Greece can build up without restrictions. Cooperation will come from British quarters there, I would think.
Feeble Constitution - A Red-and-Green Russia 1917 Timeline
- Thread starter Salvador79
- Start date
TTL Greece and Bulgaria have a border running for 752 km. In some places that's less than 50km from the sea. Yes the Greeks are free to build up their military and will have British and French cooperation at that but they won't be amused if Bulgaria starts rearming. They will view it as a major threat. Now the question is what's Stabolynskyi's foreign policy going to be. In OTL he tried a genuine detente only to be killed for his troubles. TTL he has survived the coup. If he tries the same Venizelos will be certainly accommodating. What happens with the Serbs now...
Any reaction from the local/global IRSDLP to the attempted coup in Bulgaria? I can't shake the feeling that there's somebody who kind of likes that the far-left is now the only party in the Bulgarian parliamentary hemcycle outside of the government ones which is not on Stambolijski's s**tlist and others who are simply fuming at the thought of being the "loyal opposition" to a faux-revolutionary government. 
Stamboliysky's foreign policy is ostentatively (and sincerely) peaceful ITTL, too. Bulgaria's reinforced defenses concentrate on its Western border, and both Venizelos in Athens and Mihalache in Bucharest are not blind to what goes in Serbia and why Stamboliysky is pursuing the policy vis-a-vis the Serbs. Stamboliysky aims to be allowed to integrate into the EFP; his government does what they think is necessary to ascertain continued UoE support and a path towards EFP accession. On Kerensky's strong recommendation and against loud protests at home, Bulgaria's government has not put up any serious resistance to rather unfair plebiscites which have torn parts off Bulgaria's pre-war territory and awarded it to Romania and Greece respectively. He tries hard to play by EFP rules, which also means his government's protests focus on the insistence that Bulgarian minorities in neighboring countries are awarded their EFP Charter-enshrined cultural rights and are not discriminated against or persecuted, as they presently are in Serbia. Greek and Romanian policies towards their Slavic-speaking minorities are not exactly exemplary, but they're not violent like Serbia's, either. In Bucharest, Foreign Minister Diamandy is quite open to cordial relations with Bulgaria in principle, and while there are still many details to be cleared out of the path, if the current government stays in power in Romania, then 1922 may well bring a Romanian-Bulgarian treaty of sorts and see Romania taking a favourable position with regards to the question of Bulgarian EFP membership. UoE policies in the region are geared towards faciliating such friendly and peaceful relations and unification of the region under the umbrella of the EFP, and currently also containment and isolation of the Serbian threat, at least as long as no secret plan for a "regime change" in Serbia has yet surfaced and succeeded.
As far as Greece is concerned, Stamboliysky's government is the best chance for a detente ITTL, too, in spite of the restoration of some sort of Bulgarian defense. The 1921 clampdown against the VMRO should be good news for Greece, too, for the VMRO is not only the main voice for a Bulgarian "Macedonia" (meaning Southern Serbia) but also for a Bulgarian "Macedonia" (meaning parts of Northern Greece). In this context, the sort of this Bulgarian defense is important, too: It's not a restoration of the old Bulgarian military whose generals might follow old geostrategic reflexes. It's a force nominally under UoE control, and it is currently absolutely out of the question that any UoE force would initiate aggression against Greece. UoE-Greek relations are necessarily always at least ambivalent (Kerensky has his foot very firmly in the Bosphorus and Dardanelles door, in the form of UoE participation in the International Commission for Control over the Straits), but ITTL the UoE has handed over Pontus to a reluctant Greece, and the Black Sea Naval Treaty (see below) has seen UoE naval capacity downsizing and allowed Greek build-up (the easiest way to practically implement this is selling the ships from the UoE's Black Sea Fleet to a new Greek fleet there).
I would fully expect Venizelos to practice a sort of swing diplomacy, trying to maintain good relations with Belgrade (e.g. by blocking too harsh measures against Serbia), London and Bucharest while also not mounting tensions with Sofia and Petrograd. I would expect Venizelos to see the rump Ottomans as the no. 1 threat to Greek security. But I am no expert on the matter, and if you can suggest to me who could be his Foreign Minister, what Greece's position towards Bulgaria would be in more detail etc., I'm very open to suggestions.
