The North Star is Red: a Wallace Presidency, KMT Victory, Alternate Cold War TL
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I regret I have but one asterix for my country?It would have been funny to have Beria suffer a coup due to asterix
*cries in French Algerian*
There's more or less an active war in Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Iraq, South Yemen, and Oman right now, while Syria, Saudi Arabia, and North Yemen are aligned with the USSR.
Only Jordan and Morocco and (hilariously ironically) Lebanon are peaceful right now.
Chapter 111 - Hammer and Anvil
Hammer and Anvil
The greenlight of this war was not based on a belief that victory was imminent or even occur, but rather that it would put several nations in an impossible position. Namely, the Soviets had realized that the Kingdom of Egypt had more or less lost all popular legitimacy as soon as Israeli forces entered Egyptian territory to aid the British. A coup in Iraq had brutalized the Iraqi monarchy after army officers were incensed at the notion that the Kingdom of Iraq was too close to the British, who in turn too close to the Israelis. Israel was politically toxic in the Arab World, and anti-Zionism, often veering into outright anti-Semitism, was a rallying cry for much of the Arab nations. Joseph Stalin's persecution of Jews ironically made many Arab nationalists laud the Soviet Union, which helped create modern Syria, which increasingly centralized into an explicitly Marxist-Leninist state (albeit without state atheism). President (and military dictator) Afif al-Bizri was officially non-partisan and led a "Progressive Front" comprised of the Communist Party of Syria under Khalid Bakdash, the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party under Salah Jadid, and Mansur al-Atrash, the new leader of the "Minority Front". In practice, all leaders were strongly left-leaning, and this only gave a veneer of democracy to the essentially one-party state, much like the East German National Front. The only difference was that the power rested not in the party, but in the military, which became increasingly ideologically pure.
Historically, Syrian coups typically involved purges of the army of officers that the leaders in question did not trust, significantly deteriorating the quality of the Syrian officer corps, which became one of the worst in the world. However, the Syrian Army under al-Bizri largely only purged people for purely ideological reasons, which actually led to wide swaths of officers (at least the left-leaning ones) being rehabilitated. The Soviet NKVD was directly involved in the process, being ordered by al-Bizri to simply root out anti-Communists. The Syrian officer corps remained quite terrible, but it was certainly less terrible than it was before the leftwards turn of Syria. The great enemies - Israel and Great Britain - remained essentially a unifying opponent, causing many relatively non-ideological Syrian officers to endorse the alliance with the Soviet Union (thus escaping the purge).
Ironically, as Beria began shrinking and retiring the army, he essentially exiled various Jewish commanders and politicians to the East. Under Beria's deportations, Jewish engineers, scientists, military officers, politicians, and civil servants were actually totally exempt (which highlighted the cynical nature of the purges). Ironically, Beria himself immediately repealed the prohibition on Jewish doctors as soon as Stalin wasn't paying attention. There were many reasons so many exempted individuals also left after 1957 - most of them were staunchly opposed to Beria, who although being of Jewish descent, masterminded Stalin's persecution of the Jews. In addition, Beria encouraged thsi because he felt they actually strengthened the Soviet grip on North China. Third, many of them had relatives who had been exiled to North China and were greatly worried about their conditions, as they had been kept in the dark. Many of them, such as Semyon Krivoshein, David Dragunsky, and Yakov Kreizer were skilled tank commanders, and the PRC, in the wake of the destruction of the Three Years War, was not going to turn down free military talent. Upon the North Chinese intervention in Iraq, another Soviet Jew, Yevgeny Primakov, quickly decided to also make the move, as he was a trained academic Arabist who the North Chinese government specifically requested.
