Challenge:USA gets a part of Siberia

During the Russian Civil War a more capitalistic anti-Communist USA sends troops to the Coast of Siberia to protect Alaska from the Soviet horde, and help the Whites.
It fails, and the Whites are uselessly divided so the US claims the coast as a protectorate.
After WW2 to stick it to Stalin they make US Siberia into an official territory. When Alaska becomes a state it also gains the Siberian territory.
 
Then the Americans have to do a bit better than in OTL. Their intervention in Arctic Russia was a bit of a failure (read: they were kicked out by the Reds). Siberia is even less hospitable.
 
Sell some of it with Alaska?

Pretty much impossible. Strategically this is a very differant matter for the Russians: very got rid of Alaska because it wasn't making them any cash and as adeliberate ay to build up relations with America in the friendly post-ACW climate. But selling off Siberia isn't necessary to imrpove relations (in fact, I doubt America would even want the place) and will raise an outcry from groups like the Orthodox church who were against selling Alaska in the first place.

And why exactly would they sell? They've just acquired Primorskij Kraj (the "claw") and are eagerly colonising it to give them an outlet on the Pacific. Selling that would be ludcirous. But north of it, there's a few port towns and... fuck all. That whole area was part of the Russian state pretty much by default. There was next to nothing to sell.

During the Russian Civil War a more capitalistic anti-Communist USA sends troops to the Coast of Siberia to protect Alaska from the Soviet horde, and help the Whites.

This is some pretty flawed military logic. The Reds have no desire for war with America, a tiny Pacific fleet shut in by Japan, and on the other hand a large and blooded army determined to re-assert control across the former empire. What does America gain, strategically, from sending troops to some God-forsaken coast of the Sea of Okhostsk? And of course that's some of the least defensible country in the world. It took the reds until 1923 to eliminate White outposts there because it took that long for them to get there, but when they did the Whites pretty much just vanished.

It should be noted that there were American troops in the actually useful areas along the Transsiberian out to Vladivostok. The Reds are not going to lose that area, and I doubt that America will be willing to bleed white to keep it, since for America it actually has no strategic importance. Russia needs her Pacific port; America has no shortage of such ports. Which is also why the Japanese, rather closer, more frightened of Russia, and more militant, still withdrew when the Red Army threatened to Get Serious.

It fails, and the Whites are uselessly divided so the US claims the coast as a protectorate.

How is America able to sustain it against a determined Red assault? Why would America then take over a useless stretch of coast rather than trade it for concessions somewhere that actually matters?
 
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What if the US gains control of parts of Siberia via the Japanese?

Russo-Japanese war, WWII, alternate WWI, or some other incident could all work for getting a large chunk under Japanese control. At that point it's not hard to fathom conflict with the US. All you need is for the US to win and for Russia or its analog to not have the strength to force the return of it's previous territories.
 
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What if the US gains control of parts of Siberia via the Japanese?

Russo-Japanese war, WWII, alternate WWI, or some other incident could all work for getting a large chunk under Japanese control. At that point it's not hard to fathom conflict with the US. All you need is for the US to win and for Russia or its analog to not have the strength to force the return of it's previous territories.

While the Japanese getting the place is rather more plausible than the Americans getting it, none of these three events is actually a good chance for Japan in anything resembling OTL:

1) Russo-Japanese War: Everyone thought Japan would lose, inluding her sponsor, Britain. This was partly fixed notions of "primitive Asiatics"... and partly because the Japanese were both absurdly skilled and absurdly lucky at pretty much every stage of the war, and should really have lost. And yet despite their winning streak, they still managed to end the war exhausted enough to take outside mediation because their finances were stretched to the limit and their casualties were unsustainable. For their trouble they received half of a largely useless island, a confirmation of their control of Korea which already basically existed, and some nice but not overwhelming advantages in Manchuria.

For the Japanese to physically take Vladivostok would be crazy. For them to keep it would be crazier: Russia will not accept that loss, and Russia, as the Japanese knew, simply had enough men to keep fighting for as long as she liked. And Britain (and all the other powers) would tell Japan to cool it the moment she went into Siberia.

