Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
I'd forgotten about this. Thanks for bringing it up.
[...] I'd posited as much re DPRK and PRC aggression helping to explain early Soviet success in the v4 timeline, but in less detail, in post #241 of this thread.
https://forum.juhlin.com/showpost.ph...&postcount=241
One thing that I really don't get about v4 is how it currently includes no mention of WW3 taking place anywhere else but in NW/Central Europe and the Middle East. FL's Twilight War doesn't seem like much of a world war, as currently written.
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In consentaneity with all you said, I must confess I had almost forgotten about the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis myself, too. Therefor, I could not see a conflict between the US and the PRC as likely, when you first described its possible effects in the previous post.
To be fair, I still think it's a bit far-fetched and would either need premeditation on behalf of the PRC and possibly the DPRK, which should be explained in any narrative that wants to build a credible background. However, there would be the slight chance that during such a crisis stuff just goes plain wrong and someone trigger-happy overreacts: a faulty sensor indicating missile launch, a pilot going off-course etc. This too would need explanation, of course.
In the end, the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis probably is the only incident in the Pacific theater, with high enough volatility and chronological proximity to become a flashpoint for conflict. In my opinion, a sudden, but short flare-up of hostilities, which gets contained by massive diplomatic endeavors of all parties, including, but not limited to, a US pivot to Asia, would allow the USSR a time-window of 18-24 months between 1995 and 1997, where they could fly under the radar of US intelligence services with a little more than usual.
This would be especially true, if the USSR seems to be occupied more with Chechnya and other conflicts along its periphery than it actually is and the USA plus some of its key allies are overestimating their own capabilities as a consequence of Desert Storm. This would not be a sentiment shared by the armed forces, who might actually warn against it, but probably would not be listened to. In the end, if the political elite grows complacent towards the USSR or turns its attention away (or both), all it needs is an intelligence bungle and a (strategic) surprise attack could be conducted. One only needs to look at 9/11 for that; even in a state of heightened awareness did the Japanese achieve operational surprise at Pearl Harbor.
A possible course of things then could be that China and the USA clash over Taiwan, with some assets on both sides being lost and taken out of action for quite some time. Maybe 2-3 older cruisers and destroyers get sunk, a carrier needs to be repaired and a couple of aircraft get lost. The DPRK then tries to move across the Korean DMZ, but ultimately the Chinese call them back, because that's what the - still dominant - USA demand for not bombing Fujian province and all of North Korea into submission. Still, major damage is done to South Korean units along the primary angle of the North Korean attack and Seoul was shelled badly enough to need billions of USD in repairs. This leads to a 1996 stock market crash, which hurts Western economies more than that of the USSR. It also hamstrings the New Economy and especially Dot-com bubble, taking off some of the edge Western economies historically saw. It further stops the brain-drain the USSR experiences, since Silicon Valley, Wall Street and London are not as lucrative as they historically were. Of course, the brain-drain already fell short of the historical one, since the USSR never imploded.
Consequently, the USSR uses its time well and moves full force into some of the provinces and break-away nations it (nearly) lost between 1989-1991: Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Moldavia (Moldova) all rejected reforming the USSR in 1991 and achieved independence. In 1997 the empire strikes back and brutally occupies all six nations, annexing them shortly afterwards by means of faked elections.
All former Warsaw Pact nations, cry out for help, Poland most vocally, but the US looks towards Asia, the UK is in a recession, and continental Europe is busy with itself, most notably Germany, where
Aufbau Ost - the reconstruction of Eastern Germany - is still consuming time and money. Since the Peace Dividend never came through as much as it did historically and economies perform worse than historically, money is considerably tighter in Europe and America than it was for ourselves. This leaves many Americans and Europeans frustrated, destabilizing democracies and putting politicians under pressure to act "decisively", "strong", "swift" and "for the people". These populist tendencies do not make for good counsel in the upcoming crisis of international security, which the USSR can use for its own plans better than Western democracies.
From there, it pretty much goes south on its own in the second half of 1997. All the USSR and its leaders need is some time and a spoon full of overestimation of Soviet power. An invasion like the Russian of 2014 into Ukraine, but into Poland in 1997 would have good chances to flare up all of Europe and most of the Pacific from Vladivostok to Vietnam: For, if the US is then fully occupied in Europe, as well as containing Soviet forces in the Far East, who guards the Korean DMZ against Kim Jong-il? Who stands against renewed Chinese aggression in the Taiwan Strait or the Vietnamese border?
There should be enough room for a thousand campaigns across the world in that setting.