Upon arriving in North China, most of these figures didn't quite like what they saw. The North Chinese flatly told them that KMT-American forces had massacred all of the Jewish communes in the American-occupied territory during the Three-Years War. This was not strictly true - PLA forces were ordered by Beria's NKVD to destroy the communes and murder their inhabitants if they couldn't be evacuated in time, fearing that such Jews would provide a massive propaganda boost for the West. These forest massacres, many of them enacted by NKVD troops very obviously masquerading as PLA troops, would be one of the most vehemently denied events in the Communist bloc, mirroring Beria's earlier masterminding of the Katyn Massacre. Although that was only a fairly small percentage of the Soviet Jews in North China, the Great Leap Forward had also taken a tough toll on North China's Jews, as "old feudal traditions" were outlawed. Although the industrial communes of the North were declared officially integrated and "model communes", under the veneer, Jewish cultural practices were ferociously persecuted as "feudal", with Hebrew being proscribed and Jewish religious practices met with vicious beatings. For example, circumcision was questionably linked to foot binding and similarly banned. More assimilated, urban, Russophone Jews did better, but the outcomes were very miserable for more traditional, "shetl" Jews. That being said, many of them viewed the North Chinese as the lesser of two evils (the other evil being Beria, who was also treated as a "traitor" for his Jewish descent). Some former Soviet Jews openly cooperated with North Chinese authorities to create a "modern Jewish" identity. For example, although celebration of Yom Kippur was prohibited, May 9th was selected by PRC officials as "Jewish Culture and Victory over Fascism Day." Many of these provisions were eventually relaxed as the North Chinese declared the Great Leap Forward was an unmitigated success - a polite fiction as Beria agreed with,, mutually concluding that the PRC would be given economic support in exchange for slowly easing out the Great Leap Forward, which he thought was inspiring the wrong kinds of people in the Soviet Union. The North Chinese, as economic problems piled up by 1960, took the offer.
Yevgeney Primakov was largely put in charge of North Chinese foreign policy in Iraq, and it was through Primakov that many Jewish former Red Army officers were deployed to Syria, as it became clear that the Syrians were mobilizing for a war against Israel. This change was made clearer when the Syrian Progressive Front officially renamed itself to the Syrian Arab People's Republic, evincing both war aims on Lebanon and Israel (the latter viewed as more vital). It was argued that Jewish commanders would have "special insight" on the condition of Israeli troops (this was not true). In practice, the Jewish commanders were largely there to ensure that if the Syrians actually won the war, there wouldn't be a wholesale massacre of the Israeli Jews, as even the Soviet Union had feared (Beria obviously didn't care about Jews, but as he realized during his deportations, anything resembling a Second Holocaust would destroy the moral stature earned by the Soviet Union in defeating Hitler). The Syrians loathed having Jewish commanders on their side, but Beria explicitly made it a prerequisite for support.
Both the Soviets and North Chinese viewed Israel as the anvil, an anvil that could break the Western presence in the Middle East. Simply put, if the Eastern bloc waged war on Israel, that would place pro-Western states like Jordan, Lebanon, and Libya in great disrepute (when they inevitably wouldn't join in this time due to Western diplomats). Similarly, it could help destabilize the American-funded Islamist regimes. Beria was outraged at the erratic PRC, but decided instead to use them to his advantage. The PRC went along with this, as the war in Israel was seen as the best method to winning the war in Iraq. As a result, Syrian declaration of war was planned for May 9th, to specifically coincide with Victory in Europe Day. The plan was delayed to 1960, by which time the North Chinese fighting in Iraq had died down.[1] However, like in 1948, the Israelis had been severely underestimated. Mossad more or less had a good idea what the Syrians, Soviets, and North Chinese were planning.
In a great controversy, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion refused to approve a preemptive strike on the Syrians. Ben Gurion believed that even a pre-emptive strike would be viewed as unacceptable Israeli aggression and that such a strike would jeopardize support from abroad, which Ben Gurion viewed as strictly necessary for Israel's survival. Instead, Israeli pilots were drilled nonstop to upon the expected Syrian attack, immediately strike any available Syrian air base. In addition, forces were quietly pulled from Egypt, dooming both the Egyptian monarchy and the British occupation, already accomplishing one Soviet goal. On schedule on May 9th, Syrian and North Chinese forces, armed with hordes of Katyusha rocket launchers (as a result of Soviet demobilization) showered Israeli forces with endless missile blasts, just as Israeli bombers took the air in hopes of knocking out Syrian air installations.
