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Description
Alright, here's another world based off of an old Scott Palter scenario. In it, the gimmick is that due to a mix of blustering plus the leader of a revolutionary faction in Mexico saying the wrong thing the United States stays out of the war in Europe to focus it's attention on points south.

As a result of this, the Great War ends in early 1918 following a second round of mutinies in French lines, the Russian revolution and red uprisings in the UK("Council of Edinburgh"). President Wilson's sole role in this is to negotiate something resembling a reasonable peace in the west -- Germany withdrawing from areas to the west of it's 1914 borders except for Liege, Luxemberg and Brey-Longway. Germany has won by exhaustion and default.

The 1920s and 30s see a continuation of the instability -- there are attempts from the west to overthrow the USSR, The long US war to bring order to Mexico, Japan retaining Manchuria and far east Siberia out of the russian civil war with the capstone to this era of instability being the red revolutions in Latin Europe in the mid 30s along with the Soviet-Ottoman war of 1940-42.

Since then, the world has been in a pattern of continual, if mild cold war but without serious hot wars -- the disorder of much of OTL's third world would not be tolerated. The price of this order is constant reintervention from the metropole into the colonies. The European empires rebel, with arms from Moscow or Paris but aren't lost(Yes, the colonial powers have felt a need to at least get local elites in some of the more 'advanced' areas on board -- India, Egypt, Ceylon and a couple of other areas have been granted dominion status.

Think of this as something like the world of L.A. Confidential, only a bit more prosperous and with lots of mid century-style "futuristic" or international style architecture. No internet or (civilian) comsats, but they've got good high-speed rail and lots of poorly kept up raygun gothic-style architecture.

***

The United States, while it's stuck in a near-permanent McCarthy era at least has rather less inequality than OTL, actually enforces anti-trust law and unlike the rest of the planet has real elections. Those features aside, it's a rather unpleasant place. Segregation is the law of the land in most of the nation, but at least parts of the north have tossed their laws and the south has relaxed from mid-century extremes of sticking black people in tiny rural 'homelands' to say 1930s missisipi of OTL. Northern Mexico, most of the non-french/british caribbean, the phillippines and Hawaii all remain ruled as colonial territories. Rump Mexico, Panama and the United Fruit-sponsored state of Central America are all de facto colonies.

Britain is trying to recover from fascism these days. The United Kingdom itself is whiter than OTL. Some of it's dominions like Canada or South Africa have moved to more dominant party status, rather than open one-party states while other areas like Australia due to a mix of location and paranoia are still more like mid-century Britain in terms of the level of fascism in place.

South Africa's governance is run by types who make OTL's National Party look like the ANC in comparison. South Africa's one-child policy for africans and two-child policy for coloreds is something that's seen as a bit 'funny' even in this unpleasant world -- a need to keep India on board meant that Indians in South Africa got reclassified as "white" in the 1990s.

Australia's government is celebrating the fifth anniversary of the extinction of the last known aboriginal language as "white Australia day".

Germany still leads Mitteleuropa, but at least isn't fascist these days. Yes, in this world relaxing to something like Salazar's junta is actually a liberatory move. It's not particularly racialist these days, since anyone who is pale enough and willing to learn German can move -- this is done in an effort to be able equal both the USSR and Latin People's Republic in power.

Mitteleuropa ranges from right-wing democracy to "occasionally has elections when opposition is safely jailed" to fascist to generic junta. The general atmosphere is grey, dreary and rather paranoid of the red menace.

North Italy is run by the heirs of Evola and is appropriately ghastly -- think North Korea, but with internal mixed economics, lots of religion and embarassing roman fetishism. Currently birthrates are dropping even despite the usage of rape-camps to "encourage" non-party women to get pregnant.

The Empire of Japan and it's northeast Asian puppets are all fascist states -- the Japanese jutna government managed to fully harden into Fascism and make it stick even to this day unlike the weaker attempts in both Britain or Germany.

The West African federation is a state founded from french exiles that has evolved from white supremacist fascism to non-racist, but still religiously discriminatory fascism -- everyone has equal rights in theory, but oddly the muslim minority never gets into the good jobs -- the fact that catholic Africans can get into the good jobs, while the more caucasian muslim arabs can't is seen as a bit odd by most.

