I assume when I finish the Panama War, then go with a minor arc for Europe. But that would be 1893, at the least. And 1886 has an election that must be covered. 1894-1899 is going to be an interesting period as well. The new Olympic Games(1896) must be covered and with South America being more prominent, things start to get interesting there.
Panama Faceoff: Lone Star against Thirty-Eight Stars
- Thread starter Paradox-less
- Start date
I assume when I finish the Panama War, then go with a minor arc for Europe. But that would be 1893, at the least. And 1886 has an election that must be covered. 1894-1899 is going to be an interesting period as well. The new Olympic Games(1896) must be covered and with South America being more prominent, things start to get interesting there.
I have been writing a response to this TL's basic premises for quite some time, and on Previewing decided that while I think I wrote a lot of important questions and introduced a few important facts, on the whole everything I wrote can be boiled down to these questions:
1) how can you justify the Medellin Alliance forming in the first place, against the OTL disunity that has prevailed for whatever reason in South America? What has changed here? I note you suggest the alliance forming can stabilize members--but if so, how come it did not happen OTL?
2) can you document any solid reason to think the US was being disingenuous in its 1885 actions in Panama, when US actions professed to be in defense of the established Colombian government against the rebels? (If anyone figures that of course any Yankee actions in Panama at any time are automatically suspect due to "Canal, duh!", take a look at question 4 below).
3) Is the Chilean attack on the US forces in fact Chile seeking to aid the rebels and put a new, friendly allied government in power in Bogota? Or is this an ATL where due to changes before 1885, the USN is in fact guilty of supporting rebels and the Colombian government, instead of inviting US support, has in fact called on Chile to come help them against a Yankee coup?
4) are the Yankees dissuaded from their canal ambitions focusing on Nicaragua as they were OTL at this point by some factor accounted for by a pre-1885 POD? Or are they attacking Colombia, if that is the case, for some completely different reason--if so, what is that reason?
5) or are they as innocent in these matters as they claim, and is Chile's attack an act of sheer bravado and jingoism for domestic reasons?
(To amplify on #4 a bit as I did at much greater length in the omitted material--US schemes for a canal from Atlantic to Pacific focused on Nicaragua, which I would point out is closer to US ports, deeper into the US sphere of influence in the 19th century, and easier to dig a canal across than Panama too. It took a decade of lobbying by French interests trying to recoup their investment in Ferdinand de Lesseps's stalled Colombian canal scheme, aided mainly by propagandizing against Nicaragua as too threatened by volcanic events to be considered, to switch US interest over to Panama for the Canal. So assuming that Yankees would be eying Panama with building a Canal there in mind in 1885 is anachronistic; doesn't prove they might not have had some other evil plot in mind--but if so, what?)
If you can address these questions, then your TL goes forward on its own logic, depending on the answers to them I guess. The more alien an ATL the answers indicate, the more explaining how it got that way you have to do. Vice versa, I have often been amazed at OTL facts ATL discussions bring to light, and it could be for instance that your answer to # 2 might show that that OTL was a lot closer to what i assumed to be an ATL in the second clause of question 3. It may also be, given the revolving door pattern of factional violence Colombia has suffered from OTL, that we can be persuaded the batch of rebels the Americans opposed on behalf of the central government may have been the "good guys," whose victory might have led to lasting peace there if only meddling foreign great powers would allow it. But in that case I'd still ask why and how it is that the USA, rather than Britain, is the chief meddler responsible at this point in history.
Right now it looks to me like the USN went into Panama to protect the interests (read, perhaps, the lives) of US citizens present in Panama--and the reason for their presence at risk is because of the 1846 treaty-granted right of transit of US citizens across Panama, the same treaty in which the USA also promised not to steal it. Thus a USN intervention to protect American citizens in transit or settled to cater to US citizens in transit, limited only to Panama and only to this protective function plus perhaps services to the established government in aid of upholding it, hardly looks like an ominous power grab to me. The fact that 18 years later the Yanks would do exactly that has no bearing on what they were doing in 1885, given their focus on a canal elsewhere.
