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how did we solve the austrian crisis again? Just let them go max reform or did stop them?
Attempting to Fulfill the Plan MNKh Edition
- Thread starter Blackstar
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Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
So, Blackstar has already answered the second part of your question.
As to the first part, I can only say why I didn't raise Klimenko's bias before the vote was called. If the vote hadn't been called when it was, my next post would have been about that because I'd just realized that people might be taking Klimenko's delusions about the crisis seriously.
This wasn't our first international crisis with Klimenko, we'd already seen that his ideas on foreign politics were more brain worm than reality. And we've already had plenty of examples more generally of his tendency to dismiss people who knew better than him and disagreed with his big brain conservative takes.
And again, during this vote we had the QM breaking kayfabe and OOC saying that some of the stuff that was said IC was dead wrong, something that rarely happens in this quest. Not in discord, but right here in the forum and somehow THIS is the time she was being too subtle?
I even pointed out how obvious things were being made as you know, a serious bloomin' warning sign. But apparently that was too subtle too.
Blackstar has said that she regards it as a failure that she didn't specifically name our hawkish foreign minister as one of the diplomats Klimenko was dismissing, and hey, maybe Klimenko dismissing the man by name would make some people notice. But really, I think that people are trying to find special reasons to blame for this happening, when really this is just super normal.
And I don't mean normal in this quest, I mean normal in the world. We get taken in by people repeating lies over and over again all the time. And lies like "our national prestige depends on this", "our enemies are like Hitler and must be stopped", "our enemies are irrational, to try and understand them is treason, now KILL", "if we don't go in guns blazing our allies will be disappointed in us", "our soldiers, who are trained to shoot, won't shoot and therefore we can send them in to demonstrate resolve without starting a shooting war" and so on, are repeated so often, across so many countries that like, of course some of these are going to get us sometimes.
We listened to the diplomats who said the Austrians could solve things on their own and provided low-interest loans to help them fix their botched reforms fast enough to cool the anger among ordinary Austrians.
Regards,
fasquardon
We let them do there reforms that fucked there economy so much that ended with the austrians citizens to busy trying to figure out how they will get enough food for the day then anything else.
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Whelp at least that should discourage others from trying the same reform package
That's not our solution, that's how the Austrians messed up.
Well, yes. That we were able to thread the needle on Austria meant that we didn't lose anything important, and radical rightist reform should be discredited for a generation at least. Not a bad outcome.
Regards,
fasquardon
Yee not the solution it was the outcome of the austrians deciding to hold a cooked "grenade" for to long.
- Location
- Your pantry
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- He/Him
Yeah, quite frankly the reason the vote went the way it did is because people got it into their heads that they could bully the French without repercussions, all gun ho about the revolution and "helping" our Algerian brethren. We know that the French are quite antsy about their nuclear weapons. We know that they consider Algeria a core French territory and in fact has millions of French settlers at this point in the form of the pieds-noirs. Blackstar gave several explicit warnings in post here, which should have also clued some people in. But instead, people took up the revolution band-wagon, and this is what happened.
The following course of events was entirely deserved. Yes, I do think Babkov's dismissal should have been spelled out, there is a difference between making information biased and simply not making it available at all, but I do think Blackstar overcompensated with the explicit hints and warnings. The worst part about it is that most people seemed to not give a flying fuck about them, even if it was evident.
The following course of events was entirely deserved. Yes, I do think Babkov's dismissal should have been spelled out, there is a difference between making information biased and simply not making it available at all, but I do think Blackstar overcompensated with the explicit hints and warnings. The worst part about it is that most people seemed to not give a flying fuck about them, even if it was evident.
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I voted for de-escalation but I still see convoys as a valid but risky option. As a superpower, we gotta swing that big soviet threat sometimes, and while that wasn't a good time, it was an okay one after a long period of being mildly doveish. I understand why people took the gamble. Don't agree with how salty they are after losing the gamble though.
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- Location
- The great frozen north
Ugh yeah this one is on me. Paranoia got me here, I thought she was just bringing up in-universe dissent and not making an OOC-kayfabe breaking statement that assumptions about how reliably Algeria could (not) be supplied were totally wrong. Though I'd been off the Discord for a long time, I remember her being a bit trollish in her answers to questions and rarely if ever stating "the in-universe information is totally wrong" while a vote was still ongoing. Meanwhile in elf-quest getting OOC info required spending an omake.
