raharris1973
Well-known member
[For those unfamiliar with the abbreviated reference (some non-Americans, possibly), I refer to the NRA meaning 'National Rifle Association' within the United States, which promotes the idea that the ultimate safeguard to individual and community liberty is armed self-defense.]
What if during the later stages of the Cold War as the Soviet Union was achieving nuclear parity in warheads and delivery systems, the US reversed course on its nascent preference for nuclear non-proliferation, and instead began to actively encourage its frontline allies in Eurasia to develop their own national nuclear deterrents along the lines of what the French had (Force de Frappe), the British had, or the Americans had at the theater level in Western Europe and the Pacific Rim?
As the USA's overwhelming nuclear superiority eroded after 1962 with the technical design improvement and ultimate mass production and finally MIRV'ing of Soviet ICBMs, by the end of the decade, mutual assured destruction became much 'mutual', and people on both sides of the Atlantic began to cast doubt on America's willingness to trade Paris for Peoria.
This was used as a strategic rationale for the French nuclear force. In the meantime you had the Vietnam War, protests against it, McGovern's 'Come Home America Campaign', which lost badly, but also some broader force drawdowns in the Pacific Rim, and the return of Okinawa to Japan. You had NATO allied non-support during the American airlift to Israel during the Yom Kippur war, save for Portugal.
Finally, by the middle 70s after some years of declining armed forces budgets, South Vietnam fell, Watergate happened, and one can imagine American hawks feeling like Presidential authority was being crippled.
The divergence here is that the Cabinet and Sub-Cabinet members of Ford Administration by mid-1975, like Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, alongside President Ford, and Secretary of State Kissinger, come to panic that this trend will be irreversible after the election of the Watergate baby Congressional class of 1974.
So while conservatives like Cheney and Rumsfeld still work institutionally to fight these trends and champion the 'unitary executive' theory, they set in a motion a geopolitical back-up plan to contain the growth of Soviet power and ambition on a sustainable basis in case they don't prevail or prevail fast enough to keep the US credibly backing up its global commitments.
They take heart by noticing the significant growth in the ROK, Japan Self-Defense, and Taiwan forces in the early 1970s during the US drawdown, the military rise of Israel, and the Shah's Iran. The East Asian partners, rather than buckling under and getting weak and demotivated by the US pullout from Vietnam, seem to have gotten more serious about getting their shit together, built up their economies and militaries more, and reduced their bickering with each other.
The new US strategy, rolled out shortly after the presentation of the Helsinki Final Act in August 1975, is for a lengthy phased out and controlled withdrawal of U.S. forces and U.S. automatic security guarantees to take place over 15 years until 1990, with the partners of the United States being warned of their need to substitute by their own national means for any American conventional or nuclear deterrent capabilities which will become unavailable to them by 1990.
Essentially, the United States is advising West Germany, Japan, South Korea that there is an expiration date for them to be under an American protective umbrella, and the time limit has been generously extended long-enough for the economically viable and technologically competent countries to modern conventional self-defense forces backed by nuclear weapons deliverable by aircraft or SRBM or MRBM.
Germany and Japan already had civil nuclear power sectors at this point, and in fact, the US had spent time and effort in the 1960s trying to tamp down any interest by any faction of German politicians in independent nuclear weapons. This would reverse the US policy just before Germany signs the NPT, and would toss out the NPT. South Korea had already started, or would soon look into starting nuclear weapons research that the US would in OTL need to spend alot of the 1980s trying to squash down.
Here, the US leaders, wanting above all to contain the Soviet Union, but lacking in confidence in the will of the American public and the credibility of extended deterrence, put their bet on allied self-interest to protect themselves if they have no other choice.
This policy is locked in by the end of September 1975, with a globally known sunset for NATO and the Far Eastern alliances of 1990.
How does the world of the late 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and beyond look?
Is a world with wide nuclear proliferation a multipolar, balanced, polite world?
Is Eurasia, Western Europe, and the northern hemisphere dead? Or Red?
Is the Soviet Union in 21st century? If not, is it because its a peaceful collapse like OTL (albeit with some violent aftermaths), or because its nuclear rubble?
