WI: Alaska as an independent nation

[Napoleonrules]

Well, what would be the best case scenario for an Alaskan country without using ASB?

A multi-POD scenario- first) have the Japanese never occupy Attu or threaten Aleutian Islands, eliminating the "sympathy" for Alaska to become a state because it and Hawai'i; both territories that had battles while not having full rights. 2nd) Alaska and Hawai'i arent put on the UN's list of non-self governing territories; or harder and alternatively eliminate the Cold War thereby eliminating the fear that if Alaska is given independence it is vulnerable to USSR or unfriendly govt coup. 3rd) Hawai'i gets independence as well. Alaska and Hawai'i were made states as a pair because at the time Hawaii was republican and Alaska democrat (wow how things change) without one the other is harder to bring in as well.

 

[TRH]

Is Alaska even viable as an independent country today?

Might be, actually. It's got the 15th highest per capita GDP among American states. Oil covereth a multitude of sins.

 

[Napoleonrules]

Might be, actually. It's got the 15th highest per capita GDP among American states. Oil covereth a multitude of sins.

Because high gdp per capita through oil has done so well for Libya and Venezuela, it hasnt even made Kuwait, UAE, or Brunei developed nations. A resource extraction led economy rarely turns into an industrial "making things" economy that actually helps the citizens of the nation.

 

[TRH]

Because high gdp per capita through oil has done so well for Libya and Venezuela, it hasnt even made Kuwait, UAE, or Brunei developed nations. A resource extraction led economy rarely turns into an industrial "making things" economy that actually helps the citizens of the nation.

Libya has a third of Alaska's per capita GDP, and Venezuela one ninth. So long as institutions aren't a total waste, you can end up with something like Norway rather than Nigeria.

 

[PuffyClouds]

Is there enough farmland in Russian Alaska to support a population large enough to avoid British and American dominance? It is basically the end of the world, so the local population wouldn't need to be as high as if it were Maine-Acadia for example, or the Netherlands. From looking over the climate zones in Alaska, I think there is a rather small area that can support good growing - but I might be wrong.

 

[Burton K Wheeler]

Is there enough farmland in Russian Alaska to support a population large enough to avoid British and American dominance? It is basically the end of the world, so the local population wouldn't need to be as high as if it were Maine-Acadia for example, or the Netherlands. From looking over the climate zones in Alaska, I think there is a rather small area that can support good growing - but I might be wrong.

There's very little farmland in Alaska. There was a big New Deal program to develop the Mat-Su valley, but most things would still have to be imported. I mean, 50,000 people could probably live off fish and potatoes, if that's what you're saying, but any sort of economically viable independent Alaska is a total fantasy.

Even the current levels of population and development only exist because Alaska is an overseas colony of a rich country that invested heavily in it. Even if by some miracle Russian Alaska stayed independent (presumably because no one bothered with invading it), it would have a permanent population of about 100,000 or less, mostly native villages barely getting by on fishing and aid, and a bunch of foreign oil company workers making all the money.

 

[Napoleonrules]

Libya has a third of Alaska's per capita GDP, and Venezuela one ninth. So long as institutions aren't a total waste, you can end up with something like Norway rather than Nigeria.

And Norway was diversified before oil. Oil doesn't and didn't drive Norway's economy. Norway's environment and economic potential doesn't equate to "Alaska can do it too, they're both cold!". Alaska would be more like Libya, Nigeria, and Venezuela. It would actually be more like Nicaragua, a banana republic dominated by US interests and civil wars and a third world nation. Independent Alaska will not be a first world nation.

 

[BiteNibbleChomp]

My TL has an independent Alaska arise in the 1860s after the tsar decides it isn't worth defending any more (in light of a very violent Europe) and so he just grants some of the Russians there some titles and then abandons the place. Most of its money comes from the fact that a few Russians were some of the first people in the Californian gold rush and they took that wealth back to Alaska (where it is more valuable in Russia).

