If not attacked in WW2, which major power would USSR be least unlikely to start a war with?

Which country would Stalin be least unlikely to attack (assuming he has not been attacked)?

  • Germany

    Votes: 7 14.6%
  • Japan

    Votes: 25 52.1%
  • Italy

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • France

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Britain

    Votes: 1 2.1%
  • United States

    Votes: 10 20.8%
  • China

    Votes: 5 10.4%

  • Total voters
    48

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Yep, I intentionally used a double-negative, the term "least unlikely", because, unlike many AH'ers, I acknowledge that the USSR and Stalin maybe did not have some compulsion to start a war with *anyone*, much less a major power internationally.

But assuming that Stalin *is* going to be interested in starting a war with a major power, or is interested in engaging a high-stakes aggressive policy in the general direction of another major power that he knows brings a high risk of war, who would be most most and least likely to pick a fight with:

a) Germany
b) Japan
c) Italy
d) France
e) Britain
f) United States
g) China
 
My money is on Japan. The USSR, secure in the west, sees Japan losing horribly to the USA. In the last year of the war, they declare war on Japan in solidarity with the oppressed Chinese peoples and August Storm early. They evict Japan from the continent before Japan surrenders to the US and secure the Korean Peninsula.
 
Japan. Based on proximity and competing interests, ie, Sakhalin and the Kuriles gives the Soviets a much more secure outlet to the Pacific. They will probably go after Manchukuo to make a nice puppet state of their own after the war, or they may give it back to the Nationalists. They were pretty ambivalent about Mao in OTL, and friendly towards the Chinese.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Japan really is far and away the winner in both the poll and responses so far.

Could we be underestimating the strategic priority of Europe to the Soviet Union?

I find it odd that China and the USA are both ahead in the poll of soviet targets over Britain and France, but even Germany too!
 
Could we be underestimating the strategic priority of Europe to the Soviet Union?
Europe's strategic priority to the USSR is the reason why Stalin is less likely to attack there, imo. Any aggressive act there will be responded to much negatively than a similar aggressive act in the Far East.

The USSR got kicked out of the League of Nations for invading Finland, so imagine the reaction if they try to roll into Western Europe.
 
Japan really is far and away the winner in both the poll and responses so far.

Could we be underestimating the strategic priority of Europe to the Soviet Union?

I find it odd that China and the USA are both ahead in the poll of soviet targets over Britain and France, but even Germany too!
I agree with you, the USA is ASB. They are way to far away from one another. But at the same time, to get to Britain or France the USSR has to go through Germany first. As for China, as already mentioned the USSR has intervened in China before. But I believe that the USSR will definitely be most likely to go to war with Japan. They could easily force Japan out of Asia (provided they aren't fighting Europe at the same time) with very little consequences. Part of the reason they didn't do so in OTL was they dramatically overestimated Japan's power, fearing a repeat of 1905.
 
Japan, fairly obviously. The USSR has a border with Japan, and Japan by 1940 has no allies that would come to her defense.

Also, Japan could give the USSR a solid casus belli. OTL they did so with the Nomonhan incident, but Stalin didn't take it.

Possible TL: the Molotov-Ribbentrop negotiations fall through, and Hitler backs down over Poland (settling for annexation of Danzig after a plebiscite).

Europe quiets down, and Stalin has no opportunities there, he thinks.

Then Stalin might look at the recent victories in Manchuria, and decide to go to town on Japan. So there is a Soviet-Japanese War, which overlaps with the Sino-Japanese War. (The USSR was already allied with China.) The League of Nations and the Western powers really don't have anything to say.

Soviet forces sweep across Manchuria and Korea. Japanese forces hold out on the south China coast. Soviet bombers attack Japan, in the world's first serious strategic bombing campaign since WW I. (Can the Soviets accomplish anything? They couldn't find Helsinki, AIUI.)

And so on...
 
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