In Defense of the Red Army

[Raellus]

I think that we can all agree that the Russian military hasn't performed well during Putin's War in Ukraine, especially during the first 1-2 years. Extrapolating from that, it would be easy to conclude that the Late Cold War Soviet military would have been handled rather easily by NATO in a general European War. Perhaps that's a mistake.

Russia's been able to sustain it's "Special Military Operation" for over two years, under broad economic sanctions, and without fully mobilizing the Russian economy for total war. Recently, Russian forces have seized the initiative and are threatening to push the UAF back on a broad front after achieving a significant penetration of UAF defensive lines west of Avdkiivka.

This speaks to Russian resiliency, doggedness, and resourcefulness.

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[Vespers War]

Originally Posted by Raellus

I think that we can all agree that the Russian military hasn't performed well during Putin's War in Ukraine, especially during the first 1-2 years. Extrapolating from that, it would be easy to conclude that the Late Cold War Soviet military would have been handled rather easily by NATO in a general European War. Perhaps that's a mistake.

Russia's been able to sustain it's "Special Military Operation" for over two years, under broad economic sanctions, and without fully mobilizing the Russian economy for total war. Recently, Russian forces have seized the initiative and are threatening to push the UAF back on a broad front after achieving a significant penetration of UAF defensive lines west of Avdkiivka.

This speaks to Russian resiliency, doggedness, and resourcefulness.

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I'm not sure Russia's inability to break a stalemate with a country that had a pre-war army 20% its size, a GDP 10% as large, and 33% of its population is a particular testament to their capabilities.

Edit: the rough equivalent for the United States would be getting stalemated by Brazil.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by Vespers War

I'm not sure Russia's inability to break a stalemate with a country that had a pre-war army 20% its size, a GDP 10% as large, and 33% of its population is a particular testament to their capabilities.

I'm not saying that the Russian military is good. My point is that, despite its many serious flaws, it's maybe not as bad as many analysts claimed it to be up until this year, or so. And, currently, there's growing concern that Russia may be about to break that stalemate, so the jury's still out on that point.

Originally Posted by Vespers War

Edit: the rough equivalent for the United States would be getting stalemated by Brazil.

To be fair, the USA has been definitively stalemated by two far less powerful countries during the last 50 years (essentially bracketing the Late Cold War period), so we're not the world-beaters the jingoists proclaim us to be either.

I'm very much aware that all of these comparisons are apples-to-oranges. There are simply too many variables at play in each case to draw any meaningful conclusions re a hypothetical WWIII. We're dealing with a lot of counterfactuals. Essentially, I've been playing devil's advocate in this thread, trying to find a bright side for those who want to believe that a war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact during the Late Cold War period would have been evenly matched, or at least competitive. IMHO, that's an essential premise of TWILIGHT:2000 in all of its iterations.

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[Raellus]

Originally Posted by HaplessOperator

I find it far more interesting that these depletion levels are coming from engaging a single country on their border under conditions generously described as air parity, with no NATO involvement, and with the thing starting off with some of the most modern ground branch equipment they had in stock, thrown against anti-armor systems that was new 25-30 years ago.

I mean, BMPs weren't any tougher 30 years ago than they are now, and you can still kill them with platforms throwing 40mm grenades or .50AP and SLAP. Hell, the Ukes logged a T-80U kill with a Carl Gustav, and volleyed AT-4 hits seem just as effective on the homegrown stuff as the "monkey models."

Given what we've seen of their hardware on live fire ranges, I think it's a lot more likely that we spent 75 years doing what we do best: overestimating our enemy and assuming the worst to ensure overmatch. We saw more or less the same thing in Chechnya; the only real success they managed was when they massed DIVARTY or corps-level artillery assets and delete entire settlements and called it square. First sign of significant, organized resistance using even equivalent hardware, and they melt about as quickly as the Republican Guard did.

Their problems (hardware and wetware both) seem to stem much further back than the Cold War ending with the collapse, and reached far deeper than poor warehousing of vehicle stocks; Cockburn had a fairly insightful look into this with The Threat: Inside The Soviet Military Machine as far back as 1985.

I get the feeling that thousands of Leopards, Challengers, Abrams, F-15s, F-16s, and F-22s wouldn't exactly help their situation much even if you were to somehow double the size of their military; you'd just harvest more meat, and faster.

For the most part, I agree. The Soviet... er, Russian army has always performed best when wielded like a blunt instrument. Since the fall of the USSR, they've tried to ape Western operational doctrine with little success. For example, its early-war attempts at decisive "thunder runs" against Grozny and Kiev were catastrophic failures.

Instead of bludgeoning away at a narrow segment of the front line with a tank army backed by entire regiments of heavy artillery like they did in WW2, the Russians attack piecemeal, across a broad front, in dribs and drabs. They throw a company of tanks or motorized infantry at a perceived soft spot in the Ukrainian defenses, get wrecked, then try again, and keep trying, until the Ukrainians are forced to pull back. Gains are often minimal, but the costs are still high. Since February 2022, I've been wondering why this has been the case. Yeah, by employing late-WW2 operational tactics, the Russians would be losing a regiment or division at a pop, but they'd much more likely force a significant breakthrough that would collapse Ukrainian defenses and lead to bigger, faster territorial gains. In the long run, though, the Russians don't seem too concerned about incurring casualties. It's weird.

In any case, what the Russians have succeeded at, once again, is absorbing massive manpower and materiel losses without significant negative political or economic consequences (at least, to date). The West has not demonstrated, since WW2, that it can do the same. And, despite decimating its own military in the process, as things stand, Russia will probably win a strategic victory over Ukraine (as it did v. Chechnya).

