The Arab Spring in a Continued Cold War

This is a major event in a TL I sometimes think of doing, and would like to know how plausible it is.

A few basic assumptions to consider beforehand:

Red Afghanistan: The Soviet Union has emerged from Afghanistan with a military victory. The DRA survives, but an Islamist insurgency will continue for years to come.

The Winter of Nations: The Revolutions of 1989 have been brutally suppressed thanks to the intervention of the Red Army, ensuring the survival of the Eastern Bloc.

The War on Terror: Early in 2000, al-Qaeda launches major terrorist attacks in New York and Moscow, killing thousands of civilians. In response, the US and USSR launch a joint intervention in Sudan, the nation that harbors the terrorist group responsible for this atrocity.

The Rise and Fall of the Soviet-American Alliance and the Arab Cold War: The joint US-USSR effort is initially successful. However, it soon becomes clear that the two superpowers have very different goals for the nation. South Sudan soon becomes an independent nation under Soviet sway, while the North is under American influence. Other disagreements in the region serve to further rupture the alliance. The US denounces continued Soviet support for Syria, Libya, and Palestinian liberation groups; the Soviets decry the American alliances with Saudi Arabia, other gulf monarchies, and Israel.

The Iran-Iraq Switch and the Fall of Saddam Hussein: Since the 1990s, Ba'athist Iraq has largely been isolated by the wider world. The US has considered Iraq an enemy since the unsuccessful 1991 invasion of Kuwait, while Saddam's brutal repression of the Kurds and Iraqi Communist Party and a percieved willingness to stir conflict with the US and Israel has led the Soviets to cut ties.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union and Iran develop closer relations. Both share a mutual suspicion of increased US involvement in the Middle East; both share an opposition to Israel and support for the Palestinian cause; both share common allies in Syria and Libya. These and other motives motivate the Soviets and Iran to develop an effective military alliance by 2005. Emboldened by this new alliance, the Iranians, with Soviet and Syrian support, eventually provoke a Shiite revolution in Iraq that overthrows Saddam by 2010.

With this scenario in mind, how might the Arab Spring develop in a world still dominated by US-USSR competition? What effect would the failure of the Eastern Bloc democracy movements have on it? Might it kick off earlier, the Shiite revolution in Iraq prompting similar uprisings in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain? Might we still see civil wars in Syria and Libya? What of the Yemens, still separated into North and South thanks to the continuation of the Cold War? Would the US act to save Mubarak? Would the US and the USSR be as willing to intervene in the Middle East as they have in OTL, or might the risk of superpower confrontation lead them to take a more hands off approach?
 
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Cook

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The Winter of Nations: The Revolutions of 1989 have been brutally suppressed thanks to the intervention of the Red Army, ensuring the survival of the Eastern Bloc.

There's a bit of an obstacle here, and that is to do with exactly why the Red Army wasn't used to suppress unrest in Eastern Europe in the 1980s, and why, if the Red Army had been used, ah la Budapest in '56 and Prague '68, the Soviet Union would have collapsed even faster. By the 1980s the Soviets were heavily dependent on credit from the west, principally from West Germany; not only was Moscow taking out loans to pay for wheat to feed their own people, but they were also underwriting the loans of East Germany and Poland, taken out on a yearly basis to pay for pretty much everything; by 1983 Poland's debts, underwritten by Moscow, amounted to over $60 billion. Each year the country would take out fresh loans, use one third to pay the interest on previous loans, and the rest to pay the wages of government employees. It was a ludicrous situation that required two things to continue, absolute secrecy about just how bad the East's finances really were, and an ongoing willingness for the west to continue providing loans. If the soviets had sent in the army to crush dissidents, that credit would have most likely been stopped in the face of public outcry in the west, and the resulting unrest when salaries ceased being paid and even bread disappeared from Moscow streets would have made the protests we did see look puny in comparison.

Quite frankly, the only way you realistically have a longer lived Soviet Union is by having Khrushchev's reforms be continued, sans Khrushchev of course. And that makes for a very different 1970s and 80s, and probably sees the demise of the Warsaw Pact earlier rather than later.
 
