DBWI: America not an Empire

The best emperor? Even a hidebound old republican like myself cannot deny the greatness of the late Emperor George II Kang (ruled 1997- 2005). There was a man that anyone could be proud to have as a leader! I mean, he would have been noteworthy just for being the first emperor of Asian descent, but I admire him for his two great diplomatic coups:

  1. Persuading the Japanese to pull out of Korea in return for us "withdrawing our support" for the Ezo Shogunate. (Really, it was a win-win for both sides. Korea had been turning into a money-sink for the Japanese, and supporting an outfit as corrupt as the Shogunate was causing us no end of diplomatic problems in East Asia. I still can't believe we supported those guys for over a century! And, hey, we gave them all sanctuary in this country, afterwards. No one can say we don't support our clients, no matter how awful they are! I still remember seeing the footage of the Emperor in Seoul for the first Korean Independence Day celebrations. I believe he could have gotten himself proclaimed emperor of Korea, too, if he'd wanted it, but he restrained himself, and a good thing, too. No wonder they're one of our most loyal client states!
  2. The political reforms in Freedomia (Couldn't we have come up with a better name than that?) were key to keeping that province from going the way the Netherlandish Congo did. No one wanted a repeat of that mess!
In both cases, he managed to sell the American public on the measures so well that even those nihilistic loons in the Expansionist Party had to pretend to like them - in public, at least.

It's a shame his reign was so short, but anyone might have an aneurysm. For the record, I do not believe that he was poisoned. That's just conspiracy theory stuff, like those nutjobs who think that the P-LC faked the moon landings ("Poland cannot into space", indeed!) or those guys that think that New Judah has secret settlements at the Earth's core. I do believe the one about the Finns secretly having the Bomb, though. I mean, why else wouldn't the Russians have had a go at getting Karelia back, once they settled the "Succession Crisis" over there? But I'm getting off-topic, sorry!
 
(OOC: A list of Emperors mentioned so far:

Benedict I (first emperor)
Benedict II
George I (implied by the existence of George II)
Stella I Wakefield (1944-1986)
Nelson I
George II Kang (1997 - 2005)

Note: I was deliberately vague as to when the American Civil War was, nor have I named who the rival Emperors at Philadelphia and Atlanta were, nor have I mentioned which of them won.)
 
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The best emperor? Even a hidebound old republican like myself cannot deny the greatness of the late Emperor George II Kang (ruled 1997- 2005). There was a man that anyone could be proud to have as a leader! I mean, he would have been noteworthy just for being the first emperor of Asian descent, but I admire him for his two great diplomatic coups:

  1. Persuading the Japanese to pull out of Korea in return for us "withdrawing our support" for the Ezo Shogunate. (Really, it was a win-win for both sides. Korea had been turning into a money-sink for the Japanese, and supporting an outfit as corrupt as the Shogunate was causing us no end of diplomatic problems in East Asia. I still can't believe we supported those guys for over a century! And, hey, we gave them all sanctuary in this country, afterwards. No one can say we don't support our clients, no matter how awful they are! I still remember seeing the footage of the Emperor in Seoul for the first Korean Independence Day celebrations. I believe he could have gotten himself proclaimed emperor of Korea, too, if he'd wanted it, but he restrained himself, and a good thing, too. No wonder they're one of our most loyal client states!
  2. The political reforms in Freedomia (Couldn't we have come up with a better name than that?) were key to keeping that province from going the way the Netherlandish Congo did. No one wanted a repeat of that mess!
In both cases, he managed to sell the American public on the measures so well that even those nihilistic loons in the Expansionist Party had to pretend to like them - in public, at least.

It's a shame his reign was so short, but anyone might have an aneurysm. For the record, I do not believe that he was poisoned. That's just conspiracy theory stuff, like those nutjobs who think that the P-LC faked the moon landings ("Poland cannot into space", indeed!) or those guys that think that New Judah has secret settlements at the Earth's core. I do believe the one about the Finns secretly having the Bomb, though. I mean, why else wouldn't the Russians have had a go at getting Karelia back, once they settled the "Succession Crisis" over there? But I'm getting off-topic, sorry!
George II definitely did an excellent job at inheriting the mess left behind by Nelson I and helped rebuild America's political reputation during the Cold War.

OOC: I'm thinking of there being a four-way Cold War between America, France, Poland, and China after the 20 Years War. Does anyone oppose this idea?
 
Frankly, the idea that the ACW was due to a conflict over who got to be Emperor is apologia for the South and continues Tocqueville ignore the true cause of the war: slavery. It would have happened in a Republic, or an absolute monarchy, or any country where half of it was an industrialized modern economy and the other half was an agricultural slave state. I do think that the Empire ultimately made the situation better, however. Centralized government gave Theodore I Roosevelt(who would be my pick for best Emperor if not for Theodore II) the ability to fight a coherent war and push through anti-slavery reforms; themfact that he served for life allowed him to successfully reconstruct the country. It was he who destroyed the Klan against the demands of a Congress, and it was he who refused to abandon his Black subjects by withdrawing the army, and I think history has proven him right.
 
Do you think if the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth never reformed with the help of America, Prussia would have united Germany?
I have read someone claiming that Prussia was already in the process of slowly doing so, but as the nation was no more after the Napoleonic wars they of course couldn't continue.
And even if they unified Germany, what would such a state be like?

I know that Prussia is a somewhat taboo subject due to what happened in Ostpreußen (Pruthenia, Prusy, Prūsija) and Schlesien (Silesia, Śląsk) after the war, but maybe we can have a conversation about it without devolving into rants and insults?
 
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