2) WW1: As we saw OTL, Russia completely came apart for two years, and the Japanese had ample time to occupy Vladivostok and establish a servile government. What they didn't have was the necessary manpower and politicaly will to fight a massive and probably futile land war against the re-assertive Russian government on its home ground.

Remember that the Russians have handily won each battle in that part of the world since 1905. Japan's army was always a very scantly-equipped force by European standards, and in 1922-3 the Red Army was not a slouch: it had just fought and won the RCW and its equipment wasn't quite as outrageously obsolete as it would be later in the decade. And the Japanese armies were hardly modern either.

If the Japanese were really determined, it might be possible for them to knock the local Whites into some kind of order and hold a line around Baikal, which is the only real natural defence for miles and miles and miles; but that state would be large enough to be a puppet of Tokyo but certainly not a colony. Why would such a state (a pretty hard-right one, we can be fairly certain) ever want to join America?

And you'd need to change Japan quite a bit. I think the furthest they ever went OTL was a brief stay in Chita.

3) WW2: The Japanese managed to draw a skirmish in 1938, lose a skirmish in a most humiliating way in 1939, and lose all Machuria, an area the size of western Europe, in eleven days in 1945. This speaks ill of their capability to occupy much of Siberia.

The fact is, Japan had a fairly backward army lacking the resources necessary for modern industrial warfighting. It never supressed the Chinese, despite their chronic inefficiency, and the whole Pacific War was contested by a small number of their most elite units agianst very minimal enemy forces in climates were modern industrial warfare was impossible.

Local Japanese aggressions (Khasan, Khalkin Gol) got nowhere. A large, co-ordinated attack on the Soviet forces in the Far East would be unlikley to get so very much further (Vladivostok was a pretty fearsome fortification at the time: better than Sevastopol', Soviet strategists reckoned, and just ask the Germans about Sevastopol'), and would end up with the industrial Soviet war machine hitting Manchuria like the proverbial ton of bricks. Sure, the Soviets had an obsolete and scatterbrained force in this timeframe compared to the Germans, but Germans the Japanese were not. The pre-Winter War Soviets ran rings around them, and they are not going to tolerate a major Japanese attack.

If the Japanese attack when the Soviets have all their resources committed to fighting Germany... this does fuck all. The Soviets can if necessary evacuate everything east of Irkutsk, blow up the railways, and let the Japanese have fun walking the thousands of frozen miles to any target of strategic value: the evacuated industries were in the Urals and Kazakhstan, even further out of Japan's reach than they were out of Germany's. Japan's situation will only worsen when the failure to attack the Southern Resource Area (and if she does attack south, where does she get the troops to go north from?) results in a major supply crunch.

And then Germany surrenders and the fun begins...
 
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This is some pretty flawed military logic. The Reds have no desire for war with America, a tiny Pacific fleet shut in by Japan, and on the other hand a large and blooded army determined to re-assert control across the former empire. What does America gain, strategically, from sending troops to some God-forsaken coast of the Sea of Okhostsk? And of course that's some of the least defensible country in the world. It took the reds until 1923 to eliminate White outposts there because it took that long for them to get there, but when they did the Whites pretty much just vanished.
It should be noted that there were American troops in the actually useful areas along the Transsiberian out to Vladivostok. The Reds are not going to lose that area, and I doubt that America will be willing to bleed white to keep it, since for America it actually has no strategic importance. Russia needs her Pacific port; America has no shortage of such ports. Which is also why the Japanese, rather closer, more frightened of Russia, and more militant, still withdrew when the Red Army threatened to Get Serious.
How is America able to sustain it against a determined Red assault? Why would America then take over a useless stretch of coast rather than trade it for concessions somewhere that actually matters?

I didn't think it was likely, didn't realize it was COMPLETELY ASB :eek:. Thanks for the info.
 
I didn't think it was likely, didn't realize it was COMPLETELY ASB :eek:. Thanks for the info.

No trouble. Yeah, China or even Japan acquiring eastern Siberia is not outside the realm of the possible, but this wierd meme of Britain or America getting it is a bit wonky. Basically, if "Russia", a country which is more populated than blasted wastelands, located in the old Russian heartland, exists, it can get to Siberia long before anyone else except maybe China.
 
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