I'll come back with more info on Serbia when I wrote about Montenegro and Albania. Currently, except for Greece and to some extent Romania, it is the French government which still hopes to be able to reign in and moderate Racic's new government and who would be not amused at all if it were overthrown with either Italian or UoE help. The EFP, while notionally a big group with many member nations, is de facto always hanging by the thread of a balanced triangle of power between France, Italy, and the UoE, the three big powers in the federation.
No success as of yet. Negotiations have been intense in 1919, everyone wanted it, and the UoE wanted it more than anyone else.
In the end, the only thing that has come of it is a Black Sea Naval Treaty, in which the International Control over the Straits is enshrined and UoE, Greek, Romanian and a few Ottoman and Bulgarian naval capacities are defined. As alluded to above, the UoE has been very accomodating, given Volsky's priorities, although the amount of international credit the UoE has received as a consequence has not been quite as high as he had hoped. So far, the victorious powers on the Black Sea are happy with the terms (well, not everyone in the UoE, of course, but so far, nationalist opposition has been scattered and marginalised). The Bulgarian government is accomodating, too, and hopes that by playing nice, they'll be allowed better terms next round. (The treaty is fixed for ten years, 1920-1930, similar to OTL Washington.)
On the worldwide scale, negotiations have hit a dead end. ITTL, British foreign policy, perceiving themselves at the edge of becoming isolated within Europe, and with instability from the Middle East to Southern Asia potentially increasing if the UoE ramped up its indirect support for anti-British groups to an extent that would endanger the stability of the Empire's most important holdings, has placed a much greater emphasis on keeping Japan on their side. The Knox government, on the other hand, has conducted less of a decidedly isolationist foreign policy as Harding's IOTL, and it has seen growing Japanese naval power in the Pacific as a problem. Relations between Britain and the US are slightly cooler than IOTL around this time, and so things don't play out the way they did IOTL. The UoE, as I said, generally pursued an accomodating agenda, but then again, its foreign minister is always prone to bluntness and blunders, so expect Kerensky to screw up such a very complicated matter with some all-too-open remark about British policies in Ireland or Arabia or India or Glasgow or wherever, and voilà, you have no treaty as of yet. The matter is not off the table officially, and the new US president is quite disposed to give a fresh try, but nothing has been concluded.
Bulgaria is approaching a situation similar to that in Russia now: Left-agrarians in power with the main opposition being the IRSDLP, bourgeois national-liberal opposition being more marginalised and suspiciously linked with a criminalised terrorist fringe. Bulgaria does not have a tradition of a cruel secret police like the Tsarist Okhrana had been, so maybe the bourgeois parties and the VMRO get spared the full VeCheKist experience which they suffered under Kamkov in 1918 in Russia, also meaning that their marginalisation is probably not quite as thorough and successful as that of the Russian non-leftists.Any reaction from the local/global IRSDLP to the attempted coup in Bulgaria? I can't shake the feeling that there's somebody who kind of likes that the far-left is now the only party in the Bulgarian parliamentary hemcycle outside of the government ones which is not on Stambolijski's s**tlist and others who are simply fuming at the thought of being the "loyal opposition" to a faux-revolutionary government.
Bulgaria's IRSDLP was caught by surprise by the coup. In hindsight, the party is inreasingly split along the lines you envisioned. The still dominant current, led by the party's towering figure of authority DImitar Blagoev, is supportive of the "dual strategy" of playing by the legal rules, participating in parliamentary elections (even explicitly supporting the defensive plan with Republican Guards stationed against the Unitarist threat, and calling for IRSDLP members to enlist in them) and engaging in the unions, while at the same time propagandising and promoting militant self-organisation among the workers and declaring that the Bulgarian and generally Yugoslav proletariat must prepare for the moment in which it can rise, shake off the Unitarist yoke in Serbia, overcome the national and capitalist limitations and install a united Yugoslav Socialist Federation. Blagoev sees himself vindicated by the failure of the Rightist putsch, and like IOTL (or: much more so than IOTL!) he is of the opinion that the situation in Bulgaria in 1921 is not yet ripe for a proletarian revolution and that the groundwork must be more thoroughly prepared first.
A current which begins to take more and more concrete shape as somewhat opposed to this legalism rallies around the no. 2 figure in the party, Georgi Dimitrov. Dimitrov is still not openly disloyal to Blagoev, but he is emphasising how Stamboliysky's government is turning increasingly autocratic and that this autocracy will next turn its attention to the Left and that legalism should not be taken to the extreme of naivete, meaning he is advocating less caution in arming, training and preparing Red Guards for the decisive moment, which he thinks might as well come in the near future. Dimitrov also thinks that IRSDLP members in the UoE-commanded Red Guards are a good idea, but he is (tactically uncleverly) explicit about their topmost priority being to prepare the groundwork for turning this force into a revolutionary one...)
