I strongly second that one genius!Looking forward to seeing Farrah Fawcett's movie career ITTL
Blue Skies in Camelot (Continued): An Alternate 80s and Beyond
- Thread starter President_Lincoln
- Start date
I could see Ms. Fawcett befriending Marilyn.
Admittedly, they're from different generations, but Marilyn could be a mentor for her, what with being a "blonde bombshell/sex symbol" and all. As per OTL, Fawcett began dating Lee Majors back in the late 1960s. She married him in 1973. As of 1979, they are separated and filing for divorce.
Chapter 129
Chapter 129: Life During Wartime - Conflicts Around the World in the 1970s
Above: Vietnamese soldiers attempting to hold a position during the Sino-Vietnamese Border Conflict of 1979 (left); the FMLN, a faction of the Salvadoran Civil War (right).
“Heard of a van that's loaded with weapons
Packed up and ready to go
Heard of some gravesites, out by the highway
A place where nobody knows
The sound of gunfire, off in the distance
I'm getting used to it now
Lived in a brownstone, lived in a ghetto
I've lived all over this town
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco
This ain't no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey-dovey
I ain't got time for that now” - “Life During Wartime” by the Talking Heads
The geopolitics of Southeast Asia in the late 1970s were, in a word, complicated.
Beginning with de-escalation of US and Soviet involvement in Vietnam under President John F. Kennedy and First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev in 1965, the region was, at least initially, enjoying a local version of the broader global trend of detente. Though Cambodia eventually descended into a right-wing dictatorship under Lon Nol, then civil war between Nol’s regime and the communist Khmer Rouge of Pol Pot, Vietnam managed to peacefully reunite in 1973, following a referendum that allowed for power sharing between the communists in Hanoi and the capitalists in Saigon. Most commentators in the west held peaceful Vietnamese reunification to be a vindication of Kennedy’s foreign policy. Meanwhile, the quagmire in Cambodia, which eventually held more than 250,000 pairs of American boots on the ground, and claimed more than 20,000 American lives before finally ending in 1975, was seen as a failure by the Romney and Bush administrations. Indeed, many believe that the unpopular war helped prevent Bush from winning reelection in 1976.
Following the surprise election of Nguyễn Văn Linh, a member of the Communist Party to the presidency of Vietnam in 1977, the Vietnamese Army announced that it would no longer “prop up” Lon Nol’s regime in Cambodia. Though it would remain “along the border regions” to prevent the “murder of Vietnamese civilians” until the civil war ended, Lon Nol lost his biggest remaining foreign supporter. At the same time, the atrocities being committed by Pol Pot and his communist insurgents did not exactly endear him to Linh, or anyone, really. To the north, the People’s Republic of China, first under Chairman Zhou Enlai until his passing in 1976, then under his successor, Hu Yaobang, sought to distance itself from Pol Pot and his increasingly “insane” regime. The PRC sought to moderate both its image and its governance around this time and could not “in conscience” support what Pol Pot was doing. In Moscow, Yuri Andorpov held Pol Pot at even greater distance, though he did seek closer relations with the now communist-led Vietnam, a violation of the Khrushchev-era policy of non-intervention in the region, and a signal that the Cold War was indeed heating up once again.
See what I mean? Complicated.
In the end, the Cambodian Civil War carried on for three more grueling, bloody years after the Vietnamese withdrawal. It finally ended in the summer of 1980, when Pol Pot was betrayed and killed in a coup by several of his top generals and military advisors. In Phnom Penh, the capital, Lon Nol celebrated. His victory would also be short lived, however. After almost a decade under Lon Nol’s authoritarian rule, both the common people and the elite of the “Khmer Republic” had also had enough. Popular revolution, backed by collaborators in the government, captured the president and toppled his oppressive regime in March of 1981. Seeking to reorganize the country from the wreckage of decades of colonial rule, followed by bloody civil war, the opposition needed an apolitical, symbolic figure for the Cambodian people to rally behind. It was time for the return of the King.
Above: King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia (left); Flag of the reformed Kingdom of Cambodia (right).