Even then, it only really works because:
- Neither the US, Canada, or Mexico have really populated anything in the far northwest (Mexico's border in OTL 1835's, but they never really bothered with anything much north of San Francisco)., by the time they do (20th century), Alaska has been an independent nation long enough for no-one to care.
- Colonialism more or less dies throughout the nineteenth century (Britain and France are too focused on killing each other to worry about the rest of the world), and when it comes back around 1900 it is largely a united effort of "Western nations" vs "everyone else", and Alaska counts as a Western nation.
- Oil isn't found there by the end of the TL.
- It holds the land that OTL Seattle and Vancouver are on (as well as the rest of the coast of Washington state and Oregon).

And even then, it remains a backwater with almost 100% of its economy coming from fishing (population never goes much past 50k, so this is sustainable). It's more like an oversized fishing village than a country.

I should also mention that the first real "development" beyond this comes when the Americans build a naval base on one of the Aleutian Islands (to fight China), which for all intents and purposes absorbs the town there, so there's not really any escaping the fact that Alaska will be dominated by someone else if anyone shows even the slightest inclination to do so.

- BNC

 

[Workable Goblin]

And Norway was diversified before oil. Oil doesn't and didn't drive Norway's economy.

Half of Norway's exports and a fifth of their GDP come from oil and gas, which sounds a lot like "driving the economy" to me.

Even if by some miracle Russian Alaska stayed independent (presumably because no one bothered with invading it), it would have a permanent population of about 100,000 or less, mostly native villages barely getting by on fishing and aid, and a bunch of foreign oil company workers making all the money.

I don't think the expats would be the ones making all the money, not by a long shot. Every government that's found out its sitting on a ton of oil has sooner or later gained control over its revenues, and then used that to keep itself in power. The smaller the country, the more likely it is that they end up essentially bribing everyone in the country to keep them happy. Alaska will be a small, underpopulated country, which gives rather considerable scope to this approach. I suspect, rather, that the natives will have most of the money and the expats will...well, still be making quite a lot of money, but not anywhere near all of it.

 

[Neko Tamo]

There is a timeline of an independent Alaska on the alternate history wiki. Essentially it involves a greater Russian presence through Russian private colonizers which makes this Alaska stretch down to around the northern tip of California and has it be a lot more populous. It is mainly Russian (and other East Slav) dominated but it has a sizable Anglo population too. It is an immigrant country of Russian heritage that breaks free during the Russian Civil War.

 

[Napoleonrules]

Half of Norway's exports and a fifth of their GDP come from oil and gas, which sounds a lot like "driving the economy" to me.

Oil wasn't discovered until 1973 which means you're wrong because Norway was already a first world industrial nation and diversified economy. There is a big difference between the UAE method of industrializing and diversifying as a third world developing nation versus a Norway or Canada that happens to have large oil fields after being industrialized. Alaska would fall in the way of an undeveloped nation if it had never joined the US.

 

[Workable Goblin]

Oil wasn't discovered until 1973 which means you're wrong because Norway was already a first world industrial nation and diversified economy.

Did I say it wasn't? You said, after all, that oil "doesn't" drive the Norwegian economy, that is that it is not driving it right now. If a fifth of your GDP is coming from a single industry, then I think it's pretty reasonable to say that industry is "driving" your economy, whether or not it did in 1960 or 1910.

 

[Napoleonrules]

Did I say it wasn't? You said, after all, that oil "doesn't" drive the Norwegian economy, that is that it is not driving it right now. If a fifth of your GDP is coming from a single industry, then I think it's pretty reasonable to say that industry is "driving" your economy, whether or not it did in 1960 or 1910.

Except that being 1/5th of the GDP still doesn't make oil the largest sector. Like all developed nations the service sector is the largest sector of the economy and the sector that DRIVES THE ECONOMY. Per Statistics Norway.

 

[Workable Goblin]

Except that being 1/5th of the GDP still doesn't make oil the largest sector. Like all developed nations the service sector is the largest sector of the economy and the sector that DRIVES THE ECONOMY. Per Statistics Norway.

No, it really isn't, and your graph shows why. The category "services" is a conglomeration of many industries, such as finance, shipping, health care, etc., rather than being a single industry. You would have a point if one of those industries was larger than the petroleum industry, but all of them put together are not so much bigger. That indicates an economy which has a significant dependence on a single industry--the petroleum industry--as a source of jobs and GDP. The main reason that the recent fall in oil prices has not been catastrophic for them has been their wise policy of investing oil revenue in their sovereign wealth fund and the relatively low cost of their field operations, which means that they're more competitive at low oil prices than, say, many shale plays are.

