Honestly, I'm not sure how accurate the maps are. One day I'll probably go back and uh, make accurate maps.
The North Star is Red: a Wallace Presidency, KMT Victory, Alternate Cold War TL
- Thread starter TastySpam
- Start date
Honestly, I'm not sure how accurate the maps are. One day I'll probably go back and uh, make accurate maps.
Chapter 138 - The Boat People
The Boat People
The triumph of Communist forces in Korea was a bitter triumph indeed. North Chinese forces had to desperately withdraw almost as quickly as they had aided the Korean People's Army in conquering the South, leaving a shell KPA (heavily damaged in the initial South Korean invasion) to govern a newly conquered South. The end-result of this and the creation of the unified People's Republic of Korea was largely a result of the anarchy that exploded across the South. There simply weren't enough KPA troops to guard the Korean coastline and govern South Korea. The military leadership of the DPRK decided to prioritize stopping a foreign invasion over actually establishing any semblance of order. Guerilla troops belonging to the former Korean National Army went underground with guerilla warfare, adding to the fire as criminal groups often set up small fiefdoms in their localities. Most police were trained by the Japanese and tied to the GKR regime, causing many of them to outright join either right-wing guerilla groups or join less ideologically motivated crime groups.
In general, living standards collapsed in South Korea as the KPA requisitioned food to support both their forces and to supply withdrawing Chinese troops. Small-scale famine broke out across the South, sparking a mad rush of Korean refugees into the small island of Jeju. Jeju, itself having revolted against the Greater Korean Republic was filled with angry left-wing natives who detested the right-wing government. Moreover, Jeju was a fairly small islands and the flood of Korean refugees fleeing "Chinese Communism" vastly stripped the ability of the GKR regime to hold them. After a certain point, the government simply shut off more refugees. However, anarchy still reigned over much of the interior of South Korea. The North Korean regime, outnumbered, decided it wasn't worth it to use limited military resources to stop Koreans from fleeing. After all, they believed only a few anticommunist fringes would flee.
That was not the result. The conquest itself wasn't particularly bloody because the Korean National Army had collapsed so fast, but the anarchy was destructive. South Korea was significantly already poorer than the North - and it was clear that the North Korean regime was prioritizing the reconstruction of North Korea instead (as their capital, Seoul, had utterly been destroyed by South Korean forces). What they had expected to be a trickle turned into a complete flood, as millions of Koreans, also rejected from Jeju, fled abroad in rickety boats. The President in 1956, Richard Russell, immediately stated that it was the policy to prevent any Korean refugees from reaching the United States (as he did not desire non-white refugees to settle in the United States), causing both of his opponents in the upcoming Presidential election, Douglas MacArthur and Joseph McCarthy, to lambaste him as both a white supremacist and "red supremacist." However, the United States Navy was still ordered to pick up any boats and help them transfer to a third country. After all, it was truly politically impossible to force refugees to return to a Communist bloc that the United States had just entered a war with. Eventually, one of the first acts of the McCarthy Administration was to sign the Immigration Act of 1957 (later administered by the Kennedy Administration), which allowed some refugees to resettle in the United States. However, as things stood in 1956, there weren't many nations willing to take them in. Although the Casey government was in the middle of dismantling it, the White Australia Policy was still mostly in effect. New Zealand was too small. Two nations largely stood up.
