The Second Cold War

[eurofed]

This is a story about how the 2nd Korean War, an escalation of the Yugoslav Wars, and Russia's bid to restore the USSR in a new guise created a Second Cold War between the West and Russia-China. Since I do not want the West to be troubled and distracted by the post-Gulf War mess in the Middle East, I am going to pick an earlier PoD that averts the conflict and the entire event sequence it generated. 

ITTL the British protectorate on Kuwait that ultimately led to its consolidation as an independent state never happened. The dynastic and diplomatic intrigue that IOTL led to the Anglo-Kuwaiti Agreement of 1899 instead caused the Ottoman annexation of Kuwait. As a result, Kuwait became an integral part of Iraq when the Ottoman Empire collapsed after WWI. This caused a significant alt-historical divergence to happen since the 1980s.

In the early 1980s, Iraq's leader Saddam Hussein decided to exploit the post-revolutionary weakness of Islamist Iran, which was busy tearing itself apart with a violent power struggle between the dominant Islamists and their Communist, social-democratic, and Islamic socialist opponents, as well as a purge of the old monarchist elites that wrecked the Iranian army. Iraq invaded Iran with the aim of seizing ethnically-Arab and oil-rich Khuzestan. The initial Iraqi offensive was a decisive success that overrun Khuzestan thanks to the additional oil revenues of the Kuwait province allowing a greater military build-up and a sensible strategy that concentrated Iraqi mechanized land forces and air power. Iran's troubles were magnified by the poor strategic choices of Iran's supreme guide Khomeini. He distrusted, neglected, and purged the conventional army, which had been built up to a considerable degree under the Shah's regime, and instead relied on poorly armed and trained if full of zeal Islamist militias for a counterattack that failed disastrously.

The Iranian forces exhausted and bled themselves white with a series of human-wave offensives that accomplished very few gains for a considerable blood price, despite the regime's determination to win a decisive victory against Iraq and export its revolution at all costs. Out of growing frustration and desperation, the Iranians tried to spread instability across the Middle East to their advantage and open a second front by sponsoring pro-Iranian Islamist, Shiite, and Palestinian militias and terrorist groups to wage a series of attacks against Iraq, Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. They also encouraged their Arab allies, Syria and Libya, to support the same groups and apply military pressure on those states by border clashes. This significantly worsened the chaotic situation of the Lebanese Civil War and increased tensions and instability across the Middle East. However, it eventually backfired badly for the pro-Iranian front. The enraged Egyptians, noticing Libya ignored the previous lesson it had got during the 1977 Libyan-Egyptian border war and relapsed into provocations, reacted by staging an all-out counteroffensive that crushed the Libyan army, overrun Libya, and ousted Qaddafi's regime. Egypt annexed Libya.

Much the same way, the situation led to an unspoken alliance of convenience between Iraq and Israel with the support of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The two states unleashed a joint attack against Syria that expanded into a combined intervention in Lebanon against the PLO, which took Syria's side, and pro-Syria/Iran militias. Christian and Druze militias switched to support Israel and Iraq. Israel's military superiority allowed the Israeli-Iraqi coalition to win a decisive success despite Iraq being involved in a two-front war. They crushed the Syrian army and its allies, overrunning Syria and Lebanon. This led to the ultimate collapse, disintegration, and partition of the Syrian and Lebanese states alongside sectarian lines.

Iraq annexed most of Syria, including the Sunni and Kurd northern and eastern areas, as well as the Aleppo and Damascus regions. The Alawite community on the Syrian coast established its independence with Soviet support, and became a haven for the remnants of Assad's regime. The Druze areas in southeastern Syria joined and established a land connection with the Druze community in southeastern Lebanon to form an independent state. It got Israel's support since it mostly worked as a buffer state for its annexation of the Golan Heights. Iraq also annexed the Shiite and Sunni areas in northern and eastern Lebanon. The Christians in western-central Lebanon established their own state with the support of Israel that used it as another buffer entity. The Israeli gave it control of the Shiite areas in southern Lebanon they had occupied. The PLO forces and the pro-Syria/Iran militias in Lebanon were crushed. The Palestinians got split between a pro-Iraqi faction that was kept on a tight leash by Saddam, and an anti-Iraqi faction that was expelled from Lebanon and fled to Algeria.

The Iranians also attempted to stir up Kurd and Shiite opposition to the Baathist regime within Iraq, but with limited results due to the strength of the Iraqi security apparatus and their deteriorating military situation and loss of prestige. By the mid-late 1980s, Iran came to face revolutionary collapse because of its disastrous military and economic situation. The land war was locked in an unfavourable strategic stalemate that secured control of Khuzestan and defence of its pre-war territory for Iraq, while Iranian human-wave offensives accomplished little but racking a severe blood bill. The economy was collapsing due to the loss of oil revenues. The Iraqi kept air superiority and waged an effective bombing offensive against Iranian cities and economic infrastructure. Iraq was able to keep its war machine well-supplied thanks to its oil revenues, financial backing from the Persian Gulf states, and weapons purchases from the Western countries and the Soviets (although relations with the USSR cooled after the fall of Libya and Syria). The Iranian war effort steadily deteriorated due to Iran's international isolation (worsened after the fall of Syria and Libya) and its economic inability to purchase arms (Iran's lack of money prevented anything like the Iran-Contra affair from happening). Iran's last-ditch gambit of attacking tankers in the Persian Gulf backfired once the Western powers started to escort the tankers and fight off Iranian attacks.

