DBWI:America wins the Cold War

Anyway you could the union of Socialist states of America win the Cold War against the Russian empire instead of falling and losing Quebec ,the Mexican states and the British isles .i imagine avoiding the spilt with Brazil be a good start
 
They really really REALLY shouldn't have tried to impose English as "the official language of socialism" on Quebec, or, conversely, done so in a hardcore totalitarian way that completely eliminated French. Instead, they went about it half-assed, which allowed French culture to survive, but with a burning undertone of resentment, pushing them right into the Czarist bloc.

And the anti-Catholic campaign in Quebec was absolutely bonkers. The belief of the USSA and their Quebec lackeys, that attacking Catholicism wouldn't push Quebec Catholics into the Russian camp because Catholics don't like Orthodox, was beyond-belief idiotic.

When that mob of ultrarightist Catholics hung President Trudeau from the lamppost during the Jean Baptiste Riots, the commie Yanks must have known the game was up.
 
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Anyway you could the union of Socialist states of America win the Cold War against the Russian empire instead of falling and losing Quebec ,the Mexican states and the British isles .i imagine avoiding the spilt with Brazil be a good start

America didn't exactly come out for the better, but maybe it wouldn't have lead to the victory disease which developed quickly in Russia afterwards; that country is now on the verge of a bloody political implosion themselves, what, with the failed invasions of Iran, Afghanistan, and Turkey and all(not to mention widespread violent persecutions of minorities by not just the various paramilitaries, but, increasingly, local police as well.).

They really really REALLY shouldn't have tried to impose English as "the official language of socialism" on Quebec, or, conversely, done so in a hardcore totalitarian way that completely eliminated French. Instead, they went about it half-assed, which allowed French culture to survive, but with a burning undertone of resentment, pushing them right into the Czarist bloc.

And the anti-Catholic campaign in Quebec was absolutely bonkers. The belief of the USSA and their Quebec lackeys, that attacking Catholicism wouldn't push Quebec Catholics into the Russian camp because Catholics don't like Orthodox, was beyond-belief idiotic.

When that mob of ultrarightist Catholics hung President Trudeau from the lamppost during the Jean Baptiste Riots, the commie Yanks must have known the game was up.

Also, although the imposition of English as the "First Language of Socialism" on the Quebecois public was indeed highly controversial, the effigy of Trudeau being hung during the August 1988 riots was a Bloc Capitaliste idea, and he still enjoyed a fair amount of support(48% in that period. Not a majority, but not the levels he reached by the spring of 1990, about 25%.) before the recession which followed in March of the next year. (I still have the videotape of his June 1990 assassination in Quebec City, by the way; these same people were behind that incident, too.)

And finally, anti-Catholic what, exactly? First of all, the government never had an anti-Catholic policy(yes, the government did heavily criticize traditionalist Catholicism, but they didn't spare anyone else, either)-speaking as a (social democrat semi-capitalist) Kiwi here, that's a bunch of bullshit straight from the dirty minds of the Moscow Infobureau. In fact, the October and November 1988 spree killings in Miami, New York, and several other cities were done by the KKK.....the infamous white supremacist terror group who'd opposed socialism from day one.....and one of the leaders of which had recently taken money from a rogue Russian official.....the Japanese NHK company, regarded as the East Asian BBC, did an expose on this in 1993: Link

OOC: Alright, alright. Let's not get *too* fanciful; it's highly unlikely, for a variety of reasons, that a communist America would ever suffer from the plainly ridiculous levels of repression that occurred under Stalinist Russia IOTL(or lots of organized anti-Catholicism, either). Also, Bloc Capitaliste was intended to be a hardcore right-wing Paulite "Libertarian" type group with elements of the real world Svoboda and Pravy Sektor groups in the Ukraine thrown in.
 
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the effigy of Trudeau being hung during the August 1988 riots was a Bloc Capitaliste idea

Yeah, what a bizarre group they were. On the one hand, you had Parizeau living in exile at his private dacha in Russia, issuing these high-flown proclamations about liberty, freedom, and the marketplace, which his Russian paymasters treated like holy writ.

Meanwhile, back in Quebec, the people acting in Parizeau's name were the biggest bunch of lumpenproletariat street-thugs you could ever imagine, chasing down anyone who looked "ethnic" or knew too many English words. It's really amazing the Russians managed to bring Quebec into their column, given the state of talent they had working for them in Montreal.
 
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shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
I'm always sick of seeing these pop up. Look, Communism was an inherently better system, whilst Capitalism was inherently flawed.
 
I'm always sick of seeing these pop up. Look, Communism was an inherently better system, whilst Capitalism was inherently flawed.

Looks like someone is from Brazil. To be fair Brazil is now getting to the point where it can stand of with Russia, but that does not mean communism is better than capitalism. Back to the op the only way for America to survive the 20th century is computerise its planed economy like Brazil did in the 80s and 90s. If they did, maybe New York would have the gaint statue of Marx instead if Rio.
 
The problem is that the Russian bloc is basically impenetrable. They had all of Eurasia secure except for the isles, and even then the ability of the Americans to project power was limited. Plus the Russians had legitimately powerful allies, like Imperial Germany, a superpower in its own right even today, while the Americans had Brazil and not much else. Honestly, the American collapse was inevitable from the moment Long came in to power, since he was never up to picking a successor. The civil war between J Edgar Hoover, Earl Long, the American Peoples Army, and the American Liberation army in the wake of Longs death was what destroyed Communism, and I can't see how it can be avoided. The victory of constitutional monarchism was inevitable.
 
