Hi All,
An Alternate history timeline here, the point of divergance in our history is Fourfold, three plasuible historical changes and one outrageous SciFi idea : first Persia was never conquered by Islam and thus is still a majority Zoastrian polity governened by an Emperor (Sha).
The second is that of the Suez Crisis of 1956. In short the crisis occurred as a result of Egyptian Nationalist Nasser nationalising the Suez Canal - which hitherto had been owned by Britain and France- in response a coaltion of Britian & France (aided by Israel) went to war and seized the canal by military force. Whilst this was a military victory for the allies, both the Soviet Union and America hated it and under pressure-President Eisnehower blackmailed Britain with bankruptcy - and thus France and Britian was forced to retreat. In our timeline this is seen as the actual moment Britian was seen to cease to be a great power and began the rush toward the end of the British Empire and Britian has thus defined its foregin and defence policy with 'the special relationship' or 'lapdog of the Yanks' with America ever since. In France, it took a while for the writing on the wall , viz their Indo-China War and Algerian crisis, to be made apparent. But then France was and is an stubborn poliity and therefore developed its own nuclear weapons capability alongside dominating the nacescent European Union and in fact withdrew from NATO for most of the cold war. As a tiny footnote here, it should be remembered that the US didn't rate Israel very highly - unlike today- in actual fact its biggest great power backer was France until 1967 and it was only in 1973 that America grudingly agreed to supply Israel with massive amounts of weapons in order to win the Yom Kippur War (with some suggestions the gruding bit was because Israel was rationally considering the 'Samson Option' of using nuclear strikes against Egypt and Syria) .
The third change in the timeline would be to flip the idea of a 'special relationship' from Britian to France : Afterall France (ironically as an absolute monarchy and far worse than anything that those fighting for 'liberty' would like to live under ) was instrumental in bringing about an independent USA. The Statue of Liberty is a gift from France to America. Anglophobia was a current of populist American foregin policy throughout the 19th century, with strident calls for America to join Robespierreian and Napoleonic France, which resulted in another Anglo-American war in 1812, and after that threats of war over the Canadian-American border ("48 or war") and intervention during the American Civil War, through to the Anglophobia of Irish- Americans and often fuled by the other phyfoinated Americans - Irish, Italians, Poles etc (e.g. watch the film Titanic in which DeCaprio has the joy of 'Irish dancing' in the lower decks vs the Evil British 'Throw another Paddy/Itallian/Pole/ child on the fire Lord Bastard' attitude of the crew to the pointing of shooting them- which incidentally is factully untrue). Even during world war I, German Americans did their best to keep America netural from the 'Vile Hun and his villianous Empire building', which was even greater during the isolationist period of 1921-1941. It is not a long stretch therefore to flip the roles of France and Britian so that by 1956 that France was the pro-American state with 'the special realtionship' willing to lead for America in Europe, with Britain being the stubborn one, unwilling to give up what was left of the Empire and upset with American ways (e.g. Britian gave a massive amount of intellectual and other captial to develop atomic weapons and techonlogy, but once the war was over cowboy Truman abrupty cancelled lend -lease and chucked out British scientists and refused to share the joint technology with Britian).
The fourth change in the time line would be a science fiction 'macguffin' as it were. What could that possibly be?
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