I find it's less the Soviets as a sort of evil omnicidal entity and more that the two countries just have such a virulently opposed outlook on the world that they were bound to clash over it's fate in the post-war. The Soviets had the inheritance of Tsarist Russia's old geopolitical position that propelled it's expansion coupled with the ideological doctrine of communism, which held that true cooperation with non-Communist states was impossible. This gave them a foreign policy based on brutal realpolitik infused with the strange "internationalist-nationalist" that Leninist and Stalinist thought expounded: the capitalists would invariably seek to destroy the Soviet Union, as the bastion of the workers revolution whose destruction would mean a major setback for said revolution the security of the USSR must be held above everything else, security was a zero-sum game which could only come to the Soviet Union at the expense of others, foreign policy can only be based on objective factors (relative military-industrial strength and situation) between countries, the exposed borders of the USSR can only be secured by buffers, etc. etc. Morality simply doesn't enter into it. Even all the other contenders for power prior too and after Stalin, Khruschev included, bought into these ideas to some degree or another.

For it's part, the US's ideological view was influenced by it's own geopolitical position and internal history, which combined a homeland that could not actually be challenged with great prosperity and great regard for individual rights. This resulted in an highly individualistic and moralistic view of international relations which tended to view foreign policy through a prism of "free and not free" and "good vs evil" that was uncomfortable with focusing, or even acknowledging, large-scale movements and instead focused on national leaders to make an ally or enemy out of, a view which believed that security and global peace could be based on cooperation of national leaders working together to create world orders and arbitrate disputes. This was a policy that frequently clashed with the uncomfortable reality of a global or regional situation, as the entire history of US foreign policy from WW1 on can attest, but it even in it's most realpolitik moments the US sought to infuse it into how it conducted itself in the world... even if it was flagrantly immoral actions in the pursuit of these moral goals (remember the saying about the path to hell?).

Such viewpoints in the two most powerful military superpowers was bound to create too much friction for actual cooperation to be possible.
I think you are oversimplifying the US's geopolitical ideology somewhat. During its early history the US remained aloof from European conflicts as Washington said "no entangling alliances". By the end of the 19th century you had politicians making arguments for conquering the Phillipines based on economics and strategic location alone without any moral appeal.

The whole post war history of the US and quite famously the machinations of the CIA show the US government did indeed look at things from a more cynical and imperial angle.

Thing is as Zbigniew Brezezinki noted empire is hard to sell to a democratic populace and so must be coated using appeals to morality and security.

As for the Soviet Union-I think by the fifties it was more interested in maintaining the status quo at least in Europe. If by some luck Western Europe experienced communist revolutions or unrest post war there is no guarantee that the USSR would benefit. After all what if France went Trotskyist or something? Better to maintain an uneasy status quo while seeking to check the Americans in the third world.
 

iVC

Donor
Wait do you have a source for this project?

First of all - the old good Atlantic charter to the extreme levels.
  1. there was to be global economic cooperation and advancement of social welfare;
  2. the participants would work for a world free of want and fear;
  3. there was to be disarmament of aggressor nations, AND a common disarmament after the war.
The second one - his Four Policemen plan.

The members of the Big Four, called the Four Powers during World War II, were the four major Allies of World War II: the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union and the Tridemist China. The United Nations envisioned by Roosevelt consisted of three branches: an executive branch comprising the Big Four, an enforcement branch composed of the same four great powers acting as the Four Policemen or Four Sheriffs, and an international assembly representing the member nations of the UN, which united the world's greatest capitalist state, the greatest communist state, the greatest colonial power and the greatest democratic state.

The Four Policemen would be responsible for keeping order within their spheres of influence: Britain in its empire and in Western Europe; the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and the central Eurasian landmass; China in East Asia and the Western Pacific; and the United States in the Western hemisphere. As a preventive measure against new wars, countries other than the Four Policemen were to be disarmed. Only the Four Policemen would be allowed to possess any weapons more powerful than a rifle. Other smaller nations, including France and Poland, would be required to disarm completely and be subject to inspections by the four. If the smaller ones threatened the international peace, “it could be blockaded and then if still recalcitrant, bombed.”

