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I think it's very likely that military operations will become more and more coordinated. After all, they've already pooled their nuclear programme, and although the Eurosyn does serve a political/economic function it is predominately about Cold War diplomacy. At this point there's basically no need for the ES nations to maintain individual forces, except I suppose the 'flagship' projects and small stuff for local work, as you say. Really the only possible zones of contention are going to be the GIUK–North Sea–Baltic area, where Germany gives the US a possible in, and maybe I guess pushing into the Atlantic beyond Sole/FitzRoy? Idk, I suppose ti would rely on either Eire or Portugal going rogue…

Given the geographical situation, Eurosyn can easily power project through the Med and Atlantic, and have the Soviets in a death grip navally except in the far Pacific. Thus, going to be lots of use and utility in having a unfied fleet building program.
Given all that, the power and threats to Eurosyn are land based. So air forces and land armies are going to be increasingly linked together. I wouldn't be surprised if the continental members just joined all their armies together. Might as well, given they're all going to be along the german and Soviet borders anyway.

Other joint projects are the nuke stuff as already covered, and probably cruise missles as well. As I said, I think that only things that the big countries won't share with the rest/each other are the big three: carriers, subs and monetary policy.
 
And I should also say, @stnylan, seeing as it's been a little while – I haven't forgotten your request for a look in at the cricket. I have a few plans in the works, particularly after I found out about the 1977 Australia centenary test. (If you're reading, @Bullfilter, I'd be grateful of the benefit of your expertise at some point. :D) Plenty of possibilities for sporting fun in vol. 2…
I’m on a very slow stern chase at the moment, having created my own heavy seas of updating four full-scale AARs at once, plus designing a new comprehensive scenario mod for HOI3 and trying to get/keep up to date with a good number of great AARs like this one. Oh, and real life (in our latest cricket season, where I may - allegedly - be playing for four different cricket teams regularly). :rolleyes:;)

But if there are any specific questions or things you’d like a view on, please just tag me as you have done here, and I’m happy to throw in my own two bob’s worth, as it will be a good while before I’ll be current in the episodes. :)
 
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Given all that, the power and threats to Eurosyn are land based. So air forces and land armies are going to be increasingly linked together. I wouldn't be surprised if the continental members just joined all their armies together. Might as well, given they're all going to be along the german and Soviet borders anyway.

I could see this happening. The CW army I've sort of skirted around so far because it hasn't really come up more than anything, but based on my vague idea of it there's no reason why it couldn't integrate under the ES umbrella.

Other joint projects are the nuke stuff as already covered, and probably cruise missles as well. As I said, I think that only things that the big countries won't share with the rest/each other are the big three: carriers, subs and monetary policy.

What all of this throws up, of course, is what exactly the purpose of the Eurosyn is. Which I think will be a fun debate to hash out in the Seventies. Is it purely and simply a Cold War alliance, or does it serve a wider purpose as a de facto West Eureopan confederation with some political function? Arguments in favour of both interpretations, lots of tasty B***** comparisons on the cards, Michael Foot becoming fiercely Europhilic… Yes, good fun I think.

I’m on a very slow stern chase at the moment, having created my own heavy seas of updating four full-scale AARs at once, plus designing a new comprehensive scenario mod for HOI3 and trying to get/keep up to date with a good number of great AARs like this one. Oh, and real life (in our latest cricket season, where I may - allegedly - be playing for four different cricket teams regularly). :rolleyes:;)

I take my hat off to anyone who can manage multiple AARs at once. The most I had at the go ever was three, which did not last long at all. Very soon boiled down to one, and even that fizzled out before its time. Plenty of fun though!

And best of luck with the cricket. :D

But if there are any specific questions or things you’d like a view on, please just tag me as you have done here, and I’m happy to throw in my own two bob’s worth, as it will be a good while before I’ll be current in the episodes. :)

Will do! Oz will be coming up more and more with the coming of the second volume after the New Year, but still plenty of time for leisurely reading. :)

--

General notice to all interested: I've just seen @99KingHigh's draft for Indochina, and my word are we in for one almighty mess. Hopefully plenty to mull over when it comes.
 
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Really the only possible zones of contention are going to be the GIUK–North Sea–Baltic area, where Germany gives the US a possible in, and maybe I guess pushing into the Atlantic beyond Sole/FitzRoy? Idk, I suppose ti would rely on either Eire or Portugal going rogue…
Maybe I've missed something but why would Britain and EuroSyn care about the Atlantic at all? It's not like WW2/Cold War where vital convoys from the US and Canada have to cross over, if the entire Atlantic ends up swarming with Soviets subs then.... good? There is nothing there that Eurosyn care about. Trade is going to be across the Channel, in/around the Med and maybe to bits of Africa, but even then I have doubts.

