I see, I see. Mongolia is always between a rock and a hard place, eh?
The North Star is Red: a Wallace Presidency, KMT Victory, Alternate Cold War TL
- Thread starter TastySpam
- Start date
The days when Mongolia is the rock and the hard place are long over.
Chapter 27 - 1952 Elections, USA
Posting from ultra-slow Chinese internet.
1952 Elections, USA
Although Robert Taft remained the standard bearer of the Republican Party, his favorables among the voting public remained terrible as a result of the sustained radio attack campaign against him by the Democratic Party. As a result, Republican Party handlers opted instead to place Senator McCarthy in the limelight instead, although it quickly became an open secret that his handlers had to keep him under watch 24/7 in order to force him to quit his drinking habit.[1]
The Democratic strategy was largely to target many traditionally Republican suburbs in America, especially those in California and and the Midwest, claiming that Taft's public housing policies would flood the suburbs with African-Americans. In order to neutralize the threat of the "Freedom Democratic Party", Democrats claimed that any vote against President Russell was a vote for Taft's plan to eliminate Americare (the new name they eventually settled on was Russellcare -r "Rustlecare.") Democrats hoped that the hostility of organized labour towards Taft would keep their core constituencies in check.
The Republicans aimed on campaigning on a mixture of anti-Communism and civil rights, finding that McCarthy's attacks of "Ku Klux Communism" proved shockingly effective. However, their messaging on foreign policy proved fairly inconsistent. Taft flip-flopped on American membership in NATO, opposing it at first, supporting it later after outrage from large swaths of the GOP, and then opposing it again after anger from much of his own paleoconservative political base. However, the charge of "Ku Klux Communism" became difficult for Russell to shake. Feeling anti-Communism would keep America's suburbs in line, Taft and McCarthy spent much of their time campaigning in the American South, banking that a surge among African-Americans would flip many of the less solidly Democratic Southern states into the Republican column, such as Virginia, Florida, Tennessee, and others. Much of America's military establishment was split based on whether they opposed Russell's segregationism or Taft's non-interventionism more. Despite a wide gap in foreign policy between the two, the issue was rarely discussed outside of polemic terms, with Republicans putting forward mixed messages, unsure whether to attack Russell as a Soviet fellow traveler or a white supremacist European colonialist. They did both.
The Douglas campaign found itself squished on both sides by both parties, insofar as the Democratic establishment spent all of its time trying to utterly crush the insurgency. In the industrial north, enforcers affiliated with local labour unions regularly showed up to harass and attack organizers for the Douglas campaign. In the South, the treatment was even worse, with several Douglas campaign volunteers even going missing. Federal investigations would officially confirm only decades later what many suspects: that these operatives, mostly being transplants from the North, were kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by local KKK members for trying to organize black voters. Republicans did nothing to actually stop this violence, feeling that highlighting the violence of the Democrats would turn off voters, which was an accurate prediction. Many Democrats were personally appalled, but unwilling to criticize the conduct of their party during the partisan trench wars of the elections. Instead, they planned on castigating Russell after his expected defeat, campaigning to bring the Democratic Party into the "light of civil rights", as Senator Humphrey of Minnesota whispered to his co-conspirators.
As election night rolled in, Republican expectations of a surge among black voters turned into slow creeping disappointment. Robert Taft had clearly improved among black voters. However, the result was much less than expected. In the two-party vote (excluding third parties), Wallace had defeated Dewey among black voters 71-19 [2]. A later analysis would show that black voters ultimately did vote to re-elect President Russell, who had won black voters against Taft and Douglas respectively, 59% to 28% and 13%. In contrast, Russell had managed to mount a surprisingly strong offense in California and Michigan, both which went narrowly for Dewey in 1948.
After polls had closed, radio announcers had called most of the states. For Russell went the entire South, outside of a few states, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Illinois. This brought him up to 207 electoral votes. Taft had 194 electoral votes, while Pennsylvania (32), California (32), Michigan (20), Wisconsin (12), Virginia (12), Florida (10), Delaware (4), and Maryland (9) appeared contested. 266 electoral votes would be sufficient to elect a president.
Taft looked like he might be actually completely shut out of the South, with his hopes in Virginia being dashed as the votes of the nascent military-industrial complex went almost entirely to Russell, cancelling out his Taft's improvement among blacks. Tennessee, the home state of Russell's running mate, Estes Kefauver, narrowly tilted towards the Democratic Party. However, Taft's black outreach was rewarded with victories in Maryland, Delaware, and Florida. This brought the total to Russell 219, Taft 216. The battleground states of Pennslyvania and California quickly tilted towards - with the Republican political machine in the Philadlephia suburbs carrying the day, while new upwardly mobile suburbanites in California recoiled at Taft's housing plan and tilted from Dewey to Russell. This put the toll to Russell 251, Taft 248.
A few days after the election, the results were clear. President Russell, once marked as a lame duck President, had won re-election. Reviled by both liberals and blacks, Russell had nevertheless secured most of their votes anyways as Michigan, where the Democratic coalition had been bolstered by revolting suburbanites near booming Detroit alongside its strength with organized labour. Although Wisconsin, home state of Senator McCarthy would tilt towards Taft a day later, the election was decided by Michigan's choice of Russell, bringing his total to 271 electoral votes.
