DBWI: What if Mikhail Gorbachev hadn't been assasinated in the 80s?

We wouldn't have a hardliner Soviet Union reinvading Afghanistan successfully, for one, and the ensuing Middle Eastern War between NATO and WarPac would not have occurred.
 
We wouldn't have a hardliner Soviet Union reinvading Afghanistan successfully, for one, and the ensuing Middle Eastern War between NATO and WarPac would not have occurred.

Successfully! LOL LOL LOL!

Well, Assuming Gorbachev got the nod, the Soviet State would probably attempt desperately needed reforms. There would be no 1994 Crisis in East Germany with the Death of Erich Honecker. Also, Soviet propaganda had hidden the fact that the Red Army was falling apart by this time. The Soviet Leadership, under Yanev, had no choice but to use Stalinesque methods to fight corruption.

So you'd get no massive clampdown in the Soviet Union, no reemergence of Gulags. Finally, Gorbachev would have handled the Dissolution of the Warsaw Pact very differently. Far from a Victory in Afghanistan, the world would look in horror as the Red Army deployed chemical weapons against other nations in the Eastern Bloc to retain control.

Some say that as many as 10% of the Soviet nuclear weapons are actually pointed at their own Satellite countries. Other than opening up immigration, though, we can only guess at some of the noises happening within the "Evil Empire". Rumors speak of "Lithuanian Re-indoctrination" in some kind of odd whisper. We might live in a world where the cold war would have ended--or one where the world might have ended!
 
It's likely that the 27th Amendment to the US constitution nullifying the 22nd Amendment, and allowing Ronald Reagan to gain a third term in office, would never have come into existance. Who knows maybe George HW. Bush would have been President in 1988 instead of having to leave the ticket for health reasons, and being replaced with Pat Buchanan who would later serve win 2 Presidential Terms in his own right.
 
Well the subsequent failures of the Buchanan administration led to the rise of the Al Gore Administration, in light of the failure of the "Diamond Zone" to contain Russian insurgents established in Moscow in 1991. There was the failure to capture General Gennady Zyuganov in 1994, despite his bombing of U.S. and Allied forces based in Leningrad, Stalingrad, and Vilnius. By 1996, American troops were being dragged into ethnic cleansing campaigns in Belarus and Ukraine.

In a world without the assassination of Gorbachev, it is certainly likely that American prestige would have been preserved abroad, the draft wouldn't have been reinstated in 1998, American jons wouldn't have been "out-sourced" to the Baltic States as part of "international security" and the price of gas would have remained at $1.75/barrel.

As such, who do you think will be taking for the Democratic Party nomination? Tipper Gore or Henry Cisneros?
 
Well the subsequent failures of the Buchanan administration led to the rise of the Al Gore Administration, in light of the failure of the "Diamond Zone" to contain Russian insurgents established in Moscow in 1991. There was the failure to capture General Gennady Zyuganov in 1994, despite his bombing of U.S. and Allied forces based in Leningrad, Stalingrad, and Vilnius. By 1996, American troops were being dragged into ethnic cleansing campaigns in Belarus and Ukraine.

In a world without the assassination of Gorbachev, it is certainly likely that American prestige would have been preserved abroad, the draft wouldn't have been reinstated in 1998, American jons wouldn't have been "out-sourced" to the Baltic States as part of "international security" and the price of gas would have remained at $1.75/barrel.

As such, who do you think will be taking for the Democratic Party nomination? Tipper Gore or Henry Cisneros?

OOC: That is extremely ASB. The USA would NEVER be invited to police the Soviet Union without Gorbachev, to say nothing of fighting some kind of war against a nation with a massive nuclear arsenal. The United States would not and could not get involved in a ground war against the Soviets because it would result in mutually assured destruction, a scenario in which any history buff is well versed. Just because Gorbachev doesn't come to power doesn't mean that the USA will suddenly mobilize and occupy parts of the country--even Pat Buchanan isn't so stupid as to start a nuclear war.

