[natehale1971]

Twilight 2000: Countdown to Armageddon
by Richard A. Spake ©

1992: The Year in Review

The Red Army launches a major program of modernization using the lessons of Desert Storm to make sure that any ground combat between the Soviet Union and NATO will not be as one sided as the US-Led War against Iraq. The Soviet Union attempts to create a professional NCO Corps in a manner similar to that of the West and many of the nations of the Warsaw Pact.

Inside the Kremlin, existing tensions between the various factions of the Soviet leadership became more pronounced after the start of the war. Since the coup in 1989, the highest echelon of Soviet leadership had begun to split into two groups: the Danilovians and the Tukhachevskyites. The former group, led by Premier Konstantin Dmitrievich Danilov, had allied themselves with the latter, led by Defense Minister Nikolai Ivanovich Tukhachevsky, for the purpose of deposing and replacing the Gorbachev government. However, the alliance between the two groups was always a shaky one.

The Danilov group, was smaller and less politically powerful than the Tukhachevsky cabal, was made up of true reformers who wished to modernize the Soviet Union to better compete against the west. The Tukhachevskyites were archconservative Communists whose principal goal was to ultimately hold onto power. The Danilovians needed the Tukhachevskyites for their control of the military, much of the security apparatus, and the economy. The Tukhachevskyites needed the Danilovians because Konstantin Dmitrievich Danilov was the only rival to Tukhachevskyite power in the KGB and because Danilov was much more palatable to the mid-level Communist Party officials and to the international community than any of the Tukhachevskyites.

From the start, the intent of the Tukhachevskyites had been to use Konstantin Dmitrievich Danilov as a front man while Nikolai Ivanovich Tukhachevsky and his cohorts wielded the real power in the USSR.

Konstantin Dmitrievich Danilov proved to be a master power broker however. And he spoke the Tukhachevskyite language quite fluently. He reminded the Tukhachevskyites, together and separately, that unless the Soviet economy was fixed, there could easily be another coup attempt. Worse, there might actually be an open revolution. Even a successful counter-revolution on the part of the Soviet security apparatus would further erode the Soviet economy to a point where the nation would collapse upon itself. Grudgingly, the Tukhachevskyites would empower Konstantin Dmitrievich Danilov to enact most of the reforms he sought.


After the Black Winter, The Soviet Union had replaced Egon Krenz with the return of Communist hardliner Erich Honecker to power as the leader of the German Democratic Republic. And under Honecker’s leadership, the DDR had quickly proven itself a major stronghold for hardliner communist leadership. Over the next few years Honecker had quickly became a major hurdle for many of the much needed reforms that Danilov had wished to implement throughout the Communist Bloc, and this was why the Kremlin took a direct hand in having Günther Manfred Neumann chosen to replace Erich Honecker as the leader of the German Democratic Republic after Honecker had been strongly urged by Danilov to retire due to complications that had increased with his failing health. Günther Manfred Neumann quickly proved himself to be much more responsive to the reforms and policies that had been started by to modernize the economy of Eastern Europe.

January 1992

January 1992. D

1 January 1992. The Republic of Zaire changes its name to the African Peoples Democratic Republic, the first step in establishing the Congo Pact.

1 January 1992. The US Armed Forces and the Armed Forces of the USSR start modernization programs using the lessons learned from Operations Desert Shield & Desert Storm.


February 1992

February 1992. D

4 February – 1 November 1992: Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías coup d'état overthrows the Venezuelan government, it takes me most of the year to completely stabilize his power base.

7 February 1992. The talks surrounding the Treaty of Maastricht falls apart, originally the treaty was to have created the European Union and lead to the creation of a single European currency when France makes a series of objections dealing with the handling of the Black Winter and its aftermath.

8 February - 23 February 1992. The 1992 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XVI Olympic Winter Games, were a winter multi-sport event celebrated from 8 to 23 February 1992 in Albertville, France. They were the last Winter Olympics to be held the same year as the Summer Olympics, and the first where the Winter Paralympics were held at the same site. Albertville was selected as host in 1986, beating Sofia, Falun, Lillehammer, Cortina d'Ampezzo, Anchorage and Berchtesgaden. The games were the third Winter Olympics held in France, after Chamonix in 1924 and Grenoble in 1968, and the fifth Olympics overall in the country.



