (and also has mandatory oil and metal for Japan), but also with Britain (over Pacific colonies and trading interests) and the Soviet Union (over Manchuria/Korea and other regional conflicts). There's also the nasty matter of invading China... In fact, the only person they aren't in strategic conflict with is Germany, hence the Axis alliance.


Germany and the USSR are going to be at each other's throats, no denying that. The only real question is if they'll just kill each other, or if some one else will join in on one side.

China isn't too well off either. Japan is occupying, their communist ideology is going to isolate them from capitalist countries (and Germany), and their only real ally in the wings, the USSR, half sees them as the redheaded step child.

British Empire and the US don't have that many things to even conflict over, so I'm not seeing that.



Besides, multipolar Cold Wars are pretty hard to pull off, all things considered. The various sides lessen their numbers with alliances with the people they have the fewest problems with, and any one who knows game theory knows that in a three sided struggle two parties team up to destroy the third before entering a two-way power struggle.
 
I think a multi-polar world can exist, indeed if Germany won WW1 it would be a virtual certainty. But there is not even a handful of posible candidates; USA, Greater Germany and its Mitteleuropa and the SU. I think Britain and France could become a fouth superpower if they entered into a very close strategic economic and military arrangement, whereby the British would have a food for coal and iron deal with France, covering their respective weakness'. Japan and Italy have too few resources to be superpowers, hence their performances in WW2. China is too underdeveloped, hence its performance in WW2.
 
I think the best you can do is; Isolationist but heavily armed USA (so I can stay isolated), USSR (+ OTL Warsaw pact minus Poland and Czechslovakia) , PRC (historic split between Maoism and Marxist-Leninism), Third Reich (incl./ controlling: Poland, France, Spain, Italy, Benelux, Denmark), Commonwealth (UK, Canada, Oceania, India, Africa below Sahara, Norway, Sweden)

Problems:
1. USA would find it very hard to stay Isolationist with the threat of Armageddon.
2. Early development of Nukes needed to Stop USSR and Third Reich wiping each other out.
3. Why don't PRC and USSR as fellow Communists gang up to take on the world?
4. How does the Commonwealth hold together? Africa and India would be tempted to join the likes of Japan and be non-aligned, while Canada could easily leave the UK to fight alone and hide behind the US's skirts.
5. In OTL there were only three real lines of friction: US vs. USSR, US vs. PRC, USSR vs. PRC in this world there are 25 lines of friction. So the chances of a nuclear exchange are massively higher.
6. It is a zero sum game so why don't various sides with a lot in common (USSR and PRC), (UK and USA), (Third Reich and PRC (not a threat to each other and both neighbouring the Commonwealth and the USSR)), gang up to reduce the no. of players, the threat of nuclear annihilation is bound to help but you have a lot more potential for two crazed nutjob's who don't care to get their fingers on the big red button.

Anyway as the above points point out it is quite difficult but I think this is the most plausible way to have a five sided Cold War.

Edit: Four sided is a lot easier simply merge the Commonwealth and the USA into the Allies and voila a lot more plausible though it still has a few flaws (PRC and USSR not finding common cause for one.)

I really think that a six sided Cold War with all sides fitting the superpower description (large nuclear arsenal, strong conventional forces (whether due to sheer manpower (PRC), high tech (USA), or a mix (USSR)), with an economy big enough to maintain such capabilities without being on a permanent war footing (by which I mean Germany in 1938, not USSR in 1980.)
 
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I am just bumping this, to find out if anyone is interested in doing something a bit more detailed version.
 
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I hate to be a prick, but - the PRC is too underdeveloped, the Brit Commonwealth is too disjointed as are the French and Japanese empires. The US, SU, GGME and UK-France (the latter 2 being proposed but not actual unions) have concentrated, self sufficient in a tight spot and reasonably secure core power areas. The rest of the world is also too underdeveloped in virtually any 20thC setting. The industrial revolution made possible a world of superpowers, where they were the new paradigm and everyone else had to play a lesser role, thus small powers have to be allies or victims.
 
Well I think getting the French and Japanese Empire's to stay around is impossible, Japan can't have an empire with out taking on UK, France, US and China. France can't have a big Empire and be part of a German dominated Reich, so that's them out. While the PRC is seriously underdeveloped numbers have a beauty of their own and in a world where the US is isolationist, the Commonwealth is focused on Europe and holding itself together and France has gone down the toilet, it does have the potential to carve out a sphere of influence (South-East Asia (minus Burma (Commonwealth), Korea, maybe even Indonesia.) and while it isn't going to be able to match the other superpowers economically too underdeveloped that many conscripts coupled with a nuclear program which it could manage could push it into the superpower league. I agree the UK commonwealth is disjointed and the only way it can hold together an outside threat and thankfully there is one. With a surviving Nazi Germany, USSR and PRC most of the Commonwealth would get gobbled up pretty quickly if it didn't stay together (better hang together or by God we'll hang seperately)
 
Are we looking at the present day? There doesn't seem to be enough power and wealth in the world to support that many first rank powers, especially with the US hogging about 1/3 of all world wealth and about 1/2 of its power.

