Concept 1: France (OTL France plus some historically disputed claims obtained during the collapse of the Soviet Union plus Algeria (and other North African states?). The rest of French West Africa would be independent, but a close partner to France)
Country Profile: Multi-national state half in half out of Europe (e.g. British Commonwealth, Slavic Union)
Government/Ideology: Tan
Description: When the dual bombshell of the revolutions in Germany and Russia dropped, France remained as the only major continental European power to oppose the new communist order. However, truthfully, France herself barely avoided revolution, just being able to hold out slightly longer than their German enemies. So, as much as the reactionaries and anti-commmunists insisted on declaring a great crusade against Bolshevism, no actual movement was made on that front in the early 20th century. French democracy survived the interwar period, even if barely so (recovering Alsace-Lorraine at least meant that the debt of honor from 1870 was resolved favorably), and France focused more on mantaining its colonial possessions and preparing for what they thought was the inevitable war against the communist menace, in a more defensive stance, against the most powerful line of fortifications ever made.
The war never came.
Of course, there was still
a war. But the war ended up being against the Latin Axis that formed: stopping the Italo-Iberic Axis that invaded the front that France did
not expect an attack from. In a stroke of irony, it was actually the Soviet Union that France found itself on the same side of, in a temporary agreement that stopping the destabilizing presence of the Southern powers (which may or may not include a fascist-aligned Britain too? Not strictly necessary, but I figure it'd make the sides potentially more balanced because super Soviet Union is not really a fair fight for the Axis here. Especially with France being Allied too.). Luckily, during the war, France found itself reliably under the protection of the United States, which helped prevent a Soviet stab in the back. Ultimately, France was able to hold its own against the Axis, and even take possession of their African colonies post war.
Post-war, once again, it became exceedingly obvious that, as much as France would like to deal with the Soviet Union, they weren't in any real position to actually do anything to the multinational empire. So, once again, France dug into a defensive posture, waiting for the war that never happened. In the meantime, post-war agitation in Algeria and elsewhere started to rock the French colonial empire. The war with Japan made it exceedingly obvious that Indochina was too precarious to hold onto, and Paris decided to make an orderly retreat from that region to focus on what could be held. Let the Americans deal with that mess. Africa was the heart of the French Empire, and it was there that the French Empire would make its stand.
Except, even then, something as big as "French Africa" was still way too insurmountably big to hold onto everything, once the winds of revolution started brewing. Fighting to hold onto every colonial possession would just bleed France dry, in both lives and manpower. It was still better for France to just "give in" and work with the natives for self-rule. Maybe France could still influence their politics through softer means, in a Francophonic Union. Not Paris' ideal solution, but it gave them the room to focus on what truly mattered: Algeria.
Algeria was special. It wasn't a colony, it was a part of the metropole. Surrendering Algeria was to surrender what was seen as core French territory. That, simply speaking, would not do. So in North Africa, France made its stand, and fought against the revolutionary fervor sweeping the continent. The war was long, bloody, and stretched the French state to its limits. Generals couped the civilian government to keep France in Algeria. The concept of French democracy, of rule of law, withered away in the dying grasps to keep the empire. But, despite that, and thanks to a surprisingly large amount of aid from the United States (who, with their apartheid reigme, had a vested interest in proving the superiority of whites over blacks by keeping France in the war), France weathered the storm. The independence movement was shattered, and French rule was solidified in the territory.
French civilian life would never recover from the times of the crisis, however. The junta stepped down, in a Cincinnatus-esque display. The civilian government was, nominally, restored, with free elections (although with the pesky left radical parties banned). However, simply put, no one really had faith in a system that was so easily toppled in times of crisis. What did it matter who they voted for, if the whole house of cards could collapse in a moments notice? Political apathy became the mainstream in France, and where political society withered away, an unelected bureaucracy filled its place. After all, while the democratic instittuions were increasingly seen as illegitimate, the state as a whole still largely had the consent of the governed. Legitimacy transferred away from Parliament, and towards the Minstries, which continued to function largely intact even during the junta days.
