Just wondering how '84 Olympics are going. Soviet Union probably is allowed to participate but there might be bit frosty feelings.
Bicentennial Man: Ford '76 and Beyond
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Just wondering how '84 Olympics are going. Soviet Union probably is allowed to participate but there might be bit frosty feelings.
I would strongly expect both Soviet participation and frosty feelings.
It will be interesting to see what results come from this.
From Finnish perspective this is obviously not good. Due to the limited capabilities of the Finnish Defence Forces, the best option for the Finnish might be to play possum and allow Soviet overflights to happen. Of course explaining this course of action to foreign diplomats, Sweden in particular, will be interesting, with the message undoubtedly being shrouded in a thick envelope of diplomatic gibberish. The official Finnish government stance, worded ambiguously as possible, will likely mean to convey a message that the Finnish leadership will neither condone nor condemn the Soviet overflights and while making it very clear to those reading between the lines that the Finnish leadership has very few options at hand in preserving their neutrality and that the 50 to 60 Drakens and MiG-21's of the Finnish Air Force together with the sole battalion of short-to-medium range surface-to-air missiles have plenty of targets to cover outside of Lapland where the majority of Soviet overflights will likely happen.
I'd say that Helsinki might just abandon any semblance of air defence north of Kemi-Kuusamo line, with the Lapland Air Command, based in Rovaniemi, having its Drakens either grounded or being quickly evacuated to south with their place being taken by a large force of Finnish Army units equipped with a disproportionately large number of short-range anti-aircraft weaponry. If the Soviets choose to increase the military pressure by having some of the overflights happen further south, possibly even near the Finnish southern coast for air strikes near Stockholm, then the situation will become significantly more volatile and some clashes between Soviet interceptors and attack aircraft and Finnish interceptors may occur.
For the rest of the Finnish Defence Forces, the crisis means heightened readiness and reservist call-ups. I'd reckon that the FDF will mobilize tens of thousands of reservists and at least initially orient its defences in defeating a possible Soviet surprise attack against Helsinki with naval and airborne landings. Of course, should the Soviet leadership choose to increase the heat on the Finnish, one of the reactions would be even more reservist call-ups, then measuring at hundreds of thousands, though still not at a full wartime strength.
And of course, with military aggression comes political fallout.
With overflights over Finland, with or without Finnish permission, Ustinov has royally screwed Chebrikov and the KGB over. Their already a difficult job to entice Finnish politicians to understand and support their stance will become a whole lot harder. With the escalation of the conflict, even the hardliner minority of the Finnish Communist Party might take a look at situation, reconsider their position and adopt a firmly neutral position in an effort to not give the Eurocommunist majority an excuse to boot them out of the party once and for all.
And with the worst crisis of the Finno-Soviet relations since the end of the Second World War approaching, much of the Finnish political class and the general populace will likely rally around the already popular President Koivisto. Even Väyrynen could be tamed, perhaps with some high-ranking Centre Party politicians, maybe even Kekkonen himself, telling Väyrynen that he should shut up, stay put and support the official Finnish government line and not run around on his own. Should he not do this, the very real threat of them burying him alive politically might be presented. With his political career and future prospects on the line, even Väyrynen ought to see the light.
Or maybe not. Väyrynen has shown himself to be a factor of unpredictability.
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Love this! Figuring out how to integrate these ideas into the next few Swede-Sov updates is going to be a blast
I'm glad you like it. When it comes to Väyrynen, I think I should clarify that while he is ambitious and bit of an opportunist with a pro-Moscow bent, he isn't a complete idiot. Even with his meme-like status in Finnish politics, he will likely play it safe.
That he has meme-status tells me everything I need to know about the necessity of finding him a place in the TL haha
A quality meme, if a bit out-of-place for 80s Väyrynen. I personally prefer whatever satirist Kari Suomalainen had drawn of Väyrynen:
/tiede.fi/s3fs-public/discussion_comment_image/vayrysen-jalasmokki_1.jpg?itok=04Qmk3O-)
"To every cape, valley, island I would like to raise a house" sings Väyrynen holding a bag reading "per diem" in this 1982 satirical cartoon.
