1998 (continued)
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In the front, NATO divisional strength has dropped to roughly 8,000 per division, and with the U.S forces it is only half of this. Warsaw Pact divisional strength varies between 500 and 10,000, but mostly it is in the 2,000 - 4,000 man range. Fuel, ammunition and spare parts shortages freeze the opposing armies to a standstill. Now would be a good time to make peace, but no governments remain to negotiate one. Only the military commanders remain, and they loyally follow their governments' last commands. Only the army possesses the means to distribute and store food during this time of near ubiquitous famine. Military casualties have been much lower than those of civilians.
In the Balkans, the partisan groups in the mountains of Romania and the former Yugoslavia have fared fairly well, whereas many Warsaw Pact units have either been destroyed in the tactical nuclear attacks, or scattered to the four winds afterwards. Indeed, Romanians and Serbs begin to re-establish new regular units, although they are still required to live off the land and are equipped with captured enemy equipment. At least in the beginning quite a bit of equipment is acquired by simply gathering it from all the material left behind by the enemy.
The borders also change. The Italian Army abolishes the borders of Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia while the Greek Army annexes Macedonia. The Albanians demand the province of Kosovo, but both Greece and Italy support the Serbs' position. Albania first protests, then withdraws from the alliance and finally begins sporadic attacks against Greek units. They are joined by Kosovar and Macedonian Albanian guerrillas. At the same time Italian and Hungarian units are withdrawn from the Balkans and transferred to the Czech Republic, Slovakia and southern Germany. A few officers who are sympathetic to the neutrality of the orphaned Finnish and Swedish UN forces offer them a ride with the columns to Germany. By 2000 only a few dozen men and women out of the remants of one Swedish and two Finnish battalions will wander back to their home countries. The fate of the others is unknown.
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Next: the war with Mexico
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