The US only really entered European power games with its unconditional loans in 1915 or so. Without them the war ends years earlier and Russia would be better off with a softer loss, in manpower and territory, the latter part being in truth more of a blessing than a burden. But the biggest...
They got some fighting experience out of all the rebellions in Namibia and Tanzania, without it they'd be in the same position as Austria-Hungary, not having fought a war in half a century. I can't possibly see how this would be a positive thing.
Before the large scale military investments in the 30s and the Cold War California was an underpopulated strip of land at the wrong end of the continent. An independent one would suffer the same fate, there's no inherent reason why it should prosper.
Plenty of small states ran or are runnign militarized societies, most notable examples would be North Korea or Israel. And wanting to keep the colonies puts Salazar on the fascism scale at the same level as de Gaulle or Churchill. Such things can't be the metric how to measure it, that just...
A prolonged occupation of Europe by the Mongols should do the trick. Maybe by one of the Khans who converted to Islam or one of the Eastern churches who don't use the Latin script.
The premise of these kinds of threads are always flawed as they ignore lokal change of culture and customs. For Egypt we can easily designate a number of big ones, such as Akhenatens mono/henotheism experiment, the Hyksos occupation or Thurmose III under whom the until then reclusive kingdom...
"Industrial Revolution" also means that the state takes a firmer grip of the entire society, including its culture and religion. State Shinto in Japan, Kulturkampf in Germany, Kemalism in Turkey, Cultural Revolution in China, French Revolution in France etc. Christianity, being a foreign...
Take a look at google maps, the border is impassable, only a single gravel path at 4500m above sea level. Trying to move the border to either side would at best end up like the Ottoman Caucasus campaign.
Well, the French navy would be hopelessly outmatched by the combined Italo-Austro-Hungarian navy in size and possibly quality as well (ww1 time is not the high watermark of the French navy). The Russan navy too is a non issue, especially after sinking off the coast of Korea. "What could possibly...
The job of the navy was to keep the Adriatic as Viennas personal bath tub as a fleet in being, which it did well enough. There's no improvement on that unless you want to expand the mission.