Hale, Vladivostok!
- Thread starter herlockscholmes
- Start date
Yep. Russia's relation ITTL to IOTL is complex. Generally speaking, I think people have a tendency to imagine Zhirinovsky TLs as = automatic war in all directions when in reality even he has some structural constraints acting on him if he's in charge. One of the big ones = his ability to back up his bluster. ITTL, Russia's armed forces showed in the First Chechen War that they were lacking the readiness to face off against more formidable opponents, so when Zhirinovsky goes off about, say, how Russia should go after the Chinese, he's got a whole raft of people talking him off the ledge and encouraging a more moderate course focused on gradually rebuilding Russian strength (which isn't far off of OTL). By this point ITTL, it's gotten harder for many Russians to take Zhirinovsky seriously - but at the same time, material conditions in Russia are improving substantially and a new actor - Karaschuk - is starting to have a significant effect on how Russia proceeds. Russia will play its hand, but will it overplay it? The condition of the Russian military ITTL is going to start to play a larger role.
The Middle East : Somalia has been in the background so far. It will not be forever, nor will Afghanistan. One of the things I'm learning as I'm tackling this project is that I really enjoy getting that kind of close, tight shot on the action, providing us with perspective on how individuals are thinking, feeling and acting - it comes with advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantage is that for everything I do show, there's about 40 things I don't that I'd love to get into here.
Yep, we're moving it along! Many thanks for reading! Comments as always welcome
That reminds me of the TL called Zhirinovsky's Russian Empire where there are so many times war with the West almost happens. Especially since Mr. Z is a guy who makes crazy statements.
Interesting, I'll have to give it a read. The general premise seems spot on - bluster is bluster, but it doesn't always automatically = the blusterer's wildest fantasies coming to life.
I see the "threadmark label..." box at the top, here...do I just type something into that box for each chapter?
You could just write "Chapter X" for each numbered chapter starting with one up to nineteen.
Got it. I'll do that and try to add some chapter names tomorrow. It'd be good to use threadmarks to give people a clearer sense of the purpose of each chapter (Kennedy assassination revelations, 96 election, etc) without giving the whole game away.
Thanks everyone and apologies for my novice-ness with the system, here.
Threadmarks added to chapters - hopefully I did it right and it's easier to navigate. Kudos to @SilentSpaniard for inspiring the title for Chapter 17 - I couldn't help it.
Chapter 20 - Some Damned Thing in the Balkans
(20)
November 9, 1998
November 9, 1998
A photo of twisted bodies lying beside blood-stained rifles sat on the table before Karaschuk; he hastily covered it with a folder as his aide approached. “The ministers’ conference is about to begin, sir,” the aide noted, and with a quiet nod, he followed the young man through a pair of open doors into an ornate room.
“...We’ve spent ourselves into the damn ground with this Chechen business,” said Viktor Chernomyrdin, the latest premier Karaschuk served, a man soon to be out of a job without realizing it. “We’re in danger of relapsing into the condition we were in earlier in the decade. More strikes. More bank failures. More babushkas filling ox carts with rubles to buy groceries. We can’t afford any more ‘patriotic endeavors.’ Do you all understand?”
Russia was in the middle of escaping turmoil, not sinking into it – much as the Neanderthals I’ve been serving as ‘deputy’ to would imagine otherwise, Karaschuk thought. Of all people, the ‘gas man’ should realize that. Chernomyrdin seized the opportunities of 1989-1991 to gain effective control of the Russian gas industry, which among other sectors was powering a significant recovery from the near-total collapse of earlier 1998. That catastrophe, driven by the ruble’s plunging value, the government’s mounting unpaid bills, declining demand for oil and nonferrous metals, and the Asian financial crisis, triggered strikes, cabinet reshuffles, and open calls for Zhirinovsky’s resignation.