Popular malcontent fuelled resurgent opposition to the Islamist regime. The Second Iranian Revolution overthrew the mullah and killed Khomeini. Iran was forced to sign an armistice that conceded Khuzestan to Iraq. After a power struggle between the various revolutionary factions, a coalition between the social democratics, the Islamic socialists, and the resurgent monarchists defeated and purged the Islamists and the Communists. Iran remained plagued by Islamist terrorism for a few years, but eventually suppressed it. To rebuild its economy after the loss of most of its oil revenues, Iran turned to exploitation of its gas and mineral resources. Because of their hostility to Islamism, when the Taliban threatened to take over Afghanistan, the Iranians intervened to support the Northern Alliance and helped it take over the country. Saddam spent the next few years after the end of the Iran-Iraq war consolidating his gains and enacting a ruthless purge of various opposers, including Shiite and Kurd militant groups, Syrian nationalists, Alawites, and pro-Iranian Khuzestani separatists.

In the early 1990s, a crisis developed in the Far East because of American opposition to the North Korean nuclear program. Jimmy Carter's untimely death in an accident prevented him from acting as a last-moment mediator and defusing the crisis. As a result tensions continued to grow and the US President eventually ordered a bombing of the Yongbyon reactor and other known or suspected sites of the NK nuclear program. The paranoid North Korean leaders took this as a sign a US invasion was imminent and reacted with an all-out attack on South Korea, Japan, and US bases in the region, as well as by sponsoring various terrorist attacks on Western targets across the world. Although the Western countries suffered some serious damage (especially from NK artillery bombing of Seul, use of chemical weapons on civilians, and state-sponsored terrorist attacks), the Western forces were able to contain the NK land invasion a few miles from the border, enact a massive bombing of NK military targets that crippled the invaders' war machine, and eventually staged a strategic counterattack that overrun North Korea and occupied it up to the Yalu border.

The USA was able to defuse the possible threat of a Chinese intervention by negotiating a deal that bargained Chinese acceptance of South Korean-led reunification of Korea and its continued alignment with the Western world in exchange for the guarantee no US forces would be stationed North of the 'neck' of the Korean Peninsula. Other reasons for Chinese acquiescence included China still feeling insecure of its domestic stability after the Tienanmen event and fearing Western military superiority and massive damage to its economy, the Chinese leaders being reluctant to suffer serious damage to their country because of the recklessness of the Kim Dynasty, and their awareness NK was beyond salvation after its all-out attack and war crimes. A few NK leaders were able to escape to China or bribe Russian officials to travel through Russia to anti-Western rogue states, others were captured, put on trial in an international tribunal, and received harsh sentences for their extensive list of war crimes. Russia under President Yeltsin mostly took a pro-Western neutrality stance during the crisis. The Northern portion of reunified Korea got an extensive, lenghty, and expensive reconstruction, rehabilitation, and reeducation program subsidized by a pool of several Western countries that gradually integrated it in the Western world and brought it up to speed with developed-world standards.

Serbian dictator Milosevic learnt the wrong lesson from the Korean conflict and deemed the Americans were too busy in the Far East and the Europeans too pacifist and divided to intervene. Therefore, he assumed he had a free hand in the Yugoslav Wars to redraw the political and ethnic map of post-Yugoslavia to its liking. For a good while it seemed he was right, and as a result, the Yugoslav army and Serb nationalist militias went on a brutal rampage. They attacked Croatia and invaded Bosnia, seizing the areas they claimed for Greater Serbia and expelling the Croat and Bosnian population from them. They also staged a brutal repression of the Hungarian minorities in Vojvodina and the Albanian population in Kosovo, enacting an ethnic cleasing of them and suppressing the autonomy of these regions. This ethnic cleansing took place with plenty of atrocities and caused a vast refugee wave. These successes and the apparent passivity of the Western world gave Milosevic and the Serb nationalists one heck of a victory disease and they enlarged their bloody expansionist drive. The Serb army and militias invaded North Macedonia and applied the same ethnic cleansing playbook, with the usual consequences. The Balkan mess greatly troubled the European leaders, but they were aware of their military weakness without the support of a distracted America. They tried to remedy the situation by engaging in rearmament and taking a few serious steps to add a military and foreign policy integration dimension (or 'pillar' in EU lingo) to the European integration process. The EU core countries (France, Germany, Italy, Benelux, Spain, Portugal) joined the new initiative. Britain, Ireland, Austria, and the Nordic countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland) opted out, but chose not to oppose the process. The international situation drove the Norwegian electorate to approve EU membership in a referendum. 

By the late 1990s, America had recovered enough from its Korean War effort and Europe deemed its mlitary reforms and integration initiative advanced enough to justify taking a sterner stance towards Serbia. However, Milosevic remained gripped by victory disease and oblivious to that. He topped his expansionist rampage by picking a fight with and attacking Albania about border incidents with Kosovo Albanian insurgents. To his surprise this time the Western countries quickly reacted by sending him an ultimatum and when it went unheeded, NATO approved a mandate to restore peace and security and suppress gross human rights violations in the Balkans by any means necessary. Despite support by the Muslim world, a drive to get approval for intervention by the UN Security Council failed b/c of Russian and Chinese opposition. However, the Western countries claimed their intervention was legitimate b/c of the NATO mandate, humanitarian protection concerns about Serb atrocities, and Serb aggressions against other Balkan states. As a matter of fact, such arguments turned out convincing enough in the Western world that the intervention got solid popular support and the US Congress, UK Parliament, European Parliament, and the legislatures of the EU countries approved it w/o much difficulty. 

NATO started a massive air bombing campaign that caused severe damage to the Serb military and dual-use infrastructure and industry. However, Milosevic and the other nationalist leaders bunkered down, out of stubborness, unwillingness to lose their territorial gains and grip on power, and awareness that a cell awaited them if they surrendered. The UN had established an international tribunal for human rights crimes in former Yugoslavia that had indicted them. Moreover, they expected the Western countries would eventually lose the will to fight faster than Serbia, Vietnam-style. The apparent stalemate eventually drove the NATO countries to escalate to land invasion. A massive build-up on Serbia's borders enabled a multi-front invasion and the quick defeat and collapse of the Serb army and militias. The latter proved much more efficient at brutalizing civilians than at fighting a superior conventional army. The regular army made a decent performance but it was clearly out of its league and suffered the same fate of the North Korean military. An extremist minority fought to the bitter end out of nationalist fanatism, but the vast majority of the population accepted the inevitable surrender when the situation turned hopeless. 

