Quote:
Originally Posted by ZombieLenin
When my players came up with Ireland, this is roughly what I did for my timeline. Essentially, I had the campaign setting's history deviate in 2013 with a worldwide economic collapse brought on by the failure of the US congress to pass an extention of the US debt ceiling (US Bond default). A bunch of other stuff happens (like Putin dying in a shirtless sky diving accident) and you end up with a bunch of regional conflicts that sort of merge together... presto! Nuclear war!
In Ireland specifically though, I used the economic collapse as an excuse to bolster the popularity of the RIRA and the CIRA in Northern Ireland. I mixed this with global depression's ability to turn populations towards more extremists governments into a suitably reactionary response from the UK and to place a nationalist "One Ireland" government in control of the Republic of Ireland.
So, to make a long story short, my actual story line for the game became pretty close to the original that you are describing.
That all seemed pretty reasonable to me, except:
1. When I started to do the research necessary to give a realistic portrayal of the military situation in 2018 I noticed that the Irish Defense Forces has a total number of active duty members, for all branches of service, less than 10,000. When the reserves are counted, around 15,000. The Irish Air Force is composed almost exclusively of helicopters, and the Irish Army has nothing bigger than armored cars as mechanized support.
While I am sure that members Irish Defense Forces are more than capable in a fight, it just seemed incredibly unlikely that they would be capable of "invading" Northern Ireland, let alone dealing with the inevitable response from Her Majesty's Armed Forces.
Being from the UK you're probably at least tacitly aware of this, but for those who aren't, the Royal Army has 130,000 active members with another 130,000-200,000 reserves. Compare that with the Irish Defense Forces where the Irish Army, Navy, and Air Forces have 15,000 personel AFTER the reserves have been called up.
2. I wanted to put two multinational forces facing off in Ireland. The UK, The Kingdom of France (related to my 'history'), and the United States versus The Irish Republic, The Republican (and nominaly Marxist) forces (RIRA, CIRA) and elements of the Slavic National Bolshevik Union (National Bolshevik Russia).
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Yeah, the topic has come up here a few times and conventional wisdom with regard to the disparity in numbers / equipment between the UK and Ireland has generally been that the IDF would not be able to successfully mount operations against UK forces unless UK forces were seriously weakened (for example by being involved in major conflict / conflicts elsewhere in the World...in the original timeline that vast majority of the British military was already committed to the fighting in Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East before the Irish invaded the North, leading to the situation where for the most part the Irish were fighting British reservists. By this point the RAF and the Royal Navy had also effectively been taken out of the equation),
I would defer to the Irish members about the possibility of a pro Marxist Government in the Republic but I have to say the latter coalition strikes me as unlikely, particularly the idea of the Irish being opposed to the US...how about some sort of schism in the Irish Government that has created pro Western and pro Russian factions instead?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ZombieLenin
I thought of using the UK actually, as my timeline matches the T2013 timeline slightly, and you have post-nuclear exchange internal conflict between England, Wales, and Scotland; However, I could find even less reason to include anyone but British and, to a limited extent, American armed forces on the ground.
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How about the some of following...?
Russians (or other opposition forces dependent on your timeline) - escapees from POW camps / special forces types infiltrated into the UK before hostilities started to destabilise the country / shot down aircrew (possibly POW's, possibly not)
NATO / allied nationalities - withdrawn to the UK after serving elsewhere in Europe, for example perhaps NATO sent a composite force to Norway which was withdrawn to the UK after its mission was concluded (or perhaps because it suffered horrendous casualties); after arrival in the UK the unit broke up, leading to individuals and small groups scattering. You could adapt this slightly and make it a UN peacekeeping detachment that was withdrawn to the UK if you want to add non NATO nationalities into the mix (the UK still has a garrison on Cyprus and UN peacekeepers are based on Cyprus, so perhaps some blue berets could find their way to the UK that way)
Commonwealth forces - common for Commonwealth personnel to spend time on exchange postings with British units, so practically any Commonwealth (and occasionally more "exotic") personnel might be found in the UK. It was also common for foreign students to attend British military colleges, e.g. the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (and RAF and RN equivalents) and the Staff College Camberley.
Other options may be possible dependent on your own timeline.
Plus everything Stainless Steel Cynic suggested earlier...