izixs
Jr. Member
Posts: 1,279
Political Matrix E: -8.31, S: -6.51
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« on: July 15, 2011, 07:01:05 PM » |
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Hmm... I guess it might help to sketch out a brief timeline to help build an idea for how it got to this.
1870s - Second Civil War with the succession crisis out west. OTL California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, maybe Kansas, and the northern half of AZ and NM (the souther half would of gone with the south) get leveraged by local interests (folks that got rich off gold, cattle barons, mormons, and a few others) wishing to repeat the south's success so they can build a loosely aligned coalition of independent states to further their own interests. The mix of economic and religious justification for the split fed into the fears of the rest of the country that this war wasn't worth it given the horrors of the first civil war. And so after a couple years of fighting an agreement is had that lets those states leave.
1880s - Massive political turmoil as Republicans regroup behind the idea that the country can't simply fall apart. Democrats are very disorganized and are blamed for the civil wars. A split in the Republican party between those who okayed the peace of the second civil war and the national solidarity wing leads to the later breaking off and forming the Union Party. By decades end the Democrats had been absorbed almost entirely by the Republicans and Unionists.
1890s - Unionists gain power for most the decade. Govern as classical liberals in most respects but push heavily for federal control and militarism. Unease with the confederacy and the western league peaks and another war is feared. Confederacy becomes allied with the UK. Spanish American war happens similar to OTL except the US maintains strong and direct control over Cuba and the Philippines gain independence. Hawaii is not annexed.
1900s - Unionists maintain power. Teddy Roosevelt is president for a couple terms and makes lots of national parks. A strong socialist party tries to take off but doesn't get very far. Confederacy ends slavery.
1910s - WW1 takes off in a fashion similar to OTL. The Confederacy joins the UK and France early on. Italy ends up siding with Germany and Austria-Hungary. Russia has its revolution. Still dominating the US landscape, the Unionists push for siding against the Confederacy (and thus against the UK and France) but are pushed out of power before they can move the country into war. The war wages on for longer then in OTL especially on the Russian front as with the aid of Italy the central powers refuse to let Russia leave the war and dig deep into the bear.
1920s - The French and Confederate invasion of Italy starts to bring the war to a close. Germany gets beat back on the western front and in 1924 peace is made between the allies (minus Russia) and central powers. The peace is devastating to Germany and most of the western half of the country is broken off to form the Rhine Republic complete with Allies puppet government. The war with Russia ends soon after with the various countries that emerged after the 1917 revolution plus a few others as the combination of desperate German eastern front and a weak Soviet group leads to the near dissolution of western Russia. The US, having stayed out of the war enters a depression earlier then OTL. The Republicans are blamed and the Unionists take over control again.
1930s - The Unionists flounder at building any sort of economic recovery system and are soon reviled as much as the Republicans. Fringe third parties threaten to move into the majority and the 1936 election has a five way split in the electoral college between Republican, Union, Socialist, Progressive, and American Nationalist parties. The highly divided congress eventually settles on a Progressive president (could be FDR but probably someone else given the butterflys about). The Western League splits up and the would be states of the southwest each go their separate ways. A couple become strong allies of the US, just short of wanting to come back. The great depression hits Europe hard. France, Austria, Italy, Rhine, Poland, and eventually the UK all see the rise of fascist parties while other countries (Germany, Hungary, Romania, Latvia, and Spain) end up having more communist themed parties. The Republic of Russia oddly enough establishes a fairly democratic society as it seeks to escape the horrors of the Tsar, Soviets, and WW 1. A Hitler like figure does come to power in Austria. Anti-semitism however plays a large role in the French and Rhine fascist regimes and less so out east. France, UK, and Rhine ally with Italy and Japan to form the True Alliance. Italy starts eating balkan nations and Poland eats Baltic nations and former bits of Russia.
1940s - Rhine invades Germany and WW 2 begins. France starts in on Germany's ally, Spain. Spain calls in Denmark and Russia and... well things get complicated. In the end the major European players on the anti-fascist side end up being Russia, Spain, and Sweden. The Pacific theater goes similar to how it went in OTL except the US gets pulled into the war not by the bombing of Pearl Harbor (Hawaii was the Republic of Hawaii... until it gets taken by Japan) but the bombing of Anchorage. The Confederacy ends up siding with the US as well as the western states.
The short of the war is that the US allies with Spain, Russia, et al and eventually win the day (around 1947 with the atomic bombings of Lyon and Kyoto). The peace treaty signed between the Allies and the True Alliance results in a massive reordering of the world. Spain would gain nominal control over spanish speaking areas that were a part of the hostilities as well as France, Cuba, and Puerto Rico (the later of which had been very unhappy under US rule and so the US was happy to see them go). Russia would gain back territories from True Alliance members that it had controlled before WW 1. Germany would be recreated as a liberal republic and would include Rhine, Austria, and the non-Russia parts of Poland. And the US would gain military rule over most of the british empire. The confederacy would pick up some sections but would quickly give them up.
With the wars eventual success, the Progressives become the dominate party in the US and absorb most the militaristic Unionists while the Republicans become the primary alternative again.
1950s - The US breaks off most the non-english speaking sections of the British Empire and quickly move to integrate Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland. Quebec is given independence. England proper, happy to be free of the fascists, is still a hot bed for most of the decade. The Progressives push hard for statehood of these territories and except for England all these areas are admitted as 'provisional' states by 1955. England is divided up into territorial governments. South Africa is granted independence after the apartheid system is dismantled completely.
In world events, Communists take control of China and begin to try to spread through the far east. Their primary adversaries become the Russians (who jointly occupy Japan with the US and California).
(more to come!)
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