The North Star is Red: a Wallace Presidency, KMT Victory, Alternate Cold War TL

TastySpam · Apr 30, 2021

The End of the Iraq War

Wherever Britain could retreat - it would. The new Liberal government promised an end to all of the wars, but not necessarily a pretty one. The first domino to fall was Jordan. With the British Army defeated by a sneak Israeli attack in the West Bank of Palestine, the remaining army units in Jordan proper could only desperately retreat to avoid the Syrian onslaught. Although the Syrian Army was not necessarily that strong - and in fact, the logistical collapse of the British Army combined with orders from London to simply give up on Jordan turned a retreat into a rout. Where British units could hold up and fight - they did quite respectably. For example, in the Battle of Qasr al-Abd, fewer than a hundred British paratroopers managed to hold off two Syrian divisions for nine hours, sufficient time to give enough time for Jordanian government officials and their families time to escape, before being overrun. However, the overall situation was seen as a total collapse of the Jordanian front, with desperate airlifts from Amman (a sea route was implausible, as Saudi forces had seized Jordan's only ports). Syrian anti-air, which had notably supplied by both Israel and the United States even as the Syrians claimed to be enemies of the West, raked evacuating British helicopters on their way out of Amman. President Tlass declared victory over the British forces, declaring the annexation of "South Syria". For what it was worth, the Syrian Army had been absolutely shredded in the war by superior British munitions - and was in far worse shape than most international observers understood.

Many international observers wondered why the Syrians would simply not turn on the Israelis, unaware of the secret Begin-Tlass agreement. However, even without such an agreement, Syria was in no shape to tackle Israel. Syrian troops had taken almost all of the losses in fighting the United Kingdom - and as the Warsaw Pact had actually cut off free military aid, Syrian troops were scraping the bottom of the barrel. In contrast, the Israelis received extremely generous arms shipments from the Kennedy Administration - and moreover, had captured a huge treasure trove of British equipment in the West Bank (where they were ironically stored to prevent the Syrians on getting a hold of them). Israeli military officers actually considered launching a pre-emptive strike on Syria - but it was agreed against because it was understood that there was no way for the Israelis to administer that much territory even if they won. Instead, the decision was made to construct a massive wall between Jordan and the West Bank. Instead, Syrian interests turned towards cleaning up the crisis in Iraq. The Iraqi Royalists, without their patron in Amman, also collapsed overnight, with most of their troops simply defecting to the pro-Syrian Nationalists. The Iraqi branch of the Ba'aath Party happily announced a total "merger" into the Syrian branch, one of the political parties in the Syrian ruling coalition, which had already been largely defanged in the same way that Francisco Franco had sought to defang the Falange. The Iraqi situation alarmed the West, which saw one of the few sources of oil for Europe endangered, starting a free for all as the Iraqi Civil War came to an end.

The collapse of the Royalists spelled doom for the American-backed Islamists, who quickly saw American interest in their cause dramatically after the election of President Siler. Immediately, a new patron had to be found. Luckily, a new patron was actually waiting in the wings quite happily. The French, eager to secure more oil resources for the European Economic Community, quickly moved in. Although initially pro-Syrian, the French immediately were shocked by the pace of Syrian success. Fearing for Lebanon, French troops quickly moved into the Islamic Republic of Qatif and the Basrah Province of Iraq. Meanwhile, the Iranians, who were opposed to the Islamists (due to the hostility of the Islamic ulema to the Iranian government), encouraged their closest ally in Europe to safeguard Kuwait. An agreement was quickly signed between Italy and Kuwait to protect the small state, which ironically as a conservative Sunni monarchy found common cause with the progressive Shia de-facto-republic of Iran. Unwilling to provoke a full-fledged war against the French (who they viewed as a serious military threat from two sides), the Syrians opted to stop their line of advance short of the French line of control after indicating to the French that they would not contest French control. The division of lines gave each Syria, France, and North China access to roughly 1/3rd of Iraq's oil fields, even as the Syrians were able to gain control over the overwhelming majority of the population. A cease-fire was soon signed, even as no peace agreement was ever agreed to. The Nationalists, although in theory representing an independent Iraq, were essentially coerced into signing a "Treaty of Union" with the Syrians. Oddly, there would be two Iraqi states, one in Kurdistan and one in Basrah, but neither would actually border each other.

In practice, it was impossible for the Iranians and Islamists to cooperate, even as they shared borders and a common enemy. After the Soviet-Iranian rapprochement, Iran buckled under a crushing embargo by most of the West, which caused the Iranians to generally support both the Nationalists and Communists in the Iraqi Civil War. Although Islamist militias backed up by the Islamic ulema were mostly disarmed, the war in Baluchistan continued to rage, with constant attacks on Iranian police and soldiers. Moreover, even as most of rural Iran ceased violent revolt against the Iranian government, it was never a particularly popular state. In many cases, secular reforms would be proclaimed in Tehran and simply ignored in the countryside. Prime Minister Mossadegh had neither the will nor interest in forcibly imposing such orders, feeling his position already threatened. The Beria government also pressured him to fill the empty throne with a member of the Tudeh Party, which after another disappointing economic report (which implied a need to export more goods to the USSR), Mossadegh crumbled and had his parliamentary majority enthrone a rather enthusiastic candidate (one pushed by Beria, not the candidate himself), the moderate Tudeh Party leader, Iraj Eskandari, the son of a former Qajar prince. Although welcomed by liberals and socialists, the selection was loathed by Islamists. Ironically, had fair elections been held, Mossadegh would have almost certainly lost, as his government had grown increasingly unpopular among the rural masses of Iran.

The Syrians and North Chinese-backed Kurds in theory were on the same side - but both loathed each other. And the Italo-Iranian-Kuwaitis and the Franco-Islamists were in theory on the same sides - but both groupings also generally disliked each other. The disunity in both coalitions would ironically be one of the causes of peace breaking out in Iraq - and the end of a war that to most Iraqis had simply lasted too long. Not to mention that the most aggressive party, the Syrians, were more focused on crushing widespread dissent and resistance in their newly annexed territories than making any additional gains.

TastySpam · May 2, 2021

Jordan and Iraq War Wikiboxes

TastySpam · May 2, 2021

Conqueror of the British Empire and the Last Qing Emperor

The accelerating collapse of Great Britain's colonies abroad were especially unwelcome by one group of anti-colonial activists: the vast majority of residents in Tanganyika. Idi Amin's backers loathed him - but they still viewed him as East Africa's bulwark against Communism. One CIA operative referred to Amin as a "sociopathic son of a bitch - but our sociopathic son of a bitch." Indeed, they knew that one of Amin's first purges were against civilian politicians known to be more moderate in their orientation to the West. For example, Jomo Kenyatta, was simply murdered in his cell by Amin's thugs early on in the East African War. In the end, almost every intellectual in Kenya, Northern Uganda, or occupied Tanganyika with moderate views was murdered and unceremoniously dumped in local rivers, which ironically sent most of the leftists into hiding. Julius Nyerere only narrowly escaped the same fate, escaping after a housekeeper tipped him off.

Amin often liked to portray himself as an insane buffoon to appear less threatening, but his purges had a twisted logic to them. He wanted to be the only option for the Americans in East Africa - he knew he would only continue enjoying support if he was the only option besides supposed "Communists." As a result, he portrayed his invasion of Kenya and then Tanganyika as a "crusade against Anglo-Bolshevism", in an uncanny parallel of Nazi propaganda during Operation Barbarossa. Like in Operation Barbarossa, his troops were ordered to be merciless. Accounts from the "Rape of Dar Es Salaam" spoke of mass rape, cannibalism, infanticide, and even acts that combined all three. The atrocities were intentionally encouraged in his hopes of terrifying Tanganyika and Kenya into submission.

The West generally turned a blind eye as his armies ravaged Tanganyika. France viewed the region as irrelevant to French national interests. The Americans (covertly) supplied Idi Amin's forces with modern weaponry - a practice that the newly-elected President Siler immediately ordered a halt to. However, unbeknownst to him, the CIA continued to supply Idi Amin, with modern weaponry that he could pay for due to his intimate involvement in the drug trade (massive drug addiction was instrumental aspect of pushing his troops towards atrocities). In particular, Amin loved procuring American napalm, Agent Orange, and flamethrowers - tools which he saw as indispensable in crushing the resistance that moved into the countryside after the Rape of Dar Es Salaam. Away from the front-line, Amin was not entirely despised, because a semblance of normality had returned to those areas, heavily subsidized by pillage and Amin's self-proclaimed reputation as an ardent anti-imperialist.

Several British officials had failed to escape Dar Es Salaam in time - and Idi Amin proclaimed himself "Conqueror of the British Empire" after having them fed to alligators. The incident outraged Britain, but the new Liberal government opted to do nothing after the Americans non-subtly told them that they would be highly opposed to a British re-entrance into East Africa. Idi Amin didn't actually mind Western imperialism that much - he just saw it a useful political stance to take.

The Tanganyikans, like many nations with no other meaningful friends, turned to the major economy of last resort, the Italians. However, the Italians told them that their hands were tied. With the British hastily working out independence proceedings for British Somaliland, Somalia (former Italian Somalia) was aware that most of Somaliland's politicians sought independence rather than union with Somalia. The British were attempting to effectuate Somaliland's independence against Somalian protests, so the Somalians had actually been secretly helping the CIA funnel arms to Idi Amin, in hopes of battering the British. In addition, Idi Amin, hoping for to stave off Italian intervention, quickly penned an agreement with Somalia "readjusting" the Kenya-Somalia border to include the majority-Somali Northeastern province of Kenya in exchange for a military pact, which the Somalians quickly accepted.

Nyerere, who became increasingly prominent in the resistance movement as his rivals simply were killed off, grew increasingly desperate and asked the Soviets, who also flatly declined, stating that their new administration was seeking a detente with the new American president, who seemed rather dovish. Interestingly, the first offer of help was given by a rather unexpected nation - Burma had at least offered some advisors. The Pakistanis then offered actual arm shipments, which delighted the resistance movement. However, Pakistan was still in the middle of its "Sifar Revolution" which saw millions either killed or expelled in a revolutionary storm, while the Burmese were also going through internal crisis. Only one Eastern bloc nation seemed actually semi-stable at home - and willing to help. A young Chinese military officer, Mao Yuanxin, the nephew of the late Mao Zedong, openly penned a memo excoriating the current leadership of the People's Republic of China for abandoning the East Indonesian cause after Soviet troops withdrew - and North China, unwilling to fight the Indonesian War on its own, also left. Mao didn't actually demand re-entering Indonesia since it would have probably significantly escalated the Indonesian War to possible conflict with the West - he had actually received Nyerere's letter and penned a poster demanding "Afro-Asian solidarity against modern imperialism" - he had cleverly depicted Amin's new "East African Federation" as an expy of Imperial Japan. Much to the bewilderment of PRC leadership, party cadres marched through the street demanding war against a nation that almost nobody in China had even heard of. This was in spite of military spending already eating up almost 19% of North China's budget after the East Indonesian drawdown, with tens of thousands of North Chinese casualties.

Yet, the government decided that the drawdown in Indonesia meant that it was not impossible to start another war. Not to mention that the last three wars (Israel, Iraq, and Indonesia) were all seen as humiliating defeats - and rather than simply "take the L", PRC leadership decided they needed a win somewhere. The Iraqi Civil War had also come to an end - and there seemed to be a stable enough armistice with Syria. Forces would be rotated out of Iraq and Indonesia - and sent to invade East Africa. However, one major problem arose: how on earth would they get there? Somalia was supporting Amin, as was the Central Africa Federation, the Belgians (in Rwanda-Burundi), Royalist Congo, South Africa, and Portugal (in Mozambique) - in short, every neighbor of Amin. The new government of Madagascar, which had unilaterally declared independence from France during the 1963 French crisis, saw itself immediately battered by Western sanctions would be willing to at least operate as a base. This became even easier in the future as the PRC would eventually build close links with the Madagascan military, aiding them in eventually launching a coup that would established a one-party Marxist-Leninist state (indeed, Madagascar would be often cited by anti-communists as an example of "red imperialism"). The bigger problem is that it became much harder after that. Dar Es Salaam had fallen - so it wasn't really possible to easily land in Tanganyika except by amphibious assault - which the PLA had in no ways the military or technological capabilities of actually doing.

A very unusual alliance was struck. When elected in 1963, the George Brown government declared its support for a transition to "black majority rule" in Africa, especially in the Central African Federation. Liberal imperialist Roy Welensky, who while opposed to black majority and generally holding very racist views, did not entirely rule out slow movements towards black majority rule, which satisfied the George Brown government. Ian Smith's white nationalist Dominion Front was formed by disaffected white settlers who loathed Welensky's relative moderation - and who were even more horrified after white settlers from Kenya fled from Idi Amin into the CAF, bringing stories of Amin's atrocities. The new Liberal government in Britain seemed to be demanding much more rapid action on black majority rule, which spurred the Dominion Front to the unthinkable. The vast majority of members personally loathed Amin (due to knowing those who had suffered from his atrocities), and quickly reasoned to themselves that the only way to defeat Welensky and Amin was to terrify the Western powers into supporting their belief system - by linking "black rule" and Communism in people's minds. The Dominion Front had managed to seize control of many local governments in Rhodesia and in short, had control of most of the CAF's major airports, including Salisbury International Airport. And thus the scheme was agreed to.

Constant flights between Madagascar and Salisbury ferried in thousands of People's Volunteer Army veterans. From Salisbury, they were secretly transported to the Malawi by white nationalist Rhodesians, who reasoned that a Communist army invading Tanganyikan and creating a "black Communist" threat to the CAF would end calls from London for black majority rule. The PVA, sailing across Lake Malawi, then sailed down the Ruvuma River (poorly guarded by the Portuguese dealing with growing unrest in the urban areas of Mozambique), and finally landed east of the port of Mtwara, which had a surprisingly large port built during the disastrous Tanganyikan Groundnut Scheme (it was abandoned shortly after). PVA forces attacked a totally unsuspecting East African garrison, overwhelming them by sheer surprise. They then quickly repaired the abandoned port (still in mostly great condition), as they began immediately ferrying in troops from Madagascar. Idi Amin was reportedly shocked when he was told by a commander that he had been invaded by some sort of "oriental." North Chinese troops immediately moved into the Tanganyikan countryside to support anti-Amin rebels, who were genuinely shocked to be receiving aid. In a declaration from a random cave in rural Tanganyika, Julius Nyerere declared the creation of the Democratic Federal Republic of East Africa, a new polity that would include at least some part of Tanganyika, Kenya, and Uganda after the overthrow of Amin. Oginga Odinga, a prominent Luo chieftain and one of the leading anti-Amin voices after the murder of Kenyatta, immediately heeded the call, sparking a similar revolt in Kenya. The Rhodesians immediately feigned ignorance and outrage at the "Afro-Communist war on the white race" taking place, but they were secretly jubilant.