After years living in exile in places like Paris and New York, King Norodom Sihanouk, at the invitation of the provisional government that took power after Lon Nol’s ouster, was finally able to return to his homeland and resume his reign. In doing so, he became a powerful symbol for hope and resistance to political extremism, both to his people and the world at large. The new constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia would be parliamentary, based upon the British model. The king also insisted that he be a purely ceremonial figure, and that the Kingdom pursue a neutral, non-interventionist foreign policy, as he’d originally wished. Finally, it seemed, there would be peace in Southeast Asia.
Except.
As détente began to fade following the Pakistani-Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1974, and the Cold War heated up again, so too did the Sino-Soviet split continue to deepen under Hu Yaobang. Though Hu was not interested in the least in ideological bickering with Moscow, he was interested in closer ties with the west, especially the United States, who had finally agreed to recognize the People’s Republic under President Bush, who made his famous visit to Beijing in 1974, where he shook hands with Chairman Zhou Enlai. Though Andropov was not as much of a hardliner as some in the USSR’s politburo, he could not hope to hold onto power if he did not answer this perceived slight. So, he increased his support for Nguyễn Văn Linh’s Vietnam, who held numerous political squabbles with the PRC. These squabbles, specifically over the exact location of the border between the PRC and Vietnam, as well as several islands in the South China Sea, eventually led to the Sino-Vietnamese Conflict of 1979.
On February 17th, 1979, a People's Liberation Army (PLA) force of about 200,000 troops supported by 200 Type 59, Type 62, and Type 63 tanks entered northern Vietnam in the PLA's first major combat operation since the end of the Korean War in 1953. The Vietnamese Army swiftly mobilized to try and counter the invasion, but immediately found themselves outnumbered and outgunned. Though the AVRN, the former South Vietnamese army had been gifted weapons and training for years by the United States, and the former North Vietnamese network of official army and militias were some of the finest guerrilla fighters in the world, reunification presented a myriad of challenges for the now combined Vietnamese military. For one thing, inconsistent strategy and doctrine meant that field commanders, and even top brass, disagreed on how best to respond to the Chinese invasion. For another, equipment and logistical matters were still being standardized across the entire nation. The result? Poorly equipped, poorly trained troops, led by officers who bickered and argued over not just strategy, but even tactics mid-battle. In short, the Vietnamese military response was disorganized as best, downright chaotic at worst. The PLA swiftly captured several small cities in the north. Saigon reached out to Moscow for assistance.
Above: Chairman Hu Yaobang of the People’s Republic of China (left); First Secretary Yuri Andorpov of the Soviet Union (right).
In response, the Soviet Union, although it did not take direct military action, provided intelligence and equipment support for Vietnam. An airlift was established by the Soviets to help redeploy Vietnamese soldiers to the front. Moscow also provided a total of 400 tanks and armored personnel carriers (APCs), 500 mortar artillery and air defense artillery, 50 BM-21 rocket launchers, 400 portable surface-to-air missiles, 800 anti-tank missiles and 20 jet fighters. About 5,000 to 8,000 Soviet military advisers were present in Vietnam in 1979 to train Vietnamese soldiers, a move that had been condemned by President Mo Udall of the United States as “deliberately provocative” and “tramples on the mutually agreed-upon detente of 1965”. Udall’s calls for Soviet withdrawal went unheeded.
For the duration of the war, the Soviets also deployed troops to the Sino-Soviet border, and Mongolian-Chinese border as an act of showing support to Vietnam, as well as tying up PLA forces with the mere threat of invasion. However, Chairman Hu predicted, correctly, as it turns out, that this was a bluff on Andropov’s part. The Soviets could not, and would not take direct action to help their erstwhile ally. Realistically, the only way for them to do so would be to reignite the Sino-Soviet border conflict. This could quickly spiral out of control and lead to full-scale war between two of the world’s thermonuclear powers. That was something that no one, not in Moscow, Beijing, or Washington, for that matter, wanted. In the end, all that Andropov was able to get out of Chairman Hu was a promise not to use the Chinese navy or air force during the war with Vietnam, limiting operations to the land invasion.