Japanese Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke was a radical far-right wing leader who in his previous stint in government had overseen war crimes in Manchukuo (including the use of Korean slave labor), signed the declaration of war on the United States. Just months ago, he led the bloody crushing of protests in killed thousands of Japanese in the "Tokyo Massacre" and hastily constructed the infamous Tokyo Wall between West and East Tokyo. It was this Kishi Nobusuke who stunned the Japanese political sphere and most of the world by accepting an open border for Koreans fleeing "Communist oppression" in light of "historic ties between the Japanese and Korean people." Some argue that his anti-Communist convictions were significantly stronger than any other beliefs he had - others argue that Kishi was never a committed ideologue under the Imperial Japanese system and now simply wanted to turn over a "new leaf" given the new politics of the era. In 1945 at the height of the Pacific War, 2.5 million Koreans lived in Japan, mostly brought over to work in Japanese factories (as more and more Japanese were drafted to die in an increasingly futile war). 2 million slowly trickled back in South Korea between 1945-1956, but the collapse of South Korea led the vast majority of them to return to Japan. Moreover, most of those additional refugees then chose Japan as their destination since they were offering. Coincidentally, Chiang Kai-Shek of the Republic of China was also offering, but most Koreans chose the nation that was much less poor and not at war. The flood of refugees into Japan meant there were around 5 million Koreans in South Japan, out of a population of 65 million South Japanese (compared to 15 million North Japanese). The Japanese political sphere was shocked, but the United States was not shocked, President Russell having promised the Japanese extensive economic aid in exchange for taking these refugees (so they would not have to).
An interesting legal problem arose as a result. After 1945, the Japanese state rejected all claims of any sovereignty whatsoever on Korea, which meant transferring the Imperial citizenship of all Koreans into Korean citizenship. This was welcomed by many Koreans, largely because Japanese intervention in Manchuria was often justified on the basis of "protecting Imperial citizens", which ironically generally referred to Koreans who had fled poverty in Korea and actually loathed the Japanese Empire. A condition for any refugee settling in Japan was simply - they had to choose Republic of Korea citizenship over DPRK citizenship, which highlighted much to the embarrassment of the Communist bloc, many of those that had fled weren't even South Koreans, but North Koreans from destroyed Seoul. However, this meant that none of them were true immigrants. Indeed, Prime Minister Nobusuke shepherded a bill through the Parliament guaranteeing "temporary residency for all Republic of Korea citizens until the liberation of the mainland." This meant that Japan actually had more far more ROK citizens than the actual ROK (which had around 2 million Koreans).
Some of the Koreans actually found a fairly easy niche for themselves, returning to their old homes before the end of World War II, but many of them had few useful skills, were poor, and were unfamiliar with their new nation. Crime rates unsurprisingly exploded and although few Japanese actually called for their expulsion, most were deeply concerned about the issue, regularly listing the "refugee issue" as one of their top concerns. Discrimination and conflict were commonplaces. Interestingly, violent far-right groups grew, but for a very unexpected reason. While prejudice was commonplace, South Japan had actually instituted some of the strictest hate speech laws in the liberal world - it was extremely taboo under Japanese political culture to make openly disparaging remarks about any group except through dozens of coded euphemisms such as "crime problems regarding temporary refugee status individuals." Moreover, after the rise of the centrist Prime Minister Miki, the right-opposition led by Nobusuke wasn't really in a position to criticize him on the refugee issue. The real reason far-right gangs (the ones used to help crush the Tokyo Spring) grew was that many were closely tied with Yakuza groups, which actually registered a tremendous spike in recruitment because of the huge numbers of poor, unemployed young Korean men, who joined for more pragmatic than ideological or nationalistic reasons. Conservative Japanese businessmen were loathe to actually criticize this - after all, many of them relied on Yakuza members to collect debts and evict delinquent tenants. Ironically, right-wing politicians trying to openly spread ethnic hatred would often fall victim to tattooed far-right gangs who would club them for "disrespecting the Emperor", which while ingratiating the refugees to the Japanese political class, only further fueled widespread popular stereotypes of Korean criminality.
The situation in Korea would only calm down once Chinese appointed military governors, desperate over a rapidly collapsing situation in North China itself, withering under American assault, decided to go over the heads of North Korean Communist officials and establish political order as soon as possible through any means as possible, directly negotiating with left-wing South Korean politicians for a compromise that would create the People's Republic of Korea, a Communist-dominated, but not explicitly Communist state that on its paper was a multi-party democracy (though not in practice). With most of those most fervently opposed to the new regime having left, the remaining police and army units more or less accepted the new system, helping the unified state restore order. Although the North Koreans had their complaints, they were largely satisfied with the process.