Serbia was overrun and the occupied areas liberated. Most nationalist leaders were killed in battle, took their life, or were captured, dragged to the international tribunal, and given harsh sentences for their crimes. A few managed to escape and took refuge in Russia or other anti-Western countries. Serbia got a harsh peace deal as retribution for its misdeeds. Hungary annexed Vojvodina. Albania got Kosovo. Croatia and Bosnia were restored in their pre-war borders and formed a confederation. Bulgaria and Albania partitioned North Macedonia with the support of Greece. A series of referendums approved these changes. Croat, Bosnian, Hungarian, Albanian, and Macedonian (mostly shifting identity to Bulgarian) refugees returned and repopulated these areas together with settlers from the annexing countries. On the other hand, the vast majority of the Serbs fled or were expelled, depending on whom you asked. In any case, they were not allowed to return and resettled into Serbia proper, now shrunk to Central Serbia. Despite the inevitable accusations of hypocrisy and double standards from Russia, anti-Western states, and far-leftists, the Western governments and public opinion quietly accepted this outcome as a way to tone down ethnic conflicts in the Balkans and a justifiable retribution for the crimes of Serbia. 

The Western Balkan countries that benefited from NATO intervention developed a markedly pro-Western attitude, making an eager queue in the following years for NATO and EU membership. Serbia remained under military occupation for a while, until the Western powers decided its domestic situation had stabilized enough. A division manifested in the Serb people between a faction that repudiated nationalism and embraced the ideal of integration in the EU and the Western world and another (spearheaded by the refugees) that nurtured nationalist resentment and looked to Russia as a model and protector. As a result Serbia remained burdened by serious political instability and subject to severe swings of its foreign policy depending on which faction got on top. To a lesser degree, Montenegro too manifested the same kind of division, although its pro-Western faction was more consistently dominant.

The Korean and Yugoslav wars, and later the resurgence of the Russian threat, had a number of important political consequences. They vindicated humanitarian military interventionism as a tool to contain and suppress rogue states engaged into serious human rights abuses and regional destabilization. In the face of UN paralysis and impotence, NATO appeared as the perfect tool to enforce international stability, at least from a Western perspective. This paved the way to its enlargement and transformation into a global security organization and integrated military alliance of pro-Western countries. Much the same way, these events gave a mighty boost to the European integration process, driving the expansion of the EU into Eastern Europe and the Balkans and its evolution into a quasi-federal entity. On the other hand, it also drove the leaders of the great powers and anti-Western countries, especially Russia and China, to embrace nationalist paranoia, an increasingly hostile and confrontational attitude towards the Western world, and a ruthless determination to enforce their strategic interests and sphere of influence claims by any means necessary. The seeds of the Second Cold War were sown.

[eurofed]

Vladimir Putin, new President and upcoming dictator of Russia, regarded these events as confirmation of the bitter lesson about the downfall of the Soviet bloc being a geopolitical catastrophe for the Russian people, American and European imperialist greed threatening the strategic interests and traditional sphere of influence of Russia, and the need to uphold and restore them by any means necessary short of WWIII. As he consolidated his grip on power and turned it into an authoritarian regime, and Russia pulled itself back from the 1990s chaos and rebuilt its strength thanks to oil and gas revenues, he engaged into rearmament and a drive to restore the great-power stature of Russia and its empire in another guise. Political instability and ethnic conflicts in and between the Caucasus states gave him the opportunity to intervene and a pretext to 'pacify' the area and 'protect' Russophile minorities.

The Russian army crushed separatist insurgencies in North Caucasus at the price of brutal repression, and overrun and occupied Georgia and Azerbaijan. A stick-and-carrot mix of strategic intimidation and favorable terms for the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute cowed Armenia into submission. The Russians set up or sponsored collaborationist governments in the Caucasus states that approved the creation of a confederal union with Russia. A similar mix of strategic intimidation, exploitation of political instability and ethnic conflicts, and promises of a confortable place in the new status quo for collaborationist leaders also allowed to drag the Central Asian republics in the new confederal union. The rebirth of the Russian empire under the new Tsar was well underway. In a few cases, the Russians met real resistance, and then switched to destabilization by 'green men' proxies that staged pro-Russian unrisings and gave a pretext for Russian military intervention. Foreign protests for these acts were invariably answered by statements that Russia was applying the same playbook that the West had used in the Balkans, and acted to restore regional stability and protect minorities from persecution.

However, the expansionist drive of Russia ultimately met more decisive resistance in Belarus and Ukraine. Authoritarianism, corruption, electoral fraud, and the pro-Russian stance of local leaders drove the Belarusians and the Ukrainians to stage successful democratic revolutions. The new governments enacted liberal and anti-corruption reforms, distanced their countries from Russia, and showed serious interest for closer links with Europe and the West. Putin perceived this as an intolerable threat to his authoritarian rule, the Russian sphere of interest, and his grand plan to rebuild the USSR in another guise. He quickly deployed the usual playbook of using 'green men' infiltration and Russophile minorities as tools for destabilization and a takeover. This proved easy for Crimea, which had a very Russophile population and was overrun and occupied w/o much difficulty. The eastern regions of Belarus and Ukraine also had similar circumstances, albeit to a lesser degree; therefore they were destabilized and swept by Russophile uprisings that threatened government control of these regions.

However, the Belarusian and Ukrainian governments and people reacted to this aggression with a radical anti-Russian swing and determination to defend their national integrity, independence, and sovereignty at all costs. Their mobilization, combined with support from the Western powers that sent economic and weapons assistance, were enough to beat back the Russian proxies and expel from the vast majority of the contested areas. Crimea, by then, was wholly under Russian control and out of reach for Ukraine. However, the Western governments and public opinion showed serious reluctance to intervene directly in the crisis. This turn of events on one hand frustrated Putin, on the other hand emboldened him in trying a more ambitious and forceful approach.

