Post by eurofed on Dec 8, 2019 20:56:32 GMT
The broad idea of this scenario is what if the 2nd Sino-Japanese War came to resemble the Korean War in its circumstances: i.e. it occurred in a context of global polarization between a democratic Western bloc and a communist Sino-Soviet bloc, there was no nazi-fascism in the developed world (at most there were several pro-Western 'moderate' right-wing authoritarian regimes outside of Europe), China was communist or at least pro-Soviet and widely regarded as the aggressor by the West, the Japanese Empire was liberal or at least 'moderate' right-wing authoritarian and mostly regarded as the good guy in the democratic countries. The conflict occurred sometime in the 1930s-1950s and became a major example of a proxy war between the blocs; only in this case the Japanese Empire seemed sufficiently strong to make the other Western powers assume they can afford to let it fight on its own, unless the USSR somehow expanded the conflict and escalated it into alt-WWII.
PoD occurred sometime between the 1890s and 1919-21 (or even slightly earlier as it concerns Japan) and let WWI and the Russian Revolution end in such a way that the Soviets took control of the Russian Empire and more or less everything in Eastern Europe east of the pre-WWII borders of Germany and Italy, as well as the northern half of the Near East. Britain, France, Italy, and Germany made a compromise peace and banded together to suppress Communist uprisings at home and fight off the Red Army away from their borders, but were too exhausted and fearful of revolutionary destabilization to retake what the Commies had conquered. France took Alsace-Lorraine; depending on political circumstances, Belgium might continue to exist or be partitioned between France (Wallonia) and the Netherlands (Flanders). Germany kept the 1914 eastern border and annexed Austria and the Sudetenland. Italy took Trent, South Tyrol (with a population transfer of ethnic Germans), the Kustenland, coastal Dalmatia, and Albania. Czechia, Slovenia-Croatia, and insular Greece (including the Dodecanese and Cyprus) became independent and joined the Western bloc. Finland, the Baltic states, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania were absorbed in the USSR as various SSRs. Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria, mainland Greece, and North Macedonia were merged in a communist Balkan Federation, a client state of the USSR. Turkey, North Iran, and Afghanistan became other client states of the USSR.
Due to the considerable success their early expansion experienced, the Soviet leadership remained fully committed to the long-term objective of world revolution, even if their failure to take over Western Europe made them focus on state-building of their empire for a while. In the meanwhile, they continued to pursue industrial and military build-up as well as destabilization of the capitalist bloc by means of Comintern subversion and support of anti-Western proxies. Their biggest success in this regard was their takeover of China, which fell under control of a pro-Soviet united front of the CCP and a left-wing faction of the KMT. The USSR exploited these favorable circumstances to annex the Armenian-Assyrian-Kurd-Azeri areas of the Near East, Xinjiang, and Mongolia. Tibet became independent as a British client state. The Western powers established an Arab Kingdom of Greater Syria and Arabia that merged Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, and Arabia under the Hashemite dynasty. The Saudis were defeated and marginalized. South Persia and Greater Syria-Arabia became client states of Britain like Egypt-Sudan. I am not sure what was likely going to happen about the Zionist project in these circumstances.
Due to the way WWI ended and the early rise of the Soviet bogeyman, the Entente powers and Germany soon achieved reconciliation of their grievances and made a common front against the Communist threat. Due to different circumstances, Germany, Italy, and Spain avoided a slide into fascism and all of Western Europe stayed a liberal democracy. On the other hand, the Western world as a whole adopted a Cold War mindset with no tolerance of far-left movements and potential subversion. Communist parties were outlawed and made subject to judicial and police repression in continental Europe, the Japanese Empire, and Latin America; they suffered serious Red Scare/War on Terror-style legal limitations and harassment in the British Empire and the USA. France, the Low Countries, Germany, the Nordic countries, Iberia, Italy, Czechia, Slovenia-Croatia, and White (insular) Greece formed an early equivalent of the EU that evolved into a quasi-federal union. The British Empire stood apart from the European integration process, although quite possibly it might have pursued a similar project to unite Britain and the Dominions into an Imperial Federation. However, the EU and the UK were bound into a NATO-style anti-communist military alliance. The USA was not an official member of the alliance due to its isolationist leanings but it eagerly provided political, diplomatic, and economic support to the rest of the Western bloc.