Through it all, Karaschuk kept Moscow machinations at bay and economic matters an arm’s length away. While many of his friends and aides privately called him “Mr. Prime Minister,” he remained in the deputy’s slot, leveraging his profound sway over Zhirinovsky to focus his time on restoring Russian pride through victory on the battlefield. And what a victory it’d been: in the span of sixty days, the Russian army swept over its initial finish line at the Terek River and encircled Grozny proper. Ruthless in conflict, Karaschuk spared nothing to put the Chechens down, ordering the firing of multiple SCUD missiles into Grozny and leaving what may well have been hundreds of civilians dead. Nonetheless, his tight administration ensured that the Russian public saw order being restored and little else.
Now Russia was set to revive. World oil prices were beginning to rise again, ensuring that a commodity price-driven boom would soon follow. And currency devaluation hadn’t been bad for everyone: imports plummeted by nearly half over the course of 1998, unmasking the great unused productive capacity of the Russian economy. Domestic producers filled the gaps as only they could. With reforms to the judicial system and tax code designed to enhance Russia’s economic competitiveness on the way, the future truly looked bright once again. Yet Aleksandr Karaschuk didn’t worry over any of this. He was still fixated on questions of foreign policy.
“Sorry I’m late, gentlemen. You were saying, Chernomyrdin?”
The whole table turned to face him. No one spoke.
“Well, is it doomsday or what? I walked by a few shops on the way here. Someone really needs to let the grocer know the world’s going to hell. He just wanted to shake my hand. In any event, whenever this diatribe is finished, I have an update for you.”
“Go ahead,” Chernomyrdin said, bowing to the man who in deed, if not in title, held sway in the room.
“Milošević’s delegation arrives tomorrow. As you are all aware, they’ve been contending with flareups among the Albanian population in Kosovo. I believe that they intend to sound us out for possible support in case they decide to apply a heavy hand.”
“What sort of support?” a minister asked.
“They expect economic sanctions from the west. And, of course, the potential for a NATO bombing campaign is present. They will want us to provide some form of economic aid to offset the damages, as Milošević likely cannot afford another domestic economic crisis. As usual, we will stall at the Security Council, but I suspect they will want us to ‘plant our feet,’ so to speak. If NATO threatens an air campaign, they will wish for us to make clear that aggressive action will be met with a response.”
“Risk a war with the United States over some silly Balkan dustup? As we’re paying railway workers with hopes and dreams? I don’t think so,” Chernomyrdin replied.
“You’re overestimating the United States. The Americans are embroiled in one domestic controversy after another – it seems Clinton may not even make it to a second term – and their people are still furious over the cost of the war in Somalia. They will not fight, and if they won’t fight, the French, British, and Germans certainly won’t.”
“So, you’re proposing we follow the Serb madman off the cliff?” Chernomyrdin asked, arms in folded fury.
“No. I am proposing that we do more than he asks. I believe we should tell him that he has our support for another attempt at severing Republika Srpska from Bosnia.”
Audible gasps filled the room. The Bush administration, exhausted from its failures in Somalia and disinterested in entangling the United States in another bloody conflict, briefly aided the Croatians and Bosniaks from the air in early 1995, driving Serb forces back and forcing Milošević and his clients in Republika Srpska to the negotiating table. The first Bosnian War thus came to an end in a stalemate, the product of a hastily assembled peace in London. Breaking that peace just four years after the ink went dry would serve as a major provocation to NATO, risking international condemnation – or worse.
“The United States and its NATO allies are used to promising war over this or that with little chance of it actually happening. Let’s test them. Their publics want nothing to do with war and their politicians will go out of their way to avoid it. Sure, they’ve all got their share of domestic saber-rattlers. All the more reason we should stand firm, to show the warmongers that their chest-puffing means nothing at all. If the threats come down, we send a motorized rifle division to Belgrade to be held in reserve. They talk. We act.”
Chernomyrdin chuckled, throwing his head back in exasperation.
“You’re going to tell us you got this intelligence from your old man, aren’t you?” he said. “The senile one who can barely find his way around a Vladivostok fish market, that one. He put you up to this, didn’t he?”