The end result was that, while France was still nominally a democratic state, in practice the elections didn't matter. None of the legal parties seriously challenged the status quo, or even offered a vision beyond a Neo-Gaulist platform. French exceptionalism (especially including its place in Algeria and the rest of Western Africa), neoliberal economic policy, and the belief in a "rationally derived society" became the assumed norms of government, once again enforced largely through the unelected ministries. Policy is not made for the benefit of individuals, but for the benefit of France as a whole, which tend to follow easily identifiable metrics that could be observed. Fear of returning to the chaos of the Algerian Crisis largely kept the Overton Window constrained, and therefore the technocratic system (as it was increasingly being identified as) afloat.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, France declared a vindictive victory over Bolshevism. Against all odds, they held on. Not only that, but they were in a position, Paris claimed, to be better than ever before. With Central Europe divided into weak statelets much like the Early Modern period, who would oppose France in their claims to restore the lost territories of Napoleon? After all, it was only
rational that all French-speaking lands should be a part of France. Multi-ethnic states like Belgium were a relic of a pre-nationalist environment. And if France was to truly prevent a threat against them, then of course, the left bank of the Rhine would also be suitably French. Nevermind if its ethnically German now. France can't allow a new German state to arise, if it can do so.
The collapse of the Americans, who helped prop up France during its hour of need, was likewise not sorely missed. France accepting American help at its time of need was convenient, but that was a one time exception that should never be replicated. France must stand on her two own feet, as otherwise the cruel world around her will consume her.
Concept 2: Ottoman Empire (OTL Turkey, Iraq, the Levant, and Arabia proper)
Country Profile: large Middle East state (e.g. Ottomans survive, successful Nasserist state, super-UAE)
Government/Ideology: Green EDIT: Stockholme has also indicated that
White might work for this idea too.
Description: When the Ottoman Sultan first claimed the title of Caliph in the 1300s, it was a simple title of prestige. It was a way to proclaim independence from the Abbasids, with no real practical benefit to the title. Indeed, many of the lands the Ottomans would go to conquer in its early history were not even traditionally Muslim, who would see no benefit from claiming the authority of the successors of Muhammed. Indeed, it wasn't until two hundred years later, in the 1500s, where after the destruction of the Mameluke state, that the title would have real world implications, as the Ottomans started to administrate the heartlands of the Islamic world. Even then, it wasn't actually in the late 1700s until the Ottoman sultans actually started
using the title of Caliph as a representation of their temporal authority. After their defeat to the Russians in the Russo-Turkish War, Sultan Abdul Hamid I established international recognition of his claims to represent Muslims in the newly independent Crimean state. While the treaty as a whole represented the beginning of the decline of the Ottoman state (only reversed in the mid 20th century), this small defiant acknowledgement of the Ottomans' claim to be the successors of Muhammad also laid the seeds for its eventual revival.
In World War 1, the Ottomans, identifying the British and French as being more likely to be long-term threats to the empire than the Germans, eventually decided to throw their hat into the ring of the Central Powers. Acting upon the authority of their title of Sultan,
the Ottomans declared not just war, but jihad against the Entente, seeking to inspire the Muslim populations of their respective empires to rise up in defiance. This sort of pan-Muslim war against the Entente never fully materialized, not in the way that the Ottomans intended, but it did shore up their support in the non-Turkish, Muslim population of the Empire.
Of all the major Central Powers, the Ottomans could be said to have been doing the best throughout the war. In the Caucasus, it outlasted the Russian Empire, a reversal of its fate from the Russo-Turkish Empire. The major Western Entente offensive against them, Gallipoli, failed entirely in its objectives. The Ottomans were keeping Bulgaria in the war, preventing Constantinople itself from being threatened. Then the German Revolution started. Almost immediately, the entire face of the war changed on itself. The main Central Power was effectively destroyed. Austria-Hungary, which was already being propped up by the Germans as-is, completely collasped on itself too. Bulgaria, the shield that protected the Ottomans from the Balkan Entente, was ready to bow out as well too. The Ottomans were truly and utterly alone.
There, however, was one hope left. Stoke fears into the British and French delegates that containing the revolution in Germany and Russia was more important than prosecuting war against the Sublime Porte. Victory was impossible, as this stage, but perhaps the Ottomans could still get out of this largely intact.
The British, unsure of their position (and OTL surprised in the Ottomans not calling their bluff and accepting terms as-is), largely agreed to abandon most of their goals in the Middle East in return for safe transit in the Bosporus to assist their White allies in the Russian Civil War. With the British out, the French would shortly follow.
The Ottoman Empire survived. Barely.
The fighting, of course, didn't stop immediately. The Ottomans were still involved in the Caucasus Front of the Russian Civil War, supporting the Muslim Azerbaijanis against their Christian opponents. The Balkans Entente, especially Greece, did not immediately sue for peace, but continued the war to press their claims on Bulgaria and Turkey. The Arab Revolt was still ongoing, and having reached Aleppo, was effectively in control of the non-Turkish parts of the Empire. Things were not looking good, but as long as the Ottomans looked like they were helping against the fight against communism, these smaller threats could be overcome.... eventually.
