How would our world be if Soviet Union collapsed decade earlier?

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I’m wondering what this means domestically and abroad. There’s no Afghanistan, but Iran still (kinda rightfully) hates us and we still have potentially Iraq and Syria to worry about
Iran Iraq war is still happening, so there's plenty of opportunities to stir up shit. Wonder if the soviet collapse would mean the Iranians would easier access to weapons (on the black market, aka fire sale of ex-soviet equipment)
 
An overlooked interesting aspect of this POD is the effect on Thatcher's premiership. With the Soviet threat diminished, she would be more eager to expand the defence cuts into the Royal Navy and likely would knock-off HMS Invincible and HMS Hermes. With no serviceable aircraft carriers, a defeat in the South Atlantic is more likely; given the role of both Hermes and Invincible that, or she would be forced to negotiate. If the Falkland's devolves into a fiasco with lukewarm American support, it is almost a certainty the wets in the cabinet would pounce and get rid of her prior the the 1982 Conservative Party conference. The 1983 election is difficult to determine, depending whether this "wet" Prime Minister can inflate the economy and produce some superficial economic recovery.

It is worth remembering she was the most unpopular Prime Minister in recent British history at the time and the 1981 riots had caused some agitation among the likes of Jim Prior and Francis Pym. That, and the economy was in a shambles, as unemployment had already passed the three million mark.


So Thatcher doing worse and Reagan possibly doing worse could screw neoliberalism out of existence or shoot it in the kneecaps.

I approve.

Interesting bit on Thatcher. What would happen with Afghanistan though? I figure they might turn to India for help if Iran tries something with them
 
What would happen with Afghanistan though? I figure they might turn to India for help if Iran tries something with them
Iran would be most likely too busy fighting for their lives against Iraq. With (most likely) no soviet invasion of the country to prop up their communist government Afghanistan might just collapse into civil war and general chaos for a while, with Pakistan being the biggest beneficiary out of it (and probably intervening the most in the meantime).
 
I agree Iran could do much better against Iraq without the USSR to fund Iraq Armed Forces. (Most of it loans and weapons came from Moscow.) Worst comes to worst, Iraq collapsed into civil war as Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf Arabs sponsor a Sunni insurrection, and Iraq splits into Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish states. And with that, the nightmare scenario of the Middle East and the West comes to pass as Iran moves in for the Shia crescent, and putting them in striking distance of the rest of the Gulf states and the oil lifeline of the First World.

Fun times for the Middle East

I feel the formal Warsaw Pact could be in better shape, avoiding the rest of the OTL 1980s. (Romania is saved from Ceaușescu austerity measures and the rest of dealing with him in the 80s and East Germany the worst of the economic decline.)

North Korea suffers an implosion with the sudden lost of the USSR. Korea may be united at long last between the late 80s and ealry 90s.

I wonder if how this affects pop culture, and if we move into an sort of 90s thing for Nazis, and run away nukes with the Soviets suddnely being gone, and a much version of the great political mess up

Yugoslavia is also a very interesting given Tito died in 1980 and a year later, the USSR and Warsaw Pact comes undone.
 
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Without Gorbachev and Yeltsin Russia may be in better economic state today.
Even with Gorbachev and Yeltsin, Russia from a world where the USSR fell ten years earlier would be better than OTL Russia today simply because the USSR fell ten years earlier.
 
Alright guys, I'm gonna make post that is gonna about how to make the Soviet Union collapse in 1981 and what realistic events could've made it collapse.
 
I agree Iran could do much better against Iraq without the USSR to fund Iraq Armed Forces. (Most of it loans and weapons came from Moscow.) Worst comes to worst, Iraq collapsed into civil war as Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf Arabs sponsor a Sunni insurrection, and Iraq splits into Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish states. And with that, the nightmare scenario of the Middle East and the West comes to pass as Iran moves in for the Shia crescent, and putting them in striking distance of the rest of the Gulf states and the oil lifeline of the First World.

My bet is if the Soviets don't support Iraq when Iran starts kerb stomping them, the US will step in. Possibly by using France and other allies that supported Iraq as middle men, possibly directly.

