Eagle Guardian: The War of 2010

Interesting takes on the Clinton issue. Thanks lordbyron and Dan . Anyone else?

I did think of that ship's recent sinking when I wrote that redrobin65

Eighty-Five

The United Nations had failed in its task. The ultimate purpose of the organisation, headquartered in New York and established in the aftermath of the Second World War, was to prevent a third global conflict from breaking out through diplomacy. The run-up to the war had seen a curious lack of international cooperation, with few attempts made to prevent the coming catastrophe by the international community. Though many world leaders in neutral-leaning nations had called for a summit to calm things down before it was too late, neither NATO nor Russia and her CSTO allies had heeded these warnings. When Russia had launched its offensive back on August 7th, assassinating President Obama in the process of doing so, the international community had reacted with a mixture of emotions; there had been horror, utter shock, and outrage from many, but others reacted with cynical acceptance, while there were a few countries that stood by Russia diplomatically. The world order, one that hadn’t known the horror of global conflict since 1945, was being shaken up to the core by ongoing events, with everything from religious beliefs to territorial integrity being questioned.

Nations that were normally fairly pro-Western found themselves in a difficult position during NATO’s darkest hours on the 9th and 10th of August, when Russian forces repeatedly bombed European cities and broke through Allied lines in Poland. Though most intelligence services did not believe that Russia could win the war, the events of those two days challenged that perception. A Russian victory against NATO would likely result in the total reversal of the current world order, with the United States perhaps losing its place as the dominant world superpower. Through sheer pragmatism, many governments in Africa and Latin America began making plans for a scenario which saw a Russian victory. They would, in that case, be put in a tough position where they would need to warm up to Moscow as Russia took a more prominent place on the world stage. It seemed as though smaller regional wars were becoming a part of World War III even with the combatants not wishing for this to be the case. The struggle between the Taliban and ISAF in Afghanistan had, for example, erupted into full-scale war with three sides; NATO on one, the Taliban on the other, and Russia as the third combatant. Throughout Africa and the Middle East, civil wars and political unrest continued, but those fights now seemed as though they were part of a larger global conflict. The insurgency in Iraq rapidly picked-up pace, with US forces coming under heavier attacks that at any time since 2004 from militias that some suspected were being armed by Russia using routes through Iran. Libyan forces had clashed with the US Navy in the Mediterranean and there had been violent clashes between Syrian and Israeli forces in the Golan Heights. US Special Forces training teams in Mali and Niger, operating as trainers and advisors, repeatedly fought with insurgents who were believed to be Libyan infiltrators coming in after the battle in the Med. Nations picked sides or cowered away, trying to stay out of the line of fire.

A meeting of the UN Security Council was called by the United States on August 11th. It had taken time for this to become a priority, with the Administration focused on winning the war and replacing the slain cabinet members over anything else. President Biden finally authorised the calling of the session, which both the United Kingdom and France had also wanted to do, but had held off until a consensus could be reached on when it was to happen to show international unity between the three major NATO players. The Security Council had five permanent members – the US, UK, France, China, and Russia – and several non-permanent members which changed on a yearly basis, with only the permanent Security Council members having the power to veto any resolution. In itself, this made many believe that the calling of a UN Security Council meeting was in practice rather pointless. Surely, Russia would just veto any international resolution passed against them? To the surprise of all those who attended, the Russian representative was nowhere to be seen. Moscow had simply chosen not to attend the vote; it had not officially abstained, but rather had just failed to appear. Though no explanation would be offered to the other powers from Russia through official channels, Russian state television would the next day claim that their representative’s vehicle had been sabotaged, with the implication that the CIA or MI6 had been responsible. This was a total fabrication, with Western intelligence services having given no instructions to do such a thing. The ambassador himself was alive and well too, ruling out the idea that he had been killed or had died of natural causes. The failure of Russia to attend the vote was chalked up to spite in most Western capitals, although an official explanation has never been given; the circumstances behind this event (or lack thereof) would remain a mystery.

The Security Council held a vote to formally condemn Russia on the floor of the UN. Of the five permanent security council members, the US, UK, and France naturally voted in favour of the motion, while the People’s Republic of China abstained. From the non-permanent members, there was a little more dissent. Lebanon voted against the motion, while Turkey opted not to take part in the vote. Croatia, as a NATO member, voted in favour, as did Japan as a major US ally. Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria, Gabon, Uganda, and Austria all voted to condemn Russia. There was something of an anti-climax when the motion passed; nobody had really thought it could fail without Russia’s representative there to veto the measure, or possibly a surprise veto by China. Further thought was put into the idea of putting forward a motion to remove Russia from the Security Council, but it was felt that this would lead to a humiliating defeat by way of a potential Chinese veto, or through Russia deciding to actually take part in this vote.

With the fighting continuing in Europe, relations between the majority of NATO and its members that had yet to fire a shot were extremely strained. Turkey had formally left the Alliance and so there was actually somewhat less resentment there because at least the Turks had been honest about their intentions. Its forces had not decided to contest the Bosporus even though Ankara had made veiled threats to use military force against NATO – and Russian too – military shipping that tried to pass through in or out of the Black Sea. Greece was keeping its head down. Like Turkey, Greece was not going to contest NATO use of its skies, but it would frown upon such a thing. Diplomatically, Greece had not made it clear to NATO that this was the case; the Greek government was content to let NATO think its airspace was off limits to the Allies, hoping that both Russia and NATO would see this as a sign of true neutrality but not wanting to risk its pilots being put into a position where they might be forced to shoot down jets from either side in defence of Greek sovereign airspace.

