USSR still intact and Cold War still on

What would be the changes to history should the USSR still be intact and the Cold War still be on?

The reply to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait is one area where things would get more complicated along with possibly the Yugolsav civil war.
 
possibly europe would be closer to US, or would have an EU military.
wonder whether arab terrorism would still be a problem
 
Agentdark said:
The war on terror would be widly different, perhaps even an attack on the soviet union in 9-11

Wonder how each side would react - there are bound to be those who would initially think it was somethig to do with 'the other side'.
 
I had a bit of open-ended speculation on if terrorism would be possible in a surviving USSR a while back, and I concluded that, while possible, it would extremely difficult. Of course, this all depends on what happens in Afghanistan. If the Soviets withdraw and prop up the government in Kabul, possibly with the assistance of a Northern Alliance-type organization, the nucleus of Al Qaeda might not get the (relatively) secure environment it needs to work in. Of course, in one of the black ironies of AH, the CIA would still be giving them guns.

With Iraq, I have a feeling that Kuwait is screwed. The vote for intervention in Congress was one that would've needed only 10 or so votes to go either way, and George H. W. Bush won't have the luxury of pulling forces out of West Germany to whack Saddam if the Russkies are still threatening.

There's also a possibility that, instead of escalating the arms race, whoever ends up in the White House in 1992 might try a "Detente II" plan. After all, to Washington's eyes, Reagan blew a ton of money building weapons trying to bankrupt the USSR, and all it netted was a depleted Treasury and a Soviet Union that's as strong as ever. While this would be an incorrect reading of the situation, there wouldn't be much in the way of outside sources to confirm otherwise. The Soviets were always pretty good at bluffing Westerners.

So, an American government interested in negotiation and a spike in Western oil prices caused by the loss of Kuwait...things could go quite nicely for Moscow in the 1990's, at least for a little while. However, if the economy isn't rejiggered, the 2010's might not be so hot.
 
For starters, no Gorbachev. Additionally, you'd need someone as general secretary who wouldn't have come to the conclusion by now that the USSR could no longer afford the arms race. The reply to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait wouldn't have gotten much more complicated though. The Soviets didn't want their client states doing things that might provoke an American military response without their authorization. They would've sought to send the following message to any other dictator who might've been contemplating something similar to what Saddam did: We won't protect you. The only thing they would've insisted on in exchange for their agreement not to veto the UN Persian Gulf War resolution would've been that we leave Saddam in power. As for the Yugoslavian civil wars, they wouldn't have happened if the cold war was still going on. Fear of the Soviets kept Yugoslavia together after World War II. It would've continued to do so as long as the USSR remained a threat.
 
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PMN1 said:
What would be the changes to history should the USSR still be intact and the Cold War still be on?

The reply to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait is one area where things would get more complicated along with possibly the Yugolsav civil war.
Well, Wesley Clark almost started a war with Russia as it was over Kosovo, so maybe that changes?

There won't be a 2003 Iraq War, but the Soviets and Americans might cooperate rather closely, assuming the terrorist attacks of 9/1/01 still occur in the U.S. in TTL.
 
The POD is not well defined.
IMHO, the only way for USSR to go on would be an economic reform, and a refusal to go along with the Star Wars race. In such a scenario, USSR/USA would cooperate (informally) in a much closer way, and the "cold war" would not be effectively on. The Russians might even let DDR go (possibly through some kind of economic deal with West Germany and the USA). Saddam would be less free in his decisions, not more. Arab fundamentalist terrorism would be repressed earlier. China would be in a much weaker position (an aggressive Russia on the northern border would push them toward higher military expenditures - and the economic reforms might not come on schedule)
 
LordKalvan said:
The POD is not well defined.
IMHO, the only way for USSR to go on would be an economic reform, and a refusal to go along with the Star Wars race. In such a scenario, USSR/USA would cooperate (informally) in a much closer way, and the "cold war" would not be effectively on. The Russians might even let DDR go (possibly through some kind of economic deal with West Germany and the USA). Saddam would be less free in his decisions, not more. Arab fundamentalist terrorism would be repressed earlier. China would be in a much weaker position (an aggressive Russia on the northern border would push them toward higher military expenditures - and the economic reforms might not come on schedule)

I disagree with the Chinese assessement on simple grounds that military expenditure had been rising quicker after we dismantled ourselves. The military focus would be on the 'three Norths' as opposed to the southeast as it is now, but expenditure won't be higher by much - in fact, China may b e better off, with America still on its side. What it did not gain in the garage sales we held they got back from American expertise. The economic reforms went on in 78, and back then we had an alliance with Vietnam and fourty four divisions sitting east of Novosibirsk, with a hundred thousand mechanized troops sitting in Mongolia, two hundred kilometers from Beijing, and Deng still didn't go into a spending spree - in fact he called our bluff and attacked Vietnam, all the while cutting back the PLA...
 