Assuming an Arab Spring of some sort happens, I think the United States and the Soviet Union would each try to keep their allied Arab regimes in power (or at least the geopolitically important ones). The U.S. would prop up the Egyptian government to prevent an anti-U.S. faction like the Muslim Brotherhood or pro-Soviet leftists from coming to power. Likewise, the Soviets would try to keep the Assad regime in power in Syria to prevent Islamist or pro-U.S. factions from taking over.

In the scenario presented here, I could easily see Iraq descending into a civil war between Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish factions. The Soviets and Iranians would support the Shiites, while the Americans might support the Sunnis if they can get a U.S.-friendly government into power. The Kurds would probably have Soviet support, since the main Kurdish political groups tend to be leftist, and because Kurdish nationalism in Iraq could provoke a Kurdish uprising in Turkey, potentially weakening a critical NATO member; however, Kurds in Soviet-allied Syria and Iran could also rise up, which may not be best for the USSR's interests in the region. TTL's Iraqi civil war, like the Syrian civil war in OTL, could easily destabilize the Middle East and spill into neighboring countries.

I don't think either superpower would be willing to launch a direct military intervention in the Middle East due to the fear of escalating the situation into World War III. They would prefer to fight each other via proxy conflicts, just like in the OTL Cold War.

Due to butterfly effects from the POD, I don't except TTL's Arab Spring to play out the same way as in OTL. Some of the underlying factors will probably still be present, such as authoritarianism, extreme wealth inequality, political corruption, and demographic structural problems (such as large populations of educated but unemployed/underemployed youth in Arab countries during the 2000s). But other factors could be significantly altered. For example, rising food prices were one of the biggest catalysts for OTL's Arab Spring, since Arab countries generally import most of their food. In 2010, Russia experienced a series of devastating wildfires (the result of an extreme drought) that destroyed one-third of the country's wheat harvest. As a result, the Russian government refused to export the rest of its wheat harvest and banned the export of grain. This caused global food prices to skyrocket, hitting Egypt and other Arab countries especially hard. Another contributor to rising food prices was the increasing use of grain crops to produce biofuels. Yet another factor was commodity speculation in 2007-08 and 2010-11. Those three factors worked together to inflate global food prices and helped trigger the unrest in the Arab world. Those three factors could be altered in various ways, which would influence the emergence of an Arab Spring.
 

raharris1973

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If the Soviets occupy South Sudan, I guess they still support communist governments in Ethiopia and Somalia? That would interesting, a communist east Africa block.

Why would there be terrorist attacks in New York? If a Islamic insurgency was still ongoing in Afghanistan, wouldn't Al Queda still be part of the mujahadeen? And still be getting CIA funding and arms? Why would they attack their main supplier? Only after Afghanistan was liberated did Osama Bin Laden and other Islamic groups turned against the US (and after the Gulf War with the supposed disrespect of American troops in Saudi Arabia). Another big reason was US aid to Israel. If the Soviets continue to fund Palestian groups, why would other Islamic groups attack Moscow?

Why would Iran, which strongly condemned the Afghan invasion, ally with the Soviets?

The Afghan invasion created a huge uproar throughout the Islamic world. Several jihads were declared. Sunni and Shias condemned the invasion. I don't see any Islamic group targeting the US while the Soviets are occupying a Muslim nation.

The Arab spring started because of....

1. Economic downturns from the Great Recession. If the Soviet Union continues to last and fund allied governments/movements around the world, the global economic situation would be vastly different. We wouldn't have the 90s economic boom, so would the housing crash still occur?

2. The US under Obamacare stopped supporting US allied dictators. The US supported dictators around the world during the Cold War. (Greece, Iraq, Philippines, Spain, South Korea, Chile, etc). If the Cold War kept going, these dictators would turn to the Soviets to stay in power, and Moscow would love more allies. So the US would continue to arm and fund the Arab dictators, so no movements could arise.

Of course, the Soviets could fund civil wars like OTL Syria. Once again, the Islamic movement wouldn't turn their attention away from Soviet occupied Afghstian

This is way too reductionist. Islamists attacked western allies and interests in the 1980s, even while to the Soviet-Afghan War was still going on.
 
