AHC: Nuclear Greater Thailand

With a POD no later than 1700, unify Indochina under Thailand by 1945 and have Thailand be the first to invent nukes. As well, Thailand must be on the winning side in at least one world war.

No ASBs if you can help it.
 
Thai Wank Not possible without serious butterflies.
I cannot accept your challenge
So I might as well self-Destruct. :D
 
Do you have an idea of your own for this far-flung challenge? Such major breaks from OTL usually require major mega-butterflies to bring about.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
I don't think Thai Wank is that possible as you posit it, but maybe a larger part of the Malay principalities and the Lao highlands which are culturally close.

The main problem is that Ayutthaya is not really the most powerful state in the area IIRC. Just the one that survived colonialism because it was a buffer.
 
OK, I've been thinking about this for a while, the POD is beginning with arrival of the arrival of Portuguese ambassadors in 1511. At this point the Kingdom of Ayutthaya forge close links with Portugal and agree to work as ambassadors for them in the rest of Asia. As one of Portugal's key middle men, the Thai merchants develop close relationships with Japan who Portugal has trouble trading with. However, Thai middlemen allow for a close relationship between Japan and Thailand and in the nineteen century Japan uses its influence to stop European colonization. As a result, Thailand, as the only other non-colonized country in Asia, makes an alliance with Japan and joins the Axis. From there it helps in the invasion of China and later in 1941 takes over Indo-China with Japanese support, allowing Japan to send more troops into the fight against the US in the Pacific thus allowing Japan to hold out longer than in OTL. However, Germany still falls. However, in this timeline the famous German sub U-234 carrying materials and knowledge to build an atomic bomb (or a dirty bomb) makes the trip as far as Singapore where it falls under the control of Thai scientists who follow the instructions and beat the US to the bomb by a matter of weeks. Using an atomic test as leverage, Thailand and Japan are able to secure a conditional surrender in which the Phillipines are returned to the US and Hong Kong and Singapore are returned to the UK and Japan and Thailand agree to support the US against the USSR.

That's a rough timeline, I could flesh it out more, but I think it meets all the criteria in the least ASB way.
 
Wow. I mean, it doesn't quite meet all of the criteria, but the more and more I think about it, the more it's impossible to meet all of them. This is a very good solution to the problem....would you see any U.S. cities getting nuked? I.e. Honolulu or Anchorage?
 
OK, I've been thinking about this for a while, the POD is beginning with arrival of the arrival of Portuguese ambassadors in 1511. At this point the Kingdom of Ayutthaya forge close links with Portugal and agree to work as ambassadors for them in the rest of Asia. As one of Portugal's key middle men, the Thai merchants develop close relationships with Japan who Portugal has trouble trading with. However, Thai middlemen allow for a close relationship between Japan and Thailand and in the nineteen century Japan uses its influence to stop European colonization. As a result, Thailand, as the only other non-colonized country in Asia, makes an alliance with Japan and joins the Axis. From there it helps in the invasion of China and later in 1941 takes over Indo-China with Japanese support, allowing Japan to send more troops into the fight against the US in the Pacific thus allowing Japan to hold out longer than in OTL. However, Germany still falls. However, in this timeline the famous German sub U-234 carrying materials and knowledge to build an atomic bomb (or a dirty bomb) makes the trip as far as Singapore where it falls under the control of Thai scientists who follow the instructions and beat the US to the bomb by a matter of weeks. Using an atomic test as leverage, Thailand and Japan are able to secure a conditional surrender in which the Phillipines are returned to the US and Hong Kong and Singapore are returned to the UK and Japan and Thailand agree to support the US against the USSR.

That's a rough timeline, I could flesh it out more, but I think it meets all the criteria in the least ASB way.

That would cause so many butterflies that their would be no World War 2, atleast not the one we know.
 

mats

Banned
the german atomic bomb was based on faulty calculations and would have needed massive amounts of uranium.
the only nation capable of producing an atomic bomb in the 2nd WW is the USA
 
I have no problem at least vaguely imagining Thailand doing some kind of Meiji maneuver early in the 19th century or before, catching up at least as well as Japan had by 1940--which would still put them a bit backward relative to the most developed Euro nations and USA of course.

