Alternate supranational unions?

What are some plausible supranational unions that could have emerged in recent history?

The challange here is to get a large number of countries in a certain region to participate in an economic and political union with at least EU levels of integration (or more).
 
Scandanvian Union maybe?

An Asian union of various countries may be possbile but i dont know what the POD would be

A union of arab states isnt that hard at all
 
The Mediterranean Union.
An alternate European state colonizes most of North Africa, Syria, Cyprus, (Maybe) the Levant, a couple of big islands and makes smaller nations such as Greece and Albania its puppets.
During decolonization a Commonwealth-like union is formed.
I think a stronger France has definitely some chances.

Getting to something closer to us, a very very very improbable EU-NAFTA could have interesting consequences.
 

xsampa

Banned
An American "Union" consisting of the US and former autonomous Commonwealths. During the Commonwealth Period IOTL, the Philippines had its own Congress and President, but was legally part of the United States. Some Filipinos considered this status to be equivalent to that of a British Dominion. If the US somehow gained even more colonies, perhaps Formosa from a brief war with Japan over the Philippines _somehow_, it could grant Autonomous Commonwealth status to that as well. Once there are multiple A.Cs, the idea of a Union of Commonwealths can gain traction and can be formed after the independence of these countries.
 
An Asian union of various countries may be possbile but i dont know what the POD would be
Pan-Asianism was rather in vogue for quite a while in Japan and China before being discredited as an excuse for expansionism. A bit less nationalism and militarism, perhaps, would maybe create a more suitable environment for a supranational union in East Asia (that being Japan, China (plus Taiwan), and Korea). After Japan's militaristic expansionism, though, there's no goodwill or trust left among any of the East Asian nations with each other to allow for such a union. Post-Meiji Restoration, pre-2nd Sino-Japanese War was when it still had support (Sun Yatsen was a proponent of it), so maybe Japan being beaten in either the 1st Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, or not winning so much in either that they felt cheated by the peace and by the politicians, leading to the rise of militarism. That's a good few decades (1870-1890 would be ideal for a PoD, I imagine, for this situation).
 
The problem with an Asian Union is the same as with a North American Union or stronger OAS, that is that there is a clearly dominant power that will run everything. In the case of the Asian Union this is slightly less obvious, but it's still fairly obvious that sooner or later such a Union is going to become "China and pals". You might be able to get something interesting with Japan, (united) Korea, Taiwan, and perhaps some Southeast Asian countries buddying up, however, rather in the vein of the European Communities being partially a response to the Soviet Union.

As for the question itself, you could perhaps imagine some Latin American Union along the lines of the EU coming into being at some point, maybe as a compromise with some of the wilder ideas of unification that were prominent in the early 19th century there. Something along the lines of, "Yes, we know you want to keep this big region together, but maybe we should just have some loose institutions binding together independent countries, yes?". Regional unions in Africa would be possible and indeed are developing; it would probably be possible to figure out ways for them to become stronger and more important earlier. Another interesting possibility might be that if the United States doesn't hang together, then the post-American states might later form a North American Union that might even be able to rope in Canada (with big old Mexico being the perennially excluded participant due to its size and strength relative to the other members).
 
If Operation Condor is butterflied away (no or different Cuban Revolution?) and South America remains politically left-leaning, perhaps we could see an alternate, more integrated MERCOSUR. I'd kill to see a scenario with a political union between South America's big three of Brazil, Argentina, and Chile.
 
This was brought up, but maybe an Asian union? I mean, everyone does say it wont work post ww2 because everyone in the region hates Japan. Yet, all of Europe was able to forgive Germany. So maybe something can be worked out...
 
This was brought up, but maybe an Asian union? I mean, everyone does say it wont work post ww2 because everyone in the region hates Japan. Yet, all of Europe was able to forgive Germany. So maybe something can be worked out...
Germany's made large efforts to apologise and recognise German war crimes in WWII to an extent that Japan has not felt compelled to (editing history books to gloss over WWII is quite the opposite) and, while Japan has made apologies for its conduct on certain occasions, its politicians including Prime Ministers have also seemed to backpedal on it on others(visiting Yasukuni Shrine while in office with the knowledge of the controversy surrounding it does not help). Germany also doesn't have standing territorial disputes with all of its neighbors, whom in turn don't have a tendency to use German war crimes as a rallying cry especially when territorial disputes flare up, whereas Japan has active claims or disputes with both Koreas (the Liancourt Rocks) and the Chinas (the Pinnacle Islands) that involve rich and/or strategically vital sea zones.

