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Reds! A Revolutionary Timeline

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Spartakrod said:
Venezuela and Arabia alone could supply the entirety of the planet, Canada, Nigeria etc are just gravy on top of that. Their oil supplies are basically completely fine.
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Sure, but not at this point in time. France and the UK don't have the industry to do so or the technology or wherewithal in the area to do so. You're thinking of this from a modern, 21st century perspective and not taking into account what it's going to cost France and England to maintain their colonies now that they aren't handing them off to America OR being sold tools/resources necessary to do so. They're going to be facing the problems Imperial Japan was facing in the lead up to World War II, abit to a lesser degree. Soon as the Second Revolutionary War ends: England and France are cut off cold turkey and have to play catch up as Communist and anti colonial forces across the globe take advantage of the situation; meaning they are using much of the forces and supplies they do have in order to maintain what they have, with every loss being something they can't recover, because they need those supplies elsewhere, and not towards this oil independence. In order to build up oil reserves without the America drug producer either they 'play nice' and bribe local populations into cooperating or unveil the first; neither is very efficient and grinds down an already slow process.

This is heartless kinda, but it bears mentioning again: America and to a much lesser degree Russia, despite the unparalleled loss of life, only suffered mostly superficial damage. Not only can they fight, they can do so unencumbered and with now a crack force. England and France are marching in like chain smokers, huffing and wheezing for breath before they get to the starting line. They are going to have a hard sell to continue fighting and hold onto German land, despite what that means for Capitalism in Europe in the coming decades. You mentioned the mad rush to through Europe that happened on the Western front in OTTL, but again that required one: an isolated Russia and two: untouched Capitalist forces (UK and America) to make pushing their claim dangerous.

The shoe isn't quite on the other foot, but number one doesn't apply whatsoever. I admit I stupidly suggested that Italy would be under Red control previously, when frankly America isn't going to on the African Front anymore, but I think you're totally ignoring the political and economic realities in this Alt History to draw stronger parallels to our own for dramatic flourishes and what not. France and the UK simply aren't going to want or have the means to fight. Fighting in Europe after Germany falls just default means surrendering their colonial empires for a risky war that essentially can only end if France and the UK succeed where Hitler and Napoleon failed.
 
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Overly optimistic projections of America/Comintern's chances of winning the Cold War early on and the FBU falls apart? Where did I see this discussion before? And how many times?

Every calculation has been made to buff up FBU's chances of surviving into the next century and America falling to communism in 1933 spells doom to their chances no matter how much they try anyway... but that early enough for them to be destroyed and it's world communism by 1960?

And it seems like there is also the fact that this is being seen from an IOTL perspective more than being admitted in regards to how Europe was only able to have some chance of trying to retain control of their colonial empires and achieve their economic miracles after the war is because of America's generosity of giving it Marshall Aid money.

A major point that's not been really explored in great detail is at this moment from the mid 1930s, even earlier; Britain and France have been starting to be more lenient in its colonies and dominions and are also providing them money and investment to industrialize. This is the flow of money and resources that otherwise IOTL have been going to China, which did not happen ITTL, but otherwise have went to the colonies and to Japan.

The FBU is slowly morphing into what Imperial Japan (the country being referred to in one example for some reason) was doing in pursuing a developmentalist path to its colonies.

And people are not listening, the Comintern is in no position to take advantage of any perceived situations after the war. Maybe people are not reading between the lines in the political party posts; the Comintern did attempt to try take advantage of certain things where they can see that they can push things further...(Horn of Africa)... and they failed.

And this is also not about using a 21st century perspective looking in. The 1930s revolutionary wave scared the heck enough of the British Empire to start actively look for other places where they can get oil in a way that they are going to be independent of America's oil... and they succeeded.

...If only we can start posting the history of how the Corporation for Hydrocarbons, Oil and Atomic Minerals (CHOAM) was established via LHB, who created the initial doc years ago.....
 
