DWBI: USA and USSR enemies?

How differently would the 20th century, and maybe even the 21st century, turned out had the United States and Soviet Union not been allied throughout the the latter's existence (1919-1996)?
 
I could see them going into multiple proxy wars, as both of them could've destroyed each other with their nuclear weapons. Korea, Vietnam, the Germany's-all time in which war could've happened. I think the USSR still would've fallen-it was a matter of time.
 
I'm rather sorry to see the Soviet Union gone. After developing its own variation on democracy (free civil liberties, tight control of economics and property), the Soviets did much good for modernizing the last massive agarian state in Europe.

Why should the USA and USSR be enemies? Didn't Leon Trotsky get Lenin's direct support to run the Soviet Union, and formalize the Soviet's democratic tradition into a sort of opposite version of the USA?

The Soviets and the USA occupied two extremes on the democratic side of the scale: Free Enterprise on one side and a "Fair Economy" on the other. They built a nation with a constitutional mandate that all people are allowed to have a job, and all people are covered with competitive medical coverage from cradle to grave...

If the USA is oppose the Soviet Union, it's going to have to be a radically different Soviet Union. One that plays a lot more mean than the still powerful Communist Parties in Europe today. I mean, the Communists seem a little out there on economic issues and their views on taxes, social interventions and morality, but they're clearly our friends. Compare them to the clear bad guy: The National Socialist, or even the Chinese Gangster, and its easy to see why the Soviets and the Americans have been good pals.

Heck, The Soviets wanted what we wanted in many cases: An end to colonization and exploitation of natives, much of it extremely cruel in the recent case of China's colonization by Japan. I'd have to say for all of these reasons that this idea is ASB and should be moved to that forum.
 
With that radical of a change, it would be hard to tell. For the US not to be friendly with the Soviet Union, we would probably need hard-line right wingers in the US and the Bolsheviks to somehow completely take over the USSR, possibly before the end of the Civil War. After Trotsky sided with Kerensky and convinced Lenin to allow opposition parties, a democratic USSR is hard to prevent, and IMO Trotsky switching sides was only a matter of time.

We'd probably see far more non-democratic nations today. The popularly-elected governments of Persia, China, and Germany would have been difficult to sustain without cooperation between the Americans and the Soviets. Also, I find it hard to believe that a world without US-Soviet cooperation would have seen the European colonial empires dismantled before the 1980s at the earliest. It was the Nixon-Zhordania Agreement that led to African independence, after all.
 
Well, I could imagine a more hard-line sucessor for Lenin, someone who took the whole "dictatorship of the proletariat" thing literally. Stalin, maybe, assuming he lives? Military coup? Things were really bloody and chaotic during the revolution and its aftermath...ripe atmosphere for a Soviet Robespiere. Whether the populace would go along with such a takeover and betrayal of Lenin's vision is borderline ASB, seeing as disgruntled as they were after centuries of Czarist abuse.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Who the fuck is Stalin? I really can't see the US and the USSR being enemies. They were after all natural allies against the Fascist- Imperialism of Europe and Japanese expansionism.
 
Did the US have any other potential major allies? It seems to me that all the other powers had an imperialist/colonialist focus that would be diametrically opposed to the ideals of the American republic.
 

NothingNow

Banned
Did the US have any other potential major allies? It seems to me that all the other powers had an imperialist/colonialist focus that would be diametrically opposed to the ideals of the American republic.
The British Empire was more focused on stability than anything else, so they might have been a possibility. Especially since they were friendly IOTL. Yes, they were Imperialists/Colonialists, but didn't want any new territories and were more concerned about the other Imperialist powers. Also, the ABC powers (Argentina, Brazil and Chile) but, they're not all that powerful and generally bicker amongst themselves.
 
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