D: communists weren't exactly the "greater threat". If...we here accept that Uncle Joe intended to be the greater threat - that he wished to extend his Cordon Sanitaire just as far out as poss. to defuse invasion by anyone, then: the greatest What If would be early-1948.
We created the DM, which at a stroke put Bizonia back on its feet to start the Wirtschaftswunder, so damaging to Marxist theology then to compare conditions in the worker/peasant paradise with those in the Imperialist hell...because UJ chose to reject Marshall Aid for USSR and its colonies. If...he had taken the $ and the supervision (spying, suppression)...well, much would be different, starting with no Berlin Airlift, and maybe no Korean War. We now (think we) know that UJ did not intend to rehearse WW3 in Korea, but acceded to Kim I claiming the oppressed South would rise to welcome family liberators. If Marshall $ had been splashing around USSR by mid-1950...different.
No Korea, no need to re-arm Japan; if no Berlin Crisis, no need to persuade France that W.German re-Armament, 500,000 soldiers, was a good thing. So...a consequence of no Rearmament of the ex-Axis would be...even greater, earlier economic resurgence of those Tigers.
1% of GNP ceiling on the Self Defence Forces budget, where US was often at 10%, UK 7%, was a hefty factor in Japan's industrial strength.