The results were seen as almost catastrophic for the Republican Party. Despite controlling most of the nation's state houses and the Congress, the GOP had once again failed to wrest the White House from Democrats, who had won their 6th straight presidential victory. This was also seen as a defeat for Paul Douglas - his left-wing insurgent campaign had managed the best third-party performance since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, but had failed to win a single state. If anything, some have suggested that he might have cost the election for Robert Taft, because post-election polls are generally mixed on whether he took more votes away from Taft or Russell.
Republicans actually padded their House majority despite doing slightly worse in 1952 than 1950 in terms of the popular vote, largely because the Republican victory in 1950 allowed them to gerrymander congressional lines in their favor. Their Senate majority suffered, but this was largely due to 1952 coming six-years after the massive Republican landslide in 1946. Republicans did well in the Senate races, but not as well as they did in 1946, leading to losses in the Senate. This all led to a Republican party that was in no mood to compromise with the winning President, who had been elected with the smallest share of the popular vote of any president since Woodrow Wilson, with the largest popular vote gap since Rutherford B. Hayes, thanks to Taft's ability to win more black voters in Solidly Southern states without flipping them. The years between 1953-1957 would quickly exceed the previous four in the viciousness of partisan warfare and division, especially with regards to the Supreme Court.
---
[1] OTL, I believe his alcoholism hastened his 1954 death.
[2] OTL, I believe it was 72-18, but Dewey did a little better ITL than OTL.
1952 Elections, USA
The Democratic strategy was largely to target many traditionally Republican suburbs in America, especially those in California and and the Midwest, claiming that Taft's public housing policies would flood the suburbs with African-Americans. In order to neutralize the threat of the "Freedom Democratic Party", Democrats claimed that any vote against President Russell was a vote for Taft's plan to eliminate Americare (the new name they eventually settled on was Russellcare -r "Rustlecare.") Democrats hoped that the hostility of organized labour towards Taft would keep their core constituencies in check.
The Republicans aimed on campaigning on a mixture of anti-Communism and civil rights, finding that McCarthy's attacks of "Ku Klux Communism" proved shockingly effective. However, their messaging on foreign policy proved fairly inconsistent. Taft flip-flopped on American membership in NATO, opposing it at first, supporting it later after outrage from large swaths of the GOP, and then opposing it again after anger from much of his own paleoconservative political base. However, the charge of "Ku Klux Communism" became difficult for Russell to shake. Feeling anti-Communism would keep America's suburbs in line, Taft and McCarthy spent much of their time campaigning in the American South, banking that a surge among African-Americans would flip many of the less solidly Democratic Southern states into the Republican column, such as Virginia, Florida, Tennessee, and others. Much of America's military establishment was split based on whether they opposed Russell's segregationism or Taft's non-interventionism more. Despite a wide gap in foreign policy between the two, the issue was rarely discussed outside of polemic terms, with Republicans putting forward mixed messages, unsure whether to attack Russell as a Soviet fellow traveler or a white supremacist European colonialist. They did both.
The Douglas campaign found itself squished on both sides by both parties, insofar as the Democratic establishment spent all of its time trying to utterly crush the insurgency. In the industrial north, enforcers affiliated with local labour unions regularly showed up to harass and attack organizers for the Douglas campaign. In the South, the treatment was even worse, with several Douglas campaign volunteers even going missing. Federal investigations would officially confirm only decades later what many suspects: that these operatives, mostly being transplants from the North, were kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by local KKK members for trying to organize black voters. Republicans did nothing to actually stop this violence, feeling that highlighting the violence of the Democrats would turn off voters, which was an accurate prediction. Many Democrats were personally appalled, but unwilling to criticize the conduct of their party during the partisan trench wars of the elections. Instead, they planned on castigating Russell after his expected defeat, campaigning to bring the Democratic Party into the "light of civil rights", as Senator Humphrey of Minnesota whispered to his co-conspirators.
As election night rolled in, Republican expectations of a surge among black voters turned into slow creeping disappointment. Robert Taft had clearly improved among black voters. However, the result was much less than expected. In the two-party vote (excluding third parties), Wallace had defeated Dewey among black voters 71-19 [2]. A later analysis would show that black voters ultimately did vote to re-elect President Russell, who had won black voters against Taft and Douglas respectively, 59% to 28% and 13%. In contrast, Russell had managed to mount a surprisingly strong offense in California and Michigan, both which went narrowly for Dewey in 1948.
After polls had closed, radio announcers had called most of the states. For Russell went the entire South, outside of a few states, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Illinois. This brought him up to 207 electoral votes. Taft had 194 electoral votes, while Pennsylvania (32), California (32), Michigan (20), Wisconsin (12), Virginia (12), Florida (10), Delaware (4), and Maryland (9) appeared contested. 266 electoral votes would be sufficient to elect a president.
Taft looked like he might be actually completely shut out of the South, with his hopes in Virginia being dashed as the votes of the nascent military-industrial complex went almost entirely to Russell, cancelling out his Taft's improvement among blacks. Tennessee, the home state of Russell's running mate, Estes Kefauver, narrowly tilted towards the Democratic Party. However, Taft's black outreach was rewarded with victories in Maryland, Delaware, and Florida. This brought the total to Russell 219, Taft 216. The battleground states of Pennslyvania and California quickly tilted towards - with the Republican political machine in the Philadlephia suburbs carrying the day, while new upwardly mobile suburbanites in California recoiled at Taft's housing plan and tilted from Dewey to Russell. This put the toll to Russell 251, Taft 248.
