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Description
A map based on my various musings about a 1980’s WWIII that stays mostly conventional, if some aspects of this map look familiar to you well they are based on the various concept maps for my a certain TL based on a certain video game that I honestly don’t like having around (that and some taken inspiration from Giobastia’s TL about this of which I highly recommend you read). And must I add that the Able Archer incident refers to the time the Soviets feared a nuclear attack by the West in early November IOTL rather than the incident regarding Stanislav preventing a disaster in some nuclear missile base. As for this map, this is just what I speculate to be what would happen if a mostly conventional WWIII were to occur and as such is intended to be somewhat serious in most respects though I might be inaccurate in others and if they are pointed out, I will gladly respond to them and address them.
Anyways, the POD is that the Soviet air force unit sent to shoot down the KAL 007 in September 1983 simply went with it without warning shots, prompting the Reagan Administration that the USSR can’t be trusted and went ahead with deploying the Pershing II tactical missiles earlier than OTL by the end of October. This mere change of pace would forever change the face of the Cold War and of geopolitics itself in both the short run and the long run.

By the time the annual Able Archer exercise was carried out by NATO in November of 1983, the Soviets were on the edge; they see the whole event, complete with the already deployed Pershing IIs, as a “ruse” for launching a nuclear war against the USSR and its allies and so decided to respond rather beyond vocally: by launching a wave of terrorist attacks by KGB and GRU units stationed around the Western countries then following up by an all-out conventional attack on NATO on November 9th, 1983, starting World War III,. The war began in central Europe but slowly over a few weeks had reached to the Middle East and Asia.

Despite prewar fears, the war lasted for almost three years straight with it being mostly conventional, mainly due to both sides being aware of the damage a general nuclear exchange can bring. The Warpac forces had the advantage in terms of numbers but had lacked the technological edge once a stalemate broke out throughout central Europe but had been able to take over Italy and Greece in the process. Meanwhile, the Soviets invaded Iran with Ba’athist Iraqi help along with attacking Pakistan in the process; North Korea took advantage of the chaos in Europe and the Middle East by invading South Korea which then brought Japan into the fray on the side of NATO and made both South Korea and Japan allies at last. In Africa, South Africa invaded Angola and Mozambique and Ethiopia attacked Somalia to settle their scores.

Slowly over the course of the war, the tide turned in favor of NATO; the Warpac countries fell into anti-communist revolts which then brought the USSR onto the defensive by the end of 1985. However a stalemate occurred yet again by 1986 thanks to the failure of NATO’s efforts to liberate Iran and Pakistan from Soviet occupation though they were compensated by having the some of the USSR’s allies like Iraq, and North Korea defeated in the process. However a miracle occurred that stemmed from diplomatic blunders on the part of the Soviets on October; the PRC declared war on the USSR after receiving a telegram offering an alliance to neutral yet pro-Soviet Indian government with the reward of getting Tibet and some of China’s southwest territories in the case of war. The telegram was intended as a measure to keep China from entering the war yet it had the opposite effect as Beijing interpreted it as an act of aggression (though some post-war records state that China wanted to enter the conflict anyway yet it sought a casus belli to do so).

The mere entry of China into the war unofficially on the side of NATO would become the point of no return for the course of the war given that it would not only use up more of Soviet manpower and resources on the Sino-Soviet front but also lessening the pressure on NATO in Europe and the Middle East. The Soviets by then were losing not only their power in the nation but also their minds, the country had to deal with constant anti-Soviet uprisings of various stripes and sizes, ranging from ethnic groups like the Armenians and Georgians to Russian anti-Soviet liberals. By the time they lost a decisive battle against China in Central Asia in November, they made up their decision to use nuclear weapons on a “limited” scale to force China out of the war, in the form of sending IRBMs to some of China’s biggest cities.

