President Douglas MacArthur TL help

Why? The American colonial power was just as bad. Is it a case of being blind to one's own faults?

I'm not sure that MacArthur was a proponent of American Empire either. He did train the Philippine constabulary when it was clear that the archipelago would be transitioned to independence.
 
Yikes, this is a door we should not even open. This world would probably make "A World of Laughter, A World of Tears" look like a utopia. Super militant US, no peaceful civil rights movement, nuclear bombs used like conventional weapons. The USA in this timeline would probably veer towards a military dictatorship and become almost as bad as the USSR. There would be a Red Scare of massive proportions. This would justify communist (USSR and China) claims that the USA is a fascist dictatorship, and they might even become right. I see a much larger and earlier intervention in Indochina, just look what MacArthur wanted to do in Korea.
In summary, this would be really, really bad.
Scipio

I always found this view of MacArthur leading a miltary junta pretty ridiculous unless there were some big butterflies involved. An example of this would be Jello_Biafra's great TL's Reds! A Revolutionary Timeline and A Red Dawn: American Revolution and Rebirth. The only reason he is leading a junta is due to the fact that he is leading a Taiwan-like nation with a communist US next door.

MacArthur's America would most likely be more nationalist but not on a Nazi Germany level. Being the general that he was there will support a larger increase of the US military than OTL. As for the Red Scare it would go on a bit longer due to MacArthur once telling Kennedy, when he was president, that he should be fighting the communists within the US before fighting them in the jungle. The Red Scare will end however because if you look at OTL although the Ike administration didn't like McCarthy it was McCarthy's fellow Senators who brought him down with censurship.

Diplomacy-wise MacArthur is going to be more Asian focused rather than Europe in the Cold War. Under him we might see SEATO survive like NATO and actually help fight communist expansion in the region. MacArthur will be do some saber-shaking with the Warsaw Pact and with Mao so a Sino-Soviet split might be out of the question here. The space race is going to be more militarized in the future. MacArthur will probably only complete his first term if he survives. He could be reelected but he will die earlier than OTL because he was an older man and the strains of the presidency will end up destroying his health.

A MacArthur presidency TL has always been an idea going on in the back of my head so I look forward to seeing the results.
 

pnyckqx

Banned
I always found this view of MacArthur leading a miltary junta pretty ridiculous unless there were some big butterflies involved. An example of this would be Jello_Biafra's great TL's Reds! A Revolutionary Timeline and A Red Dawn: American Revolution and Rebirth. The only reason he is leading a junta is due to the fact that he is leading a Taiwan-like nation with a communist US next door.

MacArthur's America would most likely be more nationalist but not on a Nazi Germany level. Being the general that he was there will support a larger increase of the US military than OTL. As for the Red Scare it would go on a bit longer due to MacArthur once telling Kennedy, when he was president, that he should be fighting the communists within the US before fighting them in the jungle. The Red Scare will end however because if you look at OTL although the Ike administration didn't like McCarthy it was McCarthy's fellow Senators who brought him down with censurship.

Diplomacy-wise MacArthur is going to be more Asian focused rather than Europe in the Cold War. Under him we might see SEATO survive like NATO and actually help fight communist expansion in the region. MacArthur will be do some saber-shaking with the Warsaw Pact and with Mao so a Sino-Soviet split might be out of the question here. The space race is going to be more militarized in the future. MacArthur will probably only complete his first term if he survives. He could be reelected but he will die earlier than OTL because he was an older man and the strains of the presidency will end up destroying his health.

A MacArthur presidency TL has always been an idea going on in the back of my head so I look forward to seeing the results.
Thank you, i neglected to consider the age issue. In 1952 MacArthur would be 72 years old. In 1948 he would be 68. Eisenhower was 69 when he left office in 1961.

It is evident from MacArthur's performance in Korea that if he was too old for a field command, he is probably too old to lead an entire nation.

That he was too old for a field command is self-evident (he was 70 years old at the start of the Korean War). He was at times brilliant, but very inconsistent at this stage of his life.
 
I always found this view of MacArthur leading a miltary junta pretty ridiculous unless there were some big butterflies involved. An example of this would be Jello_Biafra's great TL's Reds! A Revolutionary Timeline and A Red Dawn: American Revolution and Rebirth. The only reason he is leading a junta is due to the fact that he is leading a Taiwan-like nation with a communist US next door.

MacArthur's America would most likely be more nationalist but not on a Nazi Germany level. Being the general that he was there will support a larger increase of the US military than OTL. As for the Red Scare it would go on a bit longer due to MacArthur once telling Kennedy, when he was president, that he should be fighting the communists within the US before fighting them in the jungle. The Red Scare will end however because if you look at OTL although the Ike administration didn't like McCarthy it was McCarthy's fellow Senators who brought him down with censurship.

Diplomacy-wise MacArthur is going to be more Asian focused rather than Europe in the Cold War. Under him we might see SEATO survive like NATO and actually help fight communist expansion in the region. MacArthur will be do some saber-shaking with the Warsaw Pact and with Mao so a Sino-Soviet split might be out of the question here. The space race is going to be more militarized in the future. MacArthur will probably only complete his first term if he survives. He could be reelected but he will die earlier than OTL because he was an older man and the strains of the presidency will end up destroying his health.

A MacArthur presidency TL has always been an idea going on in the back of my head so I look forward to seeing the results.

Thanks for all the helpful advice. I don't plan on having the MacArthur presidency decaying into a military dictatorship or having the age of McCarthyism be to dramatically changed.

I completely forgot how being the president would affect his health and probably lead to him passing away earlier.

--

How do you think Mac would handle the civil rights movement?
 
Thanks for all the helpful advice. I don't plan on having the MacArthur presidency decaying into a military dictatorship or having the age of McCarthyism be to dramatically changed.

I completely forgot how being the president would affect his health and probably lead to him passing away earlier.

--

How do you think Mac would handle the civil rights movement?

On civil rights there was no evidence that MacArthur was a racist on a KKK level but he was most likely rather on the level of the average joe during this time period. His stance might be very similar to Ike's on civil rights that he would support the Supreme Court's decision of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954 (if it happens).
 

pnyckqx

Banned
Thanks for all the helpful advice. I don't plan on having the MacArthur presidency decaying into a military dictatorship or having the age of McCarthyism be to dramatically changed.

I completely forgot how being the president would affect his health and probably lead to him passing away earlier.

--

How do you think Mac would handle the civil rights movement?
i can understand and appreciate the strain the Presidency puts on a man, especially a man such as MacArthur, who would have been the oldest President in US History ITTL (Instead of Ike OTL).

Still, the Presidency might increase his life span.

Fact is, MacArthur had a pathological fear of Doctors and hospitals. Although he did have a personal physician while he held various commands, he almost never partook of their services and did his best to avoid them. It took a direct Presidential order from LBJ to get MacArthur to Walter Reed at the end of his life --by then it was too late and his body was too weak to withstand the number of surgeries he needed.

As President, MacArthur won't have very much choice in the matter. He'll get complete regular physical examinations, and he'll do what the doctors tell him to do. He won't have any choice in the matter.

It would have prevented the problems that killed him OTL.
 
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