A few days after the election, the results were clear. President Russell, once marked as a lame duck President, had won re-election. Reviled by both liberals and blacks, Russell had nevertheless secured most of their votes anyways as Michigan, where the Democratic coalition had been bolstered by revolting suburbanites near booming Detroit alongside its strength with organized labour. Although Wisconsin, home state of Senator McCarthy would tilt towards Taft a day later, the election was decided by Michigan's choice of Russell, bringing his total to 271 electoral votes.
The results were seen as almost catastrophic for the Republican Party. Despite controlling most of the nation's state houses and the Congress, the GOP had once again failed to wrest the White House from Democrats, who had won their 6th straight presidential victory. This was also seen as a defeat for Paul Douglas - his left-wing insurgent campaign had managed the best third-party performance since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, but had failed to win a single state. If anything, some have suggested that he might have cost the election for Robert Taft, because post-election polls are generally mixed on whether he took more votes away from Taft or Russell.
Republicans actually padded their House majority despite doing slightly worse in 1952 than 1950 in terms of the popular vote, largely because the Republican victory in 1950 allowed them to gerrymander congressional lines in their favor. Their Senate majority suffered, but this was largely due to 1952 coming six-years after the massive Republican landslide in 1946. Republicans did well in the Senate races, but not as well as they did in 1946, leading to losses in the Senate. This all led to a Republican party that was in no mood to compromise with the winning President, who had been elected with the smallest share of the popular vote of any president since Woodrow Wilson, with the largest popular vote gap since Rutherford B. Hayes, thanks to Taft's ability to win more black voters in Solidly Southern states without flipping them. The years between 1953-1957 would quickly exceed the previous four in the viciousness of partisan warfare and division, especially with regards to the Supreme Court.
---
[1] OTL, I believe his alcoholism hastened his 1954 death.
[2] OTL, I believe it was 72-18, but Dewey did a little better ITL than OTL.
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Romanized Japanese would be massively inferior for any well-educated Japanese (of which Japan has a lot of). The reason is that if you're reading Japanese quickly, you really quickly absorb information by scanning sentences and reading it as phrases tied to particles. I'm not really sure how to explain this, though I'm pretty sure its quite like Korean in that sense (you grow to recognize all the particle hanguls and parse sentences that way). Obviously, one reason that Hangul is great is it has the accessibility of the Latin script (its an alphabet) with the speed-reading capabilities of the Japanese script (it lets you condense particles and what nots into one character). All praise Sejong the Great
AeroTheZealousOne
Monthly Donor
I'm a simple man. I see someone mention Sejong the Great, I like.
And I subscribe to the timeline. Absolutely fascinating stuff here.
Chapter 28 - Egyptian Revolution of 1952
So some thoughts about the PoD. For most of the world outside of Asia and US/UK, I figured things wouldn't be changing until the late 1950's. The biggest change in America is really just (a very delayed Red Scare) being no Korean War.
However, I then realized there were huge effects of the Korean War on places I didn't know it strongly impacted (because they weren't major participants). This is one of those places.
On January 25, 1952, British troops ordered that police in the Ismailia Governorate stand down and disarm, claiming that they were transferring arms to anti-British fedayeen guerillas in the Suez canal zone. Interior Minister Fouad Serageddin backed the police officers as well, but King Farouk, fearing that British displeasure would mean an end to loans and end to his lavish lifestyle, fired Serageddin and ordered the police to stand down, which they did so unhappily.[3] Outrage exploded in Cairo, as police officers went on strike in solidarity with their fellow officers in Ismailia and joined up with students. The protests quickly turned violent, as the group blamed the "weak British puppet Farouk" and targeted symbols of Farouk and Britain, such as Western-owned businesses and even innocent civilians. One British missionary-doctor family in the country to provide medical services for the poor was lynched by the angry mob and images of this incident quickly grew to shock the West. The Egyptian Army moved to suppress the riots, but simply moved too slowly when some of its soldiers moved to join the rioters. In response, Prime Minister Churchill made the fateful decision that British troops had to be directly brought in to occupy the city in order to restore order. The Egyptian Army and King Farouk signed off - British troops moved from the Canal Zone and directly suppressed the riots with deadly force.
Although today the British response is often castigated as a typical imperialistic intervention, residents of Cairo at the time were actually split fairly down the middle. Although most residents did lament Farouk and the British, the theft and looting brought upon by the riots also alienated Egyptians, some of whom concluded at the time that British occupation was a lesser evil. Despite that, Prime Minister Mostafa El-Nahas resigned from the government, citing Farouk's capitulation to Great Britain, as did Army Chief Mohamed Naguib. Popular discontent quickly grew with British martial law, which forced the Egyptian government to restore many privileges for British citizens that were stripped in the 1945-1951 era. In August 3rd, 1952, junior military officers of the Free Officer's Movements seized control of the state broadcast channels and captured Alexandria and King Farouk. [4] The top military brass largely split in half, some feeling that the coup was exceptionally well-planned, but the other half fearing British intervention even though the rebels clearly held the King as hostage. Without Naguib's unifying presence, the army splintered in who to support. Under rebel duress, King Farouk issued a royal proclamation acceding to the demands of the rebels, including appointing one of their own, Anwar Sadat, as the new Prime Minister, ordering all British troops out of Egypt by the end of 1952, and declaring a popular land reform programme.