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It's nice to see the Korea situation fleshed out more. Also, having Japanese homogeneity be broken down in a much more undeniable way (Japan always had non-"japanese" peoples) could lead to some interesting political shakeups if any of the Koreans are given Japanese citizenship in the future.
Chapter 139 - Deal with the Devil
Well, I guess we're back to normal operating order. Probably going to do an update on Pakistan - and then go back to talking about stuff going down in the USSR and the Mediterranean War.
Deal with the Devil
Menachem Begin was faced with an interesting dilemma. The Syrian invasion dealt a death blow to British hopes in Egypt, as Israeli troops were hastily withdrawn to desperately defend the small Jewish state. And survival was no great reward: now the state of Israel was flooded with Jewish refugees from Northern Israel, which had lost almost half of its Jewish population to massacres and expulsions by the victorious Syrians. Israel seemed irrevocably wounded - and with the Kingdom of Egypt, not friendly towards Israel but not also dedicated to destroying it, widely expected to fall to a far more radical anti-Western movement, the future of the small Jewish state seemed very precarious. But the same issue that Menachem Begin took advantage of to save Israel - the Sino-Syrian split, seemed to be tearing apart the entire Eastern bloc. The Syro-Israeli War lasted roughly between May of 1960 to the end of the Battle of Haifa in February of 1961, more than two years before the August Days, two years of great peril for Israel.
The year and a half after the end of the Syro-Israeli War was a time of political triumph for Begin, who was hailed as Israel's savior and enjoyed sky-high approval ratings, especially because the general public was not aware of what he had done to get the Syrians off their backs, allowing him to institute radical free market reforms in Israel. In addition, Begin in fact had correctly guessed that the Syrians desired Israeli military technology and prepare for a strike against Jordan, something he was more or less fine with it, since he figured it was better them than Israel. Furthermore, he believed that the Syrians didn't actually have the capability to seriously defeat the British Army, one of the most technologically advanced and well-trained armies in the world, having proved its prowess in both the Second World War and the Three Years War. Begin was much less impressed by the Syrian Army, as he generally believed that the Syrian Army was both smaller and less competent. In fact, he feared the People's Volunteer Army from North China far more the Syrians, because they had almost managed to overrun Haifa even without Syrian support. Although the loss of Northern Israel was a catastrophe for Israel, the fact that a tiny Israeli army outnumbered in armor 15-1 by the Syrians (and closer to 3-1 in infantry numbers) managed to hold out for so long generally led Begin to believe that the Syrians were simply not a threat to Israel given Israel's rapid militarization after the Syro-Israeli War - let alone the mighty British Empire. If the Syrians smashed into Britain, he assumed this would prove to be a costly and bloody mistake for the Syrians, removing yet another threat to Israel and allowing Israel to concentrate on the growing threat to the southwest (the expected regime change in Egypt). Furthermore, the Syrians were fighting in a second front. As a result, the decision was made personally by Begin for the Mossad to openly aid Syrian intelligence services in supplying fake information to the British, obscuring the fact that the Syrians were preparing for a massive assault on the British-backed Arab Federation.
After the end of the Syro-Israeli War, the Syrians had thrown their army immediately supporting the Iraqi Nationalists under Fuad al-Rikabi. Most of the weapons transferred to the Syrians were mechanized, armored, and aircraft technology, including long-range missiles, which didn't seem particularly helpful in the actual war in Iraq, which was largely waged between infantry militias in close urban areas. Moreover, the Nationalists had attracted the ire of more or less every other faction in Iraq, including the British-backed Royalists and the American-backed Islamists, who more or less had an informal understanding that they would focus on the Syrian-backed Nationalists first. The North Chinese, stung by the defeat in Haifa, more or less just adopted an entirely defensive posture in Judeopalestine and Iraqi Kurdistan, refusing to help any of the other factions, including Syrian-backed Nationalists, in an ironic echo of how the Syrians refused to back the PLA in the Battle of Haifa. Syrian intervention in Iraq played a major role in shifting the war - the Islamists, Nationalists, and Royalists had all expended significant manpower and materials expelling the Communists and the North Chinese from Baghdad - who had conveniently left behind most of their heavy equipment in their frenzied retreat to Kurdistan. The Nationalists ended up seizing most of those weapons because almost half of the ethnic Arab officers from the Communists defected to the Nationalists in the aftermath of the "Second Mongol Sack of Baghdad", bringing with them access to where such materials were stored. The Nationalists had already gained a huge advantage in weaponry before the Syrians explicitly entered the war - the Syrian entrance turned the advantage overwhelming.
