Recent content by raharris1973

Tough luck. This ASB is an inconsiderate jerk. Boy oh boy, Central and Eastern Europe just got a population increase. There are duplicates of people who were PoWs. Also, some people coming back from the dead. Two versions of the same men with the claim to the same property, wife and...

Continuing the thought of Japan succeeding in its Dutch East Indies land grab of 1936 or 1937, the Japanese pacify and develop the islands, and release Dutch experts as they learn how to run petroleum and other operations. The British and Americans try to boost the Far East defenses, the former...

There is a what I think is a "trope" in popular alternate history imaginings and speculations, written into a few different novels, and games or game settings like GURPS alternate earths, where if Germany wins WWI, it inverts Germany and France in the postwar years, France instead of Germany...

Would Asia/the world of the twentieth century have been better off if Japan lost the Russo-Japan War, was stalemated, or deterred from attacking Russia in 1904 or later? Why so, or why not? In our world Japan, although regarded as an upstart, and the underdog, won this war, taking northeast...

What if post-Feb 1917 revolution/Provisional Government Russia is ISOT *forward* in time? Imagine if it is pretty much the entirety of Russia, those parts unoccupied by Central Powers, from May 1st 1917. The "governance" situation, such as it is, actually "dual power" between the Provisional...

OTL, Hainan hosted air bases and naval bases from which attacks were launched on Borneo and Brunei in the opening stages of the Pacific War. It also was the origination point of some of the invasion convoys that went there. If the Japanese had been better established on the island from the...

Sanctions *before* shooting? I doubt it. Pulling shipping contracts *before* shooting? Maybe by the Dutch, hardly anyone else. Neutral Norwegians and Greeks would ship apolitically even after shooting until it became too dangerous, in addition to native Japanese Japanese shippers. The Dutch...

That's kind of a weakly reductionist political answer to a technological question, that should still have technological consequences, and consequences on military and diplomatic timing.

What if Oppenheimer's consciousness from July 21, 1945 was transferred back to July 21st, 1943? How many months can this shave off getting to a bomb? July 21st 1945 was five days after the successful Trinity test in New Mexico. July 21st 1943 was the day after Leslie Groves gave Oppenheimer...

If Japan did launched this fight in, for example, December 1936, and completed its invasion occupation of the DEI in about 10 weeks or three months, which seems a generous amount of time for Dutch resistance if Japan is focused on this one objective, Britain's Australian Dominion would be the...

What if Japan had attacked the Dutch East Indies in 1936, based on lobbying from the Navy to gain the valuable archipelago located at the strategic maritime crossroads of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, offering Japan a position outflanking Singapore and Manila Bay, and providing already...

Could Japan have seized/kept Hainan island from 1931-33, without it turning into near-term all-out China War? Or more? Could that island have been an additional territorial morsel, seized for the glory of the Imperial Japanese Navy more than the Army, complementing the the contemporaneous...

Could Japan have had its carrier decks and carrier wings up to their Nov 1941 levels by Nov '40 or Nov '39 with earlier plausible investments? How far back would Japan had to have performed the designed work, allocated the steel, allocated the workers and engineers for the decks, the raw...

Why do Greater Mideast soldiers and leaders function and fight so much better in Party/Sect/Militia format than State/Army format? The combat record Arab armies in the 20th century was consistently poor despite individual instances of bravery, tenacity, and sometimes creativity. Very often...

One could quibble with your particular items of advice and specific numbers, but I think I correctly understand your argument as wait to be too aggressive or too much control control on buffer states until getting a good strategic nuclear weapons advantage and invasion capability, do not bog...