a third superpower during the cold war

Had to as it was heavily in debt to the US and wasn't letting the pound flow freely as a convertible currency. The US was able to exert immense influence. No ww2, no loss of Malaysia and its rubber during ww2, a different shorter ww2 or "Operation Robot" going ahead in 1952 and Britain could have told the US to sod off.
Yes but with all those changes, would their even be a cold war?
 
Rather than Nasserism/Ba'athism etc, could an Islamic Socialism become a significant thing?

Otl, I seem to recall that during the early days of the USSR, they initially supported an Islamic Communist movement.
Well what if they embraced that a lot further? Say greater Chaos in Turkey leads to a brutal civil war, Islamic Communists are supported by the USSR (might require an earlier POD for them to be there) and then are encouraged further by them, giving support for access to a warm water port.
 
After decades of shaky, unstable unity, the Union of Arab Republics is on the verge of collapse. The constituent republics are in open revolt against Cairo, and some (like Syria and Iraq) are in open combat with one another. Ethnic sepratists wreak havoc across the Middle East, and Shiite rebels raise hell in the Gulf. Reactionary Islamists seek a return to hardcore Sunni theology, and Soviet-supported far-leftists fight to spread communism. Wide-scale fighting breaks out across the Union, heralding the start of the Arab Civil War.
ethnic unions tend to get more stable as time goes on , see Germany and Italy . Given the success of Pan-Arabism in this TL and the large amount of oil ,a large scale civil war is unlikely and turn to far left or Islamism equally so.
 
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Rather than Nasserism/Ba'athism etc, could an Islamic Socialism become a significant thing?
An Islamic liberation ideology is possibly but it is unlikely to catch on or gain power in large areas of the Muslim world. Most likely places where it could gain power be in Africa and Iran
 
Japan, having better succes against China and snatching off French indochina, but not going to war with US. Post WW2 they support the entry of DOI, the Philippines, Burma, Australia into an EU like co-prosperity zone.
Might even snatch off a bit of Sibiria.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
Had to as it was heavily in debt to the US and wasn't letting the pound flow freely as a convertible currency. The US was able to exert immense influence. No ww2, no loss of Malaysia and its rubber during ww2, a different shorter ww2 or "Operation Robot" going ahead in 1952 and Britain could have told the US to sod off.

Or even going off the Gold Standard without going full-blown Keynesian. McKenna wanted to do it on a permanent basis and Horne and Runciman were prepared to consider it as a temporary measure (which would have been one of those "temporary" measures that continue on for seventy -odd years). So, if the Lloyd George coalition had hung on into the slump, if McKenna had accepted Baldwin's invitation to be chancellor, if the Liberals had been strong enough to demand a full blown coalition with McDonald or if the King had asked McKenna to become Chancellor of the National Government on patriotic grounds as he did Ramsay McDonald to stay on as PM....
Without going full-blown Keynesian, mass unemployment would persist, although with a slightly lower rate. The Gold standard was only the junior factor. The most important factors were the innate inefficiency and obsolescence of British heavy industries in the North, as well as industrial unrest and failing infrastructures, and these were market failures. So we need Yellow Book policies (Keynesian pump-priming was only a part of them) to tackle the root causes.

The City financiers, a strong interest group within the Tories, would not let a Tory PM or a Tory Cabinet to abandon Gold Standard until 1931, when it was clear than The Standard could not be kept.
Besides, the Tories were the only group that opposed railway nationalization during the 1920s, as even the Official Liberal Party committed to the cause. Churchill (Liberal) once said that the government must run the railway at loss to support industries. Besides, nationalizing railway would also allow greater development of national motorway system, which was never completed before ww2.

Launching Operation ROBOT would cause mass unemployment in the short-run and thus we need to butterfly away the horrible memories of the 1920s, which unlike the Depression was possible, to make it not a political suicide.
 
With a 1921 PoD, I can't see the Liberals hanging on long enough to implement any effective Keynesian policies, the Tories walked out of the coalition and formed a government the following year. Perhaps Churchill gets a quid pro quo on the railways in exchange for a compromise on the return to the gold standard.

