In our first episode of a world without the US we looked at the ways that the World War
2 and post War-era may have turned out if the US had simply refused to engage the world
and remained isolationist.
We discovered that there would be a near-certainty of a World War II that ended with a stalemate
heavily favoring Germany and positioning it for unrivaled superpowerdom in Europe.
We also saw how US non-interference in Korea would have led to a unified and communist
Korea with strong ties to the USSR and China, prompting a resurrection of the Japanese imperial
state.
Today we're going to see what might have happened if the US exited the world stage at various
points in history after the post World War II era.
Iranian Democracy
Without the US's interference in Iran, the revolution that brought down the monarchy
and ushered in a fundamentalist government may not have played out the way it did in
our world.
In fact, a revolution which would end up with a religious fundamentalist government may
have never been necessary in the first place, were it not for US and British interference
in 1953 that saw a democratically elected Prime Minister ousted by a military coup d'etat
organized by MI6 and the CIA.
Britain, who owned a majority share of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company- today BP oil- saw
their continued ownership of the Iranian company as vital to their national interests, as it
helped alleviate their budget shortfalls and also powered their oil-fired navy.
However Iranians began to chafe that the British continued to be the primary beneficiary of
the company's revenues, and in 1953 newly elected Mohammad Mossaddegh nationalized Iran's
oil industry.
This did not sit well with the British at all, and they immediately besieged the US
for help in overthrowing Mossadegh.
Initially the US was opposed to the idea, and saw the British as meddlesome and destructive
to the nation of Iran, but when Britain claimed that Mosaddegh may in fact draw close to the
Soviet Union- an unlikely event- the British played to President Dwight D. Eisenhower's
worst fear: communist expansion around the world.
Thus he approved the overthrow of Mossadegh, and the CIA and MI6 immediately went to work
manipulating the Iranian public into supporting the Sha's removal of Mosaddegh from his democratically
elected position.
Without the US, Britain would have been unable to remove Mosaddegh from power, which would
have resulted in a crippling blow to the British economy as it lost its controlling share of
one of the largest oil companies in the world.
Iran's own economy would have flourished, as would have its democratic values as popular
leaders such as Mosaddegh cultured a strong, secular and socially aware Iran that year
by year ate away at the political power of the Shah.
In many respects, Iran could today resemble Britain- a strong democracy with a nobility
that serves as nothing more than figureheads and who wield no real political power whatsoever.
Seeings its own values reflected in a strong Iranian democracy, the US would have seen
Iran as a regional partner, rather than the potential foe it is considered today, and
as a counterbalance to the growing influence of the Soviet Union in the Middle East.
With the Persian Gulf being the main tap for the global oil supply, the European democracies
would have vied to establish strong ties with Iran, while the Soviet Union would have sought
to strengthen its own ties with Iraq- both sides vying for political influence in the
most oil-rich region in the world.
The reason why is simple: while contrary to popular opinion, today governments of the
west don't 'plunder' Middle Eastern oil for their own benefit, rather a strong influence
in the region gives them the strategic capability to shut off the oil tap for potential enemies,
such as China or Russia.
In essence, one side could shut off the flow of oil to the other side in the case of war,
and that is what makes the Middle East so strategically important to the world.
With Western Europe and the Soviet Union vying for influence and power in the Middle East,
it would have inevitably lead to...
Massive Middle East War
While it would likely not have been of a scale appropriate enough to term 'World War III',
the US's exit from the Middle East would have without a doubt launched a regional conflict
to rival any of the largest European wars.
During the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988, the Soviet Union heavily supported Iraq, and after
the war Iraq was sitting on piles of Soviet hardware and a huge national budget deficit.
This would lead to the invasion of oil-rich Kuwait- and in our world this invasion was
stopped by a US-led coalition.
In a world where the US decided to simply walk away from the world though, Iraq would
have very quickly turned its attention on regional rival and very oil-rich nation, Saudi
Arabia.
