First map, help wanted

[Arcaneheriophant]

I am making an Alternate Earth map. The main difference in this world is that empires still grow and shrink in all areas of the world.

Before I get into the fluff for this map I want to say that I am not good at art and that this is my first try at something like this. I am using Gimp 2.6 and a map I found on Google. This is just for fun and I am in no way trying to steal from anyone. If you have pointers on how to make this better or anything you think I should change on the map please feel free. Also you may disregard the fluff section below as it is both not written terribly well and not too impotent for the type of help I think I need the most.

Thank you.

Europe is in decline and most of the colonial powers have lost everything, while some managed to hold onto a few areas for now. I am imagining that world history was not to different until about 1945. Pre-WW2 differences are, the Americans have a political system in which electors that control states elect an emperor for life from themselves, Mexico grabs all the nations until panama (which is a US possession), Brazil takes Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia and the São Tomé islands, the Chinese imperial family maintains power despite Japanese occupation and reforges China after the war and the Ottoman empire falls apart after WW1 and becomes the New Safavid empire, the Lebanese empire and the Moorish Sultanates. (sorry about the run on)
After the WW2 the US takes and keeps Japan, southern Korea, Germany, Austria, Sicily and Cuba. It keeps the Philippians and Panama. All of these are counted as second class citizens. Also all of the Islands on the west coast of the US and Canada are part of the US. China takes all its lands back adds Mongolia, northern Korea, Tibet and, to help the Vietnamese get rid of the French, Vietnam. Ethiopia grabbed some of its neighbors and Rwanda. Central Africa became an unstable democratic kingdom. The Moors consolidated into Africa but Egypt left for the stability of England. Australia took New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. India never lost Pakistan and also gained some other neighbors. The Thai took much of south east Asia. The Safavids took part of the Arabian peninsula in a surprise border war with the Lebanese.
In this world communism never took off as it took until after the war for Russia to fall and then was quickly invaded by the rest of Europe and made into a democracy. The rest of the world is similar to today minus the effects of communism on the world.

Thank you for any help and feel free to say anything. This is a work in progress so I am looking for constructive criticism.