We're pretty much seeing a Rummy that was reduced by circumstances (and then went a bit loony from that). Then the loony Rummy got in power.
Even Cheney thinks he's mad.
Rumsfeldia: Fear and Loathing in the Decade of Tears
- Thread starter Drew
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Even Cheney thinks he's mad.
Of course it had to be Sarah Palin (yes I know she's still a Heath right now, but you get the point) who fucks it up for everyone.
Also, why in the name of Hades are ROC and ROK killing each other so drastically again? AFAIK they don't have any disputes that warrants a death struggle apart from land in China, which itself is very odd, since the ROK has literally no claim on any Cheese lands other than Manchuria (you could point to the Goguryeo Kingdom for that one, but even then it's stretching things a bit), and IIRC there are no ROC forces north of the Yangtze.
Marc A
Also, why in the name of Hades are ROC and ROK killing each other so drastically again? AFAIK they don't have any disputes that warrants a death struggle apart from land in China, which itself is very odd, since the ROK has literally no claim on any Cheese lands other than Manchuria (you could point to the Goguryeo Kingdom for that one, but even then it's stretching things a bit), and IIRC there are no ROC forces north of the Yangtze.
Marc A
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Can someone give me a recap on what's happened internationally? China, India, the Middle East. I don't want to have to hunt through hundreds of pages.
It's not a guarantee that Rumsfeld will nuke American territory, or even that he'll try. But that door certainly seems to be opened.
As for the US military removing him... Unlikely on its face. The Pentagon plotters shot their bolt, the high command is purged and there are probably ongoing purges through the officer corps. 'Christian' Political officers are being inserted and the Christian movement is trying to colonize the army. Morale is crap, key functions are being outsourced. I don't think that the US military is capable, on its own, of taking independent action. It's broken. It will be a tool of one side or the other.
I'm hunting back to the beginning.
Okay, seems like in the later parts of the previous timeline, Nixon's China initiative was shut down hard after Nixon was taken out of office and a hard line Agnew administration came in. The subsequent administrations continued the hard line policy in terms of dealing with China. The failure of Nixon's venture resulted in the disgrace or loss of face of Chinese moderates like Chou En Lai and Deng Xioao Peng. Their stars dropped, and other rivals and hard liners rose instead.
China came under the control of someone known as the 'Lesser Mao', a nephew of Mao Tse Tung who ruled in the name of the sick and dying Mao. He outmaneuvered Mao's wife, Chiang Ching, herself discredited somewhat by the Cultural revolution, and Chou En Lai's damaged faction, and parlayed his access to and influence over Mao into political dominance. He continued to rule through his uncle, concealing the death of Mao. He seems to have been a right nutter, mismanaging the place even more catastrophically than Mao. Insecure about his position, which was based on authority derived from a sick and dying man (and then concealing that death to maintain his authority) he gave full vent to paranoia, continually purging anything and anyone around him, in a manner reminiscent of the excesses of Stalin, Pol Pot, the French Revolution's 'Terror.' Surrounded by sycophants the regime retreated into unreality and delusion, buoyed by perpetual purges to the point of randomness. Information and administration systems broke down.
The Lesser Mao, without any grounding in practical reality, embraced ideological extremism, deciding that things like literacy were counter-revolutionary and must be purged. The regime seems to have sustained itself somewhat by massive heroin cultivation and production, with a heroin epidemic hitting America. But these were one of the few successes of his regime. There was a short disastrous war with the USSR over Mongolia in 1973. Then following America's resolution of its Indochinese war, the Lesser Mao chose to invade Indochina himself, coming into conflict with Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and North and South Vietnam. In OTL China had invaded Vietnam in 1982, but gave it up as a bad job. In this timeline, the Lesser Mao regime was so removed from reality that literally, there was no one in China who could come back and report that it was a disaster. Instead, failure was not an option, and China continued to grind away disastrously, far beyond its logistical abilities, its soldiers literally unsupplied and starving.
Things went badly, badly off the rails. As a result of famines based on mismanagement, there was a major revolt of army divisions, including those involved in the Indochina war. The Lesser Mao used nuclear weapon on them at Kwangsi, a heavily populated area. He then blamed the United States for the nuclear strike, using captured American prisoners from Vietnam. The Americans, with tacit consent of the Soviets, launched a pre-emptive nuclear strike to destroy the Chinese nuclear weapons facility at Lop Nol. A full scale war between China and America largely failed to appear because the unwillingness of the Americans to follow up, and the inability of the Chinese to respond. This appears to have split the Chinese Communist party into open revolt, but this was too little too late, as the Chinese administrative structure had been so thoroughly and relentlessly repeatedly purged that it more or less disintegrated into rotten cloth. The Communist Chinese regime seems to have dissolved into civil war and then warlordism, with a complete social breakdown. There were apparently releases of biological weapons as well as atomic weapons. Infrastructure breakdown and fighting brought about mass starvation, and the effective collapse of the Chinese state. Whole cities were depopulated, immense numbers of Chinese died, survivors reported cannibalism to survive.
