AH Challenge: The Gladiator TL

[B_Munro]

Greetings and salutations.

Your mission, if you accept it, is to create a TL which by 2066 leads to the situation as in the Turtledove book ( https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=64775 ): a Soviet-dominated globe in which the US is the Soviet Union's whipping-boy. (The book is set ~2096, but the situation had clearly been in place for a while).

According to the brief mentions of historical events in the book, this apparently occured due to the US losing it's Manly Resolve [1]. This strikes me as bit...poorly...explained, although a. probably acceptable to some right-wing readers [2] and b. perhaps not accurate at all, since it is actually "official" Soviet history and may be as reliable as the narrative of the Oceanian-Eurasian conflict.

So, with PODs after, say, 1950, you have 116 years to work with. Avoid any large (although limited is ok) nuclear wars. To make things easier, multiple PODs are allowable, although no more than one can be low-probability.

BTW, if your solution is "cowardly Democrat president loses nerve and surrenders to the Soviets", I shall do my darndest to crawl through the computer screen and eviscerate you with my teeth. (especially if it's Carter or one of the Later Kennedies). Just a heads up.

Bruce

P.S. - and how will we know when the challenge has been met? Well, let's say when Ian and oh, let's see, Faeelin, Hendryk, and Carlton Bach can look at the TL and not break into gusts of derisive laughter.


[1] Possibly due to a hippie and gaysexual takeover.

[2] First, that WWII parody story with Roosevelt as Bush. Now a commieworld arising from stale 1970's "loss of US resolve" cliches. Is T* reaching out to the right-wing reader? Is a collaboration with John Ringo in the works? (And yes, I'm aware he's no right-winger himself. But mans gotta go where the money is).

 

[Faeelin]

P.S. - and how will we know when the challenge has been met? Well, let's say when Ian and oh, let's see, Faeelin, Hendryk, and Carlton Bach can look at the TL and not break into gusts of derisive laughter.

Should I be honored or annoyed to be included in such a... renowned group?

Umm.

I think the key is the US.

Kennedy blinks during the missile crisis; the Communists get nukes on Cuba. Later, Republicans take over, on a hawk platform, and try to take out the island. The USSR ducks out, but Cuba gets off a nuke, pasting Miami.

So, the US is more jittery and has been harmed. This culminates in a harsher Vietnam War, which ultimately spreads to China.

Umm. Can we make the Civil Rights movement more violent as well?

 

[B_Munro]

Should I be honored or annoyed to be included in such a... renowned group?

Just a random selection of that category I call "posters whose stuff I keep an eye out for, since they usually aren't talking through their hats." Apologies if the categorization annoys you.

Bruce

 

[Faeelin]

Just a random selection of that category I call "posters whose stuff I keep an eye out for, since they usually aren't talking through their hats." Apologies if the categorization annoys you.

Bruce

Oh, not it all. I just thought it was amusing.

 

[Paul Spring]

BTW, if your solution is "cowardly Democrat president loses nerve and surrenders to the Soviets", I shall do my darndest to crawl through the computer screen and eviscerate you with my teeth. (especially if it's Carter or one of the Later Kennedies). Just a heads up.

What's the point in making a timeline challenge if you are only interested in one type of answer (presumably one that conforms to your political beliefs)?

 

[Faeelin]

What's the point in making a timeline challenge if you are only interested in one type of answer (presumably one that conforms to your political beliefs)?

You're getting good at this.

 

[B_Munro]

What's the point in making a timeline challenge if you are only interested in one type of answer (presumably one that conforms to your political beliefs)?

Oh, I'm open to all sorts of answers. Heck, if you can _plausibly_ come up with a TL in which a Democrat surrenders to the Soviets, go for it.

I'm just not interested in attacks on the eeevil left and democrats masquerading as AH, which have a way of showing up when the discussion turns to Soviet Victory. (I'd also be uninterested in left-wing fantasy, but I seriously doubt anyone is going to post a scenario about the oppressed US proletariat rising up and overthrowing the capitalist bossess, only to be betrayed by the Soviet Deviationists.) [1]

Bruce

[1] Actually, this might be worth reading, for sheer crack value.

 

[alt_historian]

Just a random selection of that category I call "posters whose stuff I keep an eye out for, since they usually aren't talking through their hats." Apologies if the categorization annoys you.

Bruce

This has always interested me. By 'this', I mean the thread start, but also I'd like to know: how exactly does one talk through their hat? a) Wouldn't it be muffled? b) I don't have a hat... except a warm, winter beanie...