Originally Posted by HaplessOperator

I think it's a lot more likely that we spent 75 years doing what we do best: overestimating our enemy and assuming the worst to ensure overmatch.

History shows that the US did the exact opposite with both Vietnam and Afghanistan (and, nearly, Iraq). That is the purpose of this particular thread- to gird against underestimating an adversary.

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[HaplessOperator]

Originally Posted by Raellus

History shows that the US did the exact opposite with both Vietnam and Afghanistan (and, nearly, Iraq). That is the purpose of this particular thread- to gird against underestimating an adversary.
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I'm largely referring to our conventional buildup, focuses on strategic threats, and the military industrial complex.

Overestimating for downstream overmatch is what gives us F-22s and F-35s when the world's second army is installing wood screws and bare metal cockpit interiors on "stealth" aircraft.

Also, for what it's worth, I've never seen an adversary in Iraq that could match us in a stand-up fight. There was political and strategic underestimation of what would be required, and the simple fact is that unless we were prepared to kill every man, woman, and child in the country, the lack of a uniformed enemy more or less necessitates that the men in camouflage are eventually going to go home and life is going to continue - more or less - as it did before they came.

As for the actual enemy, there's a reason the most successful tactics largely centered around single shots taken followed by exfil, and roadside bombs; winning a standup fight was essentially impossible, due to the level of overmatch brought to the table even at the small unit level.

Engaging a squad of Marines in Karmah meant that you were attacking three to six machine guns, three grenade launchers, ten rifles, and anywhere between 13 and 26 rockets, and that's before QRF shows up; there's only so much that sandals and faith in Allah bring to the table against a baker's dozen guys that know how to leverage that.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by HaplessOperator

I'm largely referring to our conventional buildup, focuses on strategic threats, and the military industrial complex.

Overestimating for downstream overmatch is what gives us F-22s and F-35s when the world's second army is installing wood screws and bare metal cockpit interiors on "stealth" aircraft.

Also, for what it's worth, I've never seen an adversary in Iraq that could match us in a stand-up fight. There was political and strategic underestimation of what would be required, and the simple fact is that unless we were prepared to kill every man, woman, and child in the country, the lack of a uniformed enemy more or less necessitates that the men in camouflage are eventually going to go home and life is going to continue - more or less - as it did before they came.

I hope that I didn't offend with my comment re Iraq. I totally get what you're saying, and I understand very well how guerilla forces can win a strategic victory against a much stronger nation that's doing its best to follow the civilized laws of war. War becomes a lot more difficult when you're fighting with one hand tied behind your back against an enemy that refuses to follow any rules. What surprises and offends me is how US policy-makers haven't internalized and applied the lessons the country so painfully learned in Vietnam.

As for underestimating a near-peer adversary, the USA has made that mistake before. Even after its shocked-the-world victory over Russia in 1905, Japan's military capabilities and competence were sneered at by the USA and its western allies, much to their detriment in 1941-'42. Just a few years later, Douglas McArthur underestimated the Chinese* prior to their entry into the Korean Conflict and the result was a stalemate along the 38th parallel.

*To consider the PLA a near-peer adversary in 1951 is being very generous.

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[HaplessOperator]

Originally Posted by Raellus

I hope that I didn't offend with my comment re Iraq.

Oh, God, no, not at all. I was just highlighting the small unit-scale disparity. We saw much the same (but to a lesser degree, edging somewhat towards more parity) in Vietnam, and the Russians saw similar in Afghanistan in the 80s.

It was more engaging with the concept that we "lost to dirt farmers," a common refrain (not ascribed to you, or your words, but you get my meaning as shorthand). Dirt farmers don't win stand-up fights, because they very often literally can't. It's a much easier proposition, however, for that invading country to collectively get tired of spending money and trickling a few thousand lives over the course of ten or twenty years and decide to go home. This isn't to say it's not a victory for the occupied nation, because it absolutely is, but it's a victory derived from a wholly different mechanism than a battlefield defeat due to a lack of training, or faulty organization or doctrine, or hardware that simply cannot match the enemy's capability, or - I would contend - from underestimating the enemy tactically, operationally or even strategically, because there are such wildly different dynamics at play than in the conventional conflicts we organize militaries to engage. There's no way to put a bullet through an idea, or to drop a bomb and change hundreds or thousands of years of cultural gestalt, and this simple concept seems lost on in the minds of every leader who's ever had the thought to send soldiers to fight a population that can hide among civilians for the simple reason that they - for the most part - ARE civilians.

Originally Posted by Raellus

I totally get what you're saying, and I understand very well how guerilla forces can win a strategic victory against a much stronger nation that's doing its best to follow the civilized laws of war. War becomes a lot more difficult when you're fighting with one hand tied behind your back against an enemy that refuses to follow any rules. What surprises and offends me is how US policy-makers haven't internalized and applied the lessons the country so painfully learned in Vietnam.

As for underestimating a near-peer adversary, the USA has made that mistake before. Even after its shocked-the-world victory over Russia in 1905, Japan's military capabilities and competence were sneered at by the USA and its western allies, much to their detriment in 1941-'42. Just a few years later, Douglas McArthur underestimated the Chinese* prior to their entry into the Korean Conflict and the result was a stalemate along the 38th parallel.

*To consider the PLA a near-peer adversary in 1951 is being very generous.

I feel like it might be valid to point out that the era you're talking about, the beginning of the Cold War, as the world was creeping out of WWII and then sat and watched as the Korean War played out, is also where we began getting serious about R&D with the goal of overmatch, in a crawl progressing to a sprint culminating in the late 70s and early 80s where WP/Eastern hardware was definitively outclassed across more or less the full spectrum of systems.