I actually don't think it would be as hard as one might think. China was incredibly unstable in the 1940s shortly after the Japanese Revolution; I don't think it would be too hard to get a communist China, and that would change an awful lot. Russia and Germany are too stable to go communist; the lesson of history is that appropriately nationalistic autocracies (unlike medieval dynastic-based states like Austria-Hungary which didn't have a stable ethnic-nationalist core) are far superior at resisting left-wing subversion than the discredited ideology of liberal democracy which, as in France and the former United Kingdom and United States, allow left-wing movements to publicly organise, as has been demonstrated time and time again. But for them to lose plenty of their allies would be quite possible. Free-market capitalism and the ideology of an 'impartial arbiter' of the free market in the form of a 'night-watchman' autocratic state, untainted by politicians who can be easily bribed and brought under control, could have been reduced to a far weaker position in the world, though in Russia and Germany it would still survive, and it would be more powerful than OTL's communist remnant in Brazil.

like Imperial Germany, a superpower in its own right even today

I agree with your analysis in general but this is an exaggeration. Germany has never been and never will be a superpower. It simply doesn't come anywhere near either the Russian Empire or America in terms of either population or land-mass; it has neither the people nor the natural resources to qualify as a superpower. Nor does it conform to the definition of superpower-hood defined by the ability to defeat great powers on the other side of the world on their own turf away from one's own turf. A strong great power? Sure. The second-strongest nation in Europe? Sure. A superpower? No, not at all, not even close.

(Also, what do you mean 'Imperial' Germany? What other sort of Germany is there?)

I get that it's difficult to classify Germany; it's more powerful than most great powers. But I don't think it's fair to consider it on the same level as the Russian Empire and the former USSA.
 
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Yeah, what a bizarre group they were. On the one hand, you had Parizeau living in exile at his private dacha in Russia, issuing these high-flown proclamations about liberty, freedom, and the marketplace, which his Russian paymasters treated like holy writ.

Meanwhile, back in Quebec, the people acting in Parizeau's name were the biggest bunch of lumpenproletariat street-thugs you could ever imagine, chasing down anyone who looked "ethnic" or knew too many English words. It's really amazing the Russians managed to bring Quebec into their column, given the state of talent they had working for them in Montreal.

Yep, sad but true. Of course, it didn't help that extremist elements in the U.S. government ended up causing their own problems up there-see the Sherbrooke shootout in 1987.

OOC: I'm glad we were able to work things out! :)

I'm always sick of seeing these pop up. Look, Communism was an inherently better system, whilst Capitalism was inherently flawed.

I dunno. Personally, I have no problems with highly regulated mixed economies-New Zealand *is* one of the wealthiest countries out there, after all. And capitalist Ireland is doing pretty well, too. It's just that Communism wasn't all failures-just look at Ethiopia and Indochina; although neither are exactly full-on Communist anymore, both are doing fairly decently today. It's just that the U.S.S.A. suffered from some bad leadership, more than anything.

The problem is that the Russian bloc is basically impenetrable. They had all of Eurasia secure except for the isles, and even then the ability of the Americans to project power was limited. Plus the Russians had legitimately powerful allies, like Imperial Germany, a superpower in its own right even today, while the Americans had Brazil and not much else. Honestly, the American collapse was inevitable from the moment Long came in to power, since he was never up to picking a successor. The civil war between J Edgar Hoover, Earl Long, the American Peoples Army, and the American Liberation army in the wake of Longs death was what destroyed Communism, and I can't see how it can be avoided. The victory of constitutional monarchism was inevitable.

OOC: I'm afraid a good bit of this stuff is a bit low on plausibility-Germany never would have been a bonafide superpower and J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972 IOTL; he wasn't going to live much longer than that.

Wait, what? Germany isn't a superpower. Hell, after the Downfall of 1989-92(the loss of the last remnants of the Empire, those being Namibia and Dodomaland, the dissolution of MittelEuropa, and the abdication of Kaiser Albert in 1989-which followed the economic collapse in 1987, and the violent unrest that came after to the end of 1988, including the Sorbian Revolt, the Sinti Riot in Dortmund, etc.), it was just a shell of it's former self! They're doing much better now(the wide-reaching reforms in 1992-97 did much to ensure that!), but they'll never again be quite the truly dominant power they were in the '50s, not for a while, anyway.

Earl Long's ascension in 1973, it can be said, wasn't the best possible scenario for America-he wasn't exactly competent, for one, and was also too weak to deal with Russia effectively. By the time he died in 1978, his failures had, in fact, pretty much effectively ensured that the Crash of 1980 would hit, which signaled, in many eyes, the beginning of the true downfall of the U.S.S.A. as a superpower; although Jimmy Carter, Howard Baker, and Jerry Brown all tried to fix things up, they couldn't stop the ultimate dissolution of the country in April 1992. But at least it was largely peaceful, though(apart from the occasional fighting between the National Guard and the ALA), unlike the breakup of the Central European Federation, which involved much in the way of ethnic violence.

