If the Americans were able to hold their own against the British Empire in 1812, then maybe we wouldn’t have a country so obsessed with warring with the British and Canadians that they bankrupted themselves and lost more land than they started out with. It would be interesting to see a North America dominated by the United States instead of Canada and Mexico.
OOC: To be fair, I don't think you can get a post-1900 POD to make the United States a third world country without it being considered ASB. I might be wrong, but the US was already considered a world power by then.
It could use not having most of its banks not going bankrupt after their loans to the Entente nations became impossible to be paid back after WW1. Sure, that was something that hurt Germany quite a bit too, and arguably shattered Austria-Hungary after a hard-fought Phyrric victory, but it would be rather hard to say that it wasn't something that damage the US' economy quite a bit and in a way that not even the boost they got by selling weapons first and fighting Mexico later in WW2 could heal.
Oh. Well then my mistake. I guess I can understand your reasoning behind not mentioning it directly, but you could atleast hint at it to prevent situations like this happening and still have room for world building.
Well, America is rapidly growing right now with double-digit growth right now. They're even nowadays close to surpassing Japan as the third-largest economy (with only the German Empire and China ahead of them).
I think the USA might have been able to regain its former power and standard of living within a generation of the Second Civil War, if not for the establishment of the Association of Coordinated Police Forces immediately afterward. For all that it was intended as an impartial peacekeeping organization to quell further rebellion and protect the populace from theft and violence as they rebuilt the country, the Corps quickly devolved into nothing but a power broker for organized crime with the full powers of the state behind it. The ACPF sucked wealth out of a country that desperately needed it, and crippled the resurgent commercial institutions that were America’s best shot at getting back on its feet. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the period between 1953 and 1960, widely recognized as the social and economic nadir of postwar America, also coincided with the period in which Mel Purvis was President in all but name through his position as ACPF Commissioner.
OOC: Is it correct to say the comparative development of the "two Americas" is akin to China and Japan ITTL?
Optimistic. My great-grandfather and his family left the country for Montréal in 1938 when the fighting hit Indiana, so I have an ancestral connection to the place that may be influencing my view, but I think there’s real potential there. The country has huge amounts of natural resources that haven’t yet been drained even by decades of kleptocracy, and the industrial entrenchments in the east have huge production potential. The real question is whether it can turn those assets into social development and prosperity rather than an economy driven by the exploitation of American workers by Indian or Brazilian corporations.