Addressing the humanitarian crisis, an international response was begun, which seems to have been a cover for the dismemberment of China. Tibet fell out of the Chinese sphere, but seems to have fallen under the control of India. Meanwhile, Pakistan, encroaching or revising its borders with China came into conflict with India, which seems to have eventually lead to war between the two countries. A war where, with covert US assistance and major Indian mismanagement, Pakistan did very well in.
The Soviet Union intervened in border areas, Szechuan, Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, but avoided the interior and population centers, not wanting to be drawn into a quagmire. They supported a rump communist state on the Northeast, but overall seemed to keep their hands out. In the late eighties, they're pretty much standing idly by while North Korea bites chunks out of Manchuria. In the Chinese center and west, Muslim missionaries have managed to stabilize regions and provide for and convert the population, forming an Ad Hoc 'Islamic Republic of China.' The Russians seem unwilling to quash it, and the rump communists are unable to displace it. Even this implies more stability, as both the Islamic Republic and Rump communist state seem to be ramshackle affairs with warlords, dissidents and opportunists running wild through the region.
In the South, Burma seems to have moved into some territory, but its position is stable. Vietnam has advanced into the south of China, securing territory which borders on territories overrun by Taiwan/Kuomintang which now has mainland pretensions of being the true government of China. Meanwhile North of the Taiwan/Kuomintang territories, the South Koreans have occupied large territories. Originally, Taiwan and South Korea were junior partners of an international relief effort lead by the United States and Britain, supported by Australia, New Zealand and Japan. However, American policy through the 80's seems to have been to reduce its commitment while selling arms and sewing dissension among South Korea, Taiwan/China and North Vietnam. By the mid to late eighties, Taiwan/China and South Korea in particular have been fighting an increasingly hot undeclared war. Britain is holding onto Hong Kong and some adjacent territories, my impression is that they're overwhelmed, don't want to be there, but have no way out, so their strategy is to keep their head down as the othe parties duke it out and hope for the best. Australia and New Zealand seem to have gone home, or perhaps are rump humanitarian presences or supporting Hong Kong. The US may be holding onto a few strategic positions, but mainly seems to be stirring the pot. In the early 80's it adopted a Cheney Doctrine of attempting to break potential rivals into small states, working actively to trigger separatist movements and internal crises in India, Brazil, Britain and Canada. China was ground zero for this policy. Japan, because of its history with WWII wasn't welcome as an active player in the international consortium, and has become less and less interested in China over time. Japan's current strategy seems to be to let South Korea and Taiwan/China duke it out, rebuild its navy, re-orient its foreign policy.
Overall, China seems to have been badly damaged by the Lesser Mao period. Lots of references to collapsed and degraded infrastructure, roads being impassable for lack of maintenance, famines, plagues, disruptions, civil wars, foreign invasions. We're looking at a death toll in the hundreds of millions over the last decade, no one knows how many, but 200 million is minimum and my own assessment is probably double that. There are multiple claimants, at least two, maybe four or more, for the title of 'Chinese State' none of whom come near to ruling the whole country, and greater or lesser foreign occupations encroachments by North Korea, South Korea, the USSR, India, Pakistan, Burma, Britain and the United States, some of which are going to war with each other on Chinese soil. China is a mess.
Okay, seems like in the later parts of the previous timeline, Nixon's China initiative was shut down hard after Nixon was taken out of office and a hard line Agnew administration came in. The subsequent administrations continued the hard line policy in terms of dealing with China. The failure of Nixon's venture resulted in the disgrace or loss of face of Chinese moderates like Chou En Lai and Deng Xioao Peng. Their stars dropped, and other rivals and hard liners rose instead.
China came under the control of someone known as the 'Lesser Mao', a nephew of Mao Tse Tung who ruled in the name of the sick and dying Mao. He outmaneuvered Mao's wife, Chiang Ching, herself discredited somewhat by the Cultural revolution, and Chou En Lai's damaged faction, and parlayed his access to and influence over Mao into political dominance. He continued to rule through his uncle, concealing the death of Mao. He seems to have been a right nutter, mismanaging the place even more catastrophically than Mao. Insecure about his position, which was based on authority derived from a sick and dying man (and then concealing that death to maintain his authority) he gave full vent to paranoia, continually purging anything and anyone around him, in a manner reminiscent of the excesses of Stalin, Pol Pot, the French Revolution's 'Terror.' Surrounded by sycophants the regime retreated into unreality and delusion, buoyed by perpetual purges to the point of randomness. Information and administration systems broke down.