The Israelis had around 40,000 regular troops (10,000 in transit from Egypt), as well as somewhere just under 180,000 reservists ready to call up. This supported around 400 tanks, 200 planes, and 300 artillery pieces. In contrast, the Syrians had 80,000 troops, with 1,200 tanks, 1,000 artillery pieces, 250 planes, and an unclear number of reservists. 10,000 Peshmerga volunteers had also been sent by Communist Iraq. Finally, large amounts of "People's Volunteer Army" forces were redirected from Northern Iraq to Syria. This detached force, more or less under the command of Generals Semyon Krivoshein and Song Shilun, included around 60,000 men, including 1,200 tanks, 1,400 artillery pieces, and 550 planes.
The most crucial tool in the Israeli arsenal were a small batch of Dassault Mysteres and Sud Aviation Vautour planes imported from France, including 24 Dassault Super Mysteres, which faced off against Syrian and North Chinese MiG-15s, MiG-17s, and MiG-21s. Their tanks were largely French-built light tanks, the AMX-13, which were perfectly adequate and extremely mobile, but wildly outnumbered by Soviet-built T-34s and the occasional T-55, which like in the Three Years War, had armor that was largely impervious to the AMX-13. Regardless, the balance of power was tilted. With half of Israel's armor and artillery assets still in deployment from Egypt not to arrive for at least a week, the Syrians had a 5-1 advantage in infantry numbers, a 12-1 advantage in tank numbers, a 16-1 advantage in artillery, and a relatively balanced 4-1 advantage in aircraft.
One of the most interesting facts of the war that one of the leading North Chinese commanders, David Dragunsky, would lead coalition tank brigades against many of his close relatives, who had lived in Israel and called up as reservists in the war, in a case where the ferocious war literally pitted family members against each other. The North Chinese intentionally used many Jewish soldiers to hurt the morale of Israeli troops, a largely successful ploy, but this also had the effect of giving Mossad a field day since many of the rank-and-file soldiers had...questionable loyalties.
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[1] I'll probably describe that in the next update.
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What’s the likelihood of seeing Soviet troops near the Israeli border?
Low, unless things totally fall apart from the Syrians. The Soviets don't really want to be EXPLICITLY involved.
Jews IOTL are famed for their willingness to stick close to, and help each other. This frankly fratricidal war will cause some psychological scars. Also, it will probably be a Six Month War, at least.
Oh crap, why do I have a feeling that Israel is gonna lose this war and its independence?
BigBlueBox
Banned
I think the more likely scenario is that Britain will be forced to redeploy east to save Israel, and the war ends with Syria taking the north and a rump Israeli state in the south.
I hope Israel can pull a victory out of its butt like IOTL.
Personally, I think Ben Gurion made the wrong call by not launching a preemptive strike against the Syrian Air force. It would have not only wiped out a good chunk of their air power, but would also have dealt a psychological blow. Additionally, while the Syrians have much worse organizational skill, limited training and export spec planes, the technological gap between the two air forces is not as great as it would be had the war started just a year or two later. Israel, working with France, is probably a good year ahead of the Soviets in heat seeking air to air missiles but it likely has relatively few of them at the beginning of the conflict (and even if it did have some US sidewinders, the first generation of these missiles had some bugs to work out). As such, the two air forces will usually have to engage in gun fights and that means that Israeli pilots have to engage in riskier, close range dogfights more often than they would have if they had a fleet fully equipped with air to air missiles at the outset of the war. They will still run circles around the Syrians but the costs of this kind of combat will probably be rather high for the first few days thanks to the numerical disparity.
Maybe Britain or France or even China will intervene.
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Chapter 112 - The 1960 Republic of China Elections
The 1960 Republic of China Elections
One constitutional change Chiang Kai-Shek engineered was to remove the top-two system for the 1954 presidential elections. Fearing that he would lose the presidential election under a top-two system, Chiang Kai-Shek had the 1948-1954 National Assembly (which was majority Chiang Kai-Shek partisans) amend the Constitution to provide essentially for a first-past-the-post election in the National Assembly, which more or less functioned as a mixture of the American Electoral College and the Westminster System, as local voters elected delegates (3,045) who would then vote for their preferred candidate in Nanjing.