Blagoev is an old man. If he dies, Bulgaria's IRSDLP may become an even more "interesting" group.
“There is only one brave man in Germany, and he is a Bulgarian.”
Interesting indeed.
I got a new little Update finished, but our Landline Internet is currently down. When it's up again, I'll post it.
One Hundred and Six: Wars in Montenegro and Arabia (1921)
Instead of a purely authorial answer on Montenegro and Albania, here is another little fake newspaper from 99 years ago:
Paris (French Republic): Le Temps, January 4th, 1922, p. 1:
ITALIANS BOMB PLEVLYA AND BERANE
More than a month after the advance of League troops [1] against rebel strongholds in Northern Montenegro came to a standstill due to adverse weather conditions, Italian military forces have resumed hostilities with airborne attacks on the towns of Plevlya in the North and Berane in the North-East of the small Adriatic kingdom. The amount of casualties and civilian losses is not yet known. Both towns are rebel strongholds, and the governments in both Rome and Cetinje have claimed that they were being used as centres for the further deployment of Serbian Chetniks. It appears that the new year might bring yet more suffering to the troubled little state and its population. (More on page two.) [2]
PEACE PROTESTS IN DAMASCUS SUPPRESSED
After a week of protest marches and demonstrations, King Faisal’s government has apparently restored its control over the Syrian capital. Workers in various factories had declared a general strike in protest of new and yet tighter rationing, and an unusual alliance of conservative notables and socialistic agitators [3] had been seen to lead sizable protests in Damascus, demanding immediate peace with the Saudis of the Nejd. Faisal’s Prime Minister Rīda has deployed newly-formed forces of Shammar recruits, who have already acquired the epithet of “the King’s bloodhounds”, to crush the protests after negotiations had broken down and an ultimatum had expired on Friday. But will the ambitious Emir truly be able to continue his militaristic course regardless of losses? (More on page three.)
[1] The League which is being referred is not the League of Nations, of course, which does not exist ITTL. It is the newly founded “Mediterranean League”, an Italian-led alliance which has been concluded in 1921 with the Kingdom of Montenegro, the Provisional Governments of Albania and the Tripolitanian Republic – where a short civil war has been resolved in favour of the faction which is in favour of this alliance – and the Emirate of Cyrenaica, and which included the colonies of Eritrea and Somalia, too, even though they were far from the Mediterranean Sea. Eritrea and Somalia, where a Dervish Revolt had just been crushed, would receive Advisory Councils to their governorates, with some degree of native participation and which would send notables into the League’s Diplomatic Assembly.
The Mediterranean League is one of the cornerstones of Don Sturzo’s coalition government’s new foreign policy. It’s a glorified free trade zone with a military alliance in which everyone knows who really calls the shots. Regarding Italy’s colonies, the move will be likened by contemporaries to how the British used to elevate the status of some of their colonies to “dominions”. The Catholic Popular Party and the moderate Socialists enthusiastically celebrate a new chapter in Italy’s history in which Italy defends civilizational values (like workers’ rights against the Unitarist threat in Montenegro, or the abolition of slavery in the face of its continued existence in independent Ethiopia) in a more equal partnership. The Liberal foreign minister Soleri views it more pragmatically as a means to secure Italian control over the Adriatic and Italian investments in Africa against recurrent revolts. Only the radical right and left fringe opposition in Italy protests: the ANI derides it as a “second-rate empire” and the radical Socialists denounce any imperialism.
In Albania and Montenegro, things are more ambivalent. Stefan Noli, already the fourth premier of Albania’s Provisional Government under the crumbling EFP Mandate, faces stiff resistance from almost all quarters, but saw no alternative to the Italians while the Serb forces in the country which had been EFP Mandate forces have openly switched to securing annexed territory in the North and the Greek EFP Mandate forces are tempted to follow their lead in the South. Nevertheless, the Constituent Assembly, which has still not been able to agree on a constitution, is as full of groups opposed to the League solution as is the Albanian countryside, and Noli may very well have to make place for the fifth premier soon.
More on Montenegro in the next footnote.