At the time, Saudi Arabia relied heavily on US protection, and the US saw Saudi Arabia
as not just a vital economic partner, but a vital strategic partner as well who's location
allowed the US to ensure it could control the global oil tap in case of war against
Russia or China.
The US thus supplied much of the Saudi military, and even helped train it- and when Iraq invaded
Kuwait it was Saudi Arabia who saw the first US troops land, and were immediately dispatched
into defensive positions to protect Saudi Arabia's oil wealth, while the Saudi's own
military largely remained a supporting and token force.
Without the US however, Saudi Arabia would never have been able to withstand an Iraqi
attack, who would have plundered Saudi wealth in order to pay off its massive deficit incurred
by the almost decade long war with Iran.
Seizing Saudi oil supplies, Iraq would have become a regional superpower, firmly entrenched
with the Soviet Union and in effect giving the Soviets control over the majority of the
world's oil supplies.
Western Europe would have immediately financed a war against Iraqi aggression in a bid to
avert this strategic catastrophe, but without US firepower and military coordination, the
coalition that took out Saddam's forces in the first Gulf War would have been dramatically
underpowered.
Throughout the campaign, it was US intelligence and recon assets that coordinated coalition
attacks, and US stealth aircraft who launched crippling blows against what was at the time
one of the world's most formidable air defense networks.
Equally importantly though was American pressure on Israel and the efforts of US troops to
hunt down Iraqi SCUD launchers targeting Israel that prevented that nation from retaliating
against Iraq and thus upsetting the rest of the Islamic states in the coalition, tearing
the alliance apart.
Soviet military assistance would have flowed directly into Iraq, possibly even extending
into actual combat assistance such as that provided to China during the Korean War against
the US.
In our world the presence of overwhelming American firepower at the head of a huge international
coalition kept the Russians out of the Gulf War, but in a world without the US the international
coalition against Iraq would have been decidedly weaker, and victory much more achievable for
Iraq.
The Soviet Union would have thus thrown its full support behind Iraq, with little fear
of facing retaliation from the comparatively much weaker Western European nations.
After an Iraqi victory and the seizing of Saudi Arabia's vast oil wealth, a healthy
stream of very lucrative oil contracts would have flowed to the Soviet Union, enriching
it economically and perhaps averting its eventual collapse.
Cuba-Centric South America
Almost from the moment Fidel Castro took power and ousted the US-backed dictator ruling Cuba,
the United States tried to remove him from office.
Yet in a world without the US, Cuba would have been free to export its revolution abroad,
targeting neighboring countries with its communist revolutionary fervor.
Here in the real world, the US failed to remove Castro from power, yet it was very successful
at limiting or outright countering the influence of Cuba's revolutionaries in other nations.
For decades the US and Cuba, backed by the Soviet Union, fought an undeclared war of
influence- and sometimes actual weapons- in countries throughout South and Central America.
The US, fearful of communist expansion in its backyard, did all it could to eliminate
that threat, even going so far as to depose democratic governments such as it did in Chile
when those governments became too friendly with communist Cuba or the Soviet Union.
Without the US however, communist influence would have spread across the southern part
of the Western hemisphere, and today Central and South America would likely be made up
of communist states and a small number of very communist-friendly democracies.
Many dictators and the brutal atrocities they committed while in power against their political
enemies would not have arisen or maintained power.
Without US support, Chile's own General Augusto Pinochet would never have succeeded in overthrowing
the democratically elected Salvador Allende, and go on to become one of South America's
most oppressive dictators.
The Soviet Union Survives And Wins The Cold War
If the United States had decided to pull all its troops homes after World War II and taken
no interest in global politics, there is no doubt that the Soviet Union would have won
the Cold War against the democratic West.
Without American firepower in Europe, the Western democracies would have been forced
to stand alone against the Soviet juggernaut, which vastly overshadowed European forces
in both scope and capability.