To have them come out ahead in the A-bomb race would however require that they be one of the top three industrial nations in the world, with at least German levels OTL of development--that puts them well ahead of Japan OTL, and note that even without wrong turns in A-bomb theory, Germany was in a very dubious position to beat the USA to a bomb. The American project, which picked (and drained) the brains of the British one, involved a really colossal investment of resources--not just a handful of the brightest scientists and engineers, but just about all of them; at one point there was some thought given to emptying Fort Knox of all its silver and melting it down to make cyclotron wires. The sheer scale is such that this Thailand is not just first world status--it has to be arguably the leading superpower in its own right already.

The USA benefited from pretty free access to the entire world's resources as well, at least all those not in Nazi, Soviet, or Japanese hands. All of Africa, all of South America as well as North America, and generally a lot of even the South Pacific's resources were available to supply American needs; I imagine that more than once this proved crucial during the Manhattan Project.

So--far from an Axis affiliation, this hyper-Thailand has got to be on the Allied side. Because if such a 10,000 ton gorilla of a nation had developed in southeast Asia, you can bet that with or without a history of trying to strangle it in its cradle, by now the British and Americans have made their peace with it! Nor would it be a "have-not" insurgent nation such as the fascist regimes generally characterized themselves as--no begging for oil and/or desperate schemes to conquer oil fields for these Thais, they'd already either own Indonesian oilfields outright or be long established as their oldest and best customers. And so on. Such a nation might well have a similar level of access to global resources as the USA in alliance with the British Empire OTL. In fact the question would be, how could such an Asian tiger have allowed the world it must pretty close to own get so out of hand as to have a Hitler to deal with in the first place?

OK, tongue in cheek there. It is really hard to imagine a plausible path from its status as of say 1700 to even a peer of say the Netherlands or France as of 1940, never mind the special level of development that would explain how and why the place could pre-empt even the USA in getting nukes. If someone can do it, lay it on us, because this would be fun. But I'm standing by my assertion--if the Brits don't panic and try to crush it, either getting crushed in their turn or changing their tune and realigning with the rising power--either way if they have survived themselves as a South Asian power at all, it will be in alliance with this Thailand rather than against it. And Americans would probably go along with that trajectory.

And for Thailand to have that kind of power, I also imagine that it must have acquired territorial control of a much larger area than OTL as a matter of course--all of Indochina, probably the whole Malay peninsula and well into Indonesia--Sumatra, Java. Don't know if they'd pick up Burma at bargain rates while they are at it. Singapore is either butterflied away completely or is a British post that exists wholly on Thai sufferance.
 
Well, OTL the Thai Thai kings of 19th century were generally open to modernisation. Have Chulalongkorn rise in power earlier and give him particularly wise ideas about exploiting the First anglo-Burmese war and the surrounding dimplomatic issues. In 1834 there'a crisis in Cambodia that the Thai can use to show the Vietnamese who's the new master in Indochina... provided they have modernized the army. Malay states come next.
But, hell, even such a UberSiam won't be able to get nukes in 1945....

By the way, OTL's Thailand was actually on the Axis side on her own.
 
No, wait. We can do this.

Everyone is assuming that the Thais have to get the nukes by 1945, but that's not the case. They just have to be the first to actually invent them - the first who take the trouble to build the things.

Now, you need maximum Thailand. A glance at Look to the West gives a good example to work from - a Thailand that absorbs Laos and most of Malaya while retaining Thai Cambodia. Ally that with dwarf states in southern Burma and northern Vietnam and you have a major power. Have it luck into the national myth of "holding off all the European Imperialists" as Thande does.

Now we have a couple of centuries to work with. Nukes are expensive - at least until the 1970s or so, when related technologies are more abundant. We'll need smaller industrialized nations, so at some point Russia loses a major war to someone in Central Europe and is reduced to borders like OTL modern, but with Central Asia. The US can be wedged onto a "plague on both your houses" course to isolationist pacifism. At least one, better two, northwest-European powers spend 1-2 generations under ideological regimes that inadvertently wreck educational institutions (see OTL Nazi Germany, or Soviets on a Physics Lysenkoism-equivalent).