So hard evidence to shed a different light on these questions, or specifications of an ATL that diverged before 1885 with solid logic leading up to the point you chose to jump into the narrative, would in some combination be much appreciated.
Without these clarifications, this looks very much indeed like a "wank" in the worse sense, a mere wish fulfillment in which the historical actors of a century and more ago are turned into warped sock-puppets of a completely anachronistic agenda, with characters acting apparently out of foreknowledge of events that will never happen if act differently at this time--but in so acting, they act against their established characters and for reasons not at all present in their place and time. By all means hold the USA accountable for its real misdeeds in the region up to this point, but not for ones that have not and indeed cannot have manifested in 1885. Or write a TL in which the actual crimes and misdemeanors of the USA against South American peoples, of which I know of depressingly many and you may be able to demonstrate even more and worse than that, are opposed or foiled by timely and brave and thoughtful action by contemporary South Americans. I think I would like to see that.
But just writing this as a "take that, Yanquis!" has if anything caused me to view Chile of this era in particular in a darker light than I was wont to before I read up on the War of the Pacific and her truculence against what on a close look, looks like a perfectly reasonable USN/Marine action. If all our other interventions were on a par with what seems to have been done by US forces in Panama in that year, I'd be one with the USA!!F-YEAH! chorus. I know our actions have often been far less reasonable and so I am no such cheerleader. It may be that the description I have read of that action is massively laundered and the truth hidden, or it may be that you are writing an ATL where the situation is strikingly different from OTL. Or both. But I think you owe it to your audience to adduce any facts that might change our opinions about OTL events, and most certainly if you are making ATL assumptions, you should spell them out at some point. A guessing game as to their nature can be fun, but honestly it looks to me like you yourself read about US forces in Panama in '85 and looked no further, assuming (as I too would have if simply told this happened with no further context) they were there up to no good. Which was of course also the Chilean government's position at the time--which is why I still think maybe you do know something Wikipedia is misleadingly leaving out. Believe it or not, Chile has always been one of the countries I have thought the best of in South America, and I'd like to think if the Chilean government of 1885 said the Marines were there because we wanted to steal Panama that there was some substance to the charge. But all the circumstances of the case, once brought to light, seem to point in quite another direction, and this raises the question of how disingenuous the Chilean government was being that year. Reflect that in accusing it of a demagogic deception, I charge it with nothing worse than the US government has done thousands of times, just as the aggression of the War of the Pacific is clearly nothing worse than quite a few instances of US expansionism and may be more justified than most of those. Democracies apparently are not guaranteed to act in saintly fashion it would seem!
In my opinion by the way, the Medellin Alliance's greatest chances for mere survival for more than a decade at the outside hinge on Chile making this strike against the USN at Panama an isolated instance and then attempting to duck out of the predictable US angry response with a peace mediated by Great Britain ASAP. If it turns into a war where the USA suffers additional provocations of any kind, I expect the USA will be finishing it, within a decade at the outside, maybe two if there is a hiatus of cold peace, with a devastating invasion of Chile and the rest of the Alliance saves their hides by abandoning their ringleader to her fate. With Chile refraining from worse incidents and a brokered peace by Britain, perhaps the USA eventually calms down and accepts the MA as a power to live with. But even that assumes an unstable period in which the USA is looking for an excuse to strike back with greatly improved power manages to pass without giving the Yankees their pretext. As I say I think that if Chile does follow up this violent demonstration of ability to strike with impunity (but with only a few ships, so it is hardly like the MA can invade and conquer the USA) with further humiliation, then it will not matter how careful the Alliance is not to provoke the Yanks further after a brokered peace--El Norte will have taken to heart a doctrine along the lines of "Chile delenado est" and I don't think there is anything the Alliance can do to prevent the USA from acquiring the power to do it, within a decade or less. Only if the damage is truly superficial can you expect Uncle Sam to be talked down. Of course there is nothing they can do for some years after the incident, but vice versa there is nothing the Alliance can do to neuter the strength the USA will slowly but surely bring to bear.
And perhaps this is exactly how your Tl is going to go--a quick shot across Yankee bows, followed by an embarrassing brouhaha as the USN futilely seeks immediate revenge, then ring down the curtain on this Keystone Kops performance before anyone further gets seriously hurt.