 

[carlton_bach]

Stucxk at home with a freshly operated right hand, I umfortunately can only give you limited input, if undivided attention (typing hurts)

I think this scenario needs near-ASB events simply because the USA would have to do nearly everything wrong. They hold all the cards in this game. But for ideas

- USSR needs different economic approach. See NEP, recent thread on export of consumer goods and my 'Kirov' TL's 'Mineral Kolkhoz' concept. With more direct accountability and competitive pressure, thimngs can go righter.

- USA needs fewer allies, less global prosperity. Prosperity gap is secret of US success, Communist failure in Europe. Maybe no or limited Marshall aid? No aid to former Axis powers at all, aid to others conditional on decolonisation? Mass starvation in Germany, Austria, Italy into the 50s, hostile GB and F, NL, Belgium don't take US aid. Japan remains dirt poor.

- This creates ill will among Allies, Eureopean states more often oppose USA in foreign policy.

- same time decolonisation policy goes wrong thru blind anticommunism as per OTL

- postwar boom ends in fifties due to fewer markets for US goods

- USSR buys more euro goods, pays in commodities

- GB, F get own nuclear umbrella

- USA lose Korea, bad feeling with GB, Japan.

- by 1960s, Europe increasingly 'Finlandised', but more independent, dreams of 'great power status' in shade of superpowers.

- US internal policy much more right-wing & repressive, Jim Crow & unionbusting prevail

- 'counterculture' more violent, more disruptive

- Soviets support black activists, build up terror cells

- no Civil Rights, no beacon of democracy function fort US (instead maybe world looks to Britain or France for similar development?). Much less intl prestige (do not underestimate what MLK did for America in world's eyes)

- NATO always smaller (no Italy, W. Germany, Turkey, Greece) breaks down after US force renegotiation to extend treaty obligations to SE Asia

- More cautious and less doctrinaire Soviet leader5ship felt to be less threat.

- Energy crisis hits US hard, euros less because fewer cars, more dependence on Soviet oil & gas (earlier developed)

- following defeat in Viet Nam, US hardline discredited. Widespread social reform, racial equality measures felt to vindicate Soviet stance. US troops withdraw from most overseas areas.

- USA is now still prosperous, but friendless and with limited influence. Few firm allies, those mostly embarrassing (SA, Israel, Pahlavi Iran, Guatemala)

- USSR starts charm offensive, much influence in Third World, Europe

- In 80s, USA go back to hard line, economic fallout squelches recovery of market. Lose several confrontations with USSR in proxy. Strong sense of defeat coupled with angry pride and blaming the 'other' (black, left wingers, euros, asians, latinos)

USA in 1990s is as troubled as USSR, but has greater sense of defeat while Moscow can rely on America-kicking to boost natl. ego. Euros & SE Asia economic winners of the conflict, Arab world less so. Less prosperity all around.

 

[B_Munro]

Just trying to get this thread going again...

perhaps a post-1950 POD is getting a bit late in the game: I'm sure that many posters could spin superior scenarios for the USSR with PODs going back to the 1920's, but by 1950 a great many of the elements of OTL's Cold War were in place (a US nuclear lead and US occupied western Europe, the Marshall Plan, the foundations of the US and European economic boom were being laid)...and of course, the USSR was in the straightjacket that Stalin had put it into.

The trouble is that the earliest POD mentioned in the book is the Cuban missile crisis, and the nature of Italian Society in the book implies a USSR socially and economically rather similar to OTL's. Which rather narrows the range of possibilities for the USSR, and seems to put most of the work for _losing_ on the USA.

The real stumper is how we get the US to _surrender_ to the USSR: a closed society such as the USSR is unlikely to develop enough of a technological lead to develop a vastly superior antimissile system, and a successful "first strike" situation is unlikely. [1] Indeed, if things go badly enough in the US that some sort of far left takeover occurs (and given US history, I'd argue the US going *fascist is much likelier), we just end up with the US as the Soviet Union's principal competitor for leadership of the world Socialist revolution. [2]

Side thought re surviving USSR's - the USSR has a fundamental problem in that it's economic system is crap, but it's ideology demands that it economically outperform or at least keep from falling further behind the west. If the economy is not reformed, eventual disaster or at least crippling is inevitable: but since the only known method of reform is in the direction of capitalism, reform undermines the USSR's ideological basis. For without Communism, what is the USSR but the Russian Empire? And most Russians weren't all that interested in Empire: indeed, many late Soviet Russians thought of central Asians and such as corrupt fiefdoms picking their pocket for subsidies. Obstacles to that Good Life that would surely follow the end of dictatorship and the establishment of a Normal Country.