Bluntly, no-one has an interest in Iran winning this fight.

Now possibly this Iran-Iraq war would see Iran take a major city like Basra before the US felt pressed to support Iraq. That's that could have large knock-on effects.

Likely it the war would last about as long and result in a similar amount of total damage though.

The post-war impacts would be interesting. For example, Iraq would still have OTL's reasons to invade Kuwait. But in this TL, the invading Iraqis will be heavily armed with Western gear and will be seen as a US ally.

fasquardon
 
My bet is if the Soviets don't support Iraq when Iran starts kerb stomping them, the US will step in. Possibly by using France and other allies that supported Iraq as middle men, possibly directly.

Bluntly, no-one has an interest in Iran winning this fight.

Now possibly this Iran-Iraq war would see Iran take a major city like Basra before the US felt pressed to support Iraq. That's that could have large knock-on effects.

Likely it the war would last about as long and result in a similar amount of total damage though.

The post-war impacts would be interesting. For example, Iraq would still have OTL's reasons to invade Kuwait. But in this TL, the invading Iraqis will be heavily armed with Western gear and will be seen as a US ally.

fasquardon
Actually, in OTL there was plenty of Western & US support for the Iraqi during the Iran-Iraq war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran–Iraq_war#Support

Actually pretty much the entire world supported Iraq OTL (including those who backed both sides like the US), with the notable exception of the DPRK. In this timeline we can expect a lot more direct/indirect US support.

Iran's situation would be interesting:

-they can't really rely on anybody (except maybe PRC), given that the DPRK will most likely been in a freefall
+there's probably a lot of Ex-soviet gear/weapon on the black market
-the US & Western countries will have a lot more attention on them
 
Yugoslavia is also a very interesting given Tito died in 1980 and a year later, the USSR and Warsaw Pact comes undone.
Umm, well on one hand Yugoslavia economy had just gone into a slump around this period and the Kosvo student protests were occurring at this point on the other hand Slobodan Milošević and his cronies aren't in office yet so the idea that it would immediately collapse isn't that likely. However the possible overthrow of Titoism and replacing it with a Socialist Democracy could possible occur.
 
My bet is if the Soviets don't support Iraq when Iran starts kerb stomping them, the US will step in. Possibly by using France and other allies that supported Iraq as middle men, possibly directly.

Bluntly, no-one has an interest in Iran winning this fight.

Now possibly this Iran-Iraq war would see Iran take a major city like Basra before the US felt pressed to support Iraq. That's that could have large knock-on effects.

Likely it the war would last about as long and result in a similar amount of total damage though.

The post-war impacts would be interesting. For example, Iraq would still have OTL's reasons to invade Kuwait. But in this TL, the invading Iraqis will be heavily armed with Western gear and will be seen as a US ally.

fasquardon

Actually, in OTL there was plenty of Western & US support for the Iraqi during the Iran-Iraq war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran–Iraq_war#Support

Actually pretty much the entire world supported Iraq OTL (including those who backed both sides like the US), with the notable exception of the DPRK. In this timeline we can expect a lot more direct/indirect US support.

Iran's situation would be interesting:

-they can't really rely on anybody (except maybe PRC), given that the DPRK will most likely been in a freefall
+there's probably a lot of Ex-soviet gear/weapon on the black market
-the US & Western countries will have a lot more attention on them

Your right about the US and West making friends with Saddam to stop Iran from winning, but your also right the effects of Iran taking Basra. (Iraq's main port to the sea, and amazing important to Iraq's petroleum industry.) would be large. Might the US and West act just too late, and Iranian tanks are rolling down Baghdad? Or would be the fact the West saved him, Saddam put off any plans for invasion of Kuwait, or the ATL Gulf War being fought with Western Weapons?
 
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Actually, in OTL there was plenty of Western & US support for the Iraqi during the Iran-Iraq war

It existed sure. But all the US support was indirect and all Western aid in total was dwarfed by aid from the Soviets.