A massive escalation of what is often called the "Great East African War" had begun - with the first but not last foreign intervention. In fury at the North Chinese intervention taking away at the last moment Amin's dream of ruling over all of East Africa as an unchallenged despot (the Great East African War would not end anytime soon), one of the titles that Idi Amin appended to his long list of titles was "Qing Emperor", in a deliberate taunt of North China. Amin even had distributed a picture of him riding a horse with a bow and arrow and what was supposed to be Qing imperial regalia (the clothing was generally not very historically accurate). In a similarly odd response, the actual last Qing Emperor, the former ruler Puyi was still alive, and was specifically summoned by the North Chinese government to attach his signature to a declaration "rebutting" Idi Amin's claim on the Qing throne, clarifying that the Qing Empire no longer existed, that Manchukuo was not a legitimate successor state, and that Idi Amin's East African Federation was also not a legitimate successor state to the Qing Empire. The contents of the letter were generally not controversial.

TastySpam · May 4, 2021

The Battle of the Montewara Perimeter (Part One)

One power was particularly horrified by the North Chinese invasion of East Africa - one of Europe's most embattled colonial powers, Portugal. Unique among European colonial powers was the lack of autonomy Portugal gave to its "overseas provinces", which immediately became subject to significant levels of Portuguese settlement. A Frenchman was very rare in France's Tuareg possessions, but not so for Portugal's African possessions. The Rhodesian Dominionists believed a surge of Communism would terrify London - but in reality, it mostly terrified Lisbon which had just begun to see guerilla movements pop up in Mozambique itself. Angola had been wrecked by years of war - and now the flame of revolution had come to Mozambique. Unlike Angola, where resistance movements ended up divided by ethnicity and easier to isolate and control, Eduardo Mondlane had managed to unite all of these various groups into FRELIMO, the Liberation Front of Mozambique. Portugal was one of Amin's keenest supporters, simply because FRELIMO operated out of Tanganyika, where colonial authorities were too afraid to crack down on them. Amin's invasion of Tanzania had seemingly ended the FRELIMO threat, as FRELIMO guerillas turned towards fighting off Amin.

However, that seemed to come entirely to an end with the North Chinese entrance into the war. Seizing the port city of Mtwara, the North Chinese immediately began shipping in arms and supplies from Madagascar, with the help of Admiral Didier Ratsiraka, who was more gung-ho about the general process than the actual government Madagascar. Amin immediately radioed in to foreign powers for help. Despite the fact that the CIA had been generously supporting Amin, they told him that it was likely not possible to get the US Navy to interdict the North China navy as requested - simply because the U.S. Navy was the least independent of the American military branches after the 1957 Revolt of the Admirals - and the newly elected President Siler would almost certainly veto American naval operations. However, they did not come up empty-handed. Operating through Mossad contacts (which was always up for trying to bloody North China, the patron of Judeopalestine), the CIA was able to pay and furnish a well-armed mercenary group led by mercenary lord Otto Skorzeny to aid Amin. In contrast, the British were distracted by widespread riots in Zanzibar and other areas of their residual empire. The Italians were willing to turn a blind eye to Somalia, but they weren't willing to outright help Amin. Only Portugal answered the call. And once Portugal was in, France was willing to render modest aid (supplies, use of nearby Comoros as a navy base, etc).

Idi Amin dreamed of a grand battle of annihilation, where two large armies would clash and he could destroy the rebels once and for all (a mix of FRELIMO militants and Tanganyikan Army remnants, namely the 1st and 2nd Tanganyikan Rifles). This was a weird mixture of individuals since the Tanganyikan Rifles had mostly British officers - who while anti-Communist and condescending towards the natives, hated Amin more. Some took the hate so far, that they simply disregarded orders by London to return to Britain, going completely "native." Luckily for Amin, Nyerere seemed to give him that opportunity. Realizing quickly that Amin's army was converging on Mtwara (and not entirely aware of Portuguese mobilization), Nyerere announced the creation of the Revolutionary ("Mapinduzi") Army, a coalition of forces that would liberate all of East Africa, including Mozambique (it was generally assumed that Tanganyika and Kenya would form one polity due to shared British institutions, but Mozambique would be separate). The new Mapinduzi Army quickly converged on Mtwara.

However, the Portuguese had mobilized. Taking almost the entire garrison of Mozambique, the Portuguese Army prepared to assault Mtwara (Montewara in Portuguese) in conjunction with Amin's forces. Ironically, once Nyerere realized that the Portuguese were planning on jointly assaulting the port city, it was too late to retract the order - the fight would be at Mtwara. In practice, the Portuguese Army would vastly outclass every other army in the Battle of the Montewara Perimeter. A modern army equipped with aircraft, helicopters (for rapid aerial assaults), naval support, artillery, tanks, and motorized and mechanized infantry, the Portuguese Army vastly outclassed Amin's army, which was at best a violent mob of drugged-up infantry raiders. The Mapinduzi Army had the Tanganyikan Rifles, but was mostly untrained guerillas and furious villagers. The PVA was ironically the most combat experienced force, but they weren't able to take much heavy equipment with them, relying mostly on small arms, mortars, and cavalry. Heavy equipment was coming in from Madagascar however, which meant the PVA grew stronger day after day. Very quickly, the Portuguese realized the earlier they attacked, the better.

Portuguese forces had the challenge of crossing the Ruvamu River. The most obvious road from Mozambique to Tanganyika was to cross the river at Namuiranga into Kilambo, a suburb to the south of Mtwara. This would allow Portuguese forces to reach Mtwara in a pincer, as Amin's army was coming from Lindi to the north. However, the PVA had already anticipated this. With the Portuguese enjoying general air superiority (the closest Communist air base was in Madagascar, quite far away), what few AA weapons held by the North Chinese were precious and not often risked. This meant that large troop movements were risky. North Chinese AA was ordered to only engage Portuguese aircraft if an obvious kill could be made. During the entire Battle of the Montewara Perimeter, only 4 Portuguese helicopters and one aircraft would be downed, one helicopter by mechanical engine failure. However, the possible risk of North Chinese AA meant that the Portuguese were unable to fly helicopters aggressively. In addition river crossings were difficult in general, especially a large river like the Ruvamu. However, the Portuguese were well-trained, had aerial support, and were a largely mechanized army.

North Chinese general Chen Xilian (who was sent due to being a rare PLA general enthusiastic about the war), was a heavy believer in the use of artillery and coincidentally one of North China's few experts in amphibious (specifically, river) warfare. Realizing that the nature of the Ruvamu River meant that the Portuguese had to stop on various islands in the middle of the river, Chen had secret North Chinese engineer teams massively cover each of the islands with land mines. The Portuguese obviously had minesweepers, but this would at least slow them down. As Portuguese troops advanced across the river, they immediately came under shocking artillery fire. The Portuguese Air Force was mobilized to destroy North Chinese artillery, but they were surprisingly hard to locate. Chen had brought alongsides as a military adviser the former Qing cavalry general Zaitao, coincidentally the uncle of the actual last Emperor of China, Puyi (he was also the brother of the Guangxu Emperor, the second-to-last Emperor). Working with Chen, they had built a cavalry artillery strategy, where PVA troops would fire artillery shells, hook up to the artillery to the horses immediately, move locations to avoid Portuguese counter-battery bombardment, only then reload - and fire again.

Shocked by motorized infantry losses (North Chinese artillery weren't heavy enough to disable a Portuguese tank or APC except on direct strike), Portuguese forces rushed across the river quickly, only to quickly run into nasty minefields. After undertaking severe artillery fire, it was understood that the Portuguese could simply power through, take some degree of losses, and crush the enemy once reaching the other side of the river. However, it was judged by Portuguese officers to cost too many Portuguese lives, which would harm war support at home, so the decision was made to eventually withdraw. The PVA had won the first day of the Battle of the Montewara Perimeter, though this simply meant that the Portuguese Army would divert westwards, and cross instead at Negomano, itself the location of a battle between Portugal and Germany in World War I. North Chinese and Mapinduzi troops were easily dispersed there. However, this represented a significant detour, which bought the Mapinduzi Army even more time to receive arms and supply shipments from Madagascar, whose ships made constantly runs despite constant Portuguese harassment and bombardment. The Portuguese attempted to blockade Mtwara, but this meant significant battles off the coast between the North Chinese Navy, which was largely comprised of unwanted Soviet submarines (no longer needed after Beria's reform of the Soviet Navy into a largely surface-based carrier fleet). This naval war quickly became hard to restrain, as North Chinese submarines began even harassing Portuguese ships near Macau, with possibly disastrous consequences.

In addition, instead of assaulting from the north and south, the Portuguese would advance from the west, while Amin would advance from the north, a significant narrower front. Furthermore, several rudimentary airfields had been created in Mtwara. Most were immediately bombed by the Portuguese Air Force, but some survived, which gave some semblance of an air force. Portuguese and East African forces advanced at a rapid pace, believing that it was necessary to crush Mtwara here and now. Otherwise, the extremely large fronts in Africa would mean that it would be impossible to stop the flow of supplies towards Mapinduzi guerillas, causing the war to drag on far longer than the Portuguese or Amin hoped it would. Amin grew quite reliant on Skorzeny's advice, who generally had a strong grasp of tactics and was personally exhilarated over fighting a pitched field battle again. The Battle of the Montewara Perimeter would become the largest land battle fought in Africa since the Battle of El Alamein - and the largest in Subsaharan Africa since Fascist Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. The Mapinduzi Army would be the primary fighting force defending Mtwara proper. Nyerere's radio addresses called on peasants and villages furious at Amin's brutal occupation to simply come to Mtwara, where in most cases, they were simply handed a North Chinese Mosin-Nagant or SVT-40 with a few strips of ammo, a shovel, and if they were lucky, a grenade. The shovel would be for ditching desperate trenches and foxholes. A truly surprising amount of volunteers would show up, which meant that the equipment trickling in from Madagascar had to be shared. In some cases, one rifle was given to two or three soldiers, who were told to use the rifle if their comrade was killed. Most of the new volunteers had little idea or knowledge of the world outside of their local regions and villages terrorized by Amin, so they likely did not quite understand why Nyerere said that the fate of an entire continent rested on the shoulders of these soldiers, but he was ultimately telling the truth.

TastySpam · May 6, 2021

The Oceanian Cold Warriors

The relative dovishness of Sun Fo's Republic of China horrified Asia's two foremost cold war crusades against Communism - Australia and the Philippines. In particular, Prime Minister Casey of Australia and President Magsaysay of the Philippines were intimately involved in the Indonesian War. Magsaysay's predecessor had accepted the offer of the collapsing Dutch Empire to "administer" North and East Kalimantan on the basis of their former control by the Sultanate of Sulu, which the modern Philippines in theory was partly a successor state to. Although some Filipino planners believed this would be a national triumph ot show off to the entire nation, in practice, this had become a disaster. Both Communists and devout Muslims revolted against Filipino control, denouncing them in turn as "crusaders" or "American puppets", depending on their ideology. The Filipino War in Borneo became a rather complex ethnic war, as ethnic groups began to clash based on the perception that some were friendlier to Filipino control than others. In particular, the indigenous Dayak peoples, who had mostly converted to Christianity under the Dutch, were far friendlier to the Filipinos than the Javanese or other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups. This meant that North Kalimantan became somewhat governable (albeit with a massive guerilla problem), but East Kalimantan was not. Furthermore, the war inflamed both Filipino Communists and Islamists (mostly in the South).

The armistice ending the First Indonesian War banned Western troops from entering East Indonesia itself, so Australian troops were quickly redeployed outside of Indonesia. A very large portion went to Filipino Borneo and Dutch West Guinea, where the Dutch had requested Australian support to maintain control of the region. The Australian cabinet was initially skeptical of answering Magsaysay's call for aid, but they quickly decided in favor once it was discovered that one other nation in particular was inserting itself into the war. The People's Republic of Pakistan, especially after the Sifar Revolution and the flight of much of the Communist Party of India into Pakistan, grew much more radical and assertive abroad. The writings of one Indian Communist grew widely influential among Pakistani students and activists, Charu Majumdar, who was forced to relocate to Pakistan continuing to publish. The People's Republic of Pakistan in a sense viewed the entire Muslim world as within its general sphere of influence, making Indonesia and Filipino Borneo natural regions to intervene in. The Pakistani ISI, one of the most feared intelligence agencies of the Cold War, funneled almost an inexhaustible supply of arms into both of these theaters. To Australian leaders, this seemed like good evidence of a Soviet conspiracy to communize the Philippines.

Contrary to this however, Soviet-Pakistani relations were actually significantly worsening during the Beria era. Both President Hassan and the increasingly widely-read Majumdar lambasted Beria's revisionism, especially after the Soviets actually seemed rather unsupportive of the Sifar Revolution, which was quickly becoming a public relations disaster in most of the Muslim world. With hundreds of thousands of devout Muslims dead - and almost ten million Muslims fleeing Pakistan (disproportionately West Pakistan), the United States was seizing the mantle of "Defender of Islam." At first, the national Indian government was happy to take these refugees in, encouraging more emigration, but the total annihilation of the INC in states that had taken large amounts of refugees quickly encouraged them to reverse course. Australia was in the process of weakening the White Australia Policy, but they also firmly refused to take the wave of refugees, seeing it as a toxic political bombshell. The only nation to jump at taking these immigrants was George Brown's Labour government in the United Kingdom, which was admirably committed to non-racialism despite its currently collapsing empire.

Annoyingly to the Soviets, the Pakistanis pushed a brand of Communism that ironically elevated Mao even higher than the North Chinese did - as developing a new, more advanced of Marxism-Leninism universally applicable to other nations (which was eventually then further refined by Pakistani thinkers such as Majumdar). This was actually quite awkward for North China, which generally tried to retain good relations with both nations, but argued that Mao's principles were simply an application of Marxist-Leninist principles to Chinese national circumstances - and they certainly could in theory be applicable to other nations, but they weren't automatically or universally applicable. Worsening Soviet-Pakistani relations made North China the go-between for Pakistan and the Soviet Union, ironically in the same way that worsening North Chinese and Syrian relations made the Soviet Union the middleman messenger in that relationship. This was furthered by the strange tendency of Syria to like North China, also have decent relations with both Pakistan and the Soviet Union. In practice, the Soviets tended to pass old military equipment onto the North Chinese, who would pass it later onto the Pakistanis, which was awkward when the Soviets and Pakistanis found each other on the opposite side of issues, such as in Afghanistan, where the pro-Pakistani Khalq faction quickly became bloodily opposed to the pro-Soviet Parcham faction.

Despite losing significant amounts of support due to the never-ending Borneo crisis, Magsaysay would win a second term in 1961. Despite his unpopular wars, significant amount of American aid would allow Magsaysay to continue his populist economic policies while pleasing American-dominated businesses, which meant rising incomes for most Filipinos. Similarly, the Coalition in 1961 Australia would also lose over 10 of its seats in Parliament, but they would still retain control fairly easily. After all, the wars abroad weren't actually unpopular in Australia. The actual fighting had mostly ended outside of Filipino Borneo, where Australian forces played largely the role of air support. Supporting NILF in East Indonesia and the Filipino Army was expensive, but nobody complained when the economy was good. The problem was that this was not tolast.