It turned out to be a big mistake as NATO interpreted it as a sign that the USSR had gone nuclear and proceeded to unleash a devastating first strike on key cities and military facilities. The USSR responded with its remaining stockpile upon the US primarily, and some of NATO’s and their allies’ cities and military bases, though the latter had been less effected than the US given priorities to weaken the US by the Soviet higher ups. The nuclear exchange that was long feared had come yet it wasn’t as apocalyptic as pre-war estimates made it out to be thanks to various factors including preparedness of the civilians to evacuate and some missile bases destroyed in the process as part of the counterforce strategy. After the nuclear dust settles, the USSR had begun to fall into pieces and NATO and its allies had begun to invade the country after reluctant to do so before the November Exchange.

By the end of 1986, on December 12th, 1986, a coup broke out by dissent Soviet Army units that had enough of the conflict and sought peace with NATO and China and announcing an unconditional surrender. At this point, WWIII had come to an end and the world order would forever be reshaped by NATO and China. The USSR was to be dissolved along with some of its allies around the world; China would wound up with a lot more territories almost matching that of its pre-1911 borders. Most of the European NATO countries would unite into the European Federation given that the war had made them do so, though the UK and Germany would retain their autonomy. Turkey split off from NATO and formed its own hegemony in the Mediterranean and in the Caucasus. Japan once again become a world power and also formed its own hegemony in the Pacific. South Africa emerged as a world power as well as well as some other countries in the southern hemisphere become economically and politically stronger given that the war devastated much of the northern hemisphere. Communism in general become discredited and put in the same negative light as Nazism given its role in Soviet atrocities both within and outside its borders before and during WWIII (especially the Holodomors that occurred in occupied West Germany) yet other ideologies came into prominence, including anarchism, objectivism, and national capitalism. Hyper capitalism became the norm in many countries of the victorious Allies, even in places like China which had been experimenting with capitalism before the conflict broke out. Notably, WWIII was the last hurrah for the US as it emerged war battered and weary similar to how the UK was after WWII and that it ceased to be a superpower in the years to come with many other powers filling in the vacuum left when the US withdrew its forces from Europe and Asia post-war, which would then have an impact on world politics.

The contraction of US influence and its replacement by those of other nations like the EF, Japan, Turkey, and China would set the stage for another cold war or rather another “great game” in the years after WWIII with former Soviet Union becoming the center of the rising competition between the Euro and Asian blocs. Even Latin America, that have been mostly unaffected directly by the three world wars, have become more prominent into the world stage with Brazil (who also was involved in WWIII) becoming more independent of US influence and establishing a Latin Bloc with Chile in the 2000’s. Not that the US is irrelevant in world affairs, it maintains hegemony in North and Central America and has ties to the Euro and Pacific Blocs, yet is highly reluctant to get heavily involved after what led up to WWIII. That and the rebuilding from the nuclear exchanges of which took a toll on the economy that was once the highest before WWIII (recovering from such powerful weapons is not cheap but it doing so is at least a lot better than completely collapsing into post-apocalyptic warlord states with a bunch of wastelands and whatnot). However, even within its borders, the federal government’s influence had begun to wane thanks to the rise of California and Texan independence sentiments along with Aztlan, Confederate, and other separatist ones (it helps that fighting the Soviets boosted anti-government sentiment in the post war scene), of which sometimes escalated to violence and terrorism.

In addition the rise of the EF and China (of which ditched aspects of communism since WWIII in favor of alternative ones, hence the renaming of the People’s Republic to the Prosperous Republic), of which embraced hyper capitalistic corporatism to a degree would end up becoming the leading world powers as of 2017, though the EF is number one for now. While the PRC is more of a state capitalistic authoritarian state, the EF is more “liberal” and more decentralized yet is socialistic in some aspects (especially healthcare); other world powers were the same way (especially Japan being similar to China in some respects though it once again has the emperor as a “figurehead” like it had before 1945 and are more akin to the Taisho era only with more megacorps), though some embraced a form of Third Positionism like South Africa and Turkey. Yet the similarities between most of the blocs in regards to being capitalistic doesn’t prevent their inevitable desire to compete with one another in a fashion similar to the European empires prior to WWI; it’s all part of the same old survival of the fittest mentality of politics after all. Though nuclear weapons were either heavily reduced or outright eliminated (and banned in some countries) thanks to the Stockholm Protocol of 1996, other methods of deterring direct conflict are present including WMDs of both old and new like neutron bombs, microbial parasites, and the most non-lethal method yet devastating, interconnected economies that can wreck the finances of nations when conflict breaks out between them.

