AHC: Reverse the end of the Cold War

This timeline suffers from several faulty assumptions, but the biggest seems to be that the organization of the United States is anything at all like that of the USSR. If the U.S. loses land, then it will be in the form of its colonies and associated areas rather than any part of the Union itself. The other seems to be in what gets changed. Might I suggest having Beria succeed Stalin, or perhaps, having Humphrey elected POTUS in 1960?
 
Okay, yes, the core problem is the US can't lose the Cold War like the USSR did.

Really, for the USSR to win the Cold War, it must adjust the rules of the, "game," if you will, so that it benefits it. A race for nuclear weapons doesn't play to the USSR's strengths, so, it needs to make the Cold War one that DOES.

Now, you may be saying, "but killer, the USSR had no strengths," to which I'd say, really? This was the country that was able to infiltrate both the US and UK so well to steal nuclear bombs, among other things. This was the country that got to space first, and got a nuclear bomb by 1949 despite having more damage than every other Allied power.

Besides that though, two PODs.
1. No Stalin. He sets all the wrong precedents for the USSR, and isn't what the USSR needs in the early years.
2. Allies. And I don't just mean Communist China, I mean allies like a Communist Germany, or Communist UK. Lacking those, support the revolution in Spain without suppressing it, or trying to make it tow the Moscow line.
 
It removes many precedents he established that make the USSR less totalitarian and centralized, while also allowing much easier reforms.
 
Might I suggest having Beria succeed Stalin, or perhaps, having Humphrey elected POTUS in 1960?

How would Beria (who was extraordinarily unpopular without Stalin to protect him and never would have lasted as a Soviet leader) or Humphrey (who had no intention of either appeasing the Soviets or overstretching America and probably would have followed a similar foreign policy to Nixon) result in a different ending to the Cold War? Beria would have been overthrown right away, and a Humphrey presidency wouldn't have changed much in American foreign policy.

He might have missed the rapprochement with Mao due to domestic political expediency ("only Nixon could go to China"), but I think that might have been coming sooner or later no matter who was in office, and I don't think an unaligned China would have saved the Soviets.

Also, Humphrey didn't run in 1960 but I'll assume you meant 68.

And yes, I agree that the continental US breaking up is probably the ASB section of the little timeline I wrote up there, but I was stretching plausibility for effect. I don't think the rest of it is impossible.
 
How would Beria (who was extraordinarily unpopular without Stalin to protect him and never would have lasted as a Soviet leader) or Humphrey (who had no intention of either appeasing the Soviets or overstretching America and probably would have followed a similar foreign policy to Nixon) result in a different ending to the Cold War? Beria would have been overthrown right away, and a Humphrey presidency wouldn't have changed much in American foreign policy.

He might have missed the rapprochement with Mao due to domestic political expediency ("only Nixon could go to China"), but I think that might have been coming sooner or later no matter who was in office, and I don't think an unaligned China would have saved the Soviets.

Also, Humphrey didn't run in 1960 but I'll assume you meant 68.

And yes, I agree that the continental US breaking up is probably the ASB section of the little timeline I wrote up there, but I was stretching plausibility for effect. I don't think the rest of it is impossible.

Who is necessarily overthrowing Beria? Perhaps his triumvirate with Molotov and Malenkov succeeds.

Humphrey was anticommunist, yes, but I'm having him elected POTUS in 1960, not 1969, so following Nixon's foreign policy is irrelevant. Humphrey had been a contender for the 1960 Democratic nomination; here, I'm having him win it. By shifting the American political center to the left, I'm seeing a long-term slowdown of American economic growth, and a rise in the debt. Humphrey is succeeded by a string of more or less "progressive" presidents, and, ultimtely, issues with spending undermine the ability of the U.S. government (say, by the 1990's or 2000s) to pay its expenses deteriorates until it has to pull back from foreign entanglements altogether while Soviet forces remain posted in Eastern Europe, to be gradually withdrawn themselves and a Russian-led Eurasian Confederation is formed. Ergo, the U.S. loses the Cold War with Humphrey in 1960.

Presidents of the United States:
Hubert Humphrey (D) 1961-1969
James Rhodes (R) 1969-1977
George McGovern (D) 1977-1985
Charles Percy (R) 1985-1993
Richard Gephardt (D) 1993-1997
Richard Lugar (R) 1997-2001
Ralph Nader (D) 2001-2004
 
Who is necessarily overthrowing Beria? Perhaps his triumvirate with Molotov and Malenkov succeeds.