The 1963 Oil Shock battered Australia and the Philippines far more than Western Europe. Australia, with its large size, large houses, and wide roads, always had one of the highest oil usages per capita of any country. The skyrocketing price of oil shattered income gains among working-class Australians, who turned towards the opposition, worsened by Casey's refusal to bail out the Catholic Diocese of Goulburn, which outraged Catholics who had once defected en masse from Australian Labor. Similarly, the once-booming Filipino economy badly faltered as cheap oil no longer became an easy input. Unable to continue both his populist policies and please American bondholders, Magsaysay was forced to accept an Wall Street-proposed austerity program, sparking mass protests and strikes. Economic support from the United States would still continue until 1965, at which point President Siler decided to cut off foreign economic aid to the Philippines, though at Filipino request, he agreed to not do so until after the 1965 Filipino elections, where his Vice President Carlos Garcia was running against Liberal Party Senate leader Ferdinand Marcos.

TastySpam · May 7, 2021

The Addis Ababa Accords

By 1965, Dominionist forces had controlled nearly every major city in the Congo and had pushed the Red Congolese mostly to their strongest region in the East. However, Dominionist forces were exhausted. After the infamous Wallonian Winter, Belgium's government would remain committed to the war. In late 1960, the Belgians would call early elections immediately after the Wallonian Winter, which saw the established parties triumph simply because such a large proportion of antiwar Belgians were in jail or hiding from the police. Much to the fear of the Belgian government however, the Communist Party of Belgian would surge from 2% to 6% of the vote in the 1961 elections based on a surge in Wallonia. However, the Belgian government never actually desired to declare genuine martial law, despite the urging of General Janssens, viewing the "Communist threat" largely taken care of. Indeed, they were able to increase wages and meet union demands for wage increases thanks to a booming economy. However, all of his would come to a screeching halt during the 1963 oil shock, which damaged the entire economy of the nascent European Economic Community. Belgium in particular, one of the most industrialized states in Europe (especially Wallonia), suffered more than most European states. To meet EEC regulations, the Belgian government was unable to agree on a genuine rescue plan, and a score of Belgian industries went out of businesses. Belgian unions, furious again, adopted the anti-war cause when they realized that the overseas expenditure in the Congo was more than enough to meet union demands.

Union leaders had originally sought to negotiate with the government. The Christian Social/Socialist government were both in favor of continuing the war, but the Socialists at least thought that something could be done to meet the demands of the unions. However, President Kennedy's 1963 Winter Offensive against the Congolese Reds outraged Belgian unions, who saw Belgian casualties and costs spiral during the offensive, despite the territory gained and hideous losses inflicted on the Congolese Reds. Furious union leaders declared a second general strike in 1964, immediately sparking fear across the continent, which then became immediately terrified of a second Wallonian Winter. Brussels immediately received calls from the rest of Western Europe, asking what could be done. Learning from the Wallonian Winter, the Belgian government opted not for a military solution this time. Trying to buy off individual unions, European media quickly depicted the strikers as dangerous Communists, simply hoping to win out the unions and win the battle for public opinion. By late 1964, this seemed clearly unsuccessful. The victory of Rep. Eugene Siler in the United States freaked out most of the European political establishment, especially as Siler openly called for an end to the Congo War, claiming on the campaign stump that he would unilaterally withdraw American forces if the Belgians refused to play along. Hoping to prompt a last-ditch action, members of the American CIA shared to their counterparts in France and Belgium reliable information pointing out the Communist Party of Belgium was polling in first place in Wallonia. The upcoming elections looked fairly dangerous. And thus, a long-prepared effort went into place.

On a frosty December of 1964, former Force Publique soldiers commanded by General Emile Janssens stormed the Belgian Parliament, arresting both opposition and government members. Seizing control of the state institutions of Belgium, Janssens announced the creation of a New Order in Belgium that would see the banning of the Communist Party and "total victory" in the Congo. Most Christian Social and Socialist ministers would sign onto the package, which would establish perpetual martial law and ban the Communist Party. The package was immediately passed in the Belgian Parliament (cleansed of opposition members), and sent to the King for approval. Leopold III, almost universally loathed in Wallonia and seen as a right-wing tool, did something that shocked almost the entire continent of Europe. He refused to give royal assent to the package. The King 's right to withhold royal assent in theory existed, but had never ever been exercised before, being mostly a formality in a theoretical constitutional monarchy. This further shocked the continent when Leopold III had given Jansenns the original power to crush the general strike in 1961. However, few knew that Leopold III found the Wallonian Winter deeply distressful, and did not support doubling down on repression. The refusal blindsided the Belgian putchists, while empowering the strikers. A collapse in morale immediately crippled the government, which quickly collapsed when strikers stormed their barracks. In the end, Janssens and his top planners would flee the country for Sweden-Finland, as the King declared that elections would continue as planned.

One of the most dramatic elections in Belgian history, the iconic moment of the campaign was when an activist for a Wallonian nationalist party, having clearly not forgiven Leopold III for the Wallonian Winter, opened fire on his carriage, killing the monarch. In shock and horror, most Belgian political parties ceased campaigning except for the Communist Party of Belgium, which was predicted to suffer for this. On election day, this would not come true. The Communist Party of Belgium easily came in first place in Wallonia, as both the Christian Social Party and Socialists collapsed. However, the Communists would ultimately only take 34% of the seats nationwide, with the rest of the seats splintering among the Christian Social party, the Socialists, the new Freedom and Progress party (a right-liberal party promising a negotiated end to the war), and both Flemish and Wallonian nationalists. In the end, a unwieldy coalition (excluding the Communists) could only be cobbled together beween the Christian Social Party, Socialists, and Freedom and Progress party, under Omer Vanaudenhove, who fiercely opposed both Wallonian and Flemish nationalists. The new government agreed to attend President-elect Siler's proposed peace conference in Addis Ababa, which alongside promises of wage hikes, ended the general strike.

Indeed, the first move of the new Siler Administration was to jettison Secretary of State McCarthy to the capital of the Ethiopian Empire, Addis Ababa, to discuss peace accords in the Congo War. He wanted out - and faster the better. Apparently, the new Belgian king, Baudoin, was actually fairly skeptical of Congolese independence, and his father had actually to some extent normalized royal intervention in politics. In the end, the Morse report ended up being mostly correct. The Belgians were essentially willing to accept Katanga and Kasai as a consolation prize. Moreover, the Red Congolese acknowledged they would never recognize the independence of Katanga-Kasai, but they could at least temporarily tolerate their existence. The Americans argued that this was a fine outcome for all, since "peaceful" Congolese reunification was always an outcome in the future (nobody else agreed to this). The Addis Ababa Accords didn't actually address the insurgency or war in Rwanda-Burundi, which was to remain a bleeding ulcer on the side of Belgium and the United States, but at least the war would be far smaller and far more easily controlled. Amazingly, every country left the conference feeling like a winner. McCarthy believed his administration had accomplished its first campaign promise (even if it horrified most of the government), the Red Congolese got most of the country, and the Belgians exited the war with at least a consolation prize (one with significant economic resources). As members of the new European Union, huge amounts of French and Belgian investment quickly flooded into the new Dominion of Katanga-Kasai, which pleased both the Central African Federation and South Africa.

Only one party was particularly horrified by this outcome - the Portuguese, who immediately saw a land border between Portuguese Angola and a hostile Communist nation. Almost a third of the Bakongo people had fled into the Congo as refugees - and now most of them would be armed by a Communist government that in theory could (and in practice almost certainly would) arm them to return to their homeland to fight as guerillas. In 1963, Portugal thought it had triumphed in its African colonial wars. By 1965, it no longer believed that - and an existential threat would soon land on the shores of East Africa.

TastySpam · May 10, 2021

Her Majesty's Not Entirely Loyal Opposition

Britain wanted out of the wars. They didn't quite want out this way. The bulldozing of Jordan as British forces fled within weeks of the new Liberal government taking power was expected, but definitely seen as a humiliation by many British, especially more right-wing British. The fall of Iraq later than year was a further blow to British self-image. The image of British officials being murdered in Tanganyika by Aminist troops was played almost daily on right-wing tabloids, in particular the newly founded Sun and the older Daily Mail. Criticism from Great Britain's domains was vociferously negative, with the Australians, Rhodesians, and South Africans regularly firing invective against the British foreign ministry. Moreover, with right-wing bureaucrats resigning in protest, the new government had to rely on relatively inexperienced hands. The withdrawal from Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, and East Africa was anything but orderly. Moreover, although other British colonies went towards peaceful independence, some mistakes were made, largely at the pressure of foreign nations.

For example, Northern British Cameroon was expected to join Nigeria (the primarily Muslim region favoring integration with Muslim North Nigeria, not French-speaking, Christian French Cameroon). However, at the behest of French representatives pressuring the British, the British foreign ministry acceded to French demands to simply weld together both French and British Cameroon entirely. Similarly, during the general flight of the British from the Middle East, the British military regrouped in the Gulf State principalities, hoping to secure them. However, unbeknownst to the British, the Gulf Arab states had already asked for Indian peacemakers to help defend their nations /in cooperation/ with the British. However, when the Liberal government heard that additional troops had arrived, they simply saw it as a sign to withdraw the British presence entirely, much to a rather surprised Gulf Arab and Indian reaction.

That being said, the inexperience of the British foreign ministry sometimes meant they had remarkably prescient judgement. For example, in granting Britain's West Indian colonies independence, instead of creating a West Indies Federation as had been requested by most nationalists, the British actually correctly judged that Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago were too large to easily fit into the Federation, opting instead to grant independence to Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the West Indies Federation separately. The British foreign ministry also saw Apartheid in South Africa and the white minority government in Rhodesia and Nyasaland as untenable in the long-term. That being said, it was the belief of the British foreign corps to simply stay out of South African affairs - while the Liberal government horrified much of the West by openly condemning both.

The extremely young new cabinet saw itself rather confused as what to do on Northern Ireland. With the Irish People's Republican Army becoming increasingly radical and increasingly disliked in Northern Ireland, British army veteran Gusty Spence, radicalized by his service in Iraq fighting mostly North Chinese-backed Communists, founded the vociferously anti-Communist and Ulster Volunteer Force, which despite being almost entirely Protestant and disdainful of Catholicism, had more or less a working relationship with the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Rather disturbed by the increasing brutality of all three groups, the British government responded by simply declaring all three illegal. However, they also failed to enforce these orders, fearing a deployment of the British Army would inflame violence. The result would be Northern Irish anti-communists flocking towards both groups, mutually disdainful of the British government, which quickly declared themselves the only possible protectors of their respective communities, a worrying trend to some British analysts who pointed out that the PIRA and UVF actually very strongly disliked each other even as they worked together for now. Despite espousing Maoist rhetoric, the primary funder of the IPRA quickly became a different nation - one perhaps more responsible for Britain's domestic chaos than any other - Pakistan.

In 1955, massive race riots broke out in Notting Hill, a neighborhood where hundreds of West Indians had moved into - an incident quickly used by Winston Churchill for the better-than-expected Tory performance in the 1955 elections. This incident was ultimately buried in history simply by the sheer fury that blew up in Britain. The Indian government, desperate to prevent Pakistani refugees flooding into Northwest India as a result of the Sifar Revolution, began bulldozing refugee camps and simply diverting refugees to other nations. The problem was very few nations were willing to take them. The short-lived Labour government of 1963, desperate to live up to its Cold War responsibilities, gave ships free pass to land refugees in the United Kingdom, totally unprepared for the sheer number that had come. Merely in 1963, over 900,000 Pakistani refugees flocked to the United Kingdom. The Labour government actually invested significant resources in housing and job training, so even as public outrage exploded on the right and in certain communities, the mass migration had not yet impacted most British. However, problems were brewing. First, the new Liberal government, thoroughly a cosmopolitan and liberal party, simply denounced those who demanded that the United Kingdom exclude anticommunist refugees on the basis of their race. However, with a primarily bourgeoisie voting base, the Liberals were loathe to actually spend money to integrate the new refugees. In fact, in order to end mass deficit spending after the 1963 oil shock had torn through the global economy, the Liberals actually significantly cut spending, including almost all refugee resettlement programs and additional public house construction.

Increasingly, massive makeshift refugee camps were sprouting up in Great Britain's port cities, outraging local residents. Joblessness exploded, both as a result of the oil shock, austerity programs taken in response to the oil shock, and simply welcoming large numbers of new people into labor force. Worst of all for the British, given the nature of the Sifar Revolution, the refugees were largely deeply devout and relatively uneducated (by 1960 Pakistani standards) rural peasants, which meant both a massive culture clash (between Christians and Muslims and between industrial and agrarian peoples) and widespread difficulty adjusting to the industrial British economy, leading to mass unemployment and for the young men, crime. Nativism naturally exploded. The combination of ferocious austerity, social liberalism (the Liberal government pushed through legalized abortion, divorce, homosexuality, and other reforms), and mass immigration tore British politics apart.

Liberal popularity absolutely plunged in the first year of their government, with polling indicating an almost immediate drop from 35% of the vote to 25% - enough to lose almost all of their seats under first-past-the-post. Interestingly enough, a quick package of tax cuts paid for by declining military expenditures kept their middle-class base loyal, but working-class and right-wing voters both revolted. Realizing that the next election could see a Liberal wipeout, one thing that the Liberals could agree upon was reforming the first-past-the-post system. Indeed, a bill was passed reforming the British Parliament to an "additional member" system (largely comparable to mixed member proportional representation", with a minimum proportional threshold of 5% in each region (or one constituency won). Oddly, the Tories didn't ferociously oppose the bill, after having in 1964, come in second in the popular vote but coming in a distant third in actual seats. With the arguments of pro-Imperialist Tories seemingly vindicated by the chaotic retreat of the British Empire (notably, they denied any role in the wars that led to such retreat), the Tory hard-right would come out on top in what was a small Tory caucus (99 MPs) of hardline rightists. The only real debate was whether it would be a pro-EU candidate or an anti-EU candidate - ultimately, a pro-EU right-winger, Hexham MP Geoffrey Rippon, triumphed over Enoch Powell. Labour felt much better about things, viewing themselves as the natural party of government, with a likely Lib-Lab government (with Labour in charge) coming. In Labour, the Labour right had been devastated by their crushing defeat after merely one year of government. In the end, the rightists were the majority, but couldn't even imagine themselves leading the party after such a shellacking. Instead, they opted to permit the rise of MP Barbara Castle, a left-winger, as the next leader, figuring that a woman couldn't possibly be elected Prime Minister in Britain, and that party leadership would pass back to them.

However, the most dramatic party development would be in none of these parties. The new proportional representation certainly boosted the Liberals significantly, but others in British society realized they could have a bite at the pie too. The British National Party was in theory seeing quite dramatic growth. In the 1963 elections, the BNP gained under 3,000 votes. In the 1964 elections, they had surged to 1.8%, over 400,000 voters. Quickly seeing the moment, the BNP merged with several other far-right, neo-fascist, neo-nazi, and white supremacist organizations to form the newly founded National Front, led by the charismatic John Tyndall. Although completely uncompromising (Tyndall refused to walk back his praise for Adolf Hitler), Tyndall won a niche in an era of mass unemployment, crime, and austerity. With the NHS and public housing largely failing in the face of Liberal austerity, immigration became the natural explanation to many British - and no one was more radical than Tyndall. Labour simply sought to avoid the issue, gaining no supporters. The Liberals naturally championed an increasingly unpopular status quo. And the Conservatives promised a total end to immigration on the slogan "Keep Britain White" (a slogan used by Churchill in 1955) - but it was Tyndall's National Front that promised to "Make Britain White Again - By Any Means Necessary") Rather ironically, the National Front's white power concerts (named "Rock Against Communism") and their party coffers in general were extensively funded by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which believed that a potential rise in the National Front would actually help Communist Pakistan by proving its allegations about his international enemies correct (not to mention that such government would primarily victimized people who fled from Communist Pakistan.)

