Calm before the storm

So due to timeline shenanigans the world experiences a period of peace in the mid 20th century to the early 21st century. The POD is way before 1900 although the scenario stretches from the mid 21st century to the early 21st century. All major nations present a minimal threat of military attack on each other and compete economically rather than militarily.

The nations of the world are divided into blocks that generally coexist with each other, each of which is dominated by a power. There are a couple of small conflicts between insurgent groups for a decade or two but the great powers work together to crush them successfully.

How long would it take for the nations of this world to atrophy? How fast would they atrophy and to what extent? How badly would they be weakened? How fast would the nations be able to rearm?

Perhaps a nation might have its military shrink by 50% in roughly 100 years?
 
Just to be clear by atrophy you mean shrinking their militaries?

Military spending is super dumb if you don't have a use for it, so I think 50% is really low-balling it, if anything. If these power blocs are nominally hostile- like technically in a cold war or even just the current level of mistrust between like China and the US- then you could justify some elevated spending levels. But if there's a real cultural change where it's agreed that conflict will play out in the economic sphere, I can see a lot of nations barely finding justification to maintain much of a military at all.
 
If anything, their militaries eventually morph into security forces to secure their vast empires with Europe and America gradually settling for spheres of influence. Trade and interconnected economies will eventually erode calls for war among the powers. Prestige projects will be the norm as blocs challenge one another.

Larger white populations likely mean Italy colonizes/annexes Libya permanently, Algeria sees itself further secured to France, immigration by those south of the equator and east of the Urals will be a fraction of what it is today, Russia turns into a powerhouse without twenty plus years of death and destruction and another forty years of bureaucratic mismanagement (though a growing middle class bodes I'll for the Tsar).

Japan's nascent democracy will hold with a stronger Russia, no foreign adventures in WWI, no economic downturn due after the glut of sales during the Great War, and the great powers remaining invested in China discouraging militarist adventures.

The Ottomans struggle on even with all that oil money, Austria-Hungary either federalizes or falls apart, the Dominions remain tied to the UK (WWI helped foster than individualism) which may lead to political integration after so much economic integration. The UK will fight to hold on to India leading to a VERY radicalized subcontient. Africa will remain beneath the European boot without Soviet support (or successful Marxist doctrine), a glut of firepower, and no military experience. South America will likewise be quieter without Marxist uprisings and fascist governments; American oppression is also likely as they continue to be exploited for corporate interests (America has to have adventures somewhere).

America will remain isolationist with a small army and a large navy while remaining a sleeping giant.

The Great Depression is like any other depression without the unbridled spending of the Twenties to counter the depredations of the Teens and the house of cards which were the war loans and indemnities of the Great War.

Above all, the world will be intellectually and artistically better off without the loss of so many millions.
 
If everyone is balanced against each other, perhaps with nuclear weapons wouldn't maintaining a military be initially necessary to maintain the balance? If you let your military atrophy by too much compared to your neighbors then you might actually break the balance and get devoured by your neighbors.

Perhaps a more gradual collective downgrade might happen.

As for the social angle let's say we have a world where the EU has no threats militarily to itself for some reason. They got along pretty well OTL because there was an external threat, Russia present. Attacks between EU members would have seemed crazy. Without Russia as a viable threat or part of their union for some reason we'd probably see the military shrink but it would probably be limited by some underlying suspicion. Britain after WW2 was certainly friendly with France but I'm not sure that if France was the only thing to take into consideration the Britain of today would be comfortable almost completely abolishing it's military.

Remember that America still had War Plan Red after World War 1. Sometimes the difference between friend and foe is the presence of a common threat. With no common enemy, the nation to some extent may start to eye each other.
 
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@Expat, by atrophy I mean shrinking of the size and funding of the military. How small might the military get then? Perhaps down to 5% of previous? How fast would this happen? No cold war but formerly neutral trading partners have participated in a world war to establish the current world order.

How does this affect investment in military research though? Would that decrease by as much? While you don't need a large military on hand with no enemies it might be handy to have the appropriate equipment designs available. The decreased military size might see a larger proportion of military expenditure go to research. Perhaps we'd see increased civilian technological development dragging military tech forward?

@Inferus, good scenario but for the POD goes a bit further back. Like the bit about prestige projects though. In this timeline it is one of the driving factors for space exploration and large investments into alternative power. As for the interconnected economies that is a great idea. It is what stabilizes the eras of quiet (the timeline at this point has two with a third in the distant future).