Humphrey was anticommunist, yes, but I'm having him elected POTUS in 1960, not 1969, so following Nixon's foreign policy is irrelevant. Humphrey had been a contender for the 1960 Democratic nomination; here, I'm having him win it. By shifting the American political center to the left, I'm seeing a long-term slowdown of American economic growth, and a rise in the debt. Humphrey is succeeded by a string of more or less "progressive" presidents, and, ultimtely, issues with spending undermine the ability of the U.S. government (say, by the 1990's or 2000s) to pay its expenses deteriorates until it has to pull back from foreign entanglements altogether while Soviet forces remain posted in Eastern Europe, to be gradually withdrawn themselves and a Russian-led Eurasian Confederation is formed. Ergo, the U.S. loses the Cold War with Humphrey in 1960.

I think you're being a little hard on the American left here (the right was responsible for massive spending during the Cold War as well - look at the way the deficit spiked under Reagan), and I don't think anyone would let debt get to such a level that it endangered national security. Austerity would be brought in at some point, probably during the 70s. But I'm sensing an ideological difference there, so I'll let that lie for the moment.

I'm curious - how would Humphrey shift America further to the left than OTL's Great Society did? If anything having a "northern liberal" at the helm would make the alt-Great Society less widely accepted than if it was initiated by a hardass Texan.

As for Beria, his policies towards the West would result in better peace credentials for the USSR abroad, yes, but IMO allowing in Marshall Aid and letting the East Germans return to capitalism would just make America look like a benevolent power and would have the rest of Eastern Europe clamoring to get the same treatment as the Germans. Then we get either the loss of the satellite states, or a Hungarian situation where Beria wastes all of the diplomatic capital he's just built up.

I don't know what his domestic policy would be like, though. Any ideas for how he'd save the Soviet Union?
 
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The Soviets are able to take the whole German pie. Britain and the Free French are incapable of preventing democratically elected Communists from sweeping into power in France and Italy when President Wallace withdraws American troops and uses Britain's massive debts to them as leverage. Democratically elected Communist governments transition into proletarian dictatorships while there is a communist free-for-all in Asia, with US response limited to defeating the insurgency in the Philippines and protecting the Kuomintang in Taiwan from the mainland.

An Anglophile Republican president who sweeps into power in a fervor of Red Scare outrage at Henry Wallace, "The Man Who Sold The World", welds the United States to the British Empire as the post-war bloc capable of challenging the Communist hydra. "Unreliable" regimes are toppled and occupied, reliable regimes receive troops to assist them. There are Alliance troops from Morocco to Persia; as well as a sweeping blue hand over Indonesia, Malayasia, and the rest of Oceania. Asia might be Red, but the Pacific will stay blue!

So while the Comintern grows into a heterogenous coalition of dictatorships rather than a single overstretched empire, the NATO-analog Alliance exhausts itself for decades occupying vast tracts of Africa, the Middle-East, and the South Pacific.
 
"a heterogenous coalition of dictatorships" will be just like the Kingdoms of the Middle Ages but with all the modern technology of the 20thC 'nations' cannot be formed along those lines. It's just oo unstable.

The only plausible way for the Soviet Union to outlast the US and other Democratic nation is for itself to become democratic and meritocractic which as a guiding philosophy communism calls for this kind of state system, not one of Totalitarianism. Unfortunatly that was the system Stalin had in place, and with his purges and secret police the Soviet Union was bound to implode because the peoples governed could never voice disent and reform.

That reform is key because that is what allows the nation in question to evolve to the current situation, and with the will of its people behind it.

Really the Soviet Union collasped because of politics in that sense, rather than because of ideology or economy.
 
"a heterogenous coalition of dictatorships" will be just like the Kingdoms of the Middle Ages but with all the modern technology of the 20thC 'nations' cannot be formed along those lines. It's just oo unstable.

The only plausible way for the Soviet Union to outlast the US and other Democratic nation is for itself to become democratic and meritocractic which as a guiding philosophy communism calls for this kind of state system, not one of Totalitarianism. Unfortunatly that was the system Stalin had in place, and with his purges and secret police the Soviet Union was bound to implode because the peoples governed could never voice disent and reform.

That reform is key because that is what allows the nation in question to evolve to the current situation, and with the will of its people behind it.

Really the Soviet Union collasped because of politics in that sense, rather than because of ideology or economy.

Actually this really isn't a problem. A communist France could end up with the Comintern rather than the Communist Party of the Russian SSR calling the shots. Think of it this way - it's not a bag full of dictatorships competing with each other, it is one dictatorship made up of the ruling elites from various states under one union.

Communists, eager to make a world government, would not have a problem making the Comintern more powerful than individual nations like the USSR or a French People's Republic. And Democratic Centralism has this nefarious quality of being I Can't Believe It's Not Democracy, so I think it is not implausible for a more...let's say cosmopolitan or federal one party in a one party dictatorship to achieve the successes of a sometimes hectic alliance of truly democratic nations.