[2] Here is the back story to what happened in Montenegro in 1920 and 1921:
The small Kingdom of Montenegro had balanced on a tight rope ever since the Unitarist coup in Serbia in 1920. Sporadic unrest and political violence haunted the Adriatic kingdom. To a superficial observer, things might look just like two years ago – but upon closer inspection, the camps were not the same. Not all those who had been Whites in 1918/9 still supported unification with Serbia in 1920. A significant faction around Andrija Radović, who had supported unification with Serbia when Serbia seemed like a beacon of democracy, now opposed the Unitarist regime. The rebel movement for unification with Unitarist Serbia was now led by Gavrilo Dožić, whom the Montenegrin monarchists no longer recognized as bishop.
Renewed escalation began after the death of King Nikola on March 1st, 1921. It was the signal for which pro-Serbian forces in the Kingdom had waited. In a co-ordinated manner, they took to the streets and attempted a takeover of power, attempting to prevent the coronation of Crown Prince Danilo. They fail to take Cetinje, Podgorica or any other town in the South, though, and so Danilo III. becomes the new King of Montenegro. But the rebels are nevertheless strong, and Serbia sends more and more Chetniks into the country as infiltrators. Fighting drags on, and a front line stabilises. Danilo’s Prime Minister Špiro Tomanović (successor of Jovan Plamenac, who had not been able to form a majority government after the 1919 elections; Tomanović managed to reach out to the anti-Unitarists among the People’s Party of Montenegro) brought the troubles in his country before the EFP Assembly, but France and Greece prevented the suspension of Serbia’s membership for the moment as well as a call for all member governments to support Montenegro’s defense. The General Assembly merely appealed to all sides to refrain from stoking the flames of political violence in the Kingdom of Montenegro.
That is when Tomanović accepted the Italian deal and actually had quite a bit of influence on its military dimension. Italy has kept a small military presence in the kingdom since the Great War, but after the conclusion of the Mediterranean League with the Treaty of Rome, this presence is massively ramped up. Tomanović must fight hard to scrape together a majority in the Montenegrin parliament for its ratification because many see it as the loss of national independence, and he only succeeds because even the socialist delegates consider the League as the lesser evil compared to the threat of Unitarist reign.
Reinforced with League troops, an offensive against the rebels and their Serbian allies started, but did not make much headway in the second half of 1921, and then winter came. Now, aerial attacks by Italy’s Servizio Aeronavale are about the only military option available while both sides build up and fortify. So far, there has been no declaration of war between Serbia and the countries of the Mediterranean League. But in late 1921, as more first hand news of Chetnik atrocities against Njegos-Petrovic loyalists have been shared with the European public by Italian journalists, at least Serbia’s membership in the EFP has been suspended by the General Assembly.
[3] Syria and Iraq have undertaken an economic conversion of what industrial capacities they had for wartime goals, and they have dedicated precious many resources – raw material, finances, and human workforce – to this endeavour. This has made itself felt in the provision of almost everything necessary for civilian life, and so protests are inevitable. As was the case everywhere around that time, it’s urban workers who make up the numbers in these protests. In the two Hashemite Kingdoms, though, the protesters have found unusual allies, as the French newspaper has aptly called them, in the conservative notables and tribal leaders who see their positions threatened by this war which forces Syria and Iraq to modernise quickly and in which their formations of traditional fighters have already suffered staggering losses against the Saudis, to such an extent that at least the Syrian Army is now mostly composed of recruits in regular units under the direct command of close allies of Faisal’s. The influx of refugees from Jabal Shammar as well as from oases along the Southern borders of Iraq and Syria, which have been repeatedly raided by the Ikhwan with ostentatious cruelty in order to force the Hashemites to the negotiation table, has also shaped these regular army units: these refugees are desperate enemies of the Saudis and therefore ardent loyalists to the Hashemite kings whom they see as the only hope left to restore their homes and families.