The Sino-Vietnamese Conflict of 1979 ended less than three months after it began. President Nguyễn Văn Linh negotiated for the return of most occupied Vietnamese territory (though - controversially - not the islands in the South China Sea). China gained a new “economic zone of interest” along the northern border, which forced Saigon to relocate tens of thousands of Hoa people and other indigenous groups away from the Chinese border. The war also killed Linh’s popularity. He was defeated in a landslide while seeking a second term in 1981, losing out to Nationalist Party leader Bùi Diễm, who sought to reorganize the Republic of Vietnam, and forge it into a regional power that could better defend its interests against China.
Meanwhile, in Beijing, the war helped to solidify both Chairman Hu’s grip on power, as well as his personal popularity. Indeed, many western commentators would later posit that Hu may well have started the war in the first place to legitimize his rule, and “keep the army busy” while he appointed loyalists to the politburo. This was critical to his plans for China. Hu’s real pet-project was a series of liberalization reforms for the Chinese economy, aimed at finally introducing the world’s largest nation to the global market, though this would, of course, take many, many years to come to fruition. Hu also wanted to (eventually) pursue political reforms, though he kept silent on this for now.
…
Meanwhile, the Sino-Vietnamese Conflict marked the beginning of the end of Yuri Andropov’s reign as First Secretary in Moscow. Having risen to power in 1968 by ousting Nikita Khrushchev's successor, Alexei Kosygin, when the former was declared “weak” and “vacillating” by the other members of the politburo, Andropov now faced similar accusations. For failing to “adequately defend” the USSR’s Vietnamese ally against “Chinese revisionism”, some in the politburo began to whisper, “Comrade Andropov has embarrassed the Motherland upon the world stage.” He has also “robbed the Soviet Union of a potential communist ally in Vietnam”, which drifted rightward after the invasion. Andropov tried to rally his supporters, as Khrushchev had done successfully in 1964. He pointed out that minor reforms had had some success. The Soviet space and electronics programs, in particular, had flourished under his rule. Indeed, Soviet computers were seen as some of the best in the world by 1979, superseded only by the United States.
Moreover, Andropov had a long-term strategy.
He knew that corruption and stagnation in the Soviet economy was a ticking time bomb, the likes of which, if detonated, could easily lead to the end of the USSR. Reforms - serious ones, not the mere “tinkering” of Kosygin a decade prior - needed to be undertaken, though he knew it had to be done quietly, at first. Andropov, now nearing his 75th birthday, also understood that the time had come at last for the next generation of Soviet citizens to take over leadership. He began to groom his chosen successor.
That man was 48-year old Mikhail Gorbachev.
The youngest member of the Politburo in 1979, Gorbachev was Andropov’s closest and most-trusted ally. He was also a dedicated reformer. Under his careful stewardship, the Stavropol region saw new investment in irrigation and other systems of infrastructure throughout the 1970s. Agricultural production skyrocketed, and Gorbachev, despite his relative youth, rapidly rose to the upper echelons of party politics in Moscow. Secretly, Gorbachev had taken to reading texts written by banned Western Marxists, which blamed Soviet economic failures on excessive centralization and careerism in Moscow. Falling under the sway of these reformist ideas, Gorbachev made it his mission to one day save his country from its own ideological backwardness. Andropov approved. He hoped to remain in power until the early 80s, when he felt Gorbachev had acquired enough support, then retire to allow power to transfer peacefully. The Sino-Vietnamese Conflict threw a wrench into these plans.
Sensing that a coup of some form or another was coming in the summer of 1979, Andropov encouraged Gorbachev to “save his reputation” while he still had a chance. He told his protege to be the first member of the politburo to call for his ouster, and indeed, to support his likely successor, Second Secretary Mikhail Suslov, from the get-go. Gorbachev was reluctant, but understood that this was likely the only way to avoid his own removal, as he was seen as “overly close” to Andropov.
Thus, on August 1st, 1979, Gorbachev introduced a motion to remove Andropov as First Secretary. During the meeting, Andropov acted distraught and enraged at the “betrayal”. Gorbachev gave an impassioned speech, calling for unity, and for the transition in leadership to occur swiftly and smoothly so as not to “further embarrass the Union”. Suslov, the eldest member of the Politburo at 77, seconded the motion, which then swiftly passed. Andropov was removed from public life and “exiled” back to Stavropol, where he lived until his death from kidney failure on February 9th, 1984.
