Most utopian present day possible

Not necessarly, depending on what you think as socialism. I think more social-democracy may have lessened the 'edgy coolness' alternative appeals of communism in the other sense of the deal...
 

JoeMulk

Banned
The consensus here on AH.com is that a WWI was inevitable mostly. Too much alliances, stuff coming dangerously high, colonialism, nationalism.. SOMETHING else would have started the Doomsday Machine...

meh true enough, you gotta go further back and change the alliance system then
 
Wouldn't things be better for Arabs if a great state had been greated after WWI encopassing all OTL Arab states between Egypt and Iraq, as it was promised by during the war? Or maybe just two or three big states, one encopassing sedentary nations (from Lebanon to Iraq) and another one encopassing the Arab Peninsula?
No, an Ottoman state would probably be better then this, believe it or not. The Ottomans had ruled the place for 400 years, and many Arabs would accept them as much more legitimate then Sharif Hussain (Seeing as how him being an Arab would effect nothing, Arab nationalism didn't make serious inroads until the 20's and 30's). They also had more experience government, and with a much higher population, may not suffer from the Dutch disease that the Khaleeji Monarchies have succumbed to.

In short, pluses for the Ottomans are 1- Increased legitimacy 2- More competent and experienced government 3- much less war

Pluses for Hashemite rule 1- Arab speaking, within a few decades, providing fairly strong government, could forge a successful Arab national identity 2- Less war
 
If the consensus is that WWI is/was inevitable, then let's alter the Versailles Treaty so that Germany does not get too deep into a recession (if one happens at all). No nazis then.
 
WWI, and practically the whole of 20th century history, derives from a single man: Wilhelm II.

Change or delete Wilhelm, and you take away the main reasons for WWI, the fall of Imperial Russia, the fall of Imperial Germany, WWII, the Cold War...

Assuming Europe would coast along more or less peacefully, you'd still have Imperial Japan carving off slices of the Far East, and eventual conflict with Britain. Most of the European powers had some presence in the area, so there might eventually have been a Pacific war, but it would have been a very different one than the Pacific theater in WWII.

Most of the United States' industrial power was a side effect of WWI, WWII, and the Cold War. In the first decade of the 20th century the USA was a second-rank military and industrial power; without the wars, it might have remained so.
 
How about, Stalin dies of a heart attack during WW2 and is replaced by someone more conciliatory - maybe Beria.

After WW2, the Truman administration made a surprisingly serious offer to ban all nuclear arms, and turn control of atomic energy over to an international agency. The plan foundered for a couple of reasons, at the bottom of which was the rapidly growing distrust of the US for the USSR and vice-versa. In particular, the US refused to give up its own arms until inspections were operating in other countries, and the USSR refused to agree to inspections until the US disarmed.

I've been wondering if, with a more conciliatory leader in the USSR, a compromise couldn't be struck. For instance, the US is allowed to keep a certain number of bombs as a deterrent while the program is being set up, but the number is capped at a level the Soviets can accept. Or the US is allowed to keep a certain stockpile of plutonium metal in unmachined form.

With a more conciliatory leader than Stalin, the Berlin blockade isn't going to happen. Neither will the Korean War. Beria even proposed reunifying Germany on condition it be neutralized like Austria. Maybe he even forces Mao to form a coalition government with the KMT.

Without the crises of the late 40s creating distrust, and without the atom bomb hanging over everyone's heads, there's no Cold War. The Soviet Union and the US probably don't much like each other, but they're not locked in a life-or-death struggle over the fate of the world. Circumstances later could bring about a Cold War, but we've at least got a shot at avoiding Korea, Vietnam, and all the other proxy fights of the second half of the 20th century. And if we get Mao and Chiang Kai-Shek into a coalition government, that probably eliminates most of the deaths under Mao as well. The UN might even be effective if the permanent members of the security council aren't preparing to fight an apocalypse with each other.

Finally, with atomic energy under the control of an international agency, I bet the development of atomic power is going to look very different. It could go in all kinds of ways, some good, some bad. But it will at least prevent the push for PWRs in the US as a source of plutonium for weapons, and I bet they'd love the proliferation-resistant Thorium fuel cycle.

Anyway, it's just a brain storm so it's probably not plausible, but that's my contribution.
 
I wonder would an earlier 20th century ending of imperialism ( mind you we still have it to an extent and of course Libya will now be reimperialised), have had a positive utopian effect.
 
