Alternate History General Discussion

[Venocara]

The United Kingdom had no coherent view of what it wanted to do after World War II and seems almost to have resigned itself to the status of an American satellite state. In less than twenty years the United Kingdom went from being a global superpower in control of the world's reserve currency and largest source of uranium (source) into being a second tier power reduced to begging the United States to not destroy its economy (source) and to be allowed an independent nuclear deterrent (source). The United States has had a habit of strong arming its allies going all the way back to World War I and the British were naive in thinking that they could somehow steer it the way they wanted instead of recognizing that they were the ones being steered.

France might have been an empire in decline but it knew it didn't want to become entrapped in the gravity well of the Anglo-American system. It pursued its own strategic interests and independent foreign policy. France has its own independent nuclear infrastructure so it doesn't need to depend on anyone else for nuclear deterrence or energy (its one of the world's largest electricity exporters). It doesn't also doesn't have any foreign military bases on its soil. Its coherent industrial policy has allowed it to retain major heavy industries, including shipbuilding and an aerospace industry.

I really don’t think he’s been rude at all, I think he’s absolutely spot on, it’s an excellent analysis. France suffered from the effects of the war far worse than we did and West Germany was almost completely destroyed but even with political systems that could be rather unstable at times they both recovered far better than we did and they both have a more favourable relationship with the US. It would have been very hard for us to try to compete with the Americans in any field post-1945 (the potential to do that was wasted in 1939-41 by missing so many opportunities to noticeably shorten the war) but that didn’t necessarily mean that we had to take on the near-subservient role that we have. There are so many possibilities to kick on from 1945 to 1956, and largely due to incompetence we failed to take advantage of any of them, whereas France did, and by the time Macmillan took charge he’d been so shaken by Eisenhower’s Suez threats that he’d lost any vision of an independent future for Britain.

 

[Stateless]

Without WW1, would countries outside of the Great Powers acquire nukes?

Outside our timeline's great powers, or outside the alternate timeline's great powers? Yes to both. Either there are different great powers (Germany, Japan, A-H) who are driven to developing nuclear weapons for the same reason our timeline's great powers did. Or different non-great powers develop nuclear weapons for the same reasons our timeline's non-great powers did or considered doing (Israel, South Africa, Sweden, Brazil).

 

[Charles EP M.]

Successive governments for sixty years were very clear that we wanted to get into the European project and plant a big Union Jack there & have a loud voice within Brussells. That's one of the big coherent decisions about Britain's place in the world and where it wants to go, one of the few things united Wilson and Thatcher.

 

[Venocara]

Successive governments for sixty years were very clear that we wanted to get into the European project and plant a big Union Jack there & have a loud voice within Brussells. That's one of the big coherent decisions about Britain's place in the world and where it wants to go, one of the few things united Wilson and Thatcher.

Well not really. You had Eden’s failure to sign the Treaty of Rome or bring France into the Commonwealth, you had Macmillan’s leap into the arms of the Americans, you had Heath’s failure to convince anyone that we were committed to Europe before proceeding to offer a referendum on it to save himself from the Eurosceptics in his party. Then you had Thatcher’s mild Euroscepticism and unwillingness to go too far with the European project, Major’s temporary abandonment of the ERM, Blair’s unwillingness to do any that might jeopardise his popularity (unless of course the Americans wanted it), and finally Cameron’s continuous attempts to appease the Eurosceptics in his party to save his skin. Our policy on Europe much like our policy on nearly everything other than our “Special Relationship“ has been a confused mess.

 

[Charles EP M.]

They all had different ideas (and ability to pull those ideas off...!) and political situations they were in, but you still have them predominantly trying to get into Europe, to stay in Europe, and get Europe to be more like what the UK wanted from it (which PMs and parties differed on what that would mean). Even Heath's problems are in the context of trying to get entry and to head off his eurosceptics, and Cameron was very much hoping to win the referendum. It's the most consistent idea British governments have had outside of "can Northern Ireland become less violent and everyone get along now?", where governments have different ideas of how they want to achieve that or what it'd look like and who should be talked to about it, but they all definitely wanted it to happen and now want it to keep happening.