Japan modernized much like OTL and took over Sakhalin, Korea, Outer and Inner Manchuria, the Transbaikal region, Taiwan, and Hainan sometime between the 1890s and the aftermath of WWI thanks to victorious conflicts with Russia and China. The Japanese Empire managed to avoid a slide into extremist nationalism and militarism, and evolved into a liberal democracy. It granted a fair deal to its overseas territories, with citizenship, enfranchisement, and a reasonable balance between assimilation and cultural autonomy, quite possibly even EU-style federal autonomy. Depending on the PoD, this might represent an entrenchment and evolution of Taisho democracy, or even the Meiji Restoration taking a more liberal character almost since the beginning. Due to the circumstances of its expansion, Japan either annexed Greater Manchuria, Taiwan, and Hainan before Han and Russian settlers got a chance to immigrate in any significant numbers, or they were expelled soon after the Japanese takeover. As a result, Manchuria, Taiwan, and Hainan became almost entirely populated by Japanese and Korean settlers or sufficiently loyal non-Han natives, and Japan faced no significant nationalist resistance to its rule in its overseas territories. Almost all anti-Communist subjects of the Japanese Empire agreed it granted them an acceptable deal, or at least a much better alternative than Russia and China.
Soon after a pro-Soviet regime took over in China, its leaders and their Soviet sponsors spared to effort to stabilize it, crush the warlords and the right-wing KMT elements, and build up its industrial and military power. The USSR and China cooperated to send generous amounts of support across their borders to Communist and radical nationalist anti-colonial insurgents in the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, and Southeast Asia with varying degrees of effectiveness. They tried doing the same in the rest of the European colonial empires and Latin America, but with limited success, due to more difficult logistic circumstances, the interventionist survelliance of the Western powers, and the backwardness of Africa. The Western powers reciprocated by providing support to whatever anti-Communist resistance survived in the Soviet bloc, even if the Communist regimes tried their best to suppress it with their usual brutality.
Communist and far-left-wing movements were marginalized and driven underground in Europe, the Anglosphere, and the Japanese Empire, thanks to a combination of right-wing ideological mobilization, judicial and police repression, sufficient economic stability, and the ruling elites pragmatically accepting to establish a sufficient amount of welfare-state social programs to keep the masses content. Due to different circumstances (avoidance or quick settlement of the reparations and war debt problems, European economic unification, greater trade cooperation between the capitalist powers, effects of social reforms) no equivalent of the Great Depression took place, and the Western world stayed sufficiently prosperous to ensure political stability. For similar reasons, and due to the Soviet threat working as a unifying element, post-WWI reconciliation and the European integration project won a solid consensus from the majority of the European public and across the Western world, and the EU faced no serious nationalist opposition in the mainstream political spectrum. Even most far-righters agreed it was better to work with the system and strive to bend it their way rather than seek to overthrow it and face the risk of throwing the gates open to the Red hordes.
Much like the USA, Japan aligned with the rest of the Western bloc in political, diplomatic, economic, and military terms even if it failed to form an official alliance with the Anglo-European coalition due to various issues. Britain, the USA, and Europe however agreed about its importance as an East Asian proxy to prevent expansion of Sino-Soviet influence. When the Soviet and Chinese leaders thought China was sufficiently strong to try, the Chinese army invaded Manchuria. The Chinese also tried to land in Taiwan and Hainan, but Japanese air-naval superiority made all such attempts utter failures. The USSR provided the Chinese generous non-fighting support, but avoided a direct intervention, at least unless it could be reasonably confident Britain and Europe were not going to backstab it, or it would win a general conflict. Moreover, TTL Soviet-Japanese border made a Soviet military build-up and intervention in the Far East even more logistically difficult than OTL, since the Trans-Siberian Railway was cut off at Irkutsk. Likewise, America, Britain, and Europe strongly supported the Japanese, but did not join the fight. The conflict considerably increased tensions between the blocs across Eurasia, and both the Soviets and the Anglo-European alliance intensified rearmament and military preparedness. To a slightly lesser degree, so did America.