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I mean, the thing I'm really skeptical about isn't 1946, but basically how the FBU's Empire more or less keeps together for 60-70 years (with seeming hints that it'll just continue beyond that) just on the back of not-even-as-much-hypothetical-decolonization-as-OTL, since "neocolonialism without decolonization" isn't going to be as popular.

Them surviving the 1940s/50s is far from unlikely, however.
 
The Laurent said:
I mean, the thing I'm really skeptical about isn't 1946, but basically how the FBU's Empire more or less keeps together for 60-70 years (with seeming hints that it'll just continue beyond that) just on the back of not-even-as-much-hypothetical-decolonization-as-OTL, since "neocolonialism without decolonization" isn't going to be as popular.

Them surviving the 1940s/50s is far from unlikely, however.
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This is also pretty much my biggest skepticism. While the possession of India and other 'dominions' gives the FBU theoretically unlimited soldiers to fight its brush wars, one has to wonder how much patience does an Indian have fighting in Indochina, or a Nigerian fighting in Algeria has to fight and die in a guerrilla war simply because it benefits London's bottom line. Yes, American influence OTL did much to speed up decolonization, but let's be honest, people aren't too fond of foreign twits who come in and act like they own the place.

I can buy that the FBU liberates France and even parts of Germany and Italy because the French nationalists switched sides, and Axis pulled a gamer move and put all their troops against the Soviets, leaving their Western front basically defenseless, even if it does stretch believability a bit.

I cannot buy that the FBU can hold on to places like Algeria and large chunks of Africa indefinitely, or that India and Nigeria willingly become dominions rather than allied nations to London. We're talking about a system with institutionalized racism and cultural discrimination against the locals, with preference in careers and opportunities given to white Europeans over the locals. Especially since the FBU suckered many of the locals into fighting its wars in Europe in exchange for promises of freedom and independence, which they later reneged on.
 
Saint_007 said:
This is also pretty much my biggest skepticism. While the possession of India and other 'dominions' gives the FBU theoretically unlimited soldiers to fight its brush wars, one has to wonder how much patience does an Indian have fighting in Indochina, or a Nigerian fighting in Algeria has to fight and die in a guerrilla war simply because it benefits London's bottom line. Yes, American influence OTL did much to speed up decolonization, but let's be honest, people aren't too fond of foreign twits who come in and act like they own the place.

I can buy that the FBU liberates France and even parts of Germany and Italy because the French nationalists switched sides, and Axis pulled a gamer move and put all their troops against the Soviets, leaving their Western front basically defenseless, even if it does stretch believability a bit.

I cannot buy that the FBU can hold on to places like Algeria and large chunks of Africa indefinitely, or that India and Nigeria willingly become dominions rather than allied nations to London. We're talking about a system with institutionalized racism and cultural discrimination against the locals, with preference in careers and opportunities given to white Europeans over the locals. Especially since the FBU suckered many of the locals into fighting its wars in Europe in exchange for promises of freedom and independence, which they later reneged on.
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Like, holding it for the 1940s, 50s, and 60s? Sure. But if India's actually industrializing post-WWII (which they'd kinda have to in order to juice the FBU enough to stand up against the Comintern), what happens when they just outright wind up more industrially and agriculturally powerful than the people holding the whip?
 
Saint_007 said:
This is also pretty much my biggest skepticism. While the possession of India and other 'dominions' gives the FBU theoretically unlimited soldiers to fight its brush wars, one has to wonder how much patience does an Indian have fighting in Indochina, or a Nigerian fighting in Algeria has to fight and die in a guerrilla war simply because it benefits London's bottom line.
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.... Because it also benefits their bottom line (the dominions).

Yes, American influence OTL did much to speed up decolonization, but let's be honest, people aren't too fond of foreign twits who come in and act like they own the place.
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The dominions are in fact even freer ITTL to pursue developmentalist policies without having their governments being overthrown by Franco-British interests. They may have lingering external sovereignty connections to London via the Commonwealth of Nations and other international organizations... but doing Jacobo Arbenz policies will not get you kicked out for stepping out of line. There is no real equivalent to the Grand Area project of the CFR and U.S. State Department officials ITTL.

