Challenge: Invasion!!!!

With a POD of divergence in 1930, I'd say that it is possible. The Nazis haven't risen yet, the Great Depression is in full force, etc. The USA is weak at this point.

Not really. The Soviet Pacific fleet is tiny, the US and Japanese fleets are large, and supplying Soviet forces in Alaska would be virtually impossible. In the event of a US-Soviet war the Japanese would be almost certain to take advantage of Soviet weakness; they're supreme opportunists.

Even given the Depression (which is not yet in full force; that didn't happen until 1932-33) the US is not weak, not compared to the forces the Soviets could actually bring to bear. If war came the US military and supporting industry would be rapidly expanded, to the benefit of the economy; IOTL it was the buildup of US forces and war industry prior to WW II which jump-started the economy and pulled it out of the Depression.

The rise of the Nazis is neither here nor there; Germany in 1930 is not a credible threat to either the Soviets or the US. IOTL it did not become one until after the fall of France ten years later.

Any initial Soviet successes would be reversed within a year or two, after the expanded US forces are brought to bear. That does not mean the Soviet Union would be overrun, though; even if the US repays the Soviet invasion by invading Siberia they can't advance much further than the coast; the logistics won't support an advance into the interior, and the US will be looking over their shoulder at the Japanese as well. The US might take some islands and maybe a bit of Kamchatka, but even that last isn't really tenable.

The fact is that even in 1930 neither is in a position to really harm the other; and given the threats eventually posed by Germany and Japan that was probably for the best.
 
The US was certainly capable of having another war at that point. It lost what, 300,000 men in battle? The Soviets took millions of casualties and kept on fighting. The US can go for another war (won't be popular, though). And Stalin's regime could have survived another round of fighting!

That is an understatement if I ever saw one. I really don't think the American public would accept sending a million men abroad, where hundreds of thousands would die, spend hundreds of billions of dollars, reintroduce the privations of war at home, for what? To fight a former ally? Without some Pearl Harbour style move on the part of the USSR, I don't see how the US public would accept another world war, just 3 years after the last one had ended.

But yeah, America certainly had the capability of fighting another major war in 1948, IMO the US was by far the greatest power in the world in that year.
 
well, the USSR can't do it alone. About the only tiny possibility would be the "Not this August" scenario, where the USSR and PRC never have a falling out and spend most of their time and resources building up the forces to take on the USA. And even then, challenging the USN in it's own backyard in the Pacific would be a hell of a fight...
 
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