Basically, I think French and Italian republics in the Comintern or even in the Soviet Union would cause the base of power to be multi-polar, and instead of imploding into internal rivalry, having a competitive let's say democratic environment within the Party while that Party exercises dictatorial rule over the nations is not implausible, in my opinion. There have been other authoritarian ruling classes in history that have managed to be vibrant and meritocratic to a degree within their own ranks.
 
Actually this really isn't a problem. A communist France could end up with the Comintern rather than the Communist Party of the Russian SSR calling the shots. Think of it this way - it's not a bag full of dictatorships competing with each other, it is one dictatorship made up of the ruling elites from various states under one union.

Communists, eager to make a world government, would not have a problem making the Comintern more powerful than individual nations like the USSR or a French People's Republic. And Democratic Centralism has this nefarious quality of being I Can't Believe It's Not Democracy, so I think it is not implausible for a more...let's say cosmopolitan or federal one party in a one party dictatorship to achieve the successes of a sometimes hectic alliance of truly democratic nations.

Basically, I think French and Italian republics in the Comintern or even in the Soviet Union would cause the base of power to be multi-polar, and instead of imploding into internal rivalry, having a competitive let's say democratic environment within the Party while that Party exercises dictatorial rule over the nations is not implausible, in my opinion. There have been other authoritarian ruling classes in history that have managed to be vibrant and meritocratic to a degree within their own ranks.

Peoples forget that there was a LOT of homebrewed communism and communists in the world, and they could very well in europe flips a bird toward USSR...
 
Basically, I think French and Italian republics in the Comintern or even in the Soviet Union would cause the base of power to be multi-polar, and instead of imploding into internal rivalry, having a competitive let's say democratic environment within the Party while that Party exercises dictatorial rule over the nations is not implausible, in my opinion. There have been other authoritarian ruling classes in history that have managed to be vibrant and meritocratic to a degree within their own ranks.

This might be true later with people like Berlinguer in the French and Italian CP's, but don't forget that Eurocommunism didn't develop until the 70s, and before the Prague Spring and so on the Western Communists were doctrinaire Stalinists.

I don't see a France and Italy that went Communist immediately postwar being competitive and democratic. Even if the PCF and PCI depended on a coalition of smaller lefty parties to maintain power, those would soon go the way of Poland's "National Front" parties and be co-opted, as was Stalinist strategy at the time.

A post-Khruschev Communist Italy and France might promote the kind of heterogeneity you suggest, to some extent, but not if they joined the Soviets in the 1940s.
 
I think you're being a little hard on the American left here (the right was responsible for massive spending during the Cold War as well - look at the way the deficit spiked under Reagan), and I don't think anyone would let debt get to such a level that it endangered national security. Austerity would be brought in at some point, probably during the 70s. But I'm sensing an ideological difference there, so I'll let that lie for the moment.

I agree that Cold War largesse was common to both parties, and that would remain so here. I suspect that levels of domestic spending would be higher, but that the probable loss of more of the developing world to Communism means that there is still a strong effort in or after the late seventies to ratchet up national defense and military commitments to allies.

I'm curious - how would Humphrey shift America further to the left than OTL's Great Society did? If anything having a "northern liberal" at the helm would make the alt-Great Society less widely accepted than if it was initiated by a hardass Texan.
AS long as he moves very little if at all on race, he will be fine. Consider that many of the most ardent New Dealers outside of FDR's administration were segregationists. Humphrey will still get through civil rights, but it will be a well-timed effort, possibly toward the end of his presidency. By the way, I'm still seeing LBJ as VP here, so I suspect that the Texas hardass gives an enormous boost to the agender of the Humphrey White House.
As for Beria, his policies towards the West would result in better peace credentials for the USSR abroad, yes, but IMO allowing in Marshall Aid and letting the East Germans return to capitalism would just make America look like a benevolent power and would have the rest of Eastern Europe clamoring to get the same treatment as the Germans. Then we get either the loss of the satellite states, or a Hungarian situation where Beria wastes all of the diplomatic capital he's just built up.
Well, by the time Beria comes to power, it's probably too late to really get Marshall Aid, and he can't pull the forces out of Eastern Europe because there are not really jobs for them in the USSR. It's better to keep men with weapons training deployed abroad than to have them at home rioting in the streets, especially if they just won a war for survival.
I don't know what his domestic policy would be like, though. Any ideas for how he'd save the Soviet Union?
I'm no Beria expert, but I suspect he'd be economically the Deng to Stalin's Mao. There would be a gradual move from total collectivization of agriculture to small, private farms. State industries would organize and operate on more market socialist lines. The state would, after twenty years of this or so, start to pursue friendly relations with authoritarian and poor, but not necessarily (self-described) socialist or revolutionary states. Essentially, I see Beria's USSR becoming like China post-Mao economically, though perhaps more gradually, and with greater labor protections along the way.
 
