AH Cliches: American Isolationism

kernals12

Banned
My specialty is "no world wars" and one thing people frequently claim is that without the world wars, America would be isolationist and not rise to great power status. I think this is incorrect. Before 1914, the US had the world's largest economy and had carved out a large empire in the Pacific and South America. Under the Presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, the US was a very prominent diplomatic arbiter, negotiating among other things, the peace treaty that ended the war between Russia and Japan. Americans thought themselves to be the shining light of freedom and modernity over the autocracies of Europe. The isolationism of the 1920s and 30s was in fact a backlash to Wilsonian Internationalism. The US was an ascendent world power before 1914 and likely would've achieved superpower status without any world wars.
 
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US isolationism was not a withdrawal from the world as some think it to be. It was an avoidance of alliances in Europe, and focusing on US interests. However there was a desire to make the western hemisphere more and more a US sphere of influence, US superiority in the pacific via-a-vis Japan, the "open door" in China and more. Military spending on the Navy (to guard the moats and offer selective power projection), the air forces (for similar reasons) was limited because of economic conditions, not so much "isolationism". Army spending was throttled as it was seen that the purpose of a large and modernized Army was to send large forces overseas, in support of some other country/ies interests. Absent the world wars with the "bankruptcy" of the British Empire, the crushing x2 of Germany (sure to be an economic power) and a different Russia IMHO the USA will not be the dominant superpower in the way it was OTL. It may be first among equals among the "great powers", but not head and shoulders above the rest.
 

kernals12

Banned
US isolationism was not a withdrawal from the world as some think it to be. It was an avoidance of alliances in Europe, and focusing on US interests. However there was a desire to make the western hemisphere more and more a US sphere of influence, US superiority in the pacific via-a-vis Japan, the "open door" in China and more. Military spending on the Navy (to guard the moats and offer selective power projection), the air forces (for similar reasons) was limited because of economic conditions, not so much "isolationism". Army spending was throttled as it was seen that the purpose of a large and modernized Army was to send large forces overseas, in support of some other country/ies interests. Absent the world wars with the "bankruptcy" of the British Empire, the crushing x2 of Germany (sure to be an economic power) and a different Russia IMHO the USA will not be the dominant superpower in the way it was OTL. It may be first among equals among the "great powers", but not head and shoulders above the rest.
Britain would almost certainly lose her colonies, just later than IOTL. Colonialism would be thrown into the ash bin of history just like slavery was.
 
Even without WW1 the US was slowly developing more military power and using it in Latin America. The Army and NG was reorganised into permanent divisions and sorted out its mobilisation procedures while the USMC developed the Advanced Base brigade concept and the Navy was getting new battleships regularly although not properly backed by destroyers and cruisers.
 
A US with 50-60% less military spending during the 20th/21st century, and no costly World Wars and other conflicts like Korea and Vietnam, would be a very interesting place. With that level of spending, it could maintain the largest military in the world (challenged only by maybe Russia until the 21st century) yet have billions more to spend on other concerns. I bet there'd be universal health care and much stronger social programs in this America.

The US would undisputably be a superpower, given it would have some level of hemispheric domination over Latin America and of course Canada and the Caribbean.
 

kernals12

Banned
A US with 50-60% less military spending during the 20th/21st century, and no costly World Wars and other conflicts like Korea and Vietnam, would be a very interesting place. With that level of spending, it could maintain the largest military in the world (challenged only by maybe Russia until the 21st century) yet have billions more to spend on other concerns. I bet there'd be universal health care and much stronger social programs in this America.

The US would undisputably be a superpower, given it would have some level of hemispheric domination over Latin America and of course Canada and the Caribbean.
The US government already spends more on healthcare per person than most countries that have universal healthcare.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Britain would almost certainly lose her colonies, just later than IOTL. Colonialism would be thrown into the ash bin of history just like slavery was.

Yes it would lose colonies, but without the circumstances of the 20th century, it could remain a credible alliance leader, and certainly live as a strategically independent power without specific guarantees from any other great power.

Ditto for Germany and France and Japan I'd think.
 
