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The Transatlantic Missile Crisis: The Warsaw Agreement, Dec 9 1964
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"LESSONS FROM THE CRISIS"

THE WARSAW AGREEMENT
DECEMBER 9 1964




WARSAW, Wednesday, Dec. 9 (AP)—Germany and its European allies have today signed a security pact following a five-day conference in the Polish capital, Warsaw. Led by the German premier Chancellor Erich Ollenhauer, leaders of the five member nations of the European Economic Co-operation Zone (ECZ) approved the draft of a new mutual defence treaty, called the European Common Defence Agreement (EUCODA). The text of the Warsaw agreement must now be ratified in parliament by each of the ECZ member nations – Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Austria – before taking effect.

Speaking in the Polish capital, Chancellor Ollenhauer expressed hope at the signing of the treaty: “In coming together with our allies to commit to a pact of mutual defence, it is my belief that we have made a significant contribution to the cause of peace in Europe. Our enemies must now realise that we do not take lightly their threats to our common integrity. We will not be spooked into action by reckless pronouncements, but we stand united and ready to respond to any forceful attempts to compromise our mutual security.”

The drafting of the agreement in Warsaw, following nine days after American President John F. Kennedy’s revelation of the Soviet missile build-up in Cuba, comes in the wake of increasing Soviet military activity on the Prussian border and in the Baltic Sea. The Soviet Union has steadily escalated its military presence along its western border since October, in response to the discovery of American nuclear missiles in eastern Germany.

In a broadcast from the Kremlin, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev warned that the United States was turning Germany into “the principal hotbed of the danger of war in Europe” by arming it with nuclear weapons.

He added that the United States was encouraging Germany in “the prosecution of its imperialistic claims in eastern Europe”, before emphasising that the Soviet Union would continue to act in defence of its own interests in the region.

It remains to be seen how exactly the Warsaw agreement will impact the military organisation of central and eastern Europe. There have been no indications that the signatory nations of the EUCODA intend to integrate their military forces under one command, although the New York Times speculated in an editorial today that the ratification of the Warsaw treaty “would certainly help to bring the militaries of eastern Europe under closer American influence”.
 
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Whoa, never thought I'd see the US be the head of the Warsaw Pact...
 
Whoa, never thought I'd see the US be the head of the Warsaw Pact...

Strictly speaking it's Germany, but I suppose we all know who's really calling the shots.

Would you believe it but this has been in the works for months and the whole Warsaw thing didn't even occur to me until the other day. Suppose it's Poland's luck, always being the focus of mutual "security" agreements…
 
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Germany finally gets it's Mitteleuropa, so they are probably delighted by this even if it comes with a degree of US interference.

Also delighted to see Kruschev knows irregular verbs - I have legitimate interests, you are destabilising the region, they have imperialistic claims. He will go far with that mastery of diplomatic language, provided he can just keep his shoes on and ensure someone else takes the blame for the Virgin Lands debacle.
 
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Germany finally gets it's Mitteleuropa, so they are probably delighted by this even if it comes with a degree of US interference.

Ollenhauer in particular was very big into common defence as a sort of muscular “social democrats do anti-Communism but don’t like NATO” thing. So he’ll be over the moon.

I don’t actually envisage that much US interference, although obviously it all sort of leads back to them eventually. We’ll see how it plays out.

Also delighted to see Kruschev knows irregular verbs - I have legitimate interests, you are destabilising the region, they have imperialistic claims.

Oh you know Nicky: hot one day, cool the next. How long this newfound diplomatic streak will last is anyone’s guess.

He will go far with that mastery of diplomatic language, provided he can just keep his shoes on and ensure someone else takes the blame for the Virgin Lands debacle.

Funny you mention it…
 
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The Transatlantic Missile Crisis: "The Cuban Project", Jan 22 – Dec 16 1964
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Six Thousand Days: Kefauver, Kennedy, and the Frontiersmen in the White House
CHAPTER 21: Ordeal by Fire, the Bay of Pigs

ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER

On November 29, 1960, two weeks after the midterm elections, President Kefauver received from Allen Dulles a detailed briefing on the CIA’s new military conception. Kefauver listened with attention, consulted his advisers, including then Vice President Kennedy, and told Dulles to carry on the work. Dulles understood, however, that interest did not mean commitment. All Kefauver wanted was to have the option of a military operation against the Castro regime. Kefauver saw the Cuban project, in the parlance of the bureaucracy, as a “contingency plan.” He did not live to realize that by giving such a program its own momentum that it could create its own reality.