The Lesser Mao, without any grounding in practical reality, embraced ideological extremism, deciding that things like literacy were counter-revolutionary and must be purged. The regime seems to have sustained itself somewhat by massive heroin cultivation and production, with a heroin epidemic hitting America. But these were one of the few successes of his regime. There was a short disastrous war with the USSR over Mongolia in 1973. Then following America's resolution of its Indochinese war, the Lesser Mao chose to invade Indochina himself, coming into conflict with Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and North and South Vietnam. In OTL China had invaded Vietnam in 1982, but gave it up as a bad job. In this timeline, the Lesser Mao regime was so removed from reality that literally, there was no one in China who could come back and report that it was a disaster. Instead, failure was not an option, and China continued to grind away disastrously, far beyond its logistical abilities, its soldiers literally unsupplied and starving.
Things went badly, badly off the rails. As a result of famines based on mismanagement, there was a major revolt of army divisions, including those involved in the Indochina war. The Lesser Mao used nuclear weapon on them at Kwangsi, a heavily populated area. He then blamed the United States for the nuclear strike, using captured American prisoners from Vietnam. The Americans, with tacit consent of the Soviets, launched a pre-emptive nuclear strike to destroy the Chinese nuclear weapons facility at Lop Nol. A full scale war between China and America largely failed to appear because the unwillingness of the Americans to follow up, and the inability of the Chinese to respond. This appears to have split the Chinese Communist party into open revolt, but this was too little too late, as the Chinese administrative structure had been so thoroughly and relentlessly repeatedly purged that it more or less disintegrated into rotten cloth. The Communist Chinese regime seems to have dissolved into civil war and then warlordism, with a complete social breakdown. There were apparently releases of biological weapons as well as atomic weapons. Infrastructure breakdown and fighting brought about mass starvation, and the effective collapse of the Chinese state. Whole cities were depopulated, immense numbers of Chinese died, survivors reported cannibalism to survive.
Addressing the humanitarian crisis, an international response was begun, which seems to have been a cover for the dismemberment of China. Tibet fell out of the Chinese sphere, but seems to have fallen under the control of India. Meanwhile, Pakistan, encroaching or revising its borders with China came into conflict with India, which seems to have eventually lead to war between the two countries. A war where, with covert US assistance and major Indian mismanagement, Pakistan did very well in.
The Soviet Union intervened in border areas, Szechuan, Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, but avoided the interior and population centers, not wanting to be drawn into a quagmire. They supported a rump communist state on the Northeast, but overall seemed to keep their hands out. In the late eighties, they're pretty much standing idly by while North Korea bites chunks out of Manchuria. In the Chinese center and west, Muslim missionaries have managed to stabilize regions and provide for and convert the population, forming an Ad Hoc 'Islamic Republic of China.' The Russians seem unwilling to quash it, and the rump communists are unable to displace it. Even this implies more stability, as both the Islamic Republic and Rump communist state seem to be ramshackle affairs with warlords, dissidents and opportunists running wild through the region.
In the South, Burma seems to have moved into some territory, but its position is stable. Vietnam has advanced into the south of China, securing territory which borders on territories overrun by Taiwan/Kuomintang which now has mainland pretensions of being the true government of China. Meanwhile North of the Taiwan/Kuomintang territories, the South Koreans have occupied large territories. Originally, Taiwan and South Korea were junior partners of an international relief effort lead by the United States and Britain, supported by Australia, New Zealand and Japan. However, American policy through the 80's seems to have been to reduce its commitment while selling arms and sewing dissension among South Korea, Taiwan/China and North Vietnam. By the mid to late eighties, Taiwan/China and South Korea in particular have been fighting an increasingly hot undeclared war. Britain is holding onto Hong Kong and some adjacent territories, my impression is that they're overwhelmed, don't want to be there, but have no way out, so their strategy is to keep their head down as the othe parties duke it out and hope for the best. Australia and New Zealand seem to have gone home, or perhaps are rump humanitarian presences or supporting Hong Kong. The US may be holding onto a few strategic positions, but mainly seems to be stirring the pot. In the early 80's it adopted a Cheney Doctrine of attempting to break potential rivals into small states, working actively to trigger separatist movements and internal crises in India, Brazil, Britain and Canada. China was ground zero for this policy. Japan, because of its history with WWII wasn't welcome as an active player in the international consortium, and has become less and less interested in China over time. Japan's current strategy seems to be to let South Korea and Taiwan/China duke it out, rebuild its navy, re-orient its foreign policy.