It's not like the world's wealth and power exists in a pile somewhere and the US cleverly stole them away. These things are created by nations, and there's no reason for the Chinese (see Hendryk), Russians, Japanese, etc. to do rather better than OTL in creating wealth and power, given PODs going back to 1900.

Bruce
 
Maybe a cold war between the different military alliances was possibly if the UK and the USA weren’t members of more than one alliance. So we would have NATO, Bagdad Pact, Warsaw Pact and SEATO. The POD would be late 1950s.
 
and there's no reason for the Chinese (see Hendryk), Russians, Japanese, etc. to do rather better than OTL in creating wealth and power, given PODs going back to 1900.

Bruce


D'oh. _Not_ do better, I think.

That being said, although I don't find the notion of three or more Superpowers and near-Superpowers existing simultaneously as particularly impossible, with post-1900 PODs you begin to get a problem with more than three superpowers: an ideology shortage. Once you have Fascists and Communists, what other ideologies can you have which can inspire the existential fear and hatered of OTLs Cold War?

I mean, the US might have it's squabbles and disagreements with Authoritarian Imperial China or Anti-Racist But Snobby Federated Commonwealth, but they are unlikely to inspire a race to nuclear doomsday. They're likelier to join forces vs the totalitarianisms. (Of course, you can get Communists vs Communists, as OTL, but getting two Red Superpowers is going to be tricky, and it's hard to keep them from forming an alliance of convenience with the Fascists or Democracies or Authoritarianisms....and given the ideological sogginess of Fascism, it's hard to get ideologically competing Fascisms unless they're right net door to eachother and perceived as a military threat...).

More briefly: I see it as rather difficult to get with post 1900 PODs a multipolar Cold War with more than three sides, unless we can find a new ideology hostile to Communism, Fascism, and more-or-less democratic capitalism. Religious fundamentalism could work, but it's hard to see a religious fundamentalist superpower arising in the 20th century (back, Caliphate-fans! Back!).

(Well, there's always the US, but that's future history. :D)

Bruce
 
Would it be possible to have, somehow, a USSR that still manages to hang on to survival, and a China which makes the same reforms as now, thus being quite at odds with more traditional communism? We might just have an Islamo-extremist faction arising in the meantime... or not.

All very noobish and probably requiring huge amounts of handwavium, 'tis true.
 
Allies?
Who is allies?
The US and....err...France?
Thats unlikely.

A problem with adding Britain in as a third power is we're just so close to America. Even if both nations remain very powerful their interests are just too similar and overlapping, Americans have interest in British companies and vice-versa. You would need to make one of them go 'evil' somehow but...thats a whole other can of worms.
Any competition between the two would tend to be rather friendly. Sure maybe there would be harsh words sometimes and mutual dislike but far more US-France in the freedom fries days than a actual cold war.

I suppose the best bet is:
USA-Soviet Union-Japanese Empire (having not outright invaded China to such a extent)
China is too far behind until very recent times. India too. And they're too big to speed up their advance too much.

Or perhaps if you want to go further back you could make a South American country actually come good with a dictatorship.

The dictatorship is a key factor you need. You can only have one democratic side or else they will just band together.
 
I don't think you need ideology to sustain a multi-power cold war, simple rivalry can do that well enough.

Also, Britain can't sustain superpower status in wartime, it is too vulnerable to sea denial and immediately goes into survival mode the minute a uboat puts to sea.
 
I didn't want to make another thread for this question, but which Three-Way Cold War is more interesting to you,

NATO. vs. USSR vs. PRC
+ real-world basis
+ East vs. West
- in the real-world, China wasn't much of a true contender for the third side
- communism vs. communism could be boring for some

or

Allies vs. Axis vs. Comintern
+ Hearts of Iron 2 basis
+ has fascism and communism, oh my
- not much real-world basis; it was inevitable that two would gang up on one
- the above is probably because Russia is right next to fascist-controlled Europe- at least China and Russia are separated by Siberia

All of this is ignoring things like a cohesive Non-Aligned Movement or a Japanese Empire doing its own thing.
 
Hmm, haven't seen this thread in a while...

OK, I too think you can have a Cold War without much ideology. Just look at, for instance, the imperial rivalries between Britain and Russia in the C19th, primarily in Afghanistan. Was there much ideology involved there? Or at Fashoda?
 
The problem with Facists in a cold war is that it would become a hot war. The facists hate the communists so much, and since violent expansionism is in the Doctrine of Facism, that I think war would break out. If the Facist countries had joiend together and really successfully aided other sprouting facist regimes, I suppose you could have Germany, Italy, Spain, and Argentina maybe.

And I don't know the extent of aid China gave to other regimes, and how much that could of been increased to create a real third bloc. I think the Russia-China-USA cold war is more plausible, but the Facists-Communits-Democracies is more interesting.
 
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