Two years later, on January 22 1964, Allen Dulles and General Lemnitzer exposed the project to leading members of the new administration, among them Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara and Robert Kennedy. Speaking for the Joint Chiefs, Lemnitzer tried to renew discussion of alternatives ranging from minimum to maximum United States involvement. Six days later, Kennedy convened his first meeting on the plan. He was wary of the issue, and though had hoped for action in the earlier days of the Kefauver administration, he was inclined to focus his attention elsewhere. Kefauver’s policy had depended on the isolation and containment of Cuba through the Organization of American States. Kennedy, once dismayed at Kefauver’s supposed inactivity, had enacted this plan under his predecessor and enjoyed the acclamations of its success.


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General Lemnitzer, the Chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff under Kefauver, was an enthusiast for the Cuban project.

The Joint Chiefs, long proponents of the plan, reiterated their confidence of military success. But their official evaluation, previously an ambiguous and dispiriting document, had come to definitively adopt the “Anzio model.” This analysis claimed that an emigre victory depended either upon a sufficient uprising inside the island or sizable support from outside. Previous temporizing had been settled by the realization that the Cuban resistance was indispensable to success. They could see no other way—short of United States intervention—by which an invasion force of a thousand Cubans, no matter how well trained and equipped nor how stout their morale, could conceivably overcome the 200,000 men of Castro’s army and militia. But it punctuated this statement by philosophically remarking that the operation, regardless of its immediate success, would eventually contribute to the overthrow of the regime. This final uncertainty would loom large in the decisive days of December.

President Kennedy had the luxury of time. The CIA managed to keep the training exiles in secret, and events in Cuba seemed to work towards the plan’s feasibility. In the summer, Castro’s regime suffered an alarming defeat when revolutionary syndicalists under the Spanish-born intellectual, Abraham Guillén, seized the city of Cienfuegos. Guillén’s insurgency against Castro’s authoritarian turn, had become a cause célèbre among European radicals and their intelligence agencies. I confess that I was not surprised, given the difference in temperament and principles between the western syndicalists and the Soviets, for Castro to look first towards the Kremlin for security and emulation. His position had been precarious in the quiet years of Kefauver, and while he had managed to cultivate his personality, his true energies were spent warding off competing pretenders and frustrating interests. The drastic lurch towards the Soviet Union, once a measure of economic desperation, leaked into the political realm. Moscow’s support became a bulwark in his regime, and the cause of grave conservation to those who remained wedded to the romantic aspirations of European syndicalism. In short, all indications, I believe, pointed towards another endless revolutionary struggle, the likes of which are already familiar throughout the world. In order to prolong this reckoning, Castro courted the Soviets, and the Soviets took their price.



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Abraham Guillén, the Spanish revolutionary, captivated romantic attention in the Hispanic and syndicalist worlds.


President Kennedy was not much consoled to action by the fall of Cienfuegos. He did not think it portentous that a radical faction, backed by France and Spain, was enjoying small success against another stooge. Nor was he convinced of their military chances. In this regard, the President was proven correct, and by September, Castro had managed to retake the city. The JCS, however, read the internal strife with renewed confidence. Their only caution was to avoid expressing their uniform belief that the Cuban Revolution was imminent, less their operation be discarded in favor of a wait-and-see policy. President Kennedy, nevertheless, persisted in his program of pressure and sanction.

It was apparent by the start of the crisis in September that matters were still very much in flux. No final decision had yet been taken on whether the invasion should go forward. It fell to Allen Dulles and Richard M. Bissell, Jr., as the originators of the project to make the main arguments for action. I had known both men for more than fifteen years and held them both in high respect. As an OSS intelligence officer during the war, I admired the coolness and proficiency of Dulles’s work in Asia; and, meeting him from time to time in the years after the war, I had come greatly to enjoy his company. Years in the intelligence business had no doubt given him a capacity for ruthlessness; but he was urbane, courtly and honorable, almost wholly devoid of the intellectual rigidity and personal self-righteousness of his brother. During the McCarthy years, when John Foster Dulles regularly threw innocent State Department officials to the wolves, Allen Dulles just as regularly protected CIA officers unjustly denounced on the Hill.