I can't deny at all your points on the Russo-Japanese conflict, or the Chinese entry in Korea, but that's somewhat outside of the scope of the modern jet, nuclear, missile, and information ages of warfare, where we're looking at a case where a civilian company in one nation can cover an invaded country with satellites and provide non-jammable coverage against the efforts of what was supposedly the second army on the planet, and where sending last-generation hardware from one side can drag a three-day special military operation into a three-year slaughter without any feet, wheels, track, or tread on the ground.

[castlebravo92]

Originally Posted by Raellus

I hope that I didn't offend with my comment re Iraq. I totally get what you're saying, and I understand very well how guerilla forces can win a strategic victory against a much stronger nation that's doing its best to follow the civilized laws of war. War becomes a lot more difficult when you're fighting with one hand tied behind your back against an enemy that refuses to follow any rules. What surprises and offends me is how US policy-makers haven't internalized and applied the lessons the country so painfully learned in Vietnam.

As for underestimating a near-peer adversary, the USA has made that mistake before. Even after its shocked-the-world victory over Russia in 1905, Japan's military capabilities and competence were sneered at by the USA and its western allies, much to their detriment in 1941-'42. Just a few years later, Douglas McArthur underestimated the Chinese* prior to their entry into the Korean Conflict and the result was a stalemate along the 38th parallel.

*To consider the PLA a near-peer adversary in 1951 is being very generous.

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The purpose of a system is what the system produces, whatever the name or stated intent of the purpose. The US military, as an institution, knows how to successfully fight a counter insurgency war. The fact that we did not successfully fight a counter insurgency war is prima facia evidence that "winning" wasn't the goal. Cui bono?

[HaplessOperator]

Originally Posted by castlebravo92

The purpose of a system is what the system produces, whatever the name or stated intent of the purpose. The US military, as an institution, knows how to successfully fight a counter insurgency war. The fact that we did not successfully fight a counter insurgency war is prima facia evidence that "winning" wasn't the goal. Cui bono?

You wouldn't believe some of the crazy-ass RoE we were dealing with at certain times and locations.

An example: In Al Anbar, 2005, for a significant part of the year in the vicinity of the city of Karmah, we were prohibited from pre-emptively engaging individuals carrying obvious heavy weapons with ammunition. PK machine gun, RPG, M69 or D-37 mortar, doesn't matter, can't shoot them, doesn't matter if they see you, start running, take up positions, can't shoot them, no firing until they engage you first.

Those might be poor farmers on their way to hand those weapons in for buybacks, you see.

Almost universally, they were simply transporting them to another location for hiding away, protected by the aegis of dumbass RoE.

I'd argue that no one benefits, really, but merely that it's next to impossible to militarily force a change of culture without undertaking utterly repugnant actions. It's also not really what a military is built to do, and certainly not with two hands tied behind your back and both balls taped to one leg.

[castlebravo92]

Originally Posted by HaplessOperator

You wouldn't believe some of the crazy-ass RoE we were dealing with at certain times and locations.

An example: In Al Anbar, 2005, for a significant part of the year in the vicinity of the city of Karmah, we were prohibited from pre-emptively engaging individuals carrying obvious heavy weapons with ammunition. PK machine gun, RPG, M69 or D-37 mortar, doesn't matter, can't shoot them, doesn't matter if they see you, start running, take up positions, can't shoot them, no firing until they engage you first.

Those might be poor farmers on their way to hand those weapons in for buybacks, you see.

Almost universally, they were simply transporting them to another location for hiding away, protected by the aegis of dumbass RoE.

I'd argue that no one benefits, really, but merely that it's next to impossible to militarily force a change of culture without undertaking utterly repugnant actions. It's also not really what a military is built to do, and certainly not with two hands tied behind your back and both balls taped to one leg.

I'd argue that there are certain groups of people that profit more from long, failed wars than short, successful wars. Dumb ROEs get established because of "mission accomplished" turning a war into a "peacekeeping op" where no one told the other side and where it's a bad look if we blow up "farmers" who are handing in their weapons for buy backs.

Additionally, I won't ever say the Taliban were the good guys, but they certainly did put a crimp in things like Afghan opium production and Man Love Thursday, which both exploded back again after the US and the Northern Alliance temporarily kicked the Taliban out into Pakistan. In effect, the US military became the security force for illicit Afghan opium farming and heroin production for 20 years. Given the fairly rich legacy of certain US governmental organizations in the trafficking of narcotics, I would argue this wasn't exactly accidental.

[Red Diamond]

Let me start by saying I think the Red Army is, and always has been, capable and worthy of respect. It would always give the US and NATO a real run for their money.

However, in the T2K lore, it seems just the opposite has come to pass. The US and NATO and other allies (ROK, etc) are getting their ass kicked at every turn. The idea that the Red Army could get in a protracted war with China, then lose some of their WARSAW Pact allies to the West and then charge through Poland causing the collapse of Western Europe is crazy. And then, it's the US Government that falls apart- crazy! In My Humble Opinion.

Let's remember, it was the Soviet Union that actually fell apart. It was the Red Army that was much more hollow and ineffective than we had thought, while the US was more capable than we imagined.

In the end, it's just a game and the GM can determine how he wants to create reality so it shouldn't matter at the PC level.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by Red Diamond

However, in the T2K lore, it seems just the opposite has come to pass. The US and NATO and other allies (ROK, etc) are getting their ass kicked at every turn. The idea that the Red Army could get in a protracted war with China, then lose some of their WARSAW Pact allies to the West and then charge through Poland causing the collapse of Western Europe is crazy. And then, it's the US Government that falls apart- crazy! In My Humble Opinion.