Let's have this war - War A - be in the first decade of the 1900s and involve heavy use of civilian bombing, and almost entirely by the losing power. That means we need the steamplane for earlier heavier-than-air flight, or an outright airship timeline. We want this so that people become horrified by civilian fatalities. Better have someone use chemical or biological weapons, just to be sure. This might be the war that splits up Russia. A second, smaller war - War B - will involve much of Europe gang-piling an aggressive rogue state which violates the new rules of war and in failing pathetically, serves as a morality tale. This one is good for involving weird ideologies that cripple nastier states that might seek nukes.

This timeline's photos of bombed-out cities are not dime-a-dozen shots from half of Eurasia. Instead, they are the equivalent of death-camp photos in OTL. The sort of thing you show kids in high school when they're "old enough" to learn about human evil. Essentially, by the 1920s the modern attitude toward civilian fatalities has been reached. Then there's one more war featuring a desperate state breaking the taboo and everyone else outweighing them so extensively they don't need to. That cements world consensus against city bombing, bombing of civilian areas, or even major artillery in the same role. By the time the '60s come around attitudes are stronger than OTL 2010 - the thought of bombing something within a quarter mile of a hospital would spark universal outrage.

Nuclear power is invented in Europe or America, and becomes widespread in both, though more quickly in the latter. By the time scientists point out the potential of The Bomb, most of the pressing territorial issues of the world's major states must be resolved. As such everyone is willing to abide by treaty regulations against bombs that cannot be limited to military personnel. Russia starts a nuclear program at one point, but it loses funding and stalls with a governmental coup. It's fine for Armenia and Azerbaijan to be at each other's throats, Africa to be a huge mess, and so on. But China, Japan, major European states, et cetera must be broadly holding all of their percieved core territories. The same goes for India, though division into a 8-10 hostile states would also do the trick.

While all this is going on it is conceivable that Thailand-and-Friends can conquer southeastern Indochina (modern east- and central-Cambodia and south-Vietnam), most of Burma, and the rest of Malaya. Throw in a division of northern and western Indonesia into "liberated" states that will be under Thai "leadership." It probably splits Vietnam and Burmese acquisitions with it's "allies." Either way, most of this expansion takes place during War A, and Gross-Thailand hops in on the winning side well after the likely winner is apparent. [Just make sure the Europeans across the border turn out to be on the losing side.] Such times were one of the few where European powers would accept native conquest of European colonies and protectorates.

Thailand goes all out on attempting to replicate Western education and getting in near the start of the spread of Nuclear Power. It makes progress, but is much more successful at the latter (the West still dominates higher education for a reason in OTL). At some point, something goes wrong. Thailand loses influence in the East Indies and is diplomatically isolated. Maybe Thailand takes the wrong side in War B, maybe it gets a weird ideology, maybe India and China get matching ideologies and Thailand overreacts. Whatever, Thailand threatens its neighbors and makes a pariah of itself internationally.

In the mid-1970s, Thailand's defiant stance is looking increasingly unwise. It is certainly a titan by the standards of the turn of the century, but is losing ground in energy, computing, space, chemical, and biotechnology. It decides on the perennial course of ideologues - a great leap forward. Plans are stolen from Russia's aborted project and a few somewhat-competent, starving, and morally indifferent physicists are hired to supplement Thailand's own. Sanctions imposed by the outside world halt outright production, but research, testing, and designs continue.

In 1995, an overreaction to a border incident with China puts the Thai bloc back on the world's shit list, and the nuclear program resumes outright production. On October 3, 2006 to the horror of the world, Thailand becomes the world's first nuclear power.

Gah....

Next time ask me to do something easy, like Sealion. I feel drained.

Thoughts?
 
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No, wait. We can do this.

Everyone is assuming that the Thais have to get the nukes by 1945, but that's not the case. They just have to be the first to actually invent them - the first who take the trouble to build the things.

Now, you need maximum Thailand. A glance at Look to the West gives a good example to work from - a Thailand that absorbs Laos and most of Malaya while retaining Thai Cambodia. Ally that with dwarf states in southern Burma and northern Vietnam and you have a major power. Have it luck into the national myth of "holding off all the European Imperialists" as Thande does.

