DBWI Will we ever stop I.S.S.A.C?

[VictorVanBakker]

As you all know the end of the cold war saw a new threat rear its head. After the violent fracture of the communist world during the nineties, communists renegades have launched countless terrorist attacks on the west and have threatened the stability of the new governments of Eastern Europe. The Independent Soviet State of the Aral and the Caspian is on the cusp of conquering the Caucasus and overrunning Central Asia. Their leader an ex-KGB member by the name of Vladimir Putin has claimed responsibility for the recent attack on the Vatican. Can ISSAC be stopped?

 

[Kung Fucious]

Really, this should be moved to PolChat.

So long as the "Federal Russian Republic" (or whatever they're calling themselves these days) remains the broke, battered, and bleeding semi-failed state we all know and love, I can't see ISSAC going away anytime soon. The short, sharp shock that marked the breakup of the Soviet Union and the brief (but devastating) civil war that followed, not to mention the extremely poorly thought out "police action" by the McCain administration strangled any hope of peace in Eurasia in the cradle.

For a great many of Russian and Eurasian citizens, the choice between the FRR and ISSAC is a choice between the proverbial douche and a turd sandwich. Either they flee south to the relative safety of Iran or Iraq, west to the barely tolerant Eastern Europe, or they stay and live out their lives under either an incompetent-and-barely effective democracy, or a brutal-but-somewhat stable rogue state. Until Russia can pull its proverbial shit together (and Poland, the Baltic Federation, and Finland actually get off their collective asses and start pulling their weight), ISSAC isn't going anywhere.

 

[Escape Zeppelin]

While I agree with Kung Fucious that ISSAC isn't going to be rooted out of central Asia, whatever happens they certainly aren't going to overrun the Caucasus. The most they can do is continue their terror bombing campaign but south of the territory they hold in Chechenia they have almost zero support from the population, and the Georgians and Azerbaijan especially hate them. The Iranians have picked up their naval presence on the Caspian and both they and Turkey are providing military aid to Georgia and Azerbaijan. You're not going to see any ISSAC army marching in any time soon.

I think they've lasted as long as they have because they're being used as a tool by the Chinese to subdue any ideas of Muslim or Uyghur nationalism. Now that they've mostly gone capitalist and the economic outlooks of their own Muslim minorities are looking up a scary communist neighbor who hates religion and money is a great way to tamp down any ideas of leaving China while at the same time drawing what's left of independent Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan into their sphere. I'm sure Chinese troops in Bishkek was entirely for "humanitarian" reasons. If China wanted to they'd push back ISSAC within months but keeping them around continues to destabilize the FRR to the long term benefit of China.