 
The 4 policeman idea is interesting, but I don't think Britain would be in for the long-haul, at least if it remains anything like Roosevelt imagined.

Britain was hardly in a position to serve as the guarantor of Western Europe and its vast Empire that was starting to come undone. Furthermore, given the immense cost of maintaining such an enterprise would probably pick demobilising and establishing the welfare state over being a world policeman. That's not even touching on the issues that decolonisation is going have on the plans.

Then there's the fact that France probably won't accept being relegated to a subservient position, especially under the British, though they might be more open to the idea if they the role of the guarantor of West Europe or maybe have the Franco-British Union work out.

China I don't see as being in a good position to take up the position of world policeman given the massive war damage and the return to civil war. If the Communists win that alienates the US who refused to recognise them as IOTL and if the KMT wins then China would have likely gone through an even worse beating than IOTL and by the time they were in a position to project power the geopolitics of the world would have probably made it impossible to get the whole world policeman with neatly delimited spheres of influence things. Permanently divided China probably wouldn't be in a position either. If the Communists and KMT could find some sort of compromise and power sharing agreement that might do the trick, but getting them to agree that would be difficult and probably not that stable.

tl;dr for a world policeman system to work it would have to be very different from what FDR imagined.
 
First of all - the old good Atlantic charter to the extreme levels.
  1. there was to be global economic cooperation and advancement of social welfare;
  2. the participants would work for a world free of want and fear;
  3. there was to be disarmament of aggressor nations, AND a common disarmament after the war.
The second one - his Four Policemen plan.

The members of the Big Four, called the Four Powers during World War II, were the four major Allies of World War II: the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union and the Tridemist China. The United Nations envisioned by Roosevelt consisted of three branches: an executive branch comprising the Big Four, an enforcement branch composed of the same four great powers acting as the Four Policemen or Four Sheriffs, and an international assembly representing the member nations of the UN, which united the world's greatest capitalist state, the greatest communist state, the greatest colonial power and the greatest democratic state.

The Four Policemen would be responsible for keeping order within their spheres of influence: Britain in its empire and in Western Europe; the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and the central Eurasian landmass; China in East Asia and the Western Pacific; and the United States in the Western hemisphere. As a preventive measure against new wars, countries other than the Four Policemen were to be disarmed. Only the Four Policemen would be allowed to possess any weapons more powerful than a rifle. Other smaller nations, including France and Poland, would be required to disarm completely and be subject to inspections by the four. If the smaller ones threatened the international peace, “it could be blockaded and then if still recalcitrant, bombed.”
That doesn't sound like a moral or sustainable arrangement at all.
 
I'm not sure this is possible with the mere existence of the USSR; it was built on revolution (with a repugnant ideology no doubt) and had intended to bring socialism outside its borders no matter what and that alone would bring conflict with its neighbors which would involve the UK and/or the USA. IMO, the best way to achieve this is to have the USSR collapse yet have the Third Reich still defeated shortly after; then the Allies along with a rump USSR that reforms into some Eurasian federation that completely ditches communism forms a world order in the form of a UN/NATO esque alliance to maintain world peace similar to the A4 from AANW.

"Supporting revolution" doesn't have to be aggressive though. Rather than the Soviets actively working to foment instability in foreign countries, it could instead mean the Soviets maintaining a policy of non-intervention in countries that had unrest, but once a successful leftist revolution happened naturally, the new regime would find a friend and ally in the Soviet Union.

Not to mention, the whole idea of "jumping from feudalism to socialism" was kinda tacked on to Marxism. It is within the realm of possibility that the USSR could, during the NEP period or the post-Stalin period go "OK, we've tried jumping straight to socialism and we're not sure this is for everyone" and then support capitalist development in the 3rd world (since that, in Marx's original theory, is the necessary precursor to socialism).

fasquardon
 
"Supporting revolution" doesn't have to be aggressive though. Rather than the Soviets actively working to foment instability in foreign countries, it could instead mean the Soviets maintaining a policy of non-intervention in countries that had unrest, but once a successful leftist revolution happened naturally, the new regime would find a friend and ally in the Soviet Union.

