Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

I doubt that anybody being president of the USA during the cold war can accept the Soviet Union being in control of the biggest oil reserve of the planet

Given the even greater instability in the ME and with Kennedy in the White House you might see more prolonged interest in alternative technology, investment in which was seriously cut back OTL as the vested interest of oil and coal got priority. [Not sure of his views but he would struggle to be less friendly to alternatives than Reagan. ]

Waiting to strike at Egypt i think.

Well i think you are right, even with Egyptian forces moving into Saudi Arabia, i doubt they will leave their border with Libya undefended.

(64)

December 1981:

Gromyko and Mondale met once again, this time in Beirut. The two of them were present among other foreign ministers during on conference on ending the ongoing conflict there in Lebanon. Soviet backing of Assad had been met by support for Israel coming from Kennedy. Who spoke for the Lebanese, caught up in the middle of the deadly proxy war within their nation? Few did. There were different points of view between the Soviet and United States delegations upon a solution to the problem in Lebanon which had led to some polite but firm exchanges of opinions. Each side had allies to support and there were claims that the other’s proxy was doing something that was denied by their backers. Regardless of that issue, Gromyko and Mondale returned to the issue of a summit between their heads of state as talked about when they had achieved cooperation in Vienna. Setting that up had been stalled by various factors but it was seen as desirable for Andropov and Kennedy to meet. There were ideas exchanged between the two senior diplomats in Beirut on first where & when to have that summit and then what it should cover. Gromyko proposed that the American president should visit the Soviet Union: maybe Leningrad if not Moscow. Wasn’t Kennedy going to Western Europe early next year for a series of visits? Perhaps he would like to come to the Soviet Union too? Mondale said that he would put that to the president yet the State Department would much prefer it if a meeting took place in Western Europe instead. Kennedy was going to West Berlin: would Andropov like to hold a summit with him there? Neyt, said Mister Neyt. Gromyko suggested East Berlin instead, an idea which Mondale poured cold water on. However, several hours later when they spoke again, after Mondale had been in touch with Washington, he came back to Gromyko and agreed to the idea of a summit in East Berlin during mid-February. His president would fit a visit there into his schedule. Three days in East Berlin it would be during the time agreed.

They moved onto the subjects of discussion during the summit. By that time, Gromyko pointed out that there should be verifiable evidence that the Soviet Union was sticking to the agreement thrashed out in Vienna where SS-20 missiles would be removed from all of Eastern Europe – not just East Germany – and back inside Soviet borders. Mondale confirmed that the United States was aware of that without saying anything about how that redeployment had been verified; he also spoke of the United States keeping its word on no GLCM deployment. Other missiles and further nuclear weapons would be what Andropov and Kennedy would discuss; their foreign ministers agreed to that being a subject though during the intervening time between Beirut and East Berlin, what weapons their leaders would talk of removing would be considered. Gromyko pointed out that the Soviet position would concern the weapons systems of his country’s allies too. None of the Warsaw Pact nations operated nuclear weapons but they had long-range missiles systems. He told Mondale that with such a thing arranged – naturally, those sovereign and independent nations would have to agree – by the Soviet Union, his country would expect the United States to come to an agreement with its NATO allies on something similar. Mondale admitted to Gromyko that such a thing would be difficult and told his Soviet counterpart that his president would have to take that under consideration. What else would be up for discussion in East Berlin would be matters outside of Europe east and west. There was the ongoing situation in both Guatemala and Nicaragua with the revolutionary governments that the United States wished to discuss with the Soviet Union; the Soviets would want to talk about the United States arming the Mexican Army and making aggressive actions towards those two Central American nations as well as Cuba which was supporting fraternal socialist regimes. Iraq, an ally of the Soviet Union, had invaded and annexed Kuwait against the will of the international community with a UN Security Council resolution against Iraq vetoed by the Soviet ambassador at the UN. Mondale’s position on that was met with Gromyko’s counter of the United States suddenly arming large parts of the Middle East – the Saudi’s especially – with what the Soviet Union regarded as offensive military equipment which was destabilising for the region. Like Central America, the Middle East would be a subject of discussion come February and East Berlin.

What wasn’t going to be discussed in that summit would be other matters which Gromyko and Mondale couldn’t agree to get on the agenda where progress might be made. Those matters included Soviet military expansion in conventional weapons, Soviet military basing at the head of Persian Gulf in Iran’s port of Bandar Abbas, United States support for Israel’s continued occupation of the territory of Egypt and cooperation between America & China that the Soviet Union was opposed to. On so many matters, the two nations were at an impasse: these being the primary ones at the moment. Other agreement could come, such had been the new hope so pushed for by Kennedy in US-Soviet relations, if the two superpowers worked together. Maybe later they could turn to some of them though not in their summit in two months time.


After Beirut, Gromyko went home to Moscow. Mondale went straight to Panama City where the US secretary of state met with the new president of Panama: the now-retired general who was Omar Torrijos. No longer was Torrijos a serving military officer nor the Maximum Leader of the Panamanian Revolution. Instead, he was the President of Panama. That was long a role reserved for figurehead puppets put in-place by military strongmen such as Torrijos; now he had taken that position after an (apparently democratic) nationwide vote where three quarters of the Panamanian people had voted him into office. That election wasn’t free and fair by most international standards though it was freer than many worldwide. Torrijos was still popular in Panama and while not seventy-six point eight percent popular, he had certainly won a majority of votes: the State Department estimated the true number to be sixty to sixty five percent. Either way, Torrijos had done what he had been privately told beforehand when in the United States ahead of last year’s presidential election where it was said that if he wanted a Kennedy Administration to talk to Panama about returning the Canal Zone to them, Panama would have to be a (sort-of) democracy. He was a civilian now with the rule of law supposedly in Panama. There had been arrests of drug-smugglers and corruption crackdowns. Panamanian foreign policy might not have been pro-US recently, but it wasn’t markedly anti-American like it had been during the last year of the Ford Administration. A Torrijos-led Panama was ready to negotiate with the United States about a return of the Panama Canal to his country.

Mondale sat Torrijos down and explained what it would take for the United States to fulfil Panama’s national goal – his host’s words – on ultimate Panamanian full sovereignty over the disputed region. There would have to be long and detailed official negotiations on the matter. The United States would want guarantees of military access to the Panama Canal in wartime because the canal was an asset of geo-strategic importance for Mondale’s nation. Those negotiations would have to be conducted in good faith. Should a deal be reached, the transfer of sovereignty would have to come to an agreement on United States military facilities within the Canal Zone as well. A treaty would then have to be agreed to, one to international standards and therefore involatile by changes in government in either nation. The transfer would take several years going through stages where if there were hold-ups at each point, full transfer would be delayed or even cancelled if a breech was that serious. All those conditions would have to be met before Mondale’s president could give his support to it. Afterwards would come the really difficult bit: the US Senate would have to ratify such a treaty. Torrijos nodded and nodded. Yes, yes, yes. He agreed to all that Mondale said. He was eager to get on with things. When, he asked, could the negotiations start?

I wonder if it will be that easy as he thinks it will be.

Ted Kennedy is not going to be remembered as a good president, is he? If this keeps up, James Buchanan may need to step aside, because Kennedy will be the worst president, IMO...