Yet WMDs aren’t the only ones that the leading blocs have in store, other weapons that were either created or conceived during WWIII that the powers have in their arsenals include one to two man tanks that are highly mobile and in the case of one man tanks can crouch and/or jump, VTOL gunships resembling that of OTL’s V-22 Ospreys, AFVs that act as over glorified missile batteries (think of the MRLS vehicles on steroids), caseless firearms like that of OTL’s G-11 Assault Rifle, railguns, and electromagnetic cannons. It can be safely said that technology has gotten to be 10 to 15 years ahead of OTL thanks to the various innovations and inventions that arose in WWIII, of which are applied outside of military use; that and cyberspace and robotics research have gotten a boost ITTL along with that of biometry and genetics thanks to the shift in right leaning thinking in response to a far left aggressor that caused WWIII (though eugenics in a Nazi sense aren’t quite mainstream…yet). Already drones are becoming widespread since the 90’s and it’s not surprising for unmanned combat vehicles to be part of many armies around the world, especially those of the Japan’s military (of which notoriously has a love affair with robotics) and that the internet has become a tool for the personnel to communicate with (and use to their advantage when hacking enemy equipment). War may never change but the way to wage it can over time even as of 2017, many of the blocs are involved in asymmetric, low intensity conflicts involving insurgents of various ideological stripes (including those that follow Neo-Bolshevism) that while lacking in having advanced weaponry have the willpower in manipulating people around them to gain personnel and material (and of course morale).

Yet, even when concerned with engaging in low intensity conflicts primarily, the fears of another large scale world war are abound, especially with the involvement of both the Euro and Asian blocs in the Iranian and Indian civil wars, of which both have happened in the early 2010’s. Iran after WWIII had its fundamentalist Islamist regime disposed by a military coup in the 90’s that wanted democracy at last after having to deal with invasions by two aggressors and religiously motivated authoritarianism. The newly gained democracy would not last long as some wanted to restore the Islamist Republic and some wanted to shape Iran in their own image (including those of the neo-Fascist variety) and unsurprisingly turned into a playground for Euro and Asian interests, especially after an anti-Islamist coup in the 2010’s broke out in response to an election victory by the neo-Islamists that was allegedly rigged and of course triggered the Iranian Civil War. India was almost the same way in how it got to civil war only that it was entirely neutral throughout WWIII and had see-sawed between pro-Euro and pro-Asian interests. This kind of political ping pong would not last long as a coup by ultranationalists erupted in response to the pro-Asian government granting China rights to own businesses within its borders in the 2010’s, which then dragged the country into civil war that often gets nuclear from time to time in response to the nuke-free Iranian one. Making matters worse is the unreliability of the Pacific blocs that often swings towards China and towards Europe at times, same for Turkey ruffling Europe’s feathers in regards to handling Greece and its other client states. In addition, the USA is falling apart with a few countries achieving independence and its government under Libertarian influence with the election of a hugely Tea Party-esque leader of which made the USA ripe for corporate influence. And this leader seeks to restore confidence and pride in America even if it meant being in the form of a semi-democratic, semi-authoritarian hyper capitalist autocracy*, and has gotten hostile to the Latin blocs in regards to the situation in Venezuela and Colombia. And of course even Africa is not exempt from tension as Zaire and South Africa had turned on each other as soon as communism as a threat was vanquished and their respective racial supremacist mindsets made their peaceful coexistence impossible.

As it was in the First and Second (OTL’s Cold War up to 1983) Interwar eras, tensions around the world threaten to erupt into a Fourth World War and both sides are once again doing their best to avoid it for the good of humanity; though at least if it did happen, at least it wouldn’t be as nuclear as the last one…

*And in case you ask, the president is more of a Putin-esque figure than a Trump one and it’s best to put it that way since I do not wish to bring current day politics into this one like I have in most of my works.

