AHC: A Three-way cold war -- with the Middle East

[Swan Station]

This is based on a strange dream I had, and it made me curious if there were some parts that were possible.

Essentially, the challenge is this:

• A three-way cold war by the end of the 20th century/early 21st century, between
  • the United States,
  • Russia and
  • some sort of unified Middle Eastern nation.
• Although Islam is dominant in this Middle Eastern nation, the nation does not see itself as specifically Islamic, although there may be political factions which do.
• The U.S. may not be quite as powerful as OTL, with much less influence in the Eastern Hemisphere -- but it's still a superpower.
• China is neutral, at least nominally, but I don't know what it's political ideology is. I'm not certain exactly what is going on in the rest of the world.

Bonus points to include some other parts of the dream, but I'm not making them part of the main challenge, since I think these may be ASB:

• Israel exists as a Jewish state, but is still politically united with the rest of the Middle Eastern nation.
• Spain is a semi-neutral military and political power, with huge influence in Southern Europe and South America and colonies/protectorates in Northwest Africa.
• The war has been getting quite warm in the last decades, and there is rationing going on in the U.S. An OTL international fast food chain, is in TTL an/the official food distributor for the Federal Government. Since the one in my dream didn't even become a corporation until 1955, I'm not going to require it to be that one.

 

[MSZ]

So you want the "inevitable caliphate" to exist in the late XXth century as a power at least as strong as Russia and the US? That is difficult, as it would require America to be significantly weaker, as even today the combined population, economy and military of ALL the Arab League states place it at a huge disadvantage compared to the US. But lets go with it.

PoD would be the Ottoman Empire not joining WWI, allowing it survive for the century and becoming the basis for the "Middle Easter Nation" you are looking for. It reforms after WWI as an constitutional monarchy, industralizes and modernies, allows Jews to settle in Palestine hoping their know-how and capital would help in growth. It becomes a Turko-Arab federation of sorts with a A "Jewish Autonomous State" as well (to fullfill your challenge) and thanks to its development becomes an alternative to the Arabian monarchies subjects. As a result, at some point during decolonization, the Ottoman Federation (or whatever it would be called) annexes Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Quatar, UAE, even Egypt as a result of well used Arab Nationalism sentiment. The Middle East is united under a single power, and controls most of the worlds oil supply, revenue from which is used to develop a modern industry and military, exemplified by kicking the British out of the Suez at some point. By 2000, it is a Great Power, looking to expand northward into the Caucassus, bringing it in conflict with Russia (which just formed as a result of the USSR collapse) - something like in Clancy's "Executive Orders".

In short - surviving Ottoman Emire which controls almost all of Middle Eastern oil and uses it to become a great power while avoiding Dutch disease and peacefull resolves social tension between the Turks, Arabs and Jews. Russia remains a power as OTL. Without Izrael, the US presence in the region is limited - maybe the Shah can stay in power (no Izrael => Persia becomes America's proxy in the Middle East). A Cold War is on, with post-Ottoman Turkey wanting to expand north, Russia trying to stop that, the US trying to break up the federation and the Turkish oil near-monopoly.

Is this useful?

 

[Baconheimer]

Yes, sounds relisitc.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

It needn't be a Caliphate. It would be an Arab Nationalist super-state. The problem with that is that Arabs are too fractious for that ideology to lead them to unity for long.

 

[Laplace's Demon]

In a Central Powers victory scenario, wouldn't 9 times out of 10 did the Ottoman Empire still lose its Arab holdings within a few decades?

With the Ottoman-backed Khedivate restored in Egypt as part of the post-war settlement, Italy gaining French Tunisia perhaps, German control of the Suez (?), and the Entente powers unable to take Arab territory without starting a row with Germany (and with the Central Powers ill-equipped to administrate League of Nations style mandates, especially given it might take ten or twenty years after the war for the Osmanli grip to slip), we could be looking at the region from Egypt to Syria throwing off the chains of Ottoman oppression in the 1930's and having a convincing geopolitical reason to form a unifying alliance that could eventually federalize or be united under a single monarchy: Italians to the West, the rump Ottoman state and its Army of Islam allies in possibly surviving states of Azerbaijin and the Northern Republic of the Caucasus, not to mention possibly Persia and Afghanistan (Neidermayer-Hentig expedition, anyone?) as well.

Trapped between colonialists and cynically Ottoman sponsored fundamentalists, they could get caught up in a fight between the Ottoman bloc and the United States of Greater Austria. Or be brought closely together resisting the oil colonialism of German cartels. Or benefit from free trade across the Mediterranean with the USGA, thanks to the growing popularity of free-markets and transnantionalism in Austrian intellectual circles.

Of course, if the CP or lets say the Triple Alliance part of the CP or lets say just the Mitteleuropan part of the Triple Alliance controls the Suez, that could mean their only way to be influenced by German culture, commerce, and tech without being dominated to a point that their growth is stunted instead of helped could be competing influences by way of the Indian ocean: the British would still be big in the Pacific even if they lost India to the Hindu-German conspiracy, and the US would probably continue to build up influence there as well, so the Arab states would not necessarily be forced into the status of sattelites of Mitteleuropa; but instead could have competing Mittel and Western influences and factions that create a healthy tension conducive to growth and the creation of a distinct identity on the world stage.

They would naturally pick up the pieces after the fall of Italian colonialism, not to mention when Ottoman-backed Persian tribal marauders are defeated by an enterprising would-be dictator or monarch who wants to modernize his country. Heck, if the fallout from the collapse of Ottoman influence is big enough, as a bloc if not the federation itself this sphere could stretch all the way to Afghanistan.

So perhaps the initial core of Arab states that win their independence from the Ottomans forming a federation or united kingdom, and Italian North Africa and the Horn as well as post-Ottoman-influence Persia and Afghanistan being part of the political and military alliance or pact.