Paris (French Republic): Le Temps, January 4th, 1922, p. 1:
ITALIANS BOMB PLEVLYA AND BERANE
More than a month after the advance of League troops [1] against rebel strongholds in Northern Montenegro came to a standstill due to adverse weather conditions, Italian military forces have resumed hostilities with airborne attacks on the towns of Plevlya in the North and Berane in the North-East of the small Adriatic kingdom. The amount of casualties and civilian losses is not yet known. Both towns are rebel strongholds, and the governments in both Rome and Cetinje have claimed that they were being used as centres for the further deployment of Serbian Chetniks. It appears that the new year might bring yet more suffering to the troubled little state and its population. (More on page two.) [2]
PEACE PROTESTS IN DAMASCUS SUPPRESSED
After a week of protest marches and demonstrations, King Faisal’s government has apparently restored its control over the Syrian capital. Workers in various factories had declared a general strike in protest of new and yet tighter rationing, and an unusual alliance of conservative notables and socialistic agitators [3] had been seen to lead sizable protests in Damascus, demanding immediate peace with the Saudis of the Nejd. Faisal’s Prime Minister Rīda has deployed newly-formed forces of Shammar recruits, who have already acquired the epithet of “the King’s bloodhounds”, to crush the protests after negotiations had broken down and an ultimatum had expired on Friday. But will the ambitious Emir truly be able to continue his militaristic course regardless of losses? (More on page three.)
[1] The League which is being referred is not the League of Nations, of course, which does not exist ITTL. It is the newly founded “Mediterranean League”, an Italian-led alliance which has been concluded in 1921 with the Kingdom of Montenegro, the Provisional Governments of Albania and the Tripolitanian Republic – where a short civil war has been resolved in favour of the faction which is in favour of this alliance – and the Emirate of Cyrenaica, and which included the colonies of Eritrea and Somalia, too, even though they were far from the Mediterranean Sea. Eritrea and Somalia, where a Dervish Revolt had just been crushed, would receive Advisory Councils to their governorates, with some degree of native participation and which would send notables into the League’s Diplomatic Assembly.
The Mediterranean League is one of the cornerstones of Don Sturzo’s coalition government’s new foreign policy. It’s a glorified free trade zone with a military alliance in which everyone knows who really calls the shots. Regarding Italy’s colonies, the move will be likened by contemporaries to how the British used to elevate the status of some of their colonies to “dominions”. The Catholic Popular Party and the moderate Socialists enthusiastically celebrate a new chapter in Italy’s history in which Italy defends civilizational values (like workers’ rights against the Unitarist threat in Montenegro, or the abolition of slavery in the face of its continued existence in independent Ethiopia) in a more equal partnership. The Liberal foreign minister Soleri views it more pragmatically as a means to secure Italian control over the Adriatic and Italian investments in Africa against recurrent revolts. Only the radical right and left fringe opposition in Italy protests: the ANI derides it as a “second-rate empire” and the radical Socialists denounce any imperialism.
In Albania and Montenegro, things are more ambivalent. Stefan Noli, already the fourth premier of Albania’s Provisional Government under the crumbling EFP Mandate, faces stiff resistance from almost all quarters, but saw no alternative to the Italians while the Serb forces in the country which had been EFP Mandate forces have openly switched to securing annexed territory in the North and the Greek EFP Mandate forces are tempted to follow their lead in the South. Nevertheless, the Constituent Assembly, which has still not been able to agree on a constitution, is as full of groups opposed to the League solution as is the Albanian countryside, and Noli may very well have to make place for the fifth premier soon.
More on Montenegro in the next footnote.
[2] Here is the back story to what happened in Montenegro in 1920 and 1921:
The small Kingdom of Montenegro had balanced on a tight rope ever since the Unitarist coup in Serbia in 1920. Sporadic unrest and political violence haunted the Adriatic kingdom. To a superficial observer, things might look just like two years ago – but upon closer inspection, the camps were not the same. Not all those who had been Whites in 1918/9 still supported unification with Serbia in 1920. A significant faction around Andrija Radović, who had supported unification with Serbia when Serbia seemed like a beacon of democracy, now opposed the Unitarist regime. The rebel movement for unification with Unitarist Serbia was now led by Gavrilo Dožić, whom the Montenegrin monarchists no longer recognized as bishop.
Renewed escalation began after the death of King Nikola on March 1st, 1921. It was the signal for which pro-Serbian forces in the Kingdom had waited. In a co-ordinated manner, they took to the streets and attempted a takeover of power, attempting to prevent the coronation of Crown Prince Danilo. They fail to take Cetinje, Podgorica or any other town in the South, though, and so Danilo III. becomes the new King of Montenegro. But the rebels are nevertheless strong, and Serbia sends more and more Chetniks into the country as infiltrators. Fighting drags on, and a front line stabilises. Danilo’s Prime Minister Špiro Tomanović (successor of Jovan Plamenac, who had not been able to form a majority government after the 1919 elections; Tomanović managed to reach out to the anti-Unitarists among the People’s Party of Montenegro) brought the troubles in his country before the EFP Assembly, but France and Greece prevented the suspension of Serbia’s membership for the moment as well as a call for all member governments to support Montenegro’s defense. The General Assembly merely appealed to all sides to refrain from stoking the flames of political violence in the Kingdom of Montenegro.