That year it was revealed that Väyrynen had been able to get some 4,100 Finnish markkas (over 1,800 euros today) of tax-free extra pay a month from public funds by declaring a mobile home of few square metres situated in Keminmaa, near the Swedish border, as his personal residence. Väyrynen of course wasn't alone in getting compensated unfairly, but as he was the most important of the bunch and had been the original target of the news article that raised the issue, his case was special.
Iran past the POD
As a note on "The Olympics". The location of the 1984 Olympics was decided *after* the POD, on May 18, 1978.
iOTL, there were only two serious bids, (remember that the two previous to that decision were 1972 (terrorism) and 1976 (huge financial loss)), Los Angeles (the last cycle that the US hadn't put in a bid was 1936 (immediately after hosting 1932)) and Tehran. iOTL, the new Islamic regime had pulled out its bid making Los Angeles the only bid when it was decided. iTTL, Iran hasn't fallen, but is fairly chaotic. My guess is that the United States still gets to host in 1984.
OTOH, Iran was scheduled to host the World Scout Jamboree in 1979 in Nishapur (Pretty far Northeast) well before the POD. Does that go ahead? I'm *guessing* yes? But if so, I think it goes off without major incident as if there were something ugly, it would have been mentioned in the story. (Troops including Tanks in a circle around the scout camp...)
As a note on "The Olympics". The location of the 1984 Olympics was decided *after* the POD, on May 18, 1978.
iOTL, there were only two serious bids, (remember that the two previous to that decision were 1972 (terrorism) and 1976 (huge financial loss)), Los Angeles (the last cycle that the US hadn't put in a bid was 1936 (immediately after hosting 1932)) and Tehran. iOTL, the new Islamic regime had pulled out its bid making Los Angeles the only bid when it was decided. iTTL, Iran hasn't fallen, but is fairly chaotic. My guess is that the United States still gets to host in 1984.
OTOH, Iran was scheduled to host the World Scout Jamboree in 1979 in Nishapur (Pretty far Northeast) well before the POD. Does that go ahead? I'm *guessing* yes? But if so, I think it goes off without major incident as if there were something ugly, it would have been mentioned in the story. (Troops including Tanks in a circle around the scout camp...)
Yeah, I’d still imagine LA gets it. But perhaps Tehran has the jump of Seoul/Nagoya ahead of 1988?
I am awaiting for the various branches of the Soviet government to start blaming each other over this.
Somehow the Army gets blamed.
They're a bit curious how that happened, given they weren't even involved.
I doubt it. As written, I think, Tehran of 1981 (when the vote for 1988 was taken) is still far more chaotic than it was in 1977).
And 1978 was peak chaos in Iran, when they voted on 1984, even ITTL, so yeah, they may have to wait for the 1990s/early 2000s.
The Soviet-Swedish War - Part IV
The Soviet-Swedish War - Part IV
Western leaders of course could not know that the Soviets had elected to wait until dawn to carry out another attack rather than carrying out night bombings, and here was an advantage of Washington being six hours behind London, Paris, Bonn and Rome. President Carey called an emergency press conference, flanked by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff David Jones, Secretary of Defense Scoop Jackson, and National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzenski. In a five-minute free-wheeling address that did not seem to have been prepared (or, at the very least, made light use of notes), Carey condemned "a barbaric act of aggression against a peaceful, free and neutral state" and promised "that the American people support Sweden unilaterally, unequivocally, and unyieldingly, until this grievous act of war is over." The three men with him would answer questions on the White House's behalf, with Jackson the most blunt, stating off the cuff, "Whatever Sweden needs for support, rest assured that America will provide."
Evening newspaper headlines would focus on the attacks in Sweden and "America: We Stand With Sweden" was a common byline on many, and the next morning the same would be repeated across the pond. The Big Four of NATO made similar public remarks, and West Germany's Strauss went so far as to announce that "we are watching our own border tonight, fear not!" This announcement caught American and Soviet officials off guard and the Washington-Moscow hotline got a fair bit of use immediately thereafter.
