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Originally Posted by Raellus
I didn't mention this earlier but I think another contributing factor to NATO weakness in the run-up to WWIII would be internal divisions in the former East Bloc countries (and, in particular, within reunified Germany). I think that communist fifth columns in Eastern Europe would be more troublesome in v4 timeline than they were IRL.
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As I mentioned before, none of the former Warsaw Pact nations was a NATO state historically by 1997 and FL agrees here. Keeping these states out of NATO might have been a major contributing factor for the USSR to attack, and they might have had help from within these states. But that is neither a theme or even mentioned, nor very likely: Poland was in open insurrection against communism before 1990, the CSFR had dissolved by the mid-nineties, but anti-communism was strong before and Romania had just shot its communist leader. The Czech Republic and Slovakia might have been easy targets, maybe Hungary and Bulgaria, too, and Romania would have been easy to beat militarily, but Poland had the the strongest and toughest army of all former Pact nations. In fact, during the August Coup of 1991 that army was mobilized against the Eastern Front, should the victors of that coup attempt an invasion. The Polish security apparatus actually expected exactly that, which FL describes.
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Originally Posted by Raellus
I did read the Soviet invasion of Poland as a fait accompli for a general offensive aimed at reconquering most, if not all, of the former WTO nations. In other words, the Soviets were planning on restoring a buffer between itself and the pre-'91 NATO nations by regaining control of the former WTO countries. The offensive's strategic objective was to do so, although its publicly stated objective was to save the Polish people from an oppressive military regime.
Maybe the Soviets didn't expect much resistance, given what happened in the Baltics (I have a hard time buying the tiny, poorly armed Baltics being allowed to break away in the first place). Maybe they figured that NATO wouldn't go to war to protect Poland, much like Britain and France didn't really go to war with Nazi Germany in 1939 (i.e. the Phony War/"Sitzkrieg").
Maybe the US airstrikes were too effective to be ignored and the Soviets were faced with the decision of calling off the offensive or starting the next, general offensive vs. NATO phase early?
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I could go with the USSR re-annexing the Baltics. It's not off the table today and certainly they would have been the first to suffer from a resurgent USSR in 1991. But an invasion by the USSR of its former allies, no matter how involuntary allies they were at times (e. g. Romania had basically stopped cooperating with Pact structures during the 1980s), would have been a stupid move. In 1945 these nations were not invaded, but liberated from German occupation and annexation. True, that difference was sometimes hard to notice, but it had credibility in the citizens of Poland and the other countries no being mass-murdered or declared sub-humans in the style Nazi Germany had done it. Certainly, there were atrocities committed by Soviets or local regimes, but in general life as better in several magnitudes after 1945 than between 1939 and 1945.
A military invasion and occupation would nullify that narrative and cost the USSR hundreds of thousands of troops to maintain occupation, cash to rebuilt and political goodwill; all of which would be lacking at home. That would doom all forms of gap-closing with the West or improving the economy. It would even make the situation of the USSR worse than before 1989. There's a reason after all, Russia never tried this, not even with former Soviet republics. As of now, Russia is only nibbling away from its neighbors what it can swallow. Or, almost.
The problem with such an alternate history clearly is that we know too much about that part of history for our imagination to trigger disbelieve. Certainly, no-one would have poked the Soviet Bear in the Nineties on purpose to cause a war. The USSR itself shouldn't be in a position to invade, so leaders wouldn't come up with a plan to do so. And the trope of the insane dictator and/or the hardline US president/general is feels stale at least.
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Originally Posted by Raellus
I still very much prefer the v1 timeline, but I like trying to make things work, so this a fun thought exercise for me.
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Yeah, v1 made the Germans the bad guys by having them attack the Soviet forces in Germany. That was one huge plot device that was totally out of the question and frankly got post-war Germany totally wrong. It's quite hard to write believable contra-factual history, as it turns out. In the 1980s this might have turned away a couple of German players, but coming up with a similar reason for war today, let's say a Polish
cabal of officers and their non-communist Ukrainian and Lithuanian co-conspirators who want to revive the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, would probably sound completely absurd or turn away a sizeable customer base.