A Different Interwar

[eurofed]

The main idea of this scenario is WWI and the subsequent revolutionary wave unfold in such a way as to become even greater a transformative event than OTL. Notable consequences of this include: the USSR takes over Eastern Europe and the Near East; Western Europe (Germany, France, Italy, and Spain) stabilizes under a social-democratic regime, repudiates nationalism and extremism, and bonds in a fully-realized, federal EU; the British Empire half goes Nazi-fascist and swallows the European colonial empires, half merges with the USA; European far-right immigrants turn North Africa into a giant, Nazi-fascist analogue of Israel; the USA turns more progressive than OTL (the Progressive Era and the New Deal effectively fuse into one) and absorbs the rest of North America and Oceania; Japan becomes liberal and builds an empire across Northeast Asia, but leaves China proper alone; China experiences an even more divisive warlord era and ultimately gets reunified by the Communists; South America becomes a full player into these global trends and gets reshaped in the process.

ITTL the Great War occurred earlier, and engulfed pretty much all the OTL warring powers except the USA, plus a few OTL neutrals. The war resulted in an exhausting stalemate, which ensued in revolutionary collapse of the belligerent states. The revolutionary wave caused by the war swept the developed world and typically took the form of a three-way fight for power between the Communists and radical far-leftists, the reactionary and fascist far-rightists, and a democratic coalition of social democrats, Christian democrats, and progressive liberals.

In Russia and Eastern Europe, the Communists prevailed much like OTL and established the USSR, except the mindset became dominant in the leadership to regard ‘world revolution’ as a compelling, persistent goal. Running on revolutionary enthusiasm and aided by local Red insurgents despite terrible logistic difficulties, the Soviets consolidated their power across Russia and swept Central Europe, the Balkans, and the Near East. Their rampage only got stopped when they tried to invade Germany and Italy. A hastily assembled Western European coalition stopped the Red Army and pushed them back. However the war and the revolutionary wave it caused made the new European leaders fearful a prolonged conflict might rekindle dire instability at home.

So once they secured their control of eastern Germany, a border strip of Congress Poland, Bohemia-Moravia, Austria, northern Italy, the Austrian Littoral, Carniola, and Dalmatia they gave up trying to liberate Eastern Europe and made peace with the Soviets. In the Middle East, the British intervened to stop the Reds and they were able to push them out of the Arab lands. However they too failed to dislodge the Soviets and their allies from Anatolia and Persia, and eventually made peace on the basis of military facts on the ground.

The USSR annexed Finland, the Baltic states, Congress Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, eastern Anatolia, and northwestern Persia as various SSRs. It set up the Balkan Federation (a union of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania, and Greece), Turkey, and Iran as Communist satellite states. After their initial expansionist rampage had been checked, the Soviet leaders turned to consolidate and develop their vast empire. However they never lost sight of their long-term goal of a world revolution led by Moscow. So they engaged in ruthless brute-force industrialization and massive military build-up of the Soviet empire.

They also fostered destabilization of the capitalist powers and their colonial empires by supporting Communist, far-leftist, and radical nationalist movements across the world. The Soviet army and secret police brutally crushed any opposition to Communist rule in Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Near East by any means available, including extensive massacres, mass deportations, and use of chemical weapons. Large-scale purges and generous use of the gulag system tried hard to wipe out all real, potential, or imagined disloyalty to the Soviet regime.

The British kept control of the Arab lands, and they organized them in a few Kingdoms that became client states of the British Empire. Such states included: Egypt, which annexed North Sudan; Greater Syria, that encompassed the Mashriq (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, and Khuzestan) and was ruled by the Hashemites; and Arabia, which included the entire Arabian Peninsula (Hejaz, Nejd, Hadramaut, and Eastern Arabia) and was ruled by the Rashids. The new British regime turned hostile to the Zionist homeland project in Palestine, causing it to wither away. Right-wing Greek refugees took over Crete and the Ionian and Aegean islands and set up a far-right Greek state. It became a client of the British Empire and the British ceded it Cyprus in exchange for basing rights.

In France, Germany, Italy, and the Low Countries the coalition of the liberal-democratic forces (social democrats, Christian democrats, progressive liberals and republicans) defeated the opposition of monarchist-militarist reactionaries, fascists, and Communists and set up a series of progressive states. With their help, the democratic movements were able to win the civil wars in Spain and Portugal too; the hastily assembled European alliance stopped and repelled Soviet invasion of Western Europe. The Great War and the way it ended considerably discredited ethnic nationalism among the European leaders and masses. This combined with various other factors (ideological affinity, the threats of communism and fascism, concerns about political and economic stability, fear of new fratricidal wars) soon persuaded the Western Europeans that continental unity was the only way for peace and prosperity.