Which edition are you referring to? In 1e, the ass-kicking is mutual, and the only Warsaw Pact ally that the USSR loses is Romania. NATO, on the other hand, loses Italy and Greece. Most Soviet gains can be attributed to the use of nuclear weapons. By mid-2000, the situation in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia is essentially a stalemate. IMHO, 1e is the least improbable of the three-and-a-half editions of T2k but yes, suspension of disbelief is still necessary.

Originally Posted by Red Diamond

Let's remember, it was the Soviet Union that actually fell apart. It was the Red Army that was much more hollow and ineffective than we had thought, while the US was more capable than we imagined.

The truth is, we'll never really know. The Cold War Soviet military was never tested against a near peer adversary, and neither was the US military. The lessons derived from the post-Soviet collapse period are informative, but by no means conclusive. We're making sweeping inferences from the poor performance of the rump Russian military in Chechnya and the USA's stellar performance in Desert Storm.

Therefore, whatever the conclusion one arrives at- the USSR as paper tiger or as formidable foe- we're essentially dealing in counterfactuals. The purpose of the OP was to support a plausible alternate reality where the Twilight War, as described in 1e or 2-2.2e canon (4e didn't exist yet), could have occurred.

Originally Posted by Red Diamond

In the end, it's just a game and the GM can determine how he wants to create reality so it shouldn't matter at the PC level.

That's the crux of it, at a micro level.

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[castlebravo92]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Which edition are you referring to? In 1e, the ass-kicking is mutual, and the only Warsaw Pact ally that the USSR loses is Romania. NATO, on the other hand, loses Italy and Greece. Most Soviet gains can be attributed to the use of nuclear weapons. By mid-2000, the situation in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia is essentially a stalemate. IMHO, 1e is the least improbable of the three-and-a-half editions of T2k but yes, suspension of disbelief is still necessary.

Yep, the USSR was losing until summer of 1997, when German units cross into the USSR. Then the USSR starts using nukes, nukes China to oblivion, then redeploys the far eastern forces to Europe and slowly retakes territory. The defection of Italy, Greece, and France, and Italy and Greece turning into co-belligerents with the USSR really does a number on Germany and Turkey (sort of - Turkey is unable to deal with Greece, Bulgaria, and the USSR southern front all at once).

[ChalkLine]

Originally Posted by Red Diamond

Let me start by saying I think the Red Army is, and always has been, capable and worthy of respect. It would always give the US and NATO a real run for their money.

However, in the T2K lore, it seems just the opposite has come to pass. The US and NATO and other allies (ROK, etc) are getting their ass kicked at every turn. The idea that the Red Army could get in a protracted war with China, then lose some of their WARSAW Pact allies to the West and then charge through Poland causing the collapse of Western Europe is crazy. And then, it's the US Government that falls apart- crazy! In My Humble Opinion.

Let's remember, it was the Soviet Union that actually fell apart. It was the Red Army that was much more hollow and ineffective than we had thought, while the US was more capable than we imagined.

In the end, it's just a game and the GM can determine how he wants to create reality so it shouldn't matter at the PC level.

The Western Narrative on the collapse & dissolution of the USSR is extremely misleading. It didn't fall, it was pushed and just as they were making peace.

I find it to be one of our interesting blind spots, much like the way we think wars start only when a rifle is fired, that we don't look at the events leading up to the dissolution but only try and analyse it from its preceding situations.

To put it simply, the West spent decades preparing for that very moment to crush the USSR and people seem to think we stood quietly and suddenly it just fell over. If you look at Russian literature from 2000 to today you get a very different view. Their narrative points to a lot of shady intelligence dealing in the periphery. An interesting point is all the oligarchs who made money from the dissolution were prior criminals, smugglers & so on and by definition these people worked with foreign intelligence agencies.

[castlebravo92]

Originally Posted by ChalkLine

The Western Narrative on the collapse & dissolution of the USSR is extremely misleading. It didn't fall, it was pushed and just as they were making peace.

I find it to be one of our interesting blind spots, much like the way we think wars start only when a rifle is fired, that we don't look at the events leading up to the dissolution but only try and analyse it from its preceding situations.

To put it simply, the West spent decades preparing for that very moment to crush the USSR and people seem to think we stood quietly and suddenly it just fell over. If you look at Russian literature from 2000 to today you get a very different view. Their narrative points to a lot of shady intelligence dealing in the periphery. An interesting point is all the oligarchs who made money from the dissolution were prior criminals, smugglers & so on and by definition these people worked with foreign intelligence agencies.

The Soviet Union is a lot of things, but innocent victim isn't one of them.

They worked, actively, to undermine the US and it's government going as far back to the 1930s. In fact, their primary export for decades was counter-intelligence engineered destabilization of foreign countries, so if they collapsed by similar operations by the West / the US, it would be fitting, but I am skeptical. The record of success by the US in ops like that just isn't that good. Take Cuba, for example. Just about every single "intelligence" asset we ever had in Cuba was a double agent, meanwhile they had numerous assets imbedded in our own intel agencies. The USSR and Russia never had a Robert Hanssen. Etc. Our humint was never that good, and there's was often superb.

[VCDR]

Well said castlebravo92.

The USSR as a 'victim' of Western machinations is a deeply flawed reading of history, ignoring both the systemic failures of the Soviet system and the agency of the Eastern Bloc nations that sought to escape its grip.