Richard Bissell, whom I had known as an economist in the Byrnes Plan before he turned to intelligence work and became CIA’s deputy director for operations, was a man of high character and remarkable intellectual gifts. His mind was swift and penetrating, and he had an unsurpassed talent for lucid analysis and fluent exposition. A few years before he had conceived and fought through the plan of U-2 flights over the Soviet Union; and, though this led to trouble in 1960, it still remained perhaps the greatest intelligence coup since the war. He had committed himself for the past year to the Cuban project with equal intensity. Yet he recognized the strength of his commitment and, with characteristic honesty, warned us to discount his bias. Both Dulles and Bissell were at a disadvantage in having to persuade a skeptical new administration about the virtues of a proposal nurtured in the distaste of a previous government. This cast them in the role less of analysts than of advocates, and it led them to accept progressive modifications so long as the expedition in some form remained; perhaps they too unconsciously supposed that, once the operation began to unfold, it would not be permitted to fail. But as the crisis deepened, their position inexorably strengthened.


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President Kennedy and Director Allen Dulles in July 1964.

The final decision was not taken until late October, just as the election loomed. By then, however, the situation had become dangerous enough to warrant drastic action. I have no doubt that President Kennedy reached the decision to launch the operation prior to the election, but perhaps his resolution that the country demanded finality before plunging into a nuclear crisis. At first, he fretted, along with Thomas Mann and myself, about the probability of anti-American reactions in Latin America and the Third World if the American hand was not well concealed. He was especially worried that air strikes would give the show away unless they could seem plausibly to come from bases on Cuban soil. The President concluded the meeting by defining the issue with his usual crispness. The trouble with the operation, he said, was that the smaller the political risk, the greater the military risk, and vice versa.

In the meantime, the CIA was carrying out Kennedy’s instruction to bring representatives of the new Cuba into the Frente. Reversing their earlier position, the agency told the more conservative Frente that it had to come to an agreement with Manuel Ray and his Revolutionary Movement of the People, another powerful insurgent group in Cuba. But, though the CIA changed its line, it did not change his manner, nor were the more conservative members of the Frente themselves eager to embrace Fidelismo sin Fidel. Representatives of the Frente and the MRP engaged in complex and acrimonious negotiations. After persistent CIA pressure persuaded the negotiators to return to their groups with a draft agreement, the Frente rejected the common program as too radical. The CIA now decided on direct intervention. On October 18 at the Skyways Motel in Miami a CIA operative—told the Frente that the two groups must unite, that they must together choose a provisional president for Cuba, and that if these things were not done right away, the whole project would be called off. The Frente finally caved in and reluctantly submitted a list of six possibilities for the presidency. For its part, the MRP was no happier about this coerced alliance.


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Ray and his people liked neither the CIA control nor the idea of an invasion, but, supposing that United States backing guaranteed success, they wanted both to defend the interests of the Cuban underground and to assure their own part in a post-Castro future. Accepting the list, they chose Dr. Miró Cardona as provisional president. Miró, a lawyer and professor at the University of Havana, had been a noted leader in the civil opposition to Batista. He had inspired many students to work for the revolution, and Castro made him the first prime minister of the revolutionary regime. Though Miró did not last long in the government, Castro as late as May 1960 designated him ambassador to the United States. But by July, as the process of Sovietization advanced, Miró who had not gone on to Washington, resigned his ambassadorship and sought refuge in the Argentine Embassy. He finally came to the United States as an exile in the winter of 1960–61. He was a man of dignity and force, who faithfully represented the liberal ideals of the Cuban Revolution. Shortly after the election, the Frente and the MRP signed an agreement conferring on Miró Cardona authority to organize the Cuban Revolutionary Council. The document also pledged the Council to give “maximum priority’’ to the resistance inside Cuba, declared that no one who “held an objectionably responsible position with the criminal dictatorship of Batista” was to be admitted into any armed forces organized outside Cuba and said hopefully that the military command of such forces must pledge “their full deference” to the Council’s authority.