Winston Churchill pondered what to do. Personally, he did not want to be bogged down in an endless guerrilla war along the Nile. However, with America also being a major creditor nation to the Egyptian monarchy and involved in Middle Eastern politics thanks to what Churchill dubbed "the absurd Qatif project", President Russell gave Churchill a blank check to do whatever he felt was necessary in Egypt. Senator Taft, also running for President, also indicated that he didn't really care either way what Britain did in Egypt, or really anything about Egypt at all. Feeling secure in this, smarting over the loss of India, and feeling that the withdrawal of British troops from Cairo would be a huge global humiliation that would end Great Britain's role as a Great Power, Churchill made the fateful decision to crush the insurrection. The Royal Navy immediately moved to the coast of Alexandria, shelling the city. British troops, backed by loyalist remnants of the Egyptian Army, moved up from Cairo to crush the pro-coup forces. In retaliation for this, the coup forces brutally executed King Farouk and declared that they were digging in Alexandria for a final stand. Both the Communist Party and Muslim Brotherhood declared support for the Free Officers, providing them with better-than-expected manpower.
The British advance in Alexandria proved far harder than expected. The leaders of the free officers, in particular Anwar Sadat and Gamal Nasser, had carefully studied urban warfare after the British occupation of Cairo. The coup forces carefully turned every house and block into a killing alley, while having no compunctions behind hiding behind the large civilian population in Alexandria as a human shield. With Egyptian army forces on both sides of the battle, high losses were guaranteed. British morale plunged after gruesome casualties skyrocketed, causing the Royal Navy to increase shelling of Alexandria, which further drove up civilian casualties and strengthened the resolve of the Free Officers. Churchill was ultimately horrified by the bloodshed, but correctly figured that one horrific bloody battle was better than prolonged war for years. Eventually, American aid from President Russell arrived - surplus American flamethrowers. Eventually, British troops simply cleared the city, building by building, block by block, through grenades and flamethrowers. Images of the violence also horrified the West, as antiwar protesters swarmed London. However, Leader of the Labour Party, Clement Attlee, was unwilling to plunge Labour into being a fully antiwar party. Instead, it would be the newly elected left-leaning leader of the Liberal Party, Megan Lloyd George, who grasped onto the antiwar mantle. [5]
India protested at the bloodshed and refused to send any support, and although Canada and ANZUS sent support, they were too far to arrive in time. Instead, the only Commonwealth nation to send military support was South Africa, vindicating the Cape-to-Cairo railway. Prime Minister Malan, although a nationalistic Afrikaner who had protested South African entry in World War II, saw aligning itself closely to all British colonial wars as an easy way to increase support among Anglo-South Africans, whose support he needed in order to ban Coloured and Indian South Africans from voting. Such an act required 2/3rds of Parliament, and he concluded building better relations with Anglophone South Africans to be a useful gambit to try before resorting to Plan B (packing the Supreme Court to ignore the Constitution). His polling indicated that the Nationals might win up to 100/159 seats, when they needed 106 seats to change the Constitution. However, much of his own political base chafed at this plan, viewing any collaboration with the hated Perfidious Albion to be anathema. In Britain, this changed calculations of empire. Without the Cape, Cairo was lost. Without Cairo, the Suez was lost. And without the Suez, the entire British Empire was lost. And as the People's Republic of Pakistan and Burmese Civil War proved, there was no guarantee that peace and prosperity would reign if Britain simply evacuated its empire. Increasingly, the view in Westminster was that the alternative to empire was not democracy, but anarchy and Communism.
Ultimately, Commonwealth troops proved victorious. The Free Officers and allied elements of the Egyptian Army had been totally destroyed, with most of their members killed or captured, with the sole exception of Nasser and Sadat, who had successfully fled to Saudi Arabia. The Suez canal appeared safe for perpetuity. Egypt was peaceful and pro-Western, but this victory had its costs. Alexandria was in utter and total ruins, with almost all of its famous historical sites destroyed. Refugees had streamed into rural Egypt, often supported by the Muslim Brotherhood and Communist Party, creating a population resentful at Britain, even if they weren't able to resist violently. Even pro-British Egyptians were horrified at the bloodshed in Alexandria and the Soviets pounced on the "Massacre of Alexandria" to build support for Communist parties in the Arab World. In fact, "Remember Alexandria" would be a rallying cry for Arab nationalists, Islamists, and Communists for a generation. British influence in the Middle East had survived one more year, but would quickly reach its breaking point, surprisingly not in an Arab nation at all.
---
[1] OTL, the Korean War meant a global cotton shortages and a bigger shift into cotton in Egypt, which brought in lots of money for Farouk, but drove up food prices, angering locals.
[2] The Egyptian monarchy is somewhat poorer and more dependent on UK/US, but also somewhat less hated among the rural peasantry.
[3] OTL, Farouk did not intervene, and the police were killed in a struggle by the British, sparking the "Black Saturday" anti-British riots in Cairo. Of course, ITL, we still get a riot, except this one requires British intervention.
[4] Due to having more time to plan, the coup is actually even more successful than OTL, and it captures Farouk before he can escape Alexandria OTL. British intervention here is a really prime example of "mission creep" - stabilize Cairo quickly becomes stabilize Egypt becomes stabilize the entire Cape-to-Cairo railway.