Contrast China: China _is_ the Chinese Empire, and since the various peoples who consider themselves "Chinese" make up over 93% of the population, all the Tibetans and Uighurs and such can do is suck it up. Chinese nationalism works just fine to hold the other bits of the country down, and there's enough surplus population to swamp minorities in immigrants - hardly the situation in late Soviet Central Asia, although they came close in Latvia and Estonia.

Consider the AH stalwart, the Surviving Nazi Reich: it's ideologically all about imposing rule on others by force: economics and political organization (for Germans) is optional. And _ending_ racist dictatorship automatically means the breakup of the Empire (something Gorbachev doesn't seem to have seen very clearly re the Communist dictatorship) and the emergence of new nations which will almost automatically be bitter enemies and gladly cut every throat in Germany. So they have stronger incentives to hold things together, and a wider range of action (well, they're stuck with ruling over multitudes of very unhappy peoples, which may outweigh the advantages in the long run).

So, long-surviving USSR: probably screwed economically if it stays hardline communist, but undermined ideologically if it reforms: unable to find a real justification for it's rule if the economics are unworkable. It seems that to survive over the long run, the USSR _needs_ an all-Communist world, so embarrasing alternatives can not be seen, and any economic reforms can be explained away as another evolution in the direction of "true Communism" [3]: which leaves us where we started: how do we get the global triumph of Communism?

Bruce

[1] Admittedly, my only stab at a "USSR wins" scenario involved a nuclear first strike, but that was in a TL in which the US stayed neutral in WWII and didn't get anything like OTL's Manhattan project, and the victorious USSR got _all_ the Nazi rocket scientists...

[2] Hmm - 2084?

[3] The Chinese tried something like this at first when the reforms started, but I doubt anyone has taken that line seriously for a loooong time.

 

[Snarf]

Just finished reading the book last week. The two POD's they mention explicitly are the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. The US blinks during the Cuban crisis and capitulates to allowing Soviet missiles in Cuba to balance US missiles in Turkey. The follow-up to this was the US leaving Vietnam in 1968 instead of 1972. But then again, we are witnessing in the book a high school history class heavily influenced by propaganda, not a deep scholarly treatment of the issue.

The only way I could see either scenario happening is with completely different US leadership in the 1960's. Neither Kennedy nor Nixon (if Nixon winning in 1960 was the real POD) would have allowed the Soviets to base missiles so close to the US. The missiles that were removed from Turkey were obsolete models due to be mothballed in any case, so the US lost nothing in the deal that got the missiles out of Cuba. So perhaps the real POD was someone less astute (at least vis a vis the Soviets) than either Kennedy or Nixon gaining the US presidency in 1960.

1968 is a little more of a problem: it's possible that either Kennedy (if he'd survived) or Nixon (if he'd won in 1960) would have been reelected in 1964 on a platform of disengaging in Vietnam by the end of their term. I don't see any of the other likely candidates (Goldwater, LBJ) doing anything else but playing the Vietnam hand to the bitter end. Nixon would be easist: move his 1968 term back four years. Perhaps Nixon ran in 1964 and defeated Kennedy (or whoever) on a platform of ending US involvement in a failed intervention.

Nixon, being Nixon, would still try the same shennanigans that brought him down in OTL but during a much more unstable period in the nation's history (antiwar protests, civil rights movement still underway and perhaps being covertly aided by the USSR). If Nixon has a full two terms in the 1960's, he was hardly the right person to deal with the civil unrest the USA was experiencing at the time. Watergate in 1968 instead of 1972 would have been really, really ugly, particularly if Nixon's loyalists had been more aggressive with their damage control, and probably would have ramped up pro-Soviet sentiment amongst the activist segment of the Baby Boomer generation.

Once these pro-Soviet Boomers grow up, they are more likely to make more concessions to the USSR to the point that the USA becomes a paper tiger (it was in danger of doing so during the 1970's when US military power and international prestige were at a post-WWII low; if anything the Iranian revolution did the US a favor by reviving strong nationalist sentiment).

I've noticed in HT's book that Leonid Brezhnev is not mentioned. This seems a strange omission as (at least in the USSR we know) only Stalin served as Premier longer and Brezhnev was on his way to developing his own personality cult when he died. He was probably the most competent of the post-Stalin Soviet leaders but someone with an even harder line might have been able to push the US and its allies hard enough that NATO would fall apart during the 1970's. A stronger Soviet leader (or even just Brezhnev playing his hand differently) combined with weaker or more indecisive American leadership (from whichever party) means that the 1980's are exactly the reverse of OTL: a strengthening of Soviet influence at the expense of American influence.

