That seems relatively unlikely. Britain has too much to loose while France has not enough interest.
I think that you could well have an independent Confederacy that becomes an ally of the North, a sort of client of the larger wealthier neighbour.
If there was an Incan maritime tradition, then yes, this might easily have led to more exchanges between South America and Polynesia. Much depends on when this was activated, and how.
I think that would be enough. If Russians looked at Ukraine and understood that country would resist any Russian imperial move, then that would discourage Russia's leaders from making great imperial gambles. This, in turn, would have the effect of keeping Russian revisionism from being likely to...
I think that it might have been possible for Russia to be, with a post-1991 POD, at least as Westernized as Turkey. For that to happen, I think you would need to somehow contrive a Ukrainian consensus in favour of independence from Russia, with at least a strong leaning towards the West, and for...
I do think that it might be possible that Dutch policymaking would be changed if the Dutch state was intrinsically different from OTL, as a territorially larger state with a much larger population and much more industry. This would be a quantitative change of such a nature that it would be...
The United Netherlands could also have significant issues with political instability. If the revolt get s suppressed, you still have a majority of the kingdom's population being discontented and potentially separatist.
The Scandinavian defense union project failed because Scandinavians, especially the Danes and Norwegians, did not think even a united region could stand up to great powers.
In the case of a Communist Finland, I think it much likelier than Sweden will follow its Scandinavian neighbours into NATO.
I think it entirely possible, then, that you could not only get more of South Schleswig's population identifying as Danish in that scenario, but that you might not get a much larger German minority. Danes speaking German as a home language is an imaginable category.
Was there still some potential ambiguity about ethnic identity in South Schleswig, perhaps, people of mixed ancestry considering re identifying ethnically at a time when a German identification seemed unwise?
I do think that if you keep greater Manchuria under the Qing, that could plausibly lessen the geopolitical pressure on Korea. A country not under imminent threat of Russian occupation might well be less of a Japanese target.
Continuing this discussion, the question becomes how much rapprochement between this central/eastern Europe and western Europe becomes possible. I would suggest that we might be able to look towards southern Europe, with the Iberian republics and Yugoslavia and Greece being mostly outside the...
80% of infinity is still infinity.
Given how dysfunctional the non-oil sectors of the Iraqi economy war, since understandably no one in business wanted to make big decisions in case they got purged, counting on agriculture or tourism to replace oil would be a terrible idea. Hell, even if he was...
Saddam retained that position of prominence, despite his many failures as a leader, precisely because he was coasting on his proclaimed record and Iraq's prior successes. He was a persistent threat despite that.
He was a monstrous failure as a leader, but I think it is a mistake to understand...
That is the wrong way to view it. Yes, of course he caused huge suffering, but he did legitimately imagine that he would be able to make Iraq a real power. He was incompetent but that is a separate issue.
$10 billion would not begin to cover the debt, which was close to $40 billion to the Gulf...