President Kennedy began to see the intervention, which he had inherited from his predecessor, as rather problematic - and began to quietly plot for an exit strategy. The American CIA cleverly guessed that upon a Nationalist victory, pro-Islamist refugees would flood into nearby Kuwait, giving the Islamists sufficient public support to seize control of Kuwait. Welding together Kuwait, Al-Hasa, and Qatif would give America nearly direct control of most of the Middle East's oil resources outside of Iran. The large Shia population of Bahrain was also seen as an asset. President Kennedy was increasingly infuriated at the refusal of Western European nations to decolonize, something he believed would lead to the rise of Communist anti-colonial leaders. He believed that covertly seizing control of most of Great Britain's oil resources would allow the United States to impose its political will on Western Europe, forcing them to relinquish control of their colonies to indigenous anti-Communist leaders. The French cooperating with the Soviet Union to preserve their colonies in Algeria was the final straw in the political coffin of the American Europhiles, causing them to step up aid to the Islamists - but on the goal of seizing control of Kuwait and Bahrain upon defeat in Iraq. In contrast, the British also stepped up their aid to Jordan, the main sponsor of the Royalists, hoping to still win the war. The Royal Jordanian Army became one of the best equipped armies in the Middle East, essentially on par with the Syrians.
In conjunction with the failure to conquer Haifa and the flight from Baghdad, the leadership of the PRC began to universally regard their Middle Eastern foray as a costly disaster (considering the loss of thousands of lives, tanks, and airplanes), but blamed the failure primarily on "ideologically suspect allies", which was not wrong considering the breakdown in relations with Syria. North Chinese military aid to the rebels in Egypt - but were targeted with the explicit purpose of strengthening Egyptian leftists vis-a-vis the Muslim Brotherhood in the aftermath of a revolution they also anticipated would be successful. It seemed in the early 1960's, every nation thought the Kingdom of Egypt was doomed (including its own leaders, who slowly transferred their assets and extended family abroad) except the United Kingdom itself. PVA commanders were ordered to not "escalate" the wars in Iraq and Israel, essentially entrenching themselves in Judeopalestine and Northern Iraq. Amusingly, as a result of the North Chinese and Iraqi Communist retreat into Kurdistan, Kurds politically dominated three political entities - the Iraqi Republic, the Federal People's Republic of Turkey, and the Republic of Mahabad (a Soviet puppet state from 1946-1956, when it was once again placed under Iranian control as an autonomous region during the Soviet-Iranian detente) - none of them with the Kurds directly referenced. The Iranian Kurds generally didn't hold much in common with the other two - though there were efforts to ensure Kurdish unity by creating a "People's Federation of Turkey-Iraq", but this was seen as implausible in light of tensions between the USSR and North China.
In addition, Begin understood that the existence of Judeopalestine in the North was essentially a buffer between Israel and Syria - the Syrians had gotten surprisingly little from the whole affair besides domestic mass support. In a sense, from a pure realpolitik perspective, this actually made the two of them natural allies. Tlass was nowhere as Marxist-leaning as his predecessor - and although willing to pay lip service to "scientific socialism", didn't really see any need to align himself with any form of Communism. Relations with the USSR were driven merely by a realpolitik trade - the Syrians received military equipment from Beria in exchange for giving the Soviets naval access to the Mediterranean.