Karaschuk glared into his eyes, not furious – focused.
“Hale Boggs forgot more about American politics than you will ever know. I learned all that I know of their foibles, their strengths, their weaknesses, all of it from him. He was an honest man who tried to uncover the truth. They tried to kill him. The American public may be reckoning with this now – it may be reckoning with a lot of things now, like learning what a bunch of libertines its leaders are – but Hale Boggs knew it for years. And thanks to him, I knew it for years. So I say this, gentlemen: we provide Milošević and his delegation assurances when they arrive. I stake my place in the government on it. If it fails, I will resign the next day.”
Always upping the ante, Chernomyrdin thought. Karaschuk normally kept quiet, preferring to work the corners of the room to thrusting himself front and center, but when he spoke, he could roar like a lion. This display of bravado won the room over, as men rapped on the table and muttered approval.
I should really get back into business, Chernomyrdin mused. Politics isn’t my game.
Chapter 21 - An Announcement in Shea Stadium
(21)
July 16, 1999
July 16, 1999
Seventy-five thousand people packed into every inch of Shea Stadium. It would’ve occurred just across town, but the Yankees were hosting the Braves, and as later observers would note, the Mets’ home park was a more suitable, neutral venue for such a fundamentally American event anyway.
There were posters: some homemade, some purchased from the flock of scalpers in the parking lots and near the subway stations. The scalpers sold a poster that even years later would fetch a commanding price as a collectible. A freelance photographer shooting for the Associated Press captured John in profile, glancing to the sky just as his father had in 1961 portrait. The image, transformed by unnamed artists, stenciled in red and blue with words like “HOPE” and “CHANGE” and “WHOLE AGAIN,” formed the basis of the posters, which fluttered around in the wind next to American flags and long, homemade banners with slogans like “WE <3 YOU, JOHN-JOHN,” and “KENNEDY IN 2000.”
There were megafans: Kennedy’s book, Civic Courage, debuted to mixed reviews from the critics, but stood atop the bestseller lists for the first six months of 1999. Filled with moving (if, as the critics noted, rather empty) paeans to his fallen father, gripping autobiographical moments detailing his emotional reaction to the Boggs revelations (yet, as the critics noted, little of his actual views of those revelations) and strange, if to the average reader incisive, asides about the underrated presidency of Chester Arthur, a certain highborn set joked that “most people bought it to read exactly two pages: the front and back covers, the ones with the biggest pictures of John-John.” Still, many waited in the sun clutching their signed copies as they waited for a glimpse of the man himself.
The crosstalk of tens of thousands can fill a space with ambient noise, but as the lights fell, the crowd went silent. A long, peninsular stage extending into the crowd began to light up along its edges and the first cheers went up. A man emerged from backstage; he was not Kennedy, but an aged singer in a beret with square-rimmed glasses. He walked to a stool and a guitar at the end of the stage and sat down, smiling at the crowd.
“I’m so happy to be with all of you tonight,” he said. He was Dion, a king of early 1960s doo-wop who later transformed himself into a real songwriter, or at least that’s how he saw it. He’d arrived to sing the song he believed catapulted him into serious – from “The Wanderer” and “Runaround Sue” to a real social commentator.
“Well, let’s all sing it together now, huh?” Dion said, as the lights concentrated their focus in on him and the strings blared over the PA system.
Has anybody here
Seen my old friend John
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people, but it seems the good, well, they die young
I just looked around, and he’s gone
Seen my old friend John
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people, but it seems the good, well, they die young
I just looked around, and he’s gone
Behind him, a massive screen lit up with the image of young John-John saluting to his father’s casket as it rolled down Pennsylvania Avenue, the little boy in his bright turquoise peacoat fighting back sadness with pure confusion. Now thousands were singing in unison, and Dion set his guitar down.