Using the usual pretext of protecting Russophile communities from persecution, the Russian army openly intervened and invaded Belarus and Ukraine. The Belarusians and Ukrainians resisted valiantly, and the Western powers rushed to provide them any possible assistance short of direct intervention, but the Russian army proved too strong, its opposition too weak, and there was not enough time or space to make good use of Western support. Belarus and Ukraine were overrun, the resistance of their regular armies and paramilitary militias crushed. The world had to witness the by-now usual farce of hastily-assembled collaborationist governments asking for admission of Belarus and Ukraine to the Russian-led confederation and Putin graciously accepting. The Tsarist and Soviet empires were truly reborn in a new guise. However, the Baltic and Eastern European states were by now NATO members, busy counting their lucky stars, and frantically petitioning their partners for military deployment.

Putin had fulfilled his dream, although a full restoration of the Soviet empire was outside his grasp short of facing WWIII. As he won a short-term triumph, however, he was sowing the seeds of future trouble. No matter what their previous feelings towards their overbearing neighbor, invasion and occupation awakened an implacable hostility towards Russia and all its works in the Belarusian and Ukrainian peoples, much like what Soviet domination had done to Eastern Europe. They settled down for a prolonged struggle and staged a widespread armed resistance with the abundant weapons, training, and logistic support that the Western powers were eagerly providing them through the border with their NATO neighbors. Very well, they reasoned, if Afghan peasants and shepherds could beat back the Bear in a decade, so could they. Despite some justifiable grumbling for help coming too little, too late, they gladly and gratefully welcomed any NATO and EU assistance that came their way. To a varying degree, similar anti-Russian insurgencies also developed in several Central Asian and Caucasian states. However, in their case NATO faced greater difficulties to provide assistance, also b/c of the ambiguous stance of Turkey.

The Russian rampage triggered a vast wave of defensive panic across Europe and the West. The Baltic states staged a massive crackdown and mass expulsion of any individual or group known or suspected for pro-Russian activities. NATO declared that any Russian move to oppose this would be treated as an act of aggression according to Article 5 of its charter. Moldova staged a pro-Western political revolution, cut off ties with Transnistria to be absorbed by Russian Ukraine, and enacted an emergency reunification with Romania. Austria, Sweden, and Finland dropped any neutral stance and rushed to join NATO and EU military integration. Germany, Italy, Austria, and Japan greatly toned down post-WWII commitments to pacifism or neutrality in their constitutions. Such reforms typically clarified that use of armed force for self-defence, collective defence, or a peace-enforcing UN, NATO, or EU mandate was legitimate. The Western countries put Russia under a tight embargo and financial sanctions. Europe redrew its energy policy to guarantee independence from Russian supplies. This quickly caused Russian economy to collapse, even if the government tried to react with some success by intensifying trade with China. NATO enacted a vast rearmament program and a massive redeployment of military assets (minus what it had to spare for the Middle East and Far East theaters) on the Russian border, to the grateful relief of Eastern European nations.

The resurgence of a clear and present Russian threat worked like a massive boost for the European integration project and the popularity of NATO and the EU. Everyone was mindful of the spectacle of Minsk and Kiev being shelled and assumed complacency meant a similar fate for all of Europe. America settled back in the familiar patterns of the Cold War without any real difficulty, reasoning out that Russia never really changed after all. The Americans faced a multi-theater strategic confrontation with Russia in Europe and the Middle East and with China in the Pacific, so they welcomed and supported European integration and global expansion of NATO as a way of sharing the burden.

Pacifism, anti-Americanism, and Euroskepticism collapsed across the Western European nations. The EU core states agreed to scale up their rearmament programs according to NATO requests and upgrade integration to a federal level. It included monetary and fiscal integration, a common citizenship and free movement of people, judicial integration, a sizable EU budget and taxation, a common army, and foreign policy integration. Military integration included a pan-European military, divided into national components, with a common budget, common arms, centralized military procurement, and institutions. It inherited and expanded the French nuclear deterrent and the EU got the French seat in the UN Security Council. A reform of the EU government to balance federalization with semi-presidential democratic representation took place. It included a directly elected president and lower chamber, a senate appointed by national parliaments, and a supranational executive accountable to the parliament and the president. A series of referendums approved the new EU constitution sealing its democratic legitimacy in the eyes of the European peoples. The European party system quickly adjusted to work in a Pan-European framework according to the patterns developed in the European Parliament. As a rule, the Eastern European states turned out to be just as enthusiastic supporters of rearmament, NATO, and EU federalization as their Western European peers, if not more so. Even the Nordic nations dropped their Euroskeptic stance and joined the bandwagon. Their example dragged Iceland and Ireland in the fold. The Western Balkan states, with the notable exception of Serbia and to a lesser degree Montenegro during their anti-Western swings, made an eager queue for NATO and EU membership.

EU federalization instead triggered a wave of Europhobe panic and anti-hegemonic paranoia in Britain fuelled by right-wing politicians and press. After a bitterly fought political and cultural battle for the heart and mind of the UK, the British electorate narrowly approved Brexit in a referendum. A compromise to salvage a free-trade relationship with the EU ultimately proved impossible and the UK left with no deal. It stayed part of NATO, but it paid the price of its isolationist choice with increasing marginalization within the Euro-Atlantic community, a creeping trade war with Europe, and contemptful neglect by the USA. To a degree, it tried to balance by cultivating a relationship with the new East Asian and Oceanian members of the community. Turkey increasingly fell to nationalist/Islamist authoritarianism, embraced an ambiguous foreign policy stance, and as a result saw its EU membership chances wither and its NATO status grow all but nominal. On the contrary, the perspective of joining Europe after liberation from the Russian yoke became a powerful source of hope for the unwilling subjects of the new Tsar, esp. in war-torn Belarus, Ukraine, and Caucasus.

