AHC: World War III between 1991 and 2011.

How do you make it so WWIII happens between 1991 and 2011? Also, only tactical nuclear weapons would be used in this scenario.

Extra points if it lasts at least three years, and you describe the offensives, etc.
 
Twilight 2000 has a timeline for this if memory serves. POD is that the coup in the USSR by the hardliners succeeds.
 
How do you make it so WWIII happens between 1991 and 2011? Also, only tactical nuclear weapons would be used in this scenario.

Extra points if it lasts at least three years, and you describe the offensives, etc.

This is going to be tough, but the most plausible scenario for an actual World War III might actually be an India-Pakistan + China-Vietnam{or Australia?} conflict that quickly escalates badly, although it'd be tough to make it last longer than perhaps a few years...........I'm thinking of a POD circa 1990 or so in which Pakistan somehow manages to get the bomb much earlier, although I can't give any more details other than that.
 
No 9/11, the GOP's attempts to start a Cold War with China succeed too well.

So what would the inciting incident be? Another Taiwan Straits crisis, or something different? Maybe that incident with that American recon plane landing in China being blown out of proportion?
 
POD: The 1991 Soup coup d'etat attempt succeeds. Gorbachev and the reformists are banished behind closed doors, while hardline Marxist-Leninist types decide to prevent the further dissolution of the Soviet sphere of influence.

Attempts to crackdown on the independence of these new republics is met with fierce international opposition. NATO pledges to defend the new republics if the Soviets do not back down, hoping a game of chicken with the USSR will cause the hardliners to blink first. They don't. The Soviet Union launches a full scale invasion of various regions in rebellion and harshly put down resistance within Russia and various SSRs. The United States thus coordinates an anti-communist blockade and embargo to squeeze out the Soviets.

The blockade leads to a Soviet attack on NATO positions in Europe, which by the summer of 1992 has lead to an all out war between the United States and Soviet Union. Nuclear weapons are used, though not indiscriminately, and the war itself will see millions on both sides die. The Soviet Union ultimately falls with the razing of Moscow and the subsequent collapse of the Politburo in 1997, with NATO forces just outside major population centers in Western Russia...
 
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