[5] How she leads the Liberal Party ITL will probably be described in a later post.
However, I then realized there were huge effects of the Korean War on places I didn't know it strongly impacted (because they weren't major participants). This is one of those places.
The Egyptian Revolution of 1952
After World War II, King Farouk's Egypt was flooding with a massive trade surplus thanks to the shortage of raw materials in Europe. In a reverse of the historical situation that led to British domination of Egypt, Egypt actually became a creditor nation to Great Britain. However, as British trade lines to the rest of the world (especially India) recovered, Egyptian cotton exports flagged, causing a widespread shortage of government revenue as Egyptian farmers returned to growing grain. [2] By 1951, the balance of payments had turned negative again, and Egypt once again became a creditor nation to the United Kingdom and the United States.[1]
On January 25, 1952, British troops ordered that police in the Ismailia Governorate stand down and disarm, claiming that they were transferring arms to anti-British fedayeen guerillas in the Suez canal zone. Interior Minister Fouad Serageddin backed the police officers as well, but King Farouk, fearing that British displeasure would mean an end to loans and end to his lavish lifestyle, fired Serageddin and ordered the police to stand down, which they did so unhappily.[3] Outrage exploded in Cairo, as police officers went on strike in solidarity with their fellow officers in Ismailia and joined up with students. The protests quickly turned violent, as the group blamed the "weak British puppet Farouk" and targeted symbols of Farouk and Britain, such as Western-owned businesses and even innocent civilians. One British missionary-doctor family in the country to provide medical services for the poor was lynched by the angry mob and images of this incident quickly grew to shock the West. The Egyptian Army moved to suppress the riots, but simply moved too slowly when some of its soldiers moved to join the rioters. In response, Prime Minister Churchill made the fateful decision that British troops had to be directly brought in to occupy the city in order to restore order. The Egyptian Army and King Farouk signed off - British troops moved from the Canal Zone and directly suppressed the riots with deadly force.
Although today the British response is often castigated as a typical imperialistic intervention, residents of Cairo at the time were actually split fairly down the middle. Although most residents did lament Farouk and the British, the theft and looting brought upon by the riots also alienated Egyptians, some of whom concluded at the time that British occupation was a lesser evil. Despite that, Prime Minister Mostafa El-Nahas resigned from the government, citing Farouk's capitulation to Great Britain, as did Army Chief Mohamed Naguib. Popular discontent quickly grew with British martial law, which forced the Egyptian government to restore many privileges for British citizens that were stripped in the 1945-1951 era. In August 3rd, 1952, junior military officers of the Free Officer's Movements seized control of the state broadcast channels and captured Alexandria and King Farouk. [4] The top military brass largely split in half, some feeling that the coup was exceptionally well-planned, but the other half fearing British intervention even though the rebels clearly held the King as hostage. Without Naguib's unifying presence, the army splintered in who to support. Under rebel duress, King Farouk issued a royal proclamation acceding to the demands of the rebels, including appointing one of their own, Anwar Sadat, as the new Prime Minister, ordering all British troops out of Egypt by the end of 1952, and declaring a popular land reform programme.
Winston Churchill pondered what to do. Personally, he did not want to be bogged down in an endless guerrilla war along the Nile. However, with America also being a major creditor nation to the Egyptian monarchy and involved in Middle Eastern politics thanks to what Churchill dubbed "the absurd Qatif project", President Russell gave Churchill a blank check to do whatever he felt was necessary in Egypt. Senator Taft, also running for President, also indicated that he didn't really care either way what Britain did in Egypt, or really anything about Egypt at all. Feeling secure in this, smarting over the loss of India, and feeling that the withdrawal of British troops from Cairo would be a huge global humiliation that would end Great Britain's role as a Great Power, Churchill made the fateful decision to crush the insurrection. The Royal Navy immediately moved to the coast of Alexandria, shelling the city. British troops, backed by loyalist remnants of the Egyptian Army, moved up from Cairo to crush the pro-coup forces. In retaliation for this, the coup forces brutally executed King Farouk and declared that they were digging in Alexandria for a final stand. Both the Communist Party and Muslim Brotherhood declared support for the Free Officers, providing them with better-than-expected manpower.
