[sglancy12]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Well, perhaps an arms embargo, including spare parts for Saddam's existing stockpiles of Soviet-made weaponry. The Soviets would also force their Eastern European clients to follow suit. A collective refusal on the part of the WTO to purchase fuel from Iraq.

The collective refusal to buy their oil might be a pinch to Iraq (and a boon to Soviet and Romanian oil sectors) but it seems that while the Soviets did not diplomatically support Iraq they did not break their military ties to Iraq. Wikipedia has this to say:

"The Soviet Union was critical of Saddam Hussein's 2 August 1990 invasion and occupation of Kuwait, and supported a United Nations resolution authorizing the use of military force, if necessary, to enforce an arms embargo against Iraq. But the Soviet Union's military support for Hussein also drew substantial criticism from the United States and other Western countries. In Washington, D.C., the Heritage Foundation foreign policy experts Jay P. Kosminsky and Michael Johns wrote on 30 August 1990 that, "While condemning the Iraqi invasion, Gorbachev continues to assist Saddam militarily. By Moscow's own admission, in an 22 August official press conference with Red Army Colonel Valentin Ogurtsov, 193 Soviet military advisors still are training and assisting Iraq's one million-man armed forces. Privately, Pentagon sources say that between 3,000 and 4,000 Soviet military advisors may be in Iraq."

The actual withdrawal of those advisers might have been critical, but since the kinder gentler USSR of RL didn't withdraw them, it's hard to imagine that the more hard-line Stalinist USSR of ver 1 canon would have withdrawn them. In fact, there probably would have been plenty of hard liners who would have pushed for more support of Iraq... not that this would have been a very good idea.

Of course the wild card here would be Red China. If the WTO, NATO and the Arab world are all leaning on Iraq to get out of Kuwait, would China will willing to take up the slack as far as diplomatic of military support. Clearly the RL PRC didn't, but who are these guys running the various canon PRCs?

Originally Posted by Raellus

I honestly don't know how much economic and military logistical pressure the RL Soviet Union and former WTO nations actually placed on Saddam. My impression was that it was minimal, at best.

I agree it was probably pretty minimal. Many of the former WTO nations were still reeling from the economic shock of independence. However, IIRC the Czechs in RL send some 200 chemical warfare decontamination troops to the Gulf as part of the Coalition Forces. Apparently the Hungarians sent a handful and the Poles sent some 300 as part of a "naval and medical deployment."

Originally Posted by Raellus

I do admit that your point about the Soviet's innability to stop their Egyptian clients in 1973 is a good one. IIRC, the Soviets' refusal to allow the Egyptians to use Soviet-supplied SSMs against Irael was a big reason why the Soviet advisors were kicked out.

What I read recently (on the admittedly often flawed wikipedia) is the USSR was cajoled into selling the SAMs to Sadat, only to try and head off the invasion by leaking news of Egypt's plans. That, the article claimed, was the reason Sadat expelled his Soviet military advisers.

Originally Posted by Raellus

Maybe- and this is a bit of a stretch- Saddam would have learned something about how an isolated Arab/Muslim nation (i.e. Egypt after the Soviets withdrew their support) fared against the U.S.-supplied Israelis and backed down. I concede that, based on his track record, this is fairly unlikely.

Agreed.

Originally Posted by Raellus

Honestly, I haven't made up my mind about who the v1.0 Soviets are but, in my mind, they are closer to the Soviets of RL 1984 than they are to the Soviets of RL 1991.

I agree that the alternative timeline Kremlin, whether ver1, ver2 or homebrew, needs to be made up of old-line communists who remember fondly the days of Brezhnev. Maybe even some neo-Stalinists who want the extreme police state without the cult of personality centered around one man. They want the USSR to be like it was during WWII, untied, strong, moving in one direction with one purpose.

Originally Posted by Raellus

I am somewhat of a Soviet apologist, and an unabashed one at that. You should take a look at my archived In Defense of the Red Army thread (it's listed on the forum thread map) for a better understanding of my thoughts about the Soviet Union in the T2K v1.0 timeline.

I have and I'm not sure that is what I would call being a Soviet apologist. To be a Soviet apologist you'd have to claim something like "All those Poles at Katyn Forrest clearly had it coming."

No, you see the USSR's military capacity as being closer to it's advertised ability. Closer to what we thought it was in 1984 when the Red Army was staring across the Fulda Gap, rather than how it turned out to be in 1991 when they were humiliated in Chechnyia.

I think the truth of any alternative timeline should rest somewhere between the two. I think the US forces would far better than we expected in many cases, but the USSR wouldn't be brushed aside like Iraq. In my own timeline I have the USSR and China allied and fighting the USA because I think that the USSR couldn't fight a two front war the way the canon describes. I think for civilization to be ground down in a war of attrition, it should be the USA who has to fight on two fronts, forces stretched to the limits. Otherwise the USA would be too successful in the European, Persian Gulf and Korean Theatres and the USSR would go nuclear too soon. And commit more nukes to more targets than the canon states.

I'm not marred to any of the canon, but I'd really prefer to change the absolute minimum number of events for my homebrew.

Originally Posted by Raellus

Scott, I'm worried that you missed part of my first point.

To reiterate, I don't think that the v1.0 Soviets could have prevented the Iraqis from invading Kuwait. I do, however, think that the v1.0 Soviets could have helped compel Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait after the fact but before getting his ass handed to him by the U.S. led coalition. Perhaps, by diplomatic means, the v1.0 Soviets helped Saddam save face- a very important consideration based on his psych profile- which in turn motivated him to pull out. I think that part of the reason he stayed and got spanked IRL was that he didn't want to look like a pussy by backing down without a fight.

My only point about preventing the invasion was that preventing it from happening seems like it would be easier than forcing a withdrawal after blood, gold, and reputation had already been invested and the deed was done.

I do not deny in any way that the Soviets of any timeline would have an interest in making sure that one of their clients is not militarily humbled by the west. That's just bad P.R... makes the East Bloc look weak.

Originally Posted by Raellus

Perhaps- and this is my effort to compromise- the v1.0 helped compel Saddam to pull out after a few days of his military in Kuwait getting pounded by coalition airstrikes but prior to the kick-off of the ground campaign.

For the USSR to reign in Saddam would have taken extra-ordinary efforts... like the USSR participating in the air campaign. Then Saddam would have no illusions about hiding under the USSR's skirt. But air campaigns IMHO only work in concert with action on the ground. By the time the ground forces are moving, its too late for Saddam. His army is toast.

But if Saddam could be forced out without a war (air or ground), the near disaster would certainly give the USSR a motive behind their ver 1 coup in The RDF Sourcebook that unseats Saddam in 1991. Saddam is not named but the books says the government of Iraq is replaced.

Also, being forced out of Kuwait might teach Saddam a lesson... never attack a western ally. He got away with attacking Iran (at least diplomatically) because Iran was a pariah state allied with no one. Kuwait was too important internationally. The RDF Sourcebook has Iraq and Syria drifting towards war in 1991. Maybe Saddam decided that he should take on a Soviet Client state thinking that the US wouldn't get involved?

A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing