This post first appeared on Today in Alternate History.
"General [Richard
Rohmer], nobody knows this, but by the end of 1941, just before
December 7th that year, I was planning to come to Canada to join the
Royal Canadian Air Force" ~ Rohmer's 2004 memoir Generally Speaking
November 30, 2018 - On this day George Herbert Walker Bush died aged ninety-four. A scion
of a wealthy family of primarily English and German descent, his life
was forever changed by his rash decision to join Royal Canadian Air
Force (RCAF) on the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Empire of
Japan.
Like many of his
excitable contemporaries at the exclusive Andover Prep School, he dreamt
of flying Mustangs over Normandy. Even though the conflict was then in its third
year, the United States was still a non-belligerent power. In fact, the
Neutrality Acts actually prevented Americans from the swearing the oath
of loyalty to the King of England and this was a prerequisite for
joining the RCAF. Potentially, the nine thousand Americans who did so
risked the loss of their US citizenship.
Of course this was a
relatively minor concern for the future given the current circumstances.
This was because the inside of a Canadian aircraft was one of the most
dangerous places to be in the present day; only 25 percent of crews
would survive their tour of duty. Bush also had to falsify his age as he was still only seventeen. But the Canadians were
training up crews within six months, and the temptation was far too
great to deny. Events were to move now at a pace, and six months later
by the time he reached eighteen, America had joined the Allies Powers ,
and he was old enough to use his active flight service to request a
transfer into the US Navy (USN). At this desperate stage, Japan
has just sunk two carriers at Coral Sea and Midway in May and June
including loss of very many pilots in combat even from surviving
carriers, and the USN was desperate for pilots. Bush was eagerly
taken into service without too many questions being asked.
He resumed his university studies after the war, becoming a
successful businessman in west Texas and a millionaire in the oil
business before he age of forty. A third career, this time in politics,
followed. He was elected to the House of Representatives from Texas's
7th district. During this period, he formed a close working relationship
with fellow GOP Congressman Gerry Ford. After an unsuccessful Senate run,
President Richard Nixon appointed him as Ambassador to the United
Nations. Then in 1973, Bush became the Chairman of the Republican
National Committee.
Positioned at such a nexus in the GOP during
the immediate aftermath of Watergate, Bush was a natural choice for Vice
President to his friend Gerry Ford. Fatefully, he convinced Ford not to
pardon Nixon, and together they won election in 1976.
With the
assassination of the Shah of Iran January 15, 1979, and the declaration
of the Islamic Republic in April, the Kurdish region of northern Iran
revolted with aid from the USSR.
The
resulting turmoil in the Iran allowed Iraq to conduct a surprise
invasion that was successful in grabbing hundreds of square miles of
Iranian territory along their southern border. The suicidal fanatic
Islamic Republic threw its military into the war on both fronts using
human wave attacks to try to create pathways through minefields
deployed by Iraq and the Kurdish forces aided by the USSR.
Iranian
F-14 fighter/bombers attacked targets in Iraq leading to retaliatory
strikes by the Iraqi air force, also supplied by the USSR, deep into
Iran destroying petroleum refineries and pipelines used to transport
their crude to the ports for export to the world market. As a result ,
world oil prices reached record highs, but with swift action by
President Ford and VP Bush American drilling reached all new record
levels and the Alaskan Pipeline, finished in 1977, rapidly increased its
flow rates to help offset lost imports to the USA.
The boom in
drilling across the nation off set the recession caused by the higher
prices despite all predictions to the contrary by the Democratic party
in the 1980 election cycle. Federal subsidies reversing the fuel tax on
diesel for trucking and rail and replacing it with a $0.30/gallon
federal grant artificially lowered transportation costs back down to
where they had been in 1972 before the first OPEC crisis further
stimulating the economy.
In addition, the US Government in 1980 made it a requirement that all
future federal vehicle purchases after 1982 would be flex fuel Stirling
engine vehicles. These engines were the ultimate in fuel flexibility.
They could burn methanol, ethanol, propane, butane or any petrochemical
liquid fuel that would flow at room temperature. With tank heaters
installed, they would even burn grease, melted asphalt or old cooking
oil. They also did not need leaded fuel to maintain a proper balance for
an internal gasoline compression engines so they allowed for a great
reduction in lead being released into the air of dense cities like Los
Angeles and New York City.
