What if, after the fall of the Soviet union, outside forces took control of Soviet/Russian territory. Examples include Germany with Kaliningrad (and maybe parts of Poland?), Finland retaking territory lost during the Winter War and perhaps Karelia, Japan with the Kuril islands and Sakhalin, China retaking old Qing territory, and Romania retaking Moldova+Odessa. Could a similar thing happen with Yugoslavia, with Italy seizing Istria and maybe Dalmatia, Bulgaria/Greece taking Macedonia, Albania taking Kosovo, the list of irredentist claims goes on! Which of these would be most likely to happen, and would any of the new nations try to stop them? Also, feel free to name any possible border changes i did not mention.
What if other nations seized territory during the USSR/Yugoslavia's Collapse?
- Thread starter Bountifulauto82
- Start date
Khanzeer
Banned
Ukraine is a decent power too but the disputes you described are almost all with russian federation and not with former states
This is not 1939 anymore. For all the catastrophic economic decisions taken in the USSR, they had the second largest military on the planet and a full arsenal of nuclear weapons for détente purposes. No government would survive seizing territory like that, not in 1991.
Well, the UNSC and the UN in general would come down hard against such territorial aggrandizement. The NATO/OTAN would seriously discourage any member states to do this, ditto for the EU. Harsh economic sanctions would be passed. It's true that the same applies to present-day Russia wrt Ukrainan territory, but keep in mind that the countries you mention as possible expansionists aren't nuclear powers and weren't as strong, militarily, as Russia is.
If these forms of pressure don't work, Russia would probably be happy to fight to defend Kaliningrad or Karelia; nothing helps internal trouble as much as a external enemy.
Ukraine would probably fight and at the time is still a nuclear power, too.
Moldova is too small to fight a Romanian invasion on its own, and it probably wouldn't even want to do so - but there's the small problem of Transnistria and its Russians. It is a problem to date, and it would elicit the same reaction as for Kaliningrad.
Yugoslavia is another can of worms, and it is possible that in the general chaos of the local civil wars, a partial annexation by one of the neighbors would be militarily successful. The country doing that would, at first, possibly even be excused as a bringer of peace and stability. But over the years, it would become a pariah state internationally; and, locally, there's the usual Balkan responses to this: guerrilla and terrorism. And to gain what? An underdeveloped border region that costs more than it yields. The gain wouldn't be worth the effort, and indeed, it's not coincidental that nothing of the sort happened.
If these forms of pressure don't work, Russia would probably be happy to fight to defend Kaliningrad or Karelia; nothing helps internal trouble as much as a external enemy.
Ukraine would probably fight and at the time is still a nuclear power, too.
Moldova is too small to fight a Romanian invasion on its own, and it probably wouldn't even want to do so - but there's the small problem of Transnistria and its Russians. It is a problem to date, and it would elicit the same reaction as for Kaliningrad.
Yugoslavia is another can of worms, and it is possible that in the general chaos of the local civil wars, a partial annexation by one of the neighbors would be militarily successful. The country doing that would, at first, possibly even be excused as a bringer of peace and stability. But over the years, it would become a pariah state internationally; and, locally, there's the usual Balkan responses to this: guerrilla and terrorism. And to gain what? An underdeveloped border region that costs more than it yields. The gain wouldn't be worth the effort, and indeed, it's not coincidental that nothing of the sort happened.
I was about to comment that Finland would have to be led by a madman/madwoman to invade Russia in the early 1990s. Or, more to the point, the entire political and military leadership would have to be made of crazy people. In other words, Finland unilaterally trying to conquer Karelia as the USSR fell would have required an ASB intervention.
Closest thing I can see are if the internal Russian Federation cerntrifugal forces are greater than OTL and Moscow is not able to bring far flung regions to heel **and** the regions innate loyalty to Russia is not as strong as OTL and the US decides that Manifest destiny does not stop at the Pacific and starts agressivly courting the Russian Far East (its helpfully full of white people)............maybe?
Maybe some sort of panic cause a large portion of the Russian population of Kalingrad to flee, & the Poles annex it? Difficult to see what might cause such a panic.
When Yugoslavia fell apart there was some speculation on ethnic groups trying to rejoin the 'motherland'. Albanians were one such. The mixed nature of the populations, & who the hell would want to join Albania? made such speculation unsupportable. The Macedonians had no burning desire to become Greeks.
When Yugoslavia fell apart there was some speculation on ethnic groups trying to rejoin the 'motherland'. Albanians were one such. The mixed nature of the populations, & who the hell would want to join Albania? made such speculation unsupportable. The Macedonians had no burning desire to become Greeks.
Dave Shoup
Banned
Less so "outside," but peaceful internal movements for a union seem more likely to be at least considered by the international community (FRG and GDR being the obvious one). And of course, claims are one thing; politics is another. Most of the less obvious ones probably fail due to lack of numbers of anyone "inside" a given territory asking for annexation/union/etc., and the break-up of Czechoslovakia is the obvious counterexample...
Kaliningrad as an enclave is an unusual case; the ground would have had to been laid beforehand, but given the general fluidity of the situation as the USSR broke up, I'd guess it would not have been impossible for some Russian/Soviet residents of the region to have considered they'd have a better future with Poland (Germany seems a stretch) than Russia (or Lithuania, for that matter), and try to make it happen. Whether the Poles would be receptive is another question.
I am pretty sure there was a thread a month or two back about external invasions of the USSR. There was an apt comparison as to a drowning man grabbing onto a large piece of wreckage. If people start to invade, and they are large countries of hated people, nukes will fly. The Germans would more likely claim Polish land like they did before hand. And if they got to Kaliningrad? There were virtually no Germans. They would need to utterly ethnic cleanse the area to make it Deutsch.
Maybe a more violent breakup of the USSR, perhaps a civil war involving several factions, leads other nations occupying Soviet territory to keep stability along their borders?
The governments of the Gulf States don't seem to give much of a damn for poor Muslims. I don't know if they gave anything more than a million dollars or so to some past tsunamis that wrecked Sumatra, and whatever the religion Asians going to work for Arabs in the Gulf are treated like slaves. Still, I guess some money might leak out. Iran might send in more support first and get a good word in with everyone,