AHC: The United States and the Soviet Union both collapse

Nationalism operated as a huge centrifugal force in the SU only in the Baltics and, to some degree, in the Caucasus (esp. Georgia, less so in Armenia and Azerbaijan). There was only limited public will for independence in Ukraine and Moldova, and even less in Belarus and Central Asia. Local elites hijacked the crisis to create personal fiefs, an undertaking that was greatly eased by the existence of separate ethnic identities in the titular republics (which in turn opened the minorities Pandora's Box that keeps producing localized nastiness to this day) but it is conceivable that cultural differences in the US might be expolited the same way if things really turn for the worse. However, most Americans tend to share a national sentiment which would make a Soviet-style breakup culturally harder.

It is fully valid that Baltic states were the extreme example of nationalism driving the break-up of the Soviet Union, yet even in the case of Khazakstan, which was the last SSR to declare independence, and thus could be characterized as the most reluctant, one can talk about an own language and an ethnic identity going back a half to a full millennium.

Nothing of the sort exists in the USA as of 1945. Sure, there are political and ethnic groupings, but the very idea of e.g. a German-American homeland within the USA is ridiculous, as is it to speak of e.g. a distinctive New Jersey ethnicity.

Of course, thinking of it, maybe the way to go here is to imagine a civil war between ideological factions (or a MilGov / CivGov split as in the Twilight: 2000 scenario), each claiming to be the full and true USA, which somehow ends in a stalemate. Perhaps a succession crisis after a presidential election can trigger this, but there needs to be a lot of unfortunate events lowering the political stability of the United States.
 
Short of nuclear war, it's not plausible fr the U.S. itself to really collapse in a cold war scenario where the Soviets do too.

Indeed - OP has boxed themselves in with the conditions set.

It has to be between Soviet Union and United States - so instantly putting it with a POD AFTER December 1922;
But also at the end of the Cold War - so again, instantly both making it AFTER 1948 (say) and the Cold War has to end at the same time.

I hate to say it, but the best way is the way the OP has ruled out, which is to have the nukes fly.

I struggle post 1948 to see how the US could collapse, let alone have both collapse at the same time.
 
Every time a question like this comes up, I always have a devil of a time imagining how the US could collapse.

That said, I've just spent the last few years or so trying to understand how the heck the USSR collapsed. Even when you take stock of all the weaknesses of the Soviet system, right up to the very end there were pathways to successful reform. When it comes right down to it, the Soviet system collapsed because Gorbachev and Yeltsin chose for it to collapse (though neither knew their choices would be so damaging).

So what is a plausible situation for the US where a leader would rather take a door that led to collapse than choose a door that led to the continuation of the Union?

fasquardon
JFK isn't assassinated removing the political capital to push through Civil Rights leading to increased rioting as time progresses, Nixon is still elected in '68 and, with the increasing needs for martial law usurps more and more power. He refuses to resign after Watergate causing many to think he is maneuvering to position himself as dictator eventually starting a civil war. Couple that with the energy crisis and things get ugly. Atrocities, animosities, and scars that last generations are the result. California breaks away as likely does the South. The North and Midwest stagnates under Nixon's continuing regime. NATO disavows the rump US.
 
It is fully valid that Baltic states were the extreme example of nationalism driving the break-up of the Soviet Union, yet even in the case of Khazakstan, which was the last SSR to declare independence, and thus could be characterized as the most reluctant, one can talk about an own language and an ethnic identity going back a half to a full millennium.

Sure. There were distinct ethnic identities within the SU, which were politically recognized through SSRs, ASSRs, etc. Indeed, some of these identities coalesced partly because of the Soviet desire to recognize ethnicities politically within the Soviet framework. The point is that the Soviet framework was, to a point, able to accomodate most of these groups, politically, as in, most Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Belarusians etc. were probably quite comfortable to join an overall Soviet political identity with a Kazakh, Uzbek, Belarusian ethnic identity. This was much less the case in the Baltics and Caucasus, and of course, it collapsed entirely when the Soviet system failed.

Nothing of the sort exists in the USA as of 1945. Sure, there are political and ethnic groupings, but the very idea of e.g. a German-American homeland within the USA is ridiculous, as is it to speak of e.g. a distinctive New Jersey ethnicity.

Of course, thinking of it, maybe the way to go here is to imagine a civil war between ideological factions (or a MilGov / CivGov split as in the Twilight: 2000 scenario), each claiming to be the full and true USA, which somehow ends in a stalemate. Perhaps a succession crisis after a presidential election can trigger this, but there needs to be a lot of unfortunate events lowering the political stability of the United States.
Of course nothing of the sort existed in the US, but ethnic idenities can be established, in the right context with surprising rapidity (ask Austria, or Montenegro)
 
Indeed - OP has boxed themselves in with the conditions set.

It has to be between Soviet Union and United States - so instantly putting it with a POD AFTER December 1922;
But also at the end of the Cold War - so again, instantly both making it AFTER 1948 (say) and the Cold War has to end at the same time.

I hate to say it, but the best way is the way the OP has ruled out, which is to have the nukes fly.

I struggle post 1948 to see how the US could collapse, let alone have both collapse at the same time.

The most likely way for the US to collapse is a (fairly unlikely) mix of imperial overstretch, economic trouble, rising racial tensions and monumentally incompetent leadership (which might in part be explained by the above, as a populist backlash somehow brings some fool in power). However, this should make a Soviet collapse LESS likely, as the US would be in no position to exert the pressure that weightened the Soviet system. Now, the SU is likely not sustainable without reform anyway, but it is hard to see how it may collapse at about the same time as the US.
 
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