While this reorganization was going on, I learned that my assignment was to help clarify the new political objectives by preparing a White Paper on Cuba. The President told me that, if the invasion took place (the emphasis was his own), he wanted everyone in the hemisphere to know that its intent was not to bring back the old order in Cuba. “Our objection isn’t to the Cuban Revolution,” he said; “it is to the fact that Castro has turned it over to the communists.” Setting to work, I buried myself under a mass of papers and came up with a draft in a few days. The paper sought to explain, with documentation, the United States’ attitude towards the Cuban Revolution and the Castro regime. The thesis posited that the first had been betrayed by the second, and that the result offered a “clear and present danger to the authentic and autonomous revolution of the Americas.” It endorsed the original aims of the Revolution and said: “the people of Cuba remain our brothers. We acknowledge past omissions and errors in our relationship to them. The United States, along with the other nations of the hemisphere, expresses a profound determination to assure future democratic governments in Cuba full and positive support in their efforts to help the Cuban people achieve freedom, democracy and social justice.” It concluded with a call for the “Casto regime to sever its links with the international Communist movement, to return to the original purposes which brought so many gallant men together in the Sierra Maestra and to restore the integrity of the Cuban Revolution. If this call remains unheeded, we are confident that the Cuban people, with their famous passion for liberty, will continue to strive for a free Cuba.”



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Anti-Castro propaganda was a central feature of American anti-communism in the early 1960s.

Our previous objections to the invasions had been premised on the unreliability of triggering a domestic insurrection and the indignation that such an operation would inspire within the OAS and Latin America. But as the nuclear crisis deepened, it became evidently clear that the public, if not the OAS itself, would countenance deeper American involvement. The installation of Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, particularly after their publicization, afforded the White House much needed maneuverability. By recourse to the Rio Treaty, President Kennedy not only disarmed skeptics, but actively enlisted the Latin American states into the hemispheric collective action. The blockade, imposed on December 3rd, included detachments from Venezuela and Argentina that included two destroyers and a submarine from each force. The Dominican Republic had made available an escort ship, and Colombia was preparing to furnish military units. It was now conceivable, though no less precarious, for the President to countenance direct military action in Cuba. With the nuclear danger at hand, failure could no longer be accepted. At the decisive meeting of senior advisers on November 30, only I opposed the operation, and this did not bulk large against the united voice of institutional authority. The director of the CIA advocated the adventure; the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense approved its military aspects, the Secretary of State its political aspects. No doubt Kennedy’s enormous confidence in his own luck played its own role. Everything had broken right for him since 1956.

Events were rushing towards a climax. With the appearance of a Soviet nuclear flotilla steaming towards Cuba, presumably to complete the military and nuclear buildup on the island, D-Day was brought ahead to December 17. In Guatemala the Cuban Brigade, now swollen to almost 3000 men, waited with growing impatience. A veteran Marine colonel arrived to make a final inspection as the force prepared to leave its base. He affirmed his confidence in the plan. On December 10, the Brigade began to move by truck from the Guatemalan base to the point of embarkation at Puerto Cabezas in Nicaragua. By December 13 the men were beginning to board the boats. On December 14 the American advisers finally disclosed the invasion plan--the seizure of three beaches along forty miles of the Cuban shore in the Bay of Pigs area, with paratroopers dropping inland to control the roads crossing the swamps to the sea. Castro’s air force, in accordance with Kennedy’s plan, would be neutralized in advance by the USAF. The Brigade’s mission was to press into the interior, rally the opposition with American logistical and air support. A specialized contingency of trained Cuban exiles, supported by Marines, would approach the periphery Soviet nuclear installation. By that time, the President planned for a clear demonstration of air supremacy over the site, in order to prevent the likelihood of a Soviet-American encounter in the skies above, and to accelerate a surrender by the Soviet military advisers on the ground. The great worry—the possibility of a firefight with Soviet troops—loomed above the White House. No one within the inner circle could deny that the cause of Cuban liberty was now entangled with the very survival of humanity. As December 17 grew near, this was no hyperbole.