As for Russia today, I do think there is still some hope-despite the rampant corruption and serious problems with extreme right-wing violence, a lot of people are beginning to take notice and are getting around to demanding that the government fix everything. If there's one thing that brightens my spirits, it's the fact that the socially progressive Liberal Russia party was polling as high as 40% in the July 2015 polls, more than anyone else.

OOC: I've gone ahead and tossed the bit about Prussia threatening to break off-maybe that was a step too far. As for Russia's problems, they were admittedly inspired by some of the problems we've had here in America IOTL, but on a larger scale. Hopefully this wasn't going *too* far in it's initial incarnation, but I wanted to show that just because they won the *Cold War, that things wouldn't be all sunshine and rainbows for the Russians, necessarily; they certainly haven't been for America in the real world.
 
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Prussia was this close to breaking away.

OOC: Seriously? Prussia breaking away from Imperial Germany is as insane as England breaking away from the United Kingdom. Prussia was 60% of Imperial Germany upon unification.

In addition, the idea of Imperial Germany being such a very powerful Russian ally is contradicted by your claim that it's so weak it very nearly fell apart entirely. I get that you like socialism but you shouldn't just ruin DBWIs by contradicting other people's claims just to make your favoured ideology look good.

You lecturing other people on maintaining plausibility while mentioning stuff like Prussia breaking away from Imperial Germany is rich; if you're going to be rigorous yourself then you can criticise other people about plausibility, but not in literally the same post as you do something extremely implausible.
 
OOC: Seriously? Prussia breaking away from Imperial Germany is as insane as England breaking away from the United Kingdom. Prussia was 60% of Imperial Germany upon unification. In addition, the idea of Imperial Germany being such a very powerful Russian ally is contradicted by your claim that it's so weak it very nearly fell apart entirely.

OOC: I'd like to point out that Germany was undergoing significant unrest(unless Noscoper prefers something else)? Now, I'll admit that it's fairly unlikely that Prussia would break away even during the worst of possible strife, but in my defense, it's *somewhat* less implausible than Germany being a bonafide superpower on the level of the United States IOTL, which would require a POD well before 1900.

Edit: With that said, though, I've gone ahead and revised my post upon consideration, to something that is a little more believable.

I get that you like socialism but you shouldn't just ruin DBWIs by contradicting other people's claims just to make your favoured ideology look good.

You lecturing other people on maintaining plausibility while mentioning stuff like Prussia breaking away from Imperial Germany is rich; if you're going to be rigorous yourself then you can criticise other people about plausibility, but not in literally the same post as you do something extremely implausible.
OOC: To be honest, I'm not exactly terribly strongly favored to socialism, but I did have my reasons for suggesting that an American communist state wouldn't be at all likely to be as utterly screwed up as Russia's was IOTL; for one, unlike Russia, the U.S. had a fairly long-standing liberal tradition from it's founding-that wouldn't just totally disappear under a revolutionary state. And I'd add that it's that same thing that's really helped keep us from being at a short-term risk from going off the deep end into authoritarianism after our own major failures in Iraq and Vietnam IOTL-Russia, unfortunately, doesn't quite have that. Of course, it might help that there was never a Soviet Union ITTL, but there would still be a disadvantage compared to the U.S., depending on the post *Cold War situation.

Of course, ultimately, I'll of course defer to Noscoper, as he was the thread creator, and see what he wants to do, if he feels like intervening. With that said, though, I thought I'd make some changes to other ideas that I'd had.

Edit-Hmm....I seem to have accidentally missed your prior post, I think. :eek:

I actually don't think it would be as hard as one might think. China was incredibly unstable in the 1940s shortly after the Japanese Revolution; I don't think it would be too hard to get a communist China, and that would change an awful lot. Russia and Germany are too stable to go communist; the lesson of history is that appropriately nationalistic autocracies (unlike medieval dynastic-based states like Austria-Hungary which didn't have a stable ethnic-nationalist core) are far superior at resisting left-wing subversion than the discredited ideology of liberal democracy which, as in France and the former United Kingdom and United States, allow left-wing movements to publicly organise, as has been demonstrated time and time again. But for them to lose plenty of their allies would be quite possible. Free-market capitalism and the ideology of an 'impartial arbiter' of the free market in the form of a 'night-watchman' autocratic state, untainted by politicians who can be easily bribed and brought under control, could have been reduced to a far weaker position in the world, though in Russia and Germany it would still survive, and it would be more powerful than OTL's communist remnant in Brazil.

IC: Somewhat true, and even during the troubled times of the late '80s, early '90s, Germany wouldn't have gone communist as there was no real Marxist movement to speak of. However, though, China was itself quite nationalistic and authoritarian(and a "night-watchman" state through and through), even more so than Germany in the '20s or Russia during the Civil War(and even then, Russia came somewhat close to falling apart in 1917, where it not for the reformists being able to convince the moderate socialists to stand down. Kolchak & Kerensky, though still disliked by hardline right-wingers in Russia today, may have saved their nation from imploding completely, or worse, a Bolshevik takeover!). And look what happened to that country; and Japan, too.

(Hell, Germany's ability to recover from the malaise of the Downfall was mainly thanks to serious political reforms which reversed the authoritarian trends of the late '70s and '80s, including most of the Nachtwächter laws.)

And yet, Argentina, India, Italy, New Zealand, Australia, Venezuela, and the Scandinavian countries are all liberal democracies, and they've all done just fine by and large.