How's this for a world map where the Cold War is still on (This sort of goes with the Coup thread too)?

redrus.PNG
 
How about explaining the colour scheme? China has its own colour - good - it wasn't even on the general side of the Soviet Camp back then. North Korea has the same colour as Serbia, Ukraine, Romania, Moldavia and Byelorussia, Yemen is whole and is the same colour as Sri Lanka. Soviet Central Asia sans Turkmenistan is the same colour as Mongolia... I am confused.
 
NFR said:
How about explaining the colour scheme? China has its own colour - good - it wasn't even on the general side of the Soviet Camp back then. North Korea has the same colour as Serbia, Ukraine, Romania, Moldavia and Byelorussia, Yemen is whole and is the same colour as Sri Lanka. Soviet Central Asia sans Turkmenistan is the same colour as Mongolia... I am confused.
My idea was that the USSR would still dissolve, even if the Rus. Fed. itself stayed Communist. That said, depending on one's POD, the center of Communist strength would likely tilt eastward. Russia and China each have their own color, yes. The four stans in red as well as Mongolia are Communist governments on good terms with Moscow and Beijing. Sri Lanka, yemen, and the others are the new Communist periphery. I admit, I should have probably left Yemen out of the bundle, but the idea struck me as interesting.
 
So, I take it the Ukrainian Blood Red is for communist states exclusively in sphere of Russia?

And I presume you had in mind a sort of collapse in Soviet power so that China decided that it had more to gain by once again becoming communist rather and take over the leadership of the communist camp rather than trading merrily as before?
 
NFR said:
So, I take it the Ukrainian Blood Red is for communist states exclusively in sphere of Russia?

And I presume you had in mind a sort of collapse in Soviet power so that China decided that it had more to gain by once again becoming communist rather and take over the leadership of the communist camp rather than trading merrily as before?
Correct. But with regard to China, I saw both its liberalisation slowing, and that of the other Communists growing, if more slowly than otherwise.
 
Some questions regarding the map:
-Why is France white and not green?
-Why is the UK coloured different from the US or Western Europe?
-Why is Romania communist? Ceausescu was overthrown in 1989.

If the year of the map is 1991 , I think you should have coloured the NATO countries with the same colour and the Eastern European countries with white ( neutral ).
 
Andrei said:
Some questions regarding the map:
-Why is France white and not green?
-Why is the UK coloured different from the US or Western Europe?
-Why is Romania communist? Ceausescu was overthrown in 1989.

If the year of the map is 1991 , I think you should have coloured the NATO countries with the same colour and the Eastern European countries with white ( neutral ).
Feel free to revise the map:D

This map would likely be from after 1991, but shows the effects of longer Communism in Russia. Romania is colored as is because I do not think its fate was ceratain in 1991, Ceausescu or not. The map is not in 1991, because Austria was neutral, and Hungary, Slovenia, and the Western Slavs were still Communist then.
The U.K. is colored differently from the continent because it is arguably the second power in the Western alliance, and as such, it gets its own color, just as the PRC has a distinct color from Russia.
France is white due to its partial withdrawal from NATO in OTL.
 
Wendell said:
Feel free to revise the map:D

This map would likely be from after 1991, but shows the effects of longer Communism in Russia. Romania is colored as is because I do not think its fate was ceratain in 1991, Ceausescu or not. The map is not in 1991, because Austria was neutral, and Hungary, Slovenia, and the Western Slavs were still Communist then.
The U.K. is colored differently from the continent because it is arguably the second power in the Western alliance, and as such, it gets its own color, just as the PRC has a distinct color from Russia.
France is white due to its partial withdrawal from NATO in OTL.

I see.
If the rest of NATO is green , shouldn't Ireland be green as well?
 
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