I know Lin Biao is long gone. Are any of his underlings still around? Could this lead to A soviet Chinese reconciliation? That would be very dangerous.
Bicentennial Man: Ford '76 and Beyond
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
In researching the Deng-Hua divide I couldn't find anybody explicitly groomed/mentored by Lin Biao. Who, precisely, were his underlings? The Seven Elders would probably be smart enough to keep anybody in his orbit well out of power; detente with the US in opposition to the Soviets was not controversial doctrine within the CPC by this point, whether Hua's wing or Deng's wing
Some of the cousins of Lin Biao, didnt suffer the fate of he, or his son. Secret police overlord Keng Shang had had the ear of Madam Mao, and the gang of four.
Some of them, shared Lin's dream of socialist unity.
Some of them, shared Lin's dream of socialist unity.
Purging of the Gang of Four probably settles that. Secret police chiefs are generally pretty good at seeing which way the wind is blowing; Keng, in all likelihood, is backing Hua as the closest thing to a true believer there is against the remnants of the Deng clique
Nazi Space Spy
Banned
IIRC, the USSR and PRC saw their relations improve in the twilight years of the Soviet Union, so the possibility remains even under Hua.
Oh, certainly; Soviet allies like Vietnam and DPRK right on their borders (and ITTL a Soviet-friendly Pakistan under Bhutto) is still a geopolitical sticking point regardless
If Pakistan is pro Soviet and India and China, have already fought a war, could India embrace the West, and the Market sooner? Bangladesh could prove invaluable as an ally.
Well, depends on how Sanjay Gandhi feels about the West really 😈
Bit of both. Ford/Bush trying to avoid intra-party sniping took a harder line with Torrijos. OTL Carter DGAF and just went ahead with the treaty
Yeah, what @KingSweden24 said. Torrijos was gonna try and blow the canal if Panama couldn’t have it, and since the GOP are in charge, they’re not gonna give it back.
Adios Ayatollah
Adios Ayatollah
"...I'm not a believer in conspiracy theories usually, but c'mon."
- Former Vice President Robert Dole, 1999 Interview
The summer of 1979 had brought a major change to Iran's neighbor, Iraq - the elevation of Saddam Hussein to the country's Presidency after Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr's "resignation." His rise to power was followed almost immediately afterwards with a massive purge of Ba'ath Party members, with other important Ba'athists forced to serve on the firing squads that killed their colleagues. It was a consolidation that took mere weeks to perform, and left Hussein better positioned than perhaps any Arab state dictator since Nasser.
Hussein's program was muscular and ambitious from the start; he had been the true power in Iraq for years already, had nudged al-Bakr out of power to prevent a merger with Syria that would have rendered him irrelevant, and had cozied up to the Soviet Union in a fashion unseen in the Middle East since the Suez Crisis. The United States detested him and the Iranian junta was profoundly concerned by his violent behavior towards Kurds, rhetoric towards Israel, and large and Russian-equipped Army just a stone's throw across the Shatt al-Arab from Arab-majority Khuzestan.
It was ironic, then, that Saddam Hussein perhaps made the most critical move for the Iranian regime's long-term survival: the expulsion of Ayatollah Khomeini from the holy Shia city of Najaf. Khomeini's bootleg recordings had easily poured across the vast and porous Iranian border, especially as the security situation had begun to break down twenty months earlier; more radical clerics distributed the taped sermons to the young and impressionable, and Islamist guerillas killed by the SAVAK were often found to have such tapes on their person. Though the mullahs of Iran were often split on what role political Islam should take in the Regency era, the most hardcore revolutionaries had coalesced Khomeini's hardline views and he had become a symbol of the anti-regime forces.
A straightforward realpolitik analysis would suggest that it was in Saddam's interest to use Khomeini to stir up as much discontent as possible to weaken the Middle East's most powerful economy and (US-aligned) military, but the Muslim world is a complex place, and Saddam was first and foremost concerned about the effect Khomeini's preaching would have on the Shia majority of Iraq, which would threaten the hold the primarily Sunni Ba'ath establishment had on the country. Saddam's priority was always his regime's survival - for that reason, aware that Shia law held that Ayatollahs could not be killed, he ordered the expulsion of Ayatollah Khomeini in early September for "incitement." Khomeini was chartered a private plane to Brussels to live in exile.
At first, it seemed a massive mistake - the superior recording and broadcasting equipment in Belgium served only to give the Ayatollah an even bigger platform to reach his devout audiences from and pierce even deeper into Iran, beginning to sway even some skeptical clerics that revolution was imminent. Demands to allow the exiled Khomeini to return to Iran grew louder, and Islamist guerillas threatened to escalate their attacks if this was not done. In early October, however, Khomeini - aged 79 - died in his sleep at his apartment in Brussels, apparently of cardiac arrest.
The Shia world was inflamed, stunning even the Iranian regime. Riots raged across Iran, Iraq and the Shia provinces of Saudi Arabia; conspiracy theories spread like wildfire, with the junta, Israel or the United States the perceived assassins. No evidence ever emerged that Khomeini was murdered, but the timing convinced many adherents that it was the case. But for all of the conspiratorial rumors, his death deflated the clerical cause within Iran immensely, as Shariatmadari's bloc preached conciliation with the regime and privately breathed a sigh of relief that the temperature may now finally begin to cool rhetorically...
John Fredrick Parker
Donor
I wouldn’t celebrate too quickly -- remember, there’s still Saddam to deal with, and any regime that has to hold the country together what that bastard put them through is going to have lingering… effects.
Somebody more familiar with MENA history is free to correct me but I think it was the total Shitshow of the revolution that persuaded Saddam to attack. Irán isn’t the epitome of stability here but their quality military is running the show versus purge happy clerics