Description
A map based on my various musings about a 1980’s WWIII that stays mostly conventional, if some aspects of this map look familiar to you well they are based on the various concept maps for my a certain TL based on a certain video game that I honestly don’t like having around (that and some taken inspiration from Giobastia’s TL about this of which I highly recommend you read). And must I add that the Able Archer incident refers to the time the Soviets feared a nuclear attack by the West in early November IOTL rather than the incident regarding Stanislav preventing a disaster in some nuclear missile base. As for this map, this is just what I speculate to be what would happen if a mostly conventional WWIII were to occur and as such is intended to be somewhat serious in most respects though I might be inaccurate in others and if they are pointed out, I will gladly respond to them and address them.
Anyways, the POD is that the Soviet air force unit sent to shoot down the KAL 007 in September 1983 simply went with it without warning shots, prompting the Reagan Administration that the USSR can’t be trusted and went ahead with deploying the Pershing II tactical missiles earlier than OTL by the end of October. This mere change of pace would forever change the face of the Cold War and of geopolitics itself in both the short run and the long run.

By the time the annual Able Archer exercise was carried out by NATO in November of 1983, the Soviets were on the edge; they see the whole event, complete with the already deployed Pershing IIs, as a “ruse” for launching a nuclear war against the USSR and its allies and so decided to respond rather beyond vocally: by launching a wave of terrorist attacks by KGB and GRU units stationed around the Western countries then following up by an all-out conventional attack on NATO on November 9th, 1983, starting World War III,. The war began in central Europe but slowly over a few weeks had reached to the Middle East and Asia.

Despite prewar fears, the war lasted for almost three years straight with it being mostly conventional, mainly due to both sides being aware of the damage a general nuclear exchange can bring. The Warpac forces had the advantage in terms of numbers but had lacked the technological edge once a stalemate broke out throughout central Europe but had been able to take over Italy and Greece in the process. Meanwhile, the Soviets invaded Iran with Ba’athist Iraqi help along with attacking Pakistan in the process; North Korea took advantage of the chaos in Europe and the Middle East by invading South Korea which then brought Japan into the fray on the side of NATO and made both South Korea and Japan allies at last. In Africa, South Africa invaded Angola and Mozambique and Ethiopia attacked Somalia to settle their scores.

Slowly over the course of the war, the tide turned in favor of NATO; the Warpac countries fell into anti-communist revolts which then brought the USSR onto the defensive by the end of 1985. However a stalemate occurred yet again by 1986 thanks to the failure of NATO’s efforts to liberate Iran and Pakistan from Soviet occupation though they were compensated by having the some of the USSR’s allies like Iraq, and North Korea defeated in the process. However a miracle occurred that stemmed from diplomatic blunders on the part of the Soviets on October; the PRC declared war on the USSR after receiving a telegram offering an alliance to neutral yet pro-Soviet Indian government with the reward of getting Tibet and some of China’s southwest territories in the case of war. The telegram was intended as a measure to keep China from entering the war yet it had the opposite effect as Beijing interpreted it as an act of aggression (though some post-war records state that China wanted to enter the conflict anyway yet it sought a casus belli to do so).

The mere entry of China into the war unofficially on the side of NATO would become the point of no return for the course of the war given that it would not only use up more of Soviet manpower and resources on the Sino-Soviet front but also lessening the pressure on NATO in Europe and the Middle East. The Soviets by then were losing not only their power in the nation but also their minds, the country had to deal with constant anti-Soviet uprisings of various stripes and sizes, ranging from ethnic groups like the Armenians and Georgians to Russian anti-Soviet liberals. By the time they lost a decisive battle against China in Central Asia in November, they made up their decision to use nuclear weapons on a “limited” scale to force China out of the war, in the form of sending IRBMs to some of China’s biggest cities.

