Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Nations That Weren't: the UberCommonwealth

I was recently considering Whither the Poms that Syd Webb posted.

Personally, I am a uniter or empire builder in my political leanings. I like big nations. They organize resoruces on scales that, oh, Luxembourg could only dream of. The obvious nations I'd unite IRL would be America, Mexico, Canada, Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, El Salvador, and, if possible, the Carribean nations as well. However, this is dreamland, frankly.

However, while pondering Syd's post, I wondered about a united 'white dominions' (Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand) of the former British Empire. This has been posted before on SHWI about three years ago and it was a favorite of some less than savory characters there, so I'll skip posting it there.

It makes you wonder what that nation would be like if it came about though, huh? A lot would depend on how it came to be. The best PoD that I can think of is that the US goes isolationist after WW2 (perhaps by having a harrowing experience invading Japan?) and the Brits and the rest of the Commonwealthers are faced with holding back the Soviets, with the help of the rest of western Europe, without overt US support. Think of it as the Commonwealth on steriods that leads to political, military, and economic integration.

Consider that UberCommonwealth would look like. I don't see India bowing to and integrating with the united dominions posited here - and the united dominions being unwilling to unite with a 'brown' dominion - and the PoD is too late to keep it, anyways. I have a feeling they'd slough off Rhodesia and South Africa, PDQ.

If we steal numbers from OTL then we'd have some small idea of what would be there. The population would be in the ball park of 110 - 120 million. The GDP would around $3,510 billion PPP. Per capita would be between $29,250 PPP and $31,900 PPP. In total hitting power, it'd be a little lower than OTL's Japan, but higher than OTL India. Per capita, it'd either be just a bit richer than Canada, or a bit poorer than OTL UK or Japan.

While its nice stealing numbers from OTL, its completely unrealistic because the politics and economics between the PoD and now would prolly change this quite a bit. It would be interesting if the result of this was that the UberCommonwealth was the enforcer of the world, much like the GloboCop role that the US plays now, and the US was the economic engine, only more so.

Interesting idea. Too bad the racist crowd loves that PoD so much.


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