The Soviet Union leads the Comintern. Things have relaxed to roughly 50s Khrustchev-type governance with Yugoslav or Hungarian economics, which considering the Stalin, Molotov, Rasputin and Oginin eras is a major improvement. Premier Fedoseev is a non-entity acceptable to Army and the KGB and is clearly accountable and down to first among equals rather than either absolute dictator like Stalin, Molotov and Rasputin or a Party ideologue who used naked fear and terror to maintain his grip like Oginin was.

The Latin People's Republic is the second major Comintern state and is a relatively pragmatic form of communist state given it's geography and relative lack of resources. Think more a Yugoslav or Hungarian-type communism rather than say OTL Soviet as the norm. The effort to create a common Latin culture by forcing people to learn Esperanto are being quietly dismantled given increasing resistance -- it's going the same way as the anti-religion campaigns of the 30s to 60s, if slower.

The government of the People's Democratic Progressive Federated Liberated African Worker's Republic of Congo is shaky and has a tenth of the population of OTL's Congo. A good chunk of Congo isn't safe to be even in given the expired bioweapons waste left lying around. The ideology of "left singularity" is the most extreme form of communism on the planet.

Argentina is pretty much a white North Korea, led by Che Guevara's son -- medical technology meant Che died in his mid 70s. Che II is proving to be as much of a "character" as his father was.

Like it's patron the soviet Union, The Democratic Republic of China has relaxed to 50s Maoist China levels of ghastliness, a clear step up from both it's initial north korea-tier governance, or the more moderate cultural revolution-era radicalism of the suceeding decades.

Indonesia is run as a multi-power codominion -- the oil, other resources and cheap labor all made it too useful to be allowed to go communist. That and the question of who'd get the spoils being too divisive of a question to answer properly.

Most of the third world remains in either de facto or de jure colonialism. This breeds an endless guerilla struggle, which in turn leads to repression.

***

Technology is three to four decades behind the real world in many areas due to there being much less of a force draft push than in our 20th century. Military or internal security technology is 30 years behind, while civilian technology is a full 40 years behind. The fact that most research or implementation is secret is a good part of why this lag exists. The second rreason why this lag exists is government paranoia -- despite being technically possible cable TV has been largely stopped in most nations for vague reasons along with the fact that incipiant personal computer revolutions have been stifled a couple times in the last decade on security grounds. One of the few areas where less of a lag exists is medicine, where investment in eugenics as justified more research into it, so it's actually only 20 years behind OTL.

The area with least of a lag would be various sorts of applied psychology, specifically those relating to propaganda or interrogration. Governments have quite an incentive in this paranoid world to do it. There are secret labs out in the nevada desert, Transylvania(The current german kaiser has a weird sense of humor), The Brazilian Amazon(conveniently near tropical plant research facilities!) among other places.

All states are garrison police states of one sort or another with many secret undergrounds, armed wings of semilegitnate parties, and COUNTINTELPRO type provocations. Essentially an endless McCarthy era here in the United States and an endless version of the German WWI military state in the rest of Europe under various color banners, Fascism in both Britain and Japan along with the communist police states. Civil liberties are VERY restricted. Morals legislation, censorship and eugenics are very strong. The health nazis have real police backing in a way not seen in OTL. Difference is BAD. The group norm is good.

The flipside of the increased (State-enforced) conformism is that all societies do rather more for the bottom and do more to repress conspicious consumption for the wealthy through taxes on excess profits, sumptuory laws, luxury good taxes, restrictions on frivolous business. Of course, what these societies do isn't so much measures to attempt equality or to provide for more open advancement, but paternalistic measures -- there are extensive benefits but only if you work, and people who get on the dole find their lives scrutinized. Labor organizers trying to work outside of the system find themselves in secret prisons.

Economic policy tends towards the statist. Corporations are either part of the state or actively repressed, with the same applying for labor organization. This of course ranges from an expanded New Deal in the United States, Fascist-style corporatism in the fascist bloc, 'national capitalism' in Germany to moderate, NEP-flavored communism in the red bloc. The idea that you could run major industries without state ownership would be seen as impractical and 'weird' by most. Treasonous by some, in fact.

