Im doing an alternate history scenario with a friend and this is my map for 1980. I wanted some fresh eyes to look at this and give some history changes.
the only relavent alteration of history i have here is that I changed the result of the Ecuadorian elections which made it less dependent on the USA.
Yeah, i had a some difficulty trying to quantify US vassalage. For canada I put them under NATO since it would be an Imperial Core country (despite US vassalage). I know the history you point out, but i will say that japan in the 80s was more economically independent from the US, to an extent where america had to take drastic action to wrestle it under control.
As @thelastaxolotl@hexbear.net pointed out, OECD is a more exact representation of the imperial core countries than just trying to do my previous system, so I will be changing the way the imperial core is represented.