DBWI: No Sino-Soviet nuclear exchange

What if the Sino-Soviet nuclear exchange of 1969 never happened?

As the numbers say, millions upon millions of Chinese were killed in the initial exchange, with millions more dying from the lack of authority in the countryside, and hundreds of thousands overseas suffering from the effects of the radiation.
 
Well I certainly doubt that Korea would be the economic powerhouse it is today. While N. Korea took several Soviet bombs it was the failure of Chinese economic and military support that really collapsed the country and spurred reunification. That S. Korea received aid from the West is what kept them afloat. Without that I can easily see a situation where the industrial and populous North eventually conquered or subdued the South.

Also you're dramatically overestimating the impact of overseas fallout outside of the immediate east Asia area. US and NATO allies like Japan mostly survived on imported food stuffs until about '74 when it was determined that domestic food production was safe. And recent studies show that there are only a few thousand additional cancer cases per year due to radiation. With the dramatic "clean the environment" movement the fear over fallout started it's possible that cancer rates are actually lower than what they would have been otherwise. Sure radiation is higher but random pollutants are much lower. I seriously doubt we'd have something like the EPA without the panic over fallout. That "hundreds of thousands" suffering is trotted out every time this comes up but there's no evidence to support it. It's pure scaremongering by those who don't like the fact the US now gets 50% of it's electricity from nuclear power.
 
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Well I certainly doubt that Korea would be the economic powerhouse it is today. While N. Korea took several Soviet bombs it was the collapse of Chinese economic and military support that really collapsed the country and spurred reunification. That S. Korea received aid from the West is what kept them afloat. Without that I can easily see a situation where the industrial and populous North eventually conquered or subdued the South.

Also you're dramatically overestimating the impact of overseas fallout outside of the immediate east Asia area. US and NATO allies like Japan mostly survived on imported food stuffs until about '74 when it was determined that domestic food production was safe. And recent studies show that there are only a few thousand additional cancer cases per year due to radiation. With the dramatic "clean the environment" movement the fear over fallout started it's possible that cancer rates are actually lower than what they would have been otherwise. Sure radiation is higher but random pollutants are much lower. I seriously doubt we'd have something like the EPA without the panic over fallout.


I think you got that a bit wrong. Korea is no economic powerhouse. You get a Soviet ICBM, or two over shot it's targets, and destroy Seoul and Busan. And then South Korea had to deal with all the North Koreans coming over the border.

Japan is the main power. Yes, they had to survived on imported food stuffs until about '74, and the cancer cases, but after what happen, Article 9 ws thorw out the widow, and then the Japan jump up in the 80's and 90's.
 
Well Lyndon B. Johnson wouldn't have been credited as the "Peace President ". Consider his negotiations towards a ceasefire via Robert McNamara between China and the Soviet Union helped not only to reduce nuclear weapons on both sides, helped American forces withdraw from Vietnam, but also gave the United States a stronger bargaining hand with the United Nations.

As for other regional powers, certainly the IBM and Apple IT call centers wouldn't have been located in the Philippines without the vast markets in the region, along with the presence of U.S. military bases to defend the developing economy....
 
Communism might not have thoroughly discredited itself as it did once the nukes started flying. Watching the Soviets and the Chicoms nuke each other into oblivion did more to sell capitalism then we ever could.
 
Japan is the main power. Yes, they had to survived on imported food stuffs until about '74, and the cancer cases, but after what happen, Article 9 ws thorw out the widow, and then the Japan jump up in the 80's and 90's.

They're still kind of leery about being open about their influence, though - the totally-not-any-kind-of-prosperity-sphere Manila Security Pact is headquartered rather pointedly in the Philippines rather than Tokyo. Even though it's Japanese weapons that arm the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand and Japanese corporations that prop their economies up.

One thing that definitely would have been different is Hong Kong. The collapse of China meant that Britain was able to 'aggressively renegotiate' matters with the Nationalists on Taiwan, with the result that they hold it still. Hell, they've made a bit of a comeback in the region - mutual defence ties with Malaysia and Singapore, and HMS Ark Royal and her escorts based semi-permanently in the region. And while Japan claims credit, it was the Royal Navy who finally ended piracy in the region back in 1983.
 
Sino-Soviet Nuclear "exchange"? You do know that China did barely any real damage to the USSR, right? The Sino-Soviet war was a one-sided stomp.
 
One thing that definitely would have been different is Hong Kong. The collapse of China meant that Britain was able to 'aggressively renegotiate' matters with the Nationalists on Taiwan, with the result that they hold it still. Hell, they've made a bit of a comeback in the region - mutual defence ties with Malaysia and Singapore, and HMS Ark Royal and her escorts based semi-permanently in the region. And while Japan claims credit, it was the Royal Navy who finally ended piracy in the region back in 1983.

You know the British public whats out of the area. They don't what Hong Kong anymore, not after the massacre of thous British soldiers. Taiwan more or less owns Hong Kong. They are talks about the Ark Royal coming back to England, and ended piracy? Now that's a big lie. You forget the cruise ship hostage crisis that ending in the British firing at the ship due to a 'bad communication' killing a lot of people a few years back.
 
You know the British public whats out of the area. They don't what Hong Kong anymore, not after the massacre of thous British soldiers. Taiwan more or less owns Hong Kong. They are talks about the Ark Royal coming back to England, and ended piracy? Now that's a big lie. You forget the cruise ship hostage crisis that ending in the British firing at the ship due to a 'bad communication' killing a lot of people a few years back.

Taiwan? They're pretty much bankrupt these days, with their attempts to pacify Southern China. Britain isn't going to hand Hong Kong over to them in anyone here's lifetime. And I wouldn't read too much into the whole 'British public wants out'. Try 'leftists want out'. Most people recognise British Hong Kong's importance to regional security, and to the British economy.

