AH Gurps setting WW1 stilling going in 1964

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Honestly, no it doesn't. Over the long term, the United States is compelled by it's interests to do things like oppose Middle Eastern unification, Japanese expansion into Asia, Russian expansion anywhere and the development of Europe into an autonomous unified state. Any individual President who deviates from those interests will probably be a one-termer and his changes in policy will be reversed by the next guy.

Emphasis mine.
Why is the US so friendly with the EU, then? I haven't noticed anything like real hostility on the part of successive US administrations towards the EU becoming a 'United States of Europe.' If anything, we've tended to encourage that.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

Emphasis mine.
Why is the US so friendly with the EU, then? I haven't noticed anything like real hostility on the part of successive US administrations towards the EU becoming a 'United States of Europe.'

The EU was fundamentally an extension of NATO from the start. The United States went into Kosovo precisely so that that the EU wouldn't move toward autonomous united statehood, and become a military alliance, breaking away from NATO and the United States. The United States interests include fostering free trade among other nations, so the EU as it stands is in line with those interests. The EU as an actual nation, with a military and an independent united foreign policy? That, the US government doesn't want. The best way to prevent that, is not to be hostile. It's to be friendly. Very, very friendly.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

That's assuming more expansion and success for the Germans than I had assumed, actually. Europe isn't the whole world, and dominating that 'continent' isn't the same as dominating the whole world.

Dominating the European nations means dominating Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Canada...pretty much everything except what's being dominated by the United States and Japan.

Who said the Germans would take over all the British possessions? Not I.

Reducing the British to a "second-rate" power after the rematch requires stripping them of their colonial possessions, and the whole reason why the Germans got on the bad side of the British was because they thought they were missing out on this colonial imperialism action and therefore needed colonies in Africa and a strong fleet for force projection. The Germans would hardly decide to just let Britain and France's colonial empires fly and be free. Things just weren't done that way pre-World War II.

Why would you assume an inevitable conflict between the dominant powers in Europe and the US?

First of all, because the US had substantial anglophile sentiment by that point in time due to their mostly Brit-descended population. Secondly because the British by that point had reached their maximum point of expansion and hence were no longer alarming. The Americans were accustomed to living next door to Canada and having the British be the biggest navy in the world. They had their wars with Britain and the result was enough to assure them that Britain was not some unstoppable juggernaut.

[talonthehand]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

First of all, because the US had substantial anglophile sentiment by that point in time due to their mostly Brit-descended population.

I'm not sure about the validity of this statement. While I don't have the post WW1 statistics, according to the 2000 census numbers, 42.8 million people "considered themselves to be of German (or part-German) ancestry" whereas only 24.5 million claimed English ancestry.

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

The EU was fundamentally an extension of NATO from the start. The United States went into Kosovo precisely so that that the EU wouldn't move toward autonomous united statehood, and become a military alliance, breaking away from NATO and the United States. The United States interests include fostering free trade among other nations, so the EU as it stands is in line with those interests. The EU as an actual nation, with a military and an independent united foreign policy? That, the US government doesn't want. The best way to prevent that, is not to be hostile. It's to be friendly. Very, very friendly.

How does the CFSP and ESDP fit into that view?

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

The EU was fundamentally an extension of NATO from the start. The United States went into Kosovo precisely so that that the EU wouldn't move toward autonomous united statehood, and become a military alliance, breaking away from NATO and the United States. The United States interests include fostering free trade among other nations, so the EU as it stands is in line with those interests. The EU as an actual nation, with a military and an independent united foreign policy? That, the US government doesn't want. The best way to prevent that, is not to be hostile. It's to be friendly. Very, very friendly.

I disagree. A strong, unified Europe might well be in our interest. Now, it may well be that some American policy makers have agreed with your view- but I remain unconvinced of that.

Kosovo might be seen more as 'wag the dog' than anything else. I know that Clinton, Albright, etc tried to claim the intervention protected some vital interest of ours- but I think that they were wrong. This was a minor mater than can and should have been handled by Europeans.

Not worth the bones of one Pomeranian grendadier!

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by talonthehand

I'm not sure about the validity of this statement. While I don't have the post WW1 statistics, according to the 2000 census numbers, 42.8 million people "considered themselves to be of German (or part-German) ancestry" whereas only 24.5 million claimed English ancestry.

Yep, and Wilson was worried about those ethnic and religious groups that seemed to incline towards the Central Powers/be disinclined to enter the war.


IMHO, there's no sense in using a label like 'British.' It conflates people from Ireland, Scotland, etc with the English. Ever hear tell of the Highland Clearances? Collapse of the weaving trade in the north of Ireland? Potato Famine? The idea that all those people and their descendants looked back to 'Britain' with warmth and affection is a bit goofy. In fact, for much of the 19th century, Democrats got Irish votes in part by talking smack about the evil English.