Overall, China seems to have been badly damaged by the Lesser Mao period. Lots of references to collapsed and degraded infrastructure, roads being impassable for lack of maintenance, famines, plagues, disruptions, civil wars, foreign invasions. We're looking at a death toll in the hundreds of millions over the last decade, no one knows how many, but 200 million is minimum and my own assessment is probably double that. There are multiple claimants, at least two, maybe four or more, for the title of 'Chinese State' none of whom come near to ruling the whole country, and greater or lesser foreign occupations encroachments by North Korea, South Korea, the USSR, India, Pakistan, Burma, Britain and the United States, some of which are going to war with each other on Chinese soil. China is a mess.
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Well it looks like the shit is about to hit the fan. Not surprised to see that the coup failed (did anyone else expect Coe and Robertson to kill Palin?), but we know that Colin Powell survives, so that's something. California, Idaho, and Hawaii seceding (with Florida and Alabama looking like the next to go) and Cheney (who saw that coming?) going turncoat are probably the final nails in the coffin. My guess is that the Cuba thing goes sideways, and we get a power struggle between the Corporatists and the CV's, though how it ends is anyone's guess.
Just caught up with this flurry of posts and all I can say is; HOLY SHIT!!!
That was amazing! What's even more terrifying is that in real life the man seems just as likely to drink his own propaganda and be railroaded by that scheming bastard LeHaye! Damn him!
I can only hope those wing nuts get what is coming to them! Though tragically it doesn't seem as though that will happen for a while
That was amazing! What's even more terrifying is that in real life the man seems just as likely to drink his own propaganda and be railroaded by that scheming bastard LeHaye! Damn him!
I can only hope those wing nuts get what is coming to them! Though tragically it doesn't seem as though that will happen for a while
Japan
I wonder if Japanese companies and the government would be willing to support an independent California and Hawaii? What about Guam, the Marshalls and the Pacific bases, what happens to them?
I wonder if Japanese companies and the government would be willing to support an independent California and Hawaii? What about Guam, the Marshalls and the Pacific bases, what happens to them?
This Rummy is a different beast, one that went a bit doo-lally from his exile to the wilderness after the fall of President Agnew.
He is not the Donald Henry Rumsfeld of OTL. Two decades can massively change a man.
While I agree with your second criticism, I do have to say that the Rumsfeld portrayed here isn't that far off the mark from reality. Rumsfeld, from everything I've read about him (especially in the amazing documentary The Unknown Known), displays a dizzying capacity for self deception and "believing his own hype". I've heard it said that he's the living embodiment of the "Peter Principle": someone who's adequate at mid-level positions, but somehow manages to "fail upward". While TTL's Rumsfeld is pretty obviously a nut, I can see OTL's Rumsfeld making the same rationalizations about using the Christian Value's bloc (ironically, he's making the same mistakes Agnew did ITTL: allowing himself to be manipulated by fringe elements in a misguided belief that he's the one actually in control).
Constantinople
Banned
I wonder what sort of government emerges after this? I can imagine with leftism validated that the USA will look much different. The triumph of the 1960s Californians allied with Reagan and Nixon .
They're gonna need to redo the entire country, rebuilding its social programs from the ground up What a task... Maybe they'll do it right this time.
I just hope that the Europeans will be willing to forgive us when it's clear there are good people still fighting the good fight.
. They're gonna need to redo the entire country, rebuilding its social programs from the ground up
What a task... Maybe they'll do it right this time.I just hope that the Europeans will be willing to forgive us when it's clear there are good people still fighting the good fight.
He's at least two: conservative, and a guy.
All joking (and liberal bias) aside, Cheney OTL is nothing if not dedicated to what he believes to be best for America (and Dick Cheney), whether others agree with him or not. The second he feels Rumsfeld's off the rails, he's going to do whatever he can to correct that, whether it's refocusing Rumsfeld or replacing him.
I disagree. Cheney is dedicated to what he believes is best for Dick Cheney. Nothing else.
I agree. In that case in does make sense for him to ally with the resistance, since it's become clear that a) Rumsfeld has gone 'round the bend, b) the Christian Values people cannot hope to maintain control of the situation, and c) If he sticks around he's going to end up in either a loony-bin courtesy of Rumsfeld, or up against the wall when the revolution comes.
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