Yes it would lose colonies, but without the circumstances of the 20th century, it could remain a credible alliance leader, and certainly live as a strategically independent power without specific guarantees from any other great power.

Ditto for Germany and France and Japan I'd think.

Plus No Bretton-Woods, no european massive debt towards the american due to the wars, no 50's great prosperity due to the rest of the world being ravaged, No UK basically gifting a lot of tech at the americans in WW1, a lot less braind drain favorable to the USA and slower civil rights progression.
 

kernals12

Banned
Plus No Bretton-Woods, no european massive debt towards the american due to the wars, no 50's great prosperity due to the rest of the world being ravaged, No UK basically gifting a lot of tech at the americans in WW1, a lot less braind drain favorable to the USA and slower civil rights progression.
It takes an extreme ignorance of economics to believe that America was better off because the rest of the world was in ruins.
 
It takes an extreme ignorance of economics to believe that America was better off because the rest of the world was in ruins.

Sorry but where you think the fabulous 50's come from? All the previous great industrial power were ravaged and the US were the only game in town; if you note the first post-war serious trouble started once the economies of Western Europe and Japan started again
 

kernals12

Banned
Sorry but where you think the fabulous 50's come from? All the previous great industrial power were ravaged and the US were the only game in town; if you note the first post-war serious trouble started once the economies of Western Europe and Japan started again
It came because we got new technology to produce more with a given amount of labor thereby raising our standard of living, which still at the time was roughly 1/3 of what it is today. Western Europe and Japan had restarted by 1950 and also prospered. The economy is not a zero sum game.
 
The US government already spends more on healthcare per person than most countries that have universal healthcare.

If we cut military spending by half during the Cold War, we would be decently behind the Soviets (but good luck getting through the supercarriers, SSBNs, and nuclear arsenal) and we'd have an extra hundred billion dollars to figure out what to do with. Western Europe would probably significantly increase their defense budgets to pick up the slack. Nowadays cutting military spending by half (it's about 611.2 billion in 2016, so it would be 305.6 billion) would leave us with over 300 billion dollars to do something with.

And a multipolar world only makes things better, given the lack of the USSR being our only real rival. Sure, Russia would still be very strong by the middle of the century (no World Wars, no Stalinism), but there's major powers to check the Russians so the US does not need to devote so much effort into massive buildups of the military. And as far as the US is concerned, as long as the Russians stay the hell out of the Americas, they aren't much more of a problem than any other major power might be. No USSR means the Russians don't have much of a need to spend huge amounts of money backing up places like Cuba or funding guerilla movements, and the US thus doesn't have the need to counter them (although we'd still have covert involvement in Latin America, no doubt). Germany also might be a rival (and the only credible one aside from Russia), but I couldn't imagine them being any worse than the USSR was, and probably a lot less so since there isn't the ideological factor the USSR had and Wilhelm II's Germany is likely to democratise over time and not go for the brazen foreign policy he had (and cut military spending to some degree too).
 

kernals12

Banned
If we cut military spending by half during the Cold War, we would be decently behind the Soviets (but good luck getting through the supercarriers, SSBNs, and nuclear arsenal) and we'd have an extra hundred billion dollars to figure out what to do with. Western Europe would probably significantly increase their defense budgets to pick up the slack. Nowadays cutting military spending by half (it's about 611.2 billion in 2016, so it would be 305.6 billion) would leave us with over 300 billion dollars to do something with.

And a multipolar world only makes things better, given the lack of the USSR being our only real rival. Sure, Russia would still be very strong by the middle of the century (no World Wars, no Stalinism), but there's major powers to check the Russians so the US does not need to devote so much effort into massive buildups of the military. And as far as the US is concerned, as long as the Russians stay the hell out of the Americas, they aren't much more of a problem than any other major power might be. No USSR means the Russians don't have much of a need to spend huge amounts of money backing up places like Cuba or funding guerilla movements, and the US thus doesn't have the need to counter them (although we'd still have covert involvement in Latin America, no doubt). Germany also might be a rival (and the only credible one aside from Russia), but I couldn't imagine them being any worse than the USSR was, and probably a lot less so since there isn't the ideological factor the USSR had and Wilhelm II's Germany is likely to democratise over time and not go for the brazen foreign policy he had (and cut military spending to some degree too).
I think Japan would replace the Soviet Union as our mortal enemy.
 

kernals12

Banned
If they were still decently into imperialism and still had a massive economic boom (even less than OTL's), then that's a possibility.
I don't see why they need an economic boom above their prewar level of relative gdp per capita (about 1/3 of the US). The Soviet Union was always much poorer than the US and still was a formidable rival.
 