Too clever by a half I guess. Well, this discussion is going in circles so for my own sake this is the last I'll say on it. ON ANOTHER NOTE
Nah that would make too much sense. Most likely they'll somehow find an excuse to snub him and then give the Peace Prize to Kissinger for "long-term efforts to reduce ethnic violence in Africa" or something.
Very true... but given they just elected the Specter Of Reaction, from here on out that "had" will need to be in the past tense. Also, were TTL's civil rights acts notably more progressive than OTL's in any way?
It's probably wrong, but my first thoughts when I read that wording was that this action had Klimenko and the other hawks physically beat up Seymonov to stop him from ordering a deescalation. And given even here Babkov is not mentioned, clearly that indicates Klimenko considers him a pasty soy-boy that couldn't physically hurt a fly </s>
- Location
- UTC+0
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- He/Him/They
I honestly think Semyonov would just detain Belik and Klim, he is convinced doing this would lead to everyone's doom. At that point either Belik sucessfully coups the government using the military and goes around Semyonov or the latter stops him at any cost.
And it was the correct choice for real Soviet Patriots, it is a shame that the majority of the so called 'patriots' turned out to be nothing more than saboteurs, wreckers and Capitalist fifth columnists that did not want to continue escalating tensions and made the mighty Soviet Union look weak.
We should have given Gaddafi nukes, prepared an invasion of Belgium and continued to embarrass the the French Navy at sea for the Red Navy is the strongest!
We must continue to accelerate to achieve true communism, this is difficult to do when tensions are low; thus we should always make sure to escalate and never back down. This is what Marx would have wanted, trust me.
Maps of the The World in 1972(Counted as Cannon Omake)
StellarMonarch
Myrmidon
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- Québec
The World in 1972
Countries
CMEA Members
CMEA Membership
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- A haze of forgetfulness
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- She/Her
...why...
edit: Oh huh Denmark is a CMEA observer? Who is in charge of Denmark?
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HanEmpire
Delicious
I don't think Blackstar ever mentioned who their ruling party is. Even if they were conservatives though they'd still be in COMECON.
The Danes didn't have a choice when they applied to be an observer in COMECON, because the Red Germans are right there and the Americans occupied Greenland against Copenhagen's protests. They were terrified of being invaded and had been backstabbed by Washington.
Now though they're getting closer to Sweden, the newest nuclear power.
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So what I am seeing is that Seymonov is the all-Union Politburo boxing champion.
It is a real shame that no-one will let us film the fights in the war-room. I am sure politburo wrestling matches on television would ignite a new enthusiasm for Marxist dialectic amongst the youf.
Very nice, though there are some issues. The ones that leap out at me are:
Denmark isn't right, need to show that Greenland at least is disputed territory under US occupation.
And Algeria also isn't right. Need to show the French-held coast as disputed territory. The Atlas mountains and the deserts were probably held by the Algerians before the most recent war, as I have difficulty imagining the French having a serious guerilla war in their hands if the Algerians only have the desert.
And interesting that Finland still has their Arctic ocean port! I'd forgotten that.
Say, Tunisia and Morocco are still French-aligned right?
Regards,
fasquardon
CrabMonarchy
Allegedly Dutch
- Location
- the Netherlands, apparently
BTW Nigeria being Soviet-aligned (as shown by the maps above) has been a thing for a while, although we only recently received explicit confirmation of it. The saga begins in Turn 62 (1958H2), where a communist uprising in Nigeria is mentioned:
This is a huge change from OTL, where Nigeria was Western-aligned and exported significant quantities of oil to them (a total production of ~1.7 million barrels per day in 1975, of which almost half was imported by the US alone). According to the 1975 Direction of Trade Yearbook, something like ~85% of their total exports and 88% of their total imports were to/from the West (for reference, trade with the Soviet bloc and China amounted to ~2% of exports and ~3% of imports), with non-oil products making up only ~10% of their exports in this timeframe. Now, Nigeria is instead in our pocket and indeed is actively supporting anti-French activities in the surrounding area, which is immensely valuable both for our current efforts to destabilize Françafrique and for our broader diplomatic position (barring Kissinger deciding to Kissinger them, of course).
