AHC: Make modern US look like this

What PODs roughly after 1970 would have to happen to make the present United States look like the following:

-States have slightly more rights/autonomy (whatever that means)

-The draft does not end, there are still considerable numbers of draftees in the US military

-There are considerable numbers of modernized M60 tanks alongside M1 tanks still in service in the US army

-The Midgetman mobile missile is in service and so is the Peacekeeper rail garrison

-Space Station Freedom project is completed by the mid-90s

-There is a low intensity insurgency in southern Texas that the US military is battling

-(Optional) There are no longer any term limits to the presidency
 

missouribob

Banned
That 1970 POD makes this difficult for me. Here's my best shot for some of it.
-Easiest way for states rights is to increase racial tension. Hell in the 80s we in OTL we had Reagan proclaiming the glory of states rights. Increase racial tension and strife in the 70s/80s and you can get some more autonomy to states to slow ball desegregation or even roll it back a bit.
-Look 1970 is to late to end the draft short of say killing Nixon or getting a REALLY unlikely Gumbo timeline event to occur with either one resulting in Agnew taking the presidency. Now I don't know how Agnew felt about the draft but he personally was drafted so...? Anyway the DOD really didn't want to continue the institution nor did Congress so best way to keep it is have a President Agnew that re-escalates Vietnam AND gets America involved in another conflict requiring lots of bodies.
-Idk the United States can't produce enough tanks quick enough to meet it's war time demands?

That is about all I have any idea where to start on.
 
I think POD post-1970 would actually require one of two things happening:

1. Mexico goes hard communist or fascist and arms itself to the teeth.

2 You get some fanatical breakaway independent Quebec that's doing a lot of IRA-style terrorism against Vermont and Maine, and it's protected by a very anti-US Gaullist government.

For long-term, permanent conscription to work in a system like the US or other Western Nation, there kind of needs to be an existential crisis of being invaded. Examples: West Germany, Switzerland (totally surrounded and being a porcupine neutral helps them stay that way), Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, etc...

You either need a really hostile and powerful Mexico (combined with US laxness/impotence in the Americas on an almost ASB level) or a Quebec Missile Crisis II with the French nuclear deterrent immediately protecting New France. It's very close to ASB and really only happens with massive declines in US power over a generation and then a terrible wake up call happens.
 
The though experiment I had was how a de-NATOed slightly frightened US would look like today.
 
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