 

[Time Enough]

Major’s temporary abandonment of the ERM

Major was incredibly strong proponent of the ERM and stuck with it past the point which most more political astute folks would realise things were fucked. The only other person who supported it as openly was amusingly John Smith (With Kinnock having plans in place for if Smith chucked the baby out with the bath over devaluing).

 

[Venocara]

They all had different ideas (and ability to pull those ideas off...!) and political situations they were in, but you still have them predominantly trying to get into Europe, to stay in Europe, and get Europe to be more like what the UK wanted from it (which PMs and parties differed on what that would mean). Even Heath's problems are in the context of trying to get entry and to head off his eurosceptics, and Cameron was very much hoping to win the referendum. It's the most consistent idea British governments have had outside of "can Northern Ireland become less violent and everyone get along now?", where governments have different ideas of how they want to achieve that or what it'd look like and who should be talked to about it, but they all definitely wanted it to happen and now want it to keep happening.

Major was incredibly strong proponent of the ERM and stuck with it past the point which most more political astute folks would realise things were fucked. The only other person who supported it as openly was amusingly John Smith (With Kinnock having plans in place for if Smith chucked the baby out with the bath over devaluing).

Even if we assume that every PM from Macmillan to Cameron was an ardent believer in the European project and firmly believed that we should integrate into it (which I absolutely do not believe), in the end as a result of their decisions and general incompetence they were all failures, because we’ve abandoned the project. In fact, we are worse off now then we were in 1957 from an international perspective: we have lukewarm relationships with both Europe and the Commonwealth (who we turned our backs on for the Americans and then the Europeans) and to top it off unlike in 1957 we’re tied to a superpower on the decline. At least back then the Americans were clearly in the ascendancy, this is very much not the case now.

 

[Charles EP M.]

Ah, but "it failed in the long run" is not the same as not having a coherent idea throughout different governments. Things eventually failing or changing (which often could be considered "failure" to a time traveller) is the way all political projects go in the end.

 

[Venocara]

Ah, but "it failed in the long run" is not the same as not having a coherent idea throughout different governments. Things eventually failing or changing (which often could be considered "failure" to a time traveller) is the way all political projects go in the end.

Bringing back the comparisons with France and Germany, it is clear to see that they actually had coherent ideas and that they knew what they were doing consistently because we can see the fruits of it. France imagined itself taking a leading role in Europe from the beginning and they succeeded. Germany imagined itself taking a leading role in Europe from the beginning and they succeeded. That was always their goal and knew what they had to do to achieve it. In the same time, Britain went from trying to be an equal ally to the Americans to trying to be its mistress to trying to move closer to Europe whilst still being America’s mistress to trying to lead Europe to then moving away from it, and in almost every pursuit Britain failed to some degree. I’m really not seeing the coherency here, I’m only seeing incompetence.

 

[Elektronaut]

Their actual personal opinions varied enormously (Wilson, Callaghan and Thatcher at the time of their premierships were all moderately sceptical for instance) but all the PMs since Heath at least, while in office, held to a pretty coherent and continuous strategic view of the UK being at the centre of the three poles of the EEC/EU, America and the Commonwealth. I don't know what the point of saying 'I don't like it/think it was misguided, therefore it didn't exist' is because that's clearly not true. It was a pretty settled consensus for nearly fifty years with opponents to it generally on the margins.

 

[Venocara]

I don't know what the point of saying 'I don't like it/think it was misguided, therefore it didn't exist' is because that's clearly not true

I don’t know how you’ve managed to derive Euroscepticism from my post but the fact of the matter is if the plan was to be a leading member of the EU, the centre of the Commonwealth and equal partners with the Americans why hasn’t this happened? France has managed to do essentially this with their Community in place of our Commonwealth and they came from a worse position post-war. I can’t believe I’m saying this but CDG always knew that we weren’t truly committed to the European project, and with all of our antics with joining and Maastricht and the ERM and the Euro and Lisbon and everything else we’ve proven him right. Our relationship with the Commonwealth is lukewarm and our relationship with the Americans probably could be better. If there was a plan, it was half-brained, half-hearted and very poorly executed.