The lessons of the Korean and Balkan conflicts, the rebirth of the Russian empire, the unification of Europe, and the Russo-Chinese partnership combined to drive a global expansion and transformation of NATO. Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand joined it. Taiwan, India, and various South American and Southeast Asian states with pro-Western attitudes showed serious interest. There was a growing drive among member states to add an economic and political integration aspect to the organization, on the model of the early EU. This turn of events of course drew the hostility of Russia and China, which intensified their economic and security cooperation. Unlike the Russians, however, the Chinese often seemed somewhat more mindful of the importance of decent trade relations with the West to preserve their economic and political stability. Anti-Western states turned to Russia and China for support.

In the Middle East, resurgent tensions between Iraq and Israel exploded into war. It played out much like a remake of the Kippur War w/o any Egyptian involvement. There was an initially successful Iraqi offensive that overrun most of the Druze and Christian areas, then a victorious Israeli counteroffensive that stopped the enemy and pushed it back, threatening Damascus. An armistice mediated by the USA, the EU, Russia, and China occurred and effectively restored the status quo ante. Both sides claimed victory. The Palestinians staged an uprising and a wave of terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians to support the Iraqi. After the Israeli crushed the unrest, they took it as a justification to annex the Jordan Valley, East Jerusalem, and the areas of the West Bank close to the 1949 border or Jerusalem where Jewish settlements clustered. Israel built a barrier to defend its new border and make it impassable to terrorist infiltration. It withdrew its forces behind the barrier and relinquished control of the rest of the West Bank to the Palestinians. It applied the same strategy to the Gaza Strip, withdrawing its forces from the area and building a barrier on its border. Israel staged a mass expulsion from its territory of Arabs (especially Muslims) known or suspected of supporting the Palestinian terrorists, quoting a security need as justification and similar acts by the Balkan and Baltic states as a precedent. The Western governments and public opinion quietly accepted this outcome; Russia, China, the Arab world, and far-leftists loudly protested, but in practice failed to take any concrete steps to oppose Israel.

Because the Gulf War and US military deployment in Saudi Arabia did not occur, Osama Bin Laden and several of his associates went to Afghanistn to support the Taliban. They got killed during the Iranian-Taliban conflict, and their efforts mostly sunk into obscurity. Because of their disappearance, the success of Baathist Iraq, the failure of Islamist Iran, and the Iraqi-Syrian and Egyptian-Libyan unions, secular Pan-Arabism continued to look like a more successful model than Islamism to many Muslims thanks despite its flaws, the dictatorial character of the regimes it sponsored, and its failure to challenge Israel. Consequently, Islamist terrorism became a rather less serious problem for the world than it might have been in different circumstances. Up to a point, international stability also increased due to the downfall of several regimes with an habit of sponsoring terrorism and indulging in rogue state behavior, including North Korea, Islamist Iran, Taliban Afghanistan, Assad's Syria, and Qaddafi's Libya.

The onset of the Second Cold War, however, countered this effect as Russia took a habit of sponsoring anti-Western movements and armed groups as a means of destabilizing and weakening its enemies. Not so rarely, it indulged into assassinations of dissident refugees in foreign countries. China occasionally followed the example of its ally, although as a rule it was rather more cautious about such means. The Western powers retaliated by cracking down on such activities and Russo-Chinese assistance to extremist groups in their territory. They also strived to provide all the assistance they could deliver to resistance movements in the Russo-Chinese bloc and destabilize anti-Western regimes in the rest of the world. Whenever such regimes provided a suitable pretext, such as by causing a humanitarian emergency or picking a fight with a neighbor, they were not afraid of using the military tool, except when Russia and China drew a line in the sand. One notable example was the intervention that brought down the far-left Chavist regime in Venezuela when its dire incompetence caused an economic collapse, a regional refugee crisis, and armed clashes with its neighbors. 

[eurofed]

I have purposefully avoided naming any Western leader in this scenario. I leave it to the interested reader to speculate how this event sequence would affect the political process in the Western world. Saddam and Putin are named because of their iconic role, but even they could have been easily replaced by alternate leaders with a similar mindset and policies (Zhirinovsky comes to mind for Russia). Post-Deng Chinese leaders are largely interchangeable anyway. I am not entirely sure what happens about the Great Recession, but my tentative assumption is the divergence is too late to prevent it entirely.

However, the neo-Cold War atmosphere makes the Western elites less reluctant to drop committment to neo-liberal dogma and enact any necessary government intervention in the economy to curb the crisis relatively early and effectively. Federalization of the EU surely ensures the European sovereign debt crisis is efficiently dealt with as a footnote of the fiscal integration process. These changes in all likelihood ensure the GR is downgraded to, and recovered from as, a 'normal' recession. This should put a lot of wind out of the sails of the populist far right and far left in the West, even if economic inequality, the cultural wars, and nativist hostility to immigration from Latin America and Africa may still provide them some serious fuel.

The populists have already lost the political and cultural battle about EU federalization, Atlantic internationalism, and Western-focused globalism before they manage to become a serious force, so I guess they shall drop opposition to that as part of their agenda and propaganda, and find a different bogeyman. China looks like a good alternate target since it would provide them an easy target for the economic resentment of their followers for 'stealing' Western jobs and simultaneously allow them to look loyal to the Western cause. I assume this change would make them less interesting and useful to Putin as political proxies and destabilization tools, and in the West the rise of political leaders with barely-concealed ties to Russia shall be much less tolerated.