I can buy that the FBU liberates France and even parts of Germany and Italy because the French nationalists switched sides, and Axis pulled a gamer move and put all their troops against the Soviets, leaving their Western front basically defenseless, even if it does stretch believability a bit.
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The Western front is not necessarily defenseless and for sure, it started to look like it when the Falangists turns out to be not so incompetent and when the French nationalists started to switch sides.... but that's not how it works out... stayed tuned.

I cannot buy that the FBU can hold on to places like Algeria and large chunks of Africa indefinitely, or that India and Nigeria willingly become dominions rather than allied nations to London. We're talking about a system with institutionalized racism and cultural discrimination against the locals, with preference in careers and opportunities given to white Europeans over the locals. Especially since the FBU suckered many of the locals into fighting its wars in Europe in exchange for promises of freedom and independence, which they later reneged on.
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What is a dominion for you anyway...? See the bolded part. That's a "dominion"? Haven't you heard about the "white dominions" IOTL?

And for freedom and independence, see above regarding their economic autonomy.

The Laurent said:
Like, holding it for the 1940s, 50s, and 60s? Sure. But if India's actually industrializing post-WWII (which they'd kinda have to in order to juice the FBU enough to stand up against the Comintern), what happens when they just outright wind up more industrially and agriculturally powerful than the people holding the whip?
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The Indian economic elite knows instinctively that their position is going to be immediately threatened in any fall of Western Europe to the Reds. The Brazilian and Nigerian economic elites know about this as well.

That's why you don't see any equivalent of capitalistic "Third Worldism" developing ITTL.
 
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Libertad said:
The Indian economic elite knows instinctively that their position is going to be immediately threatened in any fall of Western Europe to the Reds. The Brazilian and Nigerian economic elites know about this as well.

That's why you don't see any equivalent of capitalistic "Third Worldism" developing ITTL.
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I'm still skeptical, because it feels too much like the achievement of "Capitalist Internationalism"*, which is of course a fable despite the shared mutual interests. Capitalism is defined in part by competition and hatred and the maintenance of oppressive structures.

And sure, Indian elites love most of those oppressive structures, but not the white supremacy kinda inherent in the FBU, for purely selfish reasons.

*Lasting and stable Capitalist Internationalism, that is, as opposed to the ratfuckery and backstabbing that the international capitalist order engages in IRL, with plenty of nationalism and attempts to fuck each other.
 
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The Laurent said:
I'm still skeptical, because it feels too much like the achievement of "Capitalist Internationalism", which is of course a fable despite the shared mutual interests. Capitalism is defined in part by competition and hatred and the maintenance of oppressive structures.

And sure, Indian elites love most of those oppressive structures, but not the white supremacy kinda inherent in the FBU, for purely selfish reasons.
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You would be surprised how much of that bolded part is not necessarily true.

Capitalist internationalism is not so much of a fable if this is what defines our own global order IOTL since 1945.

And stayed tuned about India. Terri has some stuff coming up.
 
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Libertad said:
You would be surprised how much of that bolded part is not necessarily true.

Capitalist internationalism is not so much of a fable if this is what defines our own global order IOTL since 1945.
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How could anyone look at IOTL and imagine, then, that India wouldn't try to fuck over Britain even if it was short-term gain for long term loss? Capitalist Internationalism of the sort happening IRL is very much a vicious rat race, rather than this harmonious United Front against the enemy that apparently continues without major cracks for decades.

The FBU should absolutely be falling apart by the 80s and 90s, let alone apparently at most declining somewhat in the 2000s and beyond.

E: Capitalism and the corporations that make up its own 'vanguard', after all, is driving the human race to an economic collapse from climate change despite this not being in their long-term interests. But somehow all the capitalists of the world set aside their differences (and not for a decade or two, but going on 7-8 decades) because they know if Europe falls, that'll be bad for them long term?
 
