AHC: The USSR and United States Collapse within 20 years of each other

Talking more of a balkanisation/USSR style of collapse (where some countries go independent instead). Lets say the USSR collapses under its own weight, then the US collapses in the 90, maybe via poor economic conditions and overextending itself in the middle east or something like that (military spending that is too big, continued borrowing leads to worse economic situation from credit rating etc).

Its hard but how could it possibly happen (or what/who needs to come in to make it happen).
 
For the US to collapse in the sense of various regions and ethnicites breaking away, I think you'd need regionalism to be a WAY bigger factor in American politics and culture than it is. That probably requires a pre-1900 POD, or pre-1861 if you get what I mean.

Maybe if things go TOTALLY into the crapper, like the 2008 Housing Crash X 10, some of the wealthier states might see that they're gonna end up basically serving as a soup kitchen for the rest of the country, they might try to go their own way. Texas might be the best bet, since they seem to have a greater sense of an independent identity than other rich states, plus the economy and geography(lots of saltwater coastline) to make a go of it.

But even then, I think the inherited political culture of the USA would mitigate against that. And non-geographic ethnic nationalism would be a non-starter, since the groups where such ideologies are most developed(eg. African Americans, natives, hispanics) are also the most economically marginalized, and would suffer disproprotionately from losing access to the federal welfare state and employment opportunitities.
 
For the US to collapse in the sense of various regions and ethnicites breaking away, I think you'd need regionalism to be a WAY bigger factor in American politics and culture than it is. That probably requires a pre-1900 POD, or pre-1861 if you get what I mean.

Maybe if things go TOTALLY into the crapper, like the 2008 Housing Crash X 10, some of the wealthier states might see that they're gonna end up basically serving as a soup kitchen for the rest of the country, they might try to go their own way. Texas might be the best bet, since they seem to have a greater sense of an independent identity than other rich states, plus the economy and geography(lots of saltwater coastline) to make a go of it.

But even then, I think the inherited political culture of the USA would mitigate against that. And non-geographic ethnic nationalism would be a non-starter, since the groups where such ideologies are most developed(eg. African Americans, natives, hispanics) are also the most economically marginalized, and would suffer disproprotionately from losing access to the federal welfare state and employment opportunitities.

what if some of the issues in the 90's (like a rodney king death) or an economic crisis leads to a similar thing.

Ok lets say the housing crisis hits earlier (maybe 03-04, before saddam is captured) and it is worse.
 
Just to bump this, thoughts on what it would actually take.

Also maybe what in the cold war leads to such actions to lead both to collapse (other than the war getting hot).
 
. . . Maybe if things go TOTALLY into the crapper, like the 2008 Housing Crash X 10, . . .
And everyone please remember, the U.S. House of Representatives back in late Sept. ‘08 initially DID NOT pass the bailout, and then they did.

Bailout is law
President Bush signs historic $700 billion

CNN Money, Jeanne Sahadi, Oct. 4, 2008

http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/03/news/economy/house_friday_bailout/

‘ . . . signed into law by President Bush on Friday afternoon. [Oct. 3, 2008] . . .

‘ . . . the House voted 263 to 171 to pass the bill.

‘The House vote followed a strong lobbying push by the White House and other supporters of the bill. The House rejected a similar measure on Monday [Sept. 29, 2008] [Emphasis added] - a defeat that shocked the markets and congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle.

‘The law, which allows the Treasury Secretary to purchase as much as $700 billion in troubled assets in a bid to kick-start lending, ushers in one of the most far-reaching interventions in the economy since the Great Depression. . . ’
Why did the House initially reject this?

Well, it sticks in your craw to bail out the same people who caused the mess in the first place. They correctly perceive that Morgan Chase, Bank of America, AIG, etc, are less committed to the negotiations, because shit they can just relocate.

And there may have been visible signs of disrespect or casualness by the banks (and other financial institutions such as AIG).
 

FBKampfer

Banned
Evangelicalism and religious extremism hits the US in the 60's, and basically implement the OTL political gridlock and antagonism earlier.

Ramp up the regional politics and "us vs them" in domestic policy debates, and you'll start pushing the liberal/liberalizing regions away from the rest of the country.

California and Texas (because Texas has always been a bit more independently minded, despite shared values and interests with its regional neighbors) push for limited autonomy on domestic issues in the 90's, and the USA never rolls more than a 4 on anything, and you'll be getting pretty close.

By the late 2000's, WA and OR will be moving to join California in a semi-independent economic zone, potentially trying to use early economic warfare against more conservative states on rights issues.

Have the housing market collapse in 08, and you'll start to see huge resistance in the autonomous regions to national bailouts. The south and Midwest is pretty screwed, Texas is probably alright, the West coast is probably hit moderately. Both regions are bitterly fighting to keep their federal tax money from being spent on the dead weight conservative states in the main US.

An assassin takes out a widely popular regional governor......
 
Capitalism and democracy are remarkably adaptable. You really need to undermine the pillars that hold up those institutions for the US to collapse. Hard to see those conditions emerging between 1932 and 2016. Then again, didnt see 2016 happening so what do I know...
 
Evangelicalism and religious extremism hits the US in the 60's, and basically implement the OTL political gridlock and antagonism earlier. . .
I’ve read that many U.S. evangelicals withdrew from politics following the embarrassing newspaper and radio coverage of the “Scopes Monkey” trial.

And we here at AH know that this trial was rather accidental shall we say, that young John Scopes was asked if he would serve as a test case by some town leaders and Chamber of Commerce types? They wanted to put Dayton [Tenn.] on the map again after a decade or two of industrial decline. And one of the many ironies, which John later confessed, is that the class was running short of time that day and he never actually taught the evolution part of the book!
 

Zachariah

Banned
How about if the USA had overextended itself closer to home, perhaps in the Caribbean? For instance, if the United States' Invasion of Grenada in 1983 had been publicly opposed by Margaret Thatcher as opposed to merely privately opposed by her, and had been met with a concerted guerrilla effort from the Cubans and Grenadians, forcing a lengthy occupation to try and dislodge them and resulting in far more civilian casualties?

This also leads Reagan to stand his ground on the ongoing Guatemalan Civil War, and instead of merely increasing military assistance and cooperation with the Guatemalan government, he also authorises an increase in the USA's military presence in Guatemala, deploying for the first time ground combat units to try and bring it to an end, and essentially turning the Guatemalan Civil War into another 'Resistance War Against America', just like the Vietnam War. The resulting backlash greatly increases civil discontent among the American populace, with the overwhelming majority (especially among the Latino community) believing the war to be fundamentally wrong and immoral.

And it also results in a far greater upsurge of support for the Workers' Socialist Movement in Puerto Rico, and the emergence of an armed insurrection in Puerto Rico by advocates of socialist and independent Puerto Rico, which in turn is brutally supressed by the American authorities. This is further exacerbated by the annexation of Grenada as a US territory by the USA, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the 1996 shootdown of Brothers to the Rescue aircraft triggers a declaration of war against Cuba by the United States, and another invasion of Cuba, which becomes the final straw for many of the rest of the world's nations, and for much of its own populace.
 
Early/Mid-60s nuclear war. The USSR gets totally obliterated but does enough damage to the US that she topples over a few years or decades down the line.
 
Capitalism and democracy are remarkably adaptable. You really need to undermine the pillars that hold up those institutions for the US to collapse. Hard to see those conditions emerging between 1932 and 2016. Then again, didnt see 2016 happening so what do I know...

Perhaps the Bretton Woods conference drops the ball and the new post-war monetary system is unstable while insufficiently rebuilding the world economy leading to a major new recession in the 1970's?
 
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