4th ed T2K

[Benjamin]

Originally Posted by Southernap

SNIP


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To me there are ways to try and make a new TL work for Tw2k post 1991. That would be exploiting Yugoslavia. To drag Sweden, like what FL wants to do into the game it isn't that hard and I really think that you can take the 1991 coup and make it work. You can work the "Peace Dividend" in and still make the whole idea of the Twilight war work.

Not that it matters much but take this:

• 1991 - Coup occurs and Gorby is disposed. Hardliners come into play
• 1991 - Even with the hardliners in power the need to feed folks and get the economy that Gorby destroyed back up causes USSR to go internal for a while. PACT collapses and the Eastern Europe tries to come up to speed fast with democracy and capitalism. The cracks start to falter
  
  —Gorbachev didn’t wreck the Soviet economy, communism did. Eastern Europe can’t reform quickly because their industries are outdated and run down. It would take time and the Hardliners would never allow the West to move in and get economic control.
  
• 1992 - Clinton comes to power. With the collapse of Soviet Union. High off win in Iraq in 1991. Peace Dividend comes into effect in the west. Yet, the needs for the US to be the Hegemonic power starts to play. The US has troops in Somalia, Arabia, Korea, and the American Hemisphere. All while NATO scales back.
  
  —Clinton gets elected in late 1992 but doesn’t “come to power” until January 20, 1993. I’m not so sure about what NATO does. The Coup brings Hardliners to power...so what are these Hardliners hardline about? Most likely economic reform will be reversed and sabres will be rattled concerning the status of Eastern Europe. Some European nations might reduce military spending but in many ways tensions will actually increase, especially as Jugoslavia falls apart. Either way no bailout money will be going into the Soviet Union from the West and the US economy can afford to be a hegemonic power as the USSR withers.
  
• 1992 - Bosina war starts. the USSR pledges military and financial aid to keep the Yugoslavia states together or at least to defend the Slavic peoples.
  
  —This will be another Afghanistan/Vietnam for the USSR at a time when they completely can’t afford it. It’s actually likely to occur given historical ties and Russian pride, but it won’t end well for them even if the West stays completely hands off.
  
• At this point I think have the incident at Pristina Airport occur earlier, this starts to give a cause belli for the war in the west. Have the ChiComs decide that going after the Kamchatka Peninsula and its bases along with the traditional 1969 border crisis creep up again. Introduce an economic collapse of some sort that throws everyone into the doldrums, whether it is the 2008 Great Recession or not. So some see the rising Soviets at this point fat and flush with cash making communism work and capitalists go count trees.
  
  —There is no Great Recession in the works for the early or mid-1990s. The groundwork has already been laid for the economic boom of the 90s while the internet and housing bubbles were each 6-to-10 years away. That can’t really be changed by a POD of mid-1991. Added to this the crime wave of the 1980s was abating. Global economic growth might be slower with a belligerent Soviet Union still around but it’s on its way. The Pacific Rim, where Soviet influence is minor will see its historical boom. Very quickly a stagnant Soviet Union will be left behind, even more than the Russia of our history.
  
• 1994 - The PACT comes back into play after the economy in the east falters. With the New Soviets promising to share their oil wealth.
  
  The economy in Eastern Europe was well past “falters” prior to the 1989 events. The Soviet Union has nothing to offer but oppression and Poland et.al know that. There is no oil windfall for the Soviet Union. Their infrastructure was a mess and without Western assistance and trade deals it gets worse. The Gulf War oil price spike lasted less than a year. After that OPEC moved up production quotas and the Soviet Union’s oil industry would never keep up.
  
• 1995 - The PACT goes west after "reports" of NATO atrocities in Yugoslavia when IFOR fails to protect Slavs from genocide.
  
  If the Soviet Union moves into Jugoslavia there is probably no UN/NATO presence beyond Slovenia and maybe Macedonia. The Soviet Union still has a veto on the security council and at this point they would be loath to loose even more regional influence to the West.
  
• 1996 - To assist in securing the Northern Flank with war against NATO. The PACT invades Sweden to either allow for breakout of the Soviet Naval Forces in the Baltics or to attack Norway.
  
  —Sweden does little to secure the Northern Flank. They need control of the Northern half of Norway which might call for crossing Finnish territory but bringing the well armed Swedes into the war makes no sense for either side. Occasional illegal overflights might be a go but nothing too provocative.
  
• At which we take everything else in either V1 or V2 timeline to have occurred at some point after 1996 with the course of the war.
  
  —-This the general problem. The post Coup V2 timeline never made much sense but may have been reasonable given our understanding at the time of its writing. The V4 timeline on the other hand is crap.
  

MORE SNIPE

No offense is intended here; your ideas are far better than what I’ve seen with V4.

I’ve just gotten tired of the authors of “historical” RPGs where the background setting makes no sense. It’s one thing if your doing a Cold War setting with Vampires, magic or Cthulhu but T2K is “hard alternate history” and should be written as such. The V4 timeline is a mishmash of teenage “moar cool!”, political axe grinding and downright ignorance of the Cold War era.