Begin's solution to the mass influx of refugees from the North...was to settle them in the Sinai Peninsula, as the Israelis continued to fortify the Suez Canal, having abandoned the rest of Egypt for the British and Royalist Egyptians to take care of. In many ways, the Israeli presence in Egypt was just not helpful in any way whatsoever - the mere fact that the Royalist Egyptians were seen as being aided by the hated Israelis torpedoed their public support. The Israelis, aided generously by the Kennedy Administration, quickly resupplied their army with the help of Americans and French. In particular, very warm trade relations were forged between the Israelis and both the Indians and South Chinese, partly in reaction to the increasing omnipresence of the Pakistani Interservices Agency (ISI) in the Middle East. In fact, the massive intelligence triumph of Syria (who did not have a sophisticated intelligence agency) against the British (who had an incredibly sophisticated intelligence agency) was heavily due to the fact that both the Mossad and ISI, typically at odds, actually covertly cooperated to mislead the British. The Asian trade turned Eilat, a port city alongside the Red Sea, into one of the most important ports for the Israeli economy, causing Israel to invest significant resources in developing a naval presence in the Red Sea. As a reuslt, many such refugees sent to the Sinai Peninsula would settle on the Southern Coast, setting up small businesses to export goods to India and South China. The desire to hold the Sinai led the Israelis to building one of the most heavily fortified borders in the war, hoping to also seize the Suez upon any collapse of the Kingdom of Egypt.
Deal with the Devil
Menachem Begin was faced with an interesting dilemma. The Syrian invasion dealt a death blow to British hopes in Egypt, as Israeli troops were hastily withdrawn to desperately defend the small Jewish state. And survival was no great reward: now the state of Israel was flooded with Jewish refugees from Northern Israel, which had lost almost half of its Jewish population to massacres and expulsions by the victorious Syrians. Israel seemed irrevocably wounded - and with the Kingdom of Egypt, not friendly towards Israel but not also dedicated to destroying it, widely expected to fall to a far more radical anti-Western movement, the future of the small Jewish state seemed very precarious. But the same issue that Menachem Begin took advantage of to save Israel - the Sino-Syrian split, seemed to be tearing apart the entire Eastern bloc. The Syro-Israeli War lasted roughly between May of 1960 to the end of the Battle of Haifa in February of 1961, more than two years before the August Days, two years of great peril for Israel.
The year and a half after the end of the Syro-Israeli War was a time of political triumph for Begin, who was hailed as Israel's savior and enjoyed sky-high approval ratings, especially because the general public was not aware of what he had done to get the Syrians off their backs, allowing him to institute radical free market reforms in Israel. In addition, Begin in fact had correctly guessed that the Syrians desired Israeli military technology and prepare for a strike against Jordan, something he was more or less fine with it, since he figured it was better them than Israel. Furthermore, he believed that the Syrians didn't actually have the capability to seriously defeat the British Army, one of the most technologically advanced and well-trained armies in the world, having proved its prowess in both the Second World War and the Three Years War. Begin was much less impressed by the Syrian Army, as he generally believed that the Syrian Army was both smaller and less competent. In fact, he feared the People's Volunteer Army from North China far more the Syrians, because they had almost managed to overrun Haifa even without Syrian support. Although the loss of Northern Israel was a catastrophe for Israel, the fact that a tiny Israeli army outnumbered in armor 15-1 by the Syrians (and closer to 3-1 in infantry numbers) managed to hold out for so long generally led Begin to believe that the Syrians were simply not a threat to Israel given Israel's rapid militarization after the Syro-Israeli War - let alone the mighty British Empire. If the Syrians smashed into Britain, he assumed this would prove to be a costly and bloody mistake for the Syrians, removing yet another threat to Israel and allowing Israel to concentrate on the growing threat to the southwest (the expected regime change in Egypt). Furthermore, the Syrians were fighting in a second front. As a result, the decision was made personally by Begin for the Mossad to openly aid Syrian intelligence services in supplying fake information to the British, obscuring the fact that the Syrians were preparing for a massive assault on the British-backed Arab Federation.