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The Laurent said:
How could anyone look at IOTL and imagine, then, that India wouldn't try to fuck over Britain? Capitalist Internationalism of the sort happening IRL is very much a vicious rat race, rather than this harmonious United Front against the enemy that apparently continues without major cracks for decades.

The FBU should absolutely be falling apart by the 80s and 90s, let alone apparently at most declining somewhat in the 2000s.
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This is why there is an intense focus on all the finer details of the current world war, because this world war defines the rest of the 20th century. There are quite a lot of stuff that's actually very different in different parts of the world even before this war began. One main fault in making this timeline is the fact that there are quite a lot of loopholes in it that has to be filled up and this do include the histories of other countries. A lot of this stuff are merely discussed but was not necessarily wrote down in big-time posts here yet...

For the bolded part, please read more about the finer stuff on Anglo-American relations and things like the Council of Foreign Relations and the Grand Area project because seeing those stuff will make you realize that in some ways, Lenin was right about the relationship between capitalism and imperialism.

Please see the situation more along economic and material matters, rather than this stuff about the racialized aspects of colonialism and you'll see...
 
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Libertad said:
This is why there is an intense focus on all the finer details of the current world war, because this world war defines the rest of the 20th century. There are quite a lot of stuff that's actually very different in different parts of the world even before this war began. One main fault in making this timeline is the fact that there are quite a lot of loopholes in it that has to be filled up and this do include the histories of other countries. A lot of this stuff are merely discussed but was not necessarily wrote down in big-time posts here yet...

For the bolded part; please read more about the finer stuff on Anglo-American relations and things like the Council of Foreign Relations and the Grand Area project because seeing those stuff will make you realize that in some ways, Lenin was right about capitalism and imperialism.

Please see the situation more along economic and material matters, rather than this stuff about the racialized aspects of colonialism and you'll see...
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The idea that I'm not seeing it along economic lines is annoying to me. Like, you talk about the Council of Foreign Relations and the Grand Area project, but the FBU is just plain--and I'm pretty sure this is canonical, too--in a worse position than America and the "free world" was OTL with regards to the Cold War.

Them being able to be even more organized and even more harmonious in the face of a worse situation and more pressure to defect seems to me unlikely. Capitalist systems are imperialist, yes I agree, but imperialism is not actually efficient even medium-term, especially in a situation where they're much worse off than OTL.
 
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The Laurent said:
The idea that I'm not seeing it along economic lines is annoying to me. Like, you talk about the Council of Foreign Relations and the Grand Area project, but the FBU is just plain--and I'm pretty sure this is canonical, too--in a worse position than America and the "free world" was OTL with regards to the Cold War.

Them being able to be even more organized and even more harmonious in the face of a worse situation and more pressure to defect seems to me unlikely. Capitalist systems are imperialist, but imperialism is not actually efficient even medium-term.
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Not necessarily true. I don't know how you are able to see it that way. There is a reason why Britain has been the leading world power before 1945 and it's much easier to keep its position without America around to give the baton to rather than have Britain fall faster.... I will not address the other sentences because this proposition alone is kind of problematic.
 
Libertad said:
Not necessarily true. I don't know how you are able to see it that way. There is a reason why Britain has been the leading world power before 1945 and it's much easier to keep its position without America around to give the baton to rather than have Britain fall faster.... I will not address the other sentences because this proposition alone is kind of problematic.
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...your argument is that China, all of Eastern Europe, America, a majority of South America, and Russia all together, and frankly far more economically and militarily powerful than OTL are... weaker than the USSR and Warsaw Pact OTL?
 
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The Laurent said:
...your argument is that China, all of Eastern Europe, America and Russia all together, and frankly more economically and militarily powerful than OTL are... weaker than the USSR and Warsaw Pact OTL?
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No. The argument is that the British Empire IOTL is a far more formidable entity than the USSR.... and look how the USSR for all of its fundamental flaws have managed to survive up to 1991 and may have been still surviving in other alternative realities. Now combine the British Empire with the French Empire that is not saddled with American wartime debt from TWO world wars and internal pressures to decolonize and this is a different story.
 
