Could preventing WW1 make the world a much worse place?
- Thread starter noodle
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Under communism, everyone suffers to a degree, while under the Tsar, some do okay, and some are treated absolutely abysmally.
It wasn't Hiroshima, not even Nagasaki, It was the fact that by the end of the Korean War the U.S. could have killed probably 1/3 of the Soviet population (depends on exactly how many manned bombers get through) and Soviets could makes a decent part of the West Coast and Great Lakes population centers BDA statistics.
There were, of course other, secondary, primarily economic reasons that the the Superpowers were generally not ready to rock. That said, 1956, 1961, 1968 and /or1973 would be remembered very differently without the reality of Special Weapons.
BTW: I have very much studied up on the subject. Probably excessively so for someone who had no actual professional reason to do so.
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No there wouldn't be, fortunately. I was just using them to illustrate that, while being a part of a colony is bad, what happens to those nations after they become independent can easily turn into a situation as bad as, if not worse than what it was under the colonists.
Thomas1195
Banned
On the other hand, there would be no South Korea, Taiwan, or Singapore. Colonized SK, Taiwan or Singapore would never become filthy rich like OTL independent nations. In fact, a united Korea under OTL South Korean leadership would be a great power.
The flaw in your argument is that you ignore the upsides.
Singapore was pretty rich to begin with, regardless of the government, and South Korea and Taiwan took decades to sort themselves out. And I wonder how well South Korea would have done if they'd been left entirely to their own devices, rather than having a significant military presence.
There's not flaw, I simply pointed out that post-colonial countries are quite capable of (but by no means destined to) going to crap entirely without outside influence.
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Thomas1195
Banned
They still had a strong government with a right mindset and right policies, which made them different IOTL. The same can be said with Taiwan as well.
They were already becoming Asian Tigers by the 1970s, if not the mid-1960s. In fact, even by the early 1960s, the four Asian Tigers already had greater human and physical capital than all other countries of the same development stage, and all had universal primary education.
TTL European colonial policies would be treating colonies as raw resource providers and dumping ground for European goods - no way they would allow colonies to industrialize (unless those colonies are white ones like Canada).
On the other hand, they could industrialize under right governance. As I said, they would not be allowed to industralized under European rule, especially French rule.
And how much of that was down to American intervention? Remember, after 1949 the Americans had very few allies in East Asia, so it behooved them to support the ones they did still have.
Again, how much of that was due to the Americans building them up because they needed them to be strong?
Maybe, maybe not. Television is going to arrive sooner or later, and that can give the media quite a lot of sway.
The problem is, the sort of people who are good at ousting colonial powers are not often likely to be the sorts of people who are good at running a country.
Thomas1195
Banned
America mostly cover military expenses. South Asian countries also received American aids and investments but they did not succeed.
The sort of informal oppression I talk about is way harder to expose.
Thomas1195
Banned
And I would say Poland (and Baltic republics) only got their independence thanks to the First World War, given the fact that the majority of Poland was under Russian boots, and I do not believe that independent non-commie Poland can be worse than Russian-run Poland, as Tsarist Russia was very autocratic (certainly way more autocratic than Polish Republic), corrupt and incompetent.
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Which South Asian countries are you talking about? Vietnam? Do remember that during WW2 the USA funded a lot of resistance groups (such as the Viet Minh) in SEA, resistance groups who saw any outside government as a threat to their people's freedom, which meant they also fought the colonial powers. Afterwards, well, revolutionaries don't often make good governments. Korea meanwhile didn't have an outside-funded rebel group, so didn't have that instability issue.
Informal oppression? Could you explain that one a little more deeply please?
Nor their political ones, which is probably why they had so many issues.
Thomas1195
Banned
I am referring to South Korea and Taiwan.
The US literally bankrolled South Vietnam. However, South Vietnam was too corrupt and was continually attacked by NVA.
Economic oppression, similar to what Britain did to Thirteen Colonies: restricting economic relations to just raw resource supplier while preventing/banning actual industrial production (banning iron and wool manufacturing for example). Britain also systemically destroyed Bengal's key economic sectors when it colonized Bengal. This kind of oppression - simply maintain unequal economic relations - can be done in certain ways that are less obvious than openly oppression-by-force stuffs like Belgian Congo or French Indochina.
Meanwhile, formal oppression means pointing guns on the heads of colonized natives - Belgian Congo or French Indochina for example.
I've been mulling around with the idea of a timeline where the initial POD is that the Crimean War doesn't happen, which ultimately leads to the World Wars being avoided, as well as European imperialist dominance of the world being even a bit more extensive than OTL (For example, Japan becomes a French protectorate) and lasting longer. As others have already said here, no WW1 would likely mean prolonging European colonial rule over much of the world. How you weigh that against the horrors of the Great War, and everything that followed, probably depends on your point of view, to some extent.
You have tens of thousands of American troops stationed there. Even if you didn't intend it, that is going to have some effect.
The NVA was lead by people who'd been bankrolled by the USA in WW2.
There needs to be some industry in a country to maintain the infrastructure, and if you're mining, significantly more.
Aside from the constant fear of being denounced by their rivals and at best being sent to the Gulags and at worst tortured and eventually executed by the NKVD/KGB
Some of you have a distorted idea of how colonization worked. In most places, the natives could not care less about the Europeans. Only a small percentage of the population even spoke the language of the colonizers and for all intents and purposes the Land was still ruled by the old native chieftains.
Except for places like South Africa and Congo life went on as It always had and European presence remained very low, even in economical terms.
Except for places like South Africa and Congo life went on as It always had and European presence remained very low, even in economical terms.