In fact, I'd argue that only those more traditional societies willing to reform and stay moderate are those that are able to survive in the long term, at least in this day and age-China refused to do so, and thus suffered 20 years of petty wars before the reunifications of 1969-72.....and also, as for the U.S., there was already a trend towards authoritarianism in that country(in no small part thanks to Woodrow Wilson, and his turning on the Progressives.), and it only got much worse after they lost the first World War. Britain and France would eventually suffer those same problems as well, during the latter 1920s, and into the 1930s(culminating in the abdication of Edward VIII in 1941, and the French Civil war from 1936-1939, respectively.).

OOC: There we go, this is probably better with plausibility than some of my first ideas, and gives a little more depth as to why the U.S. underwent a socialist revolution ITTL.

I agree with your analysis in general but this is an exaggeration. Germany has never been and never will be a superpower. It simply doesn't come anywhere near either the Russian Empire or America in terms of either population or land-mass; it has neither the people nor the natural resources to qualify as a superpower. Nor does it conform to the definition of superpower-hood defined by the ability to defeat great powers on the other side of the world on their own turf away from one's own turf. A strong great power? Sure. The second-strongest nation in Europe? Sure. A superpower? No, not at all, not even close.

(Also, what do you mean 'Imperial' Germany? What other sort of Germany is there?)

I get that it's difficult to classify Germany; it's more powerful than most great powers. But I don't think it's fair to consider it on the same level as the Russian Empire and the former USSA.
IC: True, Germany's been doing much better since the '90s, and they are now, at this point, once again the second player in Europe, apart from Britain, including in military strength(but especially in economic matters). But it took a lot of reformation and smart dealings to get to that point.
 
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Germany was going through a major reacession and there was some small rioting and the last germany colonies did go independent but to say the country was collapsing is over exaggerating and doesn't everybody say russia going to explode any day now and there still a lot of ethnic issues with central Asians and Caucasus but Russia will be just fine
 
Germany was going through a major reacession and there was some small rioting and the last germany colonies did go independent but to say the country was collapsing is over exaggerating and doesn't everybody say russia going to explode any day now and there still a lot of ethnic issues with central Asians and Caucasus but Russia will be just fine

OOC: Well, okay. I guess that settles it, then.

IC: Actually, you're right. I guess I did overexaggerate things a bit. :eek::eek:
 
I actually don't think it would be as hard as one might think. China was incredibly unstable in the 1940s shortly after the Japanese Revolution; I don't think it would be too hard to get a communist China, and that would change an awful lot. Russia and Germany are too stable to go communist; the lesson of history is that appropriately nationalistic autocracies (unlike medieval dynastic-based states like Austria-Hungary which didn't have a stable ethnic-nationalist core) are far superior at resisting left-wing subversion than the discredited ideology of liberal democracy which, as in France and the former United Kingdom and United States, allow left-wing movements to publicly organise, as has been demonstrated time and time again. But for them to lose plenty of their allies would be quite possible. Free-market capitalism and the ideology of an 'impartial arbiter' of the free market in the form of a 'night-watchman' autocratic state, untainted by politicians who can be easily bribed and brought under control, could have been reduced to a far weaker position in the world, though in Russia and Germany it would still survive, and it would be more powerful than OTL's communist remnant in Brazil.



I agree with your analysis in general but this is an exaggeration. Germany has never been and never will be a superpower. It simply doesn't come anywhere near either the Russian Empire or America in terms of either population or land-mass; it has neither the people nor the natural resources to qualify as a superpower. Nor does it conform to the definition of superpower-hood defined by the ability to defeat great powers on the other side of the world on their own turf away from one's own turf. A strong great power? Sure. The second-strongest nation in Europe? Sure. A superpower? No, not at all, not even close.

(Also, what do you mean 'Imperial' Germany? What other sort of Germany is there?)

I get that it's difficult to classify Germany; it's more powerful than most great powers. But I don't think it's fair to consider it on the same level as the Russian Empire and the former USSA.

Okay, that's probably true. I was referring more to the Russo-German alliance, which can't really be challenged. Also, I said Imperial Germany to distinguish it from that brief time when those crazies (I think they were called the National Bolsheviks or something) actually pushed through a bill that would have authorized greatly restricting the rights of the Jews. Fortunately, Wilhelm III vetoed it and the military supported him, resulting in the National Bolsheviks being kicked out of the rightist coalition. In any case, how exactly does China go Communist? The Russians are the ones who are going to win here. It was stupid of Chiang to side with the allies, but that's beside the point, because after he was beaten the Russians restored Pu Yi. Plus, one of the provisions of the Schulenburg-Hull pact (which mainly gave Long the to ahead to attack Canada) was that Russia would get to attack Mao's rebels without interference from the Americans. I don't see how Mao can beat that to win the Civil War.
 
OOC: I'd like to point out that Germany was undergoing significant unrest(unless Noscoper prefers something else)? Now, I'll admit that it's fairly unlikely that Prussia would break away even during the worst of possible strife, but in my defense, it's *somewhat* less implausible than Germany being a bonafide superpower on the level of the United States IOTL, which would require a POD well before 1900.