I am not sure if the Arab Spring and the Arab Winter are going to happen in any recognizable form. On one hand, the grand trends that fuelled them are still there, on the other hand political circumstances in the region are very different. Therefore, there might or might not be a refugee crisis in the region. TTL changes removed a lot of wind from the sails of Islamism, and its failure in Iran works against its popularity. However, the Muslim peoples might or might not still turn to it as a tempting quick and easy fix for their problems if other models prove flawed. If it rises at all, it shall be in very different circumstances. The rise of the populist far left in Latin America probably is not affected much. However, I assume in the neo-Cold War atmosphere the USA and their regional allies have much less qualms to intervene and cubstomp such regimes when they go out of hand and create too much of a mess. The TL explictly assumes this to be a case for Chavist Venezuela.

As a rule, there is much less reluctance in the West to use the military tool to put down rogue regimes in the developing world, except when Russia and China draw a line in the sand. The embarassing messes of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are gone and replaced with two just and successful conflicts in Korea and the Balkans. Everyone in the West but the most stubborn and ideologically-deluded anti-Western extremists can approve of their broad course and outcome, and they make a convincing case for interventionism much like WWII. Their lessons and the new Cold War drive the rise of the global NATO. It obviously warrants a name change but I am creatively challenged for such things. Perhaps something like Global or World Defence or Security Alliance or Organization?

Its functioning obviously gets dominated by the all-important relationship between the US and EU twin superpowers, although the new Pacific bloc of Japan, Korea, Australia, and NZ makes a far-from-insignificant third force. Canada in all likelihood on one hand tries to fit with them, on the other hand cultivates its relationship with the USA and the EU b/c of its different geopolitical situation. Britain may surely fit in this medium-sized crowd as an equal, as much as geography would afford. However, it shall soon discover that its likely attempts to deal with America and Europe as a great-power equal, take the leadership of the other Western countries, or resume a neo-Commonwealth preferential relationship with the former Dominions are delusions of grandeur and nostalgia for a dead and buried Imperial past. The Western camp surely has a place for another middle power with long-established ties in its ranks, but America and Europe are going to have little patience for a Britain-sized parasitical 'Singapore on Thames' financial hub, tax haven, and sweatshop on their doorstep. They can and shall counter any such behavior easily by means of retaliatory financial and trade regulations.

I assume I might have tried to make Britain react differently to TTL events, but since British Euroskepticism was such a long-standing and powerful force that predated them, I thought it was best to follow the familiar playbook and make the British react to federalization of the continent with the usual wave of Europhobe and anti-hegemonic panic. No-deal Brexit with its obvious consequences is the result, even if I guess an isolationist UK may still fit within the new global NATO framework to some degree. It is anyone's guess whether the Scots, Northern Irish, and younger generations are going to go along with the program or decide they prefer to be Europeans after all.

Putin's Russia surely got back the great power stature and the empire it longed for, even if further expansion in Europe to the Soviet extent is right out unless it wants to get a conventional war it cannot win or a dose of artificial sunshine. However, it has trapped itself in a Hell of its own making, retreading the steps that got the USSR in a similar mess. It faces a nosediving economy with a dependent relationship with China as the only hope of keeping its mouth out of water, insurgencies in Ukraine and other places that it has little hope of quelling and fuel the blazing flames of Russophobia among subjects and neighbors, a Western bloc stronger and more united than ever it has little hope of undermining or matching in power even with China's help. Like its Tsarist/Soviet model, it can surely stir up some serious trouble in the Middle East and the developing world but it is primed for a similar future collapse unless China is willing and able to subsidize Russia forever. The Russian citizens also have to stay fearful of police or drink the nationalist kool-aid forever and never tire of poor living standards, widespread corruption, and casualties from the counterinsurgency wars.

China got a useful great-power junior partner to help its climb to superpower status but the rise of the federal EU, the Western bloc gearing up for global cooperation and the new Cold War, and India aligning with it mean it can aim for third rank in the new global pecking order at best. It also needs avoid rocking the boat and making itself too much of a problem lest the West stages an all-out trade war and arms race that would send its economy and political stability in a free fall. If need be, the West may surely foster the replacement of China with India, Southeast Asia, and/or Latin America in the global economy to a large degree, even if the rise of China to industrialized great power status is irreversible. 

I leave to the interested reader the exercise of defining how the Middle East and developing world middle powers are going to realign to fit in the new Cold War environment. The UN continues to be the usual expensive show of impotence and uselessness and occasional megaphone for loudmouthed dictators. At least as the Western world is concerned, they are largely going to replace it in practice with the global NATO, esp. if they can co-opt India and a few Southeast Asian and Latin American middle powers in it.

[eurofed]

On further reflection, I assume the Pacific Rim states most likely to join global NATO include, in addition to obvious cases of long-established non-Atlantic allies (Japan, Korea, Australia, NZ), the ones that have kept consistent pro-Western foreign and security policies in the last few decades, and showed interest to join free trade agreements with the Western states IOTL. These are Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Philippines, Colombia, Peru, and Chile. It is extremely likely that in addition to the security aspect, the global evolution of NATO gains a political and economic cooperation aspect on the model of the early EU, which ITTL becomes a compelling template for supranational integration.

Therefore, the various OTL free-trade agreements between Atlantic and Pacific Rim states (NAFTA/USMCA, TTIP, CETA, TTP) are going to be merged into one vast free-trade zone. These agreements have also involved other countries that kept a more non-aligned foreign policy (Mexico, Vietnam, Indonesia). On one hand, it is possible that, much like India, these countries are prompted to realign into a more pro-Western stance, esp. the Southeast Asian ones out of the example of their neighbors and China taking an increasingly confrontational stance in the South China Sea. On the other hand, it is also possible a few of these countries accept to join economic integration with the Western countries but cling to a non-aligned stance for foreign policy and security, much like OTL EU has included NATO and neutral states.