Why would Iran, which strongly condemned the Afghan invasion, ally with the Soviets?

Because US policy blunders could easily end up pushing the Soviets and Iran into bed?

I could easily imagine, for example, if the US had supported Iraq more in the Iran-Iraq war, the Iranians would be able to learn to overlook Soviet actions in Afghanistan.

The Arab spring started because of....

You miss the role of (3) food scarcity. There was not only an intense economic downturn throughout the middle east but also severe climatic stress driving peasants into the cities and curtailing local food production even as several major food exporters had various disasters happen to major crops (especially the wheat crop).

Suddenly prosperous middle class families weren't able to feed themselves. And hungry middle classes are always especially dangerous for a regime.

The War on Terror: Early in 2000, al-Qaeda launches major terrorist attacks in New York and Moscow, killing thousands of civilians. In response, the US and USSR launch a joint intervention in Sudan, the nation that harbors the terrorist group responsible for this atrocity.

I think it is important to keep in mind just how intense the Cold War rivalry between the US and the USSR was. The US especially heavily re-tooled its domestic political arrangements to fight the struggle. Hatred of Russia and Communism was woven deep into the American national psyche. It is very difficult for me to imagine the US accepting Soviet aid to chase terrorists in Sudan even if the Soviets seriously offered their aid.

I think there is a very real risk that if the Cold War were continuing today, Islamism might still rise in the Middle East but it would be either aligned with the US, aligned with the USSR, or with different brands of Islamists aligned with the two superpowers. Much as the Nationalistic struggles in Asia and Africa drove so much Cold War rivalry in the 50s, 60s and 70s, Islamist struggles could turbo-charge the Cold War.

There's a bit of an obstacle here, and that is to do with exactly why the Red Army wasn't used to suppress unrest in Eastern Europe in the 1980s, and why, if the Red Army had been used, ah la Budapest in '56 and Prague '68, the Soviet Union would have collapsed even faster. By the 1980s the Soviets were heavily dependent on credit from the west, principally from West Germany; not only was Moscow taking out loans to pay for wheat to feed their own people, but they were also underwriting the loans of East Germany and Poland, taken out on a yearly basis to pay for pretty much everything; by 1983 Poland's debts, underwritten by Moscow, amounted to over $60 billion. Each year the country would take out fresh loans, use one third to pay the interest on previous loans, and the rest to pay the wages of government employees. It was a ludicrous situation that required two things to continue, absolute secrecy about just how bad the East's finances really were, and an ongoing willingness for the west to continue providing loans. If the soviets had sent in the army to crush dissidents, that credit would have most likely been stopped in the face of public outcry in the west, and the resulting unrest when salaries ceased being paid and even bread disappeared from Moscow streets would have made the protests we did see look puny in comparison.

Quite frankly, the only way you realistically have a longer lived Soviet Union is by having Khrushchev's reforms be continued, sans Khrushchev of course. And that makes for a very different 1970s and 80s, and probably sees the demise of the Warsaw Pact earlier rather than later.

Khrushchev certainly did some things right. I'm not so sure that his reforms continuing would be good for Soviet survival however. And certainly, I don't think it is the only way you could get a longer lived Soviet Union.

Nor do I agree that the Soviets could not have crushed dissent in Eastern Europe without some success - one of the reasons why things spiralled out of control in OTL in the WarPac satellites is that people saw that the Soviets were unwilling to intervene, so they gained the courage to go out on the streets to demand more change.

fasquardon
 
Quite frankly, the only way you realistically have a longer lived Soviet Union is by having Khrushchev's reforms be continued, sans Khrushchev of course. And that makes for a very different 1970s and 80s, and probably sees the demise of the Warsaw Pact earlier rather than later.

Yeah, I go back and forth on whether I should allow the East Bloc to collapse in the early 90s or whether I should somehow keep it in place. The former is definitely more realistic, partly due to the economic problems you mention and partly because there wasn't a whole lot of love for Moscow among the peoples of Eastern Europe.