Not to mention, the whole idea of "jumping from feudalism to socialism" was kinda tacked on to Marxism. It is within the realm of possibility that the USSR could, during the NEP period or the post-Stalin period go "OK, we've tried jumping straight to socialism and we're not sure this is for everyone" and then support capitalist development in the 3rd world (since that, in Marx's original theory, is the necessary precursor to socialism).

fasquardon

Global Popular Front with the progressive American bourgeoisie and the impossibility of violent revolution in a post-nuclear weapon age. The Posadists are going to be furious.
 
In a no Cold War scenario could there be any other major world geopolitical struggles?

No Cold War presupposes a continued US-Soviet alliance. If the European colonial powers are reluctant to get to decolonising (unlikely in my opinion that ship had long-since sailed) you could see a struggle between them and the US-Soviet alliance over decolonisation.

I also imagine that there would be those who are concerned over the inevitable concentration of power in the hands of the US and USSR and would like to see a more multipolar world. Off the top of my head France and China (regardless of who comes out on top at the end of the Civil War) would both have issues with being forced into a subservient role in the new world order. Possibly also India and the Arab States too depending on how things work out.
 
In a no Cold War scenario could there be any other major world geopolitical struggles?

No Cold War presupposes a continued US-Soviet alliance. If the European colonial powers are reluctant to get to decolonising (unlikely in my opinion that ship had long-since sailed) you could see a struggle between them and the US-Soviet alliance over decolonisation.

I also imagine that there would be those who are concerned over the inevitable concentration of power in the hands of the US and USSR and would like to see a more multipolar world. Off the top of my head France and China (regardless of who comes out on top at the end of the Civil War) would both have issues with being forced into a subservient role in the new world order. Possibly also India and the Arab States too depending on how things work out.

Wouldn't those other scenarios just be Cold Wars?

Any geopolitical rivalry with nuclear armed powers who can't afford to directly confront each other would evolve an ideology, just as the Cold War led the West to minimize the differences between (say) French ideology and American ideology, or British ideology and Mexican ideology, if any country ended up being the enemy of the US, both the US and that enemy country would come up with an ideology to explain why they were special and different.

And just as in the Cold War, such a rivalry would spill over into the rest of the world (and the rest of the world would use that rivalry to try to exploit the two "superpowers"/"chumps"/"imperialist dogs" (all 3 terms applied to both the US and the Soviet Union in OTL).

fasquardon
 
Easy, socialist revolution in France and Germany post-WWI leads to global (or at least Eurasian) revolution. No WWII, maybe a "Global War Against Capitalism", but even if not there'd be incredible internal and external pressure on the US and any remaining capitalist states.
 
Wouldn't those other scenarios just be Cold Wars?

Any geopolitical rivalry with nuclear armed powers who can't afford to directly confront each other would evolve an ideology, just as the Cold War led the West to minimize the differences between (say) French ideology and American ideology, or British ideology and Mexican ideology, if any country ended up being the enemy of the US, both the US and that enemy country would come up with an ideology to explain why they were special and different.

And just as in the Cold War, such a rivalry would spill over into the rest of the world (and the rest of the world would use that rivalry to try to exploit the two "superpowers"/"chumps"/"imperialist dogs" (all 3 terms applied to both the US and the Soviet Union in OTL).

fasquardon
Not necessarily. I don't think that those powers would have the military and economic strength, nor the ideological cohesion, to stand up to an alliance between the Americans and Soviets. At least not for very long.
 
Actually, vis-a-vis my suggestion about the French attempting to resist the new world order of a no Cold War scenario, having read into the politics of the Fourth Republic I actually think that it would be more likely that France would become a big supporter as the Communists would be much less ostracised and would be more welcome in government. This could also potentially save the Fourth Republic as it would allow left-wing parties to form reasonably more stable governments, especially if the right and the Gaullists remain as divided as IOTL.
 
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