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Post by vegalyra on Apr 2, 2019 19:46:56 GMT
Tensions were at an all time high between the USA and the Soviet Union in 1983. President Reagan had made his "evil empire" speech and the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) was the new nuclear deterrence policy, and KGB agents that were roaming around Western Europe, specifically London and Washington D.C. had increasingly been informing their superiors in the USSR about USA armament buildups and nuclear drills. Premier Andropov in the USSR meanwhile was sickly and relying on reports from his staff about the US and becoming increasingly paranoid about US and NATO intentions. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was continuing. The downing of a South Korean airline by a Soviet jet fighter increased tensions between the West and the Communist bloc. What do you think would be the outcome if Andropov had ordered a massive conventional strike of Western Europe? How do you think NATO and the USA would have responded? Would China have gotten involved and restarted the Korean war? Would it have gone nuclear?
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Post by Sulla on Apr 2, 2019 20:24:48 GMT
There's a good book from 1979 on this subject called The Third World War: August 1985 by Sir John Hackett. It tries to present a realistic view of what could happen if war broke out in Europe at that time. Initially the Soviets make good gains, but eventually the Allies prevail. It's been a while since I read it, but I don't think it covers events in Asia. There was one nuclear exchange where a British city (Birmingham?) was destroyed and the UK and US each retaliated by firing nukes at Minsk. After that, neither side wanted to continue the tit-for-tat. I think you might enjoy it because it covers what you're asking about in this thread.
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Post by politicidal on Apr 4, 2019 19:20:59 GMT
NATO and the USA would definitely respond in kind. But I think China would play the opportunist and throw in with the West. Feign a defensive course of action for the time being.
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Post by TheGoodMan19 on Apr 5, 2019 22:33:56 GMT
Tensions were at an all time high between the USA and the Soviet Union in 1983. President Reagan had made his "evil empire" speech and the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) was the new nuclear deterrence policy, and KGB agents that were roaming around Western Europe, specifically London and Washington D.C. had increasingly been informing their superiors in the USSR about USA armament buildups and nuclear drills. Premier Andropov in the USSR meanwhile was sickly and relying on reports from his staff about the US and becoming increasingly paranoid about US and NATO intentions. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was continuing. The downing of a South Korean airline by a Soviet jet fighter increased tensions between the West and the Communist bloc. What do you think would be the outcome if Andropov had ordered a massive conventional strike of Western Europe? How do you think NATO and the USA would have responded? Would China have gotten involved and restarted the Korean war? Would it have gone nuclear? More than likely. NATO (including two other nuclear powers aside from the US) would not have stood for the conquest of West Germany and certainly would not have stood for Warsaw Pact troops crossing the Rhine. NATO probably never stood a chance in a ground war against the Soviets. If you are just talking about airstrikes, there would have been massive retaliatory strikes of eastern Europe and the USSR. Sooner or later, the "tit for tat" conventional strikes would have escalated. Millions of casualties and the devastation of Paris or London, a la Tokyo in 1945, would have certainly ended up with muchroom clouds over everything.
If there could have been a conventional WWIII, the Chinese probably would have sat it out, if humanly possible. The only reason they stuck their noses into Korea is that they didn't want UN troops on the Yalu River. Europe was a long way away. Best bet was to stay neutral and pick up the peices with the "winner" and try to keep it from going nuclear and ending it for all.
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Post by vegalyra on Apr 6, 2019 16:15:19 GMT
Some great thoughts here. This period of time has fascinated me for a long time. I appreciate the book recommendation too, Sulla, I'll have to check that out. I had a non-fiction work when I was younger about comparative NATO and Warsaw Pact air force strengths at the time (mid '80s). I believe it had some hypothetical scenarios of a NATO first strike and a Warsaw Pact first strike (all conventional of course), and it included land forces. I believe it hypothesized that the NATO numerical inferiority in tanks in particular, would be offset by our A-10 and Harrier tank killers. The Harriers would have been deployed in areas away from military airbases due to the VSTOL capability so we'd still have those in the event of air bases being targeted. It was pretty interesting reading for a young teenager. I threw in China in my initial question because of some of the issues that had happened between them and India in the 1970s as well as the Korean DMZ and it's alliance with Pakistan and Albania in Europe in particular. If the Chinese threw in with the USA due to their coolness with the Soviets at the time, Afghanistan might have been an even larger battleground with a massive Chinese push against the USSR. If they had gone in with the Russians instead, I wonder if the USA could have fought a two ocean war like it did during WW2. I think the Chinese probably would have played it safe and stayed out of it altogether though. I imagine it would have worried the Japanese, S. Koreans, and much of SE Asia (the Vietnamese had just repulsed a Chinese invasion in the 1970's).
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