As a companion to the Stirling 'revolution' in vehicle engines
encouraged by the government, there were also subsidies for pilot
production of kerogen extracted from the Green River formation in
Colorado and the bitumen sands in Utah much like the Canadian pilot
project to do the same in Alberta with their Athabasca bitumen sands.
Unlike internal combustion engines, the steam engines with suitable
burners and fuel pumps installed could directly consume the recovered
Kerogen and Bitumen after it was mixed with an emulsifier and distilled
water without the need of it going through a petroleum refinery. This
allowed the US Navy to quickly and easily modify all of its older heavy
oil burning ships to burn abundant American fuel instead of imported oil
and further reduced the world oil demand putting a cap on the world oil
price despite the three way war taking place in Iran.
Due to term limits,
Ford was ineligible to run for the White House again in the 1980
election having already served over six years. Ironically, the outcry
about his compromised patriotism was muted only by his role in putting
away the legacy of Nixon. The familiar face of Bush discouraged
Ronald Reagan from running in the primaries, and Bush easily defeated
Walter Mondale in the fall.
During his eight years as President George H.W. Bush constantly sought
rapprochement and balance with the USSR. The President did not believe
the Cold War could be won but felt it could easily be lost if a hot war
were to result leading to an exchange of nuclear weapons between the
USA and USSR. In the long run, this balance between appeasement and
confrontation was a very difficult act, but the USSR was focused to a
large extent on the Kurdish S.S.R. and defending it from the Iranian
regime while encouraging oil exploitation which benefited the entire
Warsaw Pact organization by holding their internal fuel prices at a
manageable level.
As a result, by the time he left office in 1989, the 39th President left
his successor, Democratic President Gary Hart, a world that was stable
and relatively at peace. While the Cold War continued apace, the reforms
of General Secretary Gorbachev had allowed back room deals to contain
military spending by both the USSR/Warsaw Pact and USA/NATO alliances at
sustainable levels.
The Iranian civil war concluded in 1988 more as a case of exhaustion by
Iraq and Iran having spent the lives of their military aged populations
profligately to move the border between them no more than a few miles
either direction repeatedly. Historian regarded the Gulf War as much
like World War I in that it destroyed an entire generation while
accomplishing very little for the benefit of the nations themselves.
The Kurdish S.S.R. remained secure as an ally of the USSR and its own
version of the Iron Curtain had been built on its frontier with Islamic
Republican Iran which considered the USSR the Great Satan of the modern
world. Turkish and Iraqi Kurds were welcome to emigrate to the K.S.S.R.
but few came, though they did receive some covert aid across the
borders.
In March 1989 when Iraq invaded Kuwait and seized its oil fields, the
USSR staunchly vetoed every attempt in the UN to place sanctions against
them for the invasion. In return, Iraq agreed to send all of the oil
extracted in its Kurdish regions to the USSR using the Kuwaiti reserves
to maintain its world exports.
The USA and UK vigorously protested in the UN but neither nation was
willing to start a war without the backing of the UN to evict Iraq.
After a few months when world oil supplies resumed their normal patterns
of flow from the Kuwaiti fields world prices dropped back into the
$35/bbl-$45/bbl range where they had stabilized in 1984 as American
import demand had been reduced by the increased flow from Alaska and
decreased demand from the exploitation of the Colorado and Utah
alternative fuels for the military. By 1985 the US Military and Warsaw
Pact military combined were actually the worlds largest consumer of
liquid fuels. The constant military aircraft patrols and naval ship
deployments consumed far more fuel than the general public realized. If
there had been a collapse of one or the other of the superpowers the
resulting crash in oil demand would have put fuel prices at levels not
seen in a generation.
Author's Note:
in reality he joined the US Armed Forces after the December 7th attack
on Pearl Harbour and the subsequent declaration of war against Germany
and Japan.
Further note, in terms of economics most people associate higher oil prices with
recessions but this is for the most part perception bias. A study of
economic impacts of higher oil prices without the political rhetoric
usually injected shows that higher prices harm some industries but this
is mostly offset by the increased drilling and extraction which it
encourages. IOW while a few manufacturing jobs are lost an equal or
larger number of oil field jobs are created causing the economy to
shift focus more than forcing it to go into recession. When a recession
does take place whatever political forces are not in control at that
time frequently point at the price of oil and the value of the stock
market as indicators that the recession is being caused by the party
then in power.
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