This was probably for the best, because it gave Andropov a chance to communicate via the American backchannel what exactly Moscow wanted - the return of its submarine data and its sailors, nothing more or less. Reading between the lines, Carey's advisors suggested that what Andropov really wanted more than anything was a face-saving off-ramp; he was a hardliner, yes, but a smart and pragmatic one, and they were quite certain that he was listening to good advice from clear-eyed men like Chebrikov who did not see any situation in which this war could end well for the USSR or achieve any of its strategic goals. CIA and Pentagon officials did their best to quickly relay this to Falldin while the Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin was called to the White House; Dobrynin had served as the chief emissary since the Cuban Missile Crisis and thus was highly concerned about causing a rupture with a President he still did not know well at the height of the worst crisis since 1962 (compared to his chummy relations with Nixon and Ford) through anything he might say without more information from Moscow. After his equivocations, he thus abruptly announced he would return home to Moscow for consultations, but had curious car and plane trouble that badly delayed his departure, thus giving NATO foreign ministries more time to put pressure on his colleagues across Europe well into the night to communicate to Moscow just how infuriated the West was.
Public opinion was also, quite firmly, anti-Soviet across Europe - helped along by ABBA, who appeared on television in Stockholm to make an appeal to their fans around the world, and the sense was that people's love for ABBA had as much to do with their anger at the Soviet Union as what the Soviets had actually done in a surprise attack on Sweden. The tongue-in-cheek term "ABBA diplomacy," in which a country leverages its soft power to appeal to a foreign public, became coined shortly after the conflict as as result. Peaceful demonstrations erupted in major European and North American cities, including tense West Berlin, and people made makeshift Swedish flags and blasted ABBA songs at full volume to show their support.
Such public displays of support for Sweden were important, yes, but the tenseness of the situation was in fact only mounting. Royal Navy vessels arrived late at night off Copenhagen, linked up with the Danish Navy, and thereafter sailed for a position immediately southwest of the island of Bornholm, still in Danish waters but crucially immediately in the potential flight path of Soviet planes coming from East Germany or even fractured Poland. The implication to Soviet military planners was fairly clear: NATO now sat directly inside a potential combat zone. Bornholm itself was a particularly sensitive subject, as the Soviets had long maintained a line that any non-Danish NATO forces on the island would represent on its own an act of war against the USSR, which every NATO commander knew, and so ships within eyesight of the island was a potentially major escalation of the conflict by NATO even as it was intended purely as a defensive measure on its northernmost flank.
Finland, caught in the cross-stream, got to experience this tenseness even worse. The Soviet request for military consultations led to the dispatching of the fairly pro-Soviet Foreign Minister Paavo Vayrynen to Vyborg where he could tell his friends from Moscow what they wanted to hear as Koivisto and his core inner circle hunkered down in Helsinki to consider their next move. The official line of Finnish neutrality was to be maintained, but the Finnish Defense Forces would have their planes withdrawn from bases in the north and reservists called up "just in case;" Finland would neither condone nor condemn overflights in Lapland, which they had little ability to stop anyways. That being said, Koivisto approved a proposal to pass along intelligence via backchannels to Sweden to "recompense" for their surrender to Soviet pressure, and one of the most valuable things they could pass along thus was Soviet airplane positions during said overflights, and also crucially the position of the Baltic Fleet south of the Aland Islands, as the Soviets positioned themselves for a combined air-and-sea attack against the Swedish coast to drive their point home early on the 29th. Finnish airplanes began flying patrols over the Gulf of Bothnia and southern Finland, with their coded broadcasts intercepted by Stockholm and the cipher curiously finding its way into the hands of the Flygvapnet. Finland may have been consulting with the Soviets as per her treaty obligations, and politicians such as Vayrynen or the hardline Communist chairman Taisto Sinisalo urging a pro-Moscow stance until the dust settled, but Finnish politicians and military brass had by and large picked a side, and it wasn't Andropov's.
Swedish defense officials, working long into the early morning, quickly deduced the likeliest Soviet targets and thus all night long anti-air missiles and guns along with some of Sweden's most elite army units and pilots were flown in to Gotland to harden the island as a fortress in the middle of the Baltic, with the Soviet Baltic Fleet having arrived roughly at the center of a tripoint formed by Gotland, Aland and Saaremaa. As dawn of the 29th approached and both Finnish and British intelligence streaked in announcing Soviet planes in the air over the Baltic and Lapland, the Swedes this time were more than ready to do what Prime Minister Falldin had ordered - hold the border.
As a way too big ABBA fan: Slay. The (accurate) idea that Europe loves ABBA so much that they actively demonstrate against Russia is excellent. Now I want ttl ABBA to make a special wartime version of Waterloo...