AHC: Japan undertakes a League of Nations endorsed military action in Asia

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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The challenge is to avoid the cycle of OTL, (Japan acts unilaterally, there is League disapproval, then Japan quits the League) and instead Japan gets involved in the mainland ostensibly as an enforcer of an international League mandate against some threat identified by the League Assembly or Council.
 
Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, the "Mad Baron," successfully invades Eastern Siberia with the Reds and the Whites still fighting the Russian Civil War in the west. In the 1920s, he launches an invasion of the Ma Clique and Xinjiang, and the various Chinese warlord states fail to react. With the death of Sun Yat-sen, the Kuomintang splits between nationalists and communists. The communists, led by Ye Ting, advised for a "Northern Expedition" to rout the Mongols while they were overextended, but the nationalists, led by Wellington Koo, a staunch proponent of the League of Nations, instead declared that they would attempt to re-centralize the coastal warlord states instead.

The Chinese Communists make an alliance with the now-victorious Red Russians, with the Red Army pushing into Xinjiang from the west, while the Chinese pushing from the east. The Soviet Union, looking for a justification to retake Vladivostok, and sensing an opportunity to expand the Revolution, declares war on Mongolia, and announces Xinjiang to be the provisional capital province of the new Chinese Soviet Republic. Ye Ting is declared Chairman, while Sheng Shicai is declared provincial governor.

The nationalists, tired of Wellington Koo's vacillating, launch a coup, and Chaing Kai-Shek is made President of China, but in reality is dictator. Chaing, looking to establish his authority, launches an invasion of the Fengtian Clique to bring it under the central authority of the Republic of China. All the while, the Empire of Japan had been watching. In the League of Nations, Japan declared that the legitimate government of China had been overthrown, and that Communists and the Mongols were on the verge of taking over the entire nation. With a League of Nations mandate, Japan mobilized to "restore order."

With the support of their near-puppet state, the Fengtian Clique, Japan quickly invaded both Vladivostok and Beijing, pushing back the Chinese army. The remaining warlord states, unwilling to work with Chaing, remained neutral. Establishing a "Reorganized Nationalist Government," the League of Nations recognized the new government, and Wang Jingwei as its President. Sternberg, who had a long history of mental instability, had crippled Mongolia's political's unity, and despite having a huge army, it was, in actuality, a highly undisciplined army of conscripts. Against the regimented army of Japan, Mongolia quickly collapsed.

Meanwhile in the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin had secured his position as the absolute leader, and began implementing "Socialism in One Country." Paranoid of a coup by his arch-rival, Bukharin, Stalin cut his losses, pulled out of Siberia, and cut funding to the Chinese Soviet Republic, leaving it contained to Xinjiang, Tibet, and Qinghai.

With the war largely concluded, the Fengtian Clique, under Japanese "encouragement" was incorporated into the new Republic of China, along with Mongolia and the Siberian borderlands. Japan, for its part declared a "League of Nations mandate" over Eastern Siberia. In the following years, the other warlord states were incorporated into the new China, which, for all intents and purposes, was an semi-autonomous puppet of the Empire of Japan. To this day, Communist guerrillas still control western China, while the largely underdeveloped Republic of China remains an economic dependent of Japan.
 
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