A firm hardliner, Suslov was probably the most “orthodox” man in the party. He was also, however, an opponent of one-man rule. That is, he believed in collective leadership. As a result, he formed another three-man “troika” which would lead the Soviet Union now that Andropov was gone, with himself at the head of course. Joining him would be defense minister Dmitry Ustinov and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. Over the next few years, Soviet policy took a hard lurch to the right, as the country towed a harder and harder line against the west. This too, would prove a political issue throughout much of the world, especially in the United States.
Meanwhile, Andropov’s gambit appeared to pay off. Gorbachev remained on the Politburo. And while Suslov and the other hardliners began to groom Grigori Romanov to serve as “their” second generation successor, Gorbachev now had the breathing room he needed to begin to accrue allies. He started with Valentina Tereshkova, face of the “new Soviet woman”, and a noted reformer. He also went to work on Gromyko, who, as a member of the troika, would be essential to his own eventual rise to power…
Next Time on Blue Skies in Camelot: A Visit to Latin America
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One correction, it should be Alexei Kosygin as Khrushchev had already retired, unless you retconned it.
Hope in the new decade, she can finally have roles in movies that could flex her acting abilities ITTL. I also hope that she would go to the rehabilitation center to end up her addictions and maintain her beauty by the turn of the 80's. And also that whoever she married again in the new decade, I hope she finally find the right one.I could see Ms. Fawcett befriending Marilyn.
@President_Lincoln great chapter as always! Really enjoyed the dynamics of Soviet Union politics and rivalry. Also enjoyed the update on how Vietnam has been doing as well as Cambodia.
You're awesome! Love your story!Thank you!
Always! Can't wait to see more of Charles. Prince of wales, the changes will hopefully help his love life and his public image.Thank you very much!
Fantastic update! Hope Gorbachev manages to pull it off this time. Also interesting things are working in the unified Republic of Vietnam. I somehow knew the a disaster would happen under the Vietnamese communists since they weren’t banned and all. I take that the Vietnamese Workers Party will later on rebrand themselves as the “Vietnamese Socialist Party” and that they and the Vietnamese Nationalist Party are two dominant parties in Vietnam?
This post from the 1st thread says otherwise.
Nope.
Gotcha. Sorry, misunderstanding of what you meant.
Great post, Mr. President. I'm predicting that following his probable ascension as General Secretary in the future, Mikhail Gorbachev's pet-project reforms would eventually turn the Union of Sovereign Socialist Republics into the Eurasian Union, an unstable house of cards.
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Another masterpiece on your new chapter genius! Southeast Asia was truly a complicated situation. The Cambodian Civil War is unwinnable and they wasted the lives of the United States Army. Lol Nol and The Khmer Republic have finally met their end at last in 1980, and King Sihanouk returned after he went exile and brought back The Kingdom of Cambodia. I didn't know there was a Sino-Vietnamese War? Republic of Vietnam was finally reunified and I hope for their best to set their differences and do the right thing for the better of tomorrow. The Soviet-Pakistani Invasion of Afghanistan would really make the United States and its Allies to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics like IOTL. I hope they ended sooner to avoid their Olympic Boycott. Hu Yaobang really make a mistake by declaring war in Vietnam. He may have welcomed economic liberalization and political reforms in the country, but he will meet his end by the turn of the decade. Yuri Andropov also met his end with the early rise of Mikhail Gorbachev by the end of the decade. Instead of 1985 IOTL, he came in 1979 ITTL. Hope also for Gorbachev to reform the country towards to more improvements and developments, and might be the Soviet Union would end earlier ITTL. With Valentina Tereshkova helping to improve the country, is Yuri Gagarin helping there as well? Alright geniuses, we're off now to South America! The continent have finally improved thanks to the Alliance for Progress by President Kennedy ITTL.
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Thank you!
Just to clarify, Gorby, being an Andropov ally, is definitely on the "outs" at the moment. Power in the Kremlin is currently shared between Suslov, Ustinov, and Gromyko. The "new troika" want Grigori Romanov to be their eventual successor. Gorbachev will need to acquire allies and build a coalition if he's going to come to power over Romanov.