I'd guess that the Brazilian-Argentine nuclear exchange in T2K probably amounted to anywhere from a pair of weapons to a handful exchanged tit-for-tat style.
Buenos Aires probably got nuked. Probably Porto Alegre on the Brazil side, which isn't a one-for-one trade, but it's the biggest city Argentina probably had effective means to strike. I'm picturing both sides using pretty crude weapons, possibly Manhattan programmed once their shooting war started rather than a pre-existing and super-hush stockpile. Means of delivery was probably pretty limited and yield likewise.
In a shorter version of the story -- probably not enough damage from the nukes or the ground war to take either nation seriously offline circa 2000.
That said, Brazil probably is fragmenting badly under its own weight circa 2000. I mentioned food being a big issue in Brazil -- if the government introduced some sort of program to encourage/force better self-reliance for basic food supplies in the '95-97 era before the world distribution networks just collapsed they might take the edge of that razor blade some. But agribusiness might have been raking in the profits as demand increased from the war, and gone the exact opposite direction.
Either way, you've got some serious cultural divides between agricultural north Brazil and industrialized south Brazil and the ticking timebombs of the favelas in every city where the population is barely getting by as is. If Brazil, at the national or regional level, is going to keep it together things will get real draconian real fast -- even by the standards of a nation where police death squads are considered "kind of inappropriate" and even non-extra legal police actions can involve support weapons up to grenade launcher and machine gun level without raising many eye brows.
Circa 2000 I see Brazil kind of on par with ca 2000 America, situation wise -- a couple different governments claiming legitimacy, reflecting that north-south split and probably the southern government slowly winning a war to settle things with the north. Most everything up the Amazon is just gone completely off the rails and collapsed. Depending on how you see the Arg-Bra war going, possibly a Brazilian occupation force sitting in Uruguay, or an Argentine occupation force doing the same, or maybe the two staring at each other across a no mans land somewhere in the middle of Uruguay.
Argentina is, I think, better set up for cultural cohesion and doesn't have quite the same urban mess Brazil has (though to be fair, I spent a lot of time in grad school dealing with Brazilian topics, none I can recall on Argentina, so I may just not be aware). Of course they also have a historical beef with Chile and the risk of additional security issues on that border.
(And the Falklands -- honestly, I don't see them making a play for Las Islas Malvinas during the confusion of WW3, and if they did, I think they'd be well served by catching a good spread of SLBMs or other nuclear ordnance from the UK, or even the US. Sic semper imbecillus , and no one appreciates the bratty kid who interrupts when mommy and daddy are trying to kill the neighbors.)
|