In any case, a lot of those "services" probably depend on oil and gas for their customers--a bank that mostly works with oil and gas workers, for instance, would show up under "services," but is totally dependent on the oil and gas business for revenue. Something like that happened in Houston in the 1980s--probably on paper (unfortunately I'm having a hard time finding statistics--FRED only seems to have data back to 2001, for instance) we were just as diversified as Norway is, with big health care, construction, real estate, and shipping industries in addition to the 800 pound gorillas (at the time) of our chemical and oil and gas industries. But when the crunch time came and oil prices fell off a cliff, Houston was hit bad. It didn't matter that so much economic activity was nominally in other fields, because those fields were being ultimately driven by our oil and gas industry--those buildings were being built to house oil and gas offices, those hospitals were treating oil and gas workers, that shipping was more oil tankers than anything else. That kind of thing.

When I look around on line, most articles I see on the Norwegian economy do in fact seem to think that it's pretty driven by oil and gas, by the way.

 

[Napoleonrules]

No, it really isn't, and your graph shows why. The category "services" is a conglomeration of many industries, such as finance, shipping, health care, etc., rather than being a single industry. You would have a point if one of those industries was larger than the petroleum industry, but all of them put together are not so much bigger. That indicates an economy which has a significant dependence on a single industry--the petroleum industry--as a source of jobs and GDP. The main reason that the recent fall in oil prices has not been catastrophic for them has been their wise policy of investing oil revenue in their sovereign wealth fund and the relatively low cost of their field operations, which means that they're more competitive at low oil prices than, say, many shale plays are.

In any case, a lot of those "services" probably depend on oil and gas for their customers--a bank that mostly works with oil and gas workers, for instance, would show up under "services," but is totally dependent on the oil and gas business for revenue. Something like that happened in Houston in the 1980s--probably on paper (unfortunately I'm having a hard time finding statistics--FRED only seems to have data back to 2001, for instance) we were just as diversified as Norway is, with big health care, construction, real estate, and shipping industries in addition to the 800 pound gorillas (at the time) of our chemical and oil and gas industries. But when the crunch time came and oil prices fell off a cliff, Houston was hit bad. It didn't matter that so much economic activity was nominally in other fields, because those fields were being ultimately driven by our oil and gas industry--those buildings were being built to house oil and gas offices, those hospitals were treating oil and gas workers, that shipping was more oil tankers than anything else. That kind of thing.

When I look around on line, most articles I see on the Norwegian economy do in fact seem to think that it's pretty driven by oil and gas, by the way.

It's not worth continuing this argument as you are "convinced" in your "hypothesis" and refuse to look at information that is against your "conclusion". You cherry pick and don't understand what a first world developed nation looks like. If Norway was an extraction based economy it wouldn't, by definition, be a developed nation.

DO NOT REPLY TO THIS POST, PLEASE. I have no further wish to continue. If you wish to continue, do so without quoting this, and allow it to stand on its own. Good bye, sir.

 

[Burton K Wheeler]

My TL has an independent Alaska arise in the 1860s after the tsar decides it isn't worth defending any more (in light of a very violent Europe) and so he just grants some of the Russians there some titles and then abandons the place. Most of its money comes from the fact that a few Russians were some of the first people in the Californian gold rush and they took that wealth back to Alaska (where it is more valuable in Russia).

Even then, it only really works because:
- Neither the US, Canada, or Mexico have really populated anything in the far northwest (Mexico's border in OTL 1835's, but they never really bothered with anything much north of San Francisco)., by the time they do (20th century), Alaska has been an independent nation long enough for no-one to care.
- Colonialism more or less dies throughout the nineteenth century (Britain and France are too focused on killing each other to worry about the rest of the world), and when it comes back around 1900 it is largely a united effort of "Western nations" vs "everyone else", and Alaska counts as a Western nation.
- Oil isn't found there by the end of the TL.
- It holds the land that OTL Seattle and Vancouver are on (as well as the rest of the coast of Washington state and Oregon).