After the end of the Syro-Israeli War, the Syrians had thrown their army immediately supporting the Iraqi Nationalists under Fuad al-Rikabi. Most of the weapons transferred to the Syrians were mechanized, armored, and aircraft technology, including long-range missiles, which didn't seem particularly helpful in the actual war in Iraq, which was largely waged between infantry militias in close urban areas. Moreover, the Nationalists had attracted the ire of more or less every other faction in Iraq, including the British-backed Royalists and the American-backed Islamists, who more or less had an informal understanding that they would focus on the Syrian-backed Nationalists first. The North Chinese, stung by the defeat in Haifa, more or less just adopted an entirely defensive posture in Judeopalestine and Iraqi Kurdistan, refusing to help any of the other factions, including Syrian-backed Nationalists, in an ironic echo of how the Syrians refused to back the PLA in the Battle of Haifa. Syrian intervention in Iraq played a major role in shifting the war - the Islamists, Nationalists, and Royalists had all expended significant manpower and materials expelling the Communists and the North Chinese from Baghdad - who had conveniently left behind most of their heavy equipment in their frenzied retreat to Kurdistan. The Nationalists ended up seizing most of those weapons because almost half of the ethnic Arab officers from the Communists defected to the Nationalists in the aftermath of the "Second Mongol Sack of Baghdad", bringing with them access to where such materials were stored. The Nationalists had already gained a huge advantage in weaponry before the Syrians explicitly entered the war - the Syrian entrance turned the advantage overwhelming.
President Kennedy began to see the intervention, which he had inherited from his predecessor, as rather problematic - and began to quietly plot for an exit strategy. The American CIA cleverly guessed that upon a Nationalist victory, pro-Islamist refugees would flood into nearby Kuwait, giving the Islamists sufficient public support to seize control of Kuwait. Welding together Kuwait, Al-Hasa, and Qatif would give America nearly direct control of most of the Middle East's oil resources outside of Iran. The large Shia population of Bahrain was also seen as an asset. President Kennedy was increasingly infuriated at the refusal of Western European nations to decolonize, something he believed would lead to the rise of Communist anti-colonial leaders. He believed that covertly seizing control of most of Great Britain's oil resources would allow the United States to impose its political will on Western Europe, forcing them to relinquish control of their colonies to indigenous anti-Communist leaders. The French cooperating with the Soviet Union to preserve their colonies in Algeria was the final straw in the political coffin of the American Europhiles, causing them to step up aid to the Islamists - but on the goal of seizing control of Kuwait and Bahrain upon defeat in Iraq. In contrast, the British also stepped up their aid to Jordan, the main sponsor of the Royalists, hoping to still win the war. The Royal Jordanian Army became one of the best equipped armies in the Middle East, essentially on par with the Syrians.
In conjunction with the failure to conquer Haifa and the flight from Baghdad, the leadership of the PRC began to universally regard their Middle Eastern foray as a costly disaster (considering the loss of thousands of lives, tanks, and airplanes), but blamed the failure primarily on "ideologically suspect allies", which was not wrong considering the breakdown in relations with Syria. North Chinese military aid to the rebels in Egypt - but were targeted with the explicit purpose of strengthening Egyptian leftists vis-a-vis the Muslim Brotherhood in the aftermath of a revolution they also anticipated would be successful. It seemed in the early 1960's, every nation thought the Kingdom of Egypt was doomed (including its own leaders, who slowly transferred their assets and extended family abroad) except the United Kingdom itself. PVA commanders were ordered to not "escalate" the wars in Iraq and Israel, essentially entrenching themselves in Judeopalestine and Northern Iraq. Amusingly, as a result of the North Chinese and Iraqi Communist retreat into Kurdistan, Kurds politically dominated three political entities - the Iraqi Republic, the Federal People's Republic of Turkey, and the Republic of Mahabad (a Soviet puppet state from 1946-1956, when it was once again placed under Iranian control as an autonomous region during the Soviet-Iranian detente) - none of them with the Kurds directly referenced. The Iranian Kurds generally didn't hold much in common with the other two - though there were efforts to ensure Kurdish unity by creating a "People's Federation of Turkey-Iraq", but this was seen as implausible in light of tensions between the USSR and North China.