That is when Tomanović accepted the Italian deal and actually had quite a bit of influence on its military dimension. Italy has kept a small military presence in the kingdom since the Great War, but after the conclusion of the Mediterranean League with the Treaty of Rome, this presence is massively ramped up. Tomanović must fight hard to scrape together a majority in the Montenegrin parliament for its ratification because many see it as the loss of national independence, and he only succeeds because even the socialist delegates consider the League as the lesser evil compared to the threat of Unitarist reign.
Reinforced with League troops, an offensive against the rebels and their Serbian allies started, but did not make much headway in the second half of 1921, and then winter came. Now, aerial attacks by Italy’s Servizio Aeronavale are about the only military option available while both sides build up and fortify. So far, there has been no declaration of war between Serbia and the countries of the Mediterranean League. But in late 1921, as more first hand news of Chetnik atrocities against Njegos-Petrovic loyalists have been shared with the European public by Italian journalists, at least Serbia’s membership in the EFP has been suspended by the General Assembly.
[3] Syria and Iraq have undertaken an economic conversion of what industrial capacities they had for wartime goals, and they have dedicated precious many resources – raw material, finances, and human workforce – to this endeavour. This has made itself felt in the provision of almost everything necessary for civilian life, and so protests are inevitable. As was the case everywhere around that time, it’s urban workers who make up the numbers in these protests. In the two Hashemite Kingdoms, though, the protesters have found unusual allies, as the French newspaper has aptly called them, in the conservative notables and tribal leaders who see their positions threatened by this war which forces Syria and Iraq to modernise quickly and in which their formations of traditional fighters have already suffered staggering losses against the Saudis, to such an extent that at least the Syrian Army is now mostly composed of recruits in regular units under the direct command of close allies of Faisal’s. The influx of refugees from Jabal Shammar as well as from oases along the Southern borders of Iraq and Syria, which have been repeatedly raided by the Ikhwan with ostentatious cruelty in order to force the Hashemites to the negotiation table, has also shaped these regular army units: these refugees are desperate enemies of the Saudis and therefore ardent loyalists to the Hashemite kings whom they see as the only hope left to restore their homes and families.
Things are nasty in Arabia. While it seems that the Saudi attacks might not reach as far afield as OTL, the fighting looks like it could get quite bloody.
By the way, since I"m curious about this era: What sources about the unification of Saudi Arabia do you use to help write this TL?
By the way, since I"m curious about this era: What sources about the unification of Saudi Arabia do you use to help write this TL?
Barring gross incompetence of Hashemite commanders, could that really happen?
Because there aren't very many people in Arabia compared to Mesopotamia and the Levant. If Feisal raises a large army from the manpower of those regions, ISTM that Saudi forces would be too small to inflict "staggering losses".
OTL, Saud defeated Feisal as Sharif of Mecca, with a comparable population base. ITTL, the odds would be... 10-1? 20-1? I don't say that the Hashemite forces must win, only that it seems improbable they would take losses high in proportion to their numbers. Unlesss Feisal has raised only a small army - in which case the losses would not be a big deal for the country.
Note that this is in the context of traditional fighters raised by conservative notables and tribal figures. One could indeed have staggering losses among such a (relatively well-trained, experienced, and in this case politically important) group of forces without them being staggering to the nation as a whole; consider if the BEF had been totally wiped out to the man in 1914 or 1940. Despite being a small proportion of the overall population of Britain (to say nothing of its empire), it would hardly be inaccurate to say that the resulting losses would be staggering.
That was already talked before.
The population of the two kingdoms may have been superior, but socio political and economical context is different (semi urban and agricultural countries vs a country of warlike desert tribes), and the mobilization is lower in proportion of population in the Hashemite kingdoms than it is in the Saudi kingdom.
Then there is the question of logistics. Nejd is better equipped to wage a war in the deserts than Syria and Iraq are, and it's likely the Saudi would have overrun Hedjaz quickly enough, as they did OTL, to deny the Hashemites positions that could threaten the Saudis (again, initial advantage in mobilized troops for the Saudis).
