The Empire Parnell Built
- Thread starter Rattigan
- Start date
On the Anglo-Chinese rivalry, partly it's just a Thucydidean Trap: if you take out the US the British and Chinese Empires are the two largest economies and they're the largest militaries too. Frankly, they just don't share all that many geopolitical goals so they are going to butt up against one another at times. Also, it's worth remembering that there are actual border disputes between the two in the Himalayas and the status of Hong Kong (the New Territories were granted to Britain in perpetuity as part of the empires' alliance in the Nine Years War but a lot of more nationalist Chinese politicians aren't happy about that). The Chinese government has also been aggressive in pushing its commercial interests in Africa, even as the British have been drawing down their formal protectorates, so there's that too. I wouldn't quite call it a Cold War just yet, more a bubbling under rivalry.
On climate change, the situation TTL is certainly better than OTL due to a more aggressive takeup of nuclear and hydroelectric power decreasing the use of fossil fuels and the reorientation of many conservative parties into agrarian groupings with an interest in conservation also having an effect.
Very weird to see Nawaz Shariff and Pranab Mukherjee on TLs lol. Also @Rattigan. I am wondering what's happening in Afghanistan?
What is the ideology of the Progressive League and how did they take away Swaraj's seats?
Afghanistan is being boringly stable right now. It's still a monarchy pursuing an aggressive domestic development policy and a foreign policy of neutrality. There's still a fair bit of corruption and a large wealth gap between urban and rural areas, as well as a large emigrant population (mostly to India and Russian Central Asia) sending back remittances. Think of it a bit like OTL mid-century Ireland or present day Puerto Rico.
It's a conservative-liberal party, combining socially conservative stances with a strong belief in free markets. In this context their main function in the Indian political system is to advocate for deregulation of the business environment (which TTL has not reached the Licence Raj level of OTL but does see a lot of government regulation and interference). I don't have all the seat transfers to hand but, where they took seats directly from Swaraj, that would have been more likely the result of a split vote letting the Progressives in, rather than voters directly swinging from Swaraj to them. Most Progressive gains came at the expense of the Liberals, while the League and the Communists were the primary beneficiaries of swings away from Swaraj.
13-year Civil War? And in 2020 Mali still was one of the top World economies?
For a long stretch of those 13 years it's more of a rural insurgency. Also, worth wondering how evenly distributed all that GDP is...
You’d be looking at something like OTL South Africa definitely
Yeah, that's the rough idea. He doesn't really work perfectly because he doesn't share Menem's enthusiasm for free market economics OTL but I thought he was a better TTL avatar of the right wing of my "Gaullism as Peronism" experiment than someone like Balladur.
I agree. The situation is also different enough that it can better map a little to OTL France while still being very obviously the Argentina of the 90s