As you say some sort of North Sea picket between Scotland and Norway to cut any link between Germany and the US makes sense, but that is a much easier proposition than the GIUK gap and one you can do entirely with aircraft. Even the Bay of Biscay you can cover fairly easily given the coast is friendly.

I will dissent against the submarine plans, because what is the mission? If you are looking to stop Germany-US convoys then there are easier ways of doing that at pinch points and the Soviets have not got any convoys to stop. On the diplomatic front, and for East of Suez, Submarines are crap at 'showing the flag' compared to surface vessels for hopefully obvious reasons.

Power projection will probably be done in other, softer ways (eg through the CBC) so really my only other thoughts would be possibly maintaining a sort of 'humanitarian' fleet, though where this might immediately be required I don't know.
It is worse than I feared. The 'British Navy' *spits* may end up with ships as awful as the Germans F-125 frigates, arguably one of the worst ships an allegedly modern nation has ever ineptly nailed together. Just about capable of sitting off shore and showing a flag, but incapable of actually fighting as it is slow, large, under-armed and has many fundamental design flaws.

 
Maybe I've missed something but why would Britain and EuroSyn care about the Atlantic at all? It's not like WW2/Cold War where vital convoys from the US and Canada have to cross over, if the entire Atlantic ends up swarming with Soviets subs then.... good?

No you've missed nothing, except perhaps my repeated insistences that on this score I have no idea what I'm talking about. (Hopefully you now realise these are not me being polite.)

As you say some sort of North Sea picket between Scotland and Norway to cut any link between Germany and the US makes sense, but that is a much easier proposition than the GIUK gap and one you can do entirely with aircraft. Even the Bay of Biscay you can cover fairly easily given the coast is friendly.

I will dissent against the submarine plans, because what is the mission? If you are looking to stop Germany-US convoys then there are easier ways of doing that at pinch points and the Soviets have not got any convoys to stop.

Both valuable and interesting points raised, thank you. Dissent noted.

On the diplomatic front, and for East of Suez, Submarines are crap at 'showing the flag' compared to surface vessels for hopefully obvious reasons.

Yes don't worry, I'm not that hopeless. :D

It is worse than I feared. The 'British Navy' *spits* may end up with ships as awful as the Germans F-125 frigates, arguably one of the worst ships an allegedly modern nation has ever ineptly nailed together. Just about capable of sitting off shore and showing a flag, but incapable of actually fighting as it is slow, large, under-armed and has many fundamental design flaws.

I am heartened to learn that there is a website called "Naval Today".

The F-125 does indeed seem to have been (to be?) rather calamitous. I would have expected a quip about how in the CW the designers would be too preoccupied about being mysteriously disappeared to ever dare propose such a thing.
 
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Yes don't worry, I'm not that hopeless.
Hurrah!

I am heartened to learn that there is a website called "Naval Today".
The title has a certain Have I Got News For You 'guest publication' feel about it.

The F-125 does indeed seem to have been (to be?) rather calamitous. I would have expected a quip about how in the CW the designers would be too preoccupied about being mysteriously disappeared to ever dare propose such a thing.
I cannot imagine anyone in the CW daring to produce a ship that has a permanent list to the right. :eek:
 
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The title has a certain Have I Got News For You 'guest publication' feel about it.

That is rather the feel, isn’t it?

I cannot imagine anyone in the CW daring to produce a ship that has a permanent list to the right. :eek:

Yes, if anything an over correction towards the port side would be all good and patriotic.
 
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Chapters from The Birth of the American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad (1979), written by the American historian Walter LaFeber, one of the first revisionist historians of the Cold War. LaFeber explores the creation of the so-called "American empire" with an economic perspective and famously challenges the "conventional narrative of academic and political American liberalism."

The Birth of the American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad

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Chapter 15: Sink or Swim
Escalations in Indochina (1961-1964)

By 1961, the pendulum of Southeast Asia appeared to be swinging slowly but surely back to syndicalism. While Washington’s burgeoning system of subsidies and military support in Indochina had managed to temporarily quiet the syndicalist insurrection in South Vietnam, outside of Emperor Bao’s regime the strategic picture was looking increasingly bleak. India, Indonesia, and Malaysia, variously independent yet allegiant to syndicalism, remained receptive to instructions and pressure from the Marxist bloc. This allegiance was given its most public expression at the Putrajaya Conference in 1960, when Lim Yew Hock, the leader of the Malaysian Confederation and its governing party, the pro-British Labour Front, joined Indian President Saumyendranath Tagore and Indonesian President Sukarno in denouncing the American presence on the continent upon European encouragement. The two other former French colonies of Indochina—Laos and Cambodia—remained under the more direct guidance of their pro-European syndicalist governments. Despite providing nearly $2 billion in U.S aid for the anti-imperialist, anti-syndicalist movements in Laos and Cambodia, the United States faced the frightening prospect of a consolidated syndicalist presence enveloping South Vietnam from all sides.