In 1954, Chiang Kai-Shek actually didn't need to change the system, as he carried a healthy 61% of the delegates, guaranteeing his election. This was a massive drop from his 89% in 1948, but this was largely an outcome of the election system actually functioning this time, as the country was more or less in a civil war in 1948 and nobody seriously mounted a campaign against Chiang Kai-Shek. In 1954, a large amount of random individuals ran against Chiang Kai-Shek, including many academics and local mayors, such as Mo Teh-hui, Xu Fulin, Yu Youren, and other figures who were friendly to the regime but not exactly in the inner circles. None of the Chiang alternatives broke 15% and most failed to break 10%. At the end of day, nobody tried to seriously challenge Chiang Kai-Shek's rule.
However, 1960 was different. Chiang was term-limited out. Although there was a brief fear that he would use the National Assembly to remove term limits, his attempt to try in 1959 failed as National Assembly members friendly to the exiled Li Zongren helped rally opposition to Chiang. There was another brief fear that Chiang Kai-Shek would rely on his influence in the ROC Army to storm the National Assembly, but those fears dissipated as Chiang confirmed that he would not ever run for the President of the ROC again.
In the tumultuous 1960 elections, a frenzy of candidates decided to throw their names into the ring. Li Zongren and Long Yun, both exiled in Hong Kong, amusingly pushed their friends to put their names in the ring. Yan Xishan decided to run, but at 76, many suspected that the man was dying. The Mas united behind the moderate Ma Bufang in hopes that he would be palatable to the non-Muslims as well. Chiang partisans split between two men, both Chiang's second-in-commands, both who loathed each other -
Hu Zongnan and Chen Cheng, the military governors of Shaanxi and Taiwan respectively. Both men declared the end of martial law in their respective provinces, choosing to simultaneously run as civilian Governors in those provinces (they were guaranteed victory, as during the decade of martial law, pretty much all of the local provincial elites answered to both men). In the end, Hu got 23% of the vote and Chen Cheng 20% of the vote.
The man who won a surprising victory, with 27% of the vote, was the Speaker of the Legislative Yuan (China's parliament), who cannily promised both supporters of Li Zongren and Long Yun that he would pardon both men if he won - the son of Sun Yatsen, Sun Fo. Sun Fo was always kind of a political outlier in the KMT, distrusted by Chiang for being too chummy with the leftists, but ultimately politically untouchable because he was Sun Yatsen's son. It appeared that many Chinese, especially less-educated types, voted for him on the sole basis of name recognition (his famous father). As a result, the failure of the KMT-right to unite in the elections managed to hand the elections...to someone they really didn't want to see as President.
Governor-elect Chiang Kai-shek, realizing that this could end very badly, more or less led a squad of KMT elites directly to talk with the President-elect. Although unable to bend his views on the removal of martial law and legal amnesty for anti-Chiang figures like Li Zongren and Long Yun, he did sign a document declaring opposition to the "illegal Red Manchukuo regime", categorically ruling out cooperation or recognition of North China. Realizing that the rightist-dominated legislature could then stymie any domestic policies they didn't like in the Legislative Yuan or in the state governments, Chiang acceded to Sun's victory, publicly calling for KMT members to accept the outcome of the election and celebrating the "peaceful transition of power." Many KMT members were worried that Sun would be "weak", but Chiang Kai-Shek had tested South China's first atomic bomb in Tibet in 1959 (just before his attempt to try to eliminate term limits), so he wasn't actually worried about North China on the offensive anymore.
The first world leader to congratulate President Sun on his victory was the Prime Minister of India, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, whose name almost no one in the entire Republic of China had a hell's chance of properly pronouncing. Sun Fo realized that the legislature would legislative with or without him, so he turned instead to trade policy. In Sun, C. Rajaji saw a kindred soul, and the two immediately set to hammer out closer relations. Looking to more or less copy the Treaty of Rome, President Sun of China, President Magsaysay of the Philippines, Prime Minister Miki of South Japan, Prime Minister of Tunku of Malaya, Prime Minister Sarit of Thailand, Prime Minister Rajaji of India, and Prime Minister Lily Eberwein of Sarawak (interestingly the first female elected leader of a nation) began negotiating over something resembling the European Coal & Steel Community. Although there would be a fear of Chinese or Indian domination that doomed Asian integration if either was absent, the fact that both were present allowed most to feel that the two could be balanced again each other, especially when it was announced that President Kennedy of the United States had indicated an interest in becoming an observer member of what would eventually become the Treaty of Manila.