I agree that the Soviet economy has to be improved somehow, the earlier the better. Perhaps such reforms could spread across the East Bloc, allowing for a more economically viable COMECON/Warsaw Pact to survive? At the same time you'd have to avoid more liberal political reforms from taking place, or (as you mentioned) you take away the Soviet hard power that kept the Eastern Bloc nations from breaking away.


Thank you for informing me of the factors I hadn't considered that had led to the Arab Spring IOTL - I hadn't known about the Russian wildfires and biofuel causing rising food prices. I need to do a better job of considering how environmental and economic factors might be altered and how to incorporate that into my TLs.

A lot of what you said is similar to what I've been considering happening in my TL (though it does eventually turn into WW3). The Kurdish issue is one I struggle with as well. I've decided that I'll have the Russians treat them as they have IOTL; a useful tool when being used to destabilize enemies like Turkey, but an antagonistic pain in the ass when trying to break away from allied nations like Syria. The US might treat the Kurds similar to how we treat them OTL as well - a strange balancing act where we support them against our enemies but also support Turkey.

Why would there be terrorist attacks in New York? If a Islamic insurgency was still ongoing in Afghanistan, wouldn't Al Queda still be part of the mujahadeen? And still be getting CIA funding and arms? Why would they attack their main supplier? Only after Afghanistan was liberated did Osama Bin Laden and other Islamic groups turned against the US (and after the Gulf War with the supposed disrespect of American troops in Saudi Arabia). Another big reason was US aid to Israel. If the Soviets continue to fund Palestian groups, why would other Islamic groups attack Moscow?

I've thought this through a bit, though it might be a lot of handwaving. Al-Qaeda is part of the Muj, but relocated to Sudan in the late 80s after the Fall of Afghanistan. The CIA cuts off funding for the remnants of the Afghan Muj in the mid-1990s as part of a renewed detente with the USSR thanks to the rise of moderate leaderships in both nations during that time. This "betrayal", combined with anti-American sentiments thanks to the stationing of US troops in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (the Gulf War still happens ITTL) fuels alt!al-Qaeda to consider both the US and USSR as enemies, their preexisting opposition to the "Crusader heretics" of America and "Godless Communists" of Russia notwithstanding.

Why would Iran, which strongly condemned the Afghan invasion, ally with the Soviets?

The Afghan invasion created a huge uproar throughout the Islamic world. Several jihads were declared. Sunni and Shias condemned the invasion. I don't see any Islamic group targeting the US while the Soviets are occupying a Muslim nation.

I tried to explain the Soviet-Iranian rapprochement in the OP. Essentially, the Soviets and Iranians recognize that they have mutual enemies in the form of the US and Israel (and to a lesser extent Iraq), mutual allies in the form of Syria and Libya, and beneficial economic interests; all these factors lead the two to approach one another as allies. The Iranians gain a major economic and military ally in their struggle against the twin Satans of America and Israel; the Soviets gain greater sway in Middle Eastern affairs, warm-water ports on the Persian Gulf, the ability to control the Strait of Hormuz, end of Iranian aid to anti-Soviet militants in Afghanistan, and other benefits.

IOTL, similar factors (shared suspicion of US interests in the Middle East and Central Asia, economic interests, etc) helped shape the cordial Russo-Iranian relations we see today.

(I've also been considering a scenario in which a worse Iran-Iraq War results in an Iranian Civil War (1988-1993) that installs a Soviet-friendly government, but that's a whole other can of worms that has it's own effects on the Gulf War and Arab Spring)

I also sort of based the Soviet swapping of Iraq with Iran on the Ethiopian-Somalian switch of OTL, where the Soviets shifted their support from Somalia to Ethiopia as a result of the Ogaden War.

As for the second point, IOTL Syria, Libya, and Iraq all condemned the Afghan invasion but continued to gladly accept Soviet aid and advisors against their enemies (at one point Qaddafi even talked of joining the Warsaw Pact). International politics is strange like that, I've noticed - nations often hold seemingly contradictory positions (as demonstrated with the aforementioned example of the Kurds) to serve their own interests. IOTL Iran caught flack in the 1990s for taking a somewhat pro-Russian stance on Chechnya and seeming to favor Armenia over Azerbaijan in regards to Nagorno-Karabakh.
 
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