Apart from the infrastructure upgrade, this would provide a model of government sponsored investment industry that could give full blown Keynesian policies a boost in credence for the left.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
With a 1921 PoD, I can't see the Liberals hanging on long enough to implement any effective Keynesian policies, the Tories walked out of the coalition and formed a government the following year. Perhaps Churchill gets a quid pro quo on the railways in exchange for a compromise on the return to the gold standard.

Apart from the infrastructure upgrade, this would provide a model of government sponsored investment industry that could give full blown Keynesian policies a boost in credence for the left.
Well, but the OP did not mention a specific POD so we can move it back to 1918.
 
An Islamic liberation ideology is possibly but it is unlikely to catch on or gain power in large areas of the Muslim world. Most likely places where it could gain power be in Africa and Iran
I was thinking more it getting support from the USSR early on, taking advantage of the chaos of WW2 and essentially annexing territories.
 
Without going full-blown Keynesian, mass unemployment would persist, although with a slightly lower rate. The Gold standard was only the junior factor. The most important factors were the innate inefficiency and obsolescence of British heavy industries in the North, as well as industrial unrest and failing infrastructures, and these were market failures. So we need Yellow Book policies (Keynesian pump-priming was only a part of them) to tackle the root causes.

The City financiers, a strong interest group within the Tories, would not let a Tory PM or a Tory Cabinet to abandon Gold Standard until 1931, when it was clear than The Standard could not be kept.
Besides, the Tories were the only group that opposed railway nationalization during the 1920s, as even the Official Liberal Party committed to the cause. Churchill (Liberal) once said that the government must run the railway at loss to support industries. Besides, nationalizing railway would also allow greater development of national motorway system, which was never completed before ww2.

Launching Operation ROBOT would cause mass unemployment in the short-run and thus we need to butterfly away the horrible memories of the 1920s, which unlike the Depression was possible, to make it not a political suicide.

I am not denying that the Gold Standard was not the only factor in British unemployment in the mid to late 1920s but, as someone said, Churchill managed to turn a downturn into a depression. The shipping companies couldn't afford to order new ships which didn't help modernise shipyards in the North (it is a bit hard to justify retooling with an empty order book) and the new electrical and electronic industries couldn't expand as quickly as they would have liked. And there would have been quite a bit less industrial unrest without shorter hours, pay-cuts, overtime bans and pay-offs so some of these factors are symptomatic of the Gold Standard policy rather than parallel drivers. Without it they would not have been nearly as significant. And, while the City financiers were a strong interest group, they didn't rule the party in 1924 and would have been susceptible (if not very happy) to the logic of "look we are trying to prevent a Bolshevik Revolution here" just after the National Strike.
Actually I suspect that nationalising the railways early would have discouraged greater development of national motorway system as the government would have had a strong fiscal incentive to minimise their annual losses.
ROBOT actually was proposed at the best possible time to coincide with the end of rationing and ability to start moving to filling pent up demand. Yes there would have been a lot of churn but at this time there was actually a labour shortage and immigrants were being encouraged to come in from the West Indies and Indian sub-continent. Lord Cherwell would normally have been right about large levels of unemployment buy in this case it would have only been very shortlived. There literally never was a better time to do it.
 
Yes but with all those changes, would their even be a cold war
Well if Britain had had one more aircraft carrier to send with Vice-Admiral Phillips' force or Britain had managed to deliver a Khalkin Gol when the Japanese tried to invade Burma and Malaya this wouldn't have changed the European military and geopolitical situation very much (might have freed up more British troops for European theatre and possibly delivered a smaller Warsaw Pact) but essentially we would still have had the Wallies facing off against the USSR in Europe somewhere. What we would have had would have been Malaysia's tin and rubber in British hands and a more solvent and less indebted Britain in 1945
 
I was thinking more it getting support from the USSR early on, taking advantage of the chaos of WW2 and essentially annexing territories.
If the Soviets are in control , they will put a standard communist party in . They will support an Islamic liberation movement unless they start making calls for uniting Muslim world which in case the Soviets will cut support due to paranoia about their Central Asian republics breaking away. But one issue is in places like the Arab world , Somalia and Turkey the dominant ideology is nationalism during the cold war and for places like Turkey and Indonesia the military will overthrow or crush any Islamic liberation movement .
 
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