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This is not going to end well.
 
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It's the OTL Kennedy speech (minus a few bits) and the crisis has all OTL players. Given the overwhelming Historical Determinism displayed to get to this position despite all the changes that have happened, an OTL-ish outcome seems most likely. Maybe a bit less of a clear cut PR 'win' for Kennedy, but something broadly similar.
bump
 
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This is not going to end well.
Invasion hasn't happened yet. Given that socialism has to triumph (obvs) and Kennedy's term is described as disastrous then there is a good chance he defaults back to OTL and bottles it, like he did over proper support for the Bay of Pigs. Maybe the 'clear demonstration of air supremacy' results in the Soviet SAMs shooting down US jets, something like that.

Certainly if US and Soviet troops clash that will escalate and Soviet military doctrine was insanely nuke heavy, they almost have to fire them off or risk being shot by the political officer. OTL the Soviets deployed 100 odd tactical nuclear weapons before the missiles and because they were 'battlefield' weapons they could be launched without any instruction from Moscow. We know Castro was in favour of using nukes if the US landed, even if it destroyed Cuba, because he would rather see the island burn than not under his control. Once the first nuke goes off then it ends badly for humanity, but as people are writing books in the 70s it is safe to say that nuclear apocalypse didn't happen.

The US invasion can't be a clear success (if Kennedy pulled this off then he could cock up loads of things elsewhere and still not have a disastrous presidency) or a close run thing (or the Soviets/Cubans will fire off the nukes). As the forces the US are proposing are more than enough to overcome the conventional forces on the island the invasion can't happen as planned. Hence Kennedy has to either cancel the whole thing or cancel the overt US support. There is the possibility the Soviets buckle, but as discussed dialectical materialism requires a Communist success so that can also be ruled out.
 
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The Transatlantic Missile Crisis: Tito Intervenes, Dec 18 1964
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"LESSONS FROM THE CRISIS"

TITO INTERVENES
DECEMBER 18 1964




BELGRADE, Yugoslavia, Friday, Dec. 18 (AP)—Yugolsav President Josip Tito has led a number of non-aligned nations in denouncing the United States’ invasion of Cuba, describing the act as a “gross threat to global peace”.

President Tito also reserved words for Cuban leader Fidel Castro, urging him not to make any “rash decisions” which might “imperil humanity” in his bid to stave off the American invasion. The intervention comes after Cuban exiles backed by the United States landed on the island at the Bay of Pigs yesterday morning.

Castro met the challenge to his regime by declaring that he would defend his position “by any means”. Commenting on this statement, the Washington Post editorial this morning observed that the odds of nuclear weapons being deployed in the field have been “shortened incalculably”. The regime in Cuba has a number of tactical warheads at its disposal, which may be used without the authorisation of Moscow.

Officials in Moscow have made no statement on the situation in Cuba since yesterday evening, when foreign minister Andrei Gromyko asserted that any action taken by the United States against Soviet strategic interests would be “met in kind” by the Soviet Union. In response to Mr Gromyko’s statement, the German government last night placed its military on high alert.

The Yugoslavian diplomatic intervention in Cuba comes after a sharp deterioration of relations between the two Communist countries in the last few months. It is thought that one cause of the rift has been the Cuban policy of support for violent revolutionary activity in Latin America.

The counsel is consistent with Yugoslavia's declared policy of “active peaceful coexistence.” This policy holds that Socialism can best be promoted by setting a good example and cultivating normal exchanges with other countries.

President Tito’s words were endorsed by President Nasser of Egypt and President Mobarak Sagher of India. The joint statement comes in connection with preparations for a conference of non-aligned countries in the new year.
 
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Invasion hasn't happened yet. Given that socialism has to triumph (obvs) and Kennedy's term is described as disastrous then there is a good chance he defaults back to OTL and bottles it, like he did over proper support for the Bay of Pigs. Maybe the 'clear demonstration of air supremacy' results in the Soviet SAMs shooting down US jets, something like that.

