DBWI/AHC: Britain not a superpower in the 21st Century

[Psmith]

Just flown back from my holiday in the Crown Colony of Singapore, it was great but also really weird to be using British currency and reading British newspapers in a city on the other side of the world from the home islands. Of course, the UK almost lost it during the Malayan Campaign of 1942, and when I thought of that it struck me that Britain came very close to the loss of its superpower status during WW2. Its role as Defender of the East was almost lost, vast swathes of its heartland were levelled by German bombings, and it did indeed lose India in the aftermath of the war, so it seems that only a few lucky scrapes saved it from being cast alongside the likes of France, China and West Germany as a secondary power. However, it survived its identity crisis and today stands alongside the US and USSR as one of the leading powers of the world, with the 2nd largest navy in the world and an independent nuclear arsenal, although it is closely aligned with the Americans against the Socialist Powers. So, how could Britain have been forced to endure that demotion, and what would the world look like without a second Anglosphere titan to counter the USA?
EDIT: Added a few ways to distinguish this from OTL

 

[Burton K Wheeler]

EDIT: Carry on, I forgot what DBWI means, apparently.

 

[Psmith]

I'm not convinced that you're not describing OTL. I wouldn't say Britain ranks above France as a global power or has since the 1950's. If you were in Senegal you could make the same observation about France, right?

I reference a Singapore that still uses British currency and that wasn't lost in WW2, but I'll edit it to clarify a bit more that it is still a Crown Colony in this timeline, and that Britain is indeed a greater power there than OTL. I hope that would fix it?

 

[Neoteros]

No Japanese invasion of Australia and New Zealand, probably? The Japanese occupation was so brutal over there - despite it being very brief - that neither Australia nor New Zealand could really oppose integration into the new Imperial Federation, and Canada wouldn't have joined it if not for what happened in Washington D.C. after the war, either.

Even while spanning three continents, the Imperial Federation lost most of the colonies, so a United Kingdom restricted to the British Isles, or maybe even just Britain if Ireland goes its own way, would've fared much worse.

The IF is a weird state today; England is by far the most populous constituent country in the union, but most of the members of Parliament come from outside the British Isles, up to and including Prime Minister Ardern; English culture is everywhere, but a lot of what the average person in London watches on television comes from either Toronto or Vancouver, and so on.

 

[FBKampfer]

Easy. Make the Nazis do worse, ironically.

If they weren't mopping the floor with the Soviets until 44, then Churchill would have gotten his Balkans field trip at the expense of the UK. The need to open a major second front in Italy saved the UK a great deal in the long run.

I mean the Soviets lost something like a million killed outright pushing through the mountains, and mountain warfare is actually an area they would have an advantage over the Allies.

So figure 500,000 UK deaths, plus twice that wounded, captured or missing. And then they'll have to scramble to make D-Day anyway or have the Soviets gobble up Europe since Winnie wasted a year jerking off in the Balkans.


As you noted, the UK was teetering on the edge for a while. Ratchet up the cost of the war a bit, and it's tgt straw that broke the queens back.



And the reality is that your superpower status is mostly nominal, and derived from your nuclear arsenal, and your navy. However, while your navy allows you to deny a viable exit strategy for an opponent, you have your historic problem of limited land power to enforce anything, unless you scrape up most of the second line and reservists from across the empire.

You're fielding..... 38 divisions as your standing army, if I recall. The Germans, even divided between East and West, are fielding 63 divisions as the standing force.


My point being, while you retain the ability to project power on a global scale, it would take a considerable effort for you guys to frag Germany, while the United States wouldn't even need to use all of our standing strength military.



Really you guys should have been shipping people over to Australia like nuts from the get go. If it had a population density comensurate to the UK's, or even half of it, then you'd really be a heavyweight.

 

[Deleted member 109224]

Avoid Smuts becoming PM during the War.

The prospect of a non-British leader of the United Kingdom contributed greatly to the idea of pan-commonwealth unity.

