DBWI: No Warsaw Pact-NATO War

[Let's use a Red Storm Rising sort of scenario, in which the Soviets conventionally invade West Germany, but then sign a lasting ceasefire and peacefully retreat back to pre-war lines after failing to achieve their goals.]
 
Well, we stilll would have had the cities of Minsk, Russia and Birmingham, England. Also the world would probably less slanted to Japan, Brazil and India, as it is today....
 
Well, we stilll would have had the cities of Minsk, Russia and Birmingham, England. Also the world would probably less slanted to Japan, Brazil and India, as it is today....

No nuclear or chemical weapons were used in Red Storm Rising.

You're thinking of Sir John Hackett's "The Third World War: August 1985 and "The Third World War: The Untold Story"
 
[Let's use a Red Storm Rising sort of scenario, in which the Soviets conventionally invade West Germany, but then sign a lasting ceasefire and peacefully retreat back to pre-war lines after failing to achieve their goals.]

The events of September-November 1988, as terrifying as they were to many, may have ended up making a lasting contribution to world peace, as that was the closest we had ever come to annihilation.

Mikhail Gorbachev, for his part, had been quite hesitant to start any shooting, despite the tensions that summer, and only acted after the Magdeburg bombing on September 16th, in which over 100 East German soldiers(and a Soviet colonel) were killed.....only it was discovered later on, that it was actually a pair of extreme anti-Communist renegades(one from South Africa, and the other a radical Ulster Unionist from Northern Ireland, the latter of whom who'd been stationed in West Germany at the time.) who carried out the attacks. That revelation, more than anything, is what finally brought the fighting to an end on November 5th(and to Ronald Reagan's eternal credit, he was quite willing to begin talks with Gorbachev when the offer was made.). It may have even hastened the fall of the Soviet Union(it dissolved on Nov. 27, 1990, IOTL).

But I do wonder, if things had been a little different. What if something else had provided the spark instead? What if Gorbachev had been subject to a successful coup d'etat first(remember, Vladimir Putin did try to assassinate him in 1995 IOTL; he was quite angered at Boris Yeltsin losing the October 1992 elections.)?
 
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