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1950s Hyperpower US

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xsampa

Well-known member
In the fairly narrow window between 1945 and 1953 the US could be said to have approached hyperpower status with a weakened Soviet Union still recovering from WW2.

In scenarios like AANW and early 1950s Nuclear War scenarios, the Soviets, Chinese and economic competitors in Europe and Japan are either destroyed entirely or weakened.
In such a scenario how would US society realistically develop in a world where the USSR, Europe, East Asia etc. are mostly destroyed?
 
Without the Reds as an existiential threat perhaps the US might have dropped support for Old World dictators earlier, and actually shifted towards a old sort of "cooperate and learn about each other's cultures but definitely no multiculturalism or (immigration)" mentality that appeared in WW2 briefly instead of multiculturalism.

Re: Industrialization
The US let West Germany and Japan retain their industrial capacity because of geopolitical considerations, and US investors helped spur growth in the Asian tigers/China to varying degrees. Even without Europe/Japan/an organized Chinese state there are still markets investors could invest in to aid industrialization - even if out of purely selfish motive. However, the idea of the US promoting say African or Indian industrialization in tandem with a nonracist but anti-multiculturist attitude seems weird, if only considering the racial attitudes of the time.
 
This is an interesting scenario, one that isn't touched upon. With the "End of History" happening four decades earlier, only now that any potential competitors to America have been destroyed or weakened because of war (Europe, USSR, China etc.) I imagine America in the 1950s and 1960s to act sort of how it was like in the 1990s, i.e. "New World Order" and intervening in random countries on the basis of overthrowing dictators or stopping genocide. Of course after a while America will start to get too overconfident and eventually embroil themselves in an unwinnable war, though I don't really know where that would be. Without an immediate communist threat I can imagine America ignoring communism for the most part provided that the revolutions only happen in small countries which can easily be subjected to economic warfare, but military intervention is not needed.
 
As for American politics, without a "Cold War consensus" and an immediate threat I imagine the Civil Rights era would be one, delayed, mainly because there is no incentive to try and be morally superior to a rival seeing as how there is none, and two, bloodier as the South will try to use tactics even more hostile to the federal government's writ because without a Cold War there will be no accusations of "weakening America while it is struggling against the Communists".
 
lerk said:
As for American politics, without a "Cold War consensus" and an immediate threat I imagine the Civil Rights era would be one, delayed, mainly because there is no incentive to try and be morally superior to a rival seeing as how there is none, and two, bloodier as the South will try to use tactics even more hostile to the federal government's writ because without a Cold War there will be no accusations of "weakening America while it is struggling against the Communists".
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Less impetus for civil rights, certainly, but on the optimistic side it seems that the common charge that civil rights leaders and activists were Communists would carry less weight.

It also means that postwar Keynesianism would have to find a different outlet - and very possibly that the Sun Belt migration doesn’t happen, which in and of itself might have interesting implications for civil rights.
 
Wasn’t there a big cultural focus on SCIENCE and MODERNITY during that period?
So maybe there will be a technocratic counterculture movement that genuinely views the deaths of *WW3 as a reason to advocate for more impartial rule by scientists and servicemen instead of traditional democracy or autocracy with a focus on ending traditional racism/sexism as irrational.

Basically starshiptroopers as a *counterculture
 

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The defining thing about the end of WWII was that the United states was less then 10% of the worlds population but had accumulated more then 50% of the wealth. While WWIII probably knocks that around a little bit I don't think an era of undisputed American power is particularly different. There will still be the US tendency to play Imperial games in the developing world. It'll just be more naked this time.

I don't think that the sort-of fascism of Starship Troopers (A book I love) or Technocracy or anything will bloom in any positive sense, not that I think they could ever actually be positive, because the US goal will remain maintaining its own power.
 
Japhy said:
The defining thing about the end of WWII was that the United states was less then 10% of the worlds population but had accumulated more then 50% of the wealth. While WWIII probably knocks that around a little bit I don't think an era of undisputed American power is particularly different. There will still be the US tendency to play Imperial games in the developing world. It'll just be more naked this time.

I don't think that the sort-of fascism of Starship Troopers (A book I love) or Technocracy or anything will bloom in any positive sense, not that I think they could ever actually be positive, because the US goal will remain maintaining its own power.
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But does this help or hinder the Civil rights movement?
 
xsampa said:
But does this help or hinder the Civil rights movement?
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There aren't any cut corners on Civil Rights. Booker T. Washington already tried that. It was always going to have to be a hard and difficult road.
 
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Japhy said:
The defining thing about the end of WWII was that the United states was less then 10% of the worlds population but had accumulated more then 50% of the wealth. While WWIII probably knocks that around a little bit I don't think an era of undisputed American power is particularly different. There will still be the US tendency to play Imperial games in the developing world. It'll just be more naked this time.

I don't think that the sort-of fascism of Starship Troopers (A book I love) or Technocracy or anything will bloom in any positive sense, not that I think they could ever actually be positive, because the US goal will remain maintaining its own power.
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Perhaps the devastation of Europe leads to a relaxation of immigration restrictons?
 
xsampa said:
Less Europeans to immigrate
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That happened IOTL and it still took until 1965 to end Quota Immigration.

If this is about creating something like the Cultural 50s without the negative aspects I don't think that's a really workable goal.
 
xsampa said:
To what extent will the *counterculture derive inspiration from Asian cultures ITTL?
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It already did to a huge extent - if anything I'd imagine that inspiration would be heightened, if India and Southeast Asia are relatively unscathed and there's a decent amount of cultural and economic exchange between that region and the States.
 
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