The British advance in Alexandria proved far harder than expected. The leaders of the free officers, in particular Anwar Sadat and Gamal Nasser, had carefully studied urban warfare after the British occupation of Cairo. The coup forces carefully turned every house and block into a killing alley, while having no compunctions behind hiding behind the large civilian population in Alexandria as a human shield. With Egyptian army forces on both sides of the battle, high losses were guaranteed. British morale plunged after gruesome casualties skyrocketed, causing the Royal Navy to increase shelling of Alexandria, which further drove up civilian casualties and strengthened the resolve of the Free Officers. Churchill was ultimately horrified by the bloodshed, but correctly figured that one horrific bloody battle was better than prolonged war for years. Eventually, American aid from President Russell arrived - surplus American flamethrowers. Eventually, British troops simply cleared the city, building by building, block by block, through grenades and flamethrowers. Images of the violence also horrified the West, as antiwar protesters swarmed London. However, Leader of the Labour Party, Clement Attlee, was unwilling to plunge Labour into being a fully antiwar party. Instead, it would be the newly elected left-leaning leader of the Liberal Party, Megan Lloyd George, who grasped onto the antiwar mantle. [5]
India protested at the bloodshed and refused to send any support, and although Canada and ANZUS sent support, they were too far to arrive in time. Instead, the only Commonwealth nation to send military support was South Africa, vindicating the Cape-to-Cairo railway. Prime Minister Malan, although a nationalistic Afrikaner who had protested South African entry in World War II, saw aligning itself closely to all British colonial wars as an easy way to increase support among Anglo-South Africans, whose support he needed in order to ban Coloured and Indian South Africans from voting. Such an act required 2/3rds of Parliament, and he concluded building better relations with Anglophone South Africans to be a useful gambit to try before resorting to Plan B (packing the Supreme Court to ignore the Constitution). His polling indicated that the Nationals might win up to 100/159 seats, when they needed 106 seats to change the Constitution. However, much of his own political base chafed at this plan, viewing any collaboration with the hated Perfidious Albion to be anathema. In Britain, this changed calculations of empire. Without the Cape, Cairo was lost. Without Cairo, the Suez was lost. And without the Suez, the entire British Empire was lost. And as the People's Republic of Pakistan and Burmese Civil War proved, there was no guarantee that peace and prosperity would reign if Britain simply evacuated its empire. Increasingly, the view in Westminster was that the alternative to empire was not democracy, but anarchy and Communism.
Ultimately, Commonwealth troops proved victorious. The Free Officers and allied elements of the Egyptian Army had been totally destroyed, with most of their members killed or captured, with the sole exception of Nasser and Sadat, who had successfully fled to Saudi Arabia. The Suez canal appeared safe for perpetuity. Egypt was peaceful and pro-Western, but this victory had its costs. Alexandria was in utter and total ruins, with almost all of its famous historical sites destroyed. Refugees had streamed into rural Egypt, often supported by the Muslim Brotherhood and Communist Party, creating a population resentful at Britain, even if they weren't able to resist violently. Even pro-British Egyptians were horrified at the bloodshed in Alexandria and the Soviets pounced on the "Massacre of Alexandria" to build support for Communist parties in the Arab World. In fact, "Remember Alexandria" would be a rallying cry for Arab nationalists, Islamists, and Communists for a generation. British influence in the Middle East had survived one more year, but would quickly reach its breaking point, surprisingly not in an Arab nation at all.
[1] OTL, the Korean War meant a global cotton shortages and a bigger shift into cotton in Egypt, which brought in lots of money for Farouk, but drove up food prices, angering locals.
[2] The Egyptian monarchy is somewhat poorer and more dependent on UK/US, but also somewhat less hated among the rural peasantry.
[3] OTL, Farouk did not intervene, and the police were killed in a struggle by the British, sparking the "Black Saturday" anti-British riots in Cairo. Of course, ITL, we still get a riot, except this one requires British intervention.
[4] Due to having more time to plan, the coup is actually even more successful than OTL, and it captures Farouk before he can escape Alexandria OTL. British intervention here is a really prime example of "mission creep" - stabilize Cairo quickly becomes stabilize Egypt becomes stabilize the entire Cape-to-Cairo railway.
[5] How she leads the Liberal Party ITL will probably be described in a later post.
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Yeah, I was supposed to have done that many many posts ago. Mongolia and the Philippines definitely should be coming up. I might also have a super round-up for all the countries that are slightly different, but where things aren't going off the rails. Or that are actually a lot more stable than OTL.
Chapter 29 - The UN and Curious Rise of National Unions
An update that deals with Mongolia and just in general how odd the UN becomes without a Korean War.
The UN and the Curious Rise of National Unions
One perverse incentive created by the United Nations was to structure nations in a way that maximized their representation at the United Nations. For example, when the Soviet Union demanded all of its Soviet republics be represented at the UN, a compromise deal was struck giving representation to the Soviet Socialist Republics of Belarus and Ukraine, effectively giving the Soviet Union three representatives at the UN. As the UN became the battleground over a variety of diplomatic issues in the early 1950's, both the Soviet and anti-Soviet blocs wrangled to maximize their representation, especially the Western colonial empires. As a general rule, the more neutral nations at the UN looked at how "independent" each of the entities in such a national union was. As a result, ironically, this ultimately created many national unions that shared no domestic unity and separate armies - but did share one foreign policy, because of their patron's desire to maximize diplomatic strength at the UN. This ironically meant that sharing foreign policy but no other policies rewarded with extra representation at the United Nations.
For example, with regards to the British Empire, as a result of worsening relations between Prime Minister Churchill and Tunku of Malaya, the decision was made to veto the idea of the unity with Borneo. Instead, after a variety of political machinations that restored the Kingdom of Sarawak, the decision was made to grant independence to the Union of North Borneo, a mirage of a union that included the mostly independent Sultanate of Brunei, Kingdom of Sarawak, and new Dominion of Sabah (formerly the Crown Colony of North Borneo). Under the pressure of the UK, who sided with the Fezzans and Cyrenicans against the Tripolatanians, the United Kingdom of Libya was reformed among federal lines and cleverly renamed (only in English) into the United Kingdoms of Libya - Fezzan, Cyrenica, and Tripolatania were each set up as "Kingdoms" in their own right, although King Idris was the absolute monarch in each one, so the federal structure was largely a mirage. Regardless, this was enough for all three to be admitted to the UN.