It is also useful to note that the Southeast Asian countries are bound into their own regional cooperation organization (ASEAN), the most successful case of this kind of project besides the EU. ITTL the relationship between the global NATO and ASEAN might develop in various ways: on one hand, they might become rival poles of attraction if antagonism develops between their models; on the other hand, they might develop a complementary relationship much like the one between OTL NATO and EU. If this latter path prevails, ASEAN may well embrace the same 'ever closer integration' path as the pre-federal EU and become a vehicle to pull the other states of the region (Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia) in the Western camp, and eventually the global NATO, much like TTL EU did for European neutral states. The latter outcome seems especially likely if India does embrace a pro-Western course and joins the global NATO, balancing its image of a club of Western developed nations dominated by the US-EU couple.

In this regard, ASEAN may or may not well expand to the rest of non-Chinese East Asia and Oceania and become the full Pacific equivalent of the EU with the admission of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and NZ. Alternatively, these other states might stay content with pursuing cooperation within the framework of global NATO as a 3rd-5th bloc in addition to the USA, EU, and (possibly) India and ASEAN. This may also be the likely course Canada takes, or alternatively it may seek closer North American integration. Membership in the global NATO with a free trade agreement with no especially closer bond to any Western partner also seems the only viable and realistic course for 'hard Brexit' Britain in TTL circumstances.

Besides Southeast Asia, there are various other areas of the world that have attempted their own regional integration projects, although none have been as successful as the EU and ASEAN. The outstanding success of the EU ITTL is sure to increase the interest for imitation attempts. Of course, there is the the Eurasian confederation of post-Soviet states, but it is just a figleaf for Russian domination of its neighbors. Given the coercive means of its establishment and maintenance, the antagonism they create, and the lack of any real soft-power attraction, it is just a reincarnation of the Tsarist and Soviet empires which it took as a model. Like them, it is bound to collapse the moment its hegemon loses the ability or will to keep it together by brute force, short of large-scale demographic changes that 21st century Russia no longer has the potential to enact. As a matter of fact, just like the Eastern European satellites of the USSR, its unwilling European subjects are testing the strength of their cage and counting the days before they can join Europe and the West. The fate of Russia and Central Asia if and when the Putinist regime collapses seems much less clear-cut.

Of course, the more the East Asian states join the Western community, the more China is going to feel encircled. It may be expected to react by reinforcing its strategic partnership with Russia and other anti-Western states, much like Russia is going to do when faced with unification of Europe and formation of the global NATO. In this regard, once India joins the Western bloc, there is a good chance Pakistan switches sides and joins the Russo-Chinese camp. Apart from this, China might react to encirclement either by increasing its military power and hard-power projection in East Asia, which has good chances to backfire and drive the other regional players further in the arms of the Western powers. Alternatively, it might have better success at persuading at least few of its neighbors with soft-power means and a more gentle approach. It might go both ways. Russia seems far too committed to pursue a brute-force strategy, at least as long as the current regime lasts. A likely tripwire for China is Taiwan. Since global NATO certainly seems strong enough to contain the Russo-Chinese bloc in military terms for the foreseeable future, it may well have the balls to accept Taiwan as a member and recognize its independence, in all likelihood sending China further down the confrontational path.

The Arab/Muslim world, Africa, and Latin America are other areas of the world that historically have long attempted to integrate with mediocre results resembling the flaws and failures of the LoN and UN more than anything else, b/c of their political instability, fractiousness, and rivalries between regional middle powers. Such patterns do not seem likely to show radical changes in the near future. Latin America might perhaps have better chances but real progress requires an end to the region's political instability, polarization between pro-Western and anti-Western blocs, and frequent switches between these camps with government or regime changes. At most, we can expect a semi-stable split of the area into separate unions if this division becomes somewhat more stable and the local players states stop changing teams every time they change government. ITTL, the expected inclusion of most Andes states and post-Chavist Venezuela in global NATO might well represent a factor of stabilization in this regard.

[gillan1220]

We are technically living in a second Cold War. Saw it first in 2008 with the Russo-Georgia and finally intensified in 2013-14 with the Syrian Chemical Attack and the Crimean crisis.

[eurofed]

Oct 25, 2020 17:21:57 GMT gillan1220 said:

We are technically living in a second Cold War. Saw it first in 2008 with the Russo-Georgia and finally intensified in 2013-14 with the Syrian Chemical Attack and the Crimean crisis.

Technically true. We may think of my TL as an intensification of trends discernible IOTL, a 2nd Cold War 'on steroids'. Instead of the Russo-Georgian War, we have Russia corralling post-Soviet Caucasus and Central Asia back into a Russian-dominated union by any means feasible. Instead of the seizure of Crimea and Donbas alone by 'little green men' and pro-Russian separatist proxies, we have Belarus and Ukraine at large being overrun, occupied, and forced in the same union by an overt invasion of the Russian army, 1956 Hungary-style. This creates an insurgency situation broadly similar to post-1979 Afghanistan on NATO's doorstep. We also have greater tensions between China and the West, and a closer Russo-Chinese partnership, as a long-term backlash of the 2nd Korean War and Korea's pro-Western reunification. As a defensive reaction vs. an even more aggressive and expansionist Russia and a more antagonistic China, the West and continental Europe are driven to integrate to a considerably greater degree than OTL, leading to the rise of the federal EU and the global NATO. This helps prevent the rise of far-right populism in the Western democracies, and Russia's ability to use it as a tool to destabilize and divide the West. The 1980s PoD (technically occurring in 1899, but its effects are not felt till 1980) yields a very different Middle East to begin with, so analogies with OTL situation for the region are perforce limited. America's temporary distraction due to the Korean conflict emboldens Milosevic's Serbia to escalate its nationalist ambitions into a bloody rampage against pretty much all of its neighbors and minorities. This in turn escalates the Yugoslav Wars into a NATO land intervention. The perceived strategic setback of Milosevic and the Kim dynasty's downfall drives Putin's Russia to restore its empire by any means short of WWIII.