The Tories had their own supporters, of course. Sir Walter Walker, flush with CIA funding, would famously create "Civil Assistance", an unusual political organization which would eventually develop into a mass paramilitary and Conservative pressure group, which called on the government to crush striking Labour unions with force, and openly hinted that the British military should intervene in a coup to crush both the left and the far-right. Although never officially endorsed by the Conservative Party, it quickly became understood as a de facto youth paramilitary wing for the Tories, who would fight with both Labor unionists (aligned with Labour), Trotskyites/antifascists (who split from Labour after they realized entryism was obsoleted by proportional representation), and Neo-Nazis in the streets. Moreover, increasingly convoluted and specific rumors that a coup by Lord Mountbatten would imminently effectuate such a coup quickly motivated Tories, with younger Tory MPs openly begging Mountbatten to do so. The rumors were not proven, but the government had him drummed out of the military anyways, outraging right-leaning Britons even further.

TastySpam · May 14, 2021

Andean Abyss

Rojas had originally taken power in a coup in 1953, primarily on a platform of crushing La Violencia, a brutal conflict that erupted between partisans of the Colombian Liberal and Conservative Party, one that ultimately killed tens of thousands of people in gruesome civil war and turned much of rural Colombia into a warzone. Rojas himself then proceeded to govern as a populist, left-leaning but pro-American, dictator who showered urban Colombian workers with mass public works and sought to exclude both the Liberals and Conservatives from government, viewing them as failed vestiges of the past. This culminated in a 1958 counter-coup against Rojas that failed due to American support for Rojas, and his easy re-election victory in 1959. Governing as a well-funded benevolent autocrat, Rojas more or less gave up on imposing military force in much of the countryside, even against the much-feared Marquetalias, self-governing communes of rural socialist (or even Communist) peasants that emerged during La Violencia. He was more or less happy to let them exist, as long as he was secure in his urban strongholds, where he was beloved by workers who saw rising wages, better infrastructure, and improving social services.

However, Rojas's authoritarian streak, while not violent, would come through with increasing restrictions on press freedom and end to term limits, allowing him to run for office again in 1963. He easily won an election where his urban voters dominated, as much of the countryside was simply not participating in the process. In most cases, the countryside was less anti-Rojas and simply Rojas-neutral, but both Liberal and Conservative politicians saw this as proof that Rojas had become an outright dictator, one who was cultivating what even seemed like a cult of personality to his detractors. Although a long ally to the Americans, Rojas was also rather friendly with Brazil - and the Colombian government was one of many governments that immediately intervened to protect Brazil, harming the mainstream view of Rojas in Washington. President Kennedy had always been a Rojas partisan, but his death in 1964 significantly altered the calculus of the US-Colombia relationship. The shock upset victory of Eugene Siler meant that the lame duck President, Scoop Jackson, had several "now or never" decisions. The CIA (and Jackson's hawkish aides) put forward an idea. They had their man.Alberto Ruiz Novoa, a Colombian military veteran of various wars abroad. The old strongman of Colombia had grown too erratic, autocratic, and worst of all, independent. Worst of all, President Rojas had placed a ban on the export of petroleum, which stunned American businesses in the midst of the oil shock.

Claiming that the 1963 election had been fraudulent (a more or less correct statement) and claiming to "restore democracy", Colombian special forces stormed the Presidential Palace. In a shoot-out, Rojas was killed. With the autocrat dead, civilian politicians from the old era came out into public again, claiming that they would be establishing a national government of unity, comprised of both the former major parties. The autocrat had fallen - but the replacement was chaos. This outraged supporters of President Rojas, who immediately seized their own state arms to set up urban guerilla movements. Rural areas simply stopped taking orders from the new national government at all, especially the Marquetalias. Washington was promised an easy transition to democracy, but they found was chaos. Advising the Colombian Army that little "Communist microstates" were unacceptable, the army engaged in a mass offensive in rural Colombia to crush these communes. Not only did they face fierce resistance, ironically, most of the non-Communists surrendered peacefully and were unceremoniously massacred by death squads, pushing the rest into the hands of the hardcore Communists responsible for most of the resistance. Crushing those communes was more difficult, and worst of all, the Brazilians offered them free refuge, as most of them just fled across the Brazilian border. With supporters of the new junta waging a war in the cities - and the radical left waging a war across the rural interior, Colombia quickly plunged into an abyss of violence.

Elsewhere, President Eduardo Frei Montalva was finishing his relatively popular term as President. However, despite pushing popular policies and personally well-liked, his administration was always seen as illegitimate by a large share of the electorate that saw the election as stolen from Salvador Allende. Moreover, Frei's coalition was fractious and constantly fighting among itself. Ironically, the Chilean left was far more left precisely because the government banned the Communist Party, chasing them all into Allende's Popular Unity Coalition. Despite the Americans begging the Chilean right to unite around one candidate, they failed to do so. At the end of Chile's presidential, Allende garnered 40.1% of the vote, with more right-wing candidates trailing far behind him. If one of them had nearly come at least marginally close to Allende (Congress selects the winner when no one candidate hits a majority), they could have denied the election to Allende again. In 1964, he was so far ahead every other candidate and terrified of left-wing violence, Congress folded. After Allende signed a pledge to maintain the constitution of Chile, the Congress selected him as the next President of Chile. The CIA was ordered by then-President Jackson to immediately work on contingency plans against Allende. However, few of these plans were ever fully implemented, largely because the new American President, Eugene Siler, had them cancelled. A last ditch coup was made by Colonel Roberto Viaux, with the CIA hoping it would succeed before the arrival of the next US President. However, it was so hurrified and hopelessly planned, it became an absolute disaster that saw most of the coup planners arrested from the start, further strengthening the stability of Allende's government.

TastySpam · May 21, 2021

The War That Never Came

The two sides had spent perhaps years preparing for a war. HADITU and the Muslim Brotherhood (under Said Ramadan), the two largest organizations in the National Liberation Front in Egypt had always fought with one hand behind their back against the British, a fact that massively prolonged the war in Egypt. Both believed they could not take excessive losses in the war, lest their strength be depleted for the war to come - the war to settle what kind of regime post-revolutionary Egypt would be. The Islamic fundamentalism of the Muslim Brotherhood and the secular Communism of HADITU seemed essentially irreconcilable, and as such, their respective sponsors poured in weapons (much to the chagrin of the British). The Muslim Brotherhood quickly acquired top of the line American (and before the coup, French), while HADITU took in similarly advanced weaponry from the Eastern Bloc. Both groups similarly vied for the support of Ismail al-Azhari, the popular Sudanese leader.

However, a late-night discussion between Soviet and American diplomats reached a different outcome. War in Egypt was to be avoided. In the Chinese Civil War, both sides had pressured the Kuomintang and the Communists to reach some sort of a coalition government deal, which fell through and reignited the Chinese Civil War. By 1965, both the new reformist Soviet government (in total disarray at home but still functional abroad) and the new Siler Administration grew to regret the failure of peace talks in China. Much to the shock of both HADITU and the Muslim Brotherhood, they began to hear new messages from their patrons: "stand by and back."

However, one issue made the Muslim Brotherhood surprisingly open to Soviet advances - the Soviet-Pakistani split. Muslim Brotherhood leader Said Ramadan had close ties to pre-revolutionary Pakistan, including to its former Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, who was famously overthrown in the original socialist coup in 1951. Just that year, Ramadan was outraged to read reports that a mob of Communist radical youth broke into his home (he was under house arrest) and ate the former Prime Minister to show their contempt for the rapidly crumbling old order in Pakistan. Ramadan was aware that the Egyptian Communists had received significant aid from Pakistan, but he also understand that they were ideologically closer to the Soviet Union.

The other factor motivating both nations was that Egypt was in total shambles. Could Egypt take another civil war? Egypt had been in a case of nearly nonstop war since 1952, and it was now 1965. At a certain point, it becomes difficult to motivate people to pick up weapons, especially right after lowering their guard after what was widely celebrated as a massive victory. In the end, in a shock to much of the Middle East, a compromise was brokered after troops led by famed Egyptian general Khaled Mohieddin (one of the few survivors of the Free Officers Movement), leading a third faction, simply seized all of the government offices in liberated Cairo and declared the founding of a new Islamic People's Republic of Egypt, declaring that the Muslim Brotherhood and Communists would be given a choice to join a coalition government and essentially draft the new Constitution. With recognition pouring in from both the USSR and the USA, the two factions agreed to the terms. Sudanese leader Ismail al-Azhari was the first supporter of new government, an interesting choice as later released documents indicated that al-Azhari was planning on declaring Sudanese independence in case of an Islamic-Communist civil war in Egypt. However, prominent Sudanese military leader Jaafar Nimeiry (who had grown very prominent in HADITU) had planned on overthrowing al-Azhari in a coup to maintain national unity if such a move happened. Regardless, however a civil war was averted. Radicals in both the Muslim Brotherhood and Communists broke off, but they were generally unable to challenge the new state apparatus, manned by ex-guerillas who had spent a decade honed in combat.

The outbreak of peace was hailed as a triumph of Soviet-American diplomacy, with Soviet foreign minister Shevardnadze and American Secretary of State McCarthy being almost immediately nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize - both of which they would eventually win. However, not all were pleased with this. The Warsaw Pact saw this as yet another sign of Soviet weakness, while European colonial regimes in Africa shuddered. Egypt...had a lot of military equipment they didn't quite need anymore. And desperate to rebuild the nation after a devastating war, Egyptian officials covertly simply sold off some of this equipment to other African revolutionary movements, a key factor in the dramatic escalation of the Great East African War. However, not all of the equipment was sold. One nation in particular was terrified by the breakout of peace in Egypt - Israel, which was sitting on the Sinai Peninsula and hoped an Egyptian Civil War would keep the giant nation busy for several more years

In the end, the Constitution drafted by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Communists simply tried to combine their ideas in a way that made the parliamentary government totally dysfunctional - a fact that only enhanced the power of the Egyptian military, which sought to unite the nation around both a vague unclear doctrine of Islamic socialism, "Arab and African unity", and most worryingly to some planners, "retaking back all rightful Egyptian land."

TastySpam · May 25, 2021

The Battle of the Montewara Perimeter (Part Two)

The disparity in armies seemed clear from the onset. The Mapinduzi forces desperately set up landmines along all of the approaches to Mtwara, but the Portuguese responded by simply shipping anti-mine vehicles from Angola, significantly delaying the offensive. This allowed the East African/Portuguese armies to advance, albeit at a schedule significantly delayed from the original plan. Much to the outrage of Amin, the Portuguese vetoed a faster strategy where Amin would clear the minefields by simply capturing local villagers and marching them through the minefields. This choice to slowly clear the minefields the actual normal way gave the Mapinduzi defenders even more time to prepare their defenses and ship reinforcements into the city.

The next stage of the battle would be fought primarily in the outlying trenches of the port. With limited amounts of concrete, most of the defenses were simply earthworks and trenches, similar to the static defenses famously used in the Western Front of the First World War. Portuguese air cover became significantly worse as makeshift air bases began launching small squads of MiG-15 fighters, significantly less advanced than the latest fighter crafts used by the USSR or other major powers - but comparable to what they understood the Portuguese had. However, the MiG-15s presented a huge threat to the Lockheed-Vega PV-2 Harpoon antisubmarine bombers (which were even older), forcing them to pull out of naval patrols. This in turn gave North Chinese submarines significant more operating leverage, preventing easy Portuguese raids on Madagascan convoys, further improving the supply situation of the Montewara perimeter. In terms of fighters, the Portuguese primarily used F-84G Thunderjets and F-86F Sabres, having roughly 200 of those fighters at hand.

However, the new trump card of the Portuguese was three dozen Fiat G.91 fighters, purchased from of all nations, Somalia (which had leased them from Italy in hopes of selling them off for more). The new G-91s were significantly more advanced than North Chinese MiGs, racking up an easy 2-1 kill ratio when the other Portuguese aircraft were more or less trading off kills. This ultimately forced the outnumbered North Chinese air force into a defensive stance, attempting to only intercept easy targets like slow bombers. Nevertheless, this was still crucial for the Mapinduzi, who at least saw some respite from total Portuguese air dominance. This vetoed perhaps the most devastating possible Portuguese plan - a plan to aggressively use paratroopers in order t penetrate Mapinduzi lines. In theory, this could have very easily destroyed their front line, but after two transport planes were shot down by North Chinese MiGs (with all hands lost), the Portuguese judged that an aerial assault would be too bloody. This was a mistake - as the advance on the trenches became even bloodier.

Amin's next plan was to slap large amounts of armor on a fleet of bulldozers and tractors (confiscated en masse from civilian farmers, a large cause of impending food insecurity in Kenya) and simply try to bury the Mapinduzi defenders alive in their trenches. Although very successful at points, most of the vehicles were destroyed by anti-tank infantry, who were trained to attack these vehicles with molotov cocktails. Although almost a thousand Mapinduzi fighters were buried alive, the "armored" offensive of Amin had cost him all of his "vehicles", which generally saw their crew cooked alive (significantly harming morale) and simply causing most crews tasked to drive them to eventually desert, forcing the Portuguese to take direct control of that specific section of the offensive. From that point, the strategy was to simply send squads of soldiers, armed with flame throwers, old American tommy guns (often dating back to the actual 1920's), and shotguns into the trenches. This significantly expanded losses on both sides, as villagers unfamiliar with firearms realized it was simply easier to stab, chop, or club their enemies to death. Although the East Africans had been drilled in "stormtrooper" tactics by Otto Skorzeny, the Mapinduzi had been trained in ambush tactics, largely hiding in tunnels at the day, and emerging at night to ambush enemies.

Ultimately however, the trenches did break, especially after Amin resorted to bombing them with white phosphorus rounds, which caused mass suffocation among both East African and Mapinduzi soldiers, and allowed soldiers that Amin thought more loyal to advance easily (he placed troops in harms way primarily based on how loyal they were to him, with those troops from less loyal backgrounds used as cannon fodder). The advance continued, but resistance essentially stiffened everyday as more men and materials poured into Mtwara. Amin wanted to avoid large losses to the troops that were viewed as most loyal to him, so his advance slowed down as reinforcements poured into Montewara. North Chinese counter-artillery fire was also able to open up, having given sufficient time to build defensive fortifications of their own.

