The Not-So-Ascendant South

I know CSA victories in the ACW have been done to death, but I want to join the party.

In this scenario, the Confederate States of America went to war with the USA again in the 1890's, due to disputed territories where loyalty was divided, and they lost. By that time, the USA probably could have, at a great expense, reincorporated the whole of the CSA, but decided, as it was the general opinion at the time, that nothing of value was lost. Still, the CSA was severely punished, losing Tennessee, the Arizona territory, Oklahoma and Virginia (the CSA capital was moved from Richmond to Atlanta). Shortly thereafter, Texas seceded from the CSA and entered the first the American, later the German sphere of influence; Florida, Louisiana and a forcefully neutralized Arkansas would follow suit. The rump CSA that remained was left isolated and backwards, abolishing slavery as late as the 1920's (Brazil abolished it as per OTL, due to its loss of profitability) and keeping racial segregation to this day, becoming increasingly authoritarian to keep the racial tensions from imploding, to the point that nowadays the Federal government is appointed by a military junta. Texas has been considerably more succesful, if worringly oligarchical. The USA is still one of the main superpowers, though global power is more evenly distributed ITTL. It was from the USA that came and spread the Progressive movement, a mix of social democratic ideals and populistic Regenerationism. Still, the presence of the CSA in the global stage sent the message that the expansion of Liberalism could be stopped and corrected, and pushed many nations towards rather Conservative, disenfranchising forms of democracy respect to OTL. As such, the ideological divide between democratic nations is much greater.

There was a WWI in which neither the USA nor the CSA took part and which ended with a maintenance of the statu quo. The main divergence in the world stage were the spread of Progressivism to France and Britain (and the geopolitical left-right divide between democratic nations), and a Communist revolution that started in Austria-Hungary after cracks in its Auth-Conservative regime formed, and which spread to Italy. It tried to turn the cluster of nations of the Balkans into the seed of a true international Socialist state, but the project stalled when Russia followed suit and decided to take a more ethnonationalist approach. For now, *Communism is doing much better than IOTL.

The Ottoman Empire still collapsed, if a bit later, after a series of Nationalist revolts led by the Arab population. A remarkable event was the emergence of a Conservative-inspired Syrian *Fascist pan-movement, leading to a Greater Syria that stands against her neighgours and that counts as one of the most repressive states in the world. A Syrian inspired pan-movement gained momentum in Persia -there it started as reactionary Monarchist thing, but it has mellowed out substantially and now comes closer to a constitutional empire-, that eventually went all Lebensraum on Central Asia and took an advantage of the messy conflicts that followed India's independence. Needless to say, Syria and the Iranians don't get along too well. China did much better, and Japan not nearly as good, but that allowed them to avoid their OTL mistakes and to keep a degree of power over East Asia.

This is, generally speaking,a world that enjoys greater welfare but comes as a bit more backwards than our own; a world where nuclear weapons are a relatively recent developement, but the fear of a nuclear holocaust is still very present.