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Libertad said:
No. The argument is that the British Empire IOTL is a far more formidable entity than the USSR.... and look how the USSR for all of its fundamental flaws have managed to survive to 1991 and may have been still surviving in other alternative realities. Now combine the British Empire with the French Empire that is not saddled with American wartime debt from TWO world wars and internal pressures to decolonize and this is a different story.
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I mean, I was talking about them starting to collapse into the 1980s and 90s. But the FBU seems pretty stable as of the 2010s, or at least at most going through a few problems from what I can tell (based on the information we're given thus far), rather than the actual crises that I think should have been the order of the day since at least the 1990s.
 
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The Laurent said:
I mean, I was talking about them starting to collapse into the 1980s and 90s. But the FBU seems pretty stable as of the 2010s.
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Oh for sure, I can imagine for myself that the FBU is collapsing already at this moment that we are speaking of ... though I am not sure how you define this "collapse".

This is not canon but this is Sumeragi's perception of what's going on. Capitalism in Reds! by this time.... is not really capitalism anymore.
 
My own perspective is essentially that the nationalism of the elites of India and so on would basically demand they get independence. Now, after Independence they'd likely still ally with France and Britain, but the idea that they'd just nod along at being at least technically colonial subjects* because of the mutual interests of capitalism seems unlikely.

Obviously the actual outcome of 'independence but then immediately ally with Britain' isn't actually much different in material terms from what happens ITTL with Dominion status (and thus Leftists advocating Independence would be deeply disappointed at the outcome), but there are kinda big differences between the two when viewed through the lens of nationalism... which many people do believe in.

*And if that hasn't encouraged white supremacy in Britain, along with the fear of India 'dominating' the FBU with its unwashed masses, I don't know what would.
 
The Laurent said:
I mean, I was talking about them starting to collapse into the 1980s and 90s. But the FBU seems pretty stable as of the 2010s, or at least at most going through a few problems from what I can tell (based on the information we're given thus far), rather than the actual crises that I think should have been the order of the day since at least the 1990s.
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I could see the collapse starting in the 80s or 90s, but not being complete until 40 or even 50 years after the fact. I'm sure that the War on Terror is going to be noted in history books as the start of the collapse of the American empire, but I also expect that as a nation on paper we'll still exist by 2040.
 
The Laurent said:
My own perspective is essentially that the nationalism of the elites of India and so on would basically demand they get independence. Now, after Independence they'd likely still ally with France and Britain, but the idea that they'd just nod along at being at least technically colonial subjects* because of the mutual interests of capitalism seems unlikely.

Obviously the actual outcome of 'independence but then immediately ally with Britain' isn't actually much different in material terms from what happens ITTL with Dominion status (and thus Leftists advocating Independence would be deeply disappointed at the outcome), but there are kinda big differences between the two when viewed through the lens of nationalism... which many people do believe in.

*And if that hasn't encouraged white supremacy in Britain, along with the fear of India 'dominating' the FBU with its unwashed masses, I don't know what would.
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There are certain.... stuff and very big stuff coming up for India during this war that will totally destroy the Indian independence movement as it is familiar to many and will keep India as a dominion of the Franco-British Union for a few more decades.

I still don't understand the idea of gaining dominion status and it being technically a colony, which isn't the case.

And as for white supremacy's existence in Britain... People's perceptions of what is considered "white" ITTL is quite much, much different.
 
And what about places like Algeria, where a sizeable white elite rules the place? What will the FBU do about that? Allow the locals parity, or just support those already in charge? Cause I find it very unlikely they'd do the former, and the latter will just piss off the population, treated as second class citizens in their own home.

France's treatment of the Algerians has always been racist and a bit tone-deaf, trying to bury the local culture and people under its own, something which to this day France considers a good thing and tried to teach in schools at one point or another.
 
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