I could give those a shot if anyone's interested.
That would be good. Combined with maps of the oil facilities, the water pipelines and desalination plant map earlier and any maps of various military bases it would probably be an excellent map.
Yes, but my point is, due to the Civil War, that the United States is probably the least likely English-speaking country to conflate the two terms.
I wouldn't think so. It's not like "Succession" as a political topic is a buzzword in the media.
I was unaware that the Yugoslav Wars involved different claimants to the Yugoslav throne fighting over who gets to become ruler of all of Yugoslavia.
That's one of the names of the wars according to wikipedia. And it has been used in scholarly articles like
this or in
various books (not on television or in newspapers)
Oh no, I don't think the media is going to call it that right away. It would only be called that if the media never properly names the war (not unlikely).
So the media is not unlikely to give an ongoing civil conflict intimately related to an ongoing inter-state conflict involving the United States a name?
Nah. Not gonna happen. The only way the media don't name it within a week of events happening is if either:
- those events didn't happen
or
- those events happened in a conflict in which the US government had zero interests at stake and in which the news media didn't have to report about on a daily basis
The World Wars are the two most important wars in the history of mass media. The civil war in Saudi Arabia is probably rarely going to be mentioned unless as part of the greater Gulf War.
What? With 3 different people claiming to be the King of the country that is among the USA's top 5 sources of imported oil? And one of them having a ceasefire with country that is fighting US forces? (that last fact alone would probably spur volumes of debate in newspapers and on television as to how the Saudi civil war would impact Coalition efforts to defeat the Iraqis) And that's going to be rarely mentioned? How? I don't think with even Soviet- or Chinese-type censorship that the media in the USA, UK and France would not be reporting on that.
After all even in the 1960s and 1970s the media reported on the various coups in South Vietnam and those were rather less sensational than a 3-way conflict over a claim to a throne in a US ally in the midst of a war in which US forces are involved.
And the media cannot mention any of the other claimants (like Mansour and Nayef) without mentioning the conflict between them and Sultan.
Yes, that's exactly what I said.
Okay, so why then did the Iran-Iraq War start? And do you have any source which could credibly claim that if there was no Iranian Revolution in which the Iranian armed forces were gutted (thousands of officers were dismissed and many thrown in jail or worse), that Saddam would have still invaded an Iran ruled by the Shah in the 1980s?
Because I would really like to read any credible history book which doesn't have the Iranian Revolution as being extremely important to the start of the Iran-Iraq War.
Well, this is rather silly, since the only thing we really disagree about here is that I think it's perfectly possible the media doesn't end up naming the war.
Actually that wasn't what you were saying before. But if that's what you think now then fine.
It's likely to be labelled as part of the Gulf War in the media's terms, and won't be brought up enough afterwards to warrant a proper name. Thus giving an opportunity for the War of Arabian Succession.
That sounds more like something that would happen in an unimportant (from the media POV) part of the world...like say...Congo. Where a Rwandan-Ugandan conflict over Kisangani in 2000 is rarely referred to and has such names as the "Kisangani war" (referred to as such in some United Nations publications) and "The Six Day War" by
wikipedia and by the
residents of Kisangani itself. This war happened in the wider context of the (Second) Congo War and is often not separated from it. Yet the Congo garnered very little day-to-day media interest excepting very early in the war and during the battle of Kisangani and towards the end when peace was finally agreed up.
Of course the US had zero involvement in the Congo between 1998 and 2003. No US forces on the ground; Neither Clinton nor Bush labelling Kagame and Museveni as a new Hitler and Mussolini; no threats of US intervention.
On the other hand in Iraq we saw media outlets including
Time magazine, the
Washington Post, the
Wall Street Journal,
Foreign Affairs magazine,
NBC as well as many CNN journalists (CNN had no official policy on what to term it and let the journalists do as they pleased), the
BB
C and the
New York
Times all referring to the civil war in Iraq within the context of the wider Iraq War that involved US forces and started in 2003.
In Iraq in OTL we had the media referring to a civil conflict within the context of a wider conflict involving United States forces. And this was merely a conflict involving various paramilitary groups. In TTL we have 3 people claiming to be King and various units of the Saudi armed forces choosing who to follow and with forces (including military, paramilitary and armed mobs) loyal to the rival claimants having battled each other in the Holy Cities while one of those claimants has basically taken a chunk of the Saudi armed forces out of the Coalition fight against Iraq by declaring a ceasefire. That's a pretty big deal and would be very major news. I don't see how they could possibly not refer to it and do so frequently. In fact, until there is only one claimant to the throne left it is impossible for the media to not basically have to refer to the internal Saudi conflict in
every report about the wider Arabian War.
Aye, that's the most plausible solution, and I agree with all of your points.
Which is odd, since you disagreed with my points (first saying the media would call it the Arabian War of Succession when I said it was very unlikely that the media would but that it would be referred to as such in books; then later saying you thought the media would not refer to the conflict that much but instead focus on the wider Arabian War) which are
some of the same points NeoDesperado wrote.
That being said, I still definitely want to make it a part of the TL and so we can expect various books and TV documentaries to seize upon it as an evocative title and gain its own loyal following as the 90s and 00s progress. We can probably also expect the dueling titles to be an often-debated subject on TTL's AH message boards.