Add to that the British are bankrolling and arming the Saudis, with probably even planes on loan or as 'volunteers', while the Hashemites only have leftovers from the Great War and the Ottoman stocks.
The population of the two kingdoms may have been superior, but socio political and economical context is different (semi urban and agricultural countries vs a country of warlike desert tribes), and the mobilization is lower in proportion of population in the Hashemite kingdoms than it is in the Saudi kingdom.
Then there is the question of logistics. Nejd is better equipped to wage a war in the deserts than Syria and Iraq are, and it's likely the Saudi would have overrun Hedjaz quickly enough, as they did OTL, to deny the Hashemites positions that could threaten the Saudis (again, initial advantage in mobilized troops for the Saudis).
Add to that the British are bankrolling and arming the Saudis, with probably even planes on loan or as 'volunteers', while the Hashemites only have leftovers from the Great War and the Ottoman stocks.
I've been vague about how far North the Saudis strike, but expect rather deeper penetration than shallower when compared to OTL. The Hejaz has been completely overrun by now. Further Southwards from that, the Saudis don't yet focus on Asir, but neither did they IOTL until a decade later.
But I agree on bloodiness.
I must confess that this arc of the TL owes everything to the discussions I've conducted with @Falecius, who can certainly recommend you appropriate literature much better than I can. I've so far perused Joseph Kostiner's 1993 volume "The Making of Saudi-Arabia" as well as the respective chapter (ch. 2) in Madawi al-Rasheed's Cambridge History of Saudi-Arabia, because they're what is available through my university's digital library access, but all the decisions made so far concerning this TL have been made before these readings and after reading I saw no need to modify them, and that I owe only to Falecius's great advice and feedback. (Kostiner particularly drew my attention to OTL divisions among the Shammar, but I think they won't necessarily apply ITTL where the fronts are much more clear-cut and dichotomous than they were IOTL.)
For most of the answer, see below. Here is just a little side-thought on competence... I'm not assuming general incompetence among the various commanders of the forces over which the Hashemites disposed from the onset of the conflict, but I do assume a degree of incoherence (it was a really wide alliance resulting from the Arab Revolt which comprised groups who were often traditionally at odds with each other), and more importantly, I think OTL has shown that the Ikhwan were quite a force to be reckoned with, and not just individual commanders. Looking at 20th century Arab military history, there are no equivalents.
This good question has been very aptly answered:
Exactly. This is how I meant it. The update also mentions a build-up of a different kind of military force, recruited from among the kind of population that @galileo-034 mentioned in his post. We might see more of that force in 1922, if political circumstances in Syria and Iraq allow it, but through 1921, the Hashemite kingdoms could only deploy what they had at their immediate disposal, and this force has almost exhausted itself. Which does not mean they're all dead or heavily wounded - the way the battles of 1921 have gone and these forces are composed, local groups will have switched their allegiance to Ibn Saud by now to avoid further unpleasantness. This way, forces can easily evaporate. But the Ikhwan did inflict quite some horrible casualties IOTL, too, and I only expect them to do more of that ITTL. Superordinate chieftains are trying to keep their flock together by appealing for peace, which, within the framework of the new Syrian and Iraqi kingdoms, at first meant only initiatives behind curtains, then also within the Upper Houses of the parliaments. Faisal especially has resorted to a counter-strategy to prevent his Upper House from issuing a "peace resolution": he has created lots of new members by recognizing incorporations of urban professional groups, where he and his premier still enjoy great support, as "constituent entities". Now, these tribal leaders are resorting to open protest in an urban context, for which they need to build weird alliances with other potential protesters, which only shows how their backs are really against the wall. Their next and last option is defection - which is what Ibn Saud is hoping for.
Indeed. (Except for the planes, but more on that in future updates.) Yes, the Hejaz has been overrun by now.
The Hashemites have acquired, in the meantime, some Russian/UoE Great War leftovers in the context of the "tea loans" scheme, too, and they're building up. Which is causing the kind of hardships described in the update. Also, both Syria and Iraq have been building up large 20th century armies from the kind of population that they have, which is of course also politically not without its explosiveness. Think of all the Great War conscription riots. To avoid that, recruitment has been targeting selectively, but that can't fail to play into traditional rivalries and antagonisms. For a rough estimation as for why the Saudis have been able to achieve what they did, we might look at how long it took the US to fully deploy its military might in WW1 - more or less an entire year. Now, the US had to ship all their men and stuff across a vast ocean, but then again, they also had the world's largest industrial capacities to produce everything they needed for a modern war, while the Syrians and Iraqis need to build up from much more modest capacities. Also, even very motivated recruits still need training.
