- Location
- Tamaki Makaurau
In honour of the apparent detente between the Koreas, and also Donald Trump is there, I thought it might be interesting to discuss scenarios in which North Korea isn't this uniquely batshit pariah state that everyone knows at least one incredibly awful thing about.
You can interpret the moot any way you like: Communist states adopting an own-brand totalitarian ideology; awful countries that only survive because they're bankrolled by a single major power; states with a near-deified family of rulers (so, basically just if Turkmenbashi had a competent son); halves of nations in a frozen conflict with the other half; anything.
I'll get the ball rolling: Salazar lives longer, meaning that the civil wars in Angola and Mozambique take longer to resolve, meaning that the Rhodesian Bush War isn't really a thing, meaning that Rhodesia might possibly continue as a pariah state until China starts to not care about ideology and start to care quite a lot about natural resources in Africa, meaning that minority rule is subsidised by Beijing. And even if the Rhodesian aspect isn't hugely plausible, the Estado Novo might survive and retain those two colonies, whose rebel forces were on the decline in the early 70s.
You can interpret the moot any way you like: Communist states adopting an own-brand totalitarian ideology; awful countries that only survive because they're bankrolled by a single major power; states with a near-deified family of rulers (so, basically just if Turkmenbashi had a competent son); halves of nations in a frozen conflict with the other half; anything.
I'll get the ball rolling: Salazar lives longer, meaning that the civil wars in Angola and Mozambique take longer to resolve, meaning that the Rhodesian Bush War isn't really a thing, meaning that Rhodesia might possibly continue as a pariah state until China starts to not care about ideology and start to care quite a lot about natural resources in Africa, meaning that minority rule is subsidised by Beijing. And even if the Rhodesian aspect isn't hugely plausible, the Estado Novo might survive and retain those two colonies, whose rebel forces were on the decline in the early 70s.