Ultimately, the Mapinduzi were to be saved by reasons completely unrelated to their conflict. Although losses were extremely high - they had survived. And moreover, disturbing news reached Idi Amin's ears. The Luo of Kenya, led by Chieftan Odinga, had risen up in opposition to Amin. Blaming Amin (correctly) for Kenya's food crisis, they received sufficient arms smuggled to them from HADITU in Egypt, pledged their support for Nyerere, and quickly began seizing territory. This alarmed Amin. Tanganyika was primarily territory to be plundered - Kenya was very much the bread basket of his new state. Much to the shock and the fury of the Portuguese (albeit hypocritical given their own fear of taking losses), Amin told them that a frontal assault was too costly, and decided to begin pulling back his men to Kenya instead. He had lost very few of the troops he deemed to be reliable and loyal, and thus he still considered the battle a win.

Jubilation among the Mapinduzi quickly turned to horror however, when they realized the nature of Amin's retreat. He had judged holding onto Tanganyika as unlikely and not worth the manpower - so he ordered the now infamous "Carthage Degree". Simply put, Amin ordered retreating East African troops to loot all possible valuables possible - and burn or murder anything they couldn't take with them. Likening himself to the Romans, he ordered destroyed villages to be salted, inspired by the apocryphal story of Rome to Carthage (the Romans obviously did not salt Carthage given how expensive salt was back then and Carthage's economic value). The result was perhaps the most devastating scorched earth campaign in history since the Nazi German retreat from the Soviet Union, as Idi Amin concluded he could keep the Mapinduzi by foisting millions of starving civilians onto their plates. Skorzeny had actually personally recommended against this action because he argued correctly that Tanganyika was significantly poorer than the Soviet Union and the resulting famine would be so bad, it would embarrass his entire enterprise, but he did still explain Idi Amin the basics of the Nazi scorched earth campaign in the end of World War II, which then became Amin's model. This did not endear himAmin to the Portuguese either, as huge masses of starving Tanganyikans were now flooding into Mozambique, worsening the security situation there as well. Their patience with Amin had more or less evaporated.

Amin's new strategy became simple - retreat to northern Tanganyika (using the Eastern Arc Mountains, especially Mount Kilimanjaro, as a natural defensive barrier), while foisting one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters on the Mapinduzi, so he could dedicate the majority of his army to crushing the Luo rebels. The strategy was cleanly effective, as the Mapinduzi were quickly at a loss as to how to deal with this. Tanganyika almost had 10 million people, most of them now facing famine - and whereas both the Portuguese and East Africans had fled the field, they left behind monumental crisis that few had easy to solutions. Moreover, most Western nations would help little, as rumors of a Tanganyikan famine deliberately caused by Amin were quickly dismissed as "Communist propaganda", with news agencies blacklisting journalists who tried to bring light. Many intellectuals and activists were outraged, but Western governments (including Italy), would do nothing.

TastySpam · Jan 12, 2022

The Deluge

By 1965, President Rokossovsky's rule was becoming increasingly untenable. Diagnosed with early onset cancer, the aging Soviet general really did not want to actually be President. He had more or less been forced into the position as a result of the Three Years War, tasked by Moscow with rooting out "reformist" elements of the Polish state that had been blamed with causing the famous Polish uprising. That being said, this did not create a stable power base. At the end of the day, Rokossovsky dutifully took orders from Beria in Moscow, who was himself at least somewhat of a reformist in domestic affairs. The dual policies of purging Poland's reformists and then trying pushing through the reforms they had supported alienated what was left of the Polish Communist Party. Finally, the "second revolution" in the Soviet Union left the relatively apolitical leader without any actual orders from Moscow, with several Soviet detachments quietly withdrawn back to the Soviet Union proper in order to shore up what was a rapidly collapsing domestic order.

Most notably, Rokossovsky refused to sign off on several proposals by domestic leaders to engage in an "anti-Zionist" campaign intended to target Poland's Jewish population for expulsion (regardless of their opinions on Zionism). Poland was interestingly one of the states in Eastern Europe that refused to go along with the Jewish population transfers of the early 1950's, and Rokossovsky was seen as rather suspect for lending aid to the North Chinese-backed Judeopalestine (despite the Soviets generally frowning on the project). This general orientation alienated both the Stalinists and the liberals/nationalists, albeit it for different reasons.

Most damningly, Rokossovsky dithered when Poles went out to the street. Citing the precedent in the Soviet Union, Polish students went on strike, demanding reforms and greater independence from Moscow, demands which gained some popular traction because of the general economic crisis in the entire Warsaw Pact caused by the domestic chaos in the Soviet Union. Rokossovsky's position was simply to...ignore them. He figured they would simply flame out. Most of the Polish Communist Party didn't quite share this intuition, generally seeing the events in the Soviet Union with abject horror. Ultimately, Rokossovsky settled on a plan of quarantining Krakow and Warsaw and simply temporarily relocating government functions. He tremendously miscalculated.

Hardliner elements of the Polish Communist Party, seeing total catastrophe unfold, took a different approach. As Rokossovsky left Warsaw, members of the Department of Security (UB) simply abducted his convoy. Declaring Rokossovsky too ill to govern and having willingly resigned (an excuse rapidly accepted by many in the party because everyone knew he was actually quite ill and did not want his job), an emergency committee of hardline officers was set up. Although ruling collectively, one member of the Emergency Committee quickly became the most infamous because of his eponymous plan - Salomon Morel and the Morel Plan, taking Poland in a radical direction...

[Having run gulag labor camps during the Soviet occupation of Poland, Morel saw that Poland could maintain domestic security by simply dramatically expanding them. To secure his own position, Morel proposed interning Poland's Jewish population (Morel was Jewish) under the guise of pro-Zionism. Nationalist remnants in the Polish Communist Party gleefully signed on, which proved a terrible mistake when the Emergency Committee sent them into the camps immediately after in an act of historical irony that sparked many citations of the famous Neimoller poem. As economic conditions deteriorated, the Polish government saw the necessity of a source of labor that did not need to be paid well. Protesting colleges were simply shut down by state fiat, as very well-armed public security guards (initially paid for by Beria's Soviet Union in the belief that Poland was the most unstable of the Warsaw Pact nations) simply rounded up all of the students. When workers and others marched onto the street, the Polish Army was simply ordered in, shooting hundreds as they briefly resisted.

The Warsaw Pact, outside of the Soviet Union, offered essentially unqualified support. It would have looked remarkably bad from a public relations perspective if East German troops strolled into Poland, but Czechoslovak and Romanian troops rode into Poland in order to support the Polish Army, firming up domestic support for the regime (as even opponents could see it had friends abroad (the East Germans provided material support.) Viewing Rokossovsky as too light, the Morel plan expected a mind-boggling 5 million Poles to be sent to the forced labor camps. That included essentially every protestor involved in the antigovernmental protests, but also everyone vaguely associated with them or essentially anyone suspected of anti-Communism (which included religious observance in a still religious nation). The Emergency Committee had a particular animus towards the Catholic Church - violent repression against a popular institution ensured that the new gulags would always find new bodies that had genuinely resisted growing repression. With most domestic civic organizations crushed in the Three Years War, thousands were bussed out daily to poorly provisioned forced labor camps to essentially manufacture food staple and industrial products that Morel believed could sustain the Warsaw Pact during a time of economic crisis (and be used as a stick against reformism and a literal carrot to guarantee Warsaw Pact support for the new Polish regime).

Having seen most of their intelligence assets shredded after they were ordered to support the failed Polish uprising a decade ago, foreign nations simply were rendered rather unaware of what was going on in Poland, even as tens of thousands died and hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions were shipped off to gulags. In a short span of months, Poland had rapidly become the most repressive security state in the entire Warsaw Pact. For a decade, the Warsaw Pact had generously subsidized Poland's security services - now, many who had gleefully handed over the cash were now rather regretful, though most were willing to turn a blind eye given how many now saw Poland was the bulwark of orthodox Marxism-Leninism from...whatever was going on the Soviet Union. Even those Warsaw Pact states experimenting with their own reforms (chiefly East Germany) gleefully supported the regime as a buffer state.

Morel was not particularly the most powerful member of the Emergency Committee, but he became the most well-known simply because he was personally rather vicious (with a particular animus towards Polish Catholicism), and his Jewish background allowed many far-right Polish expatriates in the West to paint he new regime as a "Jewish plot", which quickly became the unspoken conventional wisdom in much of the West. For example, in Sweden, which probably had the most deranged political discourse with regards to Communism, Poland became a cause celebre used by the new Swedish right to highlight the existential danger of "Judeo-Bolshevism" to the "Nordic race."] (Add to 1967 Update)

TastySpam · Jan 30, 2022

Posle Nas, Hotʹ Potop

Laventry Beria was keen of often citing Louis XVI's famous quote when discussing the future of a post-Beria Soviet Union - "après moi, le déluge." After his brains were unceremoniously scooped out of his skull by a band of radical students who sought to attach it to a computer, he was very rapidly proven correct. The muted opposition from the Soviet political establishment, fearing that they were next, empowered one man in particular to gamble it all.

Although many Western observers argued that the Moscow Commune was a rebirth of Council Communism, insofar that it believed that the revolution ought to be led and determined by locally selected governments and democratically selected party committees, this was largely a self-interested ploy. In their own writings, the Moscow Commune stated its support for vanguard Communism and democratic centralism - they just argued that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was no longer functioning to express the democratic will of party cadres, even as they still believed it should still function as a vanguard party.

Snezhnevsky called for Soviet workers and students to march onto the Kremlin and quite simply replace the national Soviet government with a new government entirely, one based on "authentically democratic principles." Andropov, with his close relations with the NKVD, rapidly worked to broker a compromise between the NKVD and the Moscow Commune. Aliyev, who was thrust into the position, took a deal to simply resign and be shuffled to a position managing ethnic affairs (where his power base was stronger). The students demanded that Politburo created a new Standing Committee, which would include all of the additional members, but which would also include "democratically selected" academics. soldiers (mostly NKVD), and union leaders (drawing from Beria's worker self-managed enterprises) selected from across the entire nation. The compromise taken was that all such members had to be Communist Party members, but in the face of what increasingly became known as the Terror Spring, enough Soviet bureaucrats acquiesced. They saw what happened to Beria, and they had no desire to become the next Beria.

This did not work. The new Standing Committee members were known as "elected" and "meritorious" appointments, and each simply delivered their vote to fill the now empty role of General Secretary with Snezhnevsky himself, who in his inaugural speech called for Soviet citizens to "take revolutionary democracy" in their own hands and purge "antidemocratic bureaucratic dogmatism" and all elements of reactionary, "primitive" thought from Soviet society. The post-World War II baby boom had created a huge cluster of children who were around 21 years old with no real memory of "Stalinism" (at least in the much more radical pre-1941 version). Committees of students loyal to Snezhnevsky formed committees to "standardize and progress Soviet culture." For example, the August Days in Moscow saw almost all of the Soviet Union's economic bureaucrats and planners, hundreds, perhaps thousands, were simply dragged out of their homes and publicly lobotomized by radical students, who quickly shoved brains into a giant jar as a monument to Soviet progress (the jar was called the "brain trust" and the concept was eventually ship it to Wall Street in the United States in order to intimidate it into submission). The only ones spared were those who acquiesced to the new concept of the "11-year plan."

Soviet youth, who spent much of their time burning and looting Orthodox churches with more gusto than any of Lenin or Stalin's men, built an alternative cosmology. Prominent Soviet scientist Alexander Chizhevsky, known for being a crucial scientist in studying solar cycles, was once again given academic freedom to study solar cycles and in particular, his belief that solar cycles would influence human behavior and material history due to ionization in the atmosphere impacting the internal magnetism of humans and driving them towards revolutionary action. Unfortunately for the Soviet Union, Chizhevsky also died, so he was unable to tell off students who took his ideas infinitely further than he had intended. Adopting solar cycles into materialistic class struggle, activists demanded that the five-year plans be changed to eleven-year plans in order to conform to the internal magnetism of Soviet citizens and their "revolutionary drive." As a result, surviving bureaucrats would draft "eleven-year solar plans" instead of the traditional five-year plans, with Soviet workers regularly given phony (but harmless) magnetism tests as a common everyday task (this data was stored and then never used again).

The murder of almost all of the Soviet Union's major economic planners and bureaucrats unsurprisingly led to the collapse of the Soviet economy, which amusingly did not lead to famine only because Soviet agriculture was so incredibly inefficient and redundant, a significant drop in agriculture production did not increase hunger. And ironically, the murder of most of the Soviet Union's Lysenkoists (as part of wide-ranging academic purges) probably had a net-positive on Soviet agriculture in the long term. That being said, Soviet wages collapsed almost 40% in the decade, a reality which blew through the Soviet budget. American officials were not exactly aware of this, largely because the Siler Administration correctly dismissed most CIA information as attempts to destroy the Siler Administration, but this intelligence was actually correct and was almost certainly a major cause of why the Soviets were so willing to get out of East Indonesia. Instead, the focus was on building "authentic Soviet democracy" at home.

As part of those authentically democratic principles, many students alleged that the ethnic and nationality-based structure of the Soviet Union frustrated the popular will, pointing correctly that many of the frontier republics (especially in Central Asia) were the most corrupt. Dominated by relatively upper-class and perfect Russian-speakers (though not necessarily ethnic Russians), the new "authentic Soviet democracy" was rather unsympathetic to concerns of ethnic autonomy. The most radical activists were actually probably upper-class, Russian-speaking ethnic minorities in the minority republics, who saw their own region's corruption as endemic of ethnic self-rule. If Moscow broke out into chaos, the minority republics were even worse, with bloodshed that easily dwarfed Moscow. Ironically, the mass bloodshed only strengthened the Moscow government. The Red Army was obviously not a fan of this chaos and of the Moscow government, but they were deployed to the frontiers to forestall what seemed to many could end up as actual secession, which prevented any kind of coup attempt against the government. In addition, no secession actually happened, because the slow trend was simply for the Red Army to slowly usurp the government functions of the minority republics simply to prevent chaos.

However, the total non-functioning of the Soviet minority republics and collapse of the Soviet Union meant one very simple geopolitical fact: Soviet aid to the Communist world almost dried up completely in 1966 to almost nothing, thrusting the Warsaw Pact and the entire global Communist movement in its greatest crisis ever. In fact, Soviet activists largely hijacked trains heading out of the Soviet Union, which instead of sending aid, were filled instead with dead bodies (both freshly murdered/lobomotized bodies and bodies dug up from local cemeteries as part of a student effort to annihilate all churches, including graveyards) in hopes of intimidating the Warsaw Pact states into accepting "authentic Soviet democracy."

TastySpam · Feb 15, 2022

The Sun Note

By 1964, the French Foreign Ministry started throwing one question around: "whose brilliant idea was Cochinchina, anyways?" Often called France's most cursed colony, it was also one of France's largest. Although comprising less than 1/5th of the area of Vietnam, Cochinchina actually had a population roughly comparable to that of the Empire of Vietnam, situated in Northern and Central Vietnam, or roughly 17 million residents - significantly more than the Cambodia (which had sucked up most French attention). As a colony, Cochinchina was an absolute administrative disaster. French colonists, mostly owners of large plantations, governed the colony in conjunction with a mixture of South Vietnamese autonomists (mostly those with close economic ties with French colonists) and a mixture of less-than-entirely-trustworthy criminal syndicates, such as the infamous Binh Xuyen. Land reform in Imperial Vietnam was generally seen as a disappointment, but it made more progress than in Cochinchina, where no action was taken at all. A state apparatus with no legitimacy whatsoever proved to be a recruiting bonanza for the Viet Minh, who chased out of Imperial Vietnam, simply set up their operations in Cochinchina, rebranding themselves as the FLN.

