View Single Post
  #115  
Old 02-07-2010, 06:41 AM
sglancy12's Avatar
sglancy12 sglancy12 is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Seattle, WA, USA
Posts: 161
Default

So... in the Iraq Thread I tossed out some ideas about my homebrew TW2K timeline, which diverges with a 1988 assassination of Gorbachev and his key reformist allies by hard line Soviet Communists with the connivance of reactionary members of the Chinese Communist Party. Gorbachev's plane is bombed (much like Pakistan President Zia's) on his way to Beijing just prior to the Tienamen Square Massacre. The Soviet and PRC conspirators use the false crisis to crack down on reformers at home and in the WTO, ultimately placing the blame on Muslim fundamentalists getting revenge for Soviet involvement in Afghanistan.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus View Post
I just beg to differ on several key points.

I would like to point out that the PRC fought the U.S.-led U.N. force in Korea to a stalemate. <SNIP> Anyway, that was, by and large, a conventional war and one that the U.S. could not win outright. I imagine the results may have been different if the U.S. was also simultaneously fighting the Soviets in Europe.
And I am not suggesting that the US is going to win that war... or that they are doing it alone. In my homebrew timeline the Pacific Theatre of the War is going to line up the USSR, the PRC and North Korea against the USA, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the UK (Hong Kong), and Portugal (Macao). The war is confined to the Kurile Island chain, the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan. Macao and Hong Kong having been quickly abandoned as the British and Portugese "Dunkirk" out to Taiwan.

I imagine Vietnam is sitting this one out with the exception of Soviet Naval assets using Cam Rahn Bay.

Combine the power of the US Fleet with the choke point of the Korean Peninsula and the "moats" of the Taiwan strait and the Sea of Japan, I believe that the USSR/PRC/PRNK alliance can be held at bay, but not defeated outright... held at bay until the nukes start flying. And in my homebrew timeline the conventional war in the east would only last from mid 1996 (when the German Reunification Crisis lead to a shooting war in Europe) until Thanksgiving 1997 when the war advances to the level of limited nuclear strikes. After that, with both sides ability to wage war will be severely degraded, and the Chinese and Soviet armies will unable to press the Americans, South Koreans, Japanese and Taiwanese very hard. And the Americans and their allies only have to be on the defensive. They "win" by not losing, not by conquering enemy territory.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus View Post
I think it's a tad unreasonable to place so much stock in the U.S.' historical success in fighting a two-front war.
But it is reasonable to place stock in a belief in the USSR's ability to fight a two-front war, when no historical record exists to support that belief?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus View Post
I like Kato's explanation for the survival and resurgence of the Soviet Union: the U.S.S.R. finds sizeable oil and natural gas deposits near the border with China in the late eighties.
I comment on that in another post on this thread... While the idea has merit, the one thing I forgot to mention is that the problems of the Soviet system were so deep and systemic that I seriously doubt that any mineralogical treasure house would be sufficient to allow the Soviets to get buff enough in seven to ten years to be able to fight a conventional war on three Fronts for nearly two and a half years. Very few economies could handle that strain. The US economy in the mid to late 1990s was, however, one such economy.

A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing
Reply With Quote