The Western European peoples (French, Germans, Italians, Iberians, Dutch, Czechs, Slovenes, West Poles, and Dalmatian Croats) bound themselves into the European Union, a liberal democratic union of states that fairly quickly evolved into a federation similar to the USA. In its mature form it managed foreign affairs, defense with a Pan-European army, complete economic integration with monetary and fiscal union, free movement of goods and people with a common market, an European citizenship with open internal borders, and cooperation in judicial and police affairs. Member states kept autonomy in many domestic issues although European law was paramount. A semi-presidential government managed the various aspects of federal integration with a directly elected assembly, a senate appointed by national parliaments, a supranational executive accountable to the parliament, and a President elected by the European people.

The EU system strongly encouraged regional devolution and cultural autonomy for minorities in member states as a way to defuse nationalist issues. Austria willingly joined Germany, Spain and Portugal agreed to merge into a decentralized Iberian Union, and Belgium with Luxemburg was partitioned between its neighbors since war and revolution had destabilized the Belgian state. Certain sensitive areas (Alsace-Lorraine, South Tyrol, Posen and the Polish Border Strip, Bohemia-Moravia, Carniola, Dalmatia) became autonomous regions with special rights for minorities and federal oversight. Brussels became the union’s capital as a federal district.

The EU acknowledged and cherished cultural differences and the equal dignity of European peoples, although in practice the most important nationalities (French, Germans, Italians, Iberians) bound in a power-sharing agreement inevitably got much more influence. It strongly encouraged a Pan-European identity, continental civic nationalism, and a sense of European cultural exceptionalism. The union adopted Ido as a common, politically neutral lingua franca. However a simplified version of Latin also got commonly accepted and used as an alternative auxiliary language. An option between Ido and simplified Latin became mandatory in European schools; fluency in either language gradually became a de facto prerequisite to belong in European elites, middle classes, and public sector.

The European system guaranteed and praised civil rights and liberal democracy, although it banned and suppressed fascist and communist parties, radical nationalist movements, and other forms of violent political extremism. The Western European people got universal suffrage in European, national, regional, and local elections; together with the USA, the EU led the world in establishing women’s suffrage and a functional welfare state. Political stability and unification of European markets with free movement of goods and people ushered in economic stabilization that soon blossomed into steady development, an industrial boom, and a considerable degree of prosperity for Western Europe. To further recovery and help provide for political stability and common defense the EU leaders engaged in an ambitious program of infrastructure development, industrial build-up, and land reform with preferential dual use. Many projects were funded for the building of useful works such as government buildings, airports, hospitals, schools, roads, bridges, railroads, canals, and dams.

The process spread industrialization across the continent and ensured the least developed nations and regions of the EU (e.g. eastern Germany, Iberia, southern Italy, rural France) all but closed the socio-economic and infrastructure gap with the most advanced areas. The EU (and the USA) led the world in establishing a extensive set of reforms to deal with the social ills created by laissez-faire capitalism and early industrialization, including a graduated income tax and inheritance tax, job safety laws, reduction of working hours, regulation of child labor, establishment of a minimum wage, an end to government interference in peaceful labor disputes to back the employers, a fairly comprehensive welfare system with social security and health care, environmental conservation, a farmer subsidies system, and protection of labor organizing. Political stability, economic prosperity, progressive reforms, and the authoritarian threats looming at the border did a lot to cement the loyalty of Western European peoples to the EU project. The ones who disagreed mostly chose immigration.

The looming threat of a conflict with the Soviet bloc or less likely the fascist British Empire and its allies drove the EU to pursue an ambitious rearmament program and keep a Cold War stance towards its authoritarian neighbors, especially the ever-threatening USSR. The Pan-European military was set up as a common army divided into national components at the battalion level with centralized military procurement and a common budget, arms, and institutions. It became the protector of European independence, an hallmark of unification and reconciliation, and a guarantee the fratricidal wars of the past would not repeat.