Certainly if US and Soviet troops clash that will escalate and Soviet military doctrine was insanely nuke heavy, they almost have to fire them off or risk being shot by the political officer. OTL the Soviets deployed 100 odd tactical nuclear weapons before the missiles and because they were 'battlefield' weapons they could be launched without any instruction from Moscow. We know Castro was in favour of using nukes if the US landed, even if it destroyed Cuba, because he would rather see the island burn than not under his control. Once the first nuke goes off then it ends badly for humanity, but as people are writing books in the 70s it is safe to say that nuclear apocalypse didn't happen.

The US invasion can't be a clear success (if Kennedy pulled this off then he could cock up loads of things elsewhere and still not have a disastrous presidency) or a close run thing (or the Soviets/Cubans will fire off the nukes). As the forces the US are proposing are more than enough to overcome the conventional forces on the island the invasion can't happen as planned. Hence Kennedy has to either cancel the whole thing or cancel the overt US support. There is the possibility the Soviets buckle, but as discussed dialectical materialism requires a Communist success so that can also be ruled out.

Um...yeah, that's why I said this isn't going to end well.
 
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Um...yeah, that's why I said this isn't going to end well.
It would at least be different if an AAR actually ended in nuclear apocalypse. Sadly from from the hints we have had, this is not that work.

As for ending well, I suppose my position is that given the starting premise a 'good' ending is impossible so we are just discussing different flavours of bad. Though doubtless others would disagree. :) ;)
 
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It would at least be different if an AAR actually ended in nuclear apocalypse. Sadly from from the hints we have had, this is not that work.

Alas, too many ideas for the Seventies.

RedTemplar did a HOI4 playthrough as the Mexican sinarquistas last year which ended in Armageddon. Good fun but beyond bleak, and it didn’t even touch on anything beyond the gameplay particularly…
 
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The Transatlantic Missile Crisis: Boothby Speaks, Dec 18 1964
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"LESSONS FROM THE CRISIS"

BOOTHBY SPEAKS
DECEMBER 18 1964


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LONDON, Friday, Dec. 18—CBC News at six o’clock. This is Tony Benn. Good evening.

International Secretary Bob Boothby has made a public intervention in the developing situation in Cuba today, offering the deployment of British personnel in the West Indies as a mediating force in the conflict.

Since the American-backed invasion of Cuba by anti-Communist forces yesterday morning, Commonwealth military units stationed in the Caribbean have been on high alert. Fighting currently remains confined to the island of Cuba, but the government says that it intends to remain vigilant.

Speaking in the People’s Assembly this afternoon, Mr Boothby stated that the British government has no intention of waging war, but cautioned that a commitment to peace requires “deeds as well as words”.

“Our fraternal nations in the West Indies have our guarantee that, should their autonomy be threatened, we will stand with them in defending it. To our allies, we say: the friendship of the British Commonwealth is not an empty promise.”

Mr Boothby also took questions from Assembly members regarding measures being taken collectively by the European Syndicate to prevent escalation in Central Europe, where tensions remain high. Mr Boothby assured the chamber that the government was in close contact with the governments of the fraternal syndicates, and that the collective will was “to see peace prevail”.

Assisting Mr Boothby in the Assembly was Defence Secretary Kenneth Younger, who informed members that he will be spending the weekend in conference with his Eurosyn counterparts in Lyon.

As of now there has been no public statement from any of the nations party to the European Common Defence Agreement. Sources in Germany indicate that Chancellor Erich Ollenhauer is expected to brief the Reichstag on Monday morning.
 
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Thank you Boothby for that pointless, but at least short, intervention.
 
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Thank you Boothby for that pointless, but at least short, intervention.

It will all be over soon don’t worry.

***

General note: my laptop stopped working earlier. I am hopeful that it’s not fundamentally broken but I have no way of knowing because the screen no longer works. Long story short, due to the unique way my archiving system works there is a possibility that I’ve lost a number of chapters between 1965–67. I won’t know for sure until I can see a technician, which in current circumstances (*waves to tier 3*) is… more of a task than usual.

Obviously because the game ended a long time ago there’s no mortal threat to this project as a whole, but emotionally and mentally it is a pretty significant setback on my part. Having gone from being a couple of updates away from finishing, I’m now lord only knows where. Not insurmountable, but… draining is the word I’ll use.