1) The USSR’s Internal Failures Were the Primary Cause of Collapse

Economic Mismanagement: The Soviet Union’s centrally planned economy was inefficient and increasingly unable to compete with the market-driven economies of the West. By the 1980s, systemic shortages of consumer goods, food, and energy were widespread. Remember when главный противник exported over 150 million tons of grain to the USSR between 1960 and 1991? Pepperidge farms remembers...

Technological Stagnation: While the USSR maintained a strong military-industrial complex, it lagged in consumer technology and innovation. The focus on military production came at the expense of quality-of-life improvements for its citizens.

Political Corruption: The bloated and inefficient bureaucracy, rife with nepotism and corruption, alienated ordinary Soviet citizens and undermined faith in the system.

Lack of Incentives: The absence of economic incentives in the planned economy stifled productivity and innovation. This was compounded by an ideological rigidity that resisted necessary reforms until it was too late.

2) The USSR Was Far from Innocent

The Soviet Union aggressively sought to destabilize Western nations through espionage, propaganda, and covert operations. From funding Communist movements worldwide to attempting to influence elections in democratic countries, the USSR was no passive player.

The Warsaw Pact invasions of Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and Afghanistan in 1979 showcase the USSR’s willingness to crush dissent through military force. Claiming victimhood ignores its role as an oppressive imperial power.

3) The Role of the West Was Overstated

While the West certainly opposed the USSR, attributing its collapse to Western interference ignores the Soviets’ own systemic failures. The CIA’s role in covert operations often had mixed results; successes were rare, and failures (e.g., the Bay of Pigs) were numerous.

The USSR’s collapse was largely a result of internal dissent. Gorbachev’s reforms (Perestroika and Glasnost) attempted to modernize the USSR but instead exposed its vulnerabilities. The Eastern Bloc countries, tired of Soviet domination, chose to break free when the opportunity arose.

4) The "Oligarchs" Were a Consequence of the Soviet Collapse, Not the Cause

The rise of oligarchs and criminals during the post-Soviet transition was a symptom of the chaotic dismantling of the centrally planned economy. The USSR’s lack of a legal framework for privatization and property rights created a power vacuum, which opportunistic individuals exploited.

Suggesting that these individuals were foreign intelligence agents is speculative and aligns with modern Russian propaganda narratives, not historical evidence.

5) The USSR’s Collapse Was Inevitable.

A comparison with Western systems shows why the USSR’s collapse was predictable:

Economic Scale: The Soviet GDP at its peak was dwarfed by the combined GDPs of NATO countries, and its growth stagnated while Western economies grew.

Freedom of Expression: The lack of political freedoms in the USSR stifled dissent temporarily but created a pressure cooker that eventually exploded during Glasnost.

Popular Rebellion: The Eastern Bloc revolutions in the late 1980s, from Poland’s Solidarity movement to the fall of the Berlin Wall, were driven by the people, not Western spies.

6) Russian Literature Post-2000 Is Propaganda-Laden

Post 2000 “Russian literature” reflects the narratives promoted by Vladimir Putin’s government, which seeks to paint Russia as a perennial victim of Western aggression. This literature often ignores the USSR's culpability in its collapse and the genuine aspirations of the people in Eastern Europe for freedom and democracy.

TL;DR:

The Soviet Union was not a victim; it was an aggressor and an empire that collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions. Attempts to frame its demise as a purely Western plot are both ahistorical and and dismissive of the agency of millions of people who rejected its oppressive system.

[Raellus]

I wonder if the Soviet Union could have survived, or even thrived, had it instituted Chinese-style economic reforms starting in the early-to-mid 1980s- Perestroika without Glasnost, if you will. It worked pretty well for the PRC, and the Chinese started with a more backward economy.

This might be the most realistic explanation for an extant, strong USSR in a T2k timeline.

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[kato13]

Originally Posted by Raellus

I wonder if the Soviet Union could have survived, or even thrived, had it instituted Chinese-style economic reforms starting in the early-to-mid 1980s....

This might be the most realistic explanation for an extant, strong USSR in a T2k timeline.

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IMHO lots of things work against this.

Too few ports, too many borders, too many ethnicities, too paranoid, too confrontational, too proud, too isolationist, too expensive for foreign manufacturing, and too corrupt (Which compared to China is saying something).

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by kato13

IMHO lots of things work against this.

Too few ports, too many borders, too many ethnicities, too paranoid, too confrontational, too proud, too isolationist, too expensive for foreign manufacturing, and too corrupt (Which compared to China is saying something).

I think those are all fair points, but if, historically, China was able to overcome most of those same obstacles, I don't see why Russia couldn't too.

Re port cities, Russia alone had Murmansk, Kaliningrad, St. Petersburg, Novorossiyk, and Vladivostok. That's not a lot of major commercial ports, compared to China or the USA, but the Baltic States and Warsaw Pact nations would add a few more to that list.

Re ethnicities, I'm not sure if that would hinder free market reforms to a prohibitive degree. China has approximately 100 million people belonging to ethnic minorities and still managed it. If the Soviet gov't could force its ethnic minorities to accept an inefficient command economy for half-a-century, it could probably coax them into partaking in a hybrid economy. Enjoying a Big Mac every once in a while might help some Soviet citizens to forget how oppressed they are politically. Bread and circuses...

Re paranoia, pride, isolationism, etc- certainly, those would all be obstacles to meaningful economic reforms, but perhaps a Soviet regime, facing a truly existential looming economic crisis, could get past such psychological and cultural barriers to assure the survival of the state/empire. Mao wasn't exactly an internationalist. Even though most of the PRC's effective economic reforms post-dated his demise, China still had to overcome centuries of suspicion and outright hostility (300 years of Ming Dynasty isolationism, the Opium Wars, the Boxer Rebellion, etc.) towards foreign commercial interests.