March 1992

March 1992. D


April 1992

April 1992. D

May 1992

May 1992. D

June 1992

June 1992. D

July 1992

July 1992. D

25 July - 9 August 1992. The 1992 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the Games of the XXV Olympiad, an international multi-sport event celebrated in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, in 1992. The International Olympic Committee voted in 1986 to separate the Summer and Winter Games, which had been held in the same year since 1924, and place them in alternating even-numbered years, beginning in 1994. The 1992 Summer Games were the last to be staged in the same year as the Winter Games.



August 1992

August 1992. D

September 1992

September 1992. D

16 September 1992 (aka "Black Wednesday"). The British Conservative government was forced to withdraw the pound sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) after they were unable to keep sterling above its agreed lower limit thanks to internatioanl currency trader George Soros, perhaps the most high profile currency market investors, who made over US$1 billion profit by short selling sterling.

September 1992. The Red Army launches a major program of modernization using the lessons they learned while watching Operation Desert Storm to make sure that any ground combat between the Soviet Union and NATO will not be as one sided as the US-Led War against Iraq. The Soviet Union attempts to create a professional NCO Corps in a manner similar to that of the West and many of the nations of the Warsaw Pact.


October 1992

October 1992. D

1 October 1992. The African Collective Security Treaty Organization (ACSTO) is formed by the African Peoples Democratic Republic (formerly Zaire), Republic of Congo and Central African Republic; many observers will refer to the new African Peoples Democratic Republic (formerly Zaire) dominated political alliance as the Congo Pact. When Joseph-Désiré Mobutu aka Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu wa Za Banga died in 1997 he was succeeded by his son François Joseph Nzanga Mobutu Ngbangawe, whose policies had expanded the African Collective Security Treaty Organization and inspired a wave of pan-African nationalism that allowed the influence of his country to span all the way from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean… and replaced the Soviet Union as the biggest sponsor of pan-African nationalist movements with the assistance of the Peoples Republic of China. Republic of the Congo (1992), Central African Republic (1992), Republic of Uganda (1994), Republic of Burundi (1995), Republic of Rwanda (1996), Republic of Tanzania (1997), Republic of Zambia (1998), Peoples Republic of Zimbabwe (1998).

November 1992

November 1992. D

3 November 1992. William Jefferson Clinton (D-AK) is elected president of the United States. The Clinton Administration will be plagued by personal and private scandals that will limit it’s abilities to deal with international affairs and embolden the leaders of all of the various anti-American Alliances around the world.


December 1992

December 1992. D

6 December 1992. High ranking officers in the Mexican armed forces overthrows the sitting government in Mexico City, and launches a series of major reforms and modernization programs to improve the lives of the average citizens of Mexico. Despite the initial misgivings of the American left, the Clinton Administration decides to put its support behind the military junta with grants and financial aide thanks to the passage of NAFTA. The Junta is able to rebuild the Mexican economy and infrastructure by using the Mexican Army as its primary tool. Over the next few years the Mexican Army is fully modernized with the aide of the United States who wished to create a stable democracy on its southern border.

9 December 1992 - 4 May 1993 (Operation Restore Hope). Operation Restore Hope is carried out to provide humanitarian assistance to the Somali Republic. Unified Task Force (UNITAF) was a United States-led, United Nations-sanctioned multinational force which operated in Somalia between 5 December 1992 – 4 May 1993. A United States initiative (code-named Operation Restore Hope), UNITAF was charged with carrying out United Nations Security Council Resolution 794: to create a protected environment for conducting humanitarian operations in the southern half of Somalia. UNITAF's original mandate was to use "all necessary means" to guarantee the delivery of humanitarian aid in accordance to Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, and is regarded as a success.

24 December 1992. In one of his first official speeches, Premier Konstantin Dmitrievich Danilov announces an end to the government prosecution of those religious ideals and groups that promote good will and remain neutral on all political matters. During his speech he admitted admiration of how religious people had held onto their beliefs despite the prosecution and hardships that they suffered… and how they had endured them all. That he hoped that his reforms could harness that kind of renewal of ideals that had founded the Soviet Union. The new government continued the pattern that had been established by Gorbachev with regard to the fund that had been established to protect and restore historical monuments including religious monuments, and to educate the nation in a spirit of love and respect for its national history and culture. Danilov championed the fact that many Christian writers had been given the opportunity to criticize the atheist propagandists in the national media... and when their articles had been printed, they always had argued that the decline of Soviet society had resulted from the loss of the traditional family which had been held together by Christian ethics and traditions.