To overstate English contributions to American heritage, significant as they have been, does injustice to the many other sources of our heritage, native and immigrant.
Don't ignore the vast numbers of Americans whose ancestors came from other parts of Europe and other parts of the world: blacks from Africa, Germans, Poles, Italians, French, Norwegians, Dutch, Chinese ,etc. IN 1914, we were not as 'diverse' as we are today, but we were a lot more diverse than just a pack of transplanted Englishmen.


Were there Anglophiles in 1914? Yes. There were also plenty of people who couldn't care a fig for England, and others whose political, moral, and ethnic ties made them more sympathetic to the Central Powers. Intervention on the basis of affections alone seems unlikely.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

I disagree. A strong, unified Europe might well be in our interest.

But then your definition of "our interest" would probably be one in which the United States invests a lot less in exercising world-wide influence. That is a definition that will be a distinct minority among federal politicians unless and until the United States has found the burden of being a superpower impossible to economically support. The vast majority of them will want to retain NATO and the United States's position of world-wide primacy. A strong and united Europe only serves that interest when it is strong and united under American leadership.

Kosovo might be seen more as 'wag the dog' than anything else. I know that Clinton, Albright, etc tried to claim the intervention protected some vital interest of ours- but I think that they were wrong.

Without it, NATO would almost certainly have dissolved. The odds that any electable presidential candidate would view that prospect with equanimity are slim.

However, actually letting the Germans win might be a very good way of extending the Great War. England's war against Napoleon lasted for 12 years. It lasted that long because Napoleon couldn't take them at sea, and England couldn't take him on land. Still, I think keeping No Man's Land is more fun.

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

But then your definition of "our interest" would probably be one in which the United States invests a lot less in exercising world-wide influence. That is a definition that will be a distinct minority among federal politicians unless and until the United States has found the burden of being a superpower impossible to economically support. The vast majority of them will want to retain NATO and the United States's position of world-wide primacy. A strong and united Europe only serves that interest when it is strong and united under American leadership.




Without it, NATO would almost certainly have dissolved. The odds that any electable presidential candidate would view that prospect with equanimity are slim.

However, actually letting the Germans win might be a very good way of extending the Great War. England's war against Napoleon lasted for 12 years. It lasted that long because Napoleon couldn't take them at sea, and England couldn't take him on land. Still, I think keeping No Man's Land is more fun.

Dissolving NATO now that it's task is finished would be a good thing IMO. The Soviets are history. Time to move on. That's getting beyond the purposes of this thread-
if you want to discuss it in genchat, I'd be happy to do so.

-Ewan

[Michele]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

...
Since Poland did not exist prior to the end of the Great War, it is unreasonable to expect it to exist after the end of a Great War that the German won (or even broke even). The Germans weren't fighting to give up territory.
...
It is though. Stalin only ever picked on much smaller nations, and his paranoid mass murdering ways were driven by his fear of losing power. If Stalin had been the kind of man who would launch a frontal assault on the most powerful nation in the world...well, lets just say the Cold War would have been a lot shorter.

Just to say I agree with these two points, in particular. Stalin kept up the claims as to the former Czarist Russia's border regions all the time until 1939, and never did anything about those claims until Hitler offered them to him on a silver platter. He occupied the Baltic states, a slice of Poland, a slice of Romania, and waged a small war with Finland not just because these were smaller, weaker states, but also because the big dangerous state, Germany, had given him a green light to do so.
In the East, he fought a defensive war against the Japanese, not an offensive one, in 1939, and did not pass to the offensive until the game was won, with the backing of the big dangerous states of 1945.
Also in 1945, he did keep what he had gained in 1939-40, and expanded the Soviet influence further West - having ascertained that the big dangerous states of 1945 would not or could not object. He tried to push the envelope in Greece, sensed resistance, and gave the Communist Greek partisans up.
Elsewhere, he sent arms and "volunteers".

Anything more would have been Trotzkist adventurism to him. Had Stalin been madly aggressive, he would have considered in the 1930s at least the Baltic states. Puny powers, neutrals with no alliance in the world, with Russian or Belarussian minorities.
But Stalin remembered the end of the Russian Civil War, when nearly the rest of the world landed on the Russian coasts to support the Whites. The one Communist state was the pariah in the 1930s; he would not offer the rest of the world the excuse to gang up.

One might observe that in all likelihood, had the USSR annexed Estonia in 1937, the rest of the world would have done nothing. They would not have gone to war for Tallinn, just like they didn't go to war for Teplice. This only highlights that Stalin was, if anything, over-cautious.

His bloody internal policies are neither here nor there as to his foreign policy and wars.