IC: Yes, I'm familiar with Tom Clancy's Red Beast trilogy, but I'm afraid that you've mistaken the book for your history book.

I'll grant it would give you lower oil prices and increase the USA's image around the world--Yanev's move to join OPEC led to a trade war against the Soviets that dealt them and OPEC a massive blow. It would also mean that the Eastern Europe would have been free for a generation, not tied up as puppet states to a slowly failing state. Gorbachev might succeed with his reforms and reinvigorate the Soviet Union, or the reforms might at least end the Cold War and begin to pay a peace dividend.

Instead, we got Yanev and another generation of uprisings and refugees from Eastern Europe. There would be less suffering in the Eastern Bloc--No invasion of East Germany in 1994 (which used chemical weapons), no invasion of Romania in 2001, or Hungary in 2005. Economists suggest that the Soviet Union's GDP/Capita has fallen to below $10,000--well lower than Mexico or South Korea. Could Gorbachev have increased that number? Finally, the world would be a saner, less violent place: A world where the Soviets and the United States had less than 50,000 Nuclear Weapons pointed at each other. That number is needed, apparently, because the third generation of Anti-Nuclear defenses has shown real fruit, KOing at least 98% of ICBM strikes. We'd live in better times, without the massive SDI spending spree that seems to have become dominant.

The only good thing about Yanev is his sanity--he wants to keep his state alive and his empire intact. As long we have a gentleman's agreement not to fight each other, I suspect that the Soviet Union will be broke by 2030--only the massive increase in oil prices can explain how the Soviets have survived for so long.
 
As such, who do you think will be taking for the Democratic Party nomination? Tipper Gore or Henry Cisneros?
I doubt it matters, both are too heavily recognized as just continuations of the current Gore adminstration, which while I will grant had a positive impact during its first term, but this second term has been an enormous farse. Besides the amount of negative adds they are using against eachother, combined with the fact that my beloved Pennsylvania is likely to only tighten the deadlock, the GOP has this in the bag. I mean the fact that former Senator Fred Thompson more or less went into the GOP primaries uncontested, shows GOP unity, and he's so recognizable from the TV show Stargate SG1 and the gobs of movies he's done, he doesn't even need a publicity compaign. And top that with the fact that he's basically stated Steve Forbes will be his running mate. It's gonna be a Blue White House again.
 
I doubt it matters, both are too heavily recognized as just continuations of the current Gore adminstration, which while I will grant had a positive impact during its first term, but this second term has been an enormous farse. Besides the amount of negative adds they are using against eachother, combined with the fact that my beloved Pennsylvania is likely to only tighten the deadlock, the GOP has this in the bag. I mean the fact that former Senator Fred Thompson more or less went into the GOP primaries uncontested, shows GOP unity, and he's so recognizable from the TV show Stargate SG1 and the gobs of movies he's done, he doesn't even need a publicity compaign. And top that with the fact that he's basically stated Steve Forbes will be his running mate. It's gonna be a Blue White House again.
Unfortunately, the Thompson/ Forbes ticket is determined to make things difficult with the Soviets with their plan to expand the size of the American Embassy in the "Diamond Zone" to the size of a small town of 10,000 residents and contractors. Shouldn't we have learned from the 1993 Lubyanka Prison Photos of U.S. Marines that we are not welcome in the area? While it is certainly interesting that Richard Dean Anderson has been able to do ads for Fred Thompson, doesn't the country deserve more from a President , than a candidate whose plans for the Soviet Union are merely to allow the Japanese under P.M. Shintaro Ishihara, to seize greater control of the Soviet market? Shouldn't America and NATO be given the chance to withdraw its troops from places like Gdansk, Prague, Vilnius, or Sarajevo? Already too many of our young have been sent to die in the "meat-grinders" of Eastern and Central Europe. As Rep. Cindy Sheehan (D-CA) has said time and again, "It's time to come home!!!"
 
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