Soviet/Imperial japan Alliance?

See the Nazi-Soviet Pact for an example of how the USSR was able to put aside ideology when it got in the way of a decent alliance.

It was a partition plan, not an alliance, and it was in bad faith on both sides (more so on Hitler's side, since Stalin provided him with material and moral support while it lasted). They were at war in less than 2 years.

Maybe if Japan have returned South Sakhalin and Kurils Islands.

Since it saw these as an integral part of its national territory I doubt it would return them... or even use the word "return", for that matter.

Гудериан

That's "Guderian". I have trouble reading Cyrillic and most of us can't do it at all. Please write in the Latin alphabet.

Given that the motto of Realpolitik is 'My Enemy's Enemy is my Friend' I don't find this ASB at all.

That is not its motto at all; Kissinger and zombie Bismarck would laugh in your face if they heard you say that.

Honestly, I'm getting pretty annoyed at people categorising the USSR as an evil empire. It may be appropriate if you want to go on an angry political rant, but if you genuinely want to understand the Soviet Union and its place in history, it will do you no good at all!!!

How can you sincerely expect to discuss how the Soviet Union may have acted in an alternate history if as far as you are concerned the entire state is objectively evil, run exclusively by objectively evil people with objectively evil plots to enslave the world?

Except that his analysis of Stalin's reasons for the Pact is dead-on.

Anyway, Imperial Japan and the USSR were mortal enemies and you can't just up and decide to make them allies no matter how much sense it might make to you. There are 2 roads that might lead to that direction, but they take work:

1) The Japanese do not invade Manchuria (the government wasn't planning on it anyway) and Nationalist China grows strong and ambitious. They continue to claim Mongolia, Tuva and some minor Soviet territories, seize the Chinese Eastern and South Manchurian Railways, plan on retaking Taiwan, Kwantung and Outer Manchuria, crush the Chinese Communists and pro-Soviet and pro-Japanese warlords, and aid Korean rebels, Trotskyites and White Russian emigres. This eventually leads to Soviet-Japanese cooperation against what has become their biggest rival in East Asia. This could be helped by China being closely aligned with Nazi Germany (see OTL Sino-German cooperation) and the USA (both easy to do) and turning fascist (not so easy to do).

2) Towards the end of WWII Japan was trying to use Soviet influence to shield it from being completely defeated in the war; this was before the Soviets intervened. The argument its diplomats presented to the USSR was that unconditional surrender would bring the Americans to its doorstep and that wouldn't be good. Maybe something can be done with this, though I don't really see how.
 
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Honestly, I'm getting pretty annoyed at people categorising the USSR as an evil empire. It may be appropriate if you want to go on an angry political rant, but if you genuinely want to understand the Soviet Union and its place in history, it will do you no good at all!!!

How can you sincerely expect to discuss how the Soviet Union may have acted in an alternate history if as far as you are concerned the entire state is objectively evil, run exclusively by objectively evil people with objectively evil plots to enslave the world?

I apologize if my remark made me seem like some McCarthyist pig, but I stand by it. I seriously consider Stalin, as well as pretty much everyone else in the Kremlin, as little Darth Vaders who sought to unite the world under their iron fist. There is historical evidence that this seemingly fictitious diabolical plot to exhaust the capitalist powers in a series of wars against each other and then attack was real.
If you want, I could specify said evidence, but I doubt this has much to do with the topic at hand.

The closest thing you'll ever get to a Soviet-Japanese alliance (with a POD post Soviet establishment) is a Molotov-Ribbentrop of China.
 
A Molotov-Ribbentropp of China was pretty much what I was thinking.

The two powers decide to divide up the country, both of them hoping to harness Chinese manpower to either Socialist Revolution or the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere and then backstab the other.

Who'd grab what, in such a scenario?

If it's before the invasion of Manchuria, I would expect the Soviets to want that, except that's a threat to the Japanese holdings in Korea.

If it's afterward, the Japanese have already got it. The Soviets could move down through Mongolia and the Xinjiang, but the terrain would be a bit of a problem. Sichuan, however, would be a prize.
 
That's "Guderian".
I apologise0sometimes i use autotranslator-itvdoesnt translate all the words, and I forgot sometimess to correct it.
Since it saw these as an integral part of its national territory I doubt it would return them... or even use the word "return", for that matter.
South Sakhalin was transfered to Japan after Russia had been defeated by Japan in 1904-05 years.
 
South Sakhalin was transfered to Japan after Russia had been defeated by Japan in 1904-05 years.

That's besides the point. The Japanese saw it as an integral part of their territory and there were riots in Japan in 1905 when they only got half of it. It's a matter of perspective. For the Soviet it's a return of territory; for the Japanese it's a surrender of part of the homeland.
 
Given that the motto of Realpolitik is 'My Enemy's Enemy is my Friend' I don't find this ASB at all.

Rule 29. The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more. No less.
[The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates]
 
That is not its motto at all; Kissinger and zombie Bismarck would laugh in your face if they heard you say that.

Rule 29. The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more. No less.

How about; ‘Adversity makes strange bedfellows’? Does that saying express the idea more palatably?

I don’t believe anyone is proposing a warm and friendly alliance between Imperial Japan and the USSR, but the notion that there are no circumstances in which these two could agree to limited cooperation is considerably more far fetched than that.

If the British and the French can form a close, mutually supportive alliance against a third country after a millennium of mutual loathing and almost constant warfare then the Russians and the Japanese agreeing not to stab one another in the back until a mutual enemy is neutralised can be seen as a possibility.

P.S. I looked up The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates on Google, I'm still chuckling...

:D
 
I don’t believe anyone is proposing a warm and friendly alliance between Imperial Japan and the USSR, but the notion that there are no circumstances in which these two could agree to limited cooperation is considerably more far fetched than that.

If the British and the French can form a close, mutually supportive alliance against a third country after a millennium of mutual loathing and almost constant warfare then the Russians and the Japanese agreeing not to stab one another in the back until a mutual enemy is neutralised can be seen as a possibility.

I didn't say that there are no circumstances, I said that it makes no sense for them to just become allies out of the blue. I agree that they need a common opponent but that wouldn't be the US, which didn't see the Soviet Union as a serious enough threat until after Japan was defeated, it would be a strong, ambitious and preferably fascist Nationalist China. And it takes time and thought to raise China from the Sick Man of Asia to a paradigm shifting power.
 
I didn't say that there are no circumstances, I said that it makes no sense for them to just become allies out of the blue. I agree that they need a common opponent...

Excellent! So we agree then! :D

...but that wouldn't be the US, which didn't see the Soviet Union as a serious enough threat until after Japan was defeated, it would be a strong, ambitious and preferably fascist Nationalist China. And it takes time and thought to raise China from the Sick Man of Asia to a paradigm shifting power.

Oh live a little Doctor! The whole point of alternative history is to create alternatives! :D
 
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