For at least the last two decades of the Cold War, the Soviets were open to western products; the problem was, they couldn't afford them. Pepsi entered the Soviet market in the 1970s. The Soviets didn't have enough hard currency to buy much cola, so they traded alcohol and other agricultural products for it. In the most extreme example, the Soviet gov't even traded a handful of soon-to-be-scrapped warships to PepsiCo in 1989.

https://warisboring.com/the-cola-fle...-largest-navy/

McDonalds opened its first location in Moscow in January of 1990, shortly before the dissolution of the USSR. Lines for the grand opening stretched for blocks. And who can forget Gorbachev's cameo in a 1997 Pizza Hut commercial?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3jA0SVtyUE

Given these historical precedents, I can see a Soviet government, desperate to save its tottering economy, embark upon a program of PRC-style market reforms in the 1980s and '90s. This wouldn't need to spark the kind of economic boom that China achieved IRL during the first decade of the 2000s- it would just need to be enough to keep the Soviet economy afloat until the Twilight War kicks off in the mid-1990s.

Corruption would be the biggest obstacle, IMHO. The government would need to adopt some serious semi-independent self-regulating mechanisms to weed that out. If doing business with the West was seen as a way to save the Soviet empire, Moscow would have a strong incentive to do so.

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[castlebravo92]

Originally Posted by kato13

IMHO lots of things work against this.

Too few ports, too many borders, too many ethnicities, too paranoid, too confrontational, too proud, too isolationist, too expensive for foreign manufacturing, and too corrupt (Which compared to China is saying something).

China is also exceptionally corrupt, but they are corrupt in different ways.

The Chinese would court foreign investment, the foreign company/companies would move money into a China to build a factory in China to build widgets in the factory. The Chinese would keep the factory running on the 2nd and 3rd shift and sell the product under another label (and/or replicate the factory). In the end, the Chinese got factories and goods out of the deal.

The Russians would court foreign investment, the foreign companies would move money into Russia, and the Russians would steal the money. In the end, Russian government and mobsters (and government mobsters) got money funneled into Swiss bank accounts out of the deal.

Foreign capital investment also had a ~20 year head start in China, and it was in the West's best interest to prop up China as a bulwark against the USSR while it was in the best interest for the West for Russia to partially collapse.

[HaplessOperator]

Originally Posted by Raellus

I'm not saying that the Russian military is good. My point is that, despite its many serious flaws, it's maybe not as bad as many analysts claimed it to be up until this year, or so. And, currently, there's growing concern that Russia may be about to break that stalemate, so the jury's still out on that point.



To be fair, the USA has been definitively stalemated by two far less powerful countries during the last 50 years (essentially bracketing the Late Cold War period), so we're not the world-beaters the jingoists proclaim us to be either.
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We are when it comes to fighting a conventional conflict, wherein soldiers aren't expected to not fire at people carrying mortars and machine guns, and don't have to swab gunshot residue tests on the hands of people who were trying to kill them five minutes prior while bagging shell casings, tagging rifles, collecting IDs, and taking photos of suspects like they're conducting police raids after treating the combatants' wounds. Using a military to fight a war against ghosts is a difficult proposition that works out about as well as it does in Spectral, and it doesn't really matter that you have F-22s or some of the best infantry on the planet when your opponent is a pair of 155mm artillery shells buried two feet deep two days before a winter rain.

I assume the other one you're talking about is Vietnam, where similar political concerns essentially kept us fighting with our hands tied behind our backs, trickling soldiers in slowly so as not to be offensive to the sensibilities of a hand-wringing public or politicians afraid of getting their constituencies' mandates mussed, and where the political realities of fighting against a guerrilla force

When it comes to superpowers doing actual superpower things, you can't really find an example of a stalemate, because there aren't any. About the closest you can point to is the Korean War, with the entire military apparatus of China and North Korea fighting us before anything resembling modern American doctrine of technologically-enabled maneuver warfare or full spectrum dominance was even a sparkle in anyone's eye.

Those F-16s, F-15s, and F-22s come in awfully handy against an enemy that's stuck with duct-taping GPS receivers to their instrument panel, though, and I haven't met a BMP that can survive the ordnance equivalent of a gnat fart, and threat systems weren't any more advanced or better armored 25 years ago.

That you're talking about Russia potentially, possibly breaking a stalemate against such a weak adversary after three years is sort of telling in and of itself. The last time Russia had any real chance of winning a conventional war against the West was probably back around 1979-1983 or so. Sure, they're a wild nuclear threat, assuming they've been able to maintain their arsenal, but that's a fairly long shot, too. We have an arsenal somewhat smaller, and spend as much maintaining our nukes each year as they allocate for their entire military budget.

[HaplessOperator]

Originally Posted by Red Diamond

Let me start by saying I think the Red Army is, and always has been, capable and worthy of respect. It would always give the US and NATO a real run for their money.

However, in the T2K lore, it seems just the opposite has come to pass. The US and NATO and other allies (ROK, etc) are getting their ass kicked at every turn. The idea that the Red Army could get in a protracted war with China, then lose some of their WARSAW Pact allies to the West and then charge through Poland causing the collapse of Western Europe is crazy. And then, it's the US Government that falls apart- crazy! In My Humble Opinion.

Let's remember, it was the Soviet Union that actually fell apart. It was the Red Army that was much more hollow and ineffective than we had thought, while the US was more capable than we imagined.

In the end, it's just a game and the GM can determine how he wants to create reality so it shouldn't matter at the PC level.

If you want a good look into how rotten the Soviet military was from stem to stern, you should give "The Threat: Inside the Soviet Military Machine" by Andrew Cockburn a read.