If Germany is alive through the 1990s and 21st century, is it ever allowed to be re-unified?
What if during the later stages of the Cold War as the Soviet Union was achieving nuclear parity in warheads and delivery systems, the US reversed course on its nascent preference for nuclear non-proliferation, and instead began to actively encourage its frontline allies in Eurasia to develop their own national nuclear deterrents along the lines of what the French had (Force de Frappe), the British had, or the Americans had at the theater level in Western Europe and the Pacific Rim?
As the USA's overwhelming nuclear superiority eroded after 1962 with the technical design improvement and ultimate mass production and finally MIRV'ing of Soviet ICBMs, by the end of the decade, mutual assured destruction became much 'mutual', and people on both sides of the Atlantic began to cast doubt on America's willingness to trade Paris for Peoria.
This was used as a strategic rationale for the French nuclear force. In the meantime you had the Vietnam War, protests against it, McGovern's 'Come Home America Campaign', which lost badly, but also some broader force drawdowns in the Pacific Rim, and the return of Okinawa to Japan. You had NATO allied non-support during the American airlift to Israel during the Yom Kippur war, save for Portugal.
Finally, by the middle 70s after some years of declining armed forces budgets, South Vietnam fell, Watergate happened, and one can imagine American hawks feeling like Presidential authority was being crippled.
The divergence here is that the Cabinet and Sub-Cabinet members of Ford Administration by mid-1975, like Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, alongside President Ford, and Secretary of State Kissinger, come to panic that this trend will be irreversible after the election of the Watergate baby Congressional class of 1974.
So while conservatives like Cheney and Rumsfeld still work institutionally to fight these trends and champion the 'unitary executive' theory, they set in a motion a geopolitical back-up plan to contain the growth of Soviet power and ambition on a sustainable basis in case they don't prevail or prevail fast enough to keep the US credibly backing up its global commitments.
They take heart by noticing the significant growth in the ROK, Japan Self-Defense, and Taiwan forces in the early 1970s during the US drawdown, the military rise of Israel, and the Shah's Iran. The East Asian partners, rather than buckling under and getting weak and demotivated by the US pullout from Vietnam, seem to have gotten more serious about getting their shit together, built up their economies and militaries more, and reduced their bickering with each other.
The new US strategy, rolled out shortly after the presentation of the Helsinki Final Act in August 1975, is for a lengthy phased out and controlled withdrawal of U.S. forces and U.S. automatic security guarantees to take place over 15 years until 1990, with the partners of the United States being warned of their need to substitute by their own national means for any American conventional or nuclear deterrent capabilities which will become unavailable to them by 1990.
Essentially, the United States is advising West Germany, Japan, South Korea that there is an expiration date for them to be under an American protective umbrella, and the time limit has been generously extended long-enough for the economically viable and technologically competent countries to modern conventional self-defense forces backed by nuclear weapons deliverable by aircraft or SRBM or MRBM.
Germany and Japan already had civil nuclear power sectors at this point, and in fact, the US had spent time and effort in the 1960s trying to tamp down any interest by any faction of German politicians in independent nuclear weapons. This would reverse the US policy just before Germany signs the NPT, and would toss out the NPT. South Korea had already started, or would soon look into starting nuclear weapons research that the US would in OTL need to spend alot of the 1980s trying to squash down.
Here, the US leaders, wanting above all to contain the Soviet Union, but lacking in confidence in the will of the American public and the credibility of extended deterrence, put their bet on allied self-interest to protect themselves if they have no other choice.
This policy is locked in by the end of September 1975, with a globally known sunset for NATO and the Far Eastern alliances of 1990.
How does the world of the late 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and beyond look?
Is a world with wide nuclear proliferation a multipolar, balanced, polite world?
Is Eurasia, Western Europe, and the northern hemisphere dead? Or Red?
Is the Soviet Union in 21st century? If not, is it because its a peaceful collapse like OTL (albeit with some violent aftermaths), or because its nuclear rubble?
If Germany is alive through the 1990s and 21st century, is it ever allowed to be re-unified?
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