In addition, Begin understood that the existence of Judeopalestine in the North was essentially a buffer between Israel and Syria - the Syrians had gotten surprisingly little from the whole affair besides domestic mass support. In a sense, from a pure realpolitik perspective, this actually made the two of them natural allies. Tlass was nowhere as Marxist-leaning as his predecessor - and although willing to pay lip service to "scientific socialism", didn't really see any need to align himself with any form of Communism. Relations with the USSR were driven merely by a realpolitik trade - the Syrians received military equipment from Beria in exchange for giving the Soviets naval access to the Mediterranean.
Begin's solution to the mass influx of refugees from the North...was to settle them in the Sinai Peninsula, as the Israelis continued to fortify the Suez Canal, having abandoned the rest of Egypt for the British and Royalist Egyptians to take care of. In many ways, the Israeli presence in Egypt was just not helpful in any way whatsoever - the mere fact that the Royalist Egyptians were seen as being aided by the hated Israelis torpedoed their public support. The Israelis, aided generously by the Kennedy Administration, quickly resupplied their army with the help of Americans and French. In particular, very warm trade relations were forged between the Israelis and both the Indians and South Chinese, partly in reaction to the increasing omnipresence of the Pakistani Interservices Agency (ISI) in the Middle East. In fact, the massive intelligence triumph of Syria (who did not have a sophisticated intelligence agency) against the British (who had an incredibly sophisticated intelligence agency) was heavily due to the fact that both the Mossad and ISI, typically at odds, actually covertly cooperated to mislead the British. The Asian trade turned Eilat, a port city alongside the Red Sea, into one of the most important ports for the Israeli economy, causing Israel to invest significant resources in developing a naval presence in the Red Sea. As a reuslt, many such refugees sent to the Sinai Peninsula would settle on the Southern Coast, setting up small businesses to export goods to India and South China. The desire to hold the Sinai led the Israelis to building one of the most heavily fortified borders in the war, hoping to also seize the Suez upon any collapse of the Kingdom of Egypt.
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Banned
Wow....Begin working under the table with Syria?
Kennedy arming Islamists AGAINST colonial rule?
Politics does make strange bedfellows.
Kennedy arming Islamists AGAINST colonial rule?
Politics does make strange bedfellows.
This timeline is wild. I love it. Was wondering if you could do a update on Australia at all?
Definitely throwing it on my to-do list, alongside USSR updates and a much-needed Pakistan update
I feel Korean membership in Yakuza gangs will end poorly for the prospects of interethnic harmony in South Japan, at some point. Some extremist will come to power (Ishihara?), and then...ouch.
Thanks this timeline is amazing love the differences to the Cold Wars like China
I sense a Lost Decade analogue coming in the future. With extra political instability and ethnic tensions, it would be as good a spark as any. South Japan doesn't have the resources of the entire island, nor the economic standing of its OTL unified self. If their growth ever stops, I think it could hit them much harder.
A nasty depression, far right leadership, and a rival power right there on the main island with them sounds like a recipe for ghettoization (more formalized ones anyway, I doubt the Japanese and Koreans are very integrated) at least and possibly even reprisals against the Koreans. If word of Koreans leaning toward their homeland or, heaven forbid, North Japan for political support against the discrimination and violence, who knows what worse can happen then.
Japan's managed to scrap together something of their reputation outside of East Asia in OTL by keeping to themselves and making electronics, but if they start cracking down on their most significant ethnic minority some 20ish years after US occupation, that's going to torpedo a lot of good faith they have abroad. Especially if they really push things to violence.
I think that would fit with a lot of what's happened in the TL so far (the backfiring of post WWII US foreign policy). With Italy basically turning its back on the west's defensive infrastructure, Germany going right back to a nationalist dictatorship and almost every colonial power butting heads with the US on decolonization policy, Japan regressing into early Showa era political and social repression just seems like icing on the cake.
Every attempt of America to impose its will on the prevailing order of the world only make it messier and more confused.
