DBWI: What if the United States had survived into the 21st Century?

OOC: Do we need exact analogues for every single country on the OTL globe?
OOC: I think when you guys try to find matches for OTL states, you’ve probably realized that the OTL Cold War was not a “fair fight”, it was agrarian backwaters vs industrialized powers, former colonies vs colonial powers, etc.

For instance, when you try to trade Cuba for Turkey, you do realize that Cuba came from a sugar-producing banana republic, while Turkey was one of the major empires in human history.

It required a string of horrible turn of events and horrible leaders in Europe and the US, and a series of wise decisions and extreme luck in the eastern bloc.
 
IC: I wonder what would happen if the Southern Imperialist-puppet regime still exists. Would Sygnman Rhee be ousted like Kim Il-Sung IOTL? Who would take charge then?

I would put hon-young Park or Tu-Bong Kim instead of Kim Il Sung. Choi man-sik is a right-winger, which makes him unfit for communist leader.

BTW, Tu Bong Kim was the Leader of WPK before Kim il sung was.

OOC: In a Kim-less DPRK, I’d imagine right-wingers still preserved in some United Front structure. Maybe even briefly in charge in some Seoul Spring.

I wonder what would the addition of a new Southern WPK affect internal chemistries in DPRK. There would be former followers of Kim Gu, Veterans of Jeju uprising, and other southern communists. This would add to the already existing factions in the country’s power structure.

But by Marx, there has to be a competent economist within their ranks.
 
Soviet Union suffers worst wheat harvest in 55 years... Labor and food riots in Poland. Soviet troops invade... Cuba and Nicaragua reach troop strength goals of 500,000. El Salvador and Honduras fall... Greens Party gains control of West German Parliament. Demands withdrawal of nuclear weapons from European soil... Mexico plunged into revolution... NATO dissolves. United States stands alone.
- Opening of Red Dawn

I just watched the old American movie Red Dawn last night. It was...kind of disturbing, to say the least. I think by 1984 it was pretty obvious that America was finished, and American popular culture got...really weird by then. Red Dawn wasn't the weirdest of American 80s pop culture, but it certainly was creepy enough. The premise is basically that the entire world falls to communism (or "communism", since God knows capitalism's still alive and well) except for the United States of America, and the Soviet Union decides to invade the USA to finish what they've started.

The evil Soviet invaders are fought by a team of small-town high school football players in Wisconsin called the Wolverines, and this is meant to be heroic. Of course, the Soviets still win at the end, but the guerrilla force manages to go out in a blaze of glory. It's presented that these are the good guys, fighting against the evil Soviet jackboot, and the film uses pretty much American blockbuster filmmaking trick in the book to try and get you to root for them, but what really struck me was just how fucked up that movie got. Honestly, I think everyone kind of knew the real America was finished, so they put as many torture scenes and mass killings of Soviet soldiers as possible. The townsfolk are herded into an internment camp/repurposed drive-in theater, and Strategic Air Command is knocked out by Cubans pretending to be Mexican immigrants, all while the ATF's filing system is used to track people's guns so the Soviets can steal them.

I'm not even kidding, it's that paranoid, racist, and generally shitty. I'm almost certain that this movie inspired some of those crazy survivalists and militia nuts in the former USA.

Honestly, I was kind of surprised at the production values of the movie. It looks pretty much almost as good as a comparable Russian movie of the 1980s. It's just that the creepy nationalism, blood-obsession, utter hate for the Soviet Union, unambiguous endorsement of child soldiers, and general craziness kind of shows through. It was pretty kitschy, I guess, but underneath all of the 80s was some...really weird writing, I'll say that. It was definitely a product of the US right wing.
 
- Opening of Red Dawn

I just watched the old American movie Red Dawn last night. It was...kind of disturbing, to say the least. I think by 1984 it was pretty obvious that America was finished, and American popular culture got...really weird by then. Red Dawn wasn't the weirdest of American 80s pop culture, but it certainly was creepy enough. The premise is basically that the entire world falls to communism (or "communism", since God knows capitalism's still alive and well) except for the United States of America, and the Soviet Union decides to invade the USA to finish what they've started.

The evil Soviet invaders are fought by a team of small-town high school football players in Wisconsin called the Wolverines, and this is meant to be heroic. Of course, the Soviets still win at the end, but the guerrilla force manages to go out in a blaze of glory. It's presented that these are the good guys, fighting against the evil Soviet jackboot, and the film uses pretty much American blockbuster filmmaking trick in the book to try and get you to root for them, but what really struck me was just how fucked up that movie got. Honestly, I think everyone kind of knew the real America was finished, so they put as many torture scenes and mass killings of Soviet soldiers as possible.

Honestly, I was kind of surprised at the production values of the movie. It looks pretty much almost as good as a comparable Russian movie of the 1980s. It's just that the creepy nationalism, blood-obsession, utter hate for the Soviet Union, unambiguous endorsement of child soldiers, and general craziness kind of shows through. It was pretty kitschy, I guess, but underneath all of the 80s was some...really weird writing, I'll say that. It was definitely a product of the US right wing.
That movie was made 6 years before US fell, so There was a feeling of fear and hopelessness there..
 
So, how successful do you think would European President West's Golden Milestone project be in strengthening European power?

I honestly don't think it would have made much of a difference. Frankly, the trade routes it would have used would be dominated by the Comintern anyway.
 
OOC: With the EF (and India) as the China analogue(s) and the Golden Milestone Project as the Belt and Road Initiative analogue.

OOC: I'd like to point out that the post-Cold War One World Order was little more than a fading illusion rather than the "End of History", and that was with liberal democracies instead of largerly autocratic Marxist-Leninist regimes and weirdly liberalized social democracies (TBH, I'm not sure what effect the New Left had on this universe, but I feel like it probably should have had more than it did).

Frankly, the Super Awesome Commie Wank is a recipe for disaster, especially given the rise of radical Islam and other factors. Once the post-Cold War high wears off, the new world order is going to have a lot of nasty surprises to deal with in the forms of Islamism, anti-imperialism, the remnants of ML authority, splits in the Comintern, the violent mess that is the balkanization of the USA, and such.
 
Btw how is USSR handling Daesh?
Extremely poorly. The slow reforms from autocracy to liberal democracy (or whatever they're calling it) haven't done it many favors in keeping the aging state nimble and on its feet.

OOC: Do you mind if we use Al-Qaeda instead of Daesh? Daesh was in many ways a product of post-Cold War American interventionism, and doesn't really make that much sense to be in a world without a US. Al-Qaeda was a product of Cold War anti-Sovietism, though, so that might work better.
 
OOC: Do you mind if we use Al-Qaeda instead of Daesh? Daesh was in many ways a product of post-Cold War American interventionism, and doesn't really make that much sense to be in a world without a US. Al-Qaeda was a product of Cold War anti-Sovietism, though, so that might work better.
Ok.. We will use Al qaeda..
 
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