But for now, the Sick Man of Europe was still sick. The Empire, whilst avoiding bursting apart, was at its seams. The Three Pashas which had led the Empire since the beginning of the war were discredited for almost leading it to its ruin, especially as word about what happened in Armenia started to come out. Facing massive public outrage, the Sultan purged the Committee of Union and Progress from all levels of the Sublime Porte's government, calling for new elections. Whilst nominally interested in restoring the pre-war constitution, the crisis in Arabia made such an election on the face of it impossible, due to the occupation of half the empire. Instead, those within the Army opposed to the Three Pashas would form an emergency, unelected government, to ride out the crisis.
With both Ottomanism and Turkish Nationalism discredited by the pre-war and post-war consensus, respectively, the question became of how to justify the continued war in Arabia, and of the Ottoman state itself. However, just as it was in the 1700s, the answer laid in a dormant title: The Caliphate. How does one rule over a large, multi-ethnic empire? By emphasizing the religious unity of the Sublime Porte. After all, with the Balkans and Armenia out of the empire, most of the non-Muslim areas of the Empire have already left (Not all, of course, there still remained other Christian minorities, and the Druze, and the growing Zionist movement in Palestine. Not to mention the Shi'ites in Iraq, which aren't exactly compatible with the type of Islam that the Ottomans practice). Not only that, but by presenting themselves as the defenders of Mecca and Medina to the Muslim world, and painting the nationalist Arabs as being polluted by Western ideology, it presented a form of legitimacy for their reconquest of the peninsula.
However, it was not until after the Second World War (which the Ottoman Empire largely stayed out of, not particularly enthralled with the notion of assisting the Soviet Union nor the aggressively Christian Axis Powers, although it would eventually come to the Allied side by the end of the war, when it became clear which way the chips fell) that the Ottoman Empire would re-enter the world of international politics as a great power once again. With the Arab Wars, as they became known, largely settled in the Ottoman favor (although the interior of the Arabian Peninsula would not see pacification for a few more decades), the Sublime Porte started to see lasting stability again. The beginning of the exploitation of its oil reserves, the largest in the world, also served as a boon to enwealthen the Ottoman state, although Constantinople also knew it painted an attractive target on its back with the Soviet Union.
As a result, the Ottoman Empire, whilst preferring to remain neutral, found itself closer to the American orbit than the Soviet during the Cold War. However, this is not to say that the Ottomans were firmly supportive of the American system. Indeed, as the Ottoman Sultan started to more and more embrace the legitimacy of the title of Caliph, the Ottomans also embraced the duties set about in it. And, in the wake of the growing independence movements in Africa and in South(east) Asia, that took the form of supporting Muslim insurgents against the western powers. Of course, the Ottomans wouldn't get themselves involved in these conflicts directly, but they would send guns, advisors, and other war material to assist in these independence movements. The Caliph, Constantinople claimed, would protect their own; all the mujaheddin had to do was ask for help.
Through this aid, the Ottomans were finally, for the first time since the 1600s, expanding their influence. New states were carved out, independent from the Ottoman Empire, but within its cultural and political orbit. These states would also emphasize their Islamic nature (although tended to be more republican in nature compared to the Ottomans, whose attachment to the medieval world was an aberration even in their own bloc). The Ottoman program of supporting Islamic independence movements would often put itself at ends with not only the Soviet Union, but oftentimes the Americans, who would prefer more secular organizations.
After the 1990s, the main policy goal of the Ottoman Empire has been expanding its influence to former Soviet Central Asia. These newly independent states are considered part of the House of Islam, and therefore the Caliph has an obligation to support their newly found independence from any attempts of Bolshevik revanchism. The collapse of America is also seen as an opportunity to expand influence into Africa and South(east) Asia, albeit to a much smaller degree than the Soviet collapse.
Concept 3: Patria Grande (Current core members are OTL Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay (with its disputed territories with Brazil restored). Bolivia and Chile are closely aligned, and stretch goals, but may possibly not be full members of the Union as of 2001.)
