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Originally Posted by Marc
First of all, I have not read the timeline but I hope to do it very soon.
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Please remember that it is a mess and needs a great deal of work to adjust real world incidents to the TW2K timeline.
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Originally Posted by Marc
Only two small comments about the matter
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And at least they were both positive comments. I'm glad you generally approve.
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Originally Posted by Marc
I totally agree that this is one of the weak points of the Twilight timeline. I've been working in Italy for months and while in Kosovo we were (I don't know if still they are) under Italian jurisdiction. I've been working and living together with soldiers from the Ariete Armored Brigade and the Garibaldi Bersaglieri Brigade. Our close languages make our communication easier and, my feeling is that , though Italy probably would not leave NATO in the beginning of the war depicted in the v2 Twilight timeline, it would be a political decision against a very reluctant population that would put the country in a very difficult situation. Riots and civil disobedience are probable. I cannot imagine Italy leaving NATO to avoid the war and then entering in the fight for an alliance (without precedents) with Greece.
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Yes, but like anything involving the Italians, where there are five Italians there are likely to be ten opinions on any given subject. Italy would be torn by political strife at home, maybe even a resurgence in the Red Brigades with covert KGB assistance. Governments would fall, form and fall again, leaving the Italian military in a precarious position of not knowing when their orders are going to change on any give day.
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Originally Posted by Marc
About the gazeteer I've only have a quick look to it, searching for the references to Spain. The situation depicted seems very plausible. An evacuation from Ceuta and Melilla and a fighting withdrawal from these two enclaves are credible and, most probably, it is an old studied maneuver in the Spanish army high command. They are not military valuable. Canarias and the Balearic Islands are a total different matter and they will be defended for their strategic position. The coming together between Spain and France seems plausible, too.
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The Secretary General of NATO at the time (Javier Solana) was, and still is, very anti-NATO, seeing it as an extension of US power over European sovereignty. I can easily see Spain (and Portugal) quitting NATO under the TW2K scenario. Of course, if Portugal stays in NATO, their joint-use military bases could be subjected to Soviet nuke strikes and the resulting chaos could land Spain with a massive refugee problem, plus a fair bit of fallout. Who needs to get nuked if your country is over-run by starving refugees from next door.
So, big question back to you, as a resident of the Iberian Peninsula, would Portugal (in the mid-1990s, not now) stayed in NATO or withdrawn? Under a goon like Salazar they would have stayed in, but I'm not familiar with Portugal's politics in the 1990s. They, like Spain, have everything to lose and nothing to gain by joining the conflict. At least in the short term. Granted, it would suck to have the Iron Curtain roll all the way forward to the Rhine for the next 50 years, but I just can't see the Red Army (in TW2K) rolling through Portugal and Spain.
The only places on the Iberian peninsula I imagine getting nuked are Gibraltar and any NATO bases still in use. Of course, I'm imagining the Spanish taking a very hard line neutral position on the war, perhaps totally withdrawing from NATO and forcing a withdraw from the airbases, because they can afford to. The USSR isn't going to get to them even if they win. France will prevent that. So Spain can afford to try and avoid getting nuked in the crossfire. They have nothing to gain and everything to lose by joining in the Twilight War.
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Originally Posted by Marc
About the Basque country I think that sometimes the situation is enourmously exagerated for the foreigners. I think that If you want to create enough instability to force the Spanish army to send there "limited resources" (as stated in he gazeteer), a conscription could be the suitable trigger.
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I agree that the Basques would definitely resist a move to have forced conscription. And forced conscription would definitely be happening as the government tried to keep order (with the lights going off due to energy shortages), distribute food, and keep the country from being over-run by refugees.
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