Strong aspirations to push the Soviet threat away from Western Europe’s borders, liberate the rest of Europe and North Africa from communism and fascism, and assimilate them in the European project lingered in the EU elites and public, although not to the point of starting a conflict on Europe’s own initiative. Some resentment for the loss of colonies initially existed as well, but it increasingly got discredited over time as the Europeans largely came to regard colonialism as wasteful and morally suspect. This viewpoint got especially strengthened after colonialism turned more and more brutal under fascist management. The EU kept very friendly relations and flourishing trade with the democratic powers of the USA, the Japanese Empire, and the Southern American Union, typically only marred by the occasional trade dispute.

Political changes and conflicts in Europe, Soviet aggressive expansion in the Baltic region, and the home-rule issues of Norway and Iceland drove the Nordic states to bind together for mutual help and protection. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland bonded into the Nordic Union, a confederation that managed issues such as foreign affairs, defense, currency, and trade, and left member states autonomous in domestic matters. Concerns about sovereignty, cultural differences, and neutrality initially made the Nordic nations opt out of the European unification process and instead pursue a regional integration project of their own. However the EU and the NU soon established close economic and political bonds and an informal but solid military cooperation, even if the Nordics remained officially neutral.

Over time political, economic, and military ties and cooperation between the two unions and affinities between their systems grew ever greater. At the same time, the Soviet and British threat, with a pattern of recurrent border and naval incidents with both powers and the growth of Soviet military power and aggressiveness in the Baltic, made the Nordics increasingly question the value of their neutrality. Eventually the NU decided to throw sovereignty and neutrality scruples away and petition to join the EU. It was admitted as a sub-federation that enabled member states to keep autonomy in domestic matters and deal as a whole with the European government. All but the smallest EU member states had embraced sub-federalism or regional devolution on their own, so the Nordic requests were granted without any real difficulty.

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Europe lost its colonial empires during the revolutionary period, since far-right political refugees, the opportunist British Empire, and nationalist rebels took them over. Its new leaders were too busy restoring stability at home and defending themselves from Communist aggression to give much concern to the colonies for a good while. Moreover the new progressive ruling elite was not so persuaded colonialism was such a good idea in the first place. So they largely neglected colonial affairs until the new status quo stabilized.

Defeated European reactionary monarchists and militarists, fascists, and assorted far-rightists fled en masse to Northwest Africa, which they turned into their new homeland. During the migration a sorting scheme soon spontaneously emerged and got entrenched by unspoken agreement: the French settled into Algeria, the Italians went to Tunisia and Libya, the Germans took over Morocco, and the Iberians seized Mauritania and Senegal. As a rule, European colonial authorities threw their allegiances to the right-wingers, so their takeover of the colonies occurred with relatively little opposition.

The right-wing refugees initially set up their respective states as reactionary-fascist recreations of their lost homelands. Fairly soon, however, ideological affinity and a wish for mutual support drove them to put aside nationalist scruples and combine their states into a close alliance, the League of European States, that evolved into a loose but sufficiently functional confederation. Ironically the LES fairly quickly turned into a fascist mirror image of the EU in Northwest Africa. The far-right refugees soon engaged in a ruthless effort to entrench their rule of the area by all means necessary, and turn the region in their preferred version of Europe. They imposed a harsh discrimination, exploitation, and population control regime on the natives and brutally suppressed all opposition. They also engaged in a long-term program to Europeanize North Africa by means of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced cultural assimilation of natives, pro-birth policies for the settlers, and encouragement of politically-reliable immigration from Europe.

Britain, which developed a very similar political regime, provided financial and military support to the LES and turned it into a close ally, out of ideological affinity, strategic concerns, and economic opportunity. In exchange, the LES acquiesced to the British seizure of most other European colonies in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. West and Central Africa became a de facto condominium between the LES and the British Empire, as both sides tried to avoid imperial overextension. Britain annexed the Dutch East Indies, and merged it with its own Southeast Asian colonies to create a second British Raj besides India. A nationalist uprising instead toppled French rule in Indochina with Japanese help; the area became a client state of Japan as a restored Vietnamese empire.

In Britain, a coalition of ultra-Tory reactionaries and populist fascists won the civil war and purged the left-wingers and liberals. They set up an authoritarian regime that kept the empty trappings of constitutional monarchy and parliament but ruled through sham elections, police repression of dissidents, fascist propaganda, censorship, militarism, and ruthless enforcement of imperialism. George V abdicated and his son Edward VIII was happy to become the pampered figurehead of the new order. The new regime brutally suppressed unrest in Ireland and India with much loss of life, fought off the Soviets in the Middle East, and affirmed British control of the Arab lands. It supported takeover of North Africa by European fascists and seized most other European colonies in Africa and Asia.

