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Originally Posted by Raellus
That would be interesting considering that neither of them had/has nuclear weapons IRL. IIRC, Brazil was working on developing them in the late '80s but never quite got there and eventually quit trying altogether. Assuming that they tried much harder in the Twilight timeline (I'm not a fan of the v2.2 history), and the Argies did too, neither side would realistically have more than a half-dozen warheads max by 2000, and they most likely would have had to have been delivered by aircraft making interception a strong possibility. Yeah, I just don't buy a nuclear war between Argentina and Brazil.
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There was speculation that both had nuclear programs in the 80s -- GDW apparently decided those programs made it to limited fruition in the T2K timeline. Argentina-Brazil was one of those late Twilight War side clashes (1998? don't have chronology handy) that seemed to fall into the "everyone else is doing it, why shouldn't we?" (Pakistan-India being another, though that one seemed more probable to me.)
An exchange between Brazil and Argentina probably wouldn't amount to much more than maybe tactical use if one side was doing badly in their conventional war and/or hitting Buenos Aires on the one side and one of the southern most Brazilian cities (Rio and Sao Paulo are probably too far north to be hit, but there are lucrative targets closer to the border).
Both nations probably suffer more overall damage from the collapse of the global economy. I don't know the numbers for Argentina, but Brazil is a net importer of food because a big chunk of their agricultural sector is cash crops (citrus fruit, rope fiber, whatever) -- a country whose national dish is rice and beans imports both to meet its food needs. For Brazil to make it without massive unrest and chaos, there would have to be some well organized and orchestrated austerity and economic reconfiguring programs . . . which honestly probably were not favored by the initial outbreak of war, when demand would have gone up for Brazilian cash crops.
For Brazil, I see it fragmenting for a time along the longstanding north/south divide (opposite of the US -- industrialized south, agricultural north), with the Amazon basin just abandoned entirely. Eventually the south succeeds in reestablishing control over the rest of the nation, but settling the coastal north takes time and getting back into developing the Amazon is generations down the line from the Twilight War.
Argentina I think is better off in terms of cohesion and an easier territory to control, but a war and nuclear exchange with Brazil exposes a lot of high value areas to potential damage -- Buenos Aires and Rosario are both conceivably involved in fighting if it leads to Brazilian troops on Argentinean soil or nukes. I'd guess the capital has had to relocate from Buenos Aires and the war with Brazil has ground down to both sides trying to restore order and rebuild, with Argentina having a head start compared to Brazil owing to nothing as comparably complicating as the north breaking away.