French troops had been deployed in 1960 by the de Gaulle administration, with the deployment expanding in 1963 as the deployment in Algeria was withdrawn, partly in order to shield de Gaulle from criticisms of weakness. Ultimately, de Gaulle intended on making the Cochinchina administration dependent on French support, before unceremoniously abolishing the entire project. The Cochinese Council had voted repeatedly against unification with Vietnam and the risk-aversion of France's parliamentary governments meant they were unwilling opt overrule the local Cochinchinese government (dominated by colonial landlord interests). The French had nearly given in to Bao Dai's demands to dissolve Cochinchina, but they simply decided to pick the more pliable (at least as they perceived) Duy Tan to place on the throne. [1] De Gaulle's plan was to simply chip away at the power of the Cochinchina Council - and then simply turn over the country to the Imperial Vietnamese, who seemed quite capable of suppressing the Communists. However, de Gaulle's plan to end the Cochinchina War died with him.

The new French government really did not want to be in Cochinchina. But they also viewed it as politically impossible to roll back the local administration. After condemning De Gaulle's "surrender mentality" to "global Communism", the Committee of Public Safety concluded that the de Gaulle plan was simply not politically feasible. A young upstart charismatic politician, Jean Marie Le Pen, drew huge crowds railing against the Committee, trying to claim the mantle of Gaullism for himself (even as he condemned the actual de Gaulle's plan to withdraw from Algeria), dubiously claiming any betrayal of the "legitimate government in Cochinchina" would constitute a betrayal of de Gaulle's legacy (which the Committee of Public Safety amusingly also claimed to be upholding).

However, the French were also unwilling to simply "wait." The British strategy of simply trying to outwait anti-colonial rebels in Egypt was a catastrophic failure, one that did not go unnoticed in France. The brightest minds in France, mostly educated in the United States, were recruited to find a new path forward. Many of them were in fact State Department, CIA, and other such officials who resigned their positions in rage against the new American president, who was seen as both a theocrat and radical populist. The solution of the "experts" was simple: a massive surge of French troops in Cochinchina to crush the FLN combined with an ambitious social reform program (sidelining the Cochinchina Council) to remove the social roots of the Communist insurgency. The plan was met with outrage in twp cities in particular - Hue and Nanjing.

Widely interpreted by the South Chinese public as an attempt to permanently anchor Cochinchina to France, this belief was seemingly vindicated when the French-backed government cracked down on the Binh Xuyen (which had close ties to Chinese criminal syndicates) and various aggressive Buddhist militarist-religious groups, such as the somewhat cultlike Hoa Hao movement (this alienated many Imperial Vietnamese, who were generally closely tied with the Buddhist clergy). The outgoing Sun administration, hoping to marshal something akin to a sense of a rally-around-the-flag effect, had decided that with the Soviet Union rather ensconced in internal drama, the time to move was now. A letter was drafted from the office of the President of the Republic of China, bypassing the more dovish, liberal foreign ministry, directly to Prime Minister Tran Van Ly in Hue. The Sun letter was essentially a black check to Imperial Vietnam to do as they please, offering the "state and non-state assets of the Republic of China" to secure "Vietnamese territorial integrity."

It's not clear that Sun actually understood the ramifications of this, as the letter quickly went public in jubilant Vietnamese newspapers (which naturally filtered its way into the Cantonese press). China's omnipresent criminal organizations saw a green-light. Gang wars were tearing up many of the streets of Southern China, as Teochew gangs and Shanghainese gangs battled ferociously over control of the heroin and opium trade. Anti-opium campaigns by the federal government, although generally seen as disappointing by most Chinese, did made incremental progress against the drug trade, harming the bottom lines of many of these organizations. With Hong Kong firmly esconced as a global drug trade hub, many of these organizations were quickly recruited by ROC Army general Kot Siu-Wong in service of a new profit motive. Binh Xuyen militias deserted the Cochinchinese Defense Force, setting up independent power centers in Southern Vietnam. They were immediately supplied generously with weapons and drugs by Cantonese, Teochew, Fujianese, and Shanghainese gangsters, who were paid under the table by the Imperial Vietnamese government (which fudged accounting tricks to borrow money from Kuomintang-aligned banks).

The French were flabberghasted as their attempt to purge Cochinchina of their former gangster allies ended up in catastrophe. Public order collapsed as the drug trade flourished, creating a third force of anti-government, anti-communist right-wing paramilitaries in the jungles of South Vietnam. This aided the Communists as well, simply by dividing their opponents and ironically profiting a third party. Surprisingly enough, North China had developed one of the world's most capable medic operations as a side-effect of their mass mobilization of universal healthcare for peasants. This had the result of North China actually having far more wounded soldiers survive in the Three Years War, a trait that carried on into future military adventures abroad. This resulted in a massive glut of wounded and crippled war veterans, which when combined with the economic devastation of the post-war period, the government spending huge amounts of its expenditures on military adventures, and the institutional memory of widespread opium cultivation under the Manchukuo reigme, an explosive black market of opium poppy production swamped the People's Republic. After a few years of failing to stem the tide, the central government threw in the towel and decided that if it couldn't stop this, it could at least control the production and presumably export most of it away from the People's Republic (where opium consumption had largely been and remained destroyed). As a result, an implicit agreement was struck between certain South Chinese and North Chinese military officials to turn a blind eye to the export of opium poppies from North China to South China, with several KMT generals becoming quite wealthy and PRC budgetary coffers significantly aided (although then harmed again as part of their cash was spent supporting the FLN).

Although the Vietnamese Nationalist Party (VNQDD) had largely been destroyed by the Viet Minh in the first few years after World War II, the broad forces opposing both the Communists and the Cochinchinese government organized under the name simply because it was the most prestigious (and it sounded better to be a real political party than...what many of the individuals were actually from). That being said, a few old VNQDD veterans were involved in the creation of the "New" Vietnamese Nationalist Party, but it was largely a catch-all organization of Buddhist theocrats, criminal gangs, and genuine Vietnamese nationalists. That being said, they were generally devoid of large landowners, so the New Nationalists were able to promise and enact some degree of land reform, letting some peasants overlook their less-than-savory origins and modus operandi.

The "surge" became a total catastrophe, as public order quickly collapsed in Cochinchina. The Cochinchinese government faced attacks from both criminal elements and Communists, the former doubly harmful as former allies who generally had a good idea of how Cochinchina was actually operated (a mix of palm greasing and bribery that the Communists were loathe to engage in made them a greater assassination threat to Cochinchinese officials than even the Communists). Above ground, South China and Imperial Vietnam firmly denied any involvement or support for the New Nationalists. The broad population generally viewed Cochinchina as an illegitimate colonial government, and although the French generally desired to change that and do whatever was necessary to escape from Cochinchina while saving face, there didn't seem any good avenue to accomplish this. Cochinchina would be a festering wound on France for decades to come.
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[1] OTL, Duy Tan had died in a plane crash, so the French had no choice to give into to Bao Dai's demands.

TastySpam · Apr 1, 2022

The New Finland

The increasing instability in the Soviet Union as a result of the "Second Red October" was widely predicted by Western audiences to be a great opportunity for Finland to break free from the "Soviet yoke." Much to the shock of the West, this did not happen. If anything, the opposite happened. Partly because Soviet Finland had developed one of the strangest ethnic compositions. Simply put, the Soviet Union would prefer to govern Finland with mostly Russified Finns and Karelians, but there simply weren't enough Karelians or Finns. With the passing of Kuusinen, who had stabilized postwar Finland (and generally been given great accolades for this), there was a severe shortage of ethnic Finns with backgrounds that were trustworthy to Soviet authorities.

If you didn't have enough Finns or Karelians, what was your best option? The Russians had a simple option: Estonians. In fact, Soviet Estonia was in the power struggle between Russophone ethnic Estonian Communists in exile (who generally were brought by the Red Army in 1940 when they integrated Estonia into the Union) and native-born Estonian Communists, who were often referred to as June Communists. It was not exactly sure whose idea this was, but it ended up official state policy to stop this conflict by taking the Estonian Communists who had actually grown up in Estonia and spoke Estonian...and assigning them all to Finland. This was vaguely justified by Finnish, Karelian, and Estonian all being Balto-Finnic languages, and it was theorized (not incorrectly) that native Estonian speakers would have an easier time picking up Finnish.

Although the postwar situation was stabilizing (ie, starvation was no longer a serious threat to Finns), the nation actually had been significantly depopulated by the Three Years War. One of the goals of the rulers of the "New Finland" was simply to "stamp out Finnish bourgeoise nationalism as a political force." They settled on a simple and "humane" way to do this: make the Finns a minority in Finland. Declaring a "thaw", Soviet Finland declared that residents of Soviet Finland were given some time to emigrate. Immediately, a stampede of Finns left the rather poor nation. Primarily not to Sweden-Finland, which although welcoming was even poorer, but to France, the United States, Canada, and other such nations. That being said, the nation most welcoming was actually South Africa, which was ecstatic to welcome Protestant White immigrants.

After the brief "thaw", the government of Finland quietly reinstituted border controls and announced new "reforms", namely that the nascent propiska system in Finland would be entirely abolished, having never been properly implemented. In short, Finland would have free migration from the rest of the Soviet Union. That being said, it was unlikely Russians, enjoying a higher living standard, would move there, even had their governments allowed it. Striking a deal with some of the poorest Soviet republics, especially those in the Caucasus and Central Asia, Soviet Finland encouraged these high-fertility regions to allow "surplus population" to move to Soviet Finland. Helsinki quickly became home to neighborhoods like "Little Grozny", "Little Samarkand", and "Little Baku."

The combination of losing some of its most politically hostile residents, reasonable economic growth (from both the postwar recovery continuing and some degree of demographic dividend from immigration), and relative (large emphasis on relative) political stability actually made the government of Soviet Finland popular enough to quell public unrest. An entirely new national narrative was constructed, where the Reds in the Finnish Civil War was treated as the true Finnish patriots, and Finland from 1921-1956 generally dismissed as "Nazi Finland" (with a strong emphasis on war crimes committed in the Continuation War). Public unrest was still strong, but it immediately became super-focused on outrage over large influxes of immigrants, especially Muslim immigrants. As a result, the Finnish opposition, much to the disgust of many otherwise anti-Soviet liberals, took on an increasingly ethnonationalist, often even white supremacist and Nazi-sympathizing, sheen. This was not helped by the increasing far-right politics of nearby Sweden-Finland, which increasingly became a foil for Soviet Finland (and object of veneration for anti-Communist Finns). Anti-Soviet liberals quickly found themselves completely alienated and excluded by the political spectrum of Soviet Finland, becoming an increasingly irrelevant force.

Soviet Finland appeared peaceful and recovering on the surface, but under the surface, Communist paramilitaries and far-right urban terrorists often tussled, a situation which was complicated by the Communist government covertly deploying criminal gangs associated with migrant populations to combat the domestic far-right. Whereas overt Islamic practice was frowned upon in most of the Soviet Union, the government of Soviet Finland turned a blind eye as long as such practitioners would aid the government in "maintaining public order." That being said, this level of disorder was actually viewed as significantly better than average to what was going on in the rest of the Soviet Union, and internal migration actually picked up to Soviet Finland as many Soviets in the poorer Republics judged that "Nazi terrorists and Islamist gangsters blowing each other up in the streets is still better than what we've got here - at least I won't get lobomotized!"

TastySpam · Apr 4, 2022

The KKT Scandal and the Indian Elections of 1965

Of all the things to possibly tank Rajaji, most had expected the war in Sri Lanka to do so, especially as it dragged on. Much to the surprise of international observers, the actual culprit was caste politics. As the culmination of his widespread reforms, Rajaji had saved education for the last. His "Modified Scheme for Elementary Education" believed that modern Indian education was simply not useful enough for creating practical vocational skills and most of all, was too expensive. In a scheme to save money, Rajaji proposed that elementary school education should be split into two blocs of time. Children would spent half of the time in the classroom under typical classroom instructions, but to save money, the other half could be spent with the children staying at home, learning the occupation of their parents.

The primary motivation of this plan was to expand education to more students without costing more money (Rajaji, an economic liberal, feared higher state revenues would prove a 'drag' on private investment and economic activity). At the time, only around half of Indian elementary-aged children actually attended elementary school, and Rajaji genuinely wanted to drag that number to 100% (without spending money). However, his scheme electrified the third rail of Indian politics.

The notion that children would be vocationally educated in the occupation of their parents proved deeply offensive to a wide swath of Indians, who believed the proposal reeked and was motivated primarily by casteism. The term Kula Kalvi Thittam (Hereditary Education Act) was immediately adopted by Rajaji opponents. Rajaji was not in fact a casteist, but he was a Brahmin from a wealthy family, and it was easy to smear him as such. Opponents charged that the goal of the "KKT" was entrench occupational casteism. As a result, members of "backwards castes" electorally revolted against the ruling party, delivering them a repeated string of devastating state-level losses. Capitalizing primarily were parties aligned with the politically ascendant Menon-Bose coalition.

After a decade of rather energetic reforms, it increasingly appeared that Rajaji was invariably tainted by the scandal. For one, Rajaji had never actually at any time been actually popular - his liberal economic reforms were fairly consistently popular among both urban workers and peasants. The KKT affair dragged his approval ratings from mediocre to apocalyptic however, and it seemed to many party elders that he finally had to go. Rajaji decided to go peacefully, but made sure to pull enough strings to make sure his successor would at least not roll back his reforms or challenge India's pro-Western orientation.

A conservative moderate, Morarji Desai, took over Rajaji. However, he had one problem - he wasn't Tamil. Rajaji has used his own Tamil heritage as a way to keep Tamil nationalists in line, despite their insistence that the Indians move to integrate the Tamil-areas of occupied Sri Lanka into Indian governance (he always refused). The Tamil coalition partners issued Desai an ultimatum to do so. Desai said no, and calling his bluff, they unceremoniously torpedoed his government, campaigning on a more hawkish approach to Sri Lanka.

The results would be an unceremonious disaster for the INC. Although taking an easy plurality in 1962 due to first-past-the-post, this meant that a moderate loss in popular vote would annihilate the INC from parliament. However, this was a situation that many had prepared for. Menon was seen as an anti-Western leader, with Bose being seen as more moderate, but widely disliked by upscale, pro-Western Indians. Western governments signaled their support for a third candidate besides Bose and Menon, namely the ambitious daughter of former Prime Minister Nehru, Indira Gandhi. A vicious anti-Communist in the 1950's (despite her father's third worldism), Gandhi railed against both Rajaji's market-liberalism, but promised a tougher line on Sri Lanka and Pakistan. The two parties were convinced that rallying behind Nehru's name would also enhance their own popularity, and so they campaigned on nominating Gandhi as their prime minister candidate. The results would be a huge victory, with the INC coming in third.