Has anybody here
Seen my old friend John
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people, but it seems the good, well, they die young
I just looked around, and he’s gone
Seen my old friend John
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people, but it seems the good, well, they die young
I just looked around, and he’s gone
The older man stood up, leaned into the microphone, and exhaled. “Now, I need to go. It’s time for you to hear from my old friend John.”
The crowd roared. Once again, the lights went dark. Strings intoned over the PA system into the thousands waiting to hear. A single guitar’s riff cut through the layers, and a voice beamed in over it:
The heart is a bloom
Shoots up through the stony ground
There’s no room
No space to rent in this town
Shoots up through the stony ground
There’s no room
No space to rent in this town
A few lights – signs of the main event! The front rows jumped with anticipation, and thousands stood from their seats.
You’re out of luck
And the reason that you had to care
The traffic is stuck
And you’re not moving anywhere
And the reason that you had to care
The traffic is stuck
And you’re not moving anywhere
Lights went up to illuminate the campaign’s banners: “NEW LEADERSHIP FOR THE NEW MILLENIUM,” “CHANGE FOR ALL OF US.” The singing continued to pipe through the PA system:
You thought you’d found a friend
To take you out of this place
Someone you could lend a hand
In return for grace
To take you out of this place
Someone you could lend a hand
In return for grace
Now all the lights leapt to life, beaming across the stage as fireworks flew off behind it. Drums thundered, and the choir joined in unison with the lead singer:
It’s a beautiful day
Sky falls, you feel like
It’s a beautiful day
Don’t let it get away
Sky falls, you feel like
It’s a beautiful day
Don’t let it get away
Across the stage, Caroline, Jack, Teddy, and countless other Kennedys walked to the fore, several locked arm in arm. The leaping crowd, an undulating mass of humanity before them, hollered with delight. The family waved to the audience, and after several minutes of rapt applause, John began to speak:
“Thank you, thank you! Thank you so much, New York! You are, and you will always be, home for me. I know so many of you traveled from far, far away and waited in the heat to be here today. I can only hope that the humble words I’ve come to offer to you – after all, I am many things, but I am not the speaker my father was – will have made it all worth your while.
“I have lived no ordinary life. When I was just three years old, I waved farewell to my father for the last time. My uncle – who also fell to the assassin’s bullet before my tenth birthday – said of my father, the late President Kennedy, that ‘his idea was that this country, that this world, should be a better place when we turn it over to the next generation than it was when we inherited it from the last generation.’ It was a herculean task for my father, but he maintained his strength because of you.
“You, the elderly, struggling to maintain house and home against mounting bills.
“You, the citizens of this country treated as second-class citizens solely because you weren’t white.
“You, the poor, the workers, the middle class and all those struggling to reach it. You – the people. You sustained him. You gave him life. You gave him an energy so bright that no killer could snuff it out.
“And I know, Dad, that you are here with us today. Your courage sustained us then, and it sustains us again now.”
Applause shook the building.
“Thank you. Now, I must return to what Robert F. Kennedy so eloquently said of John F. Kennedy: that he believed our children and grandchildren should inherit a better country and a better world than the one we inherited.
“As we look around at America today, can we truly believe that we are leaving it better than we found it? Our children are turning to the twin scourges of drugs and alcohol – and their parents aren’t far behind. Our schoolyards are turning into battlefields. Just a few months ago, we witnessed the horrors of Littleton. So many young, beautiful lives, so much potential erased.
“Death and sorrow follow us everywhere. The lost and confused turn to false prophets who promise prosperity and salvation but deliver little more than an early grave, as so many innocents discovered in a New Mexico desert just a few years ago. Others seek salvation through destruction, as the bomber who struck in Dallas believed he could achieve.
“This decay – this despair – it is a symptom, not the disease. Ours is a disease of the soul. It is what happens when a society loses hope, faith, a shared set of values. The values that turn a set of streets into a community and a set of laws and boundaries into a nation.
“We are as prosperous as we have ever been. Some would claim we’re more prosperous than ever. But what is prosperity without purpose? Without a sense of higher obligation, a commitment that extends beyond self-indulgence, that says to one’s fellow human being, “you are my brother, my sister – you are a person of worth,” without these things, we are rudderless.
