AHC: Make the United States a third world country and the Middle East a first-world continent

This challenge is inspired by the Matt Ruff novel, the Mirage, where the roles of the US and the Middle East are flipped, so that the Middle East is the world's dominant superpower and the US is a third-world wasteland.

So, the challenge is simple: find a point of divergence that would result in the United States becoming a poor, third world-type nation while the Middle East becomes an entirely first world-type continent.
 
Is this the United States with today's borders? I hope not. But I'll write a scenario.

Because I think an Articles of Confederation POD is the best way to achieve this. Basically have the whole thing fail and escalate into more and more conflict between the states, eventually resulting in decades of civil wars, like in Argentina, punctuated by even more serious conflicts both internal and external (War of 1812, say). Some Western filibusters manage to grab Louisiana and New Orleans at this tim. Maybe by 1830 or so things get a bit more stable as General Andrew Jackson (with his prestige as the hero of New Orleans as in OTL) re-unites the states by the sword, and the following decade the United States conquers the Mexican North. After Jackson's death we get some more low-level civil war, followed by a new dictator imposing their will in Philadelphia (Washington DC?--we'd love to build a city like that, but we don't have the money!), sparking a major civil war lasting nine years, helped by the unusual amount of outside support. Since the South is the nucleus of this new rebellion, slavery gets abolished to punish the South and many plantation owners get the firing squad with their land given to their former slaves (though other plantation owners get to effectively re-enslave their slaves through with Black Codes and such). In the North, the capitalist system still takes off and oppressive labour conditions are the norm. The country tries to rebuild, but border incidents with Britain over the northern border cause intense tension in the 1880s. The United States fights a 5 year war with Britain over these border disputes, only ended by the deposition of the ruling president and the promise by Britain to not restore Mexican land, a very real threat.

All the while, the United States spends massive amounts of money on her military, and unlike OTL receives much less immigration, although some are still lured by the burgeoning industries on par with Brazil or Argentina or likewise the chance to own land. This also introduces the ideology of socialism to the United States. Labour suppression in the 1890s - 1920s is far, far worse than OTL. At the end of the 1920s, a global depression grips the world, and the United States fights yet another civil war, the Second American Revolution, a decade-long struggle between communists under their charismatic yet brutal leader Comrade Johnson and anti-communist forces that goes endlessly back and forth with huge amounts of violence on either side before finally the communists hoist their red banner over Independence Hall as the new United Socialist States of America. The communist regime is hit by one disaster after another, like the 1950s famine caused by the return of the Dust Bowl. Adopting pseudoscientific methods to fix the problem, it actually gets far worse and large swathes of the Great Plains remain almost permanently useless. The regime is practically synonymous for "environmental disaster" in many other areas. Domestically, with every new ruler the government embarks on purges of both the military and the societal elite--gulags containing millions of people exist in remote regions of the Rockies and Southwest. Huge amounts of income is wasted on military projects intended to defeat the regime's chief ideological rival, the Anglo-French Union, to not even speak of the massive amounts of support given to regimes and rebel movements throughout the planet. After another drought in the late 1980s, the USSA begins to collapse in on itself, leading to even more brutal reprisals. Hypernationalism is promoted even more as the new ideology. The son of Comrade Johnson, nicknamed "Comrade Jr." seizes power using his father's legacy as a legitimiser. Comrade Jr.'s rule is totalitarian, extreme, and brutal, even by the standards of the USSA. Civil war occurs throughout the 1990s, before the government finally suppresses it. Comrade Jr. dies in 2013, leaving his son, nickamed "Comrade the Third" in charge of the family dictatorship which detractors call the "Johnson Dynasty" but supporters viewing Johnsonism as the only force which can save the USSA.

Although research on nuclear technology was hindered for decades because of its "anti-socialist" nature and the defections of many scientists, under Comrade Jr. the government has rapidly acquired nuclear weapons and has begun a global arms race, pointing these nukes at every major city on the planet. While many Americans live in 2017 conditions little different than 1917, with rampant poverty and a country often on the brink of famine, the USSA possesses the world's largest military and nuclear arsenal, clearly making it a power to be feared.

Meanwhile in the Middle East, the only thing sunnier than the beaches is the economy...I'll leave that to someone else
 
Not sure if this can be done in a single POD, though I suppose since the path to both don't need to happen at the same time, it can be plausible with the work of butterflies.

The Middle East part is easy. Two words:

Ottoman Empire.

Could a plausible alternative be an Egypt-wank starting from or before the Oriental Crisis?

And regarding the US... I think it's plausible with a screw and balkanization. I guess it could also be possible if the US still managed to get its early-to-mid 19th Century history more or less intact, but I don't think it's that plausible.
 