The natural instability of Indian politics meant that volatility was the norm. For one, many INC politicians were only affiliated with the mainline INC because they were in charge. Once the winds blew elsewhere, so did their loyalties. Scores of veteran INC politicians abandoned the mainline INC, joining the INC(S) (still viewing the INC(N) as too radical). This however, meant that the first few months of the new administration would be insanely vicious in terms of infighting.

The first issue to come up was the issue of the Sri Lankan War. Menon called for a withdrawal, claiming that India was not secure unless it established working relations with the Communist bloc. Bose was skeptical of the government's prosecution over the war, but didn't have strong views as to whether the war itself was just. Gandhi's first news was to immediately release classified information that the Rajaji-Desai government had concealed. Indian intelligence had strong confidence that the People's Republic of Pakistan was developing nuclear weapons, with progress considered extremely advanced (they would be finished by 1969, best estimates went). Further, the Gandhi government revealed that the primary foreign supplier of arms to Sri Lanka was not North China (as expected), but rather the People's Republic of Pakistan, despite Pakistan's condemnation of "Sinhalese Buddhist theocratic-chauvinism." The furor shredded the public image of V.K. Menon, who Gandhi lambasted as weak. An internal leadership election in the INC (S) easily replaced him with Gandhi herself, and this opened up options for her. Menon was once again expelled from a party (this one, the party he founded), so he naturally responded by founding a new party, the INC (LS) - Left Socialist.

Regardless, this would go not particularly far, as a "Red Scare" swept India. Trade unionists who cheered the defeat of the market liberal, right-wing Rajaji-Desai government quickly saw their hopes answered with detention or even lynchings. Trade unionists often survived only by quickly associating their movement with Bose's INC (N), which as a junior partner of the government, was spared these retributions.

Namely, the INC(S) did not have a plurality, but they could get there with several options. The INC (N) would easily push them over the edge, but so would nascent Tamil regionalists. Inviting them to be partners with the ruling government, Gandhi announced that referendums would be taking place in the Tamil-majority regions of Sri Lanka with regards to union with a new "Tamil Nadu", carved out of the boundaries of the Madras State. With the low-tax policies of Rajaji-Desai government ended, Gandhi declared that they would put an end to "Communist aggression in South Asia", in theory aimed at Sri Lanka, but also warning Pakistan and Burma (on purpose) and Nepal/Bhutan (on accident). Although the Rajaji-Desai government had secured significant arm shipments from the United Kingdom, the humiliation of the British Army at Souda proved to be an opportunity to India, which sought to essentially buy /everything/ the British hadn't nailed down. A decline in American military spending under the non-interventionist Siler administration also meant good deals from American defense companies, who quickly received a license waiver from the Siler Administration in exchange for not protesting the stagnation of American defense spending. After all, Siler was an American non-interventionist, not a peace activist.

The weapons were immediately put to use in a massive escalation of the Sri Lankan War. Under Rajaji, Indian forces pushed Sri Lankan forces out of the Tamil-majority regions, and then predominantly fought in relatively low-populated areas to secure defensible points, hoping that the Sri Lankan government would agree to negotiated settlement (one that would essentially create a federal state in Sri Lanka). Under Gandhi, the decision was made to "push for peace", which meant occupying all of Sri Lanka and then dictating terms. Bombs fell en masse on Sri Lankan cities, as the death toll of the war significantly piled up. Sri Lankan "boat people" fled across the Indian Ocean, primarily to Pakistan and to a lesser extent North China.

All of these developments helped lead to the development of a very aggressive plan began being floated in at least 5 major world capitals, which would be cryptically referred to as "Plan Chandrahas."

TastySpam · Apr 5, 2022

The Diplomatic Revolution

The complex diplomatic game played the Iranians grew even more complex. After the Iranian-Soviet alienation from 1946-1957 and then Iranian-Soviet partnership from 1957-1965, another page had turned in Iranian diplomatic history. Mossadegh's conflict with France, the United Kingdom, and the United States had essentially ended in one outcome - his victory. He had outlasted all three governments. Prime Minister Churchill once said "Mossadegh must go", and Mossadegh supporters were now eagerly painting portraits of the Iranian leader with "WHO MUST GO?"

Iran's diplomatic revolution was also undergirded by the fact that the Soviet Union also just seemed to be in a deep sense AWOL on foreign affairs. Economic aid from the Soviet Union simply one day...stopped, with the stop largely unexplained. Then it became rather concerning when the only thing being shipped over seemed to be dessicated brains, the brilliant idea of some Turkmen Communist youth group who thought this would intimidate the Afghans and Persians into adopting Orthodox Marxism-Leninism, including the infamous Brain Quran, a Quran written sacrireligiously entirely in liquefied brain matter, which Islamic authorities immediately responded by burying in the deepest imaginable vault they could find.

The new British government, essentially dealing with economic collapse and a wave of refugees from Pakistan, started to regret their open-borders policy. However, unwilling to capitulate and give more political tinder to the soaring far-right movement. White supremacist marches became commonplace in most British cities and even Winston Churchill died of a stroke shortly after being heckled by a mob of furious anti-immigration radicals who insisted that he was responsible for the "wrong side" winning the Second World War II. No longer holding many imperial pretensions, the British government was willing to give in essentially on all Iranian demands in exchange for Iran hosting some Pakistani refugees. France threw in the towel shortly after, since they were largely only upholding sanctions against Iran in solidarity with the British, who they now viewed as an embarrassing liability and cautionary tale. The Americans were more or less also willing to throw in the towel in exchange for the Iranians returning the American portion of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (which was a relatively small slice that continued to leave the enterprise under American control). Iranian-Americans relations immediately improved, especially the Siler Administration essentially respected the notion of a neutralist, nonaligned Iran, as long as they were amenable to American commercial interests.

Moreover, this was seen as an opportunity for Tehran to extend its control. Without much warning, the Iranian military engaged in a clear shock and awe campaign, bombing the autonomous Kurdish Republic of Mahabad. Taken totally aback, the Kurds were unable to resist Anglo-American-supplied artillery and the Republic, which had survived fairly prosperously from 1946-1965, collapsed. Its fighters, totally outarmed, fled instead to the mountains to continue resisting the Iranians. Many surviving fighters would also flee into the North Chinese-backed Socialist Republic of Iraq, where they would continue fighting against the Iranians. Indeed, this move quickly soured the relationship between the non-Soviet Communist bloc and Iran. However, that too was seen as an opportunity to reconcile with an ancient enemy. The Syrians and Iranians both shared a distaste for the Islamic Republic of Iraq - and an "anti-terrorism" agreement was quickly penned between the Syrians and Iran. Many democratic and liberal dissidents had fled from Iraq or Syria into Iran, which was seen as a "democratic socialist, secular state." For the most part, with the approval of both the Western powers and the foreign ministry of the Soviet Union, these individuals were arrested and sent back to Syria, where the government unceremoniously executed them en masse. This was followed by full normalization of relations between Iran and Syria, which brought significant economic riches to both parties.

This sparked another strange realignment. Communist Judeopalestine and the Kingdoms of Saudi Arabia and Yemen had forged a rather odd alliance with each other, aimed at excising British influence. However, the strongest power to arise from this devastation was Greater Syria, as tacitly supported by Israel and now Iran. The Saudi-Yemeni Royalist coalition quickly formalized close as possible relations with the new Islamosocialist Egypt, which both Israel and Syria jointly saw as a threat. With the Egyptians as a mediator, relations were opened up between Communist Iraq and Islamist Iraq, who quickly agreed to unite on paper (albeit not in reality since they didn't even border each other) into a new Democratic Islamic Federal Republic of Iraq (DIFRI). The odd alliance was highlighted in one event, where a Communist Secular-Jewish diplomat publicly lauded the King of Saudi Arabia as "Allah's custodian of the holy cities" and an Islamist imam was forced to acknowledge the "holy contributions of the Jewish people to scientific-socialist Marxism-Leninism, consistent with Islamic values." Indeed, the term "consistent with Islamic values" became an oft-mocked buzzword.

The new proxy war for these two camps quickly became Oman, where a civil war would eventually metastasize into the catalyst for the most devastating war in human history since the Three years War.

TastySpam · Apr 7, 2022

The Dead Hand of Jackson

The booming economies of East Asia left out one nation in particular - the Greater Korean Republic, humiliatingly exiled in Jeju Island. Blaming Rhee for the defeat of the GKR in the Three Years War and the disastrous "March to the North", former coup leader Lee Beom-seok seized control of the country in a second coup, promising to turn Jeju into a fortress island for retaking the mainland. The first few years of his rule was marked by significant economic gains based on state-led enterprises. However, the extreme alienation of the local Jeju people (who generally leaned left) meant that Lee was forced to expend significant funds on establishing a security garrison state of actual economic development. Although booming, the GKR was probably the slowest growing East Asian economy, even slower than North China, which similarly spent a ludicrous share of its national budget on wars (albeit overseas).

In contrast, the People's Republic of Korea was rapidly recovering from the war. However, significant tensions had developed between the People's Republic of Korea and the People's Republic of China. Korean nationalists, especially the Juche Socialists, resented the influence of the Chinese Communist Party and of Chinese-Koreans on the ruling government. In response, the government embarked on a platform of "indigenization" that created significant tensions with the PRC, which led to a significant reduction of Chinese military assistance to the Korean People's Army between 1962 and 1965. Although this did not hurt the army, this significantly degraded the naval and air capabilities of the Mainland Korean military. A more clever Western bloc could have potentially taken advantage of this growing chasm, but they did not.

For one, things were even worse in Jeju. State owned enterprises quickly fell into insolvency as a result of the oil shock of 1963. Nations around the world snatched to secure cheap sources of oil, and the Jeju-GKR was a significant afterthought for most nations. Generous IMF loans to the GKR quickly went insolvent and against his own wishes, Lee was forced to privatize a significant number of these industries, which led to mass layoffs for relatively uncompetitive (at least compared to South Japan or South China) industries. When workers broke out in illegal strikes as a result, Lee simply ordered all the labour activists shot. However, local gendarmeries, often local Jejuese, refused to fire on the striking workers. That gave Lee two options. First, he could call for international assistance from the anti-Communist bloc. However, he was an ardent Korean nationalist who simply ruled that out. As a result, he was forced to against his own desires to do an act he never wanted to do - negotiate.

Negotiations broke down as worker committees simply seized control of industrial facilities and major thoroughfares in Jeju City. This was seen as a huge threat, because the city was traditionally the bastion of the ruling regime, as it was the most heavily with mainland anti-communist loyalist exiles. In the countryside, the situation was even worse, as villages simply declared themselves autonomous villages, some even declaring "solidarity" with the mainland. In 1964, the Jeju Crisis would begin. PRK ships began harrassing and trailing GKR ships, threatening imminent reunification. In reality, the PRK had no real ability to launch any amphibious assault on Jeju, but this put significant psychological pressure on the regime.

In South Japan, this was treated by nationalists and centrists as an existential threat to South Japan. Imperial Japanese war planners famously called Korea a dagger pointed at the heart of Japan (if it were to be controlled by a foreign power). South Japanese war planners did not go that far, but they viewed a Communist Jeju, combined with Communist North Japan, as a vice on South Japan. Prime Minister Miki's response to the Jeju Crisis was...well, he didn't really care. He never really bought into the notion of a Communist "vice" and he had reasonably reliable intelligence that the PRK had no ability to launch an amphibious assault. Regardless, this spooked much of the Japanese right, both the right-opposition and the centrists. In Washington, the government had become increasingly dissatisfied with the Miki government, which seemed to adopt the same political posture towards the Eastern bloc as pre-war Finland.

Moreover, South Japan was being ravaged by its worst ever labor dispute as well. During the oil shock of 1963, the price of Japanese goal skyrocketed. Despite that, working conditions at Japan's coal mines remained as poor as ever. Even worse, many of these mines rehired previously laid-off workers, who had become radicalized when the Kishi government had previously violently crushed their strikes against layoffs. Furious miners famously seized control of the Mitsui Miike Coal Mine, demanding that the corporation hike their wages and provide back-pay to previously fired miners. The company refused to compromise and neither did the union. As a result, Miki took the unusual step of forcing Mitsui to sell the mines to the government (at a relatively poor "fair market" price given that the price was very low due to the strikes) and simply paying off the miners, but otherwise not altering Japanese labor law. To many of Japan's businesses and conservatives, this was seen as a "capitulation" to "communism" and "radical socialism", even though Miki saw it as a pragmatic path forward.

Large elements of both the Japan Self-Defense Forces and CIA had become convinced, likely through inaccurate threat inflation, that Japan was about to "encircled" by Communist forces. Masanobu Tsuji had succeeded his famous predecessor, Takushiro Hattori, as head of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, and unlike Hattori, Tsuji was actually much more pro-American. Although both Hattori and Tsuji were nationalists and close friends, Hattori sided with the Hatoyama line of non-alignment, while Tsuji sided with the Kishi school of alignment with the United States. Moreover, Tsuji was a fanatical antisocialist, and felt that the Japan Social Nationalist Party was infected with leftists and socialists (due to its pro-labor wing). In addition, Miki was preparing a bevy of environmentalist laws in response to the "Four Great Pollution diseases", which significantly annoyed the business wing of the JSNP.

In late 1964, Tsuji and a ring of other high-ranked South Japanese generals penned the famous Tsuji memorandum, specifically criticizing the government, claiming that it was leading Japan into strategic encirclement, and subtly hinted (via an arcane reference to classical Chinese history) to military intervention in politics. The plan of the so called "Silent Coup" was simply - simply covertly replace the government. Although the Jackson Administration had lost re-election, this actually only supercharged their interventionism, as they were hoping to ring the world with friendly regimes /before/ the Siler Administration could take power. The CIA contacted a significant number of Japanese civilian politicians to simply inform them that the JSDF had their support and funding - and that they should act accordingly.

The centrist faction of the JSNP, led by Ichiro Kono, took the point and feared the possibility of a military coup. Their resulting statement that Prime Minister Miki had lost their confidence simply led the Prime Minister to resign, realizing that he had no huge majority and generally not having an appetite for a fierce political fight. However, in furious response, both the JNSP-left and the center-liberals stated they would refuse to support any candidate from the Kono-faction. In desperation, Kono entered negotiations with Nobusuke Kishi's right-opposition. In the end, a deal was struck to appoint one of the most moderate politicians from the right-opposition, Kishi's brother Eisaku Sato, as Prime Minister. In return, the JNSP-right would receive most of the cabinet seats, with the notable exception of Defense, which went to Sato supporter Genda Minoru, former head of the JSDF Air Force. Upon taking power, despite their promise to "rollback radical socialism", the government actually failed to reverse the mine nationalizations in any meaningful way. However, goaded by elements of the CIA, Genda would begin planning events that while not as influential as the military strike he was best known for being a chief planner of (the attack on Pearl Harbor), was nevertheless quite impactful for the entire Asia-Pacific region.