And even then, it remains a backwater with almost 100% of its economy coming from fishing (population never goes much past 50k, so this is sustainable). It's more like an oversized fishing village than a country.

I should also mention that the first real "development" beyond this comes when the Americans build a naval base on one of the Aleutian Islands (to fight China), which for all intents and purposes absorbs the town there, so there's not really any escaping the fact that Alaska will be dominated by someone else if anyone shows even the slightest inclination to do so.

- BNC

I don't know if I buy this. There's a lot of fantastically valuable farmland west of the Cascades, not to mention Portland as a hub for river shipping on the Columbia. It's not going to get ignored and be a backwater. Even if you have this independent west coast nation, the focus of it will be Seattle or Portland, not Alaska, and it will be populous and agricultural/industrial. You could move your Alaska pretty far south and still have it as a fishing backwater, but if it goes as far south as the Fraser delta, it's not Alaska, it's Cascadia with an Alaskan appendage.

 

[Burton K Wheeler]

It's not worth continuing this argument as you are "convinced" in your "hypothesis" and refuse to look at information that is against your "conclusion". You cherry pick and don't understand what a first world developed nation looks like. If Norway was an extraction based economy it wouldn't, by definition, be a developed nation.

DO NOT REPLY TO THIS POST, PLEASE. I have no further wish to continue. If you wish to continue, do so without quoting this, and allow it to stand on its own. Good bye, sir.

I kicked you less than a month ago with this message:

"If you can't respond civilly to someone, the burden is on you to be mature enough to just ignore them, not on them to not respond to you. I've spoken to you recently about treating other posters with respect."

The same holds here. You really need to stop it with this routine where you snap at people who disagree with you and pompously tell them they aren't allowed to reply to you.

Kicked for a week.

 

[BiteNibbleChomp]

I don't know if I buy this. There's a lot of fantastically valuable farmland west of the Cascades, not to mention Portland as a hub for river shipping on the Columbia. It's not going to get ignored and be a backwater. Even if you have this independent west coast nation, the focus of it will be Seattle or Portland, not Alaska, and it will be populous and agricultural/industrial. You could move your Alaska pretty far south and still have it as a fishing backwater, but if it goes as far south as the Fraser delta, it's not Alaska, it's Cascadia with an Alaskan appendage.

Just curious, have you read the TL?

Seattle and Portland don't exist ITTL (1812 PoD is far enough before they were settled). Apart from near San Francisco and the Gold Rush, not many people even really bothered to cross the Rockies (Manifest Destiny was killed after the British sat on America in the Napoleonic Wars). When your entire country's population is the size of a large town at best, there's not a lot of drive to colonise elsewhere (not to mention that none of the people there are likely rich enough to start a new town from scratch: fishing doesn't exactly make millionaires).

- BNC

 

[Burton K Wheeler]

Just curious, have you read the TL?

Seattle and Portland don't exist ITTL (1812 PoD is far enough before they were settled). Apart from near San Francisco and the Gold Rush, not many people even really bothered to cross the Rockies (Manifest Destiny was killed after the British sat on America in the Napoleonic Wars). When your entire country's population is the size of a large town at best, there's not a lot of drive to colonise elsewhere (not to mention that none of the people there are likely rich enough to start a new town from scratch: fishing doesn't exactly make millionaires).

- BNC

Doesn't have to be Seattle or Portland specifically, that's still really prime land. Even if there isn't large-scale state sponsored settlement there, it's going to fill up well beyond 50,000 people. 50,000 is plausible for Alaska alone, maybe even an expanded Alaska that goes as far south as the Fraser Delta. But something that goes as far south as you're describing isn't Alaska, it's going to be centered on Puget Sound and the Columbia.

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

My scenario is, the Russian Empire hangs on the Alaska into the 20th Century. Gold is discovered as OTL, leading to immigration from Russia as well as some from the US & elsewhere tho less than OTL. This boosts the 'white' population and starts a mineral extraction economy.

In 1918 the Reds fail to take hold in Alaska, perhaps the leaders all die of cerebral hemmorage or something. The US and Britain cant tolerate a Red province in North America. So, a breakaway republic is established, subsidized by the US at some barely adequate level.