  If the strong coupling is promoted to a dynamical field-dependent quantity,
it is possible that the strong force looked very different in the early
Universe. We consider a scenario in which the dynamics is such that QCD
confines at high temperatures with a large dynamical scale, relaxing back to ~1
GeV before big bang nucleosynthesis. We discuss the cosmological implications
and explore potential applications, including fleshing out a new mechanism for
baryogenesis which opens up if QCD confines before the electroweak phase
transition of the Standard Model.