So anyway I am posting all the other stuff I decided to edit out of here in a PM to the author.
1) how can you justify the Medellin Alliance forming in the first place, against the OTL disunity that has prevailed for whatever reason in South America? What has changed here? I note you suggest the alliance forming can stabilize members--but if so, how come it did not happen OTL?
2) can you document any solid reason to think the US was being disingenuous in its 1885 actions in Panama, when US actions professed to be in defense of the established Colombian government against the rebels? (If anyone figures that of course any Yankee actions in Panama at any time are automatically suspect due to "Canal, duh!", take a look at question 4 below).
3) Is the Chilean attack on the US forces in fact Chile seeking to aid the rebels and put a new, friendly allied government in power in Bogota? Or is this an ATL where due to changes before 1885, the USN is in fact guilty of supporting rebels and the Colombian government, instead of inviting US support, has in fact called on Chile to come help them against a Yankee coup?
4) are the Yankees dissuaded from their canal ambitions focusing on Nicaragua as they were OTL at this point by some factor accounted for by a pre-1885 POD? Or are they attacking Colombia, if that is the case, for some completely different reason--if so, what is that reason?
5) or are they as innocent in these matters as they claim, and is Chile's attack an act of sheer bravado and jingoism for domestic reasons?
(To amplify on #4 a bit as I did at much greater length in the omitted material--US schemes for a canal from Atlantic to Pacific focused on Nicaragua, which I would point out is closer to US ports, deeper into the US sphere of influence in the 19th century, and easier to dig a canal across than Panama too. It took a decade of lobbying by French interests trying to recoup their investment in Ferdinand de Lesseps's stalled Colombian canal scheme, aided mainly by propagandizing against Nicaragua as too threatened by volcanic events to be considered, to switch US interest over to Panama for the Canal. So assuming that Yankees would be eying Panama with building a Canal there in mind in 1885 is anachronistic; doesn't prove they might not have had some other evil plot in mind--but if so, what?)
If you can address these questions, then your TL goes forward on its own logic, depending on the answers to them I guess. The more alien an ATL the answers indicate, the more explaining how it got that way you have to do. Vice versa, I have often been amazed at OTL facts ATL discussions bring to light, and it could be for instance that your answer to # 2 might show that that OTL was a lot closer to what i assumed to be an ATL in the second clause of question 3. It may also be, given the revolving door pattern of factional violence Colombia has suffered from OTL, that we can be persuaded the batch of rebels the Americans opposed on behalf of the central government may have been the "good guys," whose victory might have led to lasting peace there if only meddling foreign great powers would allow it. But in that case I'd still ask why and how it is that the USA, rather than Britain, is the chief meddler responsible at this point in history.
Right now it looks to me like the USN went into Panama to protect the interests (read, perhaps, the lives) of US citizens present in Panama--and the reason for their presence at risk is because of the 1846 treaty-granted right of transit of US citizens across Panama, the same treaty in which the USA also promised not to steal it. Thus a USN intervention to protect American citizens in transit or settled to cater to US citizens in transit, limited only to Panama and only to this protective function plus perhaps services to the established government in aid of upholding it, hardly looks like an ominous power grab to me. The fact that 18 years later the Yanks would do exactly that has no bearing on what they were doing in 1885, given their focus on a canal elsewhere.
So hard evidence to shed a different light on these questions, or specifications of an ATL that diverged before 1885 with solid logic leading up to the point you chose to jump into the narrative, would in some combination be much appreciated.
Without these clarifications, this looks very much indeed like a "wank" in the worse sense, a mere wish fulfillment in which the historical actors of a century and more ago are turned into warped sock-puppets of a completely anachronistic agenda, with characters acting apparently out of foreknowledge of events that will never happen if act differently at this time--but in so acting, they act against their established characters and for reasons not at all present in their place and time. By all means hold the USA accountable for its real misdeeds in the region up to this point, but not for ones that have not and indeed cannot have manifested in 1885. Or write a TL in which the actual crimes and misdemeanors of the USA against South American peoples, of which I know of depressingly many and you may be able to demonstrate even more and worse than that, are opposed or foiled by timely and brave and thoughtful action by contemporary South Americans. I think I would like to see that.
