America Be Watching With The Popcorn: A Sino-Soviet War TL
- Thread starter theflyingmongoose
- Start date
I would be interested to know the logic behind the USSR annexing what seems to be a rather significant swathe of Manchurian, possibly even including Harbin.
Would the USSR really be interested in absorbing ten of millions of Chinese in its territory post-war?
Sure, population transfers are an option but the Soviet Union of 1970s lacks the demographic resources to resettle a significant chunk of Siberia with Russians and other Slavs.
A far more likely scenario are some limited border rectifications, especially in the north where population densities are lower and around Blagoveshchensk and Khabarovsk.
The existing border is already easy to defend as its a river for most of its length.
Manchuria would also likely be spin-off as a satellite state, especially as Harbin hasn't been nuked so the Soviet Union could conceivably promote the local identity and create something similar to what happened in Moldova OTL over a few decades. This could include promoting the 'Manchu' identity, promoting traditional Chinese characters are bourgeois and counter-revolutionary and writing Chinese in Cyrillic.
Oh and I wouldn't be surprised if some Chinese "volunteers" are used to rebuild Chita, Omsk and accelerate the development of Siberian resources and transportation links to better tie the Far-East with the rest of the Union. The war will have proven the wisdom of building the Baikal-Amur Mainline since a nuked Chita means that Transsib is cut into two sections until it is rebuilt.
Except TTL Soviet Union to look inwards for some time as it rebuilds. The war may even spur some reforms of the armed forces and the economy to increase productivity.
Would the USSR really be interested in absorbing ten of millions of Chinese in its territory post-war?
Sure, population transfers are an option but the Soviet Union of 1970s lacks the demographic resources to resettle a significant chunk of Siberia with Russians and other Slavs.
A far more likely scenario are some limited border rectifications, especially in the north where population densities are lower and around Blagoveshchensk and Khabarovsk.
The existing border is already easy to defend as its a river for most of its length.
Manchuria would also likely be spin-off as a satellite state, especially as Harbin hasn't been nuked so the Soviet Union could conceivably promote the local identity and create something similar to what happened in Moldova OTL over a few decades. This could include promoting the 'Manchu' identity, promoting traditional Chinese characters are bourgeois and counter-revolutionary and writing Chinese in Cyrillic.
Oh and I wouldn't be surprised if some Chinese "volunteers" are used to rebuild Chita, Omsk and accelerate the development of Siberian resources and transportation links to better tie the Far-East with the rest of the Union. The war will have proven the wisdom of building the Baikal-Amur Mainline since a nuked Chita means that Transsib is cut into two sections until it is rebuilt.
Except TTL Soviet Union to look inwards for some time as it rebuilds. The war may even spur some reforms of the armed forces and the economy to increase productivity.
Since they are now in recognized Soviet territory, they can be used for reconstruction work or other labor. Everyone else will ignore it like the Uigur issue in China now.
If the KMT takes over the entire border with North Vietnam, the South Vietnamese government could launch a reverse third indochina war and steamroll the North to reunify it
Maybe at some point. Right now they are still pacifying the territory and recovering.
It would still take a bit of time for the KMT to reach Yunnan province and the areas in need of shutting down the border, so there's time to wait
Sigh , once more, its airbursts so we are not talking a lot of material, For a nuclear winter , even with ground bursts it would not be enough , its a few dozen devices not the 1000's of the WW3 scenarios.
Data on nuclear winters is very sketchy and made on some pretty broad assumptions. Even the authors of most studies will remark that they've deliberately shown the worst-case scenario in order to raise awareness, a form of scare tactic really.
The nuclear exchange in this timeline (23 cities) happens in February, about the coldest part of the year across most of the northern hemisphere, when the cooling effects of the dust clouds (assuming there are any) would be severely depressed. I would expect most of the local effects to have cleared up by April, so maybe a late growing season in China in 71, but that'd be about it.
I'm actually most surprised the Soviets bothered to bomb the cities on the southern coast, especially the ones so close to Hong Kong. I didn't think they were large enough or close enough to China's centers of power to be that high on the target list, to say nothing of the risks to Hong Kong itself, which would assuredly provoke a response from NATO the Soviets would VERY much wish to avoid right now.
Hong Kong getting a front-row seat to the aftermath is REALLY going to amp up the anti-nuclear movement in Britain and Europe in general. There's no way that scale of devastation isn't going to be broadcast across the globe. We might actually get some pretty sweeping nuclear disarmament treaties in future.
For a given measure of winner, yes he is. Anyone can now point at the Chinese Communist Party and say 'look at what they did' after not just the war but also the disasters of the Cultural Revolution and the famines of the 50s. It's been a severe blow to the Communists legitimacy, to say nothing of the collapse of centralized government.
It's going to take a long time to reunify the country, the ROC has to essentially start the work in the 30s over from scratch. At least he should have more international backing this time.
McPherson
Banned
Hmmm. Still have a number of 1960s bomber bases and rocket artillery and naval bases and ports hit. These would be surface bursts.
I missed the bit about Shenzhen being hit, what has the UK's response been to their favourite colony being flash tanned?
It still would take several year to unify China, and OTL he died in 1975, so he had solid chance not lived to see the country under his rule again.
keep in mind its likely a smaller nuke was used in Shenzhen to avoid bringing in nato through splash damage.
That might not be necessary
Russia is broke in China has been nuked silly
North Vietnam just lost its sugar Daddy
If the North Vietnamese economy takes a nose dive the North Vietnamese leadership may decide to reunite with the south in order to save their own skins
marathag
Banned
Airbursts are fine for those targets, especially airbases.
Google on what a Tornado did to a B-36 SAC base.