“How can we rebuild that sense of shared responsibility – that trust – with the people we have in power today? I speak not only of the figureheads whose personal failings we can see, like the White House that dragged us deeper into Somalia to preserve its poll numbers, or the men who said, “read my lips” and “I never told anybody to lie.” I speak of the tens of thousands of nameless, faceless bureaucrats with the power to change lives – or, as we’ve learned, to erase them – with the single stroke of the pen. The state beneath the state.
“We have the power to begin our country again, but only if we welcome a new generation. A generation untainted by the cynicism of the old. A generation filled with the optimism and the promise of all the goodness of the human spirit, tempered by the storms of experience, yet never yielding in its faith that a better tomorrow is possible. It is time for that next generation.
“And so, my friends, I am here to tell you that I, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Junior, am seeking the office of President of the United States.”
The lights and pyrotechnics that followed were later criticized as a bit ‘over the top,’ but in the moment, it felt as close to a rockstar performance as any could imagine. When the joyous cheers faded, Kennedy got down to business.
“As your president, I will offer a new agenda for the American people.
“One: we must transform the federal bureaucracy, modernizing and professionalizing the engines of government as brave, forgotten leaders did a hundred and twenty years ago. We will impose new standards for accountability and new punishments for those who exceed their legal authorities. Nowhere is this action more needed than as regards our intelligence community, and nowhere will the action be swifter and stronger than it will be for the intelligence community.
“As a wise man named Hale Boggs once said,” Kennedy began to roars of the crowd at the mere mention of the elder statesman’s name. “’We have granted to the elite and secret police within our system vast new powers over the lives and liberties of the people.’ Those powers have gone too far if they treat the constitution as a suggestion and sanction murder without repercussion. I will supplement the work of the Special Commission on Assassinations with a new one dedicated to concrete policy reforms. And if our new commission recommends it, I will splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the wind.”
Cheers turned into a crowd rendition of ‘America the Beautiful’ illuminated by the lights of thousands of lighters – and an increasing number of cellular phones.
“Second, we must channel our nation’s energy and its economic might to a higher purpose. Our technological prowess in the world is unmatched, and we must use it to demonstrate American leadership. For the source of our greatness – the thing that makes us the envy of the world over – is not just our military might, but the economic, the scientific, the technological greatness that inspires all.
“So as my father pledged we would set foot on the surface of the moon in ten years, I pledge that we will return to it by 2010, setting up a permanent home for research and exploration. As the Democratic Party pledged a great program of public works to overcome the scourge of economic malaise, I pledge to reinvest our coming budget surplus to combat poverty, transform our schools, and build a new, clean energy-powered system of transcontinental railroads to foster our transition to a healthier planet for all. We can do great things, and we should do great things again.
“Finally, we must send the new generation forth into the world with a spirit of community, shared humanity, and volunteerism – to send the message that America is here to help. I will triple President Clinton’s commitment to the AmeriCorps program, one of the few bright lights in a painful four years. I will quadruple our commitment to the Peace Corps. These investments will ensure that the next generation moves hearts and minds, whether in East St. Louis or the nations of the former Eastern Bloc.
“These may seem hopeless dreams to a nation conditioned to think small. But we’ve never bent the arc of history with incrementalism. Rather than allowing the pain of the 1990s to destroy us, let it fuel us. If you’ll join me on this journey, I know we can slough off our fears. For as my father once said, ‘the energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it – and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
“Thank you, God bless you, and let’s get to work!”
Thanks! I do find the repercussions of a Lewinsky scandal in a first Clinton term rather than a second a fascinating thing as is this whole story. Very unique POD…keep up the good work!