Reasons the British Empire engaged in assimilation of the European colonies included a wish for even more resources, an ideological drive for imperialism, fear collapse of the European colonial empires might destabilize its own possessions, and a desire to recoup their own losses. The fascist takeover of Britain drove Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to sever political links with London with US support. They initially became independent republics, but soon chose political union with the USA to seek greater stability and protection.

Reasons the former colonies did so included political and cultural affinities with America, concerns about their own economic stability, fear of British attempts to reassert imperial rule by force, and good relations established with the USA during the independence process. The Canadian provinces, the Australian states, and New Zealand became US states; Quebec successfully lobbied the US government for special guarantees about its language and legal system.

Differently from the other Dominions, South Africa was content to stay bound to Britain. The main reason was its White settler population got persuaded support from a fascist and hyper-imperialist Britain would give them better chances than independence to entrench and expand their racist rule over Southern Africa. As a matter of fact, the British leaders gave the South Africans ample guarantees of that and sweetened the deal with the concession of an fairly good degree of informal autonomy that mostly healed the wounds of the Boer War.

The South African colonies were organized into an union that annexed Southwest Africa, Southern Rhodesia, Bechuanaland, and southern Mozambique. It also got administration of Angola, Northern Rhodesia, southern Congo (Katanga and South Kasai), and northern Mozambique. The Black population became subject to a ruthless regime of exploitation, discrimination, territorial marginalization, and population control that made Jim Crow and OTL Apartheid look liberal. The British and South African fascists engaged in a long-term effort to turn Southern Africa into a White settler colony by means of ethnic cleansing and genocide of Blacks, pro-birth policies for White settlers, and encouragement of immigration from the British Isles and Europe.

The example of South Africa also inspired the British to try and turn East Africa into its analogue and sister White settler colony. They invaded and subjugated Ethiopia to further their plans and eliminate the threat of an African independent state which might turn into an anti-colonial haven and bad example. They merged Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, and South Sudan into an East African union of colonies. It was ruled by its White settler population and got administration of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia. It imitated the policies of South Africa for the Black population, White settlers, and European immigration.

As a matter of fact, LES policies in North Africa and British ones in Southern and East Africa got rather similar and set a pattern for the whole continent. The main difference was the LES deemed Arabs and Berbers sufficiently similar to Europeans to be absorbed in the settler population if they collaborated with the regime and went along with cultural and religious assimilation. This option was not open to the Blacks in Sub-Saharan Africa for obvious racist reasons. At most, an exception was made for mixed-race people that were more or less able to pass as Whites and proved politically reliable.

The fascist colonialists did not regard the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa as a viable target for Europeanization in the foreseeable future. So they largely focused on economic exploitation and repression of unrest, but even this turned harsh enough to make a serious difference for the worse. The atrocities of the Congo Free State more or less became the new standard across Africa. As a rule, the Africans were far too disorganized and lacking in resources to stage much of an effective, sustained resistance, even if tribal revolts occasionally flared up across the continent and were inevitably crushed.

Living conditions in the Arab and Asian colonies did not worsen so much in comparison and stayed closer to pre-WWI standards. The British fascists did their best to pacify those colonies by a mix of brutal repression and token concessions, and they were successful enough to keep their hold on India, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. However a lot of resentment and opposition existed in these colonies and occasionally flared up in rebellions the British found increasingly difficult to suppress. The rise in influence and popularity of anti-colonial movements was only barely slowed down and the USSR was not stingy in providing support to the far-leftist and radical nationalist factions.

In comparison, the British got more successful in quelling unrest in Ireland. Repression of nationalist revolts of course left behind a considerable amount of bad blood, but the fascist regime came to regard Ireland as a valuable demographic resource for the Empire, especially after the loss of Canada and Australia. So it deployed a serious effort to improve socio-economic standards, education, and infrastructure in Ireland and co-opt Irish Catholics in its ranks. Ambitious Irishmen were encouraged to immigrate in the settler colonies on favorable terms. This lessened discontent among the Irish.