No Hitler, Stallin, Mao or 'Pol Potty' and whatever loons were in charge of E.Timor under Indonesian rule, and 'leading' Burundi and Rwanda during the massacres, you could also throw in Kim Il Sung!
 
The Watergate burglary is called off when G. Gordon Liddy painfully breaks his angle stepping out of a car that's still moving. (I like G. Liddy, overall, but the man had to be leashed in the early 70s, that's all I'm saying.)

Sometime around the 1970s, thanks presidential term limits declared unconstitutional.

Oh, let me be more specific:

Nixon supporters manage to get term limits declared unconstitutional in an unusual lawsuit based on a petition for Nixon to run for re-election in 1976.

Nixon wins in 1976.

Jimmy Who?

George H. W. Bush overcomes the charismatic Californian by the hairs of his nostrils for the nomination in 1980.

The Bush-Dole ticket bring themselves to victory in '80, '84, and '88.

They bring the dying Soviet Union to rest in a gentle, soft landing with minimized violence and blow-back.

(I think I've unleashed some strange butterflies that are already profoundly colliding with each other in this...)

Bill Clinton and Al Gore win in 1992, sorry VP Dole

Clinton re-elects 1996.

Bill Clinton re-elected in 2000

Assuming that Newt somehow gets control of congress in 1994 or so, in this tl, Newt Gingrich continues to serve as speaker of the house concurrent to Clinton's presidency.

They continue to turn in budgets that are balanced and reap the surpluses that result from the market's and economy's comfort and confidence with the "symbiotic" regime in Washington, DC.

Very slowly, very gradually, spending on science research and development of technology is clicked up a notch every year or so, and this overlaps with more goodies for schools around the country.

Thanks to Al Gore and his pain-in-the-ass "Reinventing Government" mania, combined with acute awareness of the things that Bin Laden wants to do, the myriad warnings of suicidal hijackers actually reach the decision-making level(s), and action is taken.

Mohammed Atta attempts to nonchalantly speedwalk away as agents are closing in on his residence and gets very painfully hit by a bus moving slowly enough to not kill him instantly but fast enough to mortally injure the motherkcufer.

Fifteen suspects are rounded up. Other hijack plotters, rumored at and indicated of indirectly, paint their asses white and run with the antelopes, as LBJ would say.

After a noisy and very hard-fought campaign, a visibly aged Bill Clinton wins re-election in 2004.

In New Jersey, attorney Chris Christie is very much enjoying his prosperity with the nicely bubbling economy and on a whim postpones his political career to let the good times roll a bit longer.
 
How about, Stalin dies of a heart attack during WW2 and is replaced by someone more conciliatory - maybe Beria.

...


how about Zhukhov?

065711-russian-general-georgy-zhukov.jpg
 
YES! Zhukov-Molotov for premiereship. Reign in the frickin NKVD! Might make for a more tolerant union. Zhukov has seen the horrors of war, and molotov the horrors of Stalins purges. That would make a whole different union

Um, Molotov was a die-hard Stalinist to the day he died, even when it was politically unpopular. He actually preferred Mao to Russia's post-Stalin leadership. I believe this was after he would have known of the consequences of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, too. He might make a good premier in terms of avoiding the Cold War, but he's not going to be very nice to his own people.

I don't know about Zhukov.

Beria, weirdly enough, was probably the most reformist of the candidates for leadership after Stalin's death. He was even talking about ending communism and bringing back private property. It would be very hard to make him leader, because a) everybody hated him, and b) he was talking about ending communism and bringing back private property. But it might be possible, especially if Stalin dies during the war, before he started to distrust Beria.

A Russia under Beria is probably going to look similar to the government of China today: ruthless but not genocidal; still nominally communist, but fundamentally pragmatic. He probably wouldn't have China's economic success, but he might do better than the USSR did IOTL.
 
Ok I revise my previous statement. Zhukov-Beria would do good. If Beria has Zhukov on his side, his reforms will pass because of the backing of the army.
 
On Beria.. My theory is that spying and ntelligence leaders in all of history are ALWAYS eitheir the ones who actually see their real regime and leaders as they are, cynicaly realist, or the most obtuse, ideologicaly fanatics.

They SEE the whole of the nation, so eitheir they 'see' it.. or not.
 
If, if, no wars is a way of describing a 'utopia' then instead of one meteroite/comet/UFO striking Tunguska, Siberia, in 1905 have a whole shower of them striking around the globe. Annihilation of all animal and vegetable species (save, perhaps for some deep in the oceans). No wars.
 
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