[natehale1971]

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


2000

Exactly how and why Konstantin Dmitrievich Danilov allowed things to evolve as they did over the past four years is still a mystery. He had much better control over events earlier in his career, when he was technically weaker. It has been suggested that he didn’t really believe war would start. It has been suggested that Danilov truly believed that a last-minute deal with Chinese Premier Zhu would head off a war and bring even greater prestige for himself. Whatever the reason, by the end of August 2000, Konstantin Dmitrievich Danilov would find his country involved in a war he had never wanted.

Selling this war would become a painful exercise for Danilov. There was very little he could say to the West that had any meaning beyond the usual propaganda, though he dutifully made his efforts at the UN and in the capitals of the West. For the most part, Danilov was forced to trade in much of the good will he had built in the West over the past decade in an effort to keep the economic credits flowing.

Since there was little the Soviets could do to justify the war in world opinion, it was important that they convince the world that the USSR was winning the war. Superiority of20Soviet arms and soldiery would be its own justification in the end. As a result, Soviet propaganda efforts initially focused on the excellent progress being enjoyed by Soviet armed forces in Manchuria. Never mind who was right—the Soviets were winning.

By contrast, China would find it quite easy to portray herself as the innocent victim. Though the Western media were never given the free reign on the Manchurian battlefields they would have liked, images of smashed Chinese villages and dead and injured Chinese civilians poured back to Western television virtually from the outset of the war. The Chinese Communist Party strove to play up two key images: the suffering of the Chinese people and the heroic resistance of the People’s Liberation Army. In this effort they were largely successful.

Beijing quickly moved to exploit the swell of sympathy among Westerners—particularly among Americans. The large Chinese-American community was solicited to provide financial support, political support, and propaganda support for China. Though not successful everywhere, Chinese-Americans answered the call of the motherland in large numbers. Though many conservative Americans were delighted to see the two great Communist powers at war, at least as many Americans were telling pollsters that the gallant Chinese people deserved the support of the United States against the Soviet aggressors. Washington took notice.

Throughout the Western political circles, the initial reaction was one of muted relief. Despite the warming of Soviet-Western relations during the first half of the 1990’s, NATO remained ready to defend against a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Many were concerned that Danilov’s Soviet Union was a more dangerous Soviet Union because her core strength was now greater. A Soviet Union with a healthy economy and the ability to feed itself might come under the control of an aggressive militarist at a future date. At the same time, the growing economic power of China was causing concern in the West. How long would it be before China’s burgeoning economic power translated itself into military power?

Already the mid 1990’s, the People’s Liberation Army was undergoing a significant modernization. With the Soviet Union and China at war, the West appeared to have killed two birds without actually having to throw its own stone.

Naturally, there was some concern about the war going nuclear. This fear was at its most intense during the first few days of the war, when chemical weapons were used on a large scale both on the front lines and in the rear areas. Some Western military analysts feared that whoever got the worst of the chemical exchange might go nuclear as a means of rectifying the situation. Fortunately, the chemical exchange died down without the use of nuclear weapons; however, there were several very tense days at the UN as Western mediators attempted to get both sides to pledge to no-first-use of nuclear weapons (despite the fact that both parties to the war already had pledged as much).

In Europe, there was some alarm over the rapid rate of advance of Soviet ground forces in the opening weeks of the campaign. If the Soviets could make such short work of the PLA, how would they fare against the much less numerous Western European ground forces? Speculation was rife that NATO would be incapable of stopping a sudden Soviet sweep to the English Channel. As the Soviet advance ground to a halt, such irresponsible talk died down, though.

World opinion elsewhere varied. India gleefully watched one of her two principal rivals stagger under the heavy Soviet blows. Pakistan issued belligerent statements in support of China, one of her chief benefactors. Without China to counterbalance India, the Pakistani security situation was far more tenuous.

Generally, the Soviet client states gave their support for the USSR, while their Western clients loudly decried the invasion. Many countries in trouble spots around the globe heightened their military readiness, and some even mobilized additional troops. However, for the most part things settled down in the countries not directly affected by the fighting. Notable exceptions were the two Koreas, Vietnam, and Pakistan.

As seen, after a period of increasing tension and escalating border incidents, a full-scale war had erupted between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. The Red Army had enjoyed rapid initial successes, and tank columns had roared deep into the northern Chinese industrial heartland.

However, the Chinese surpassed the expectations of most military analysts in their ability to mobilize reserves from the interior and shift them to the fighting front. While the Soviets continued to make impressive gains, their losses mounted and the tempo of advance slowed. Soon, large bodies of citizens' militia were operating in the rear areas, attacking installations and destroying supply convoys. More and more front line troops had to be detailed to mopping up these patches of guerrilla resistance, and the advance ground to a halt.

When the main Chinese conventional forces counterattacked, to the amazement of the world's military experts, large pockets of Soviet troops were formed. Most of the Soviet units, due to their superior mobility and tremendous firepower, were able to fight their way out of the pockets, but Soviet losses were great and the front was shattered.

The Soviet Union had already been mobilizing additional troops from the western military districts, and this was now placed on an emergency priority basis. As a stop-gap, half a dozen combat ready divisions were withdrawn from Eastern Europe and sent to the Far East. But the Far Eastern Front had become a meat grinder, which devoured divisions as quickly as they could be committed. As factory output switched more and more to wartime production, the flow of consumer goods dwindled to a trickle and standards of living in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union fell.

