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Old 08-26-2009, 10:34 PM
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Targan Targan is offline
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Location: Perth, Western Australia
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First of all I agree with everything that Legbreaker has said in this thread.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sglancy12 View Post
I had read that back during the apartheid Australia was taking a lot of whites who were fleeing South Africa... so maybe they would accept South African refugees (they speak English, they are of European descent, they are Christians) if they came individually, but not if they were part of some kind of Afrikaner "nukes for land" swap?
Both before the fall of Apartheid and after many white South Africans moved to Australia. I know quite a few myself and because the city where I live is the closest Australian city in distance to South Africa I believe more South African immigrants to Australia moved to Perth and the surrounding areas than to any other parts of Australia. It needs to be understood that during the latter part of white rule in South Africa (especially during the 1980s) Australians and Australia's government were greatly opposed to Apartheid and Australia strongly backed sanctions against the white government in South Africa. All of the South Africans that I personally know in Perth were totally against Apartheid. The ones that moved here during white rule did so because they didn't like the policies of the white government in South Africa. Those that moved here after the fall of white rule did so because of economic and social difficulties which incressed after the fall of white rule, not because they were protesting the end of Apartheid.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sglancy
But (in my timeline) Australia is going to be locked in a military struggle with Indonesia. The creepy military government Indonesia has embraced the Jihadists in order to co-opt them into a ultra nationalist movement to focus and distract the population with a war to liberate the "occupied" areas of "Greater Indonesia," most importantly Borneo and New Guinea.

(BTW This war will involved Australia, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and East Timor fighting against Indonesia. Maybe even the Philippines if the Muslim/Nationalists in Indonesia are supporting a full-blown Moro rebellion in Mindanao.)
I'd agree with that but I refer back to what Legbreaker has said about the certain failure of any Indonesian invasion of Australia.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sglancy
The Australian military might need the nukes to fend off the Indonesians.
We wouldn't need nukes to do that. Crocodiles followed by dehydration would do most of the work for us. And no, I'm not joking.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sglancy
I do think that after the Twilight War that experimental nuke plant better be upgraded to produce power or Australia is going to start looking like "Road Warrior" when their access to Indonesian oil dries up.
Not true. Australia has many energy options. We produce a fair amount of oil and heaps of natural gas and have huge untapped reserves of both. Australia is one of the biggest coal exporters in the world. We also produce huge amounts of sugar cane so alcohol production on a large scale would be easy to get underway.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sglancy
The protesters can go out to the radioactive crater at Pine Gap and protest US imperialism out there. I can't imagine the Sovs not dropping a weapon on the NSA/GCHQ facility Pine Gap even if Australia stays neutral in the conflict.
Pine Gap might well be nuked but it would be a much bigger bummer for the US than for us. There isn't very much out there that would break our hearts if it was nuked. There are a few other nuke-worthy targets in Australia, a few airbases and naval facilities, that would hurt us more from a military point of view.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sglancy
I can't imagine the Kiwis swapping nukes for refugees... after all who would they nuke with them? Sure, I imagine New Zealand giving covert assistance to Australia during their war with Indonesia, but apart from fending off pirates/refugees, disaster relief, and controlling internal lawlessness, what is the New Zealand military going to do?
There are few nations on earth with closer ties than Australia and New Zealand. There is a kind of sibling rivalry between them and New Zealand is politically a fair bit "greener" and left leaning than Australia but basically they will always be there for each other through tick and thin. Any assistance from New Zealand to Australia would be very much overt, not covert. In every major conflict that Australia has been in since the Boer War, New Zealand has been right there with us. The weapons and equipment and training of both militaries is almost 100% compatible. Yes it is true that New Zealand's geographic location protects it from any realistic threats apart from nuking but look at it from New Zealand's point of view - if Australia was ever to fall to an enemy New Zealand would be next. During the Twilight War New Zealand would back Australia 100%.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sglancy
I think the refugees plus the internal dissent might spark a general rebellion. Imagine the current refugee problem in South Africa. The current government seems content to let local South Africans beat and murder refugees in order to "encourage" them to leave the country. The Apartheid government might tolerate this kind of violence too, so long as it is directed at blacks from other countries, assuming wrongly that it doesn't matter so long as it's blacks killing blacks. With the right incident all that violence could end up directed against the government and the white minority population, especially if South Africa's neighbors are beating the drums of "national liberation" and "anti-colonialism."

So? would the white government, military and police go down under a tidal wave?

Or would they cut a power sharing deal with the Zulus to fight at their side against the Showa and other tribes of South Africa?

Or would they retreat to someplace like Capetown, with their backs to the sea, and be besieged?

Is there a more defensible/resource rich area of South Africa that would be a good place for the Apartheid government to try and make a last stand?
I work with a white South African who is a former role playing gamer and is very knowledgeable about military and history matters. I've talked to him many times about the discussions on these forums. He has told me that even if the USSR hadn't fallen Apartheid would not have lasted all that much longer in South Africa, it was simply unsustainable. In my opinion shortly before or during the Twilight War white rule ould have ended in South Africa. If it was before the war it might have happened much like it did in RL. If it was during or after the Twilight War my guess is that it would have been brutal and bloody.

Finally, the last time Australia really made a push to acquire nukes was when it was a partner in the Blue Streak missile program from the mid 1950s through to the 60s. The only reason that Australia invested in the program was because we had an understanding with the British that they would sell us nukes to put in the Blue Streak. Those hopes ended when the US pressured the British not to give Australia nuclear weapons technology because the US considered Australia to have too much of a leftist streak and thought we would be an intelligence risk. Since then Australia has made no official attempts to gain nukes and in fact has been very anti-nuclear (that feeling ebbs and flows depending on who is in government).

Here is a link to Wiki's take on Australia's WMD history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austral...ss_destruction
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Last edited by Targan; 08-27-2009 at 12:14 AM.
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