If you thought America's brief Hollow Army phase after Vietnam was something, you should prepare to have your mind blown. They seem to have suffered through a similar situation worse by several degrees, more pervasive, and lasting from WWII essentially to the collapse.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by HaplessOperator

I assume the other one you're talking about is Vietnam, where similar political concerns essentially kept us fighting with our hands tied behind our backs, trickling soldiers in slowly so as not to be offensive to the sensibilities of a hand-wringing public or politicians afraid of getting their constituencies' mandates mussed, and where the political realities of fighting against a guerrilla force.

You're right. Granted, it's apples to oranges, but "the politicians wouldn't let us win" narrative about the Vietnam War has been overplayed by American military apologists. Although the we didn't go so far as to invade North Vietnam or use nuclear weapons, the US did indeed try very hard to win. By 1968, we had half-a-million troops on the ground in South Vietnam, and US combat troops in Vietnam spent more time in active combat zones than they did in either world war. In addition, we dropped a greater tonnage of bombs on North Vietnam during the conflict than we did versus the combined Axis Powers in WWII (and with more accuracy, to boot).

Originally Posted by HaplessOperator

When it comes to superpowers doing actual superpower things, you can't really find an example of a stalemate, because there aren't any. About the closest you can point to is the Korean War, with the entire military apparatus of China and North Korea fighting us before anything resembling modern American doctrine of technologically-enabled maneuver warfare or full spectrum dominance was even a sparkle in anyone's eye.

I mentioned the Korean War upthread. Despite post-WW2 draw-downs, the US possessed the most technologically advanced military in the world at that time- at least a sparkle, as you put it. China, on the other hand, had recently emerged from decades of civil war and Japanese occupation. Still the US/UN couldn't decisively defeat the PLA. Given your point quoted above, this seems like a fair historical comparison vis-a-vis the hypothetical Twilight War.

I also posted the following:

The Cold War Soviet military was never tested against a near peer adversary, and neither was the US military. The lessons derived from the post-Soviet collapse period are informative, but by no means conclusive. We're making sweeping inferences from the poor performance of the rump Russian military in Chechnya and the USA's stellar performance in Desert Storm.

Therefore, whatever the conclusion one arrives at- the USSR as paper tiger or as formidable foe- we're essentially dealing in counterfactuals. The purpose of the OP was to support a plausible alternate reality where the Twilight War, as described in 1e or 2-2.2e canon (4e didn't exist yet), could have occurred.

...

In other words, the goal here is to make the game work. And, on principle, I want to hedge against succumbing to the twin traps of overconfidence in one's own side and underestimating the adversary.

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[HaplessOperator]

Originally Posted by Raellus

The Cold War Soviet military was never tested against a near peer adversary, and neither was the US military. The lessons derived from the post-Soviet collapse period are informative, but by no means conclusive. We're making sweeping inferences from the poor performance of the rump Russian military in Chechnya and the USA's stellar performance in Desert Storm.

Therefore, whatever the conclusion one arrives at- the USSR as paper tiger or as formidable foe- we're essentially dealing in counterfactuals. The purpose of the OP was to support a plausible alternate reality where the Twilight War, as described in 1e or 2-2.2e canon (4e didn't exist yet), could have occurred.

...

In other words, the goal here is to make the game work. And, on principle, I want to hedge against succumbing to the twin traps of overconfidence in one's own side and underestimating the adversary.
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At the risk of sounding more than a little cheeky, I'd hazard that there's more than a few reasons why the one was a campaign of horrific loss and a near-unbroken string of setbacks punctuated by slaughter against a military one fifth the size of our Marine Corps, while the other led to the near-total operational annihilation of the fourth-largest military on the planet, conducted across a distance of 3000 miles, separated by an ocean, and concluded within about four days, against half a million troops concentrated in an area 2/3 the size of Texas and against one of the densest AA networks then in existence.

Counterfactuals aren't always accurate, but they very well can be used to draw basic inferences. It's not as if we can't draw valid inferences or critiques from those two well-understand wars against multiple well-understood forces using well-understood equipment; the same can be said of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

It's not as if we all haven't seen two years of videos of an up-armored, modernized T-80 being killed by a single Carl Gustav hit, or a T-90AM worn the hell out by a bone stock ODS Bradley, or "hypersonic" missiles being shot down by Stingers and Iglas during terminal approach. No, these aren't engagements against NATO troops using NATO equipment, except in the cases where they're using gifted pld war stock that was too out of date to be modern by ten years even when I was serving, and I'd be retired this year, but that should tell anyone watching all this something in and of itself.

[Raellus]

I hear you. Again, i am playing devil's advocate. Why stop now?

Russia eventually reconquered Chechnya. I've written entire essays on how the Iraqi and Soviet armies are not synonymous earlier in this thread so if your curious, you know where to look.

We've also seen M1 tanks taken out by RPG-7s in Iraq and an F-117 shot down over Serbia by an SA-3 SAM so...

Out of curiosity, since you strongly believe that the Soviet Union was no match for NATO from the mid-1980s through... today, why are you a T2k fan, given its central premise and all?

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[HaplessOperator]

Originally Posted by Raellus

I hear you. Again, i am playing devil's advocate. Why stop now?

Russia eventually reconquered Chechnya. I've written entire essays on how the Iraqi and Soviet armies are not synonymous earlier in this thread so if your curious, you know where to look.

We've also seen M1 tanks taken out by RPG-7s in Iraq and an F-117 shot down over Serbia by an SA-3 SAM so...