Even so, recurrent anti-colonial unrest became a major, persistent problem for the British Empire. It only got worse because of postwar territorial expansion in densely-populated non-European lands and loss of established settler colonies. This kept the British under the looming threat of imperial over-extension. They tried to compensate with their alliance with the LES and other fascist states, massive military build-up, ruthless resources extraction from the colonies, pro-birth policies for Whites, and their long-term plans to Europeanize vast tracts of Africa. In their expectations, South Africa and East Africa would eventually grow to match and surpass what they had lost in North America and Oceania.

As a result the British incarnation of fascism took a mostly defensive form. It was much more concerned with preserving the integrity of its vast empire than with any further territorial expansion. In its case defense however got a definite paranoid, trigger-happy character. Military intimidation, aggressive interdiction of potential destabilization sources, and bullying enforcement of strategic interests became standard tactics; moreover, preventive war was always on the table as an extreme option. Therefore the Great Game antagonism with the Soviets reached new Cold War heights of mutual hostility, and relations with Europe and America became seriously bad. On the other hand, tensions with democratic powers got some check since both sides usually thought the Soviets were a worse threat.

The democratic powers got seriously disgusted with fascist brutality when they noticed it. However its impact was often diminished since its worst aspects mostly manifested in remote lands and for people Europeans and Americans had limited access to and cared not so much about. Moreover the fascists usually tried their best to hide and minimize their misdeeds. On the other hand, the Soviets too did their own abundant lot of atrocities in their empire, often victimizing people the Western public knew and cared more about. Most importantly British defensive if paranoid stance tended to compare favorably with Communist expansionist ambitions and global campaign of infiltration and destabilization. Shared concerns about the Red menace also meant Britain and Japan kept relatively amicable relations most of the time, despite their serious disagreement about the role of colonialism in Asia.

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The USA annexed Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines after its victory in the Spanish-American War. It avoided getting involved in the Great War, and this kept it mostly safe from the postwar revolutionary wave. When US would-be revolutionaries seemed eager to imitate their ideological fellows on the other side of the Atlantic, the Americans found it easy to stomp them out in the so-called ‘Red Scare’. Much like it happened in Western Europe, the process led to the repression and persistent marginalization of communist and fascist movements. Moreover, the threat of revolutionary instability spreading to the Western Hemisphere did drive the USA into a major bout of interventionist-expansionist activism to suppress it.

America supported the secession of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand from the British Empire by political, economic, and military means when Britain fell into civil war and suffered a fascist regime change. This support paved the way for the political union of the USA and the British Dominions. The Americans also intervened in the Mexican Revolution and the so-called Banana Wars in the Caribbean and Central America when they threatened to radicalize and become a problem for US security. This persuaded the American elites and public that expansion of US rule across North America and Oceania was the best way to prevent a relapse in revolutionary instability and protect their strategic and economic interests. Bigot concerns and anti-imperialist scruples about this revival of Manifest Destiny got overruled or sidelined under the rallying cry of national security.

As a result, the USA annexed the scarcely populated Mexican territories north of the Tropic of Cancer as well as the strategically valuable areas of the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. The Canadian provinces, Australian states, and New Zealand became US states immediately after political union; Alaska (with Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut), Hawaii, Cuba, East Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, southern Central America, and the Northern Territory also gradually got statehood. Northern Mexico got statehood as well after being reorganized into a half-dozen states. The US government financed various important infrastructure improvements in the new territories, most importantly including the Panama Canal and the Nicaragua Canal.

The British fascists were quite pissed off at US support and takeover of the rebel Dominions. However they were busy enough stabilizing their rule at home and in their other colonies they thought better of picking a fight they would probably lose with the US giant. Central-southern Mexico with northern Central America, Haiti, and the Philippines were turned into associated states of the USA (‘Commonwealths’). They got self-rule in many domestic matters and non-voting representatives in the Congress, while Washington managed issues like foreign affairs, defense, currency, and trade. This was a compromise between the aspiration of Filipinos and Mexicans to self-rule, American wish for control, and the bigot concerns of WASP and Southern Whites about making too many dark-skinned folk US citizens.

Because of their willing merger and extensive political, cultural, and socio-economic affinities with the Americans, the former Dominions assimilated rather easily into the US political system. The US army had to toil for a while to put down nationalist resistance in the Philippines, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. However it was ultimately successful thanks to its superior organization and resources, as well as the lack of external support for the rebels. Once pacification settled in, most Filipinos and Hispanics gradually came to appreciate the extensive benefits – political stability, economic development, liberal democracy – provided by US rule and made themselves content with the new status quo. They found their place in the American political game or strived to imitate it in their own Commonwealths. Unfortunately annexation by the USA meant Caribbean and Central American Blacks became subject to Jim Crow racial segregation and discrimination.