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Vice-President and later President John F. Kennedy attempted to restrain Indonesia's Sukarno from open affiliation with the syndicalist bloc. This policy was dealt a serious blow when Sukarno endorsed the syndicalist position at the 1960 Putrajaya Conference with his Indian and Malaysian counterparts.

Kefauver had determined to stand firm in Southeast Asia. Vividly recalling the attacks against Truman for “losing” China, Kefauver and Kennedy did not plan to fall victim to an anti-communist opposition, and especially not over a full member of the Pacific Alliance. Moreover, Washington was sensitive to Japan’s need for Southeast Asian markets, which provided both raw materials and a consumer base for its skyrocketing economy. Their commitment to the preservation of South Vietnam’s independence, however, could not simply paper over their unenviable position. In late 1961, the elderly MacArthur told the President that “the chickens are coming home to roost, and you live in the chicken's house.” The General’s evaluation was not far off the mark.

The administration’s most pressing problem was in Laos, the narrow, strategically located nation that the French had carved out in 1956 as its autonomous protectorate. It was a vital highway along which their allies in North Vietnam covertly moved into South Vietnam to supplement indigenous rebels or to implant their own guerilla forces. In April 1961, with the homegrown South Vietnamese resistance enervated by heavy losses the previous spring, traffic along the so-called “Ho Chi Minh trail” picked up precipitously. The assistance from Lao’s Communists, the Pathet Lao, enabled the Viet Minh to conduct an extraordinary reinforcing maneuver that threatened to topple the government in Saigon. Kefauver and Kennedy reacted by sending air power and the U.S Marines into areas bordering Laos. Simultaneously, the CIA redoubled its assistance to the right-wing rebels under Colonel Phoumi Nosavan, an anti-French rebel who succeeded in rallying a well-supplied resistance against the syndicalist government.


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Anti-Communist rebels under the command of Colonel Phoumi Nosavan in 1961.

Faced with increased American involvement, the Pathet Lao agreed in July 1962 to a pact that neutralized the country. But it soon became apparent that the North Vietnamese were operating as freely as before, particularly along the trail. When they arrived in the South, the North Vietnamese soldiers found frequent and encouraging welcomes among a disgruntled peasantry. Partial land reforms, effectively forced on Saigon by Kefauver in 1958, had stemmed the torrent of defections from the South Vietnamese peasants to the Viet Minh. Nevertheless, there were plenty of grievances still to air, and the North Vietnamese were effective in their appeals against Saigon’s gross corruption and its oppressive political apparatus. In fact, one American military analysis estimated that Emperor Bao’s government only effectively controlled 60 percent of the country. Even this precarious status was again threatened by the unimpeded flow of manpower and material from China and Laos that flowed down the trail.

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Seeking to stabilize the situation, Washington officials looked upon the nearly twenty-thousand U.S troops stationed in Vietnam as the ultimate safeguard of the regime. Since 1954, they had combated the low-level resistance with limited success, but their true value was in providing the administration with critical leverage over Vietnam’s dysfunctional political system, then under Prime Minister Nguyễn Văn Xuân. Kefauver, for his part, expected that support for Colonel Phoumi in Laos and the effective suppression of the trail would ease the pressure on Saigon’s armed forces. Such a reprieve would then permit further political and economic reforms. To his disappointment, the Vietnamese showed no patience for the whims of American strategy, and a wave of anti-royalist demonstrations shook the regime in 1962. It was not only the North Vietnamese who seized on this opportunity to intensify their resistance, but the domestic opposition as well. Violent protests gripped Saigon and crippled public confidence in the government. The monarchy, much to the consternation of Washington, was not spared from public condemnation. Shortly before his death, the President complained that the “If only those bastards [the Vietnamese] would wait for Laos.”

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Emperor Bao Dai struggled to balance the competing political influences around the palace and the country, forcing him to accede to growing authoritarianism in the cause of maintaining stability.

With the death of President Kefauver, Kennedy inherited a quagmire that he had helped manufacture. Back in 1961, Kennedy had sided with General Maxwell Taylor and Walter Rostow in favor of a major increase in allocations and military equipment. Not unlike many other officials, Kennedy had fixated on confronting China, and believed that South Vietnam’s independence was a cornerstone of such a program. Upon attaining the presidency, his fixation on Beijing deepened. He became so obsessed with his fear that China would acquire a nuclear weapon that he even floated the idea of a unilateral strike on Chinese nuclear facilities, an idea that came frighteningly close to implementation before Harriman warned that such an attack without Soviet cooperation could invite a global catastrophe. But as the president became more concerned with the Chinese threat in Asia, he seemed to become more confused about how to deal with his collapsing policy in Southeast Asia. In a September 1963 television interview, Kennedy commented that “in the final analysis, it is their war.” A week later, however, the president told another television audience that he believed the domino theory and warned that China, “which looms so high, could seize the region,” and that “America should not withdraw.”

