What if: Communist America

[K. A. Pital]

Is Stalin going to do what the Japs did at Pearl Harbor?

Yeah, Stalin is going to attack the US homeland... with what Navy? With paper Sovietsky Soyuz battleships and a trophy German air carrier, not even finished?

The USSR was so much a threat to homeland US... well, almost none exactly to be fair.

Frankly, I'd point to UK, and France, developing their own nuclear weapons even as they had the US backing them, and being U.S. allies for many years. Clearly they were deviously plotting to backstab America with nuclear weapons and pull a Pearl Harbor.

[Aranfan]

By the way, I think that a world where America was the sole possessor of nuclear weaponry and a sole unopposed superpower, would be a very frightening place.

I think someone wrote a story with a premise similar to that. IIRC, according to the summery (haven't actually read it), it ended with the world entering a new Dark Age after a bioweapon got loose. Can't remember the name or author though.

[Shroom Man 777]

Yeah, Stalin is going to attack the US homeland... with what Navy? With paper Sovietsky Soyuz battleships and a trophy German air carrier, not even finished?

They must, to establish the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere! The Super Sino-Stalin Soviet Socialist Spherical States!

The USSR was so much a threat to homeland US... well, almost none exactly to be fair.

I don't know. How did the Evil Russians stack up against the Yellow Peril in terms of scariness?

Frankly, I'd point to UK, and France, developing their own nuclear weapons even as they had the US backing them, and being U.S. allies for many years. Clearly they were deviously plotting to backstab America with nuclear weapons and pull a Pearl Harbor.

Oh, hells yeah on the goddamn Frenchmen. Didn't they continue testing nukes on Pacific islands long after everyone else stopped doing so?

In any case, it's totally fair if America gets to pick who gets nukes and who doesn't to advance its own (beneviolent) interests throughout the world.

But it's mean and unfair and bad and not nice when other people get to do it. It is doubly evil when those other people seek to defend themselves because in the last war, they had a foreign power come over and murder a tenth of their population, leaving their country in total ruin and in no state to survive another war against indomitable powers wielding the most destructive weaponry imaginable to man. Most especially when its the Evil Russians who are doing it. Goddamn Evil Russians. It's all their fault!

It'd be nice if, in the multipolar future, the world's financial transactions will be done on Berlin Wall Street and our greenbacks will be in the petroroubles. Just, y'know, out of spite.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yeah, Stalin is going to attack the US homeland... with what Navy? With paper Sovietsky Soyuz battleships and a trophy German air carrier, not even finished?

Stalin’s fleet was a lot more then paper, several ships were laid down, and the US had various fears that they’d have nuclear shells or be converted into atomic missile battleships! Indeed for years Janes and other publications came up with images of what these ships should look like. Mind you… at the same time the US Coast Artillery wanted nuclear shells too…. so you can see the scale of forward thinking going on.

The real fear though was the Soviets would start mass producing captured Nazi uberwaffen in secret Siberian slave camps and surprise us with 3,000 jet bombers or something… Yeah maybe it was too reasonable, but two world wars had caught the US napping, and the technological advances in WW2 were simply breathtaking, from biplanes to near supersonic jets in one war. No one was going to take chances on either side, and thus we got the Cold War.

Frankly, I'd point to UK, and France, developing their own nuclear weapons even as they had the US backing them, and being U.S. allies for many years. Clearly they were deviously plotting to backstab America with nuclear weapons and pull a Pearl Harbor.

Well the US cut off all exchange of nuclear information to the UK about a month after the war ended and actively worked against both the French and UK programs, buying up lots of uranium and such they attempted to purchase.

[K. A. Pital]

Well the US cut off all exchange of nuclear information to the UK about a month after the war ended and actively worked against both the French and UK programs, buying up lots of uranium and such they attempted to purchase.

Yeah. I can understand the US position, the less people have their own nuclear weapons, the more is everyone dependent on the US and cannot have truly conflicting foreign policy. However, the desire to have own nukes was par the course for some US partners, and for a US antagonist such as the USSR it was absolutely critical.

[Samuel]

By the way, I think that a world where America was the sole possessor of nuclear weaponry and a sole unopposed superpower, would be a very frightening place.

I think someone wrote a story with a premise similar to that. IIRC, according to the summery (haven't actually read it), it ended with the world entering a new Dark Age after a bioweapon got loose. Can't remember the name or author though.

The TBO series?