 

[Ivan Druzhkov]

This is a pretty damn tricky one to work out. I think that the POD might have to go all the way back to the late 1940s, back when American policy vis a vis the Soviet Union was still being formed. Unfortunately, the only way I can think of altering the period so that the Truman administration might not consider taking a hard line against the Soviets would be by allowing the occupied Eastern European states to have free elections on a permanent basis, and for the support of communist parties and insurgency movements in Greece, Italy, and France to be curtailed. Of course, I can't really see Stalin actually doing that.

Of course, I do have my share of promising ideas on what could make such a scenario work. I keep thinking that a Robert Taft presidency, with its combination of isolationism and hardline response to Soviet expansion, might be able to damage the United States' position in the world at this critical time. Taking a page from Superman: Red Son, it might be possible to break NATO by having some horrendous accident occur in Europe as a result of American bungling. In the comic book, the accident was the destruction of the British Parliament (and the presumable slaughter of the entire British government) as collateral damage in a commie Superman/American Bizarro fistfight. In a more realistic TL, I think a nuclear detonation in an urban area would do nicely.

Incidentally, Turtledove's novel mentioned that a number of "popular front" movements containing pro-Soviet communists were formed in Europe during the 1970s, allowing Soviet power to tentacle its way into the continent. Overall, the weirdest thing I find about the book is that the victory of communism was bloodless (at least, before the counter-revolutionaries were sent "back east"). I could buy a WW3 in Europe where the U.S. loses its nerve and doesn't fire the nukes, but entirely through passive methods? That's too much to swallow.

 

[MarkWhittington]

If you don't want liberal Democrat bungling, how about conservative Republican bungling. GOP opposition stymies the Marshall Plan in 1947. Subsequently Robert Taft gets elected on America First/Isolationist platform. Western Europe goes under. And of course Israel doesn't get recognized.

Things go down hill from there.

 

[Peter Cowan]

Going out on a limb here...No suppression of the Prague Spring...Western Europe assumes some form of democratic socialism within the Warsaw Pact is possible. Possibly the Paris riots lead to a more left-wing France rather than a De Gaulle presidency. Greater anti-US agitation over Vietnam..ultimately a break-up of NATO.
Soviet oil and gas reserves come online sooner than OTL...conveniently just before the Arab oil crisis but before the North Sea deposits are available. One advantage for the USSR is that a net inflow of cash makes its economic model look successful - no one starves even if the waiting list for TVs or cars is numbered in months rather than days. More cash available to prop up progessive regimes in the developing world. Maybe even buy up a US media outlet.

A more socialist world results in less trade..US economy collapses and a left-wing government subscribing to the apparently successful Soviet economic model. Maybe more multi-lateralist and willing to accept the UN as a final arbiter(UK, France, China, USSR bloc against a fairly compliant USA) and subsequently becoming a de facto world government.

OK, less one butterfly, more like swarms of the sods but, I think, not wholly unlikely.

 

[Snarf]

If you don't want liberal Democrat bungling, how about conservative Republican bungling. GOP opposition stymies the Marshall Plan in 1947. Subsequently Robert Taft gets elected on America First/Isolationist platform. Western Europe goes under. And of course Israel doesn't get recognized.

Things go down hill from there.

That's why I was thinking of Nixon, who proved himself more than adept at dealing with the Soviets and Chinese in OTL but was much less capable when it came to domestic politics. I could foresee Nixon completely misreading the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement and responding in such a way that American intellectual circles are even more alienated from the government than in OTL. The timing for the book's stated POD's works with this scenario too.

But Taft (or for that matter any potential GOP candidate in the late 1940's with the exception of MacArthur and Eisenhower) would be a good choice.

 

[Ivan Druzhkov]

We seem to have steered the thread onto the sandbar this topic usually gets stuck on: the Soviet Union needs market reforms, and the US is too powerful to do anything about. I’d like to drag us back into the water by seeing if we can develop a way the Soviets can win that plays to their strengths.

The main problem with these scenarios, it seems, is that people always assume that the only way that the Soviet Union can “win” is by competing on American terms. That is, the Soviet Union needs to maintain its military power, make its citizens safe and happy, keep the economy growing at a fever pitch, and be beloved the world over. Unfortunately, the Soviet Union could never do any of those things, and Gorbachev’s attempts to make the USSR act in that fashion simply destroyed the whole thing in less than a decade. With this in mind, it seems obvious to me that the only way for the Soviets to win the game is not to play. Put another way, it means that, rather than making the Soviet Union act like America, we need America to start acting like the Soviet Union.