His advisers saw Bao as the problem. After ten years of intense U.S training, his much larger army had been repeatedly humiliated, culminating in a disastrous encounter at the village of Ap Bac that killed nine Americans. Bao’s army then worsened the crisis by firing into a crowd of protesters who were defying a government ban on civil demonstrations. With the tacit approval of the White House, frustrated generals under the Defense Minister, Ngo Dinh Diem, saw their chance and plotted to overthrow the monarchy. On November 1, 1963, Diem and his generals seized Saigon and sent the imperial family packing into an American exile. The administration’s silence was correctly interpreted as satisfaction with the direction of events. Confidence in Diem was further improved when the CIA-backed Colonel Phoumi succeeded in deposing the Pathet Laos and seized control of the Laotian government. Back in Washington, the apparent success in Laos was read as an endorsement of Dien’s competence, though the victory in Laos was to prove ephemeral. Kennedy’s new defense secretary, Robert McNamara, went so far as to declare in December that “we have every reason to believe the [U.S military] plans will be successful in 1964.” By late 1964, however, the South Vietnamese government and army were falling apart, while Americans were being killed by terrorists in Saigon.


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Diem accepts executive authority from representatives of the South Vietnamese army.

Diem, in fact, cured none of the issues ailing South Vietnam. Though he struck a popular tone by rejecting U.S requests for additional American troops, he could not hope to repress the burgeoning insurrection without larger American assistance. Furthermore, Diem was an imperfect personality to reconfigure and rally the South Vietnamese war effort. He had never worked for the French, but had freely collaborated with the Japanese, and his devout Catholicism set him apart from the Buddhists, who comprised more than 90 percent of Vietnam’s population. Those beliefs, nevertheless, made him popular with many Americans. He was seen as a rigorous anti-imperialist with sufficient credentials to forge a nationalist, if authoritarian nation, that could weather the onslaught from the North. Thus, the United States went to “sink or swim with Ngo Dinh Diem,” as the phrase soon went.
 
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Looks like indochina is about to go all red.
 
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Are they, though? It seems to me that, with the exception of South Vietnam, the SE Asian countries are all more or less becoming syndicalist simultaneously, with France being the only real foreign influence. That doesn't really fit with my understanding of domino theory.

I was being facetious, but yeah, it’s safe to say new theory is needed for this situation.

Thanks for commenting, by the way. Always glad to see new faces. :)
 
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Fair enough. Detecting tone on the internet, etc, etc.

I forget sometimes that this isn't just a conversation between me and two other people, but is in fact visible to hundreds of onlookers.

That said, you raise an interesting point: what are the implications for domino theory when the table starts red? I could well imagine an inverse scenario to our world, where Washington are optimistically talking about falling dominos in relation to countries flipping over to capitalist government.

And thank you and 99HighKing for writing this magnificent tale!

Very welcome indeed! Plenty more in the tank yet :D
 
I took a class waaaay back in the day called "Vietnam: Policy and Procedure" about the conflict in Vietnam. I wish I remembered more of that class because it was awesome.
 
I took a class waaaay back in the day called "Vietnam: Policy and Procedure" about the conflict in Vietnam. I wish I remembered more of that class because it was awesome.

I have to say, one of the great joys of opening this project up to include the American side has been the crash course in US Cold War diplomatic policy I’ve received on the side. Particularly seeing as my previous knowledge of the Vietnam debates ran about as far the three verses of Fortunate Son…
 
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Are they, though? It seems to me that, with the exception of South Vietnam, the SE Asian countries are all more or less becoming syndicalist simultaneously, with France being the only real foreign influence. That doesn't really fit with my understanding of domino theory.

As we all know, the next domino is always the Philippines, and after that it's California Commune time, with Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin launching mass executions on live tv to a jazzy theme.
 
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As we all know, the next domino is always the Philippines, and after that it's California Commune time, with Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin launching mass executions on live tv to a jazzy theme.

I’m hoping KH will be giving us plenty of Dead Kennedies in vol 2. Altho they might need a new name…
 
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As we all know, the next domino is always the Philippines, and after that it's California Commune time, with Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin launching mass executions on live tv to a jazzy theme.

Oh yes. Because communism only happens if someone else is doing it...
 
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Oh yes. Because communism only happens if someone else is doing it...

In fairness, it’s usually the other way round: if someone else is doing it, it’s not proper communism.
 
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