And the Soviets were very quick to abandon neutrality when the Iranians started winning, meaning their aid utterly dominated during the key parts of the war. Whereas the West supplied more once the Iraqis had pushed the Iranians back.

Lack of Soviet aid either really hurts Iraq or (more likely, since the US just can't let Iran win), it sucks the US much deeper into the war.

Your right about the US and West making friends with Saddam to stop Iran was winning, but your also right the effects of Iran taking Basra. (Iraq's main port to the sea, and amazing important to Iraq's petroleum industry.) would be large. Might the US and West act just too late, and Iranian tanks are rolling down Baghdad? Or would be the fact the West saved him, Saddam put off any plans for invasion of Kuwait and the ATL Gulf War being fought with Western Weapons?

You know, that's a good point. I am assuming that Iraq could weather the loss of Basra, but it would be a really heavy blow in political and economic terms. Not to mention the strategic can of worms it opens for Iraq. I'm not sure if taking Basra would improve Iranian logistics. I guess it would strengthen their position in the naval struggle, but they were already pretty dominant in that sphere.

So it could, just maybe, open the window for an Iranian victory of some kind.

fasquardon
 
I actually think this is a possible boon for neoliberalism and neoconservatism, depending on the precise POD.
 
I actually think this is a possible boon for neoliberalism and neoconservatism, depending on the precise POD.

Oh? Why do you reckon so?

It does make me think: what sort of international order results if Reagan is the one in charge while the post cold war consensus is being hammered out, not Bush and Clinton?

fasquardon
 
I am unconvinced by the idea that high oil prices were good for the Soviets. It may be correct, but, there are various ways that high oil prices also hurt the Soviets.

High oil prices encouraged the Soviets to invest more in their oil extraction industries, when the most efficient thing would have been to do as the West did, and import oil. The Siberian oil was difficult to get to, requiring expensive investments in infrastructure and extensive imports of Western technology (like the large diameter oil pipes, imported if memory serves from the UK, in any case, the Soviets simply didn't have any factories capable of producing pipes in that diameter). Of course, at the time oil was starting to flow through the expensive investments in the mid-80s, the oil price was starting to collapse.

And of course, resources used to develop distant oil and gas reserves in Siberia weren't being used to improve the Soviet electronics industry or the Soviet steel industry or improve the quality of Soviet cars etc.

High oil prices in the West encouraged the Soviets to limit their own oil consumption and the oil consumption of their allies and preferentially export to the West. Coal is a less efficient fuel than oil and gas, so keeping the Eastern block running on less efficient coal for the overwhelming majority of its energy was keeping overall efficiency down and therefore repressing economic productivity. The Soviets were also under-pricing coal (for political reasons) so lower oil prices in the West doesn't push the Soviets to use oil as much as optimally, but it does help. As such, lower oil prices in the West might mean that the Soviets and their allies manage to enjoy greater productivity gains during the 70s, meaning growth slows relative to their performance in the 60s, but not the humiliatingly poor performance of OTL's 70s.

Sudden economic collapses are much more dangerous than slow declines. Especially when one is in debt. The subsidy of high oil prices in the West allowed the Soviets to put off reforms in more fundamental sectors of their economy like the steel industry (which was being clobbered by the exhaustion of coal and iron ore mines in the west of the USSR) while importing and borrowing heavily from the West (or at least, heavily compared to previous levels of trade and borrowing - contrary to popular mythology, the Soviets were never an autarky), then suddenly the oil price goes down and the Soviets had to confront all the accumulated problems at once. With lower prices, the Soviets have to address their more fundamental problems over the course of the 70s (something that theoretically at least they can do - the Soviets had been tackling fundamental issues as serious in the 60s as well and they didn't collapse in that decade) and they don't have the ability to quickly ramp up their imports and borrowing, since without oil they need to develop their industrial exports, which means improved quality, which takes time.

So high prices in oil caused a bubble economy that allowed the Soviets to avoid making hard decisions until it was very late in the day and thus very difficult.

Had oil prices been lower, the Soviets may still have made poor decisions, and thus collapsed earlier, but I think this is a lower probability outcome.

