America Be Watching With The Popcorn: A Sino-Soviet War TL
- Thread starter theflyingmongoose
- Start date
I doubt the part about the oil price spike, actually. The USSR throwing nukes around will lead to the Arabs and other OPEC members suddenly rediscovering how much they value the friendship of the NATO countries and pledge to make up any shortfall. With the USSRs Tankies and other useful idiots in the West discredited you'll also see an expansion of North Sea Oil drilling and Nuclear Power.
The probably did exactly that, but didn't consider the possiblity a few 1000 rank and file acting on their own. Institutional tunnel vision in agencies, that were (too) used to doing things a certain way for too long is a thing.
Medium to Long term you are correct. But short term I'd be surprised if OPEC has that much spare capacity lying around un-used, this is a matter of practicality not intent. They can pledge all they want, but if there aren't enough oil wells then people will have to wait while more are drilled. While that drilling happens and people adapt, there will be a shortage and so a spike in the price.
The Politburo had the Army Hierarchy, party supervision and the KGB Third Chief Directorate all working to make sure rank and file didn't show any initiative. Something actually unexpected, like the KGB and Army high command co-operating despite hating each other (and successive Soviet leaders working very hard to make sure they hated each other), that could blindside Brehznev. But something like what was presented in the update was absolutely a known risk, it would be well within their 'tunnel vision'.
So it kind of sounds like the August Coup but successful. Surprised that Sergey came out on top of it all in light of the men in other positions of power at the time. Perhaps there was a secretive deal struck to put Sergey up in exchange for favors, I don’t know.
Be ironic if after the collapse of the Warsaw pact, there is an effort to reuinify Czechslovakia
Nixon has a chance to pull a Reagan and truly cause the Soviet Union to be crippled. Perhaps he should travel to Prague and give an ITTL version of the "Tear down this wall" speech
Well if nothing else with a free Czechia the GDR will have a longer border to police than in OTL, making escape at least marginally easier. Also the "Tribute Payments with the serial numbers filed off" to the USSR will probably lead to higher internal dissent in the GDR, meaning more people trying to escape and more border guards willing to look the other way or accept a bribe to look the other way. Third a free Czechia means all parts of the GDR can be reached by Western radio and TV broadcasts.
Put those together and the GDR will have a bigger problems with dissent, "Republikflucht" and all sorts of "secondary damage" resulting from those than in OTL. Domino effect, anyone?
And even if chances of the "Fascist Sponsored Counterrevolutionary Coup" in Czechia leading to a Domino effect is in fact very small, that doesn't mean the people in charge in Berlin and Moscow wont assume it being much more likely than it is and double down on repression.
That's before we get to the matter of Poland now having a land border with an ex-Warsaw Pact country and until now not having had the need to police it's borders against escape attempts.
1974, Continued.
President Chiang Kai-Shek was at the beginnings of a Lyndon Johnson Vietnam situation.
He was currently popular, but he would be in much deeper water if progress on the mainland front continued to stall. In a basic sense, the anger was justified. The Republic's military, armed with top-notch equipment and superior numbers, was struggling to defeat a power with disadvantages in both categories. While initial progress was several miles per day inland, the new rate was in the hundreds of feet. It didn't help that the warlords were often little more than guerrilla fighters.
But the biggest story of the year was the mid-term elections.
President Richard Nixon had recently been elected in a landslide, and he used that as a mandate to fix the health system. The democrats got into a civil war over this, with the southern conservatives being up in arms and the northerners not doing so. What ended up happening was that several southerners and conservatives switched to the new 'Conservative Party' label, resulting in Republican gains across the country, especially in the upper south.
Republican: 236 (+28)
Democratic: 185 (-42)
Conservative: 14 (+14)
Republican: 52
Democratic: 46
Conservative: 2
The Republicans won a trifecta for the first time in decades, with large gains throughout the country. It was a mandate, and Richard Nixon was going to use it.
On December 1, a few weeks after the election, President Nixon sent 10,000 troops to China as 'peacekeepers', while planning a request to Congress for another 100,000. Nixon may have a liberal domestic policy to many outsiders, but his main agenda was to get rid of communism, and he would do it come hell or high water.
I know, short chapter. I have lots of RL stuff going on, so I figured I would get a short update out so I don't have the inevitable 'Is this dead?' in a couple days.
