WI: Saddam Hussein is still around during Russia's Annexation of Crimea in 2014?

Let's say there is no Iraq War in 2003. The Arab Spring still occurs around the same time due to climate change but Saddam weathers it by brutally crushing anything that even remotely resembles a threat to his rule, much like he did in the 1990s. The rebels in neighboring Syria may or may not get help from him -- take your pick, it's not really relevant to the discussion. Thus he's still around in 2014-2015 when the Euromaidan occurs in Kiev and Russia uses the Little Green Men to capture Crimea.

So here is the question: given that before 2014 he was the last leader to try annexing a country by force and got smacked down hard for it, how would he react on the international stage to Russia's nearly-bloodless takeover of the region? Does he suddenly make noise about "fixing the injustice" from 23 years ago? Furthermore, now that Russians achieved something Saddam tried to do, how would that impact Russia's view of the 1991 Gulf War? Would it actually start saying Saddam was the undisputed "good guy" in the conflict? Will Putin try to build a closer working relationship with Saddam :)eek:)? And if so, how would that impact Russia's relationship with Iran or Syria?
 
Well, if ISIS still flared up, they wouldn't be long for this world. The Iraqi Army would be so scared of Saddam, they wouldn't dare to retreat... And I can see them hammering the bejesus out of IS, and using singularly brutal methods to put them down.

Which would probably work, too...
 
Well, if ISIS still flared up, they wouldn't be long for this world. The Iraqi Army would be so scared of Saddam, they wouldn't dare to retreat... And I can see them hammering the bejesus out of IS, and using singularly brutal methods to put them down.

Which would probably work, too...

ISIS would not exist if Saddam was still in power, as most of them are ex-Baathists.

Also, Saddamn wouldn't wait till the Crimean annexation to take inspiration. He has the example of the 2008 Russo-Georgian war over South Ossetia too.
 
Let's say there is no Iraq War in 2003. The Arab Spring still occurs around the same time due to climate change but Saddam weathers it by brutally crushing anything that even remotely resembles a threat to his rule, much like he did in the 1990s. The rebels in neighboring Syria may or may not get help from him -- take your pick, it's not really relevant to the discussion. Thus he's still around in 2014-2015 when the Euromaidan occurs in Kiev and Russia uses the Little Green Men to capture Crimea.

So here is the question: given that before 2014 he was the last leader to try annexing a country by force and got smacked down hard for it, how would he react on the international stage to Russia's nearly-bloodless takeover of the region? Does he suddenly make noise about "fixing the injustice" from 23 years ago? Furthermore, now that Russians achieved something Saddam tried to do, how would that impact Russia's view of the 1991 Gulf War? Would it actually start saying Saddam was the undisputed "good guy" in the conflict? Will Putin try to build a closer working relationship with Saddam :)eek:)? And if so, how would that impact Russia's relationship with Iran or Syria?

Russia hardly did something like what Hussein did. They lost control of their client state and were only able to retain control over Crimea. Hussein would realize this and would not do anything to risk a second intervention.

However, a Hussein-Putin alliance is very plausible. After all, Russia is currently aligned with the Baathist al-Assad regime in Syria.
 
Russia hardly did something like what Hussein did. They lost control of their client state and were only able to retain control over Crimea. Hussein would realize this and would not do anything to risk a second intervention.

However, a Hussein-Putin alliance is very plausible. After all, Russia is currently aligned with the Baathist al-Assad regime in Syria.

Yeah, but the Assad regime were enemies of the Saddamn regime.

Russia could bring them together though. Particularly if Saddam dies of old age/ailments, and Qusay succeeds him. With Hafez al-Assad dead by that point too, the two youthful successors Bashar and Qusay could come to a Baathist rapprochement. And Putin would love to be their joint patron.
 
This is a bit hard to judge based on the fact that we don't know Iraq's position in international diplomacy for the past 11 years in this scenario, nor what the internal politics of the United States and United Kingdom are without the Iraq war. Or the situation in Afghanistan for example. Also, the alternate destiny of al-Qaeda could have major affects on Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc. The Iran situation could also be different.

Basically, the situation isn't going to be "WI ASBs make Saddam Hussein's 2002 Iraq appear in 2014", it's going to be a very different 2014 even with the wave of Arab political unrest occurring on schedule.
 
Let's say there is no Iraq War in 2003. The Arab Spring still occurs around the same time due to climate change but Saddam weathers it by brutally crushing anything that even remotely resembles a threat to his rule, much like he did in the 1990s. The rebels in neighboring Syria may or may not get help from him -- take your pick, it's not really relevant to the discussion. Thus he's still around in 2014-2015 when the Euromaidan occurs in Kiev and Russia uses the Little Green Men to capture Crimea.

So here is the question: given that before 2014 he was the last leader to try annexing a country by force and got smacked down hard for it, how would he react on the international stage to Russia's nearly-bloodless takeover of the region? Does he suddenly make noise about "fixing the injustice" from 23 years ago? Furthermore, now that Russians achieved something Saddam tried to do, how would that impact Russia's view of the 1991 Gulf War? Would it actually start saying Saddam was the undisputed "good guy" in the conflict? Will Putin try to build a closer working relationship with Saddam :)eek:)? And if so, how would that impact Russia's relationship with Iran or Syria?

He was born in 1937. He would have been around 78 by now. Far from too old to be a dictator, but we don´t know how his health condition would be in ATL 2015.
 
Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait because the US said it didn't care if he did. Pretty sure the CIA rooted for his invasion of Iran too. So unless we give him something that can at least be interpreted as a wink and a nudge, he's not going to try his luck again.
 
Honestly, given he's going to be on the older side after a pretty stressful lie, the Arab Spring might coincide pretty closely with his death.
 
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