While we don't directly see the results of this, it is later mentioned in Turn 79 (1967) that Nigerian forces are assisting anti-French uprisings in the surrounding countries (see bolded section below), which very strongly suggests that the communists won:
We recently discovered these quotes while discussing the current state of West Africa in-quest in the Discord, and Blackstar later confirmed that Nigeria is Soviet-aligned and holds CMEA observer status:
This is a huge change from OTL, where Nigeria was Western-aligned and exported significant quantities of oil to them (a total production of ~1.7 million barrels per day in 1975, of which almost half was imported by the US alone). According to the 1975 Direction of Trade Yearbook, something like ~85% of their total exports and 88% of their total imports were to/from the West (for reference, trade with the Soviet bloc and China amounted to ~2% of exports and ~3% of imports), with non-oil products making up only ~10% of their exports in this timeframe. Now, Nigeria is instead in our pocket and indeed is actively supporting anti-French activities in the surrounding area, which is immensely valuable both for our current efforts to destabilize Françafrique and for our broader diplomatic position (barring Kissinger deciding to Kissinger them, of course).
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- Location
- The great frozen north
I am pretty sure none of the French West Africa countries are formally independent yet. Unless they had success while we weren't looking?
Cool that East Africa and Korea are full members. Does it mean they have free-ish trade and movement with the USSR on the same level as the European client states or are we too much racist jerks for that.
Very cool to know Nigeria is fully aligned with us. Here is hoping they eventually become close brothers like East Africa. And also that the French don't blockade them too when/if the Franceafrique rebels gain ground.
Also IIRC Iran flipped to the American side with their oil business? Or are they still "officially" in our camp?
- Location
- Earth, Milky Way
this reminds me of my recent performance review
CrabMonarchy
Allegedly Dutch
- Location
- the Netherlands, apparently
Ghana is independent and socialist-leaning, Benin and Togo are anti-French dictatorships, Cameroon is an anti-French democracy/party-state/idk, Chad is in a civil war but the Soviet-aligned insurgents are winning, and Niger is closely French-aligned despite Soviet efforts, all as of 1970. Regrettably, however, we know a grand total of literally nothing about the state of the remaining countries in the area, so I can't comment on those, but I presume they're nominally independent but tied to France through other methods like Françafrique OTL.
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- The great frozen north
OK then, good to know! That's a lot better than I thought, and regrettably a large part of why I was so hawkish during the crisis. I thought organized independence hadn't happened and France was still actively fighting over most of its empire.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
We absolutely had a chance to figure out our guy was a hawk, though I do wish (as we've largely agreed) that not knowing our normally kinda hawkish foreign minister was among the "some diplomats" opposing escalation in this situation was a bit much
Eh. They give the things out every year. I figure they can't fuck up every year.
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The whole reason why France has so much empire to lose now is that in the 40s and 50s they were WAY more sensible than the British and brokered a bunch of compromises that allowed them to maintain a bunch of influence and keep a coastal strip of Algeria.
Our hawks had made unpicking French influence in West Africa their main project and we were backing various freedom fighters struggling against various French-aligned regimes and the Algerians trying to get back their coast.
But now, thanks to us confirming all of Ashbrook's prejudices, the inheritors of the sensible Frenchmen have American backing to rebuild their empire!
This will end well for everyone.
Regards,
fasquardon
Am sure El Prez would yes, the problem is now he has political capital to spend at home in getting Congress to put money behind his prejudices.
And what's worse, we probably haven't scared the Americans enough to do something REALLY stupid, like put actual American soldiers in harms way so we can have a nice Vietnam-style millstone around their necks.
I am sure the number of Americans in the French foreign legion will go way up of course, but the voters back home won't care so much about volunteers being turned into red mist by Soviet-supplied RPGs.
Regards,
fasquardon
StellarMonarch
Myrmidon
- Location
- Québec
I spent way too long messing with Greenland and Algeria trying to represent the occupation / conflict and I couldn't figure out a way to make them look nice. Here it is, I suppose.