Besides the temporary right-wing turn that accompanied the Red Scare, the USA stood as a bastion of liberal democracy and progressivism in the first half of the 20th century, much like post-revolutionary Western Europe. For most of this period, liberal progressives remained dominant in the American political system and enacted many important reforms. Increasing awareness of and concern for excessive socio-economic inequality, predatory and crony laissez-faire capitalism, and the ills of early industrialization drove the movement.

As a rule, liberal reformers and Progressive activists gradually became dominant in the Republican party; they got the support of an electoral coalition of middle-class reformists, labor unions, blue-collar and white-collar workers, minorities (racial, ethnic, and religious), farmers, and intellectuals. The Democratic party instead became clustered with social and economic conservatives, and stayed an haven for segregationist Southern Whites. Nonetheless, conservative minorities continued to exist in the GOP and liberal ones in the Democratic party.

The Progressives got a sizable array of reform legislation approved, including the first peacetime graduated income tax, a railroad regulatory agency, an anti-trust act to prevent large firms from controlling a single industry, laws to ensure the safety of foodstuffs and drugs, a child labor regulation act, a federal job safety code, the ban of federal injunctions against nonviolent labor disputes, a workers’ compensation law for work-related injuries and diseases, minimum-wage and maximum workday laws, a postal savings banks system, a low-interest credit system and other subsidies for farmers, campaign reform laws, citizenship for Native Americans, a program of conservation, reclamation, and irrigation of American land, establishment of a national park service, and creation of the Federal Reserve system. A few of these measures, however, were struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Constitutional amendments were passed to enforce direct election of senators, forbid restriction of voting rights because of sex, language, or creed, and allow an income tax.

When the Supreme Court struck down the child labor and job safety laws, the Progressives reacted by getting other constitutional amendments passed that empowered the Congress to regulate child labor and education without prejudice for the free exercise of religion and to enact regulations of business, property, and labor for the sake of public health, safety, general welfare, and protection of the environment. Frustrated with what they perceived as the slow pace of ratification due to the increasingly large number of states in the Union and obstructionist attitude of some state legislatures, they also passed another amendment that lowered the ratification threshold to 2/3 of the states and allowed to use state referendums to ratify constitutional amendments.

The Progressive movement engaged into a vast and successful lobbying effort to get the threshold referendum ratified by state conventions. This also provided momentum to ratify all the other Progressive amendments in relatively short order through a mix of state conventions and referendums. Laws were subsequently passed to regulate child labor, establish a graduated federal income tax and inheritance tax, and set up a federal job safety and health code. Progressive activism at the federal level was fuelled and mirrored by a similar effort at the state and local level. Many states created the initiative, referendum, and recall processes for citizens to directly introduce or approve proposed laws or amendments to the state constitution, and to give voters power to recall elected officials. The use of state and national primary elections to reduce the power of bosses and machines spread across the nation. The Progressives worked hard to reform and modernize local and state governments and the education system, professionalize medicine, law, and social sciences.

Much like it happened in the EU, Progressive reforms culminated in a legislative effort to protect labor organizing, ensure farm relief, set maximum hours and minimum wages for most categories of workers, and lay down the groundwork of the US welfare state with social security and health care systems. The movement also included an ambitious infrastructure development and public works efforts. It engaged in a wide range of government financed public works projects, building bridges, airports, dams, post offices, courthouses, roads, canals, and railroads. Through reforestation and flood control, it reclaimed millions of hectares of soil from erosion and devastation. Federal regulation of agricultural production and various subsidies supported farmers. Several hydroelectric and water regulation projects managed by federal agencies were established to provide navigation, flood control, irrigation, electricity production, and economic development to various regions of North America.

Efforts to enforce nationwide prohibition in the USA also persisted for a good while as part of the Progressive movement but proved too controversial and ultimately failed. Important factors in this outcome included US neutrality in the Great War, the growing importance of many immigrant communities that were hostile to prohibition, and the admission of several new states that shared a ‘wet’ disposition. The temperance movement however remained influential in the USA for a few decades, leading to several states becoming ‘dry’ or more frequently enacting local option laws.

