Alternative History

Great Debates
1

Here is an alternative history debate:

In 1945, only America had the atomic bomb. Suppose, at that point, the United States sent out airplanes and dropped a bomb on every world capital. Essentially, setting itself up as the ruling authority of the world. From that point forward, any and every time there was any kind of uprising, a plane was deployed and an atomic bomb was dropped.

Although initially there would be a horrific loss of life, significant benefits could have been reaped. For example, the trillions of dollars spent on the world’s defense systems and armed forces could have been used for things like world hunger, eradication of disease, etc. The loss of lives from all the wars since 1945 would have been prevented.

There does not seem to be a reason that we could not have continued to have free-standing elections, although the issues would clearly have been different.

So, why would this system/plan have failed—or could it have succeeded?

2

Where to begin?

Well, first of all, in 1945, the U.S. didn’t have enough bombs to drop on every nation.

But assuming we did, your assumption of less loss of life due to fewer wars is ridiculous. There are many examples of governments with absolute power still facing uprisings. And we’d have to be patrolling the world, bombing innocent people every time there is an uprising somewhere. This, of course, would only cause more uprisings.

And if we were going to rule all of these people and still remain a representative democracy, we would have to allow them all to vote. Do you think they’d all vote to continue being bombed? I don’t.

Basically, you’re talking about a dictatorship by the U.S. I think we have seen that those kinds of governments don’t tend to last very long.

3

In any case, just to add a side note, the atomic bombs available at the time weren’t really that great. The same, or better, effect of an atomic bomb circa 1945 could be easily accomplished with a relatively thourough firebombing. (In fact, the reason that the Atomic bomb was so devastating was that it set off a firestorm in the cities it destroyed-on it’s own it only would have killed 1/2-1/3 of the people it did.(of course thats still 30,000 some people, but overall the value of the atomic bomb was psychological and not tactical.)

4

This is too bizarre.

No democracy (to my knowledge) in all history has waged war against another democracy. That is a function of capitalism and wealth creation.

The idea is to foster markets, that what creates wealth and get’s Presidents re-elected.

Hence at the end of WW2, the US didn’t bomb their allies and anyone else. Instead they went with the Marshall Plan and created the first Empire led by economic power and supported by military power. Until then, Empire’s had been built on military might. This also is a function of capitalism.

5

D**n, I thought for sure Cecil had addressed this, but the search engine turned up no hits.

Anyhow, I can’t come up with a reference for it, but I’ve seen a discussion of this that essentially concluded that it’s true only if you perform some convoluted gyrations with the meanings of “war” and “democracy”.

The American Civil War springs to mind …

6

I’d think all civil wars spring to mind but i guess you know that’s not what i meant.

7

What about all the radioactivity that would eventually accumulate? Who wants to be a millionaire if the only place you can spend it is in a radioactive wasteland? “The paradise formerly known as the Bahamas…” And then, eventually, “the formerly inhabited planet known as Earth…”

Milton says that Lucifer said, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven”. Do you think this “dictatorship” that goes around dropping bombs on people would be pleased with those results? Seems like it would be violating the Prime Directive that says, “You don’t shit where you eat.” Seems like maybe this bomb-dropping dictatorship might figure that out, after a while.

It’s starting to sound like some of those Cold War sci-fi stories, where the evil alien dictatorship (read: commies) really does rule over a radioactive wasteland, but Johnny America saves humanity, just in time, with his left-handed frannistan…And then they all build bio-domes and settle down to wait out the half-life…

In the OP’s situation, you’d have a huge Cold War-style arms race, because nobody’s going to just sit around waiting for Uncle Sam to drop a bomb on them. Then you’d have World War III. So now it’s like one of those sci-fi stories where they go back in time to try to change things, only to discover that you can’t really change things.

Also, in terms of psychology, governments that concern themselves a great deal with stamping out all opposition generally don’t concern themselves overmuch with abstract do-gooder concepts like “world hunger, eradication of disease, etc.” I didn’t notice the Nazis doing much towards eliminating world hunger or eradicating disease (unless you want to count all those experiments on Jews).

And now that I think of it, I suppose that this bomb-dropping dictatorship might actually prefer that “world hunger” and “disease”, at least the parts that affected the opposition, would continue–less opposition. They might even investigate the interesting possibilities of germ warfare, and a global “scorched earth” policy. Spray some Paraquat on those Ukrainian wheat fields, that’s if the radioactive fallout hasn’t already messed them up good…

8

Boom goes London, and Boom Paree
More room for you and more room for me
And every city, the whole world round
Will just be another American town
Think how peaceful it would be
We’ll set everybody free
You’ll wear a Japanese kimono and it’ll be Italian shoes for me!

They all hate us anyhow
So lets drop the Big One now
Yeah, lets drop the… Big… One… Now!

  • Randy Newman
9

JonF - Cecil did cover the question of whether or not two democracies had ever gone to war against each other, in one of the later books, with the same analysis that you’ve given. I noticed that the search archives ony contain a sampling of columns that were put into the books, with this comment: “We don’t want you to browse through the entire index. We want you to buy the damn books.” I think that’s why we couldn’t find it.

The OP brings to my mind a quote from the Vietnam era - “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”

10

US citizens simply would not tolerate their sons being killed all over the world.

There would be an enormous worldwide terrorist movement organised by some of the most effective military minds in history.US cities would be devastated by trailer sized bombs and there would be no obvious enemy to strike back at.

The only way US authorities would be able to prevent this would be to remove many of the freedoms enjoyed by US citizens today.Then there would be organised protests by disaffected groups in the US funded, doubtlessly, by terrrist organisations.

These tactics have been and are curretly employed by “freedom” fighters all over the world.

I suspect strongly that one of the motivations for the British in the negotiations over the Northern Ireland assembly was the financially devastating bombs left in London and Manchester. There were people killed but that number was small, yet the cost ran into billions of £ and I doubt that it was sustainable.

Even if the US franchised out its authority to friendly states such as the UK, with its own agenda, it would not work.

There is an argument the the US is already pulling the strings of the rest of the world to great effect anyway so why bother with the nuclear thing ?

11

Let’s see…we would be contaminating the world (including ourselves), we would be killing our relatives in other countries, we would suffer economically since no one would trade with us anymore (like, all the oil we need so much), we would be incredibly immoral, we would be illogical (killing to prevent killing), we would lose security (the rest of the world would gang up on us), etc. etc. etc.

12

David B wrote:

Nonsense. The citizens of countries conquered by the U.S. would not be U.S. citizens. We wouldn’t have to allow them to vote. That’s the “nice” thing about being the central nation in an empire.

13

We would need a few more US citizens to create an army large enough to cover the entire planet. I imagine that we would want a couple of armed representatives to watch the middle east.

I have a better Idea, lets create the biggest nuclear arsenal and the best war engines. Then let’s dominate the global markets and let each country take care of its own damn problems. Then, let’s get rich and use our vast wealth to be the de facto rulers of the world…

or did we do that already?

14

That Democracy vs democracy thing intrigues me. Let me ask the historians here if any of the following would count:

American Revolutionary War: Americans vs. Brits (who despite having their king, were basically a democracy)

Brits vs. Irish, a la turn of the century.

Now some of these is gonna depend upon where we draw the line for “democracy”:

Greece vs Turkey
India vs. Pakistan
Israel vs. Jordan
Brits & French vs. Egypt
Ecuador vs. Peru
Argentina vs. Brits (not sure the status of Argentina’s government during the Falklands War, so if they were still a dictatorship, I appologize)

Anyone else think of any?