Country Profile: super-Brazil or super-Argentina
Government/Ideology: Black
Description: When the Libertadores fought against the Spanish Empire for the independence of the New World against the old, no one quite knew exactly how Latin America would look post-independence. Bolivar, the greatest of the Libertadores, had a dream of a unified South America, one that stretched from modern day Panama down south to Argentina. This dream would lead to a series of rebellions, as an entire continent rose up in unison, and Spain being all but evicted from mainland America. However, it simultaneously showed how utterly impossible a unified government would be. The continent was simply too large, too divided by remote geography, and too diverse in culture and socioeconomic status for a nation the scope that was in Bolivar's mind. Bolivar's attempt to keep Colombia (as he referred to his pan-Hispanic state) together ironically tended to only increase support for independence, and by his death, the whole project had largely fallen apart. Colombia still exists, legally, but it is a rump state, just simply one nationality among many.
One of the other South American nations to come out of this process was Argentina. Argentina, much like Colombia, was originally larger, a legal successor to the Spanish Viceroyalty of La Plata. Indeed, La Plata is still recognized as one of Argentina's names in its constitution, albeit one that is not used outside of the document. Like Colombia, its main Libertador, Jose de San Martin, also had aspirations of a pan Hispanic government, an ambitious model known as the
Inca Plan. Much like Bolivar's Colombia, the Inca Plan was abandoned due to the political realities of the early 1800s making such a government (a monarchy, in this case, with a native Incan on the throne) unfeasible. Argentina instead became a republic, like its sister nations, and for an entire century, that represented the end of Argentinian aspirations for a pan-Hispanic state.
It would not be until the 1920s when discussions about federation started to take hold in Argentina. In 1922, socialist writer Manuel Ugarte first coined the term "Patria Grande" -- the Great Fatherland-- a name for the nationhood of Hispanic America as a whole. The right also had a similar concept, Hispanidad, which referred to the unity of not just Latin American cultures, but also of Spain proper. Both of these terms reached for the same core idea: the idea that Argentina is not just Argentinian, but part of a greater whole, a much larger national identity.
Of course, the origins of a greater Hispanic identity didn't mean they instantly popular in that decade. Other issues took the forefront of the nation's attention. Most of these was the attempted coup of 1930. Up to this point, Argentina's government was one of the most stable in the continent, having enjoyed continuous democratic rule since the 1850s. Wealthy and prosperous, especially during the 1920s, the nation was becoming the leading power of South America. That is, until the Great Depression reared its ugly head. Argentina's economy, once the soaring tiger of the region, crashed immediately, and an unemployment crisis threatened to tear the country apart. The once popular liberal President Hipólito Yrigoyen was seen as out of touch, especially by the growing fascist Nacionalismo movement. Talks with the military led to a planned coup to overthrow the democratic government, one that would establish a government that would more readily address the crisis and prevent the nation's slide towards unfettered liberalism.
However, shortly before the coup, the plot was uncovered. Communication was left unsecured, some people grew cold feet, and the whole thing fell apart. Elements of the army that were supportive of the coup were purged, and Argentinian democracy survived. Yrigoven would be out by the next election, replaced with the conservative opposition. In the meantime, political stability would slowly return to Argentina as the aborted coup served as a wake up call that things needed to change before it got worse.
Argentina's neighbor, Brazil, didn't escape the same fate. The Brazillian government, far more used to the concept of coups and unstable transfers of power, found itself on the tightropes of a political battle between the far left and the far right. In 1934 President Vargas attempted to shift his support base from labor unions to the far right Integralist movement. However, during the chaos of the quasi-civil war, an assassin took out Vargas. To this day, no one is certain who took him out. Saldago, who took power shortly afterwards, blamed the assassination on the communists, but modern evidence indicates that it might have been the Integralists themselves who orchestrated the assassination as an attempt to seek power. Regardless of who did it, the end result was that Brazil was under the effective control of the Integralists, who modeled their new state off of European fascism, and closely aligned their state with the Axis.
As Europe was eventually plunged into war, Brazil sought its sights on Uruguay. Once part of Brazil, Uruguay's independence was seen as a slight towards Brazil. Even if the Cisplatine War was over a hundred years ago, it represented a core territory of the Brazillian state, and that was cause enough to relitigate the conflict. Waiting until it was believed the world was too distracted with the fight against global fascism, Brazil would eventually invade Uruguay in the early 40s. This would start what would eventually be known as the South American front of World War II, as Argentina moved in to support the independence of the region, much as it did a hundred years ago. Paraguay would also eventually join the Argentinian coalition, partially in fear that they'd be next after Uruguay, and partially to avenge
its losses after the War of the Triple Alliance.