It turned out to be a big mistake as NATO interpreted it as a sign that the USSR had gone nuclear and proceeded to unleash a devastating first strike on key cities and military facilities. The USSR responded with its remaining stockpile upon the US primarily, and some of NATO’s and their allies’ cities and military bases, though the latter had been less effected than the US given priorities to weaken the US by the Soviet higher ups. The nuclear exchange that was long feared had come yet it wasn’t as apocalyptic as pre-war estimates made it out to be thanks to various factors including preparedness of the civilians to evacuate and some missile bases destroyed in the process as part of the counterforce strategy. After the nuclear dust settles, the USSR had begun to fall into pieces and NATO and its allies had begun to invade the country after reluctant to do so before the November Exchange.

By the end of 1986, on December 12th, 1986, a coup broke out by dissent Soviet Army units that had enough of the conflict and sought peace with NATO and China and announcing an unconditional surrender. At this point, WWIII had come to an end and the world order would forever be reshaped by NATO and China. The USSR was to be dissolved along with some of its allies around the world; China would wound up with a lot more territories almost matching that of its pre-1911 borders. Most of the European NATO countries would unite into the European Federation given that the war had made them do so, though the UK and Germany would retain their autonomy. Turkey split off from NATO and formed its own hegemony in the Mediterranean and in the Caucasus. Japan once again become a world power and also formed its own hegemony in the Pacific. South Africa emerged as a world power as well as well as some other countries in the southern hemisphere become economically and politically stronger given that the war devastated much of the northern hemisphere. Communism in general become discredited and put in the same negative light as Nazism given its role in Soviet atrocities both within and outside its borders before and during WWIII (especially the Holodomors that occurred in occupied West Germany) yet other ideologies came into prominence, including anarchism, objectivism, and national capitalism. Hyper capitalism became the norm in many countries of the victorious Allies, even in places like China which had been experimenting with capitalism before the conflict broke out. Notably, WWIII was the last hurrah for the US as it emerged war battered and weary similar to how the UK was after WWII and that it ceased to be a superpower in the years to come with many other powers filling in the vacuum left when the US withdrew its forces from Europe and Asia post-war, which would then have an impact on world politics.

The contraction of US influence and its replacement by those of other nations like the EF, Japan, Turkey, and China would set the stage for another cold war or rather another “great game” in the years after WWIII with former Soviet Union becoming the center of the rising competition between the Euro and Asian blocs. Even Latin America, that have been mostly unaffected directly by the three world wars, have become more prominent into the world stage with Brazil (who also was involved in WWIII) becoming more independent of US influence and establishing a Latin Bloc with Chile in the 2000’s. Not that the US is irrelevant in world affairs, it maintains hegemony in North and Central America and has ties to the Euro and Pacific Blocs, yet is highly reluctant to get heavily involved after what led up to WWIII. That and the rebuilding from the nuclear exchanges of which took a toll on the economy that was once the highest before WWIII (recovering from such powerful weapons is not cheap but it doing so is at least a lot better than completely collapsing into post-apocalyptic warlord states with a bunch of wastelands and whatnot). However, even within its borders, the federal government’s influence had begun to wane thanks to the rise of California and Texan independence sentiments along with Aztlan, Confederate, and other separatist ones (it helps that fighting the Soviets boosted anti-government sentiment in the post war scene), of which sometimes escalated to violence and terrorism.

In addition the rise of the EF and China (of which ditched aspects of communism since WWIII in favor of alternative ones, hence the renaming of the People’s Republic to the Prosperous Republic), of which embraced hyper capitalistic corporatism to a degree would end up becoming the leading world powers as of 2017, though the EF is number one for now. While the PRC is more of a state capitalistic authoritarian state, the EF is more “liberal” and more decentralized yet is socialistic in some aspects (especially healthcare); other world powers were the same way (especially Japan being similar to China in some respects though it once again has the emperor as a “figurehead” like it had before 1945 and are more akin to the Taisho era only with more megacorps), though some embraced a form of Third Positionism like South Africa and Turkey. Yet the similarities between most of the blocs in regards to being capitalistic doesn’t prevent their inevitable desire to compete with one another in a fashion similar to the European empires prior to WWI; it’s all part of the same old survival of the fittest mentality of politics after all. Though nuclear weapons were either heavily reduced or outright eliminated (and banned in some countries) thanks to the Stockholm Protocol of 1996, other methods of deterring direct conflict are present including WMDs of both old and new like neutron bombs, microbial parasites, and the most non-lethal method yet devastating, interconnected economies that can wreck the finances of nations when conflict breaks out between them.