In contrast, the Dutch attempt to have all of its many many constituent nations admitted to the United Nations largely failed, with only Maluku and and Sulawesi making it in. The French on the other hand actually had several nations from the French Union quickly admitted, such the Kingdom of Laos, Kingdom of Cambodia, and Republic of Cochinchina. The Americans totally failed to get the Islamic Republic of Qatif and Hasa any recognition, as it remained a diplomatic pariah in the Middle East.
On the Red bloc, a national union was formed by the leader of Mongolia, Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal, attempting to be annexed as a constituent republic. Ultimately, Soviet authorities vetoed this union, feeling that adding a relative backwater to Soviet administrative burdens was clearly not worth losing UN representation. Aware that the Western powers would immediately reject giving a fourth UN representatives to the Soviet Union and aware that the North Chinese were hungering for some sort of diplomatic reputation, Soviet officials drafted a plan where Mongolia, a new Tuvan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic[1], and the People's Republic of China were put in a new customs union, the Union State of China, North Mongolia, and Tuva, a name that flowed relatively awkwardly in all three languages because it was drafted by Russophone Soviets. The term North Mongolia was used after some minor wrangling between North Chinese and Mongolian officials - Mongolian officials were eventually browbeaten by Soviet diplomats into accepting that this was the terminology that least minimized territorial claims between the two Communist states.
Terms like Red China and Communist China quickly became interchangeable with the Union State, often colloquially referred to as the "Union State of China" much to the annoyance of Mongol and Tuvan diplomats, who represented the Union State in the United Nations. An attempt was made to add the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to the Union State, but Kim il-Sung refused. The arrangement largely worked between the two and a half nations, largely because the North Chinese and Mongols clearly cared not at all for each other's internal affairs.
Amusingly, both the Soviet Union and United States worked together in order to shut down Yugoslavia's attempts to have all of its member republics admitted, which retaliated by trying to shut down the Soviet attempt to have the Czech and Slovak Republics admitted separately. Although this succeeded at first, the Soviets came back somewhat later, having ordered Czechoslovakia to fake adopting federalism (creating two internal republics, the Czech Socialist Republic and Slovak Socialist Republic)[2], which was enough to wrangle two more representatives.
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[1] OTL, this was created in 1961. Here, it's created to get an extra UN representative.
[2] This was done OTL in 1969 after Prague Spring was crushed.
The UN and the Curious Rise of National Unions
For example, with regards to the British Empire, as a result of worsening relations between Prime Minister Churchill and Tunku of Malaya, the decision was made to veto the idea of the unity with Borneo. Instead, after a variety of political machinations that restored the Kingdom of Sarawak, the decision was made to grant independence to the Union of North Borneo, a mirage of a union that included the mostly independent Sultanate of Brunei, Kingdom of Sarawak, and new Dominion of Sabah (formerly the Crown Colony of North Borneo). Under the pressure of the UK, who sided with the Fezzans and Cyrenicans against the Tripolatanians, the United Kingdom of Libya was reformed among federal lines and cleverly renamed (only in English) into the United Kingdoms of Libya - Fezzan, Cyrenica, and Tripolatania were each set up as "Kingdoms" in their own right, although King Idris was the absolute monarch in each one, so the federal structure was largely a mirage. Regardless, this was enough for all three to be admitted to the UN.
In contrast, the Dutch attempt to have all of its many many constituent nations admitted to the United Nations largely failed, with only Maluku and and Sulawesi making it in. The French on the other hand actually had several nations from the French Union quickly admitted, such the Kingdom of Laos, Kingdom of Cambodia, and Republic of Cochinchina. The Americans totally failed to get the Islamic Republic of Qatif and Hasa any recognition, as it remained a diplomatic pariah in the Middle East.
On the Red bloc, a national union was formed by the leader of Mongolia, Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal, attempting to be annexed as a constituent republic. Ultimately, Soviet authorities vetoed this union, feeling that adding a relative backwater to Soviet administrative burdens was clearly not worth losing UN representation. Aware that the Western powers would immediately reject giving a fourth UN representatives to the Soviet Union and aware that the North Chinese were hungering for some sort of diplomatic reputation, Soviet officials drafted a plan where Mongolia, a new Tuvan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic[1], and the People's Republic of China were put in a new customs union, the Union State of China, North Mongolia, and Tuva, a name that flowed relatively awkwardly in all three languages because it was drafted by Russophone Soviets. The term North Mongolia was used after some minor wrangling between North Chinese and Mongolian officials - Mongolian officials were eventually browbeaten by Soviet diplomats into accepting that this was the terminology that least minimized territorial claims between the two Communist states.
Terms like Red China and Communist China quickly became interchangeable with the Union State, often colloquially referred to as the "Union State of China" much to the annoyance of Mongol and Tuvan diplomats, who represented the Union State in the United Nations. An attempt was made to add the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to the Union State, but Kim il-Sung refused. The arrangement largely worked between the two and a half nations, largely because the North Chinese and Mongols clearly cared not at all for each other's internal affairs.