It didn't stop South Africa from declaring itself a Republic, but it did lead to Natal seceding to join the Federation.

 

[Psmith]

your superpower status is mostly nominal

You're fielding..... 38 divisions as your standing army, if I recall.

Yeah, but have you seen the Chinese? 0.8 billion people, the largest army on Earth, and what do they have to show for it? An attempt to announce a trade bloc at the Asian Economic Congress last year and being literally laughed off stage. Nobody signed up. I think Britain is definitely a proper superpower today, if nothing else because it still has places like Hong Kong and Aden on the peripheries of nations which on paper should beat it hands down, but simply can't because their economies are in the gutter and they have no diplomatic relations to speak of. What it did have is an identity crisis in the 40s and 50s over the territorial empire that it was too weak to sustain, and I will admit that cost us a lot of heft.

 

[Thomas1195]

Avoid Grimond and Jenkins ministries, then you would butterfly away most of their OTL social market economic reforms. These reforms completely reversed UK's economic decline.

 

[samcster94]

If it happened, then the Yanks probably would replace us.
OOC: I am role playing as someone in this alt 21st century.

 

[Psmith]

Yanks probably would replace us.

The US are probably Number 1 at the moment but I know what you mean, they weren't a fan of our spheres of influence and made several subtle efforts to kick us out of the Middle East in OTL. They failed, of course, and we're still pretty big players there. I thought that aside from something in the War, the Suez Crisis would be a suitable POD since it could have been far more humiliating than it was. Placing the canal under the jurisdiction of a UN P5 comission was a far better alternative to Nasser's original plan of simply seizing it for himself. The Americans ultimately stood with us on that debate, but it was a pretty close call, they were really worried that standing with us would force Egypt into the Soviet camp and apparently they had contingencies to attack the British economy. That would have been supremely embarrassing for us.

 

[samcster94]

The US are probably Number 1 at the moment but I know what you mean, they weren't a fan of our spheres of influence and made several subtle efforts to kick us out of the Middle East in OTL. They failed, of course, and we're still pretty big players there. I thought that aside from something in the War, the Suez Crisis would be a suitable POD since it could have been far more humiliating than it was. Placing the canal under the jurisdiction of a UN P5 comission was a far better alternative to Nasser's original plan of simply seizing it for himself. The Americans ultimately stood with us on that debate, but it was a pretty close call, they were really worried that standing with us would force Egypt into the Soviet camp and apparently they had contingencies to attack the British economy. That would have been supremely embarrassing for us.

More recently Yanks have sent their own troops to the ME to help us, but most of them are for peacekeeping reasons and not actual combat. Muslim extremists attacked a major building in London and killed several hundred people(OOC:9/11 analog) about 20 years ago.

 

[Deleted member 109224]

Yeah, but have you seen the Chinese? 0.8 billion people, the largest army on Earth, and what do they have to show for it? Announcing a trade bloc at the Asian Economic Congress last year and being literally laughed off stage. I think Britain is definitely a proper superpower today, if nothing else because it still places like Hong Kong and Aden on the peripheries of nations which on paper should beat it hands down, but simply can't because their economies are in the gutter and they have no diplomatic relations to speak of. What it did have is an identity crisis in the 40s and 50s over the territorial empire that it was too weak to sustain, and I will admit that cost us a lot of heft.

Britain is an odd country. Collectively the Commonwealth is able to act as a Superpower-level force, but individually I wouldn't call the UK a superpower on its own.

I think the biggest source of Britain's strength following its shift away from territory-based imperialism to a looser 20th/21st century model was its population boom and respectable economic growth.