Besides being tested by both the Israel crisis and the Singapore crisis, one of the most tumultous events of history would be set in motion by the Sun administration sending out diplomatic notes...directly to the General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Laventry Beria...
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Are there any regions of the ROC that are developed? As in to the point where they are developed as a city in Europe? What about the capital?
Also, please don’t let my home nation of Israel die! If it does, then that’s fine, since it’s your timeline, but still.
Also, please don’t let my home nation of Israel die! If it does, then that’s fine, since it’s your timeline, but still.
Too bad Ma Bufang didn't win. A truly tolerant Muslim who could lead Islam worldwide to an era of peace and enlightenment.
I think you've missed India in the list of countries negotiating the equivalent of the ECSC...
Presuming it's there....
India+China(w/o North China)+Philippines+ South Japan + Malaya + Thailand +USA(yes, I know it is an observer)
Which side of half of the population of the Planet does this treaty cover?
Also, with Malaya in, you have a majority Muslim country, which IMO means anyone not aligned with the Soviets and Between Kuwait and Tahiti will be welcome.
Probably the Zhejiang/Jiangsu/Nanjing/Guangdong (coastal regions) have reached levels of development comparable to Spain or Portugal. And the rest of the country...significantly lags behind. In a lot of ways, I think the level of development + regional inequality resembles most closely...Mexico.
Eh, I'd argue relatively tolerant (at least towards non-Jews) Islam is actually close to the norm ITL right now. The closest thing to Sharia...is in a handful of small states sponsored by America.
Oh whoops, I forgot India. And Sarawak!
Doing very rough math, I'm guessing something like 560m for China, 25-30m for the Philippines, 75m for Japan, 450m for India. 25-30m for Thailand, I guess 5-10m for Malaysia. Looks like around 1.15 billion people. There's about 3 billion people on Earth, so we're actually only looking at around 1/3rd of the world's population here.
Still, it beats the Communist bloc, which probably has at most around 500 million people, which in turn is also smaller than the European empires, which in theory contains most of the 300 million Africans in 1960.
Well, he also died two months later OTL, so it wouldn't be THAT much fun.
Bookmark1995
Banned
I imagine that once the ROC starts to have its own cultural renaissance, one of the themes that appear in movies and books will be the conflict between country and city, with some ROC-Chinese denouncing the cities as "soulless" and "corrupt" and "not respecting Asian values".
On that point, if I eyeball the Manila Pact at roughly 1,150 million, the Warsaw Pact is bigger.
The total population of the Communist bloc in the 3-years war was around 400 million. Add in population growth, maybe 450 million. Add in Pakistan (100m), Iran (20-25m), Syria (5m), and a few rando countries (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Cambodia) and we can actually make it to 600 million.
Kennedy's core Alliance for Progress is basically rocking around 400 million people (in the New World).
That being said, the Western blocs aren't that stark. In general, there's a lot of overlap. Italy has one foot in DC and one foot in Brussels. The Philippines has one foot in Nanjing and one in DC. Vietnam has one foot in Nanjing and one foot in Brussels. In general, America, China, India, Europe, etc. are closer to bickering friends than rivals (kind of like OTL America vs OTL De Gaulle)
The real takeaway is that the Communist bloc only has 600 million people - and the anti-Communist bloc has nearly 2 billion people arrayed against it, with maybe 400 million people living in contested or neutral nations (Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Brazil, Laos).
The total population of the Communist bloc in the 3-years war was around 400 million. Add in population growth, maybe 450 million. Add in Pakistan (100m), Iran (20-25m), Syria (5m), and a few rando countries (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Cambodia) and we can actually make it to 600 million.
Kennedy's core Alliance for Progress is basically rocking around 400 million people (in the New World).
That being said, the Western blocs aren't that stark. In general, there's a lot of overlap. Italy has one foot in DC and one foot in Brussels. The Philippines has one foot in Nanjing and one in DC. Vietnam has one foot in Nanjing and one foot in Brussels. In general, America, China, India, Europe, etc. are closer to bickering friends than rivals (kind of like OTL America vs OTL De Gaulle)
The real takeaway is that the Communist bloc only has 600 million people - and the anti-Communist bloc has nearly 2 billion people arrayed against it, with maybe 400 million people living in contested or neutral nations (Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Brazil, Laos).