Soviet Backstab

Quite a long time ago I read an AH novel that dealt with the world after WWIII. To be honest, it wasn't the best book nor was it really the best POD, but I thought I'd float the general premise of the novel on here and see if people think it's ASB or not. If you do, feel free to tweak it.

At the height of the Cold War, the Soviets launch an attack on Western Europe and parts of Asia. The combat stays conventional, and after a month or so the West is able to stop the Soviets at a dear cost. On the eve of the peace treaty, however, the Soviets manage to assassinate much of the United States' leadership and Spetsnaz operatives disable the command & control of the US' nuclear weapons. Once this has occurred, the Russians launch a strategic nuclear strike on the US' silos and key command centers, such as NATO Supreme Headquarters. The USSR does not escape retaliation, but the damage inflicted upon it is much less than what the West suffers.

I understand that much of it sounds ASB, but I admittedly find it to be somewhat interesting. Do people think that it's too far out of left-field to be realistic AH, or is there a snowball's chance in hell this could happen?
 
Quite a long time ago I read an AH novel that dealt with the world after WWIII. To be honest, it wasn't the best book nor was it really the best POD, but I thought I'd float the general premise of the novel on here and see if people think it's ASB or not. If you do, feel free to tweak it.

At the height of the Cold War, the Soviets launch an attack on Western Europe and parts of Asia. The combat stays conventional, and after a month or so the West is able to stop the Soviets at a dear cost. On the eve of the peace treaty, however, the Soviets manage to assassinate much of the United States' leadership and Spetsnaz operatives disable the command & control of the US' nuclear weapons. Once this has occurred, the Russians launch a strategic nuclear strike on the US' silos and key command centers, such as NATO Supreme Headquarters. The USSR does not escape retaliation, but the damage inflicted upon it is much less than what the West suffers.

I understand that much of it sounds ASB, but I admittedly find it to be somewhat interesting. Do people think that it's too far out of left-field to be realistic AH, or is there a snowball's chance in hell this could happen?


No it is pretty much totally ASB. Even if you disable the bombers and silos there are still a few hundred sub based missiles. Besides that there are all those french and british nukes.
 
Probably not. In addition to the SSBNs mike oneal mentioned, there's also the fact that the Soviet ICBMs, even at the very end of the Cold War, weren't accurate enough to reliably kill US silos, even with several warheads targetted on each silo. Also, if NATO and the USSR have been fighting a ground war for the last month, the Americans are going to have as many of their bombers as they can manage in the air, round the clock, to avoid just this kind of situation.

You'd have better luck with an American backstab. In the 80s, American missiles were getting accurate enough to have a chance of taking out most of the Soviet ICBM force, and SOSUS and American ASW is good enough to have a chance of sinking most of their SSBNs. Everything would need to go Exactly Perfectly Right for the Americans, and most of Europe would be obliterated by Soviet mobile IRBMs, but it's at least a theoretical possibility.
 
The USSR's SSBNs could attack the continental USA from quite far away, and there were all kinds of security systems meant to prevent any sort of "backstab."
 
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