I fully appreciate that people have their own feelings about the link between T2k and 2300 but I would like to say something about it.
As we know, 2300 came first and the "Twilight War" was a significant event within its backstory that was later used as the basis for the Twilight: 2000 setting.
However, it should be noted that to come up with the history for 2300, the GDW staff participated in something called "the Great Game". This was in effect, a massive tabletop wargame in which the future of humanity, from the time of the Cold War until the year 2300AD, was gamed out like any tabletop wargame (including all the random events and strange occurrences that could occur in such a game).
The major events in the Great Game were used to plot out the timeline for 2300.
T2k came about years after the creation of 2300 and it could be argued that it was a happy coincidence that GDW had already plotted out a planet devastating third world war and afterwards wanted a military themed adventure RPG set in a devastated world - the two ideas suited each other.
So, the GDW staff plotted out the third world war already knowing the end result and thus they created a T2k history to fit into that end result (the end result being 2300's backstory).
Was this a good idea, was it necessary, was it effective etc. etc.? Subjectively I would say "yes". It worked well enough to create the game that still gets talked about 20 years later.
Ultimately though, none of that matters. Every T2k referee is free to do what they want with the game history. No matter how you might feel about the link between 2300 and T2k, it's worth remembering how that link came about when trying to understand why it exists in the first place.
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