Could a plausible alternative be an Egypt-wank starting from or before the Oriental Crisis?

I don't know, the whole Oriental Crisis Egyptian Sultanate thing seems more like a regional splinter than anything, but if that Egypt manages to conquer, hold, and rule over what we would today consider the Middle East, then I see no reason it couldn't work. Really, all the Middle East needs to be as the OP describes is a liberal, tolerant, central empire controlling it in its entirety (minus maybe a few nations.) A reformed Ottoman Empire seems the easiest and most direct way to create this type of power.
 
The Middle East part is easy. Two words:

Ottoman Empire.

Does first world just mean technology or society? I mean, we usually consider than a 1st world country doesn't take free people and enslave them. Tech isn't the only reason they were considered backward by the time of the Crimean War
 
Does first world just mean technology or society? I mean, we usually consider than a 1st world country doesn't take free people and enslave them. Tech isn't the only reason they were considered backward by the time of the Crimean War

I'm not talking about the 1856 Ottomans. The Ottomans showed great promise at radical reform in the years preceding WWI, and, IMO, probably would have without the disaster that was that war or maybe even a victory in it. They were liberalizing, both socially and fiscally, and great progress for equality was made in an already multi-ethnic empire. Did it have its problems? God, yes. From its horrible military, to its collapsing foreign-dominated economy, to its insistence on a (at least de-jure) religion-focused head of state, and its genocides, it had tons of debilitating issues from the nineteenth century and on. However, these trends looked to be reversing, and a strong, stable Ottoman Empire, at least in Turkey, Mesopotamia, and maybe Arabia, seemed not only a strong possibility, but likely the best option for the region overall. Certainly, it would be better than OTL's colonial mess.
 
Does first world just mean technology or society? I mean, we usually consider than a 1st world country doesn't take free people and enslave them. Tech isn't the only reason they were considered backward by the time of the Crimean War

I like how you specifically worded it as "take free people and enslave them" thus excluding the horrific practice of racial chattel slavery for some reason. Ottoman slavery was inhumane and unjust but I would 100% prefer to be a slave in the OE than a slave in the US. In any case, the OP doesn't specify the time period. The OE had outlawed the slave trade in the latter half of the 19th c and almost certainly would have outlawed slavery altogether had it survived.

Actually, I have to wonder why the evil atrocities perpetrated by Britain/France/etc in general are somehow more compatible with being a "socially" first world country than Ottoman slavery?

EDIT: Correction: an 1887 edict had actually outlawed slavery altogether. I was misremembering.
 
Last edited:
Also, what does "first world Middle East" mean? Does the entire Middle East have to be first world? Making the United States a third world nation isn't terribly hard. But making the entire Middle East first world is a bit harder.

Now, reformed Ottomans are a good solution. But would they necessarily spend their oil income improving the Middle East instead of improving the core areas in Thrace and Western Anatolia?
 
Actually, I have to wonder why the evil atrocities perpetrated by Britain/France/etc in general are somehow more compatible with being a "socially" first world country than Ottoman slavery?

History is written by the victors and all that. :p

Also, Orientalist chauvinism.
 
Middle East isn't a continent, it's a series of countries lumped together into a region by outside commentators.
 
The Middle East needs a stronger Ottoman Empire or a faster decline of one, depending on who you talk to. The Middle East has so many different cultures and such a wide variety of terrain in places, it takes a mammoth amount of administration to keep together. The Ottoman Empire attempted to centralise it, ultimately unsuccessfully and it's attempts to keep together often involved limiting the groups within it. Why build up infrastructure when the people will take it from you if they revolt? If the Ottomans did succeed then there is a good chance living conditions within the Middle East would be on par with the First World Nations. If they fell sooner, then it would have allowed local groups to establish their own forms of administrations and governance much earlier on. It might not be a one size hits all solution, but it would make it more likely for improved living standards in a lot of them. You'd also need to potential tackle faith and technological stagnation that gripper the Middle East region.

In a scenario where the US is considered a third world country you wouldn't have a US. Look at Brazil. It has a lot of issues, but most would still consider it either a First or Upper Second World Nation. The USA united and with all that territory and resources within them is going to become a whole power. Step one is to keep the colonies from forming a union. Step 2 is to encourage the same mass immigration to the Americas, but stop the expansions.

Overpopulation and lack of resources (or the ability to get said resources) are key to keeping a nation considered Third World. Step 2 is to make the colonies Monarchies. You can't have them fall apart because what's to stop the British coming back. Have explicit rules on the colonies expansion. Have settlers ignore the rules much like OTL and have a creeping expansion of settlers with their own nations and kingdoms popping up. Have these kingdoms and nations engage in territorial disputers and conflicts that keep them disunified. That's step 3.