Description
Alright, here's another world based off of an old Scott Palter scenario. In it, the gimmick is that due to a mix of blustering plus the leader of a revolutionary faction in Mexico saying the wrong thing the United States stays out of the war in Europe to focus it's attention on points south.

As a result of this, the Great War ends in early 1918 following a second round of mutinies in French lines, the Russian revolution and red uprisings in the UK("Council of Edinburgh"). President Wilson's sole role in this is to negotiate something resembling a reasonable peace in the west -- Germany withdrawing from areas to the west of it's 1914 borders except for Liege, Luxemberg and Brey-Longway. Germany has won by exhaustion and default.

The 1920s and 30s see a continuation of the instability -- there are attempts from the west to overthrow the USSR, The long US war to bring order to Mexico, Japan retaining Manchuria and far east Siberia out of the russian civil war with the capstone to this era of instability being the red revolutions in Latin Europe in the mid 30s along with the Soviet-Ottoman war of 1940-42.

Since then, the world has been in a pattern of continual, if mild cold war but without serious hot wars -- the disorder of much of OTL's third world would not be tolerated. The price of this order is constant reintervention from the metropole into the colonies. The European empires rebel, with arms from Moscow or Paris but aren't lost(Yes, the colonial powers have felt a need to at least get local elites in some of the more 'advanced' areas on board -- India, Egypt, Ceylon and a couple of other areas have been granted dominion status.

Think of this as something like the world of L.A. Confidential, only a bit more prosperous and with lots of mid century-style "futuristic" or international style architecture. No internet or (civilian) comsats, but they've got good high-speed rail and lots of poorly kept up raygun gothic-style architecture.

***

The United States, while it's stuck in a near-permanent McCarthy era at least has rather less inequality than OTL, actually enforces anti-trust law and unlike the rest of the planet has real elections. Those features aside, it's a rather unpleasant place. Segregation is the law of the land in most of the nation, but at least parts of the north have tossed their laws and the south has relaxed from mid-century extremes of sticking black people in tiny rural 'homelands' to say 1930s missisipi of OTL. Northern Mexico, most of the non-french/british caribbean, the phillippines and Hawaii all remain ruled as colonial territories. Rump Mexico, Panama and the United Fruit-sponsored state of Central America are all de facto colonies.

Britain is trying to recover from fascism these days. The United Kingdom itself is whiter than OTL. Some of it's dominions like Canada or South Africa have moved to more dominant party status, rather than open one-party states while other areas like Australia due to a mix of location and paranoia are still more like mid-century Britain in terms of the level of fascism in place.

South Africa's governance is run by types who make OTL's National Party look like the ANC in comparison. South Africa's one-child policy for africans and two-child policy for coloreds is something that's seen as a bit 'funny' even in this unpleasant world -- a need to keep India on board meant that Indians in South Africa got reclassified as "white" in the 1990s.

Australia's government is celebrating the fifth anniversary of the extinction of the last known aboriginal language as "white Australia day".

Germany still leads Mitteleuropa, but at least isn't fascist these days. Yes, in this world relaxing to something like Salazar's junta is actually a liberatory move. It's not particularly racialist these days, since anyone who is pale enough and willing to learn German can move -- this is done in an effort to be able equal both the USSR and Latin People's Republic in power.

Mitteleuropa ranges from right-wing democracy to "occasionally has elections when opposition is safely jailed" to fascist to generic junta. The general atmosphere is grey, dreary and rather paranoid of the red menace.

North Italy is run by the heirs of Evola and is appropriately ghastly -- think North Korea, but with internal mixed economics, lots of religion and embarassing roman fetishism. Currently birthrates are dropping even despite the usage of rape-camps to "encourage" non-party women to get pregnant.

The Empire of Japan and it's northeast Asian puppets are all fascist states -- the Japanese jutna government managed to fully harden into Fascism and make it stick even to this day unlike the weaker attempts in both Britain or Germany.

The West African federation is a state founded from french exiles that has evolved from white supremacist fascism to non-racist, but still religiously discriminatory fascism -- everyone has equal rights in theory, but oddly the muslim minority never gets into the good jobs -- the fact that catholic Africans can get into the good jobs, while the more caucasian muslim arabs can't is seen as a bit odd by most.