Motor vehicles and railroad rolling stock were increasingly drawn out of the civilian sector to support the war effort. As the first snows of winter fell, the Soviets began soliciting the other members of the Warsaw Pact for volunteer formations to serve on the Far Eastern Front. Resistance to this was surprisingly strong, but by the new year the first Polish, Czech, and East German divisions were traveling east by rail. At least one Hungarian and Bulgarian division would follow once they finished mobilizing and re-equipping with more modern weapons. No Romanians would be going east.




The United States and Europe growing increasingly fearful of the improved economic and political recovery of the Soviet Union throughout the 1990s prompts them to give support to the Peoples Republic of China during the outbreak of the Sino-Soviet war.

Even with tensions that will led to the Sino-Soviet War, the 2000 Olympics is held in <city>, <country> in an effort to promote the efforts to get both sides to participate in peace talks.


2000: The Year in Review

d

January 2000

January 2000. D


February 2000

February 2000. D


March 2000

March 2000. D


April 2000

April 2000. D


May 2000

May 2000. D


June 2000

June 2000. D

16 June - 20 June 2000. After several tense years of border skirmishes between their border protection forces, full blown open fighting between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China breaks-out along their shared Siberian border. This fighting will slowly spread to include the Central Asian front when the Chinese bring the rest of the Beijing Pact into the war forcing the Soviets to bring in their own Warsaw Pact allies. Danilov is forced by his cabinet to order a full scale invasion of the PRC in an effort to teach the Chinese a lesson. The initial Soviet objective is to occupy Sinkiang and Manchuria, to break the Chinese Army, and ultimately to humiliate China in an effort to bring the Chinese Communists back into the Soviet fold.

16 June 2000. What starts out as a minor skirmish between elements of the KGB Border Guards and the Chinese 52nd Border Defense Force along the Amur River near Khabarovsk leads to a full blown war between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

20 June 2000. Fighting between Soviet and Chinese border units dies down while diplomats try to stop the build up to war. But both sides use the attempts at negotiation as a chance to mobilize and shift combat troops into the theater. The NATO alliance nations put their forces on alert, and the inter-German Border is placed on heightened alert status. The United Nations attempt to negotiate a settlement, but both the Soviet Union and Peoples Republic of China refuse to accept the United Nations as a neutral third party.


July 2000

July 2000. D


August 2000

August 2000. D

19 August 2000. The lead divisions of the Soviet First and Second Far East Fronts launch the initial offensive into the Peoples Republic of China.

20 August 2000. The Soviet Union declares war on the Peoples Republic of China, officially starting the Sino-Soviet War. Tensions in Western Europe increase dramatically as states on both sides of the Iron Curtain place their militaries on a heightened alert status. In the first weeks of the Sino-Soviet War, the Soviet Red Army roars through Manchuria, crashing past the Peoples Liberation Army.

August 2000. In the United States, millions of Americans are alarmed by the possibility of the escalation of the Sino-Soviet War into a full blown nuclear World War. This leads to the American Media spotlighting the decades old evacuation plans that the government had dusted-off. When the media carry stories on these plans, many people start peaceful demonstrations that turn into riots in New York, New Hampshire and eastern Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, four US Department of Health and Human Services representatives are severely beaten while making surveys of potential host communities.


September 2000

September 2000. D

September 2000. The Soviet Red Army capture Shenyang, but start to show signs of suffering from major shortages in men and equipment. Expert West European military analysts start to predict that the Sino-Soviet War will grind to a halt, and lead to a stalemate and cease-fire before Christmas.

15 September - 1 October 2000. The Sydney 2000 Summer Olympic Games or the Millennium Games/Games of the New Millennium, officially known as the Games of the XXVII Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was celebrated between 15 September and 1 October 2000 in Sydney, New South Wales, Commonwealth of Australia. It was the second time that the Summer Olympics were held in the Southern Hemisphere, the first one being in Melbourne in 1956, and as a result of this location and the dates, took place in early spring. During the XXVII Summer Olympic Games, its hosts had great hopes for promoting a peaceful resolution to the growing tensions that would eventually lead to the Sino-Soviet War.


October 2000

October 2000. D

October 2000. The Chinese Peoples Liberation Army launches a major counter-offensive against the Soviet Red Army, leaving pockets of the Soviet Red Army cut off from supply lines and reinforcements.

30 October 2000. The United Kingdom stands down the alert status of most of its armed forces, only those assigned to Hong Kong will remain on alert.


November 2000

November 2000. D

7 November 2000. George W. Bush (R-TX) is elected president of the United States during the growing crisis around the world, thanks to the general feeling that the Clinton Administration could have done more to prevent it, falls heavily on the shoulders of Vice-President Albert Arnold 'Al' Gore (D-TN) who ends up facing a great deal of the blame for the failures of the Clinton Administration’s foreign policy to limit the growth of communist alliances that appear hostile to the United States and its allies all around the world.

11 November 2000. The Soviet Union launches the last of its high-orbiting weather-tracking satellites, DP-201.


December 2000

December 2000. D

December 2000. The Politburo and the Presidium order a general mobilization of all Soviet military forces; martial law is declared in the Far East, Siberian, and Transbaikal military districts. They also request that the Warsaw Pact nations to start the process of mobilization and preparing their armed forces for the possibility of being deployed to the Sino-Soviet Front. NATO realizes the Soviets intend to pursue the Sino-Soviet War to the bitter end.