Problem with that is that Earth will grow a lot more divided. Of we have multiple Superpowers, then each will have their own spheres of indluence.
Your choice and style of study site approach works just fine. You're all clear.
It might grow more divided, or, without the rampant idiot-balling of the KGB and CIA deliberately causing tension to rise, people might be more willing to extend some trust to one another, at least on the surface.
A cripplingly bad roll saw Stalin popped, despite doing a SECOND roll to prevent it, and another roll to retain the Soviet OTL course. From there most of the 'member republics' saw a chance to break away from an overlord that had been increasingly brutal, and the new Russian leadership were perfectly happy to not have the issue of dealing with angry client states that weren't necessarily even loyal Russians to begin with.
I mean, I guess that's possible if very anomalously peaceful.* But, frankly, its been a month. Its far too early for everything to have shaken out into the new status quo and its especially too early for "the west" to be convinced that the reformists will actually last, much less come through on their promises. We'd be at the "moderates formed a provisional government last week and everything hasn't exploded yet" stage.
Basically, things fell to pieces so quickly and publicly at Moscow that by the time the moderates could get the dust to settle, most of their client states went through cascading secessions. They couldn't really even start committing energy to pull some back in without the rest of the states that broke away ganging up on them out of the fear they'd be gobbled back up next, or petitioning the west for direct intervention, which they would not be able to handle. About their only good roll was in how their new administration handled the breakaways, by setting up a series of defensive promises and guarantees that, outwardly, would not look TOO much different from the big red blob as it was before, sans most of Asia, and would also be more diplomatically palatable to the west.
The social dems were already gaining ground thanks to the project's prior contributions, but with some of the Soviet stuff cropping up in the beginning of the month, the Republicans' 'protect us from the reds' platform fell flat on it's face DAYS before the ballot boxes opened. It's hard to take a threat seriously when their own cloak and dagger people literally shoot their own head of state in the head.
I mean, the problem with that is that the social dems gaining ground in September doesn't matter much if all of the primaries were done by June or July. We just didn't start early enough for Social Democrats to win the 1950 election when the PoD is in September, because the internal party fights and final candidate slates are done by then.
The discovery of the gate prompted some major technological advances that I refused to ignore because the entire point of starting this early in OTL is to see the butterflies fly free. Social dems and progressive elements saw more popularity in the primary because it was harder to deny that those advances didn't provide profit to the government, or dramatically improve the lives of the average American. With two major planks of the republican platform straight up vanished overnight right before the voting commences, they saw landslide defeats in swing states and even several narrow losses in red states.
You do know that for a American, those are the same as communism especially at that time? It's like how you talked about Europe uniting into a single nation from the perspective of an American.
The trouble is, that you yourself are right now talking out of the Real Life Second Red Scare Zeitgeist that truly got going only in OTL 1955. We can thank Stalin and the GOP for it. And this Zeitgeist just died in the crib ITL, getting poisoned, stabbed, strangled and head loped off. Multiple things killed it: things like the economy doing immensivelly better and Stalin dying at the same time.
McCarthy's career would need a sarcophagus to revive it, at this point. He's still got 2 years in his seat, but he's pretty much the laughingstock of D.C., and the embarrassment of Wisconsin. The insidious Red Menace literally blew up in his face, and one high profile member of Truman's staff retorted to an accusation of communist sympathies with, "Even the soviets didn't like communism, why would I?" The retort made headlines in several major papers that saw a chance to lampoon him.
Yeah, that's what I wanted to say too, but I see I got ninja'd. Without things like NATO, things will be like pre-WW2.
Honestly, I found it probably less surprising than I should have...
AKA: We cannot do WW3 that destroys Earth's civilization. Because then a random Goa'uld explorer will mop up the survivors.
Part of it was Stalin's paranoia at alien involvement ratcheting his sociopathic behavior up to 15. He pressured his people hard with practically Orwellian surveillance policies, seeing secret aliens behind every corner and suspecting every one of his political rivals of having some other alien artifact that might be more practically useful than his. Recording techniques derived from DHD data storage were perhaps months from turning Moscow into a panopticon of cameras and audio recording, all slated to pass Stalin's desk personally, and those of his most fanatical followers.
Except also extreme paranoia of infiltrators( which is actually somewhat justified considering what we are dealing with), which well...
I'm surprised that the KGB was involved, seeing as how it was only founded in 1954, after Stalin's death and Beria being purged. Clearly some sort of time-travel shenanigans are at work.
Or it was formed under different context because of the discovery of aliens. 🤷♂️I'm surprised that the KGB was involved, seeing as how it was only founded in 1954, after Stalin's death and Beria being purged. Clearly some sort of time-travel shenanigans are at work.