To do this, I think that what the United States needs to do is to give in to the doom-and-gloom predictions of the 1970s and impose greater state controls on the economy. One of the recurring themes from that period that have come up in my readings is that quite a large number of educated people seemed to assume that the era of economic growth of any description was coming to an end, in the West as well as the East. This seems to have been a running theme with environmentalists, who invoked the spectre of overpopulation and global cooling as reasons to call a halt to “mindless expansion.” In the future, the state was expected to hoard a collection of shrinking resources and distribute them equally. You can see hints of what the future was to look like in the science fiction of the time, with polluted wastelands, decayed cities, and prosperity a forgotten dream.

Of course, as it turned out, such fears were misplaced. While harsh for many, the deregulation mania of the 1980s seems to have allowed economic growth to resume in Britain and the United States. Shortages became a thing of the past. Even cities were cleaned up, thanks to renewed investment and bigger police forces. However, as is so often the case, people can believe in nonsensical economic theories for quite some time. If such a system of increased regulation and state control was enacted in the United States, it would eventually become all the harder to break out of. Deregulation would be stymied by the presence of large centrally-directed enterprises that require federal funding to operate normally, and whose closure would mean the unemployment of thousands. More important to this scenario, it would take away many of the advantages that the United States enjoyed in the Cold War, while not conferring many advantages.
The real question, therefore, is how exactly such a system should come into being in the U.S. The gloomy economic predictions were hotly contested even then, and they do not seem to have had much influence on the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations. What is needed, in my opinion, is some type of catastrophe that would necessitate emergency measures to be instituted across the country, preferably one serious enough that even the most stringent measures can be implemented and not draw any comment. Perhaps if Three Mile Island suffered a major reactor leak, or even an all-out meltdown, and contaminated a large hunk of the Pennsylvania countryside, people might start decide that a period of austerity and control is needed in the wake of a hideous tragedy caused by “incompetent management” and a “ravenous consumer greed” for cheap power.

However, for the mortal wound to be delivered, I think that the US needs to lose Europe. Not only would that be an unrecoverable blow to American prestige, indeed, the American way of life as an example, but it would shut down the great trans-Atlantic system that sustains both American and European economic prosperity, and replace it with an isolated America that hawks its wares to the insolvent Third World, and a Europe that is slowly being locked into a colonial economic relationship with the Soviet Union, akin to what Eastern Europe underwent. However, discussing how a pro-Soviet communist victory could occur in Western Europe in the 1970s is beyond my knowledge. However, this blow combined with the system of economic autarky mentioned above, would be enough to drastically reduce American power the world over, as well as the power of those countries that rely on American markets to expand, thus giving the Soviet Union a little more room to flex its muscles. It’s not a victory for Moscow, but it could lead to one.

 

[Snarf]

To do this, I think that what the United States needs to do is to give in to the doom-and-gloom predictions of the 1970s and impose greater state controls on the economy. One of the recurring themes from that period that have come up in my readings is that quite a large number of educated people seemed to assume that the era of economic growth of any description was coming to an end, in the West as well as the East. This seems to have been a running theme with environmentalists, who invoked the spectre of overpopulation and global cooling as reasons to call a halt to “mindless expansion.” In the future, the state was expected to hoard a collection of shrinking resources and distribute them equally. You can see hints of what the future was to look like in the science fiction of the time, with polluted wastelands, decayed cities, and prosperity a forgotten dream.

One really easy way to deprive America of one of its major strengths would be to ramp up the Arab oil embargoes of the 1970's. Many of the Baathist regimes in the Middle East at the time were Soviet clients, and an oil embargo indirectly sponsored by the USSR and sustained over many years would bring the American economy to a standstill. There's no way enough oil could be brought in from Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, and surrounding countries fast enough to keep the US and continental Europe from sliding into another economic depression. And American military power during the 1970's would not have been up to a confrontation in the Middle East without abandoning NATO and South Korea/Japan (for that, you need Reagan's presidency to occur about eight years earlier and take exactly the same trajectory as OTL).

The 1970's were a period of rather weak leadership in OTL. Nixon's already got enough on his hands with Watergate and China and Ford doesn't have the political capital to cut deals that would end or mitigate the embargo. By the time Carter gets into office (if he does in this TL) the damage is already done and the 1976-80 presidency is a dead letter no matter who's in charge. Throw in a major disaster (TMI going much worse, or a major hurricane--Hurricane Allen's a good candidate--leaving behind Katrina-level damage would work, or the much-prophesied Big One, the 7.0+ earthquake that decimates Los Angeles and/or San Francisco. Or maybe all of the above.) Then the US government is stretched beyond its limit.

The intellectual environment in the 1970's was very strongly slanted toward the left, and political violence was already a factor in OTL. Make the situation more desperate and you could end up with pro-Soviet leadership in the US and western Europe. The Soviets win by playing the American game (if by proxy).