With the beginning of the Spring season, we are a month away from celebrating the bicentennial of the United States of Africa. the USA has emerged in the top five of industrial and agricultural powers. And cultural attitudes have changed in the last ten years. President Bjoernd Olofssen recently asked Congress to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (Six states already passed gay marriage into law). Five years ago, he was the first non-black person to win election as President (well, his mother was a black woman from Congo and his father was of mixed Cherokee-Norse heritage from Sequoyah).
Bordering the USA's north is the Dominion of Sahara. The mostly desert country is a parliamentary democracy as opposed to the USA's separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches. Saharans are subjects of the Ottoman Empire and cherish the traditions of democracy. Sure it has gone through a lot. A decade ago, the indigenous Tamazight were granted local self government in the northwest part of the country. The Tamazight speak primarily Berber while the majority of Saharans are bilingual in Arabic and Coptic.
90 percent of Sahara's Copts live in the province of Egypt (which is under 60 percent Coptic). In the past, the Egyptian Copt Party has advocated independence from North Africa. The provinces of Sumeria and Puntland have threatened to become separate dominions of the Ottomans if that had happened. I don't know why the Copts are complaining. A few Copts became Prime Minister of Sahara. Boutros Ghali was Prime Minister from 1993 to 2003. Before that, Michel Shalhoub was Prime Minister from 1970 to 1985 and he had a penchant for the ladies (and his gambling jaunts to the casinos of Bophuthatswana).
I am thinking of writing an alternate history where Africa is a third world continent of multiple independent countries while America is democratic and a first world power in which Indeans are a minority of the population; Vinland, the Aztec Empire and the Arawak Federation do not exist; and the white descendants of Dutch settlers (known as Boers or Amerikaners) do not settle in southeastern America. I just need to come up with a good POD.
Would such a scenario be ASB?
OOC: inspired by Misswhatsitoya's excellent story of the Reverse Cold War.