@TastySpam
I know this is probably spoilers to ask, but will the UN actually survive the 20th century? Because it seems like this long 40s is testing the limits of international cooperation in a lot of ways that would leave contemporaries very displeased.
I'm not saying things are enough to break it as is, but I don't think I'm wrong to assume that more is coming in the future along the lines of what we've got.
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Madam Chiang-Kai Shek Learning of the Battle of Haifa (1960, colorized)
The whole affair is only solidifying Sino-Israeli relations, which is definitely going to pay off for the ROC in one way...
Speaking of the Earth Kingdom - Dai Li is still alive and still the head of ROC Intelligence Services and more or less operates totally autonomously from the actual civilian government.
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Presumably just a lot of stuff to quell domestic resistance that stops the PRC from getting the "national uprising of the peasantry" that they had hoped for during the Three Years War. Probably going to do one more of those updates that reaches back to 1950 or something...
Well, the ROC is definitely one of the biggest supporters of the NILF insurgency in Eastern Indonesia right now (alongsides the US, Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, and Netherlands) - and they probably also helped in the defeat of the Viet Minh in Vietnam. Also aided in the suppression of Malayan Communists, the defeat of the Filipino Communists, and the training of the South Japanese military (when the USA was loathe to aid)
I can't really spoil things because that implies that I've thought things out that far. I've probably got things planned out to like...1970 at best. My guess though is...probably. The UN survived a lot of crazy stuff IRL too.
I'd say Germany sits in a rather grey zone between electoral democracy and dictatorship. Elections are formally held and explicit voter fraud doesn't happen - but a powerful military that has launched what was essentially a coup basically acts like a sword hanging over the civilian politicians, implicitly tilting the system in their favor. And if the electorate choose "incorrectly" - then it's an open question whether they'd intervene. I suppose the closest parallel would be IRL Kemalist Turkey during the Cold War.
Well, part of what causes a chaotic Cold War is that there's only really 2.5 nations actually trying to "win" a global ideological struggle. The post-1957 USA is essentially playing to win - and more or less believes it that it knows what's better for the Europeans than the European nations themselves. The USA pretty cleanly supported the persistence of European colonies from 1948-1956 as a bulwark against Communism - but the new American consensus after the Three Years War was that European colonies actually encouraged Communism by allowing Communist rebels to align themselves with anti-colonialism - and thus the Americans are actively pushing for decolonization (and for indigenous anti-communist rulers) regardless of what the Europeans want.
Beria's USSR isn't actually really trying to "spread Communism" worldwide - it's just seeking to enrich itself, secure Beria's own power/dominance/oppression, and maintain a ring of buffer states against what they correctly view as a hostile United States. Their agenda is pretty clearly regime survival and national power. Like the USSR, most other nations, although seemingly aligned with one bloc or the other - are really just seeking pretty narrowly seeking to advance their own national self-interests. A lot of the disunity in the West is that Beria's USSR isn't actually trying to clean their clocks - and the USA is actually going it alone trying to topple him - and this actually conflicts with the national interests of France or Britain or the Netherlands or Portugal or Belgium or whoever at times. Essentially, most European countries are fine with peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union. The United States actually is not.
Ironically, the only nations really trying to "spread global Communism" are North China/Burma - whose efforts are generally far less effective than the USA for obvious reasons. US intervention pretty much saved West Indonesia, has murdered Communism in Cuba, and increasingly probably smothering it in North Africa (the FLN is now being backed by the USA and they're winning as of 1963). Every Marxist-One Party state since the end of 1945 has been installed in some territory formerly occupied by the USSR (Eastern Europe, North China, North Korea, North Japan). In contrast, the North Chinese are probably the #1 foreign supplier to the Communists in Egypt, Iraq, South Africa, Northern Ireland, Burma (and by extension, Laos) - and they have yet to actually have anything to show for it except Northern Israel and Iraqi Kurdistan, which isn't a lot considering their massive investment (something like 12% of their GDP every year in foreign military aid - or more than what the United States and Soviet Union proportionally spend on their own militaries). This has led to the standard of living gap significantly narrowing between the two Chinas.