Political and socio-economic reforms in North America (and Western Europe) made did a lot to help ameliorate the social ills created by early industrialization and laissez-faire capitalism. The only major problem they weren’t able to address was racial segregation and discrimination of the American Blacks. Jim Crow stubbornly resisted all attempts to reform it and even got extended to Blacks in the newly annexed territories, due to the political influence of racist Southern Whites. However pressure for change was gradually building up and the influence of segregationists was diminishing. Black activism was growing, and the Progressive coalition, the Northern section, and the new Anglosphere states turned more and more hostile to Jim Crow.

The conservatives and racists were unable to prevent the Progressive reforms, including a basic welfare state and a liberal immigration law, from being enacted or stop the admission to the Union of several new states with sizable non-White populations. As it concerned the new immigration laws they greatly relaxed limitations to immigration and naturalization for South and East Asians, and established none for Southern and Eastern Europeans. Good relations with Europe and Japan, sympathy for the plight of Eastern Europe, China, and India, and the lobbying of established immigrant communities proved important in getting this reform passed.

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The Great War and the subsequent revolutionary wave spread to South America; various states of the continent picked the former as an excuse to try and settle their territorial and geopolitical conflicts in a series of regional wars, and the latter combined with long-standing social issues of the continent to empower local extremists into attempting radical political changes. This ushered in a decade of regional conflicts, coups, civil wars, and revolutions that redrew the political map of the continent, much like it happened in Europe. When the situation stabilized, South America got split into a few large states of widely different political alignment, again rather like Europe.

A fascist regime took over in Brazil, albeit with the loss of the southern region. Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia were seized by Communists and merged into the Andes Federation. A liberal-democratic federation, the Southern American Union, took form with the merger of Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, and the South Region of Brazil, and stabilized with US support across the Southern Cone. To try and counter the rising threat of fascists and communists, the Americans also supported the local liberal and conservative moderates into organizing the merger of Colombia and Venezuela in a federal union, basically a revival of Gran Colombia.

As a rule these new states and regimes aligned diplomatically and established economic cooperation with the great powers that had a similar ideology: fascist Brazil grew close to the British Empire, the Andes Federation joined the Soviet bloc, and the SAU and Gran Colombia kept close ties with the USA. Expansion of fascist and communist influence in the Western Hemisphere got the Americans seriously concerned. It was one reason the USA decided to expand its rule across North America and Australasia, poured support to its South American allies, and turned hostile to the communist and fascist powers.

Japan turned itself into an industrial power thanks to its Meiji modernization process during the second half of the 19th century. Its newfound strength, successes in the wars against China and Russia, and opportunist interventions in the civil wars of its neighbors gradually allowed Japan to build an empire that encompassed Korea, Greater Manchuria, the Russian Far East, Sakhalin (renamed Karafuto), Taiwan, and Hainan. It played a limited, opportunist role in the Great War, and the resources it thus spared allowed the Japanese to crush all attempts of local Communists to imitate their Russian fellows and defeat the Soviets in the Far East.

At the same time, a coalition of constitutionalist moderates, liberals, and loyalist monarchists in the political parties, the armed forces, and the Japanese elites was able to suppress all the attempts of Japanese fascists, ultra-nationalists, and radical militarists to impose far-right policies at home and abroad. As a rule, the ruling Emperors and their advisors supported the moderates and this bound the loyalist majority of the armed forces to back the constitutional order. The extremist nationalist-militarist faction in the army staged a few coup attempts but they all failed and this gradually led to a thorough purge of radical elements from the armed forces and Japanese elites.

This allowed the Japanese Empire to evolve and stabilize into a liberal democracy, somewhat more conservative than the Western European and American models, but stable and vital enough nonetheless. A series of constitutional and political reforms entrenched liberalization by establishing responsible government, curbing the influence of the armed forces, providing universal suffrage for the Japanese people, and establishing civilian rule and a similar degree of enfranchisement for the other nationalities of the empire. The reforms also provided some autonomy and a border redrawing to Japanese prefectures and Korean provinces, and gave administrative organization to the Manchurian and Far East territories. Rather like its American and European models, the Japanese Empire came to embrace an ideal that downplayed ethnic differences in favor of cultural exceptionalism and a civic national identity.

Its policies in the overseas territories fostered economic development, encouraged Japanese and Korean settlement in the less populated habitable areas, and brought the same kind of social and political modernization that had taken place in Japan. They combined respect of cultural differences with encouragement of political assimilation for the nationalities deemed sufficiently loyal and cooperative, such as the Koreans, Manchu, Mongols, Siberian natives, Taiwanese, and non-Han Hainan people. The groups deemed too tied to their original nations and a potential danger for the unity of the empire, such as the Han and the Russians, instead got the choice of giving up their national identities and undergoing cultural assimilation or leaving.