The titanic political clout of an unchallenged Soviet Union would have easily bent even France
and Britain to its will, lest they face the wrath of the largest mechanized force in world
history on their own.
For decades the United States carefully outmaneuvered the Soviet Union on the international front,
resulting in a stunning defeat of the Soviet Union after it was completely economically
isolated from the rest of the world.
The Soviet Union always fielded a greater number of forces, and the United States always
relied on superior number of nuclear weapons to keep a parity of power between the two
states.
However, the end result of decades of sly US international maneuvering was a world where
the Soviet Union's greatest economic allies were the small third and second world governments
it had backed in Vietnam, Korea, and other places, leaving the Soviet behemoth slowly
starving as the world preferred trade with the US and its allies over the Soviets.
Without America, the Soviet Union would have been the greatest economic power in the world,
and profit alone would have encouraged the nations of the world to trade with it.
This great economic clout would have made it an untouchable superpower, and given it
enough influence to economically isolate western democracies in much the same way that the
US did to the Soviet Union in our world.
Interestingly enough though, rather than remaining a hardline communist power, the Soviet Union
would likely have resembled more modern-day China than the communist stalwart we know
from the Cold War.
Much like China, its growing exposure to global trade would have seen it relinquish central
control of the economy in exchange for dramatic economic growth.
As China today, the Soviet Union of a world without America would have been a political
communist power, with a free market system.
Nukes, Nukes Everywhere!
The greatest casualty of a world without the US however, would have been the cause of international
nuclear peace.
Today, US allies from Japan, to South Korea, to even Britain and Germany all live under
the protection of the American nuclear umbrella, with the assurance that a nuclear attack against
one of the US's protected states would result in an American nuclear response.
While Britain and France still choose to remain nuclear independent, the American nuclear
umbrella has ensured that the majority of nations it covers see no need in pursuing
a nuclear weapons program, resting secure in the knowledge that no matter what, the
US will abide by its promise to protect its allies.
A purposeful strategy, the US has for decades shouldered the burden of protecting other
nations knowing that by doing so, it could limit the threat of nuclear proliferation.
Less nuclear-capable states in the world means that the world at large remains safer from
the threat of nuclear war.
Yet without the US, many nations around the world would desperately seek out nuclear weapons
of their own.
Britain and France, who already have a small nuclear arsenal, would dramatically increase
the number of nuclear weapons they each hold, specially in light of how powerful the Soviet
Union would have become without the US to counterbalance its military and political
influence.
The Soviets themselves proved to be less concerned with nuclear proliferation than the US, and
would have likely done little to prevent regimes in places such as Syria and Libya from developing
their own nuclear weapons.
Even today in our real world, despite assurances of protection from the US, nations such as
Jordan and Saudi Arabia both desperately want their own nuclear programs, and Turkey has
long sought for NATO nuclear weapons to be under its own control- something the US flat-out
denied.
With the threat of a rising China and a nuclear North Korea, Japan remains confident that
it can rely on its American allies- yet without the US Japan would have been forced to develop
its own nuclear weapons program.
In the real world, a Japanese government internal document even went so far as to hypothesize
how quickly Japan could develop its own nuclear weapons if it decided it needed to.
A world without the US would look vastly different than the one we know today, perhaps better
in some areas, and vastly worse in others.
Like any other nation, the US has its fair share of villainous and heroic deeds alike,
though the consequences of its actions are magnified on a greater scale than any other
nation due to its power.
Still, given the state of the world today it can be hard to argue against the course
the US has plotted throughout the 20th century, despite the many missteps along the way.
Today the US stands as the world's sole superpower after defeating the Soviet Union, and now
at last is the time for Americans to demand that the US acts true to its declared values,
as it will likely never have this opportunity in history again.
What do you think a world without the US would look like?
What other crazy What If scenarios can you think of for us to explore?
Let us know in the comments!
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