Amusingly, both the Soviet Union and United States worked together in order to shut down Yugoslavia's attempts to have all of its member republics admitted, which retaliated by trying to shut down the Soviet attempt to have the Czech and Slovak Republics admitted separately. Although this succeeded at first, the Soviets came back somewhat later, having ordered Czechoslovakia to fake adopting federalism (creating two internal republics, the Czech Socialist Republic and Slovak Socialist Republic)[2], which was enough to wrangle two more representatives.
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[1] OTL, this was created in 1961. Here, it's created to get an extra UN representative.
[2] This was done OTL in 1969 after Prague Spring was crushed.
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BigBlueBox
Banned
With shenanigans like this I’m surprised the USA didn’t try to get Puerto Rico membership at the UN. The only real solution to this is to switch to a system of weighted votes.
what effects will this have on the timeline since there are so many more representatives for each bloc in the un
Well, America is a democracy with tons of moving parts. It's actually hard for a democracy to do things like this, because it's awkward telling your population "yeah, we're changing the way we do things for a minor diplomatic advantage." The thing that ties together all the countries doing this is that they're doing it to non-democratically governed areas (ie, either colonies of European empires or some Communist state).
I'm actually not sure yet.
Chapter 30 - Stalin's Triumph in the Middle East
Stalin's Arab Triumph
As Stalin's health continued to worsen throughout 1953, more and more of his foreign policy decision-making was farmed out to other ministers. The atmosphere of paranoia and oppression would linger in domestic Soviet politics up until his death in 1955, but in the area of foreign policy, Andrei Gromyko (the Deputy Foreign Minister who replaced foreign minister Vyshinsky after his retirement due to ill health) had a fairly free hand in dealing with foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, which quickly became the prime example of Soviet diplomatic success in the early Cold War.
Many of the Free Officers crushed in Alexandria fled to Saudi Arabia and then to Syria, where they often joined up with many Arab Nationalist Syrians. In particularly, they coalesced behind Afif al-Bizri. Because the previous President of Syria removed in the 1949, Shukri al-Quwatli, was in exile at the time in Alexandria, Egypt, he ended up being one of the casualties of the bloody siege. Ironically, this caused many Arab nationalists to claim the hostile al-Quwatli as a martyr to their cause. In late 1952, Syria's military dictator, Adib Shishakli, attempted to arrest al-Bizri and his supporters, who revolted in a coup that proved surprisingly popular in the streets of Syria. As swarms of Syrian protestors mobbed the streets and rushed soldiers, many soldiers changed sides and Shishakli fled the country. With no leader to unite the country, as the previous president al-Quwatli was dead, al-Bizri himself ran for President and was re-elected handily. He immediately orientated the nation's foreign policy closely with the Soviet Union, leasing them a naval base in the Syrian of Tartus in exchange for being showered with development and military aid. Like the Khan regime in Pakistan, al-Bizri was not an open Communist, but governed with support of Syria's Communist Party and aligned closely with the USSR.
All of these Soviet-aligned leaders quickly learned that alignment with the Soviet Union actually provided intense nationalist credentials because Stalin's persecution of Soviet Jews, while causing disgust in the rest of the world, actually became viewed as a diplomatic asset in the Middle East, as many mono-manically anti-Israel politicians in the Arab world saw the Soviet Union as their natural ally. This made the monarchies of Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq even shakier as both Arab Nationalists and Islamists saw the Soviet Union as their natural ally against the "Zionist-Western conspiracy." Of course, the openly anti-Semitic nature of much pro-Soviet sentiment in the Middle East also helped push Israel much closer to the Western powers despite its social democratic politics.
With Soviet influence and access to Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan established, this put immense pressure on the government in Turkey. As a result, the Adnan Menderes government moved as close to the West as humanly possible, something that they claimed was necessary because the Soviet Union would be after them next. However, with unfettered Soviet access to both the Mediterranean (through Iran -> Syria), the Indian Ocean (through Afghanistan/Iran -> Pakistan), the Pacific Ocean (through their naval base in Port Arthur), and the Atlantic Ocean (through Petsamos), the Soviet Union began to enjoy global projection power far beyond that the Russian Empire ever enjoyed, totally bypassing the Turkish Straits.
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Will Kim il-Sung push for forceful unification with the South like he planned several times in OTL?
Well, and Soviet atrocity. Stalin's antisemitic paranoid persecution of Jews permanently alienates Israel, which permanently aligns much of the regions Arab nationalists with Stalin (enemy of my enemy kind of thing). So they're kinda doing this half on accident. And FWIW, trading Egypt for Iran/Syria is probably a winner for both the British Empire and the USSR. Same with the India/Pakistan swap-a-roo.
OTL, he did it after Stalin tacitly approved and Mao allowed 60k-70k Korean-Chinese troops to join the Korean People's Army (over 1/3rd of the initial invasion force in 1950 and the most trained veterans of the KPA). Take those troops out of the picture and the KPA and South Korean army of 1950 are at near-parity (there's no way the PRC is giving up 65k troops with Chiang Kai-Shek at their borders).
Also, with the situation in China the way it is, a lot of the tanks/weapons that went to OTL DPRK are probably split between ITL PRC and DPRK. I strongly suspect that the military balance in Korea is equal - or if by 1952 due to American support and Japanese remilitarization, probably favors the South. Though ITL North Japan might make up for a lot of that. Stalin's approval...probably doesn't come.
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I wonder if this will cause the USSR to consider a push to claim all of China. With so many allies in the Middle East and India I imagined the USSR feels emboldened.