Many chose to be loyal to their national identities and fled or were expelled; others underwent cultural assimilation since they thought life as a Japanese subject was a better deal than what they would get in Russia or China. The other nationalities of the Japanese Empire found the lot they were given acceptable thanks to the benefits – modernization, economic development, political stability, and liberal democracy – it brought. Or alternatively they deemed it a better option than the Soviet and Chinese likely alternatives that loomed threateningly beyond the border.

A language reform tried to improve education and linguistic cohesion in the Japanese Empire and ease its cultural and trade exchanges with the West by dropping or marginalizing kanji, fusing katakana and Hangul, experimenting with use of modified Mongol-Manchu script, and creating romaji, a romanized version of the Empire’s languages. There were serious efforts to combine Japanese, Korean, Manchu, and Mongol vocabularies into one or two pidgin languages. Plans were made to move the empire’s capital to Shinkyo (OTL Changchun).

The Soviets of course greatly resented loss of the Far East to the Japanese, but the bulk of their military power at the time was tied down in Eastern Europe and the Near East, so they accepted a peace deal that placed the Japanese-Soviet border at the Lena River, Stanovoy Range, and Lake Baikal line. To make up for their losses, they exploited Chinese weakness to annex Xinjiang (renamed East Turkestan) and the non-Manchurian portion of Greater Mongolia. They also poured a lot of assistance and support to Chinese Communists. The Japanese kept armed defense of their lands against the Soviets, friendly relations with America and Europe, and a complex stance towards the British Empire.

The latter combined hostility to British colonialism with an attempt to cooperate and contain the Communist threat. The Japanese supported the Indochinese in their anti-colonial rebellion and the Thai in their efforts to resist colonialism, turning both Indochina and Siam into client states of Japan. Much like the USA and the EU it picked as models, the Japanese Empire developed into a fairly stable and prosperous multi-ethnic nation based on liberal democracy, civic nationalism, and cultural exceptionalism.

Just as Japan became Asia’s success story with its timely modernization, China instead turned into a sobering tale about the terrible price of failing to keep up with the times. After suffering a long, humiliating string of setbacks, defeats, and decline during the 19th century, China fell into chaos when revolution toppled the Qing dynasty at the beginning of the 20th century. All its border territories were lost to foreign powers: Japan absorbed Manchuria, Taiwan, and Hainan; the USSR swallowed Xinjiang and Mongolia; and Tibet became effectively independent under British patronage. China proper broke down into warlord chaos and subsequent fragmentation into a half-dozen states as neo-monarchist reformists, republican nationalists, communists, and opportunist warlords fought for dominance. The monarchists and nationalists splitting into rival factions that supported different leaders only added to the mess. The Chinese of course greatly resented the vast territorial losses their nation suffered, but they were far too weak and divided to do anything about it.

Division of China lasted for a couple decades as no faction was strong enough yet to reunify the nation on its own. All the great powers gave some support to the factions they found friendly enough for reasons of ideology or convenience but avoided extensive intervention, and their meddling failed to break the equilibrium for a good while. Even the Japanese opportunistically exploited events in Russia and China to consolidate their rule over the Far East, Manchuria, Taiwan, and Hainan, but avoided a large-scale conflict with the Soviets or the Chinese.

Over time, however, the Chinese Communists grew stronger thanks to their superior organization and the generous support they got from the USSR. The CCP gradually conquered and reunified China proper, establishing the People’s Republic of China. The monarchists and the nationalists failed to stop the Communists due to their inability to overcome their divisions till it was too late. The British and the Japanese considered an intervention to stop the CCP but hesitated until the other Chinese factions were in full rout. Then both powers preferred to avoid an exhausting and difficult full-scale war against the Sino-Soviet alliance.

They were only able to help the Chinese Nationalists entrench their rule in Yunnan against the Communist onslaught. The KMT state in Yunnan stabilized thanks to Anglo-Japanese aid and Yunnan’s considerable degree of ethnic diversity. Tibet declared independence and became a British client state. Fall of China to the Communists and expansion of the Soviet bloc across Eurasia heightened awareness of the Red threat for all other great powers, despite their ideological differences and geopolitical rivalries.