While the South American Front was perhaps the least dramatic front of WW2, it still represented the deadliest conflict fought in South America. Brazil, having chosen to initiate the war, was at first better prepared for the conflict. Both Uruguay and Paraguay were overrun, and Brazilian troops pushed into Argentina proper. However, Argentina had one advantage Brazil did not have: Lend-Lease. Due to Brazil's friendliness with the Axis Powers, Argentina in turn appealed to the Allies, who saw no reason not support the country. And with effective Allied control of the seas, it was Argentina that was able to get equipment and even supporting divisions shipped to their front. When it became clear that Brazil couldn't get the killing blow on Argentina, the war effort fell apart completely. Once Argentinian troops were entering Brazilian territory, and the begginings of an Anglo-American invasion of the north were being mustered, everyone in Rio knew the war was lost. A coup overthrew Salgado, and the remaining intergralists either died in futile last stands, or eventually fled into the Amazon interior, promising to wage an insurgency against whatever foreign puppet state gets established.
It was the wake of the post-war proceedings in which the groundwork of the Patria Grande was finally sown. The destruction caused by industrial fighting, and the eventual triumph of the Allies, led to an increased feeling of unity among the nations of the Southern Cone. So, when Argentina proposed a custom union between the three states, it was readily accepted. Of course, the continued occupation of Argentinian troops in the country may have also played a role in their decision to accept, but water under the bridge. This custom union would eventually evolve throughout the Cold War, eventually expanding to include Bolivia and Chile, along with dealing with issues beyond tariffs and common trade policies.
Indeed, the ideological struggles of the Cold War made the issues of Pan-Hispanicism more pronounced. The United States has always had an awful history of intervening into the affairs of its Southern members. While its support against Brazil was sorely appreciated, its attempts to further interfere into the affairs of the region post-war were less so. In particular, its racism against non-WASPs was seen by many as horrific. Even to the Argentinian right, Catholicism taught the spiritual equality of all humans; the apartheid system that the United States demanded from them was simply an affront to human dignity. This was not a view uncommon across all of Hispanic America, which largely rejected the growing apartheid nature of the United States. Furthermore, especially in Argentina, the economic interests of South America and the United States simply did not meet eye to eye. The United States wanted to enact a form of neocolonialism, reducing the region to raw resource dumps for American corporations to extract wealth from.
The Soviet Union wasn't much better. Whilst the United States represented the excesses of mammon and hatred, the Soviet Union represented the path to hell paved with good intentions. The communist system was as totalitarian as it was atheistic, benefiting the elite privileged few at the top of the party at the expense of society as a whole. Providing for the workers was a noble goal, in theory, but in practice all it led to was repression of human rights.
No, if South America was to survive, it had to look internally. Something that wasn't just the American or the Soviet system. And that is when interest in the old attempts at unifying South America got another look over culturally. It was the perfect solution. The United States was strong because all the Anglo-American colonies federated together, while the Spanish colonies fractured. However, if one were to reverse the trend, then Spanish-America would easily dwarf Anglo-America. And while no one would seriously claim an Argentinian was the same as a Colombian (or even Mexican, as interest also arose to a potential state that included former New Spain), they were more similar than different. They shared a common language, a common faith, a common struggle for independence, a common history, etc. The geographical barriers that seemed insurmountably large a hundred years could be conquered with recent advances in infrastructure and telecommunication. It was possible, and even, desirable, to try again.
From there, the
Patria Grande movement took hold in initially Argentina, becoming one of the prevalent ideologies of the country. Based around Christian Democracy, it could best be described as socially conservative, but economically liberal. Tying itself to the contemporary movement of liberation theology, it imagines a world where the entirety of the Spanish New World is organized together into one state (ideally, from Buenos Aires). This state would be based on traditional Catholic values, considering the faith the cornerstone of a moral society. The twin vipers of free market capitalism and socialism would both be repudiated for a mixed economic system, one in which the poor received the "preferential option". Excess materialism, either from the left or the right, would be repituded at every opportunity.
The Patria Grande movement would eventually spread across the entire Hispanic American sphere, although it remained the most popular in the Southern Cone. There, the custom union that Argentina set up eventually evolved into an EU-like organization. However, ironically enough, it was the collapse of the United States (and possibly the subsequent formalization of the North Seas Federation, if that sign up is accepted?) that encouraged talks of outright federation. Seeing how low the post-collapse United States went served as further evidence that the lack of Hispanic unity is what held the Hispanidad back. Plus, the lack of a functioning US also made others hopeful that a federation could actually work, as Washington couldn't try to muck it up. Indeed, the door was open to push unification on the rest of South America, if not more...