If we cut military spending by half during the Cold War, we would be decently behind the Soviets (but good luck getting through the supercarriers, SSBNs, and nuclear arsenal) and we'd have an extra hundred billion dollars to figure out what to do with. Western Europe would probably significantly increase their defense budgets to pick up the slack. Nowadays cutting military spending by half (it's about 611.2 billion in 2016, so it would be 305.6 billion) would leave us with over 300 billion dollars to do something with.

And a multipolar world only makes things better, given the lack of the USSR being our only real rival. Sure, Russia would still be very strong by the middle of the century (no World Wars, no Stalinism), but there's major powers to check the Russians so the US does not need to devote so much effort into massive buildups of the military. And as far as the US is concerned, as long as the Russians stay the hell out of the Americas, they aren't much more of a problem than any other major power might be. No USSR means the Russians don't have much of a need to spend huge amounts of money backing up places like Cuba or funding guerilla movements, and the US thus doesn't have the need to counter them (although we'd still have covert involvement in Latin America, no doubt). Germany also might be a rival (and the only credible one aside from Russia), but I couldn't imagine them being any worse than the USSR was, and probably a lot less so since there isn't the ideological factor the USSR had and Wilhelm II's Germany is likely to democratise over time and not go for the brazen foreign policy he had (and cut military spending to some degree too).

I'm just gonna say the US military budaget was higher during the coldwar not lower currently the US spends somewhere around 3% of its GDP on the DoD back in the coldwar that number avg arounded 4-8% IIRC
 
It came because we got new technology to produce more with a given amount of labor thereby raising our standard of living, which still at the time was roughly 1/3 of what it is today. Western Europe and Japan had restarted by 1950 and also prospered. The economy is not a zero sum game.

Yes you can produce more, but you also need a very important thing aka client otherwise you are in a very bad place economically speaking; enter the already indebted western european nation and the Marshall Plan; and while the standard of living was a third of today, it was a massive boom for the population of the time, there were a massive influx of people that for the first time in their family history had the mean to go to university, family bought their home in greater numbers.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
I'm just gonna say the US military budaget was higher during the coldwar not lower currently the US spends somewhere around 3% of its GDP on the DoD back in the coldwar that number avg arounded 4-8% IIRC

I wonder how the percentage of GDP spent on the military for the 17 years from 1974 to 1991, compares with the percentage of GDP spent on the military from the years 2001 to 2018, IF you count not just the base budget but all the supplementals for overseas operations.
 

kernals12

Banned
I wonder how the percentage of GDP spent on the military for the 17 years from 1974 to 1991, compares with the percentage of GDP spent on the military from the years 2001 to 2018, IF you count not just the base budget but all the supplementals for overseas operations.
Here you go
Screen Shot 2018-03-23 at 10.34.35 PM.png
 
I don't see why they need an economic boom above their prewar level of relative gdp per capita (about 1/3 of the US). The Soviet Union was always much poorer than the US and still was a formidable rival.

Only if they somehow were able to keep Korea as a colony. Let's assume a population of 150 million (no Pacific War, Taiwan, Karafuto, and South Pacific Mandate still part of Japan). That would give an GDP of about 3 trillion USD, between OTL France and Germany but significantly less than modern Japan. They'd need to spend over 10% of their GDP on the military to match US spending, and they're still resource poor. Compare that to the USSR with a significantly larger population and massive amounts of resources. The main advantage is that they can afford to build up a large navy as unlike the USSR, Japan is naturally a naval power.

If they somehow were able to keep Korea, though, then they'd be a lot more of a threat, given Korea adds a significant amount of people and more importantly, a massive amount of resources.
 
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