The post-WW2 German wave was a tremendous contribution to the country's well-being.
The Anglo-Indian mass migration was a plus.
The influx of British loyalists from India following the expulsion
The wave of Greek Cypriots that came when the Turks took the island
The liberalization of Chinese migration as part of the agreement in which mainland China recognized Hong Kong as British
The steady inflow of individuals from the overseas provinces (Sierra Leone, Gambia, Mauritius, Malta, Aden, etc)
Britain playing its part in the Indochinese refugee crisis, taking in hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurial-minded Hoa

If Britain had been less liberal in terms of immigration, the country would be perhaps 20 million people fewer.

88 million people * a GDP per capita of about 48,000 = Nominal GDP of around 4.224 Trillion (the world's second largest between the United States and Japan).
Throw the rest of the commonwealth on top of that, and you've got a GDP of around 9 Trillion.

Maintaining the protectorate agreements with the oil-rich Sultanate of Brunei and the Trucial States and strategic partners like Zanzibar are also pluses.



There were calls following the war to make Britain more protectionist and socialist (of the Eastern variety, not of the Northern European liberal social-market model). If you isolate the UK from competition, prop up failing industries, don't allow sterling convertibility, etc for a generation, you'd see a much poorer and weaker Britain.

 

[Some Bloke]

Smuts becoming PM during the War.

OOC: If this is the PoD then this is gets top marks for originality, and would make an interesting AHC.

 

[Some Bloke]

If it happened, then the Yanks probably would replace us.

They're already the most powerful single nation in the world, so I'm not sure where you're coming from, replace us how?
Taking over our trade blocks in Africa, Asia, and the Americas? They're our biggest trade rivals in the South America anyway,
but I don't see how they could form part of a trade bloc in Asia or Africa. Granted they extensive trade with Japan and the Philipines,
but not much clout in the mainland Far East.

The Chinese can see the writing on the wall, whoch was why they tried forming their own regional economic organisation.
The days of the one nation superpower are numbered, which is probbly why the Americans are forming closer economic ties
with South America, particularly Brazil.

 

[Deleted member 109224]

OOC: If this is the PoD then this is gets top marks for originality, and would make an interesting AHC.

I found this on Wikipedia. Apparently it was an OTL idea floated around.

Smuts' importance to the Imperial war effort was emphasised by a quite audacious plan, proposed as early as 1940, to appoint Smuts as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, should Churchill die or otherwise become incapacitated during the war. This idea was put forward by Sir John Colville, Churchill's private secretary, to Queen Mary and then to George VI, both of whom warmed to the idea.

 

[Psmith]

Avoid Smuts becoming PM during the War.

A good point. Without his 2nd Imperial War Cabinet to keep an eye on all aspects of the Empire, its quite probable that the Singapore Strategy would have failed, with all the humiliation and calamity that would have entailed.

 

[JonKenobi]

You know; I just thought of something.

If the U.K. wasn't as globally reaching; I could see a bolder Soviet Union. A 1 on 1 fight is more even than a 2 on 1 fight.

As it is; the west is just more successful. More resources, a joint Allied research moon base (built in 2014) a hemmed in China and less proxy wars with Russia.

 

[Ditzy Vixen (RossN)]

No Japanese invasion of Australia and New Zealand, probably? The Japanese occupation was so brutal over there - despite it being very brief - that neither Australia nor New Zealand could really oppose integration into the new Imperial Federation, and Canada wouldn't have joined it if not for what happened in Washington D.C. after the war, either.

Even while spanning three continents, the Imperial Federation lost most of the colonies, so a United Kingdom restricted to the British Isles, or maybe even just Britain if Ireland goes its own way, would've fared much worse.

The IF is a weird state today; England is by far the most populous constituent country in the union, but most of the members of Parliament come from outside the British Isles, up to and including Prime Minister Ardern; English culture is everywhere, but a lot of what the average person in London watches on television comes from either Toronto or Vancouver, and so on.

OOC: Ireland permanently staying in the UK (as against being in a strong Commonwealth or Imperial Federation) probably needs a pre-1900 POD. Some form of Home Rule was inevitable by that point and from there it is very difficult to see it not leading to Dominion status quite quickly.