In This Alternate Timeline

What if the Soviet Union won the Cold War???

The Cold War was a tense moment for human history as it pitted two of the worlds hugest super powers against each other after world war 2. The United States that supported free democratic states, and the Soviet Union supporting communism in socialist states. The reason why it was so tense was because there was one key thing these two countries had in common with each other, they both possessed nuclear weapons that could destroy human civilization a thousand times over. Because of this potential assured destruction the two sides had to find a way to gain victory through other mean, through covert means...

This meant supporting governments and regimes that supported either capitalism or communism even if that means making countries go to war with each other. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan were just some of the major frontlines of this stand off worldwide. To us we know how this whole story ended; the Soviet Union overextends its spending on the military, the economy sink further, coups happen, and the Soviet Union officially dissolves on December 26th, 1991. However what if in some alternate timeline it was the United States that fell apart instead?? What if the Soviet Union had won the Cold War???

In this alternate timeline our story begins in the 1970s, which was a really difficult decade for the United States.  In the 70s the last helicopter had just taken the last American troops out of Vietnam, Watergate put a huge stain on Nixon and The Republican Party, and the American economy was in the tank. Respect for the authorities was at an all time low in America. And of course the Iran hostage crisis followed the fall of the Shah of Iran which diminished then president, Jimmy Carter's popularity with the people.

Now it was at this point Ronald Regan was elected president and reorganized spending to compete with the Soviets, and this was the move that choked the Soviet economy to death. In this alternate timeline however, we are going to assume Regan never became president, if he even ran at all to start with. Instead we will say the George H.W. Bush becomes president instead in 1981 taking out Carter after 4 years. With no Regan to reorganize spending towards the military and the space program Bush may just try to stay out of affairs of the Cold War, and if it sounds like it's unrealistic well that's because it's how George Bush Sr. was to a certain extent.

When the Soviet Union and the eastern block was coming apart he mostly stayed out of the way and just let everything happen to them. So assuming that he would do the same again here he would leave the spread of communism into places like Grenada which the United States doesn't send troops to in this alternate timeline. A series of uprisings and coups leads to Grenada falling to communism which hurts trust in the American government even more.

Now what about Afghanistan in this alternate timeline? By the time Bush becomes president in this alternate timeline The Soviets have been in Afghanistan for two years at this point. This was a war where the battles were won by the Soviets but the war was ultimately lost by the end; the reason for that was because Regan agreed to give weapons to the Mujahideen which used those weapons to break Soviet morale overtime. And this came to bite America in the butt because one of these leaders of the Mujahideen was a certain Saudi by the name of Osama Bin Laden... You can fill in the blanks as to where that went...

So in this alternate timeline Bush just doesn't give weapons to the Mujahideen whether he sees that they will become radicals or not. Without these modern weapons to fight off the Soviets the Mujahideen is too far backwards technology to fight a superpower like the Soviet Union, and they are ultimately defeated. Osama Bin Laden is possibly killed in a Soviet air attack, so maybe groups like Al Qaeda, and the Taliban won't exist in this timeline. Afghanistan becomes a fully established Soviet puppet state most likely by 1985. If the Soviets did gain a victory in Afghanistan the United States would be utterly humiliated on the world stage; any trust the American people had in the government to contain communism is shattered. Bush himself is soon voted out of office and replaced by Dukakis in 85.