OOC: The thing is, Prussia was the core of the German Empire and had a huge amount of power therein. The England-United Kingdom analogy is an apt one. It would be more likely for every other part of Germany to secede than for Prussia to secede. It's difficult to see why the Prussians would want to leave a project which they, to a great extent, ran.

Edit: With that said, though, I've gone ahead and revised my post upon consideration, to something that is a little more believable.

OOC: Thanks. :)

OOC: To be honest, I'm not exactly terribly strongly favored to socialism, but I did have my reasons for suggesting that an American communist state wouldn't be at all likely to be as utterly screwed up as Russia's was IOTL; for one, unlike Russia, the U.S. had a fairly long-standing liberal tradition from it's founding-that wouldn't just totally disappear under a revolutionary state. And I'd add that it's that same thing that's really helped keep us from being at a short-term risk from going off the deep end into authoritarianism after our own major failures in Iraq and Vietnam IOTL-Russia, unfortunately, doesn't quite have that. Of course, it might help that there was never a Soviet Union ITTL, but there would still be a disadvantage compared to the U.S., depending on the post *Cold War situation.

Of course, ultimately, I'll of course defer to Noscoper, as he was the thread creator, and see what he wants to do, if he feels like intervening. With that said, though, I thought I'd make some changes to other ideas that I'd had.

OOC: You making the USSA more democratic than OTL's USSR is fair enough. Other things, like having Imperial Germany nearly collapse (pre-WW1 Germany was a stable nation-state with a strong unifying national identity; there was much more regional identity than in, say, France, but not that much), I'm much less comfortable with. Germany could lose all its colonies but Germany itself would remain united unless forced not to be.

Somewhat true, and even during the troubled times of the late '80s, early '90s, Germany wouldn't have gone communist as there was no real Marxist movement to speak of.

Absolutely.

However, though, China was itself quite nationalistic and authoritarian(and a "night-watchman" state through and through), even more so than Germany in the '20s or Russia during the Civil War(and even then, Russia came somewhat close to falling apart in 1917, where it not for the reformists being able to convince the moderate socialists to stand down. Kolchak & Kerensky, though still disliked by hardline right-wingers in Russia today, may have saved their nation from imploding completely, or worse, a Bolshevik takeover!). And look what happened to that country; and Japan, too.

The Russian Civil War wasn't much of a civil war. The tsarist state was never really in danger from the Bolsheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, nor would it have been without some serious external disturbance; people were getting generally more prosperous, the poor and primitive strip-farming commune system was being reformed into small-holders under Stolypin, there was no democratically elected body to legitimise and give voice to the forces of sedition and staunchly religious and reactionary factions of the people, with the aid of the secret police and the army, were more than capable of suppressing the revolutionaries. The Socialist Revolutionaries were losing a lot of support due to the improvement of agricultural standards and the rise in the ability of peasants to manage their own small-holdings, which were of course far more efficient than the medieval strip-farming mir system; most credible historians argue that that's why they launched the uprising in the first place, because they were terrified that they were losing support and if they didn't rise up now they would never win. Yes, Kolchak's modernisation of the bureaucracy to make it more meritocratic was certainly welcome, but the regime was never realistically likely to fall. Patriotic support of and loyalty to the Emperor was too strong, as we saw in the spontaneous public celebrations after the defeat of the Japanese. It's not like Japan, where the imperial regime was recently established (the Meiji Restoration was quite recent) and still very shaky, without holding much public loyalty.

All sorts of people—the French revolutionaries by direct invasion, the USSA by political pressure during the Cold War—have attempted to destroy the Russian Empire. They've all failed. Russia's political stability is legendary, and the world owes a lot to it.

OOC: How alternate historiography arises from alternate history is fun, especially when we get to insult determinism.

(Hell, Germany's ability to recover from the malaise of the Downfall was mainly thanks to serious political reforms which reversed the authoritarian trends of the late '70s and '80s, including most of the Nachtwächter laws.)

Germany may be less properly autocratic than Russia, sure—they have their foolish Reichstag with those Social Democrats allowed in it, though properly revised with the appropriate internal security forces to ensure the mob doesn't get too out of hand—but that's why Germany has been less stable than Russia historically; Russia has never really experienced political instability on the level of what Germany went through. That's the problem of democratically elected institutions; even if they're only advisory they'll get ideas above their station and paint themselves as an alternative government to the legitimate government under, in this case, the Kaiser. If a country gives a voice to the socialists they'll just be able to strengthen their appeal by manipulating the politics of envy; usually, the only way for a society to avoid socialism, unless it's propped up by a stronger society, is to keep the socialists down and not allow them to openly spread their lies.

And yet, Argentina, India, Italy, New Zealand, Australia, Venezuela, and the Scandinavian countries are all liberal democracies, and they've all done just fine by and large.

That's only a few countries in the whole world, most of them weak ones. On the whole, the lesson of history is that democracy generally doesn't work; it inevitably devolves into socialism as the mob wants more and invokes the politics of envy. Venezuela only defeated the People's Revolution over the corruption of the oil barons with loads and loads of Russian help, and they're lucky the USSA fell when it did because the Russians were getting tired of propping up such an unstable regime; otherwise it would have become a satellite of the USSA. Australia and New Zealand are only immune to this trend largely due to the huge anti-socialist backlash following the British Revolution resulting in 'socialism' being a dirty word there. India had those Naxalites and only survived because the Russians were terrified it would fall to communism and poured in so much money to prop up the system; they're damn lucky the USSA isn't around any more or else they would probably have collapsed by now. Republics are generally unstable because once you concede to the principle that revolution is a good thing, it's difficult to take a hard line against socialist revolution.