TastySpam · Apr 11, 2022

The African People Have Stood Up

The Belgian gambit seemed to be failing. The Belgian government's consolation prize of Katanga was not particularly something it wanted to have - it was largely strongarmed by Portugal, the United States, and the Central African Federation into accepting the accords that ended the Congo War. Indeed, the struggle for Belgium did not end. Not only was Katanga not entirely stable either, the situation in Rwanda and Burundi were significantly deteriorating. The defeat of Amin the Battle of Montewara and what increasingly became known as the Great Tanganyikan Famine was to send waves of refugees fleeing across the continent, often across Lake Tanganyika towards Rwanda and Burundi.

Although Imin believed he would be secure as a result of creating a horrific famine to disrupt his enemies, deals had been made to further undermine his power. Idi Amin's rise to power was heavily aided by the Buganda Kingdom, who supported the Kenyan Rifles when they arrived. However, the brutality of Amin essentially spooked them away from his orbit, and the Bantu kingdoms of the Great Lakes, while admittedly loathing each other, were generally horrified by stories of Idi Amin's man-made famine. Buganda was distinctly the dominant kingdom, with Busoga under its domination and both Ankole and Toro struggling with internal governance and ethnic issues. King Mutesa saw his opportunity. With Amin both terrifying but increasingly weak, King Mutesa of Buganda worked out an agreement with the smaller kingdoms to provide for the creation of the United Bantu Kingdoms, with him as Prime Minister. The combination of Amin appearing scarier than Buganda and their own internal problems made Buganda look like the least threatening option in a sea of vipers. Finally, with Buganda's flank secure, Mutesa struck another bargain. The Mapinduzi rebels, with their distinctly left-leaning revolutionary outlook, seemed like a serious threat. However, they shared an interest in removing Amin from power.

The Arusha Accords saw a bargain struck. The Mapinduzi would recognize the sovereignty of all the Bantu Kingdoms, including Bunyoro (which was under Amin's occupation) ending Ugandan claims. In exchange, Mutesa cleverly conceded claims on the Kigezi region, realizing that it would serve as a buffer between the UBK and the increasing chaos in Rwanda-Burundi. Mutesa saw Bunyoro, Buganda's historic enemy, as the hardest kingdom to integrate. However, he also viewed liberating them from Amin as a public opinion triumph. Finally, the Somalis/Italians were bargained with. The Mapinduzi also agreed to drop claims to ethnic Somali regions of Kenya that Amin had pawned off, which meant that the Italo-Somali interest in retaining Amin also ended.

With the bargain struck, UBK forces moved against poorly defended borders in both occupied-Tanganyika and occupied-Uganda. Bunyoro was liberated within a few weeks, as anti-Amin Bunyoro soldiers gladly cooperated with the invading UBK army. With two additional borders threatened, Amin's heavily demoralized army quickly found itself unable to keep its enemies at bay. The Portuguese and Belgians were furious at Amin, as their colonies were collapsing under the weight of refugees from Tanganyika, but they had no choice to keep funneling weapons towards what was a clearly losing fight. Mapinduzi rebels, learning from the North Chinese way of war, eagerly welcomed defectors. The change in administrations in Washington also dealt another gruesome blow to Amin. The spigot of free American weapons was turned off. Although the Siler Administration was happy to provide Amin weapons, they wanted payment. And he was out of funds.

Amin left behind a significant garrison behind in Dar Es Salaam, ordered to destroy the city in urban warfare to slow down the advancing Mapinduzi rebels. Being mostly local collaborators, they made a rational choice - they simply surrendered the city without a shot in exchange in exchange for food (they were aware of the famine conditions battering rural Tanganyika). Although claiming to be the legitimate government of Amin's East African Federation to Western observers (who had recognized Amin), they rejected Amin's EAF as a Western imposition. Desiring a more indigenous national narrative, Nyerere famously paid homage to Mao Zedong when he declared that the African people had stood up, as he announced the creation of the People's Republic of Tankenia. Recognition quickly came from the Eastern bloc and much of the nonaligned bloc. Although Tankenia promised to be a "multiparty electoral democracy based on the Westminster system", every observer immediately recognized it would be dominated by the Mapinduzi rebels.

Moreover, everyone could see where the wind was blowing. Amin's army was chased out of Tanganyika by early 1966. Attempts to evacuate by sea failed as Madagascaran navy ships, although unable to adopt naval superiority, interdicted possible transport. Remaining army groups in Tanganyika, sandwiched between Mapinduzi and UBK troops, surrendered en masse. Amin's army fought a losing scorched earth campaign in Uganda as well. That being said, his defensive line along the Tanganyika-Kenya border was actually fairly successful, with the best of his Belgian-Portuguese artillery guarding a frontier that was relatively difficult for Tankenian troops to supply (due to the massive famine in Tanganyika). The war was clearly being won by one side, but gains quickly slowed down. The North Chinese reaction was to double down on their support for Tankenia. Military and economic assets (in particular, food) were quickly shifted to what they saw as an impending glorious victory in East Africa. The North Chinese called this the "Zheng He Initiative", named after the famous Ming admiral who had visited East Africa. However, this massive commitment, alongside with their support for Judeopalestine and Communist Iraq, would ironically leave the North Chinese incredibly unprepared for events in Asia.

TastySpam · Apr 12, 2022

Return of the Queen

The battle lines were drawn. The victory of pro-Chiang KMT loyalists in the midterm elections brought a de facto end to Sun's campaign against local governors and really the rest of Sun's domestic agenda. Although Sun had dismantled a few state-owned enterprises, the midterm election also marked an end to Sun's very brief economic liberalization campaign. Instead, the rest of Sun's agenda was forced into primarily foreign affairs, such as the issuing of the famous Sun note. Moreover, the midterms had made it clear what the stakes of the 1966 presidential elections would be. In short, a referendum on Chiang's legacy.

To make this clearer, Chiang was not about to repeat the 1960 elections, where he allowed the KMT to splinter on preferred candidates by attempting to retire as a senior statesman. He didn't officially endorse a candidate, but his choice was very clear to almost everyone in the entire nation. Chiang's wife, Soong Mei-ling, had once again public notoriety by being active in private relief efforts to help end the Great Chinese Famine. And she would gain even greater notoriety by declaring her candidacy for President of the Republic of China. Inter-party squabbles on who would challenge Sun ended overnight. The choice was clear.

The 1966 presidential elections, despite being of incredible importance to the entire world, was a relatively low-drama affairs. Soong chose to campaign like American presidents of old - not directly. Rather it was Chiang loyalists in the KMT, especially local governors, who would shoulder the burden of campaigning. Soong campaign events were sparse and carefully correlated. The most controversial and notable one was a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who seemingly gave her a full endorsement. The image of potentially two woman leaders of the two largest nations in the world forging a partnership was simply irresistible to foreign press and also deeply infuriating to the Eastern bloc, which had always sold themselves (for the most part, accurately) as a relative bastion of gender equality (North China and Pakistan had generally significantly higher levels of education and workforce participation for women).

The sole presidential debate held between the two was in rather formalistic Chinese that most Chinese did not actually understand. Both Sun and Soong were very educated individuals who simply spoke in a register incomprehensible to most Chinese, making complicated references to classical Chinese literature and philosophy that flew over the heads of most viewers. Regardless, a televised debate between presidential candidates was still seen as a watershed moment as hundreds of millions of Chinese tuned in (mostly on poorly functioning village radios) to the debate. They would vote in droves for the election. The presidential election was not a direct popular vote election, but rather indirectly for representatives to the National Assembly, who would then vote for President. That being said, the districts were mostly proportional. Although mass corruption, vote-buying, and voter intimidation was common, actual voter fraud was extremely rare and the international consensus was that the election was mostly free and fair...enough.

On most measures, the South Chinese economy had done rather well under Sun. Recovery from the Great Chinese Famine was total and it became understood on both sides of the Great Wall that South China now had a significantly larger economy and military industry. Pro-Sun forces largely believed that an increasingly prosperous voter class would reward them. Indeed, Sun's share of the vote /was/ significantly higher than his vote in 1960. The problem was that he had not actually gotten that many votes in 1960. With most precincts reporting, the results were a rout. Soong was leading Sun roughly 64-36 across the entire nation in the popular vote. In terms of the electoral vote, this gave Soong over 93% of the seats. Moreover, the midterm results were largely replicated in the Legislative Yuan. The Chinese People's Party (which supported Sun, even if he was not an official member) had actually inched up, from 16% to 19%, but the KMT still had a 2/3rds majority in the Legislative Yuan.

Soong's victory was celebrated by international observers, especially in the West, who believed that she would pivot to a more pro-Western orientation than Sun. However, more elated than anyone else would be the Indians. Indeed, the first act of the Soong administration was to accept an Indian offer that had been proposed during the Sun administration but left unanswered (neither accepted nor rejected) - a joint Sino-Indian nuclear program. The reality was that there was already a Sino-French-Israeli nuclear program (with nuclear tests in Algeria), so Sino-Indian cooperation mostly benefitted the Indians. Indeed, at her inaugural address, Soong declared India "another middle country" - insofar that it was a civilizational peer also "encircled" by the "Communist powers."

Tight cooperation would not just be forged with the Indians - but rather the third great economic power of Asia, South Japan. Economic relations between South Japan and South China had been very strong under Sun and Miki (and Sun and Sato), but they had always held each other at arms-distance geopolitically. Not because of any history (as believed by most Western analysts), but because the Sun Administration had been hoping to pull apart Mainland Korea and North China - and they felt that leaning too closely towards South Japan would prevent this. However, the Soong administration, informed by ROC military generals, generally viewed this as a fool's errand. Moreover, the JSDF immensely respected Chiang and the KMT, largely because they fought them in World War II (and had been unable to defeat them).

The influence of Chiang Kai-shek on his wife was always unclear, since he actually went to great lengths to distance himself officially from state affairs, resigning his positions in government. However, Soong's coterie significantly overlapped with Chiang's closest advisors, and it was obviously impossible that they didn't converse. In many ways, Soong benefitted from both being able to campaign as Chiang's third term - but also being able to distance herself from the less popular aspects.

TastySpam · Apr 19, 2022

The Tuvan Conspiracy

The revolution in the Soviet Union swept hardest into the border republics, none harder than Tuva. Annexed by the Soviet Union in 1944 and then given nominal independence again in an attempt to give North China a seat at the UN, Tuva had rested under the hardline rule of General Secretary Salchak Toka for decades, who had been previously installed into power by Stalin due to his intense loyalty to Moscow. Angry students sought to overthrow Toka and in a brief moment, it seemed that Toka's reign was seriously threatened. As students stormed the headquarters of the local Communist Party and demanded "reforms", Toka fled across the border to Mongolia and then North China, asking another old Soviet functionary in North China, Vyacheslav Molotov, to aid him in retaining power.

For a variety of reasons, the North Chinese were not inclined to listen to Molotov's plea to simply send the troops into Tuva, largely because it was implicitly understood that the Soviets were to retain actual control in Tuva. Although deeply skeptical of political developments in the USSR, the North Chinese did not want to do anything that actually suggested an anti-Soviet approach. In addition, there was significant discontent in Mongolia, where many politicians believed that its independence was threatened by the much larger North China (which also had a much larger Mongol population). The Shenyang-Ulan Batoor-Urumqi railway also seemed to link Mongolia to North China economically, which worried some, especially General Secretary Tsedenbal, who was always a hardline Soviet loyalist who more or less only agreed to this arrangement because the USSR ordered it. As such, a North Chinese incursion into Tuva was vetoed.

That being said, an arrangement was secretly struck behind the scenes, by Molotov, Saka, and North Chinese foreign policy eminence, Burhan Shahidi. The arms of the Red Army were rather tied when it came to intervening in the largest cities of the Soviet Union, but they had political capital to act on the borders when 'border security' was jeopardized. An agreement was thus struck between North China and the Red Army. PLA regiments mobilized across the Central Asian border in Xinjiang, claiming that it was necessary to prevent "mass violence" from spilling into North China. Then claiming that border security was under threat, elements of the Red Army simply marched into Tuva, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan (oddly, Kazakhstan was one of the most stable Republics, with only a brief bloodletting in Almaty that quickly led to the creation of a rather moderate committee willing to play ball with the national Communist Party) to put down the greatest excesses of the revolution. The Red Army then declared itself defender of "national integrity", by announcing the reannexation of Tuva into the Soviet Union, a move which was met by fake outrage in North China. Coincidentally, the Tajik expedition also reassured the Afghans (who were worried about violence), but actually further alienated the Iranians, who saw it as "cultural suppression" of the Persian-speaking Tajiks.

However, the greatest revulsion was in Mongolia, which now saw the North Chinese as the more reliable partner. After all, the Soviets had brought mass violence and then military occupation. The North Chinese had really just brought a few railroads and a few military expeditions, which Mongolian Army commanders actually largely liked (Western media outlets attacking Mongolians as the 'children of Genghis Khan' had the opposite effect that Western media outlets hoped.) As a result, a wave of pro-Chinese sentiment swept the Mongol Communist Party. When Tsedenbal tried to fight it by purging the party of its younger cadres, North Chinese-sponsored officers simply removed him from office and exiled him...to Tuva. Ironically, the breaking point was when he attempted to purge cadres for the crime of celebrating Genghis Khan, who he condemned as a bourgeoise, feudal ruler. In contrast, the North Chinese had rebuilt the Genghis Khan Mausoleum and declared him an anticolonial, anti-imperialist resistance fighter (North Chinese state media also questionably depicted Mao Zedong as a direct descendent of Genghis Khan).

Propelled by younger cadres, General Secretary Tomor-Ochir officially embraced the North Chinese, albeit at a bit of a distance. Tuva was forcibly pried from the State Union, which the North Chinese ultimately accepted (which was taken as a sign of weakness by another government in East Asia), so a decision was made to strengthen the State Union with 'North' Mongolia. Although the Mongolian People's Republic remained in theory distinct, the Mongolian People's Army was fully integrated into the PLA (albeit as a distinct field army, the smallest 5th Field Army), with the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party fully integrated into the Communist Party of China (which actually gave reasonable levels of influence, since part of the deal was the constitutionally guarantee them a seat on the Central Committee, the same deal offered to the 'Xinjiang Autonomous Chinese Socialist Republic'). This also gave North China a better position at the UN, since now the Mongol seat was a clear proxy for North China (giving it a leg up against both Japans and both Koreas, neither which had representation at the United Nations). As such, the harshest UN debates were often between the Chinese representative and the Mongol representative, especially because the latter consistently demanded the UN Security Council seat of the former.

The reaction in South China to the union of "Red Mongolia" and "Red Manchukuo" was to simply depict all Communists as Mongols and vice versa. State sponsored media depicted heroic struggle of Chinese fighters against the Mongol invasion, including several films which amusingly depicted Genghis Khan as a protocommunist. The Red Turban rebellion became one of the most heavily taught and popularly depicted periods of Chinese history. In South Japan, this led to a flurry of anti-communist media focused on the Mongol invasions of Japan. That being said, this had limits, as one government minister faced widespread condemnation in South Japanese society when he referred to the nuclear bomb as a modern kamikaze (divine wind). Although he retracted his statements, it foretold the roots of an incredible crisis in Asia.

The North Star is Red: a Wallace Presidency, KMT Victory, Alternate Cold War TL

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