The POD is quite far before 1900 but the world blocks are ruled by that region's native people. The quiet world order takes shape following a world war with most of the blocks except 1 (called Aux) representing people or powers from the victorious alliance. Most of the large blocks prior to the world war were neutral towards each other or only mildly hostile.

Insurgents aligned with the previous Aux administration fight on for 20 years in Central Asia, 10 years in North, South America and Central Africa for 30 years and Britain, France, the Former Byzantine Empire, Poland and Hungary, each time with low levels of local support allowing them to be rooted out and destroyed by authorities. The Insurgents in Central Asia cause some problems from most of Asia as valuable trade from most of Asia to the Siberian nations goes through there. They try to exert as much influence over their own matters as possible but this is not much. Military action is not an option as this will result in a combined assault from the rest of Asia to keep those routes open.

The nations of Aux still remain after the World War under new more friendly governments. Occasionally groups advocating breaking away from the new world order rise in prominence within Europe but never take power.
 
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Okay so onto the further end of the era of quiet

If we see the nations expanding into a new environment such as space, would we see spending and development pick up again to properly police the new environment? 20th century equipment probably isn't going to cut it in the age of space colonization so not developing anything new (like a space faring war vehicle) could raise a few problems.

How about if new techs enter the world? No threats but in an age of Powered Exoskeletons for industry your soldier's effectiveness would drop against civilian threats using these suits or any other emergent tech. If electric engines for airplanes becomes available due to new energy storage tech then perhaps nations would shell out money to upgrade their air fleet?
 
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So due to timeline shenanigans the world experiences a period of peace in the mid 20th century to the early 21st century. The POD is way before 1900 although the scenario stretches from the mid 21st century to the early 21st century. All major nations present a minimal threat of military attack on each other and compete economically rather than militarily.

The nations of the world are divided into blocks that generally coexist with each other, each of which is dominated by a power. There are a couple of small conflicts between insurgent groups for a decade or two but the great powers work together to crush them successfully.

How long would it take for the nations of this world to atrophy? How fast would they atrophy and to what extent? How badly would they be weakened? How fast would the nations be able to rearm?

Perhaps a nation might have its military shrink by 50% in roughly 100 years?

This sounds like one of those incredibly boring city builder games made by German developers over the last couple of decades. It's so bloody difficult to get any troops, that I've never even managed to use them in Anno 1404.

I'd rather play Age of Empires! Or to put it another way, one of the best historical strategy games wasn't called "Rome Total Peace". No, we want WAR! x'D
 
@Byzantine fanatic, you're right on about that. This scenario sets up the era following the second age of quiet, during which things start to heat up. How the 2nd age of quiet plays out is going to affect how the following conflict plays out: The Transhuman Metamorphosis. Two main groups at odds over the transition of humanity into new, more resilient artificial bodies. It is at the link between the more traditional Alternate History part and the more Alternate Future part.

Would a 100 years of quiet stall weapons development so badly that things like stealth bombers, railguns (TM conflict is in the 2050's), power armor and weapons satellites would not appear? or appear significantly stalled to when they might otherwise appear in a universe closer to OTL? Are we going to see fighting groups suddenly finding themselves needing to fight a space war and only having 20th century equipment?

Just for reference in this timeline geniuses and other gifted people appear within zones that would have usually been devastated by conflict. Other gifted people are able to benefit in non conflict zones from having their country not at war. They are either not killed or are able to be raised in an environment that allows them to perform to their full potential. This allows tech development (at least from a civilian perspective) to go at a 150% faster rate.
 
If one of the factions was the losing side of the world war this would presumably mean that it is ruled by a puppet government. Those can take a great deal of force to maintain and if it was a global threatening force the need to maintain an army certainly would be apparent. Imagine if America had no rivals after WW2 but needed to keep America friendly governments in Germany and Japan in power as groups in those nations revolted. That might cause a great deal of concern. I've curious how to transition such a nation back to the control of the locals?

You'd get an interesting situation where everyone is researching weapons and the puppet governments are getting mighty worried because those weapons are meant to fight their peoples, even though the puppet governments are supposed to be allied to those developing the weapons against them.

Also consider that the existence of neutral nations are plenty motivation to keep funding an army. Also defunding much of the military doesn't suddenly happen overnight when the threat disappears. If it is happen at all it will gradually happen over decades, perhaps 40-50 years. Also consider that people will also be eyeing those previous troublemakers cautiously for a few decades even when they aren't a threat anymore.
 
Look at the United States in 1939 it took them until 1943 to get up to speed. But if directly at war in 1939 they could have done it by 1941.
 
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