The whole of the preset day USA will not be Third World, but you could with above make a majority of nations such.
 
I like how you specifically worded it as "take free people and enslave them" thus excluding the horrific practice of racial chattel slavery for some reason. Ottoman slavery was inhumane and unjust but I would 100% prefer to be a slave in the OE than a slave in the US. In any case, the OP doesn't specify the time period. The OE had outlawed the slave trade in the latter half of the 19th c and almost certainly would have outlawed slavery altogether had it survived.

Actually, I have to wonder why the evil atrocities perpetrated by Britain/France/etc in general are somehow more compatible with being a "socially" first world country than Ottoman slavery?

No you wouldn't,
 
....Look at Brazil. It has a lot of issues, but most would still consider it either a First or Upper Second World Nation. ...

Let's clarify what "First", "Second" and "Third" worlds mean. My understanding is that "First World" is the US and western Europe- the western "democracies" of the Cold War; "Second World" is the USSR, China, and their communist satellites; and "Third World" is everyone else, essentially to non-aligned of Central/South America, Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. I'm not sure where Japan, ROC and ROK fit in.

But those usages have a definite time stamp that might be different than intended by the original poster, and certainly something different than your description of Brazil.
 
Yeah can we discuss the development metrics that OP is interested in achieving in a more objective way?

If the objective is just to switch the relative wealth and development of the two regions, it's worth noting that the two regions already have roughly similar populations.

However, the United States area is just generally an easier place to live in. More temperate, better rainfall, more minerals and more potential energy sources. Less likely to get stuck with the point source resource curse because certain regions are flush with oil and little else. Technological developments that made parts of the US into the breadbasket of the world simply wouldn't work for the Near East. Now hindering the development of a single US country wouldn't be hard but I'm hard pressed to imagine those countries don't end up at least somewhat wealthy given their abundance of natural resources. Climate change will only exacerbate pressures in that region as well.

One option might be a hypothetical United Near East polity expanding into Central Asia and using that as a frontier of sorts to gain access to resources and arable land. A hypothetical Iranian-based regime that ruled from Anatolia to Afghanistan that managed to industrialize early and overcome it's disadvantages could certainly be a modern superpower.

It's screwing the US region down that I struggle with, although i suppose a succession of unstable governments in a couple fractured states might be a good step in the right direction.
 
No you wouldn't,

@123456789blaaa , I doubt you would want to be a slave in the Ottoman Empire over the US.... There were no formal laws to defend slaves, only the hope that your master was a correct Muslim. Then, there is no real outrage or dislike of slavery at all in the Muslim world at the time, only pragmatic fears of slave revolts such as the Zanj 700 years earlier. In the US, you at least had abolitionists and an acceptance by millions that the practice was decadent, the Muslim world had no such conviction. Instead, the Islamic world still had the same view of the 850s, that is that slavery is a natural occurrence ordained by Allah and regulated this for vice. Punishment of slaves was always seen as just for a slave was given his position in life for a specific reason, perhaps as a way to avoid a greater evil this person could wrought. There is also the aspect of slaves carrying the role of status as opposed to economic values. Thus, slaves were expendable and not valued. So, the numbers of slaves killed or discarded in terms of property, would likely have been immense.

There is also and aspect that slavery in the Islamic world continued to be connected to dominance. By dominance, I mean martial dominance, not cultural. Then, there too was racial components despite attempts by revisionists to write the colonial societies only developed such. Nearly all Muslim scholars for a thousand years wrote the 'kinky haired african' as perpetually occupying a place of slavery for if left to his/her own devices, would bring fitnah and slavery was the gift of Islam for him/her. It should also be said, as a woman, you are much more likely to be sex slave within the Ottoman Empire than the US.
 
Last edited:
If it's about the US as a country rather than the region encompassed by OTL!US, then here's one idea I could think of.

An important step I think would be to have an America with not that big of a westward expansion desire, or that fails to do so. Personally, I think a US that gets to reach all if not most of its OTL!borders is a US hard to topple to the desired level of the challenge. As such, I think it needs to diverge quite early, no later than early 19th century at most. Like say, have the War of 1812 be a disaster for them, with them loosing most of the North (British land gains, Native American buffer nation, New England breaks off, etc). This leaves the country South-dominant, which in turn impose slavery country-wide. This in turn brings its own set of problems, with delayed industrialization to an extent, more constant or stronger slave revolts, and once again unable to expand its borders or regain its lost ones.

Well, I still don't have much else beyond that, but it's a proposed start.
 
I might point out that by a goodly number of measures (incarceration rates, executions, income inequality, access to healthcare, etc.) the US today fits much better with 3rd World countries than with the other developed countries.
 
Top