AHC: British Empire as the 3rd Superpower in a Tri-Polar Cold War?

[InvaderX]

The British Empire is often considered to be the world's first superpower (and for a while, the only superpower) - is it possible for them to retain this status, even while the Soviet Union and the United States both emerge as superpowers in their own right? In such an alternate Cold War, how could you have Britain avoid falling into the American camp (or the Soviet one) and pursue it's own interests that are contrary to those of the US and Soviet Union?

 

[steamboy]

Thing is the UK was bankrupt following WW2 and the collapse of the Empire was inevitable. To have it survive, you'd need a vastly different (and shorter) WW1 which would probably lead to a very different WW2 and then different cold war.

 

[BigBlueBox]

You would need a PoD before World War 1, and that of course could prevent the Cold War make it unrecognizable.
Edit: Just got ninja’d.

 

[Zen9]

It would need the UK to not owe the US huge amounts of money for WWII 'loans', and it would need the transition back to a peacetime economy to be swift and comprehensive.
Going deeper, making the Pound the currency of oil purchases worldwide.

 

[InvaderX]

Thing is the UK was bankrupt following WW2 and the collapse of the Empire was inevitable. To have it survive, you'd need a vastly different (and shorter) WW1 which would probably lead to a very different WW2 and then different cold war.

You would need a PoD before World War 1, and that of course could prevent the Cold War make it unrecognizable.
Edit: Just got ninja’d.

Certainly you could still have the Soviet Union eventually emerge as a superpower even with an alternate WWI? It had the resources and the population to become one (or it wouldn't have OTL). America was already well on the way to becoming an economic superpower (though perhaps not a military one) before WWI.

 

[Matteo]

I disagree with this :

The British Empire is often considered to be the world's first superpower (and for a while, the only superpower

The notion of superpower was developed for the US and the USSR, not for the British empire.

The British empire was a worldwide spanning traditional imperial power. What defines superpowers is their gigantic intrinsic power and resources (continental States).

The British empire was not the only one of its kind. By many standards, the Spanish empire had been quite comparable.

And the British empire never had such power as the superpowers that emerged after its decline.

Had it had such power, there would have been no WW1 and no WW2.

And Britain’s falling into the US camp happened as early as 1941. There were debatable criticisms against Churchill’s political choices on this point but this was probably unavoidable. The British empire was on the path of dislocation. The colonies and dominions would not follow Britain on the path of continued imperial competition against superpowers.

And as Churchill put it in a caricatural way, without India, Britain could not compete on the top league. And India’s will to get rid of British domination was so strong and immediate that it was game over for Britain as a top world power.

 

[Dominic]

What defines superpowers is their gigantic intrinsic power and resources (continental States).

It is not intrinsic power, but relative power. The gap in power between the US and British Empire in 1945 was far smaller than the gap between any of the pre-war Great Powers and say, Portugal. Nor indeed was the gap between them anything close to as large as the gap between the British Empire in 1945 and its equivalent in 1914. That is to say, there is nothing special about the US reaching a hitherto unprecedented degree of absolute strength as that was a feat being achieved constantly for centuries.

The term 'superpower' only has meaning relative to the huge jump in comparative strength that the US/USSR enjoyed over the UK/France combined with the reluctance to admit that what had actually occurred is that the latter two had lost Great Power status. There is no functional meaning in term 'superpower' that is not encapsulated in the term 'Great Power', while the term 'superpower' also brings with it a degree of unnecessary confusion regarding the difference between it and the still-used 'Great Power'.

So to answer the OP, no, Britain could never be considered a 'third superpower' as that term was defined solely on the UK/France's inferiority to the US/USSR. Had that not occurred, the term 'Great Power' would have remained in vogue for describing the leading states of the time.

And to answer the OP without playing with definitions, IMO still no there was no way by the 20th century that the UK could keep up with the US or USSR. Without the world wars the gap would have been smaller and grown slower, but the UK was already on the backfoot regarding the US in 1914... though I suppose it is plausible that Russia in its various forms could have been dismantled by external forces, allowing the UK to remain 'ahead'.

 

[Drizzt]

And to answer the OP without playing with definitions, IMO still no there was no way by the 20th century that the UK could keep up with the US or USSR. Without the world wars the gap would have been smaller and grown slower, but the UK was already on the backfoot regarding the US in 1914... though I suppose it is plausible that Russia in its various forms could have been dismantled by external forces, allowing the UK to remain 'ahead'.

By the beginning of the 20th century, it was by no means assured, that something like the USSR would rise out of Russia or that the US would ever even want the kind of global influence it had after WW2. Of course that would also mean it wouldn't be 3rd, but one of say 5 or more Great Powers, for example:
- A U.S. which is hegemon over the American continent
- The German Empire
- A Russia/USSR/whatever that achieved detente with Germany and looks south and east for power projection
- A resurgent China
- The Imperial Federation aka Former British Empire, that as time passes more and more people will say should really be called "The Indian Empire with an Island of the coast of Europe"

All you'd need is a PoD before or early in WW1.

 

[Jiraiyathegallant]

Have Stalin die or get murdered during a purge resulting in a power struggle and civil war in the Soviet Union that results in the Soviet Union being crippled economically and losing much of its sphere of influence.

Have America retreat into isolationism, mostly just concerning itself with much of Latin America, Canada, and Japan.

Have China and India get driven into the ground by their OTL leadership.

Have the UK cut military spending post war, avoid many of their nationalizations, take in millions more immigrants each decade than the OTL, and hold on to a few key pieces of their empire and develop them (Hong Kong, Singapore, Suez, several small oil rich Gulf States, if possible create an Indian, African, and South American Hong Kong/Singapore somewhere and hold on to them).

 

[Dominic]

By the beginning of the 20th century, it was by no means assured, that something like the USSR would rise out of Russia or that the US would ever even want the kind of global influence it had after WW2. Of course that would also mean it wouldn't be 3rd, but one of say 5 or more Great Powers, for example:
- A U.S. which is hegemon over the American continent
- The German Empire
- A Russia/USSR/whatever that achieved detente with Germany and looks south and east for power projection
- A resurgent China
- The Imperial Federation aka Former British Empire, that as time passes more and more people will say should really be called "The Indian Empire with an Island of the coast of Europe"

All you'd need is a PoD before or early in WW1.

The US is going to be number 1 by a decent margin, no avoiding that. Germany has an outside chance of being competitive, while Russia could do far better than it did in OTL (though I agree that the opposite is possible too). China by late century, sure. The British Empire was doomed from well before 1900 though, nothing can be done to save it though a lot more of the furniture could have been. Britain is fundamentally too small and weak to maintain it for much longer than it did, and would never accept Indian domination. Nor would the rest of the Empire.

 

[MickCz]

Thing is the UK was bankrupt following WW2 and the collapse of the Empire was inevitable. To have it survive, you'd need a vastly different (and shorter) WW1 which would probably lead to a very different WW2 and then different cold war.

The UK was bankrupt following WW1 let alone WW2, and the American loans to the UK to fund that war remain unpaid to this day. That is why arms and other purchases by the UK at the start of WW2 had to be "cash and carry", and why there was such a political struggle to pass Lend Lease.
Indeed the British Empire, if it was such a thing, could not survive; but there could possibly have been a smaller trading bloc presumably based around the Imperial Preference arrangements which would have been beneficial. After WW1 there is no chance at all of the British Empire being a superpower; it wasn't one even before that.