In fact, I'd argue that only those more traditional societies willing to reform and stay moderate are those that are able to survive in the long term, at least in this day and age-China refused to do so, and thus suffered 20 years of petty wars before the reunifications of 1969-72.....and also, as for the U.S., there was already a trend towards authoritarianism in that country(in no small part thanks to Woodrow Wilson, and his turning on the Progressives.), and it only got much worse after they lost the first World War. Britain and France would eventually suffer those same problems as well, during the latter 1920s, and into the 1930s(culminating in the abdication of Edward VIII in 1941, and the French Civil war from 1936-1939, respectively.).

Oh, I certainly agree with that; modern free-market capitalist autocracy is very different from the old traditional autocracies. For a stable state, aristocratic cronyism has to be broken in favour of a modern bureaucratic bourgeois-based state, aristocratic land redistributed (by buying and selling of course, not socialist-style unilateral confiscation) to small-holding farmers and protectionism and too much state control in the economy dismantled in favour of the vigour of the free market. Russia has its legendary political stability because it evolved in this manner, smoothly conceding to liberal economic reforms without getting rid of the autocratic political system. A state that tries to keep the inefficient old economic models instead of adapting to laissez faire will inevitably fall, in the end; the fate of the USSA taught us that.

As for the UK and France, they fell not because of their economic systems but because of their political systems. Make socialist parties legal and allow them to have a chance at governing the state if only they get enough of the mob on their side, persuaded by the politics of envy, and it's inevitable that sometime they'll win an election, in which case the state has to keep them down; and if you've already established a precedent that the state should be governed by whoever wins the election, that gives them a dangerous amount of public support among ordinarily sensible, traditionalist-inclined people who merely want the political system to be maintained and persist as it is. That's what caused the French Civil War, after all; and as for the British Revolution, trade union militancy and strikes protesting against the legitimate government whenever it does something they don't like and taking over the country are only to be expected if the state is foolish enough to allow legal trade unions. The modern United Kingdom and Kingdom of France are far more stable now that they've got rid of all that nonsense; they haven't experienced any significant political unrest at all ever since the American "brotherly assistance" was thrown out of the country and they regained de facto independence.

OOC: OTL Russia actually did move in the direction of free-market capitalism and was more successful that way than at any other time; Imperial Russia's economy was, admittedly from a very low base, growing tremendously under that system until the Imperial Germans screwed the whole thing over, so I'm not actually posing anything particularly radical. Indeed the astonishing economic growth of Russia was a great part of why several German decision-makers were so terrified of Russia and wanted war to nip it in the bud in OTL.

IC: True, Germany's been doing much better since the '90s, and they are now, at this point, once again the second player in Europe, apart from Britain, including in military strength(but especially in economic matters). But it took a lot of reformation and smart dealings to get to that point.

Yes, well, Germany has a huge advantage over the United Kingdom, France et cetera in sheer population as well as lots of other things; it's difficult to imagine any country in Europe other than Russia (being even larger) ever being economically ahead of Germany for long. The 19th-century days of British dominance are long gone. Don't get me wrong, it's a reasonably big country, but its economy is well behind that of several other European countries after fifty years of socialist mismanagement. Even with the high economic growth under the restored conservative autocracy it'll be decades before the UK surpasses, say, Spain as it once did.

Okay, that's probably true. I was referring more to the Russo-German alliance, which can't really be challenged.

Alright.

Also, I said Imperial Germany to distinguish it from that brief time when those crazies (I think they were called the National Bolsheviks or something) actually pushed through a bill that would have authorized greatly restricting the rights of the Jews. Fortunately, Wilhelm III vetoed it and the military supported him, resulting in the National Bolsheviks being kicked out of the rightist coalition.

Ah, fair enough. Sure, they're the most radical party that's ever got into power, but Germany didn't really change its fundamental political system so I'd still just call it Germany; but I see where you're coming from.

In any case, how exactly does China go Communist? The Russians are the ones who are going to win here. It was stupid of Chiang to side with the allies, but that's beside the point, because after he was beaten the Russians restored Pu Yi. Plus, one of the provisions of the Schulenburg-Hull pact (which mainly gave Long the to ahead to attack Canada) was that Russia would get to attack Mao's rebels without interference from the Americans. I don't see how Mao can beat that to win the Civil War.

Pu Yi was an intelligent and able monarch who did a lot of good for China but he had very little public support early in his reign, and his main power-base was conservative nationalists who personally opposed Chiang. I honestly think that Mao could have pulled it off if Russia had bowed to the concerns of some of the Emperor's more bellicose nationalist advisers like Wrangel, who was famously sceptical of the long-term viability of Pu Yi's regime and wanted Russia to salvage what it could, and annexed Inner Manchuria and Outer Mongolia in accordance with Russian nationalist ambition, instead of trying to give the restored Qing empire as much legitimacy as possible. Thank God for Emperor Mikhail's good sense.
 
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Yep, sad but true. Of course, it didn't help that extremist elements in the U.S. government ended up causing their own problems up there-see the Sherbrooke shootout in 1987.