 

[Charles EP M.]

That's arguing we didn't do well with a plan - which is more true on a long-term arc and hindsight, if you looked another time you might say "this has mostly worked, the UK government has its feet under the table and got a nice fat rebate" - more than we didn't have a plan though.

 

[Elektronaut]

I don’t know how you’ve managed to derive Euroscepticism from my post but the fact of the matter is if the plan was to be a leading member of the EU, the centre of the Commonwealth and equal partners with the Americans why hasn’t this happened? France has managed to do essentially this with their Community in place of our Commonwealth and they came from a worse position post-war. I can’t believe I’m saying this but CDG always knew that we weren’t truly committed to the European project, and with all of our antics with joining and Maastricht and the ERM and the Euro and Lisbon and everything else we’ve proven him right. Our relationship with the Commonwealth is lukewarm and our relationship with the Americans probably could be better. If there was a plan, it was half-brained, half-hearted and very poorly executed.

Again, the fact it ultimately failed and gave way to Brexit doesn't mean it wasn't a fairly settled and serious consensus for nearly fifty years. It wasn't a "plan" because that's not how countries work, but the way you're talking about France and Germany it seems like you think someone could have flipped a switch at the end of WW2 in Britain. (Which is an odd presumption given you're citing de Gaulle, as if nothing was contested on the French side) On that assumption, then yes, whoever was asleep at the switch probably would look incompetent. But that's not how things work in real life.

It failed because people don't have the benefit of hindsight, which is also why pretty much the entire political establishment were hostile to intergration in the forties and fifties.

I don't think I implied euroscepticsm. In the UK saying our entire membership was a strategic failure is however only ever an anti-EU position or a federalist one and I think I left room for both. But I really wouldn't want to guess which direction you were coming from this at.

 

[Neal]

Newspeak was designed as a “simplified” version of English for dystopian purposes, but its phonology and morphology was not simplified, the former being especially surprising since Oceania includes South America which mostly spoke Spanish and Portuguese which have simpler fônoloji den Olespik.

Morphologically it would be something like: Two day ago me operate put document in memory hole

 

[Charles EP M.]

It would make more sense that way, yeah, though then it'd be harder for the 1948 audience to read and understand the sentences. We can handwave and say that was phase two.

(We never do see or here much from the South Americans in 1984. Have they all been forced to learn English?)

 

[Persephone]

The world deserves a Roscoe Conkling, International Prizefighter TL. That is all.

 

[Neal]

It would make more sense that way, yeah, though then it'd be harder for the 1948 audience to read and understand the sentences. We can handwave and say that was phase two.

(We never do see or here much from the South Americans in 1984. Have they all been forced to learn English?)

The general lack of interest of SpecFi, and more damningly, Fantasy writers in languages is irritating. Why nothing at least vaguely resembling, say Mandarin or Japanese in phonology instead of random apostrophes?

 

[JesterBL]

Newspeak was designed as a “simplified” version of English for dystopian purposes, but its phonology and morphology was not simplified, the former being especially surprising since Oceania includes South America which mostly spoke Spanish and Portuguese which have simpler fônoloji den Olespik.

Morphologically it would be something like: Two day ago me operate put document in memory hole

Does simplifying the grammar serve a political purpose? Did the language of euphemism in the Soviet Union simplify the grammar?

 

[Neal]

Does simplifying the grammar serve a political purpose? Did the language of euphemism in the Soviet Union simplify the grammar?

It was IIRC inspired by Basic English which wells regarded as dystopian

 

[Neal]

Because it's a lot easier to do random apostrophes on a keyboard not set up for Mandarin or Japanese.

For the romanization of these languages?