Due to TTL circumstances, the Western powers (including Japan) were going to cling to pre-WWII liberal-democratic standards of behavior in warfare. This more or less means established laws of war between 'civilized' powers, varying degrees of ruthless repression of resistance in 'colonial' conflicts, but no equivalent of Nazi- or Showa Japan-style atrocities. On the other hand, the Communist security forces could be expected to operate at their usual level of Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist brutality.
PoD occurred sometime between the 1890s and 1919-21 (or even slightly earlier as it concerns Japan) and let WWI and the Russian Revolution end in such a way that the Soviets took control of the Russian Empire and more or less everything in Eastern Europe east of the pre-WWII borders of Germany and Italy, as well as the northern half of the Near East. Britain, France, Italy, and Germany made a compromise peace and banded together to suppress Communist uprisings at home and fight off the Red Army away from their borders, but were too exhausted and fearful of revolutionary destabilization to retake what the Commies had conquered. France took Alsace-Lorraine; depending on political circumstances, Belgium might continue to exist or be partitioned between France (Wallonia) and the Netherlands (Flanders). Germany kept the 1914 eastern border and annexed Austria and the Sudetenland. Italy took Trent, South Tyrol (with a population transfer of ethnic Germans), the Kustenland, coastal Dalmatia, and Albania. Czechia, Slovenia-Croatia, and insular Greece (including the Dodecanese and Cyprus) became independent and joined the Western bloc. Finland, the Baltic states, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania were absorbed in the USSR as various SSRs. Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria, mainland Greece, and North Macedonia were merged in a communist Balkan Federation, a client state of the USSR. Turkey, North Iran, and Afghanistan became other client states of the USSR.
Due to the considerable success their early expansion experienced, the Soviet leadership remained fully committed to the long-term objective of world revolution, even if their failure to take over Western Europe made them focus on state-building of their empire for a while. In the meanwhile, they continued to pursue industrial and military build-up as well as destabilization of the capitalist bloc by means of Comintern subversion and support of anti-Western proxies. Their biggest success in this regard was their takeover of China, which fell under control of a pro-Soviet united front of the CCP and a left-wing faction of the KMT. The USSR exploited these favorable circumstances to annex the Armenian-Assyrian-Kurd-Azeri areas of the Near East, Xinjiang, and Mongolia. Tibet became independent as a British client state. The Western powers established an Arab Kingdom of Greater Syria and Arabia that merged Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, and Arabia under the Hashemite dynasty. The Saudis were defeated and marginalized. South Persia and Greater Syria-Arabia became client states of Britain like Egypt-Sudan. I am not sure what was likely going to happen about the Zionist project in these circumstances.
Due to the way WWI ended and the early rise of the Soviet bogeyman, the Entente powers and Germany soon achieved reconciliation of their grievances and made a common front against the Communist threat. Due to different circumstances, Germany, Italy, and Spain avoided a slide into fascism and all of Western Europe stayed a liberal democracy. On the other hand, the Western world as a whole adopted a Cold War mindset with no tolerance of far-left movements and potential subversion. Communist parties were outlawed and made subject to judicial and police repression in continental Europe, the Japanese Empire, and Latin America; they suffered serious Red Scare/War on Terror-style legal limitations and harassment in the British Empire and the USA. France, the Low Countries, Germany, the Nordic countries, Iberia, Italy, Czechia, Slovenia-Croatia, and White (insular) Greece formed an early equivalent of the EU that evolved into a quasi-federal union. The British Empire stood apart from the European integration process, although quite possibly it might have pursued a similar project to unite Britain and the Dominions into an Imperial Federation. However, the EU and the UK were bound into a NATO-style anti-communist military alliance. The USA was not an official member of the alliance due to its isolationist leanings but it eagerly provided political, diplomatic, and economic support to the rest of the Western bloc.