I couldn't agree more. That young lawyer Charest was, by far, their best hope for a peaceful settlement. He had managed to negotiate a deal that explicitly excluded the local Bloc Capitalistes from power-sharing, while at the same time maintaining support from the majority of the city's French speakers. No small feat, that.

And then that asshat Yank-puppet thug Trudeau sends in his goons to break up the council meeting where the deal was supposed to be announced. Not that I'm an advocate of violence or anything, but I'm glad Charest's bodyuards managed to take out one of those creeps. Sad that Charest had to die in that, but at least he departed this world with his moral dignity intact. Can't say the same thing for the Yank's "PET" three years later.
 
There is so many people out of work now that were a so called republic now. I wish we had won the cold war. Was better when our navy was not rusting in port and we did not have all these extra M16's around. Wonder why someone does not sell a whole extra load in Albania or Turkey.

on another note I do like that I can get Grekof jeans instead of those cheep ugly Levi's we used to wear.
 
OOC: The thing is, Prussia was the core of the German Empire and had a huge amount of power therein. The England-United Kingdom analogy is an apt one. It would be more likely for every other part of Germany to secede than for Prussia to secede. It's difficult to see why the Prussians would want to leave a project which they, to a great extent, ran.



OOC: Thanks. :)



OOC: You making the USSA more democratic than OTL's USSR is fair enough. Other things, like having Imperial Germany nearly collapse (pre-WW1 Germany was a stable nation-state with a strong unifying national identity; there was much more regional identity than in, say, France, but not that much), I'm much less comfortable with. Germany could lose all its colonies but Germany itself would remain united unless forced not to be.



Absolutely.



The Russian Civil War wasn't much of a civil war. The tsarist state was never really in danger from the Bolsheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, nor would it have been without some serious external disturbance; people were getting generally more prosperous, the poor and primitive strip-farming commune system was being reformed into small-holders under Stolypin, there was no democratically elected body to legitimise and give voice to the forces of sedition and staunchly religious and reactionary factions of the people, with the aid of the secret police and the army, were more than capable of suppressing the revolutionaries. The Socialist Revolutionaries were losing a lot of support due to the improvement of agricultural standards and the rise in the ability of peasants to manage their own small-holdings, which were of course far more efficient than the medieval strip-farming mir system; most credible historians argue that that's why they launched the uprising in the first place, because they were terrified that they were losing support and if they didn't rise up now they would never win. Yes, Kolchak's modernisation of the bureaucracy to make it more meritocratic was certainly welcome, but the regime was never realistically likely to fall. Patriotic support of and loyalty to the Emperor was too strong, as we saw in the spontaneous public celebrations after the defeat of the Japanese. It's not like Japan, where the imperial regime was recently established (the Meiji Restoration was quite recent) and still very shaky, without holding much public loyalty.

All sorts of people—the French revolutionaries by direct invasion, the USSA by political pressure during the Cold War—have attempted to destroy the Russian Empire. They've all failed. Russia's political stability is legendary, and the world owes a lot to it.

OOC: How alternate historiography arises from alternate history is fun, especially when we get to insult determinism.



Germany may be less properly autocratic than Russia, sure—they have their foolish Reichstag with those Social Democrats allowed in it, though properly revised with the appropriate internal security forces to ensure the mob doesn't get too out of hand—but that's why Germany has been less stable than Russia historically; Russia has never really experienced political instability on the level of what Germany went through. That's the problem of democratically elected institutions; even if they're only advisory they'll get ideas above their station and paint themselves as an alternative government to the legitimate government under, in this case, the Kaiser. If a country gives a voice to the socialists they'll just be able to strengthen their appeal by manipulating the politics of envy; usually, the only way for a society to avoid socialism, unless it's propped up by a stronger society, is to keep the socialists down and not allow them to openly spread their lies.



That's only a few countries in the whole world, most of them weak ones. On the whole, the lesson of history is that democracy generally doesn't work; it inevitably devolves into socialism as the mob wants more and invokes the politics of envy. Venezuela only defeated the People's Revolution over the corruption of the oil barons with loads and loads of Russian help, and they're lucky the USSA fell when it did because the Russians were getting tired of propping up such an unstable regime; otherwise it would have become a satellite of the USSA. Australia and New Zealand are only immune to this trend largely due to the huge anti-socialist backlash following the British Revolution resulting in 'socialism' being a dirty word there. India had those Naxalites and only survived because the Russians were terrified it would fall to communism and poured in so much money to prop up the system; they're damn lucky the USSA isn't around any more or else they would probably have collapsed by now. Republics are generally unstable because once you concede to the principle that revolution is a good thing, it's difficult to take a hard line against socialist revolution.



Oh, I certainly agree with that; modern free-market capitalist autocracy is very different from the old traditional autocracies. For a stable state, aristocratic cronyism has to be broken in favour of a modern bureaucratic bourgeois-based state, aristocratic land redistributed (by buying and selling of course, not socialist-style unilateral confiscation) to small-holding farmers and protectionism and too much state control in the economy dismantled in favour of the vigour of the free market. Russia has its legendary political stability because it evolved in this manner, smoothly conceding to liberal economic reforms without getting rid of the autocratic political system. A state that tries to keep the inefficient old economic models instead of adapting to laissez faire will inevitably fall, in the end; the fate of the USSA taught us that.