But just writing this as a "take that, Yanquis!" has if anything caused me to view Chile of this era in particular in a darker light than I was wont to before I read up on the War of the Pacific and her truculence against what on a close look, looks like a perfectly reasonable USN/Marine action. If all our other interventions were on a par with what seems to have been done by US forces in Panama in that year, I'd be one with the USA!!F-YEAH! chorus. I know our actions have often been far less reasonable and so I am no such cheerleader. It may be that the description I have read of that action is massively laundered and the truth hidden, or it may be that you are writing an ATL where the situation is strikingly different from OTL. Or both. But I think you owe it to your audience to adduce any facts that might change our opinions about OTL events, and most certainly if you are making ATL assumptions, you should spell them out at some point. A guessing game as to their nature can be fun, but honestly it looks to me like you yourself read about US forces in Panama in '85 and looked no further, assuming (as I too would have if simply told this happened with no further context) they were there up to no good. Which was of course also the Chilean government's position at the time--which is why I still think maybe you do know something Wikipedia is misleadingly leaving out. Believe it or not, Chile has always been one of the countries I have thought the best of in South America, and I'd like to think if the Chilean government of 1885 said the Marines were there because we wanted to steal Panama that there was some substance to the charge. But all the circumstances of the case, once brought to light, seem to point in quite another direction, and this raises the question of how disingenuous the Chilean government was being that year. Reflect that in accusing it of a demagogic deception, I charge it with nothing worse than the US government has done thousands of times, just as the aggression of the War of the Pacific is clearly nothing worse than quite a few instances of US expansionism and may be more justified than most of those. Democracies apparently are not guaranteed to act in saintly fashion it would seem!
In my opinion by the way, the Medellin Alliance's greatest chances for mere survival for more than a decade at the outside hinge on Chile making this strike against the USN at Panama an isolated instance and then attempting to duck out of the predictable US angry response with a peace mediated by Great Britain ASAP. If it turns into a war where the USA suffers additional provocations of any kind, I expect the USA will be finishing it, within a decade at the outside, maybe two if there is a hiatus of cold peace, with a devastating invasion of Chile and the rest of the Alliance saves their hides by abandoning their ringleader to her fate. With Chile refraining from worse incidents and a brokered peace by Britain, perhaps the USA eventually calms down and accepts the MA as a power to live with. But even that assumes an unstable period in which the USA is looking for an excuse to strike back with greatly improved power manages to pass without giving the Yankees their pretext. As I say I think that if Chile does follow up this violent demonstration of ability to strike with impunity (but with only a few ships, so it is hardly like the MA can invade and conquer the USA) with further humiliation, then it will not matter how careful the Alliance is not to provoke the Yanks further after a brokered peace--El Norte will have taken to heart a doctrine along the lines of "Chile delenado est" and I don't think there is anything the Alliance can do to prevent the USA from acquiring the power to do it, within a decade or less. Only if the damage is truly superficial can you expect Uncle Sam to be talked down. Of course there is nothing they can do for some years after the incident, but vice versa there is nothing the Alliance can do to neuter the strength the USA will slowly but surely bring to bear.
And perhaps this is exactly how your Tl is going to go--a quick shot across Yankee bows, followed by an embarrassing brouhaha as the USN futilely seeks immediate revenge, then ring down the curtain on this Keystone Kops performance before anyone further gets seriously hurt.
So anyway I am posting all the other stuff I decided to edit out of here in a PM to the author.
After the last battle, in Panama, it's 27,000 against 11,500. Reinforcements should be arriving shortly for the US.
Sorry about the delay, but September 18th delayed me and being somewhat busy has delayed me even more.
The Alliance has variated training depending on the country.
Brazil has the quantity, but lacks the experience that Colombia and Chile have. Argentina has some experience, but not against a regular army. Ecuador is the one that has it toughest.
Training, Brazil has a moderate amount. Argentina, Colombia and Chile have trained and were put to the test. Ecuador needs more training to compensate its inferior numbers.