Bush vs. The Axis of Evil - TL
Don't you mean June 29th to June 30th?
Qasem Solemani: "Man thank goodness Zhirinovksy never came over am I right guys?"
Welp, nice knowing y'all.
Give him a break, he's a time traveler
Or ruled Russia
*Shivers*
Nice knowing you too
This image might be a better representation:Kim Jong-Il shot himself in the foot. The Hermit Kingdom is on their final countdown.
Meanwhile, everyone to North Korea ITTL:
This is definitely going to be one of those "little known fun facts" that everyone says to feel smart in this TL.
For how long has this "Finno-Korean Hyperwar meme" been a thing? in 2016 I remember seeing a DeviantArt map series that were basically modified versions of Totentanz0's Axis plans map series.
Well, this raises a good point: What is Gaddafi doing rn, same for Castro.
"It was at this moment that Kim Jong-il knew he fucked up."
France could send their CDG aircraft carrier along with some of their Pacific naval assets. I think Italy, Spain, and Germany would follow suit to rescue their citizens trapped in Korea that were in the World Cup.
Most likely keeping their heads low and hoping the US doesn't care enough about either of them to invade their countries.
True, we haven't heard much about them yet. Assad is obviously out of the picture (unless something truly crazy happens that brings him back onto the anti-American side), but Gaddafi especially is an interesting factor. I wonder if this TL will have an Arab Spring equivalent, or if that will be butterflied away completely, because even if he keeps Libya out of the war, he may still need to deal with something akin to the revolution of 2011, at some point - maybe sooner, maybe later. Likewise with Assad - he's avoided the War on Terror but the Syrian Civil War may still come along in some form.
No JGSDF troops on Korean soil because Koreans would not want that. The memories from the 1910-45 occupation would still linger, especially the thousands still alive as of 2002 that remember it. The JMSDF and JASDF would probably be the one that will get more action. The MSDF would patrol the Sea of Japan and sink any North Korean navy ship while the ASDF would make sure no North Korean fighter jets would stray into Japanese air space.
The Kongo-class guided-missile destroyers (Kongo, Myoko, Kirishima, and Chokai) would prove their worth as the most powerful warships in Asia at this period.
EDIT: @John-Dax, the RTA uses the Stingray light tank, M60 Patton, M48, and the FV101 Scorpion as of 2002.
UK has some assets in Brunei. Those SAS troops there would probably be the first to be called to support the ROK. These would either be airlifted by the USAF or the RAAF. Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia might join the fight. The Philippines is still 50-50 because of anti-war sentiment and economic woes. The Filipino public's mindset would be "we're too underfunded to fight a foreign war" or stuff like that.
North Korea's allies are already in NATO at this point. They won't help North Korea. All the best they can do is tell Pyongyang to stop the act, which Kim obviously ignores.
The F-22 wasn't in service yet in 2002. But let's say it was rushed, I think the F-22's first air-to-air kill would be a MiG-21 or MiG-29.
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On that note, having the US invade Libya, Cuba, and/or Syria would probably be a quite common trope in TTL's AH.Com, assuming it still ends up a thing.
For sure. "What if Assad didn't pull out of Lebanon?" would probably be a fairly frequent thread. A land war extending from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean to the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan would be an even worse nightmare than what America has already gotten into ITTL.
Add in Cuba somehow (fortunately I cannot see Castro ever getting involved in any way, and I doubt even the most diehard Neocons are crazy enough to start a war with Cuba while also fighting Iran, Iraq, North Korea and possibly even Syria and Libya) and the US might actually see military attacks on its Caribbean territories, and possibly even Florida if Cuba has weapons with the range to hit it (I don't know if they do). With America already reeling from 9/11, any Cuban attack on US soil, even if the US is the aggressor, is going to end up making the American populace very angry.
I'd like to see more takes from people critical of the War on Terror in this timeline.
Particularly Paleo-Cons like Pat Buchanan, Libertarians like Ron Paul, and liberals and leftists.
Wonder if there will be more of a venn diagram of the anti-Bush left and the Libertarians in this timeline.
No draft, no war, no lines at the pump would be a easy political sell to Americans the more the war drags on.
Particularly Paleo-Cons like Pat Buchanan, Libertarians like Ron Paul, and liberals and leftists.
Wonder if there will be more of a venn diagram of the anti-Bush left and the Libertarians in this timeline.
No draft, no war, no lines at the pump would be a easy political sell to Americans the more the war drags on.
Generally the only debate in the United States about interventionism is not about whether it is good to intervene in the affairs of other countries or not. But in what way to do it.
The debate is more about "Do we send the Marines to take out the trash, or do we send money so that the terrorists we call the democratic opposition do it for us?" than in "Uhm, what if we try the incredibly novel strategy of stopping meddling in other countries' internal affairs?"
So we can expect paleoconservatives and libertarians to be the most aggressive about how very necessary it is to bomb Iran into a parking lot because "how dare they disrupt the global economy."
Uhm, I'm not American but I'm pretty sure that paleocons and libertarians do tend to oppose interventionism in general. In fact, paleocons are more-or-less defined by their opposition to the pro-intervention neocons.