As for the UK and France, they fell not because of their economic systems but because of their political systems. Make socialist parties legal and allow them to have a chance at governing the state if only they get enough of the mob on their side, persuaded by the politics of envy, and it's inevitable that sometime they'll win an election, in which case the state has to keep them down; and if you've already established a precedent that the state should be governed by whoever wins the election, that gives them a dangerous amount of public support among ordinarily sensible, traditionalist-inclined people who merely want the political system to be maintained and persist as it is. That's what caused the French Civil War, after all; and as for the British Revolution, trade union militancy and strikes protesting against the legitimate government whenever it does something they don't like and taking over the country are only to be expected if the state is foolish enough to allow legal trade unions. The modern United Kingdom and Kingdom of France are far more stable now that they've got rid of all that nonsense; they haven't experienced any significant political unrest at all ever since the American "brotherly assistance" was thrown out of the country and they regained de facto independence.

OOC: OTL Russia actually did move in the direction of free-market capitalism and was more successful that way than at any other time; Imperial Russia's economy was, admittedly from a very low base, growing tremendously under that system until the Imperial Germans screwed the whole thing over, so I'm not actually posing anything particularly radical. Indeed the astonishing economic growth of Russia was a great part of why several German decision-makers were so terrified of Russia and wanted war to nip it in the bud in OTL.



Yes, well, Germany has a huge advantage over the United Kingdom, France et cetera in sheer population as well as lots of other things; it's difficult to imagine any country in Europe other than Russia (being even larger) ever being economically ahead of Germany for long. The 19th-century days of British dominance are long gone. Don't get me wrong, it's a reasonably big country, but its economy is well behind that of several other European countries after fifty years of socialist mismanagement. Even with the high economic growth under the restored conservative autocracy it'll be decades before the UK surpasses, say, Spain as it once did.



Alright.



Ah, fair enough. Sure, they're the most radical party that's ever got into power, but Germany didn't really change its fundamental political system so I'd still just call it Germany; but I see where you're coming from.



Pu Yi was an intelligent and able monarch who did a lot of good for China but he had very little public support early in his reign, and his main power-base was conservative nationalists who personally opposed Chiang. I honestly think that Mao could have pulled it off if Russia had bowed to the concerns of some of the Emperor's more bellicose nationalist advisers like Wrangel, who was famously sceptical of the long-term viability of Pu Yi's regime and wanted Russia to salvage what it could, and annexed Inner Manchuria and Outer Mongolia in accordance with Russian nationalist ambition, instead of trying to give the restored Qing empire as much legitimacy as possible. Thank God for Emperor Mikhail's good sense.

Hey, don't bash Wrangel too much. I will admit, no one knew how competent Pu Yi was going to be back then, so China very well could have ended up for Russia like Saudi Arabia ended up for America, and no one would want that. Also, Wrangel was a military genius; the drive on Delhi was an utter master stroke, as was the complete destruction of Montgomery's paratrooper attack on Karachi. Russia might have lost without him.
 
There is so many people out of work now that were a so called republic now. I wish we had won the cold war. Was better when our navy was not rusting in port and we did not have all these extra M16's around. Wonder why someone does not sell a whole extra load in Albania or Turkey.

on another note I do like that I can get Grekof jeans instead of those cheep ugly Levi's we used to wear.

Even if the USSA won the Cold War the inherent inefficiencies of a command economy wouldn't go away. There would still be a lag in producing consumer goods as an ideologically motivated leadership focused on heavy industry; there would still be plenty of corrupt Party bureaucrats skimming off money for themselves; there would still be a general slowness in supply responding to changes of demand, unlike a proper free-market economy; there would still be a poor, inefficient and inflexible economy due to the leadership prioritising the retention of existing jobs rather than ever allowing substantial job losses to improve efficiency and move on from outdated methods of manufacture such as with automation.

In short: if the USSA won the Cold War, the American People's Navy might not be rusting in port as the modern American Navy is, and the state would have greater power on the international stage and greater territorial extent (Canada, Quebec, Hawaii, Dixie, Alaska, etc—all those regions that felt ill-treated by the Union central government and the heavy hand of the Union Institution for the Protection of the Revolution arresting too many 'reactionaries' there) than the modern-day American Republic, so things would be more decentralised due to lacking the anti-federal backlash that arose from the secessions, but the people would be poorer and there would remain hideously inefficient nationalised industries in the American command economy. To put it another way, you'd still be wearing Levi jeans.

Hey, don't bash Wrangel too much. I will admit, no one knew how competent Pu Yi was going to be back then, so China very well could have ended up for Russia like Saudi Arabia ended up for America, and no one would want that. Also, Wrangel was a military genius; the drive on Delhi was an utter master stroke, as was the complete destruction of Montgomery's paratrooper attack on Karachi. Russia might have lost without him.

I don't dispute that Wrangel was a great general—no-one with sense does—but in spite of his military prestige he was so nationalist and expansionist, lacking any inclination to use methods subtler than the brute force of Russia's military might, that it was a mistake for him to ever be near the levers of power. The general consensus is that it was all politics: Emperor Mikhail had to throw a bone to Purishkevich and co. after he sided with the Kadets over them earlier during the Colombian Crisis, and appointing a popular reactionary general to the State Council as an imperial adviser was a good way to do that.
 
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