Italy was a somewhat more complicated issue. There were investigations going on there in secret with regards to Prime Minister Berlusconi’s intentions. The CIA and French DGSE too were conducting some operations in support of internal Italian investigations. Berlusconi’s government was facing criticism both from within Italy and from other nations for forgoing its obligations when faced with Russian atrocities such as the assassination of an American President. American warplanes were still flying from Aviano Air Base in Italy, and US Army paratrooper stationed at Vicenza were preparing to deploy to the Middle East from there should the confrontations with Syria and/or Libya escalate further than they already had. Several days ago, a damaged American aircraft had landed at Sigonella Naval Air Station. There were concerns here with whether the Italians would want to intern the pilot and aircraft in order to maintain its appearance of neutrality. Such worries were countered by the fact that US personnel weren’t being threatened with internment when they returned to Aviano from sorties flown over the frontlines. The Italians weren’t thrilled about the damaged aircraft landing there, but they ultimately refused to take any action; the Italian Armed Forces were still quietly providing NATO with whatever information and support they could, and it wasn’t as if the Italian government was going to send policemen to force their way onto an American military base to detain a lone Navy pilot.

One particular area of concern for the Pentagon was the Korean Peninsula. The North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) had a huge number of commandos which could be used as a means of striking deep into South Korea and possibly Japan too. The Korean Central Intelligence Agency was claiming it had detected the beginnings of a North Korean mobilisation, at least of the DPRK’s special operations regiments. Though both the US and the ROK felt that a North Korean offensive could be held off by what forces were readily deployable in the region, the prospect of Russian forces getting involved on the North Korean’s side was troubling. The US Army had its 2nd Infantry Division in South Korea, but this unit was understrength and needed reinforcement brigades to come in from Fort Lewis up in Seattle to boost its strength. There were Marines in Okinawa who could come into South Korea and reinforce the ROKA and the US 2nd Infantry Division as well. Nobody in the DOD really knew what Pyongyang was planning; if North Korea wanted to take the opportunity to go south, it was taking its sweet time in doing so. It was clear that the North Koreans were planning something, and so the orders were given for the 2nd Division to receive its reinforcements and for the 3rd Marine Division to ship out from Japan; the resources needed for this large, but not excessively daunting, task however would not be dedicated immediately; PACOM was bluntly informed that the fighting in Europe was taking a front seat and that its reinforcements would come in as the assets to move those troops became readily available. Until then, soldiers and Marines would be coming in to defend South Korea at a snail’s pace.

The prospect of a two-front war was much more daunting than that of deploying a couple of divisions to the Korean Peninsula. Already, the US Armed Forces had taken a huge number of casualties; some reports placed the number of dead American soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and civilians at over eight thousand so far, with five thousand or so more missing and believed to be POWs. Huge numbers of tanks, armoured vehicles, ships and aircraft had been destroyed or badly damaged. Those personnel lost needed replacing and so too did their equipment. On the first night of the war, President Biden had called up hundreds of thousands of recently-retired servicemen and women. Most of those personnel, people who had retired or otherwise been discharged within the last three years, were in the middle of hasty ten-day refresher courses where that was possible; infantrymen, tank crews and similar types would have only their original training and experience along with this brief re-training course to go on before being assigned to one of the newly-forming US Army divisions. The 7th & 24th Divisions would be the first to be stood up, followed by the 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th & 23rd Infantry Divisions. Many personnel in more technical fields who were called back to service would need longer retraining periods, but even then the Department of the Army was only willing to extend that to six weeks at most. Pilots and aircrews were the only group that was allowed longer.

Interesting to see what's happening diplomatically. The US can raise hundreds of thousands of troops, but equipping all of them might be an issue, even with all of their production and stored reserves.

It seems that Berlusconi is in trouble.

For small arms I'd imagine production wouldn't be the bottleneck.  The American arms industry could probably kit out every adult American within 18 months if it wanted to.

Replacing all of the vehicles is going to take a while though.

I don't think the problem will be small arms, or even when it comes to it, heavier personal weapons. Trucks - not an issue.
Armoured vehicles will come along after a pause, and Boeing will be working 24/7 to replace lost aircraft. So once that production ramps up, America will simply out produce the Russians, (nearly called them Soviets - oops), with ease.

The bottleneck is likely to be things like Boots, webbing and uniforms. A lot of this stuff is made in China, (who will be the ultimate winners in this war, I for one welcome our new Chinese economic overlords), and will need to be shipped, this could produce an interesting bottleneck and shift the balance of power considerably. Especially when it comes to rebuilding the world post war. It will be like Africa on a much larger scale.




If he's lucky he'll be forced to resign then prosecuted. If he's unlucky...

Let's just say that certain Italian stereotypes regarding "Gentleman's clubs for honest businessmen" may be given some substance again.

Worst case, years later there will be Berlusconi pinatas in the same way we in Britain have the Guy on a bonfire...

Another great update forcon

Great to see Germans, British and Polish forces side by side fighting the Russians.