EDIT: And yeah, the massacre was bad...but that was British peacekeepers in China proper. Hong Kong's peaceful. Hell, my cousin works there as a police officer, he says the only public order difficulties are with refugees in the New Territories (mind you, a large chunk of rank-and-file cops in Hong Kong these days are Gurkha veterans. You don't aggravate them If you can help it)
 
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Ming777

Monthly Donor
I'm guessing Canada would have stuck with Trudeau for more terms than just the one, followed by Robert Stanfield and his long rule. The need for more military presence in the Pacific led to major reinvestment by Ottawa into the Canadian Armed Forces, and expanding their Pacific Fleet.
 
I think you got that a bit wrong. Korea is no economic powerhouse. You get a Soviet ICBM, or two over shot it's targets, and destroy Seoul and Busan. And then South Korea had to deal with all the North Koreans coming over the border.

Japan is the main power. Yes, they had to survived on imported food stuffs until about '74, and the cancer cases, but after what happen, Article 9 ws thorw out the widow, and then the Japan jump up in the 80's and 90's.

Korea actually is an economic power, there economy was in the top 20 last year and the year before that. Their actually ahead of Spain and Ireland now. By historical standards they actually grew after the war. Korea now has Jilin and Liaoning provinces, which are admitedly wastelands but still more land is more land.

How do I explain it?

Korea south of the old DMZ is a first world country, Korea north of the old DMZ and south of the Yallu is a developing country with a living standard equal to that of modern day Mexico, or Argentina, you go north of that and its a waste land.


As for the soviets, the exchange caused them to wobble quite a bit but their fate was sealed when they got into the middle east and got into a quagmire.
 
I'm guessing Canada would have stuck with Trudeau for more terms than just the one, followed by Robert Stanfield and his long rule. The need for more military presence in the Pacific led to major reinvestment by Ottawa into the Canadian Armed Forces, and expanding their Pacific Fleet.

Eagle is a beautiful carrier. And the ANZECANUK alliance is a major force in the world these days. Especially in shared naval and peacekeeping operations.
 
Eagle is a beautiful carrier. And the ANZECANUK alliance is a major force in the world these days. Especially in shared naval and peacekeeping operations.

I think "major force" is a bit of an overstatement when compared to the US or Japanese navy but I will admit that the ANZECANUK alliance was a big help in keeping much of Oceania and the islands of South East Asia within the Commonwealth's sphere of influence. I find it ironic that the British Empire's supposed decolonization turned out to be just a name change to the British Commonwealth. The British backed coup in Burma that installed a pro-Western government in '72 was just icing on the cake. It never ceases to amaze me how much the China-Soviet war destabilized so many of the Communist and Socialist satellite states.
 
The deaths of 300 million people should not be taken so lightly as to their effects on the world economy either. China had a hlaf-half-dozen of the CSS-2 missiles actually ready to use, we thought a *test* was at least 18 months away. Moscow shot down the hundreds of fake-signal drones fired at the city only to miss one of the two real target, hence why Moscow, Omsk, Novosibersk, Astrakhan, and Stalingrad were annhilated. Leningrad/St Petersburg only survived by being out of range, even then it came under threat from Chinese long-rage aircraft out of Urumqi on one-way trips. With Moscow offline the Warsaw Pact shattered and the Commonwealth was soon reborn (Poland, Ukraine, Baltic States, Czechloslovakia) along with the Balkan Federal Union (Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia). Russia itself shattered into the Remnant USSR east of the OB and the New Empire out of Siberia.

But China regressed into a warlord zone, for five years China had three dozen 'legitimate' goverment while North Koreans were eating their own dead for a while. Taiwan survived only to become 'seamstress and junkyard of Asia' before Pakistan and India had their peace talks. Hard to believe that they would make a permanent peace the following year, or that Arafat would be the one to mediate it, but the war made a lot of people sit up and take notice. Hell, even Vietnam might have had a few more years of American involvement if not for the Peace of Paris in late 1970.

I am fairly sure the South Asian Trade Community would not be a factor, but then who would have dreamt of a common currency from Baghdad to Brunei forty years ago? Or even fifteen? The USSR was doing well enough to make the 21st century, especially if the microelectronics revolution proceeds on pace starting in 1980. Maybe the Space Race actually goes on instead of stalling out too
 
I am fairly sure the South Asian Trade Community would not be a factor, but then who would have dreamt of a common currency from Baghdad to Brunei forty years ago? Or even fifteen? The USSR was doing well enough to make the 21st century, especially if the microelectronics revolution proceeds on pace starting in 1980. Maybe the Space Race actually goes on instead of stalling out too

Well, the US did land a man on the moon right before the war happen.
 
The real problem with the USSR was that they kept acting like they and their allies could compete on an even footing with NATO after 1969, when they quite simply couldn't. This war didn't destroy the USSR, but it did destroy a lot of their credibility and cause them to lose pretty much all influence in Eastern Asia. Their attempts to focus on the Middle East and Europe thereafter were never going to be as strong as before, and in the end this is what ruined them.

As for the U.S, LBJ is today remembered as one of the greatest presidents we ever had. Now, his progress towards civil rights and Great Society program all happened before the war, but it was really here that he gained his (well deserved) fame. I could see the Democrats being a lot weaker in a TL without this exchange, merely because of Johnson not leaving such a great legacy.

That Nixon was able to win in 1972 was really something of a fluke, more due to who Nixon was than actual party politics (and remember, Nixon made sure to align himself with Johnson on almost every issue, so much so that you could barely tell the Dems and Republicans apart). But even after that, we had a string of Democratic Presidents until Bush.

So I'd imagine this stranglehold wouldn't be too certain without the Rally 'Round the Flag that was the Sino-Soviet War.
 
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