Now, interestingly, had the Soviets still collapsed with low oil prices, (a) they'd have invested less in oil production and (b) 1981 is before Siberia's oil and gas developments were on-stream even with OTL's rush to develop them and a collapse in the middle of building such a major infrastructure project would basically mean it would never be completed - or at least it would be put off for a generation. As such, the post Soviet regime (regimes?) wouldn't be able to use oil and gas as political weapons the way Putin's regime has.



Well, Stalin completely botching his post WW2 diplomacy was probably worse. The Cold War was a disaster for the development of the USSR in my view. While it's hard to avoid a rivalry between the extremely assertive post-WW2 US and the very incompatible economy of the USSR, a much more friendly rivalry is, in my view, possible. Freer trade, less military spending and less ideology warping economic decisions on both sides of the iron curtain would have been good, and it would have been especially good for the Soviets.

But ya, I agree that the discovery and decision to exploit Siberia's oil and gas was poorly timed.

fasquardon

I think it is even more likely that it simply collapses sooner. Brezhnev was corrupt , clueless and in the end senile as was most of the Soviet Politburo . I don't think they had a single clue on what to do. They would simply go on with their neo-Stalinism and the country would get more and more in the hole. As long as they got to stay in their fancy dachas , get treated like royalty and live a lifestyle Louis XVI would envy I don't think they much cared.

I doubt very much military spending or foreign relations would change very much but the standard of living in Russia would be even lower than OTL. I doubt very much they would change the mix of products much as those in charge were completely clueless in what was needed. They were 70 and 80 somethings reliving the "Glories of the Great Patriotic War".

You would need a much more competent and less corrupt leader than Brezhnev for them to do things differently merely because the oil crisis doesn't happen. You would need someone who had a clue and gave a damn which doesn't describe the 1970's Politburo very well!
 
Oh? Why do you reckon so?

It does make me think: what sort of international order results if Reagan is the one in charge while the post cold war consensus is being hammered out, not Bush and Clinton?

fasquardon
Basically. You've, for one, presumably shifted Reagan's plans to ratchet up defense spending, thus possibly leaving the country in better fiscal shape. This means the idea that tax cuts can spur economic growth is more popular, as the American economy grows with access to new markets. Secondly, you have a president whose brad was optimistic and possessed an actor's charm who could now shape the Pax Americana for decades to come. Conversely, an earlier demise to the U.S.S.R. probably also diminishes the near-divinity Reagan holds in some quarters of the American right, as it would be harder to argue that his presidency played a role in the defeat of Communism. Then again, he was of the minority view in the early eighties that the USSR could be defeated and/or dissolved short of nuclear war, and this prescience would probably work in his favor. I think we see his denuclearization efforts being more substantive and far-reaching. Likewise, the possibility of a spacewank here could also be a boon for the Elon Musk-like figures of the ATL.
 
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Likewise, the possibility of a spacewank here could also be a boon for the Elon Musk-like figures of the ATL.

Why would there be a spacewank?

With the US married to the Shuttle, with the limitations of the system and NASA's poor risk management and determination to push the system to the breaking point, I really can't see how the US can avoid a Challenger-like disaster.

And of course, the civilian space program was ultimately a military campaign to demonstrate American technology and count coup on the Soviets. With no Soviets to compete against, I think it is pretty well inevitable that the politicians lose interest and NASA budgets in real terms enter a long downward slide.

fasquardon
 
Why would there be a spacewank?

With the US married to the Shuttle, with the limitations of the system and NASA's poor risk management and determination to push the system to the breaking point, I really can't see how the US can avoid a Challenger-like disaster.

And of course, the civilian space program was ultimately a military campaign to demonstrate American technology and count coup on the Soviets. With no Soviets to compete against, I think it is pretty well inevitable that the politicians lose interest and NASA budgets in real terms enter a long downward slide.

fasquardon
It's entirely possible. On the other hand, space had captured the imagination of the global north, and a joint venture with post-Communist Russia might foster goodwill.
 
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