The Soviets are able to take the whole German pie. Britain and the Free French are incapable of preventing democratically elected Communists from sweeping into power in France and Italy when President Wallace withdraws American troops and uses Britain's massive debts to them as leverage. Democratically elected Communist governments transition into proletarian dictatorships while there is a communist free-for-all in Asia, with US response limited to defeating the insurgency in the Philippines and protecting the Kuomintang in Taiwan from the mainland.

An Anglophile Republican president who sweeps into power in a fervor of Red Scare outrage at Henry Wallace, "The Man Who Sold The World", welds the United States to the British Empire as the post-war bloc capable of challenging the Communist hydra. "Unreliable" regimes are toppled and occupied, reliable regimes receive troops to assist them. There are Alliance troops from Morocco to Persia; as well as a sweeping blue hand over Indonesia, Malayasia, and the rest of Oceania. Asia might be Red, but the Pacific will stay blue!

So while the Comintern grows into a heterogenous coalition of dictatorships rather than a single overstretched empire, the NATO-analog Alliance exhausts itself for decades occupying vast tracts of Africa, the Middle-East, and the South Pacific.

This could work too I suspect.
 

Saggin

Banned
Well America has it's own american identity so it's impossible for america to split along regional lines.

Not really. Remember there was the first civil war and there still is an identity from that war. There also are other regional separatist movements with some history which could be pushed forward if things get annoying (i.e. New California Republic) and always ethnic states (Aztlan or Republic of New Afrika). That "American" identity, even among the dominant white americans (black nationalism hasnt really died off or black national identity, couched in terms like 'community' and referring to each others as 'brothers' and 'sisters) can die off given the right context.

EDIT: also http://www.amazon.com/American-Nations-History-Regional-Cultures/dp/0670022969

Depends. If Civil Rights Movements in this TL are mishandled you may see black areas try to form their own nation. OTL this idea was discussed by black groups.

Yeah.

Coming as it does at the same time as explosion of social discontent among young people and the beginning of outright insurrection in black-majority areas, America is pushed into crisis and the CPUSA - now associated with the "friendly" Khruschevite Soviet Union - begins to attract support.

Eventually the USA is able to overcome the crisis but it becomes less and less democratic as a reaction to the CPUSA and black militant groups gain in local power. Their members are often imprisoned and they become a symbol of popular resistance. During the 80s, a reformist is elected who frees most political prisoners and attempts to pass a long-overdue version of the Civil Rights Act - which is met with hatred from southerners who have been faced with low-level race war for the past few decades. When federal troops are sent in to desegregate the South, they are met with armed resistance.

By 1991 the South has become the site of Yugoslav-style ethnic cleansing and civil war, while the Communist Party is finally victorious in the Presidential election of 1992 after the previous government admits defeat in its war against the Soviet-backed Afghan mujahideen.

I'd think if you're mirroring the collapse of the USSR, there would be mass protests in black america, the white southern regions and the Mormon-zone in Utah and surrounding areas as these groups want their own national identity like how the Baltics did want to restate theirs.

Also, a coup-de-etat from white nationalists who want a centralized white-dominant america (like the soviet hardliners who wanted a centralized USSR) which collapses from people in D.C. streets of all races and ethnicities who riot and oppose the system (remember those videos of people literally pushing back the T-72s in Moscow and the tank dragging them forward and one guy who lays in front of the tank waiting to get ran over and another guy pulls him out of the way? It'll be like that, but in D.C. and with southern states and utah and california etc declaring their opposition to the coup. Perhaps a white separatist (mirroring Yeltsin) makes a speech to white ppl in DC on top of an Abrahms holding some white nationalist flag.

And remembering the ethnic issues in the Caucauses and some parts of Central Asis, you could TOTALLY get away with a Yugoslavia-analogue in the US south.....and have the federal government fuck up and side with either the white or black nationalists before they realize they were duped (that happened between Armenis and Azerbaijan in the last years of USSR). That and post-collapse nastiness.

The People's Republic of New Afrika and the States of Dixie are both awarded their independence after a lengthy peace process.

Also, ressurected Deseret for mormon ethno-religious group, and possibly some Aztlan analogue. Possibly California or Texas or Cascadia exists.

This timeline suffers from several faulty assumptions, but the biggest seems to be that the organization of the United States is anything at all like that of the USSR. If the U.S. loses land, then it will be in the form of its colonies and associated areas rather than any part of the Union itself.

new Africa seems like something possible. At least those ethnic, regional and racial issues. i.e. a sexond secession over segregation (lol) and then a race war in the independent south. Granted, separatist movements ARE different than losing territory officially in treaties.
 
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