Chapter 22 - Jahiliyyah
(22)
August 3, 1999
August 3, 1999
The road from Tuzla was still littered with corpses. The Serbs long since had their way with it. The remnants of those who tried in vain to flee – suitcases flung open, shirts, dresses, schoolbooks, medicine bottles, toiletries, and the degrees that once hung on peaceful walls, those final vestiges of a life long since past when Serb and Bosnian lived side by side, scattered across the pavement and the dirt. Twisted bodies bloated from the sun laid in humiliating contortions, some soaked in puddles, others left half-clothed. Burnt-out scrap metal remained where cars once sat. The Egyptian pressed a handkerchief to his face to stifle the smell, but it also caught his tears.
And the Prophet was visited by an angel, and the angel spoke to him and called him to serve as the messenger of God on Earth through recitation. And the Prophet said to the angel, ‘what then should I recite?’ The angel said, ‘recite thus: in the name of thy Lord who created, created man of a blood clot, and thy Lord is the most bountiful, who taught by the pen, taught man what he knew not. No, indeed, surely man waxes insolent, for he thinks himself self-sufficient. Surely unto thy Lord is the returning.
They believed they were safe. They believed they were safe.
“The Serbs approached from over there,” the Egyptian’s tour guide said, gesturing in the distance. “Tanks, APCs, heavy artillery. The men, they were drunk from beginning to end. I saw it. You see these cigarettes on the ground? Mostly from the soldiers. They’d flick them at people before they opened up with the PKMs. Horrible, horrible sight.”
And the Prophet said, “Intoxicants come from these two trees,” and he pointed to the grapevines and the date-palms. And so if it intoxicates in a large amount, it is forbidden even in a small amount.
“They surrounded quite a few villages and such around here,” the tour guide continued. “Made sure to cut off the escape routes. The dogs. You could hear them singing and dancing by their fires at night. They treated the whole spectacle like they were on holiday. Rapacious. I don’t know how we’ll ever get rid of them now.”
Then, following misery, He sent down upon you a feeling of security, a slumber overcoming a party among you, while another party cared only for themselves, thinking false thoughts about God, thoughts fit for the Age of Idolatry. Jahiliyyah.
You trusted them. You trusted their planes and their bombs and their tanks and their guns and their politicians and their peace summits. They came once, and you let them lull you to sleep. The guns they turned to your enemies can be turned away from your enemies, too – and they can even turn the guns on you. Oh, our brothers in Somalia. Oh, our brothers who live in subjugation, ignorance, and idolatry from the Atlantic coast of Morocco to the highlands of Afghanistan. This is your future. Ruin.
“We can’t go much farther,” the tour guide said as the Egyptian stood motionless over the body of a young child. “They have too many checkpoints. You only need to look at them the wrong way for them to shoot you. You understand this, you’ve seen what they’d done in Chechnya. Repulsive infidels.”
The whole Islamic world, lulled to sleep. Lulled by decadent rulers who felt they could emulate these godless demons, lusting after nothing but gold-braided uniforms and fancy German luxury cars. The price is dependence – and defenselessness. The price is this.
The two men walked away from the scene, hoping to return to safety before the Serbs returned. The Egyptian would leave soon, first for Turkey and then for the fraught journey to Central Asia, where he would report what he’d seen to his compatriots in Afghanistan. He was on one of his frequent vanishings – officially, he lived in Hamburg, but fell off the radar quite often in the late 1990s – and wouldn’t be back for a long while now, if ever. His purpose was clear before he arrived in Bosnia. Now it was even clearer.
“You will talk to them about the volunteers, will you?” the tour guide asked. “We could use anybody. If they come with a rifle ready to fire it, they’re welcome here.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Mohammed Atta, the Egyptian, replied. “Be well, brother. Be safe.”
Many thanks! I agree, it's really interesting to consider. Condensing Clinton's challenges into a single term really tests the limits of his (considerable) deftness.
Really appreciate it! The 2000 election is going to be a really fun part of this.
Oh snap
Well hello there. 😱
I see an even greater intelligence failure happening on the US side but it might be countered by the Russians providing good intel to stop a plot and building goodwill.
Or 9/11 happens against Russia and the US.