[James G]

Oct 27, 2020 20:49:03 GMT eurofed said:

Oct 25, 2020 17:21:57 GMT gillan1220 said:

We are technically living in a second Cold War. Saw it first in 2008 with the Russo-Georgia and finally intensified in 2013-14 with the Syrian Chemical Attack and the Crimean crisis.

Technically true. We may think of my TL as an intensification of trends discernible IOTL, a 2nd Cold War 'on steroids'. Instead of the Russo-Georgian War, we have Russia corralling post-Soviet Caucasus and Central Asia back into a Russian-dominated union by any means feasible. Instead of the seizure of Crimea and Donbas alone by 'little green men' and pro-Russian separatist proxies, we have Belarus and Ukraine at large being overrun, occupied, and forced in the same union by an overt invasion of the Russian army, 1956 Hungary-style. This creates an insurgency situation broadly similar to post-1979 Afghanistan on NATO's doorstep. We also have greater tensions between China and the West, and a closer Russo-Chinese partnership, as a long-term backlash of the 2nd Korean War and Korea's pro-Western reunification. As a defensive reaction vs. an even more aggressive and expansionist Russia and a more antagonistic China, the West and continental Europe are driven to integrate to a considerably greater degree than OTL, leading to the rise of the federal EU and the global NATO. This helps prevent the rise of far-right populism in the Western democracies, and Russia's ability to use it as a tool to destabilize and divide the West. The 1980s PoD (technically occurring in 1899, but its effects are not felt till 1980) yields a very different Middle East to begin with, so analogies with OTL situation for the region are perforce limited. America's temporary distraction due to the Korean conflict emboldens Milosevic's Serbia to escalate its nationalist ambitions into a bloody rampage against pretty much all of its neighbors and minorities. This in turn escalates the Yugoslav Wars into a NATO land intervention. The perceived strategic setback of Milosevic and the Kim dynasty's downfall drives Putin's Russia to restore its empire by any means short of WWIII.

With a NATO land intervention into Yugoslavia, would the neighbouring countries support that? I'm thinking of Greece especially and how hostile they were to Operation Allied Force due to long-standing Belgrade-Athens ties which have survived changes of governments.

[eurofed]

Oct 28, 2020 19:25:50 GMT James G said:

With a NATO land intervention into Yugoslavia, would the neighbouring countries support that? I'm thinking of Greece especially and how hostile they were to Operation Allied Force due to long-standing Belgrade-Athens ties which have survived changes of governments.

I tend to assume TTL Serbia's bloody expansionist rampage against many of its neighbors alarmed them enough that they genuinely cooperated with NATO to various degrees, or at least they did not get in the way. They got threatened directly or indirectly (e.g. by the vast refugee wave that Serbian ethnic cleansing caused, or b/c the Serbs brutalized minorites they liked). This included Greece b/c of Serbia's invasion of North Macedonia and Albania, and also since NATO endorsed a postwar territorial settlement (partition of North Macedonia between Bulgaria and Albania) that pleased the Greeks. It avoided them having to deal with the specter of potential North Macedon claims on Greek Macedonia that arose with the OTL name dispute.

As far as armchair strategist me can tell, NATO multi-front bombing offensive and later land invasion took place from Germany and Italy through Slovenia, Croatia, and Albania (all of them strongly supporting the endeavor for obvious reasons, or b/c they backed the Croats and the Albanians and resented the refugee crisis Serbia created), and from Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria (the Hungarians and the Bulgarians enthusiastically cooperated b/c they loathed their ethnic kin being brutalized in Vojvodina and North Macedonia, and stood to gain their territory in the postwar settlement). Romania went along as well to gain brownie points with the Western bloc they were joining and since they too disliked the mess happening at their doorstep. I dunno if there was any real strategic need for Greece to get more involved than providing diplomatic and perhaps logistic support, but I tend to assume the Greeks were at least willing to go that far.

Of course, Serbia's strategic situation was hopeless in conventional terms from the beginning, even more so than in 1941. Its nationalist leaders gambled on the assumption that NATO was all bark and no bite, America and Europe were too spineless and/or exhausted by the Korean conflict to intervene or at least escalate the conflict to a land invasion. At most, they assumed they could win a war of attrition much the same way North Vietnam did. When they realized they were badly wrong much like TTL Kims and OTL Saddam, NATO troops were effortlessly trashing the Serb regular army and nationalist militias, and Western public opinion strongly backed intervention, it was far too late. Much like their North Korean peers, life sentences awaited them in the international tribunal, and they could thank their lucky stars that legal standards had evolved since 1946 to rule out the death penalty.

Broadly speaking, the main international supporters of Serbia in the 3rd Balkan War were Russia and China. However, the Chinese were distant, unwilling to get much more involved than in diplomatic terms, and busy redrawing their agenda after the fall of NK. Russia was in the twilight of Eltsin's rule and transitioning between his pro-Western stance and Putin's hardcore revanchism. Russian policymakers surely were greatly displeased and alarmed by the downfall of Serbia; it was one of the main reasons that sent TTL Russia on a brutal quest to restore its empire by any means short of WWIII. OTOH, during the conflict even Russia failed to do much more than provide diplomatic and logistic support to Serbia. It was in a transitional period, its economy and military were still recovering from the post-Soviet mess, and even Putin and his cronies knew picking an armed fight with NATO was a line they could not afford to cross. It is the reason why at the apex of the new Cold War, the Baltic states and Eastern Europe stand safe under the NATO/EU umbrella even if Putin and his associates would love restoring the full measure of the Soviet empire. For various reasons, ITTL destabilization of the West by populist proxies is not much of a workable strategy for Russia and China. On the other hand, the post-Soviet peoples groan under the restored Russian yoke, yearn for the day they can shake it off for good, and if feasible (e.g. Belarus and Ukraine) are busy enacting a remake of Afghanistan on steroids with smuggled Western weapons.