Plausibility Check: Alternate Possible Cold Wars With the U.S. As One of the Parties?

CaliGuy

Banned
Out of curiosity--in addition to our TL's Cold War and the possibility of a Cold War between the U.S. and a victorious Germany either after WWI or WWII, which other alternate possible Cold Wars with the U.S. as one of the parties can there be?

Any thoughts on this?
 
Non communist Russia with an eastern European sphere of influence and an american western European sphere

syndicalist Major powers

Japan winning in china

Stronger china earlier
 
With an after-1900 PoD and no specification for the nature of the Cold War incl. time frame it's pretty easy to see a US v X Cold War against any of Britain, Germany, "Europe" and variations thereof, alt-Russia, China, maybe India or Japan, or even some fairly obscure ones if you want to play the "post (limited) nuclear war game". Say some CMC-style conflict occurs which hurts the US and leaves some middle sized countries fully intact, Brazil for instance. With America cut down to size and Eurasia presumably out of the picture a US vs Brazil Cold War is quite possible materially, just need to do the politics now.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
With an after-1900 PoD and no specification for the nature of the Cold War incl. time frame it's pretty easy to see a US v X Cold War against any of Britain, Germany, "Europe" and variations thereof, alt-Russia, China, maybe India or Japan, or even some fairly obscure ones if you want to play the "post (limited) nuclear war game". Say some CMC-style conflict occurs which hurts the US and leaves some middle sized countries fully intact, Brazil for instance. With America cut down to size and Eurasia presumably out of the picture a US vs Brazil Cold War is quite possible materially, just need to do the politics now.
For the record, by "Cold War," I mean a global rivalry and competition between the U.S. and another power.
 
For the record, by "Cold War," I mean a global rivalry and competition between the U.S. and another power.

Global 1v1 makes it tricky, only happened OTL due to the near-total destruction of all other great powers, let alone potential competitors with the US. Germany comes to mind as a possibility then, or perhaps China and maybe India late century if something awful happens to the European peninsula. Very hard to see anyone actually matching the US in power though, for all that the USSR did not need to to be a global competitor in a sense.
 
A modernized China could easily enter a CW with the USA, as could a stronger Germany, an Alt-Russia, a unified and focused India, etc...

Really, all you need is another nation to control enough land, population, and resources to be able to go one-to-one against the USA. As for the destruction of other major powers that could interfere, there are many methods to achieve such. They could collapse into anarchy and civil war (China, Spain), they could have been ruined in war (Britain, France, Germany, Japan), they could've stagnated and collapsed (USSR).
 
Without specifics, any European Great Power, Japan, China, or a larger Brazil could do it but we need more specifics.
 
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