Japan modernized much like OTL and took over Sakhalin, Korea, Outer and Inner Manchuria, the Transbaikal region, Taiwan, and Hainan sometime between the 1890s and the aftermath of WWI thanks to victorious conflicts with Russia and China. The Japanese Empire managed to avoid a slide into extremist nationalism and militarism, and evolved into a liberal democracy. It granted a fair deal to its overseas territories, with citizenship, enfranchisement, and a reasonable balance between assimilation and cultural autonomy, quite possibly even EU-style federal autonomy. Depending on the PoD, this might represent an entrenchment and evolution of Taisho democracy, or even the Meiji Restoration taking a more liberal character almost since the beginning. Due to the circumstances of its expansion, Japan either annexed Greater Manchuria, Taiwan, and Hainan before Han and Russian settlers got a chance to immigrate in any significant numbers, or they were expelled soon after the Japanese takeover. As a result, Manchuria, Taiwan, and Hainan became almost entirely populated by Japanese and Korean settlers or sufficiently loyal non-Han natives, and Japan faced no significant nationalist resistance to its rule in its overseas territories. Almost all anti-Communist subjects of the Japanese Empire agreed it granted them an acceptable deal, or at least a much better alternative than Russia and China.
Soon after a pro-Soviet regime took over in China, its leaders and their Soviet sponsors spared to effort to stabilize it, crush the warlords and the right-wing KMT elements, and build up its industrial and military power. The USSR and China cooperated to send generous amounts of support across their borders to Communist and radical nationalist anti-colonial insurgents in the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, and Southeast Asia with varying degrees of effectiveness. They tried doing the same in the rest of the European colonial empires and Latin America, but with limited success, due to more difficult logistic circumstances, the interventionist survelliance of the Western powers, and the backwardness of Africa. The Western powers reciprocated by providing support to whatever anti-Communist resistance survived in the Soviet bloc, even if the Communist regimes tried their best to suppress it with their usual brutality.
Communist and far-left-wing movements were marginalized and driven underground in Europe, the Anglosphere, and the Japanese Empire, thanks to a combination of right-wing ideological mobilization, judicial and police repression, sufficient economic stability, and the ruling elites pragmatically accepting to establish a sufficient amount of welfare-state social programs to keep the masses content. Due to different circumstances (avoidance or quick settlement of the reparations and war debt problems, European economic unification, greater trade cooperation between the capitalist powers, effects of social reforms) no equivalent of the Great Depression took place, and the Western world stayed sufficiently prosperous to ensure political stability. For similar reasons, and due to the Soviet threat working as a unifying element, post-WWI reconciliation and the European integration project won a solid consensus from the majority of the European public and across the Western world, and the EU faced no serious nationalist opposition in the mainstream political spectrum. Even most far-righters agreed it was better to work with the system and strive to bend it their way rather than seek to overthrow it and face the risk of throwing the gates open to the Red hordes.
Much like the USA, Japan aligned with the rest of the Western bloc in political, diplomatic, economic, and military terms even if it failed to form an official alliance with the Anglo-European coalition due to various issues. Britain, the USA, and Europe however agreed about its importance as an East Asian proxy to prevent expansion of Sino-Soviet influence. When the Soviet and Chinese leaders thought China was sufficiently strong to try, the Chinese army invaded Manchuria. The Chinese also tried to land in Taiwan and Hainan, but Japanese air-naval superiority made all such attempts utter failures. The USSR provided the Chinese generous non-fighting support, but avoided a direct intervention, at least unless it could be reasonably confident Britain and Europe were not going to backstab it, or it would win a general conflict. Moreover, TTL Soviet-Japanese border made a Soviet military build-up and intervention in the Far East even more logistically difficult than OTL, since the Trans-Siberian Railway was cut off at Irkutsk. Likewise, America, Britain, and Europe strongly supported the Japanese, but did not join the fight. The conflict considerably increased tensions between the blocs across Eurasia, and both the Soviets and the Anglo-European alliance intensified rearmament and military preparedness. To a slightly lesser degree, so did America.
Due to TTL circumstances, the Western powers (including Japan) were going to cling to pre-WWII liberal-democratic standards of behavior in warfare. This more or less means established laws of war between 'civilized' powers, varying degrees of ruthless repression of resistance in 'colonial' conflicts, but no equivalent of Nazi- or Showa Japan-style atrocities. On the other hand, the Communist security forces could be expected to operate at their usual level of Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist brutality.