Out of curiosity, since you strongly believe that the Soviet Union was no match for NATO from the mid-1980s through... today, why are you a T2k fan, given its central premise and all?

-

Mostly because of the mechanics (of both 2.2 and 4), the military focus, and the depth of squad-level wargaming it lends itself to - without outright being a wargame. The post-war setting, aesthetic, and atmosphere is compelling as well, even if the premise itself for how it happened isn't all that believable.

I think a big part of what happened is just that time marched on, and we know a lot more than a couple of random guys from the 80s.

I personally find it a lot more believable to just assume the Soviets went a little more nuke-happy. I don't believe they weren't a match for NATO; a conventional one, no, but they posed (and Russia now poses) a credible nuclear threat.

[kato13]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Out of curiosity, since you strongly believe that the Soviet Union was no match for NATO from the mid-1980s through... today, why are you a T2k fan, given its central premise and all?

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I am guilty of this as well.

In the 80s I believed much more in the Soviets than I do now.

As time has moved on I feel the timeline must be changed earlier and earlier. Given you have to explain an alternate history now (rather than the projected future back in 1984) who cares if the alt history starts in 1989 or 1972.

Red Dawn threw like 7 Alt history sentences to us to set the stage for that conflict.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by kato13

I am guilty of this as well. In the 80s I believed much more in the Soviets than I do now.

Me too. I'm just trying to keep my youth alive here!

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[Vespers War]

Originally Posted by Raellus

I hear you. Again, i am playing devil's advocate. Why stop now?

Russia eventually reconquered Chechnya. I've written entire essays on how the Iraqi and Soviet armies are not synonymous earlier in this thread so if your curious, you know where to look.

We've also seen M1 tanks taken out by RPG-7s in Iraq and an F-117 shot down over Serbia by an SA-3 SAM so...

Out of curiosity, since you strongly believe that the Soviet Union was no match for NATO from the mid-1980s through... today, why are you a T2k fan, given its central premise and all?

-

I was just discussing that Nighthawk shoot-down elsewhere, so the amazing circumstances surrounding it are still relatively fresh in my memory:

There were a bunch of mistakes on the American side that made the shootdown easier.

The airfield was being spied on by Serbs who were transmitting information back to the military about what was flying and when. Allegedly there was also a mole somewhere in Italy with access to operational information sending that to the Serbs as well.

On the night of the shootdown, weather had grounded the EA-6B Prowlers that had been escorting F-117s with radar jammers and HARM missiles to counter SAM batteries.

The Nighthawks were using the same ingress and egress routes they had used before, making them predictable.

The SAM battery had been told where to emplace to be able to engage the Nighthawks. This battery had previously tried to engage twice without being able to lock on to an aircraft.

The low frequency radar spotted the flight at a range of 15 miles (the normal range against a fighter was 200 miles). The tracking radar never saw the aircraft, and at first the guidance radar didn't either. They had been directed to only do short periods with the radar on to avoid getting a HARM fired at them, but since the battery CO had been told the Prowlers weren't firing, he lit off the guidance radar a second time.

By coincidence, that happened at the same time that one of the Nighthawks was dropping a bomb, and the radar saw the inside of the bomb bay at a range of 5 miles (normal range 50 miles). A pair of SA-3 were fired. Neither achieved a direct hit and the first detonated too far away to cause damage, but the second one detonated close enough to the Nighthawk to cause damage that led to its crash. The guidance radar never saw the other two Nighthawks that weren't open while it was emitting.

So yes, an SA-3 shot down an F-117, but it took a rather remarkable string of actions to get there - the air defense knew where the aircraft would be, when they would be arriving, may have known what the targets that night were, knew there was no SEAD escort, took advantage of that knowledge to make a second try that would have likely gotten them killed if there was a SEAD escort, and got lucky with the timing on the second try.

It ended up being a combination of complacency on the American side, good intelligence work and a gutsy battery commander on the Serb side, and a dollop of luck on top that allowed that shootdown to happen.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Raellus

You're right. Granted, it's apples to oranges, but "the politicians wouldn't let us win" narrative about the Vietnam War has been overplayed by American military apologists. Although the we didn't go so far as to invade North Vietnam or use nuclear weapons, the US did indeed try very hard to win. By 1968, we had half-a-million troops on the ground in South Vietnam, and US combat troops in Vietnam spent more time in active combat zones than they did in either world war. In addition, we dropped a greater tonnage of bombs on North Vietnam during the conflict than we did versus the combined Axis Powers in WWII (and with more accuracy, to boot).

With the benefit of long hindsight, I think the biggest factor in the US losing the Vietnam War was that US political leaders as well as the leaders of the military and intelligence services fundamentally misunderstood Indochina's history from the Vietnamese perspective. Ho Chi Minh was very much an "accidental communist". Literally the only reason he became a communist was that his repeated attempts to have a seat at the table at the Paris Peace Accords in 1919 and 1920 were ignored. It was the same after World War II. The US very much could have chosen a different path with respect to supporting France's continued colonialism in Indochina, but chose not to (and flying in the face of its own decades-long proclamations on the right of peoples to choose how to be governed in their own lands). The Viet Minh were patriots, flighting for self determination. In the end the only support they could get was from the Soviet Union and Maoist China.

I mention these events because taking into account the tendency for the US, the UK, my own country, to misunderstand the motivations of its adversaries can absolutely be used in our various attempts to devise alt-histories that would bring about the Twilight War. Likewise the tendencies of the Warsaw Pact nations and other belligerents to misunderstand the motivations of the US and the NATO countries. I really enjoy seeing those elements in T2K alt-histories, because that sort of thing has resulted in wars and the direction of conflicts countless times in human history.