1922 is going to be the pivotal year in this conflict. The Saudis have achieved all that they could hope for - they captured the holy sites, inflicted serious losses, captured infrastructurally important points, gained new allegiances; they want to press their advantages home by forcing at least a second Hashemite kingdom out of the conflict over the negotiation table. Will the Hashemite kingdoms fray under the tensions erupting among its young framework and crawl to the negotiation table? Or will they be able to deploy the modern military forces they're building up?
By the way, the British have achieved their policy goal - if they can be said to have had one - in this conflict already by now. Their goal has never been to wipe out the Hashemites - they had been their previous allies in the Great War, after all - but to take them down a notch, to drive out the spirit - or, to them, the demon - of a Caliphial enthusiasm which might spread across the entire British-ruled Islamic world like wildfire. Of the enthusiasm of the spring of 1921, there is little left as of yet.
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Just a small note: I can see Italy offering native Eritreans a voice in government and other things, but 'independence' formally on par with Montenegro, while possibile for Somalia and the indirectly ruled parts of Libya, is likely off-table for Italy's "firstborn colony" at this point. I can more easily see direct integration a là French Algeria, or, for a better comparison, the Senegalese Quatre Communes, but recognition as a technically separate country seems politically impossible in my opinion.
Good point. Here I haven't been very clear, either.
No, I didn't mean the foundation of the Mediterranean League to bring true independence to all these places at once, let alone on par with Montenegro's.
My idea is that the League unites entities with very different statuses - Italy as the head of the whole thing, a sovereign kingdom with a military problem like Montenegro, an EFP Mandate which is supposed to become independent soon but contested in the case of Albania, the two indirectly ruled parts of Libya and the two colonies of Somalia and Eritrea.
My thought was that Tripolitania and Cyrenaica could really be likened to British Dominions in their status and autonomy.
For Eritrea and Somalia, my thought was that they would continue to be directly administered through Governors appointed by Rome, albeit now with advisory councils in which natives play a role (like the British tried at various stages in the Raj). The idea of a path to Italian citizenship is worth pursuing, too, and so is - using the analogy to the Quatre Communes you brought up - the idea of voting rights for the Italian parliament for a somewhat larger portion of the population. To these two colonies, the creation of the Mediterranean League and their integration into it is just the beginning of a path whose end status is undetermined yet. Theoretically, it should bring a terminological change, but since I'm no expert at Italian, I don't know how it could sound. "Colonia" does not sound right anymore, but it shouldn't be something akin to "republic" or "emirate" as in Libya, either. Something vague in the middle maybe, perhaps something equivalent to "territory"...?
Practically, their League membership is a new formal umbrella for the ongoing recruitment of colonial troops from these quarters and their deployment in the Mediterranean, not so much in Libya right now ITTL and more in Montenegro and Albania, perhaps accompanied with a slight pay rise and at least officially a more respected status, although racism on the ground will certainly persist.
By the way, before @Lascaris has to mention it, of course Greece is not happy at all about the whole League thing and especially about the inclusion of Albania as a whole, without the consent of the Greek members in the EFP Mandate Council for Albania.
Now that come in mind, with the Italian navy air contingent getting some street creed in the fight in Montenegro and no Benny...it mean Italian Aircraft Carrier; ok now i shut up
That, too. Its status still being that of having been conceded to Italy by the Ottomans, with the implication that Italy could somehow at some point hand it over to Greece maybe... That status is too uncertain for it to be explicitly included in the MedLeague, or as full territory of the Italian metropolis. So far, Italy's reasoning is: if the British don't give Cyprus to the Greeks, why should we? It's hovering between "bargaining chip", "status object" and "marine outpost".
I was not aware that this is a taboo topic or something?
Aircraft carrier boom IOTL had something to do with the provisions of the Washington Naval Treaty which ITTL does not exist yet, if I'm not mistaken. But principally, to me, it would make good sense. What are the counter-arguments? (Except for the costs, so at least the socialists are probably opposed because they want the money elsewhere? But that applies to every country...)
Indeed, but I'm minding that if the Hashemites were to achieve some success and endanger Saudi gains, the British would intervene in some way to force them to the peace table.