Could the Soviet Union have checkmated the West and won the Cold War in 1979-1980?

Long story short: Theoretically possible, logistically difficult and completely nuts.

I mean besides pissing off the west, what does this plan acchieve for the sovs? It swaps one running sore of an insurgency for two.

Likewise, what's in it for India? Is exchange of a few border issues and the occasional skirmish for open war followed by a lengthy insurgency (and that's if things go to plan...) really worth while?

To be fair - Afghanistan looks like it will prove a relatively short victorious war after all.

I think it would inevitably spiral into a third world war. Just as in WWII with chemical weapons the Balance of Terror shall keep things from escalating into unrestricted WMD use so it comes down to the military balance. Given the USSR having a superior production capability in terms of weapons in the short term they shall probably take Madrid before their enemies can mobilize for a proper war economy.
 
NATO and China can draw maps and make basic extrapolations as well. WW3 is going to start if the USSR launches its quixotic adventure.
 
NATO and China can draw maps and make basic extrapolations as well. WW3 is going to start if the USSR launches its quixotic adventure.

Assuming the shock of trying to support this crazy adventure over the Afghan road system doesn't cause the entire USSR to implode earlier.
 
Few hours into Step 1 and we'll be looking at a whole lot of death, even instant sunshine... Case in point, pre-Cold War style partitions aren't kosher, and anyone that tries to do as such would face stiff resistance from a lot of countries with threatened interests. Even today, Russia's rampant axeing of Crimea and slow absorption of Abkhazia and South Ossetia didn't come off as a slap in the wrist. Even in the absence of NATO intervention, their economy is already tanking due to sanctions, counter-sanctions, bad timing (oil price drop) and the Chinese pulling a steal on Russian natural gas interest.

Something on the scale of what you demand is nothing short of WWIII.
 
This thread was actually very interesting.
Usertron - would you still repeat your statements back in 2011 on Iran, or has recent developments or etc changed your views on the matter?
 
NATO and China can draw maps and make basic extrapolations as well. WW3 is going to start if the USSR launches its quixotic adventure.

I'm not old enough to have been around at the time, but I have a hard time believing the US President could justify starting WW3 in defence of radical islamists who want us dead, in order to counter reds who (at worst) may want to raise our fuel bill.

IOTL Iran was invaded by Iraq, Afghanistan by the USSR, and Pakistan by India, and the US/West expressed a lot of deep concern and nothing else.

Realistically, I think the US/NATO would pour forced into Turkey and Saudi Arabia/Kuwait, and warn Saddam / the Soviets not to go any further (as if they could). But they wouldn't actually do anything militarily.
 
I'm not old enough to have been around at the time, but I have a hard time believing the US President could justify starting WW3 in defence of radical islamists who want us dead, in order to counter reds who (at worst) may want to raise our fuel bill.

Back in the day, radical Islamists weren't considered as scary as communists. That's why the CIA poured in so much to the mujahideen, despite being as anti-American as they were anti-Soviet (then again, they were pretty much anti-non-Islamic as a whole). Only an event on the scale of 9/11 could have changed people's minds and even then, it's unlikely to make the Islamists seem like a graver threat than the USSR.

As for all three cases, the goals for each of the invaders were limited enough for the US and NATO not to intervene militarily.Saddam wants Khuzestan and its oil. The Soviets want to prevent an anti-Soviet Islamic takeover of Afghanistan. And India wants Kashmir and no more. Expanding those goals to include partitioning a country wholesale would be a whole different level, and much harder to keep away in case it spirals out of Western control.
 
Remember the hostage crisis went on for 444 days. That's a lot of time for the Soviets to complete both steps. And while it would be strictly rational for the US to come to Irans' defence no matter what, the US is a democracy (approaching a presidential election) and revolutionary Iran has done absolutely everything a country could possibly do to anger the United States: is President Carter (or Reagan) really going to sell the American people on World War 3 to defend DEATH TO AMERICA Islamic Iran from what mostly ordinary Americans would figure they had comin' to 'em?

The point of this scenario isn't that strategic thinkers in the West would see it as an existential threat: because they clearly would. But that the Soviets cleverly take advantage of events and client regimes to avoid crossing any 'red lines', and without these clear violations it's simply not possible for the Western democracies to pre-emptively launch WW3 because they feel they've been strategically snookered (now China is another matter...)

The Iranians did also take the Soviet embassy for a very short time and then gave it back when the USSR made it clear that their county would be made a puppet state if that was not done. Jimmy Carter had the US military in such a low state that Russia could have done it and the USA could only watch.
 
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