The road to destruction - T2k 1.0

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Speculate with me for a moment, fellow gamers...

In the final analysis, trying to unravel what exactly went "wrong" from 1990-1997 (and a couple years beyond) may well be impossible for future historians in the T2k timeline. But there are some big picture events that are fairly easy to get ahold of, and with that in mind...

Was the US in the wrong? Did the US have what happened to it coming? Was the US - and NATO - the enemy that the Soviets had always decried it as? I think the answer is closer to yes than many in the west might think is comfortable.

Consider: NATO's stated goal was ostensibly always defense. To be ready for a Soviet invasion. The US supplied the Chinese with lend-lease to fight the Soviets (as the 1.0 rules, I think, state: many conservative politicians were only too happy to watch the world's largest communist governments destroy one another). Then, the US and Germany attacked the Warsaw Pact - and scored frightening (to the Soviets) successes on the Western Front. Losing in Manchuria, losing in Germany and soon Poland, the Soviets had to see this as a repeat of 1941. A reunited German army, invading for the third time in less than 80 years? For the fourth (or fifth?) time in their history?

The USSR was in the same position the US and NATO thought they'd be at this point: losing ground, trying to buy time with lives, fearing for their very survival against an implacable foe. Thus, they did probably what NATO was prepared to do under the same circumstances (which we, in our own real-world now know would've happened, too).

If the DDR military had mutinied and appealed to the FRG's commanders to let them flee West, or help them if they were attacked, and then fight a defensive-only war within Germany's borders to stop the Soviets taking them, rather than the US becoming involved and taking the fight to Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Poland and further points east, I think (just my opinion about in-game events!), maybe the world might have squeaked by without the disaster that happened. Maybe.

Ultimately, you have to be willing to win a war to fight it, however. Stopping the Soviets from continuing the pressure on a Germany risen and united by unilateral decision would have absolutely meant strikes into Warsaw Pact countries, and hitting Soviet assets abroad. There's no way around that. Widening the war would inevitably mean going beyond the East German theatre.

Had the DDR forces successfully mutinied against the Warsaw Pact on their own, or with minimal assistance from NATO, the Soviets may well have viewed the entire thing as causus belli anyway and attacked into the West with the same end results. Whose fault the nuclear exchange was doesn't matter to the two-to-three billion dead in 2000 - but ultimately as much as it pains me to say this...

Yeah, what happened to the United States during the Twilight War was in no small part the fault of the United States.

(Note: as with everything I say regarding in-T2k-universe events, this doesn't reflect any real world opinions, feelings, ideas or ideology I may or may not have - I don't care what the Clinton Doctrine or GW Bush foreign policy or even Reagan or Bush I meant/means in the slightest in terms of the game/universe. Cracking the fourth wall and letting discussion leak in from our own political opinions can only end in tears.)