Yet WMDs aren’t the only ones that the leading blocs have in store, other weapons that were either created or conceived during WWIII that the powers have in their arsenals include one to two man tanks that are highly mobile and in the case of one man tanks can crouch and/or jump, VTOL gunships resembling that of OTL’s V-22 Ospreys, AFVs that act as over glorified missile batteries (think of the MRLS vehicles on steroids), caseless firearms like that of OTL’s G-11 Assault Rifle, railguns, and electromagnetic cannons. It can be safely said that technology has gotten to be 10 to 15 years ahead of OTL thanks to the various innovations and inventions that arose in WWIII, of which are applied outside of military use; that and cyberspace and robotics research have gotten a boost ITTL along with that of biometry and genetics thanks to the shift in right leaning thinking in response to a far left aggressor that caused WWIII (though eugenics in a Nazi sense aren’t quite mainstream…yet). Already drones are becoming widespread since the 90’s and it’s not surprising for unmanned combat vehicles to be part of many armies around the world, especially those of the Japan’s military (of which notoriously has a love affair with robotics) and that the internet has become a tool for the personnel to communicate with (and use to their advantage when hacking enemy equipment). War may never change but the way to wage it can over time even as of 2017, many of the blocs are involved in asymmetric, low intensity conflicts involving insurgents of various ideological stripes (including those that follow Neo-Bolshevism) that while lacking in having advanced weaponry have the willpower in manipulating people around them to gain personnel and material (and of course morale).

Yet, even when concerned with engaging in low intensity conflicts primarily, the fears of another large scale world war are abound, especially with the involvement of both the Euro and Asian blocs in the Iranian and Indian civil wars, of which both have happened in the early 2010’s. Iran after WWIII had its fundamentalist Islamist regime disposed by a military coup in the 90’s that wanted democracy at last after having to deal with invasions by two aggressors and religiously motivated authoritarianism. The newly gained democracy would not last long as some wanted to restore the Islamist Republic and some wanted to shape Iran in their own image (including those of the neo-Fascist variety) and unsurprisingly turned into a playground for Euro and Asian interests, especially after an anti-Islamist coup in the 2010’s broke out in response to an election victory by the neo-Islamists that was allegedly rigged and of course triggered the Iranian Civil War. India was almost the same way in how it got to civil war only that it was entirely neutral throughout WWIII and had see-sawed between pro-Euro and pro-Asian interests. This kind of political ping pong would not last long as a coup by ultranationalists erupted in response to the pro-Asian government granting China rights to own businesses within its borders in the 2010’s, which then dragged the country into civil war that often gets nuclear from time to time in response to the nuke-free Iranian one. Making matters worse is the unreliability of the Pacific blocs that often swings towards China and towards Europe at times, same for Turkey ruffling Europe’s feathers in regards to handling Greece and its other client states. In addition, the USA is falling apart with a few countries achieving independence and its government under Libertarian influence with the election of a hugely Tea Party-esque leader of which made the USA ripe for corporate influence. And this leader seeks to restore confidence and pride in America even if it meant being in the form of a semi-democratic, semi-authoritarian hyper capitalist autocracy*, and has gotten hostile to the Latin blocs in regards to the situation in Venezuela and Colombia. And of course even Africa is not exempt from tension as Zaire and South Africa had turned on each other as soon as communism as a threat was vanquished and their respective racial supremacist mindsets made their peaceful coexistence impossible.

As it was in the First and Second (OTL’s Cold War up to 1983) Interwar eras, tensions around the world threaten to erupt into a Fourth World War and both sides are once again doing their best to avoid it for the good of humanity; though at least if it did happen, at least it wouldn’t be as nuclear as the last one…

*And in case you ask, the president is more of a Putin-esque figure than a Trump one and it’s best to put it that way since I do not wish to bring current day politics into this one like I have in most of my works.