Nationalism (the associated political power from it) and economic/territorial gains are major hurdles for East Asian reconciliation, the second exacerbating the first quite a lot.

There's also the fact that China is as big as Europe alone while Japan is around Germany's size and a union of equals isn't exactly feasible with an 11-1 demographic disparity between the two of them. South Koreans were wary of plans for a Japan-Korea Straits Tunnel because of the possibility of being dominated by Japan again due to Japan's advantage in population and economic size and the difference there isn't quite as sizeable as China-Japan or China-Korea (also because Korea was made economically subservient to Japan during the colonial period).
 
Germany's made large efforts to apologise and recognise German war crimes in WWII to an extent that Japan has not felt compelled to (editing history books to gloss over WWII is quite the opposite) and, while Japan has made apologies for its conduct on certain occasions, its politicians including Prime Ministers have also seemed to backpedal on it on others(visiting Yasukuni Shrine while in office with the knowledge of the controversy surrounding it does not help). Germany also doesn't have standing territorial disputes with all of its neighbors, whom in turn don't have a tendency to use German war crimes as a rallying cry especially when territorial disputes flare up, whereas Japan has active claims or disputes with both Koreas (the Liancourt Rocks) and the Chinas (the Pinnacle Islands) that involve rich and/or strategically vital sea zones.

Nationalism (the associated political power from it) and economic/territorial gains are major hurdles for East Asian reconciliation, the second exacerbating the first quite a lot.

There's also the fact that China is as big as Europe alone while Japan is around Germany's size and a union of equals isn't exactly feasible with an 11-1 demographic disparity between the two of them. South Koreans were wary of plans for a Japan-Korea Straits Tunnel because of the possibility of being dominated by Japan again due to Japan's advantage in population and economic size and the difference there isn't quite as sizeable as China-Japan or China-Korea (also because Korea was made economically subservient to Japan during the colonial period).
Hmm. So, what can we change to make Japan more like otl Germany?
 
This was brought up, but maybe an Asian union? I mean, everyone does say it wont work post ww2 because everyone in the region hates Japan. Yet, all of Europe was able to forgive Germany. So maybe something can be worked out...
doesn't even need to necessarily include Japan for it to be functionally pan-Asian--for a fictional example, while the United Federation of Asian Republics in Empire Earth is vaguely defined, it's pretty clear that it comprises most of Asia but not all of it, since it's all but directly stated that Japan and Taiwan aren't part of it (it's mostly Chinese but, curiously enough, the ruling family in it seems to actually be Korean as far as i can tell, based on their name)
 
I once read a on Wikipedia that someone in late-1800s/early-1900 proposed a USA-Britain-China union. I could never find that wiki page again though.

Another far-fetched (though much better known) was the proposed USA-Russia/Siberia union:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_regionalism
The idea of an autonomous Siberia was supported by Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, hoping it would become a democratic state, prosperous within a union with United States and leading to the collapse of Imperial Russia.[2] Siberia was seen by local thinkers and settlers as means of escape from the oppression of the Russian Empire, and the seed of a possible free and democratic country that would spread freedom across Asia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin#Imprisonment,_"confession"_and_exile
Muravyov was a liberal and Bakunin, as his relative, became a particular favourite. In the spring of 1859 Muravyov helped Bakunin with a job for Amur Development Agency which enabled him to move with his wife to Irkutsk, the capital of Eastern Siberia. This enabled Bakunin to be part of the circle involved in political discussions centred on Muravyov's colonial headquarters. Resenting the treatment of the colony by the Saint Petersburg bureaucracy, including its use as a dumping ground for malcontents, a proposal for a United States of Siberia emerged, independent of Russia and federated into a new United States of Siberia and America, following the example of the United States of America. The circle included Muravyov's young Chief of Staff Kukel, who Peter Kropotkin related had the complete works of Alexander Herzen; the civil governor Izvolsky, who allowed Bakunin to use his address for correspondence; and Muravyov's deputy and eventual successor, General Alexander Dondukov-Korsakov.
 
Union of the Danube - a Federal Union which evolved out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; consisting of Austria, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Croatia and Bosnia. POssibly still has the Habsburgs as the titular rulers, but with a supranational parliament and devolved 'national' governments.
 
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