"US ended up fracturing during the Second American Civil War"
Someone won against the Federal/Union. Call it Confederacy, Federation, something.
OOC: The Atlanta Republic that
@Whiteshore mentioned?
The Philadelphia Republic (OOC: basically the Northeastern, Mid-Atlantic, and New England states), the most powerful US successor state (except for the the PSA, all US successor states are referred to as the (Insert capital city here) Republic) due to them claiming to be the legitimate government) would probably be the model for a still-extant USA as it's Constitutionalist government has managed to turn the Philadelphia Republic into a major world power, albeit nowhere near what an extant USA would look like in power and it's political system is merely a modified version of the old US' government unlike the communistic Chicago Republic, the fascist Atlanta Republic, and the parliamentary system of the PSA.
IC: Point. Though mind you, would the two-party system have managed to endure in a country as big as the old US? Would two parties have managed to govern such a large and diverse group of people? I mean, one of the big advantages about the Parliamentary system in the Pacific States of America is that they've managed to effectively enfranchise and represent the diverse population.
Though that said, Prime Minister Santiago's Progressive-Centrist-Mormon-Independent coalition government is one of the more argumentative Pacific politics has seen in a while...
No Soviet domination of Europe, for one, since the US would've intervened as the Soviets moved from Germany into France. This, with the rather violent revolution in India which led to its independence in 1945, led to the Federation of the British Empire to occur in the first place.
Yeah...the Brits were able to help the Scandinavians resist, at least, and the Italians and Spanish managed to hold Southern Europe together (backed up by the threat of the V-Force). With hard-right regimes, but still...
Mind you, these days the USSR's influence over Western Europe's pretty negligible. The economic reforms and the loosening of the strings holding the puppet regimes has led to the European People's Association effectively becoming a bloc in its own right. Granted, they're still part of the Pact of Budapest, but many reckon they'll economically eclipse the Union soon.