He was currently popular, but he would be in much deeper water if progress on the mainland front continued to stall. In a basic sense, the anger was justified. The Republic's military, armed with top-notch equipment and superior numbers, was struggling to defeat a power with disadvantages in both categories. While initial progress was several miles per day inland, the new rate was in the hundreds of feet. It didn't help that the warlords were often little more than guerrilla fighters.
But the biggest story of the year was the mid-term elections.
President Richard Nixon had recently been elected in a landslide, and he used that as a mandate to fix the health system. The democrats got into a civil war over this, with the southern conservatives being up in arms and the northerners not doing so. What ended up happening was that several southerners and conservatives switched to the new 'Conservative Party' label, resulting in Republican gains across the country, especially in the upper south.
Republican: 236 (+28)
Democratic: 185 (-42)
Conservative: 14 (+14)
Republican: 52
Democratic: 46
Conservative: 2
The Republicans won a trifecta for the first time in decades, with large gains throughout the country. It was a mandate, and Richard Nixon was going to use it.
On December 1, a few weeks after the election, President Nixon sent 10,000 troops to China as 'peacekeepers', while planning a request to Congress for another 100,000. Nixon may have a liberal domestic policy to many outsiders, but his main agenda was to get rid of communism, and he would do it come hell or high water.
I know, short chapter. I have lots of RL stuff going on, so I figured I would get a short update out so I don't have the inevitable 'Is this dead?' in a couple days.
If Nixon is smart and wants to have even a remote chance of not having committed troops overseas blow up in his face then he’d have US troops stick only to secured areas and leave the combat areas to the ROC. Chiang would take what he could get (for now) even if it’s just US special forces and having more of his own troops available for fighting.
Nixon can't run for a third term, but the GOP probably will win the election in 1976. Wonder who he'll pick as his heir apparent.
Two domestic policy questions:
1) did Agnew resign like OTL?
2) considering the supreme court seat that went to Stevens in OTL, may I suggest Hiram Emory Widener Jr. as his nominee? With a stronger position in congress, he won't need to compromise as much
Two domestic policy questions:
1) did Agnew resign like OTL?
2) considering the supreme court seat that went to Stevens in OTL, may I suggest Hiram Emory Widener Jr. as his nominee? With a stronger position in congress, he won't need to compromise as much
Yes. He was replaced by George HW Bush.
Someone of Widener's views is certainly in contention, however he still didn't have much service (5 years) at a federal level.
will Hong Kong and Macau rejoin the ROC, and how will the eventual death of Chiang Kai-Shek affect the ROC? Will his death result in democracy like otl or will his death cause another strong man to be in charge? Also, will Cantonese and other sinitic dialects be taught in ROC schools?
On another note, will the Republic of Korea push into Manchuria? Due to the anarchy it should be easy for them to take some land. Or are they still trying to assimilate North Korea first?
On another note, will the Republic of Korea push into Manchuria? Due to the anarchy it should be easy for them to take some land. Or are they still trying to assimilate North Korea first?
Not going to come up for a while, as both countries held the territory for decades after the current year. Chiang Kai-Shek's death will eventually result in democracy by the present day, although how long it takes is unknown. It is currently a flawed democracy, as the legislature is elected with little fraud but the Presidency is more or less authoritarian. As for languages, lack of Taiwanese or Cantonese speaking teachers in many areas will (at first) result in whatever the area's language is being taught.
I'm sure some want it, but the military (especially since the US Congress mandated a withdrawal) is already busy pacifying a large area.
To my understanding Yanbian Prefecture should have still been majority Korean at the time, not sure about Changbai County.
If ROC follow OTL Taiwan's path, than if would be Chiang-Ching Kuo, Chiang Kai-Shek's son take over, while he had done many things to improve the country(ex: massive infrastructure projects, end of martial law in 1987) he was still a strongman rule till his death in 1988. And process to democracy only happened in 90s (first presidential election in Taiwan happened in 1996.) So TTL ROC likely will remain authoritarian for a while. As for HK and Macau, they might join much later than OTL since it will take couple decade to clean up the mess.
I'm asking this question as Hong Kong's main language is Cantonese, and as one of the few cities in China that are still functional, should allow them to have Cantonese as their main language due to their cultural influence of ROC's mainland. But, Taiwan has Mandarin as its main language, and would lead to a messy situation where the mainland speaks Cantonese as its lingua franca while Taiwan speaks Mandarin. Would Taiwan add official languages like Cantonese into its official languages so it can effectively rule over both areas?
Well, I'll try and not spoil everything I have planned, but it will be worse, considering a 300M+ casualty war that was over 95% civilian deaths and the fact that some or all of China is a Republic.