OT or Not OT: Twilight 2030

[Rainbow Six]

Originally Posted by kato13

I have difficulty seeing how the North could be successful in penetrating more than 40km from the border. Their equipment is 70s era and the South keeps modernizing. Unless there is obvious Chinese support from the beginning (and perhaps in equipment upgrades during the decade before) I see an "invasion" as being a non starter.

I am interested in seeing if anyone has ideas on how and why China would do this when generally they consider the DPRK leadership to be about as useful as a rabid dog.

Kato, I need to head out soon so I can only give brief replies at the moment - I'll try and come back with more substantial comments later - but the initial thinking was that the PRC "persuade" the DPRK to invade the ROK essentially as a huge scale diversion for their planned attack on Taiwan.

However, it could also be posited that the DPRK acts of its own accord and for its own reasons and the PRC simply takes advantage of the situation to make its grab for Taiwan.

Also, my original thinking agrees with the view that the DPRK don;t get very far...I originally suggested the fighting bogged down near Seoul, which I believe is approx 35 miles from the border, so whilst that is slightly further than 40kms we seem to be in general agreement as to that aspect.

Originally Posted by Rainbow Six

The fighting in Korea becomes very, very bloody, very, very quickly. No quarter is asked or given by either side and the situation becomes bogged down in a very nasty stalemate somewhere just north of Seoul.

Originally Posted by kato13

The Baltics are full NATO members (for over 20 years in this history) who are victims of Russian aggression. Nato falling apart when Germany attacks makes sense in the original timeline, but this scenario seems very off from what I would expect given this is exactly why NATO was created.

I think you have to have a major NATO reorganization (such as France's actions in 1966) or even dissolution for the Russians to expect zero response to such an invasion.

Maybe there is a requirement that members put a certain percentage of their GDP to defense in order to stay in NATO and this leads to many countries (including the baltics) deciding to leave.

Ultimately this comes down to how plausible one considers the idea of some NATO members not taking action when another member is directly threatened. We have attempted to give this some background by coupling it with several countries being forced from the EU but I think it's fair to say that the Russian grab for the Baltics is perhaps the biggest deus ex machina in the proposed timeline.