Yet another Alternative TW2K Timeline

[sglancy12]

Howdy folks,

Being a history/political science wonk from way back, I completely got off on the alternative history in the TW2K game setting. Like most of you I was sorry to see history render the game's setting obsolete, and was a little disappointed in GDW's attempts to tinker with their time-line to keep it relevant. Rather than advancing the time-line and setting the Twilight War further and further into the future, I felt that Twilight 2000 should be an alternative history set in the 1990s. By setting TW2K in an alternative past we can correct some of the faulty assumptions and presumptions the game designers made back in the 1980s when they were writing it. Furthermore, we can avoid our own faulty assumptions and avoid having real world events render our predictions "quaint" or even ridiculous.

Both these documents are very incomplete. The time-line dates for real world events have not been properly checked against off-line sources. The gazetteer, in particular, suffers from the use of online data (particularly from the CIA World Factbook) and is anachronistic because the data does not reflect 1997 conditions.

The time line and gazeteer diverge from TW2K canon on several major points:

1) I was never convinced that the Soviet Union could fight a two front war against the US and the PRC and manage to hold out for as long as they did before taking the nuclear option. From my perspective, once the second front opened up in the west, it would have been a matter or weeks before the Kremlin used the same sort of nuclear options in Europe that they used on the Chinese. I just don't see them as being able to keep up that pace conventionally without the empire falling apart.

The only country on earth that could simultaneously fight on two continents against two super powers (or close enough to being super-powers) is the United States. So I wanted to create a situation where the People's Republic of China patched up their differences with the USSR sufficiently to have them fighting against the west. That way the war could grind along conventionally with victory just within reach, thus discouraging the Reds from going nuclear until they've completely exhausted themselves.

Besides... I'm no more a fan of Red China than I was of the USSR. Having the Red Chinese on our side in the Twilight War is a lot like having Joseph Stalin on our side in WWII. I'd rather be shooting at them too.

Furthermore, for America to be so out of resources that we are down to one Los Angeles Class attack boat by 2000, we are going to need to have been slugging it out against both the USSR and the PRC. A war of attrition against both those powers might just grind the American military down to the nub it is in the canon materials.

2) I was not completely convinced about the likelihood of combatants nuking neutrals in order to deny the enemy the resources, particularly when it comes to oil resources. I can imagine Cahm Rahn Bay in Vietnam getting nuked, even if the Vietnamese didn't overtly join the USSR's war. I can also imagine Soviet listening posts in Cuba being knocked out, or that huge NSA facility in the Australian outback getting nuked, but I wasn't convinced that nuking neutrals would be as widespread as the canon indicated. In my world there are a lot of countries that never got hit. Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, all of South America were spared the war's direct effects (mostly), but they would have plenty of problems to keep them occupied in the aftermath. The canon even has France getting nuked once or twice, and again, considering the French nuclear strike capacity, I just don't think that would have been a good idea for either side to provoke a French nuclear response.

3) I was never convinced that NATO allies like Italy and Greece would first duck out of the war and then enthusiastically join in again on the side of the Warsaw Pact. I can see the Greeks getting into it with Turkey... after all, what are Greeks and Turks supposed to do except shoot each other? But Italy? I kept Italy on the side of NATO, where they would be bogged down fighting in the Balkans.

Certainly I can see NATO bailing out when the war starts, leaving the UK, USA and FRG on their own. But when the Soviets try to invade Norway (and Denmark in my version), that brings the northern European NATO members back into the fold. That invasion would demonstrate that everyone is at risk, not just the Germans and their dream of unification.

4) Speaking of the Balkans... I never did make much sense out of anyone sending three divisions off to be marooned in Yugoslavia when they were so badly needed at home. In my time line, the Pentagon retains the IV US Corps in the States prior to the MilGov/CivGov split. IMO, CivGov's best hope to recruit military units away from MilGov in 1999 is by telling them the war is over and that they should be concentrating on rebuilding at home. A sales pitch like that could sway a lot of soldiers. In fact it does... within a year that message sways the Joint Chiefs of Staff and they launch Operation Omega to evacuate the European Command.

5) The old canon backgrounds seem to have missed out on radical Islam and the Jihadists. My preference was for a Twilight War waged between Western Democracies, Eastern Communists and Radical Jihadists. The Jihadists would be a kind of global New America... an insidious fascist totalitarian movement that is preying on the world when it is weakest. While there won't be armies of Mujahehdeen marching on Chicago, there are other parts of the world that are going to feel their effects... and more than just a few suicide bombers. The Persian Gulf, India, Pakistan, Indonesia... and Africa. From Cairo to Cape Town, from Tangiers to Zanzibar... radical Islam is going to turn Africa into a corpse factory. Throw in the AIDS pandemic and who needs nukes to create total devastation?

With more involvement from radical Islam the fight in the Persian Gulf would get more confused, with the Iranian Republic essentially shooting at everyone rather than forming an alliance with the west. Al Queda would be bombing and attacking US, UK and even French forces for "occupying the holy soil of Saudi Arabia." The aftermath of the Twilight War could easily be spun as "Allah's judgment on the infidel," with the least westernized and least modernized elements of the region seeing this as the perfect opportunity to rebuilt the Uma. There might be a point where the Soviet and US forces in the area start to realize they have more to fear from the Jihadists than from each other.

6) As part of the new background, I wanted to be sure to include real world events and "Twilightize" them into the context of TW2K. The Second Gulf War, for instance, and the break up of Yugoslavia. Those events are included, but recast in light of the Twilight War and the continued survival of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact.

Ugh... "Twilightize?" Sounds like there's going to be sparkly vampires... maybe we need a better term?

Finally I should point out that these documents are nowhere near complete. Even though both stand at somewhere around 35,000 words apiece, I expect the Gazeteer needs another 50,000 words and the time-line needs another 15,000. Of course with the time-lime I'm also going to lose some of the material that's there if it could not have happened in the alternative universe.

Nevertheless, comments are welcome.

A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing