Bicentennial Man: Ford '76 and Beyond
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
John Fredrick Parker
Donor
@KingSweden24 Sounds like, under this analysis, that Mo Udall or Reuben Askew would be the biggest potential threat to Ted’s kingmaker ambitions, since both of them have the same challenge of “breaking out”. (Unless you meant something else than “would struggle in a bigger field”?)
Right. Of all the candidates they’d be the ones most likely to sneak up on a frontrunner backed by Teddy
No john Anderson siphoning off votes here i guess? Perhaps a third party hopeful can be found looking around elsewhere.
Anderson was very much a product of Carter not being acceptable to his base; they’d prob just vote Democrat in this case
Few updates away but yes!
Don't Cry for Me, Uganda
Don't Cry for Me, Uganda
"...helicopter crash, huh? Shame."
- Secretary of State George Bush on a hot mic
Kampala's fall to Tanzanian and Ugandan rebel forces marked the end of the notorious Idi Amin regime for more than one reason; not only did it mean that Milton Obote was, provisionally and tentatively, back in power, but as Amin fled the capital, his helicopter struggled to gain elevation and then plunged down to the city street below, killing all six persons aboard. To this day, rumors abound that UNLF sympathizers tampered with the chopper's engine or blades; the Tanzanian "investigation" into the crash was, unsurprisingly, barely worthy of such a name.
The death of Amin effectively neutered his loyalists out in the West Nile and paved the way to a smooth election the next year for Obote, who would rule until 2000; it was a relief as well to Tanzania's own strongman, Julius Nyerere, who was alarmed at the way little Uganda had exposed his country's economic and military deficiencies. The Ford administration was perhaps less alarmed - Nyerere was hardly one of Washington's favorite African dictators - but it still drew attention once more to a part of the world that simply could not seem to find peace. Just a year after tacit American support had turned the tide in favor of the Barre regime in Somalia, it seemed like the erratic general was now itching to realize his Pan-Somali dreams by looking at Kenya, one of the few Western-aligned countries in East Africa, which had undergone a surprisingly smooth transition from the passing of Jomo Kenyatta to Daniel arap Moi. After the annexation of the Ogaden, the Derg in Ethiopia had collapsed, and the long-dormant civil war had erupted into one of the bloodiest conflicts in Africa; by summer of 1979, it was estimated as many as 150,000 had been killed by fighting or famine, and a further 600,000 displaced, as rival leftist "liberation" groups fought each other just as much as a counterrevolutionary restorationist force aiming to bring back the monarchy of the House of Solomon. Riding high on the Internal Settlement in Zimbabwe Rhodesia and with Israel and Egypt seeming close to a historic, world-changing peace agreement, Secretary of State Bush suggested that "bringing peace to the people of Ethiopia" should be the administration's next priority in its final eighteen months.
Ford, for his part, was skeptical; to him and others, such as Cheney and Secretary of Defense Baker, Ethiopia was just another civil war on a continent full of them (Angola, Mozambique... the list was long and depressing), and preventing conflict between Somalia and Kenya was more important. That Cuba and the Soviets had picked different horses in Ethiopia gave Ford a feeling of being settled on the matter. Even if there had been interest, events in Latin America soon erupted again to the point that the administration's attention had to return to its own backyard as the seemingly neverending crisis triggered by Torrijos' daring terrorism just over a year earlier struck again...
A Little Game of Kremlinology
A Little Game of Kremlinology
"...the Soviet state is bigger than any one man, it is all the men and women within it, but of course, some of those men must guide the state, to guide the Revolution to its inevitable conclusion."
- Yuri Andropov
Few things are more valuable in foreign policy than known commodities; predictability in diplomatic relations can be the difference between peace and war. For all his eccentricities and difficulties, to the West, Leonid Brezhnev was at least predictable. He was a medium between the iron fist of Stalinism and whatever it was exactly that Krushchev had claimed to represent; it could not be said that the old, often ill Soviet leader was liked by his peers across the Iron Curtain, but at least they knew what they were dealing with, and his plain failing health and physical weakness suggested to some observers that there was an opening to take advantage of the Soviet Union with how much power had become concentrated in that man's hands.
President Ford had if nothing else respected Brezhnev and more or less continued the policy of detente; by mid-1979, SALT II's breakthrough made the passage of the treaty hopefully imminent, and its passage was perhaps one small upside of the massive Democratic majority in the Senate. Arms control and detente had been Kissinger's projects but Ford was open to continuing them; Bush had kept nudging SALT II talks along periodically through junior diplomats but had not made it a priority, though 1979 seemed to be the year, much like the potential final push for the ERA that now drew much of Ford's attention.
So it came as a shock in Washington to learn that Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev had died in his sleep on July 3, 1979. The shock was even greater in Russia, where the news was unexpected by the public and created a vast outpouring of mourning. Had the public known how dire the old Chairman's health was, they perhaps would not have been so shocked; he had been near death several times before. KGB records in later years revealed that Brezhnev's death was suspected to be due to malpractice by his doctors, a pure accident but nonetheless one that resulted in the Lubyanka's travel agency booking several tickets to balmy Siberia for those held responsible for mixing Brezhnev's heart medication incorrectly.
A transition in Soviet power had not occurred since Brezhnev maneuvered into power fifteen years before; hypothetically, the Second Secretary was to become the next General Secretary, but Kremlinologists were skeptical that the man in that office, Mikhail Suslov, would take the ring. For one, he had little interest in the role; for second, his position as eminence grise inside the Presidium appealed more to him. Two other candidates seemed clear, then - Andrey Kirilenko, who was just as old and senile as the late Brezhnev, and the young (relatively) Fyodor Kulakov [1], aged 60 and a good generation younger than the others. It helped that he sat in both the Secretariat and Politburo; only Suslov and Kirilenko did the same, though in the pecking order of the Supreme Soviet he certainly did not rank second.
The path seemed paved for Kulakov to take the ring and become General Secretary; within the Presidium, Suslov declined even a transitionary term of one year as the Politburo debated where to go with Brezhnev gone; his only real competition seemed to be Konstantin Chernenko, a figure of the Politburo aligned with Brezhnev but generally mistrusted by the others, perhaps most importantly the Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko.
That Chernenko was unpopular, though, did not mean Kulakov was an immediate choice; his stormy term as Minister of Agriculture had earned him skepticism from others in the Presidium. Two factions were forming rapidly within the red walls of the Kremlin; the hardliners behind Chernenko, the reformists behind Kulakov. Suslov, quiet operator that he was, quietly moved his support behind Chernenko, to the surprise of many of his colleagues; Gromyko, unimpressed as always with Chernenko, reached out to the head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, to see what the feared spymaster could potentially do.
Andropov, Gromyko and Defense Minister Dmitry Ustinov had effectively operated as an unofficial troika since 1976; they had dictated much of the policy of the country, especially in foreign affairs, for years. Andropov was thus, to Gromyko especially, a known asset; what Gromyko did not expect was for Andropov to effectively push Kulakov out by suggesting secret KGB files existed, and that the Minister of Agriculture had been investigated in the previous year, or to leak Kirilenko's medical records. The power move genuinely stunned even hardened survivors of previous political power plays within the Presidium; Gromyko involving the KGB was what Andropov, who had planned to make no moves, needed to see to determine that Chernenko was disfavored but Kulakov was weak and that there was space for him to make his gamble.
Seemingly within hours, support for Andropov to rise to the General Secretary position despite having not served in the Secretariat or Politburo emerged out of nowhere; Suslov signaled that he would back Andropov, who had proved his mettle as a force within the Politburo already, and Kirilenko, already an ally, conceded the matter as well. Kulakov would leave the Politburo shortly after voting in favor of Andropov; as a final indignity, it was he who placed Andropov's name into nomination, and he would die at the age of 62 the next year.
Even the most experienced Kremlinologists were shocked, and quite frightened, that the head of the KGB had effectively knocked out both prime contenders to succeed Brezhnev in a single blow while the body was still practically warm; what it portended for East-West relations, with such an unexpected result, they could only speculate. The known commodity was no longer so known...
[1] Who in this TL has not died of "natural causes" in 1978
Brezhnev dying early is probably a good thing for the long term health of the USSR. Then again, not like Andropov covered himself in glory OTL.
Could we still see Gorbachev obviously not in command but as one of yuri's saplings? He was a mentor iotl.
Also will there still be an analog to Samantha Smith?
Andropov’s problem was really that his health began failing within months of taking the top job and he spent much of his tenure in the hospital (allegedly because he sat on a park bench for too long in the cold, but not sure how that produces Kidney failure). Of course it’s nothing quite like the Weekend at Bernie’s routine with Chernenko that even the old graybeards like Gromyko and Ustinov thought was a farce and helped consolidate support for the youngest, most vigorous Politburo member - Gorbachev
Gorbachev is still going to make an appearance and Andropov’s program of finding and grooming young talent unlike his immediate predecessor will be a factor. That the defenestrated Kulakov was Gorbachev’s true mentor will make him a complicated option to succeed Andropov eventually, though
The Fire Spreads
The Fire Spreads
"...it is clear that the wealth from oil in this country flows like that black gold into the hands of increasingly few, and that wealth finances their oppression of the great Venezuelan people..."
- Lieutenant Hugo Chavez
By late spring of 1979, it appeared to most observers that the Latin American crisis that had threatened to create a "continent-sized Vietnam" was not dwindling but at least seemed to not be as severe as once feared. Though Torrijos and Noriega still hid in the Central American jungles, attacks on American troops in Panama had declined substantially and the Canal Zone was once again one of the most fortified places on Earth; the fighting in El Salvador raged but next door, in Nicaragua, the Sandinista regime of Daniel Ortega had quietly implemented a populist, non-confrontational path, at least so far. Honduras and Costa Rica had seemed to dodge any serious spillover from the crises of their neighbors; though political violence had spiked in both Guatemala and Mexico, it was nowhere near the level of an insurgency. Colombia was another story, with FARC and ELN dramatically stepping up their campaigns, and earning CIA counterinsurgency attention for their troubles. It was now easily the most violent country in the world, and close to 100 American soldiers had perished there since the previous year despite the rather small contingent of forces - no more than 15,000 troops meant to serve as backup support - stationed at bases throughout the country.
But the Ford administration was quick to ignore Colombia, at least for a little while, when Argentina sued for peace in the Beagle War in May. The campaign had been a catastrophe for Buenos Aires. Their Navy had been quickly routed in the waters around Tierra del Fuego, with the bulk of it now at the bottom of the South Atlantic and Chile's elite Marines having seized Ushuaia in a bloody firefight; Chile's air force, while severely hampered, had been able to deny Argentina complete air superiority over the core mountain passes the enemy sought to secure, and a mix of barbed wire, trenches and dynamite had turned the Andes into a latter-day Isonzo, where the outmanned Chileans had exacted hugely disproportionate casualties on their enemy's elite mountaineer divisions and soaked the white snow red. 27,000 Argentines were dead, many from being left wounded in the cold, against just shy of 8,000 Chileans, a quarter of whom were civilians killed by indiscriminate bombings in Santiago; many more tens of thousands were wounded, and the men being sent up by Argentina into the Andes were now raw recruits fighting a weakened but still grizzled Chilean force. Perhaps worse than the high casualty count was Argentina's complete diplomatic isolation; their war of aggression had managed to turn Pinochet from a reviled American puppet to a national hero, and their own regime from a run of the mill junta to an international pariah whom even other South American dictators wouldn't engage. A hoped-for intervention by Peru was not forthcoming; the crumbling, unpopular military dictatorship there elected to continue its transition to democracy lest it trigger a political crisis like those further north, and at any rate had its hands full with the massive economic crisis engulfing the country, one which was about to only get worse. [1] Bolivia would be no helped either; it was in the midst of a churn of Presidents, where nine different men would serve in the office in the space of four years, a remarkable orgy of instability. [2] Fearing a mass uprising after news reports of soldiers mutinying in the mountains (reports that were, ironically, fabricated by SIDE, the Argentine intelligence agency, in order to stiffen the resolve of the junta to not tolerate dissent), President Rafael Videla announced an immediate ceasefire and that Argentine troops would withdraw five kilometers from the front lines. This proved enormously unpopular with the rest of the junta and frontline troops who had spent months fighting for every last centimeter of that rugged mountain land and were now being asked to give it up as winter approached; a coup and counter-coup erupted in Buenos Aires as people took to the streets. Pinochet secured the five mile retreat zone and then accepted the ceasefire offer, though in cables to Washington the US ambassador in Santiago relayed that Chilean officials seemed unsure who exactly in Argentina they were to negotiate with.
Argentina's collapse into civil discord - a civil war now seemed likely - and the robust position of Pinochet in Chile was followed upon suddenly by utter chaos in Venezuela. Protests against the narrow electoral win - by less than 10,000 votes - of Luis Herrera Campins in 1978 had soon blended in with the general "red tide" around South America after the Panama Shock and American response and paramilitary spillover from Colombia along the porous border of both. While Colombia had navigated its 1978 Presidential election successfully in electing a Liberal reformist in Julio Cesar Turbay (and through a robust security operation to minimize still-substantial political violence during polling), Venezuela's had seemed a farcical exercise by comparison, with supporters of both Campins and his main opponent Luis Piñerúa claiming unproven fraud allegations, and the more ardently socialist Jose Vicente Rangel declaring the whole matter a rigged "duopoly" of the main parties. Riots had broken out, but been ignored at the time as every Latin American country seemed plunged into quasi-revolutionary riots in 1978.
By the spring of '79, however, the boiling water in Caracas had started to come out of the pot. FARC and ELN forces had made connections not only with Venezuela's Red Flag Party with radical Army officers, most prominently Lieutenant Hugo Chavez, and tapped into a deep well of disillusionment among junior Venezuelan officers who were tired of the rampant corruption, middling pay and endless counterinsurgency operations that seemed mostly to target innocent women and children rather than actual rebels. It did not help matters that even the right wing government of Campins was busy fanning populist, anti-American sentiment to stave off its own unpopularity and spending heightened oil revenues as a form of mass public bribery. In June of 1979, therefore, a minor coup began to spread; not large enough to topple the elected government entirely, but just right to cause mass chaos. Led by Chavez, the Venezuelan People's Liberation Army (ELPV) announced itself and encouraged other disgruntled soldiers to refuse to follow orders which contravened "popular rule." Hundreds of soldiers revolted, but rather than marching on Caracas to establish yet another Latin American junta, they simply went home. Street gangs picked up the guns floating around the country and violence erupted; right wing forces established paramilitaries, now worried that the military may no longer be able to defend the country. And on June 28, 1979 [3], their fears were borne out - a massive, coordinated attack by the Red Flag Party, ELN and other Marxist guerillas against the country's onshore petroleum infrastructure, bombing multiple refineries and pipelines and seizing two drilling platforms in the Maracaibo oilfields. The attacks occurred in the northwest and northeast of the country, within minutes of each other; a remarkable surprise attack, completely unforeseen by Venezuela's battered intelligence infrastructure, and stunning the world with images of burning oil wells turning the sky black, Venezuelan flags being torn down and replaced with red revolutionary ones, men with machine guns dancing on the top of oil tankers, and refineries exploding in glorious balls of fire.
The revolutionary forces in Latin America had triggered another attack that struck at the heart of the Western capitalist system - this time, not against its commerce or trade, but against oil - the lifeblood of its economies, taking a page from the Arab sheikhs who had turned off the spigot to the West six years earlier...
[1] Latin America is pretty screwed in this TL, just as a heads up. Thanks Torrijos! (And also, thanks intransigent American conservatives!)
[2] This is true to OTL
[3] Anniversary of Franz Ferdinand's death
Yes - Andropov identified IRL a number of promising young talents in the CPSU ranks (Gorbachev, Romanov, Legachev, Ryzhkov, etc) whom he elevated to key positions even before he was General Secretary and mentored and groomed them to eventually replace the increasingly ossified cadres that had come to dominate the late Brezhnev era system