103 – DownfallPresident Robb addresses the nation on the evening of August 15th. He announces his intention to resign from the office to which he ascended six weeks beforehand.
Talking to the American people, and the watching world too, in a momentous speech that will long be remembered, Robb says that mistakes have been made with regard to the war launched against the Gromov-led Union of Sovereign States and in the immediate aftermath of victory on the battlefield. Those were borne out of
the best of intentions though where his administration sought to limit further loss of life and also make sure that nuclear conflict didn’t break out. Still, he concedes,
the errors were grave. He takes full responsibility for all that happened. Robb apologises for what has happened: the buck stops here, he adds.
The president says that, after consultations with Congressional figures, he will leave the Office of the Presidency once Congress confirms a new vice president and that nominee takes the oath of office. He only intends to stay where he is until that moment so that the country can have stability with a right and proper Constitutional transfer of power. It will be a choice of Congress as to who will replace him. Robb says that he will not interfere in that process yet he does urge Congress to move quickly on the matter.
Criticising the recent massacres inside the Union, Robb states that these actions by the Chernomyrdin regime against its own people cannot be excused. Yet, they were unforeseen consequences of his mistakes. The lives lost in this war, all of those from American ones to Coalition ones to Union ones, are deaths that he is ultimately responsible for. He urges Americans to remember President Kerrey and all that he achieved and focus in the future of Kerrey’s legacy. Once more, as he ends his address, Robb apologises and in conclusion he also asks for forgiveness for all that has happened during his presidency.
While he is still physically in the White House, Robb’s presidency is over. ‘A dead man walking’ is what Robb has become. The United States needs a new president to replace him.
With Graham out of the picture, there is rapidly momentum behind Al Gore. Kerrey’s (and thus Robb’s) Treasury Secretary, Gore was floated as a vice presidential candidate for first Kerrey and then later Robb too. While in the Cabinet, Gore is seen as untainted by the scandal-hit Robb Administration… unlike other figures such as Blanchard and Nunn who look certain to leave the State Department & the Pentagon. Democratic senators and representatives quickly come out in support of him. Gore being named as vice president, then immediately taking the presidency upon Robb’s promise to resign upon that occurring, upsets some though. There are calls for Robb to go straight away and Gore has his opponents. Many Republicans come out in opposition at all of this too yet they aren’t enough in number to matter. Figures such as Gingrich may want to impeach Robb and draw things out longer yet others in his party, especially in the Senate, aren’t in such a mood to do so. Senior Republicans look at Gore and don’t see someone who can win in 1996 when he’ll be up for election. They are taking a risk with that because he will have the benefit of incumbency yet they think that they can take the White House in two year’s time away from the Democrats. Republicans are willing to work with Democrats on this and move on for all of this
mess.
Summer recess for lawmakers should have begun weeks ago. It has been delayed from an expected late July shutdown for several weeks now due to the now-abandoned hearings on Graham’s suitability for the vice presidency. During August, Congress is usually empty of senators and representatives but they are in Washington throughout the month… suffering in the humidity of the nation’s capital like everyone else. With agreements reached to make things speedy (and so they can all go on vacation), there is a lot done very quickly. It only takes two weeks to confirm Gore as vice president.
Later that evening, August 31st 1994, Robb resigns and Gore takes his second oath of office that day. Albert Arnold Gore Jnr. becomes the forty-fourth president of the United States. History will not be kind to Charles Spittal Robb and his presidency will be (unfairly in the opinion of many, especially in later years) compared to those of James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson.
Across on the other side of the North Atlantic, the Major Government in Britain is brought down in September. The fallout from Downing Street being exposed as acting in concert with the Robb White House to cover up the truth behind the Kerrey assassination has been played out for several weeks through the nation’s newspapers. There have been government resignations and allegations of further attempts to suppress the truth. There is no apology from Downing Street for what was done in colluding with Robb to suppress the truth and this, more than anything, will be Major’s downfall.
Major’s thin majority should keep him in power when Blair’s opposition Labour calls for a motion of no confidence but following a string of unexpected Conservative abstentions, the Commons declares by a majority of two votes that they have no confidence in his leadership. Labour expects a general election and – despite not being ready for one – are going to fight that. The Conservatives have other ideas. That Commons vote doesn’t necessarily mean there has to be an election: someone has to attain the majority of support of the Commons to form a new government. Major is formally challenged for the leadership and it is a fight which he, stubbornly, goes into after resigning as party leader yet not prime minister. Black Wednesday, Maastricht and Sleaze are all in the background during the contest among Conservative MPs where he faces more challengers than he thought he might do. Major makes it to the final ballot but losses out to a surprisingly strong challenger: Peter Lilley.
Lilley ‘kisses hands’ and assumes the premiership. Labour and other opposition parties are in uproar, calling again and again for a general election. Lilley is able to command the support of the Commons though… only just. What a
ride his premiership will be for the next couple of years!
Canada and Norway will likewise see new governments emerge yet throughout Eastern Europe, the four nations of the Visegrád Group retain their leaders. The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia do not see presidents and prime ministers brought crashing down by scandal. There is still a hostile neighbour on their borders and the lies told were those of others. The survival of these leaders will lead to greater integration especially when Western Europe shows no sign of real friendship… or at least the kind that this bloc led by Wałęsa wants: NATO troops in their countries to defend them. That will not occur.
Chernomyrdin holds onto power, succeeding where Robb and Major don’t. With the support of the military and a rapidly fading protest movement – those who refuse to go home in fright are shot down –, he retains the leadership of his nation.
The Union is a union in all but name. It is instead a Greater Russia where Belarus, the Ukraine, the Russian Caucasus republics and the other small ones inside Russia are held under Moscow’s direct rule with force of arms. Coalition troops leave as per the general agreements struck under that August deal agreed at the soon abandoned Camp Raven. There are clashes with former republics of both the Soviet Union and the Union of Sovereign States but full-scale warfare, feared by many at various times, doesn’t erupt. The disputes are over ethnic Russians now on foreign soil and threats over military deployments along borders aplenty: the Union sets itself on a course to have permanent hostile relations with its neighbours. The Baltics, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and the Central Asian nations retain their independence. Inside Kaliningrad, that former Russian region becomes an independent nation and one, like Lithuania, closely tied to Poland… a nuclear-armed Poland at that.
Calls from Moscow are for Gromov to be handed over but he is held by the Americans. Relations between Chernomyrdin and Gore are cold yet never truly terrible. Chernomyrdin wants to see the United States withdraw from the Union and this is done with the pull-out completed before the middle of October. Even when Gore announces that many of those who troops who left the Union will stay in the Baltics as a permanent presence to protect those countries, Chernomyrdin does nothing more than blow hot air. Britain will do the same too as the Baltics become an armed camp full of those here to defend them against another feared Union takeover. Their presence there is actually beneficial to Chernomyrdin: he uses the threat of another invasion in a domestic sense to deflect criticism of his regime’s actions. Blaming foreigners and traitors for all of the Union’s ills are what will – alongside the willingness to use force domestically – cement his rule.
That rule is over a country devastated by war and civil strife where recovery will be a very long time coming. Despite everything, all the political chaos and a resulting sea-change in geo-politics in many ways, it can be said that when looking at the Union in the aftermath of what popular culture will later call ‘Russia’s Blue Dawn’, America certainly did get its vengeance for the murder of its president. There is only one superpower left in the aftermath and it certainly isn’t the land over which Chernomyrdin rules.
The End 