Now we have a couple of centuries to work with. Nukes are expensive - at least until the 1970s or so, when related technologies are more abundant. We'll need smaller industrialized nations, so at some point Russia loses a major war to someone in Central Europe and is reduced to borders like OTL modern, but with Central Asia. The US can be wedged onto a "plague on both your houses" course to isolationist pacifism. At least one, better two, northwest-European powers spend 1-2 generations under ideological regimes than inadvertently wreck educational institutions (see OTL Nazi Germany, or Soviets on a Physics Lysenkoism-equivalent).

Let's have this war - War A - be in the first decade of the 1900s and involve heavy use of civilian bombing, and primarily by the losing power. That means we need the steamplane for earlier heavier-than-air flight, or an outright airship timeline. We want this so that people become horrified by civilian fatalities. Better have someone use chemical or biological weapons, just to be sure. This can be the war that splits up Russia. A second, smaller war - War B - will involve much of Europe gang-piling an aggressive rogue state which violates the new rules of war and in failing pathetically serves as a morality tale. This one is good for involving weird ideologies that cripple nastier states that might seek nukes.

Nuclear power is invented in Europe or America, and becomes widespread in both, though more quickly in the latter. By the time scientists point out the potential of The Bomb, most of the pressing territorial issues of the world's major states must be resolved. As such everyone is willing to abide by treaty regulations against bombs that cannot be limited to military personnel. Russia starts a nuclear program at one point, but it loses funding and stalls with a governmental coup. It's fine for Armenia and Azerbaijan to be at each other's throats, Africa to be a huge mess, and so on. But China, Japan, major European states, et cetera must be broadly holding all of their percieved core territories. The same goes for India, though division into a 8-10 hostile states would also do the trick.

While all this is going on it is conceivable that Thailand-and-Friends can conquer southeastern Indochina (modern east- and central-Cambodia and south-Vietnam), most of Burma, and the rest of Malaya. Throw in a division of northern and western Indonesia into "liberated" states that will be under Thai "leadership." It probably splits Vietnam and Burmese acquisitions with it's "allies." Either way, most of this expansion takes place during War A, and Gross-Thailand hops in on the winning side well after the likely winner is apparent. [Just make sure the Europeans across the border turn out to be on the losing side.] Such times were one of the few where European powers would accept native conquest of European colonies and protectorates.

Thailand goes all out on attempting to replicate Western education and getting in near the start of the spread of Nuclear Power. It makes progress, but is much more successful at the latter (the West still dominates higher education for a reason in OTL). At some point, something goes wrong. Thailand loses influence in the East Indies and is diplomatically isolated. Maybe Thailand takes the wrong side in War B, maybe it gets a weird ideology, maybe India and China get matching ideologies and Thailand overreacts. Whatever, Thailand threatens its neighbors and makes a pariah of itself internationally.

In the mid-1970s, Thailand's defiant stance is looking increasingly unwise. It is certainly a titan by the standards of the turn of the century, but is losing ground in energy, computing, space, chemical, and biotechnology. It decides on the perennial course of ideologues - a great leap forward. Plans are stolen from Russia's aborted project and a few somewhat-competent, starving, and morally indifferent physicists are hired to supplement Thailand's own. Sanctions imposed by the outside world halt outright production, but research, testing, and designs continue.

In 1995, an overreaction to a border incident with China puts the Thai bloc back on the world's @#!*% list, and the nuclear program resumes outright production. On October 3, 2006 to the horror of the world, Thailand becomes the world's first nuclear power.

Gah....

Next time ask me to do something easy, like Sealion. I feel drained.

Thoughts?

*clapping*
 
Heh. Thanks.

Now that I look at it, the scenario requires a pretty nice world to live in. It means no major wars in the last 75 years except perhaps in Africa or India. There's no WWII or Holocaust analogues, no Cold War, none of the dangerous states are strong, and none of the strong states are dangerous. The Ottomans or their replacement is providing a moral center and model for development to a Middle East that probably lacks Israel as a boogy man. Might be more eugenics and racism to deal with, but decolonization probably went better and there are a few Belgiums less war dead in China alone. Probably there's a broad gradual trend to loose EU-like groupings.

Not terribly likely I admit. But, I hope, possible.
 
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