The Soviet Union leads the Comintern. Things have relaxed to roughly 50s Khrustchev-type governance with Yugoslav or Hungarian economics, which considering the Stalin, Molotov, Rasputin and Oginin eras is a major improvement. Premier Fedoseev is a non-entity acceptable to Army and the KGB and is clearly accountable and down to first among equals rather than either absolute dictator like Stalin, Molotov and Rasputin or a Party ideologue who used naked fear and terror to maintain his grip like Oginin was.

The Latin People's Republic is the second major Comintern state and is a relatively pragmatic form of communist state given it's geography and relative lack of resources. Think more a Yugoslav or Hungarian-type communism rather than say OTL Soviet as the norm. The effort to create a common Latin culture by forcing people to learn Esperanto are being quietly dismantled given increasing resistance -- it's going the same way as the anti-religion campaigns of the 30s to 60s, if slower.

The government of the People's Democratic Progressive Federated Liberated African Worker's Republic of Congo is shaky and has a tenth of the population of OTL's Congo. A good chunk of Congo isn't safe to be even in given the expired bioweapons waste left lying around. The ideology of "left singularity" is the most extreme form of communism on the planet.

Argentina is pretty much a white North Korea, led by Che Guevara's son -- medical technology meant Che died in his mid 70s. Che II is proving to be as much of a "character" as his father was.

Like it's patron the soviet Union, The Democratic Republic of China has relaxed to 50s Maoist China levels of ghastliness, a clear step up from both it's initial north korea-tier governance, or the more moderate cultural revolution-era radicalism of the suceeding decades.

Indonesia is run as a multi-power codominion -- the oil, other resources and cheap labor all made it too useful to be allowed to go communist. That and the question of who'd get the spoils being too divisive of a question to answer properly.

Most of the third world remains in either de facto or de jure colonialism. This breeds an endless guerilla struggle, which in turn leads to repression.

***

Technology is three to four decades behind the real world in many areas due to there being much less of a force draft push than in our 20th century. Military or internal security technology is 30 years behind, while civilian technology is a full 40 years behind. The fact that most research or implementation is secret is a good part of why this lag exists. The second rreason why this lag exists is government paranoia -- despite being technically possible cable TV has been largely stopped in most nations for vague reasons along with the fact that incipiant personal computer revolutions have been stifled a couple times in the last decade on security grounds. One of the few areas where less of a lag exists is medicine, where investment in eugenics as justified more research into it, so it's actually only 20 years behind OTL.

The area with least of a lag would be various sorts of applied psychology, specifically those relating to propaganda or interrogration. Governments have quite an incentive in this paranoid world to do it. There are secret labs out in the nevada desert, Transylvania(The current german kaiser has a weird sense of humor), The Brazilian Amazon(conveniently near tropical plant research facilities!) among other places.

All states are garrison police states of one sort or another with many secret undergrounds, armed wings of semilegitnate parties, and COUNTINTELPRO type provocations. Essentially an endless McCarthy era here in the United States and an endless version of the German WWI military state in the rest of Europe under various color banners, Fascism in both Britain and Japan along with the communist police states. Civil liberties are VERY restricted. Morals legislation, censorship and eugenics are very strong. The health nazis have real police backing in a way not seen in OTL. Difference is BAD. The group norm is good.

The flipside of the increased (State-enforced) conformism is that all societies do rather more for the bottom and do more to repress conspicious consumption for the wealthy through taxes on excess profits, sumptuory laws, luxury good taxes, restrictions on frivolous business. Of course, what these societies do isn't so much measures to attempt equality or to provide for more open advancement, but paternalistic measures -- there are extensive benefits but only if you work, and people who get on the dole find their lives scrutinized. Labor organizers trying to work outside of the system find themselves in secret prisons.

Economic policy tends towards the statist. Corporations are either part of the state or actively repressed, with the same applying for labor organization. This of course ranges from an expanded New Deal in the United States, Fascist-style corporatism in the fascist bloc, 'national capitalism' in Germany to moderate, NEP-flavored communism in the red bloc. The idea that you could run major industries without state ownership would be seen as impractical and 'weird' by most. Treasonous by some, in fact.