In the interim nothing should change. The crisis updates are fine and who knows, maybe by the end of it all I’ll know whether my laptop is lost forever and so can decide what to rewrite, what to scrap. But for now everything is a bit up in the air to say the least, so if there’s a sudden delay in proceedings towards the end of the year then you all know why.

Most significantly for the long term, if my laptop is gone forever then I will have lost a large portion of the planning for the sequel. Not all of the references, thankfully, but a goodly amount of the plotting and sequencing.

Anyway this will teach me to archive my work more regularly, and it will teach me not to dare to dream that I could possibly finish an AAR without any complications whatsoever.

We’ll get there one way or another – this is just so you all know what my situation is. In the meantime, thanks as ever for the continued support. (Particularly those gamely putting up with this recent sequence. Who would’ve thought the casualty would be the AAR itself? Not so deterministic now eh.)
 
A) I guess it's too much to hope for that you have a way to unplug the hdd from the laptop into another computer to see if you can see it and access files? The hook up for them is usually around $12 or so, so maybe £8-9? Regardless, that's an option. I'd send you mine, but I'll be needing it soon.

B) as much as I hate to, use some Google drive. It's honestly fairly easy and avoids lots of the loss by way of computer failures for notes and the like.
 
That is indeed a bugger. It is normally quite hard to kill a hard drive, so hopefully your data survived whatever it was that stopped the rest of the laptop working. Fingers crossed anyway.

B) as much as I hate to, use some Google drive. It's honestly fairly easy and avoids lots of the loss by way of computer failures for notes and the like.
I've been using DropBox with similar results but less Google. Nothing to remember to backup, dropbox just syncs the files as you save them and you can work with whatever doc editor you want and not have to use the Google online ones. The free 2GB plan should be more than enough for all the important stuff in any reasonable sized writing project.

Doubtless at some point it will stop being free, but until then it is working well for me.
 
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Thank you both for the encouragement and suggestions.

A) I guess it's too much to hope for that you have a way to unplug the hdd from the laptop into another computer to see if you can see it and access files? The hook up for them is usually around $12 or so, so maybe £8-9? Regardless, that's an option. I'd send you mine, but I'll be needing it soon.

Sadly yes that is a hope too far. Probably not ideal in any circumstances to ship yours across the globe, but very generous of you to offer.

B) as much as I hate to, use some Google drive. It's honestly fairly easy and avoids lots of the loss by way of computer failures for notes and the like.

I do have a nice physical hd which has plenty of room on it, but frankly I'm just lazy and complacent. Google would be an ideal solution but... well, I'd have to get over my google squeamishness. Not an insrumountbale problem of course, but you know how it is.

Funnily enough the reason the crisis is fine is because that, out of everything, is on google so that me and KH can access it jointly.

If by some miracle when this is over i can access stuff, I'll probably just take this as a stern lesson to back up with a far greater rigour than before. As things stand I do at least have the vast majority of the project on the drive or on here. So in the scheme of things the potential losses are mercifully small.

That is indeed a bugger. It is normally quite hard to kill a hard drive, so hopefully your data survived whatever it was that stopped the rest of the laptop working. Fingers crossed any

That's encouraging, thanks.

I've been using DropBox with similar results but less Google. Nothing to remember to backup, dropbox just syncs the files as you save them and you can work with whatever doc editor you want and not have to use the Google online ones. The free 2GB plan should be more than enough for all the important stuff in any reasonable sized writing project.

Unfortunatey my dropbox is full of crap left over from my degree, and apparenlty whatever plan I'm on (Free) means that even if i delete files then the storage doesn't come back. So despite efforts to free it up for other things it is locked in as a horrible time capsule of student architectural projects.

Keybase is what I use for the pictures, so they'll all be fine. Maybe I should start backing up the text there too? You get some astounding amount of storage so it would all fit in spades, although underneath the surface it is some wierd crypto wallet type platform which i think is vaguely icky but i'm not entirely sure why. Nevertheless, does a job and isn't google.
 
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Damn and blast!

I have no better suggestions than those already put forward, so I'm simply going to extend my commisserations and hope on your behalf that the damage is temporary, or, at worst, like that of my old laptop; affecting functionality, not files.