I think he's really experiencing buyer's remorse with Victoria right now.
No he isnt. Why would he? He didnt BUY Victoria, he got them for free.
To date, Alexander has invested nothing of significance in Victoria. Some technical advisors, a lot of intelligence and intelligence agents. A couple arms shipments over four decades, including junk like T-34s. Rounding error stuff. When the Vics were preparing to declare war on the Commonwealth, Alex didnt buy them weapons; he made them pay for their own weapons from California, and made California give them a discount.
In return, he has had them terrorize the Eastern US and Canada for forty years.Used them to cripple the NCR.
Even Imperial Russian involvement in the real Vic economy primarily comprised of corporations taking over old US/Canadian/Chinese projects, and operating them at a profit.For decades.
If Victoria cripple themselves to hurt us, its a net profit to him.
If he walked away today, if Victoria crashed and burned today, it would still have been a wildly successful, wildly profitable scheme for him.
There is some obvious stuff like giving weapons and supplies to their opposition, starting an offensive against them and intelligence operations. But I question the value of that. They already lost almost the entirety of their army, are fighting a civil war and were forced to sign a peace treaty that made Brest-Litovsk look soft by comparison. What exactly would we gain by further undermining them?
Pretty much.
The lowhanging fruit with regards to damaging Victorian recovery speed has been plucked with the results of Operation Foil. Anything else would require increasing investments of both resources and PR and goodwill on our parts, as well as escalating levels of collateral damage and human misery on the part of the Vic population.
Some things are just not worth it.
Part of our peace treaty involved not supplying or helping the Crusaders in any way, and trying to do so would torpedo popular support for our government anyway. Our big thing to screw with Victoria will probably be exploiting the peace treaty to turn them into a captive market until they tear up said peace treaty. We kinda need the money from that to help fuel our industrialization and militarization programs.
This.
The Crusaders have an especially vile reputation among the already terrible reputations of Victoria's assorted military forces.
No one can help them as a matter of realpolitik without being tainted by association.
Its like when the US was giving diplomatic and intelligence support to the Khmer Rouge because they were fighting Vietnam.
After they killed 3 million people in the Cambodian Genocides.
I don't understand why people are arguing for Victoria rebuilding to threaten us. If Blackwell had won immediately, they might have been able to pose a challenge, but the nation that emerges from this war is going to be in ruins.
Because they are ideologues who are backed by a superpower.
Targeted aid and technical advisors, coupled to the Victoria regime's sense of mission, could regenerate post-war military capability pretty quickly. The economic capacity and population to wield that capability is much more variable, and depends on how much Vic ideology is willing to bend to reality.
Its been done IRL, with both small and large countries post-WW2. Both China and Israel went from civil war to nuclear power in less than twenty years, with Soviet and French help respectively. France went from occupied WW2 country that was bombed to rubble to its first nuclear test in 15 years. Nevermind West Germany.
I think that just about the only faction capable of putting a significant dent in Victoria by exploiting the civil war is the Free City of New York- they have got to be considering it.
Besides extending their intelligence network and meticulously monitoring any fighting to make sure its not coming their way, up to and possibly including daily satellite and drone overflights? They are going to be dealing with a refugee problem on their shared land border(and sea borders) with Victoria, and will be racing to expand down the eastern seaboard through lower Pennsylvania,New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland.
And they are rearming to boot.
I doubt they have the effort to spare, and wont want to give Blackwell or the Crusaders propaganda fodder anyway.
Furthermore, the Crusaders are explicitly some of those guys who used to stage cross-border razziahs into PA and the Appalachians as training missions to blood the troops. Given that FCNY is looking to expand into, or at least establish strong influence there, any aid would be a bad look.
Do note however that the GM has previously stated that the FCNY has broadcast networks dedicated to beaming news INTO Victoria, and has for most of the last three decades, almost as soon as they could afford it. The Inquisitors tried to jam them early on and basically got crushed by the combination of money and modern technology.
The Inquisitors are reliant on the internal broadcast system to control the population, which is a key advantage over the Crusaders.
But they are not the only purveyors of information on the airwaves, and FCNY has no incentive to censor anything about the war.
An entire war where FCNY news proves to be more accurate and timely than Vic radio, where people rely on FCNY radio for literally lifesaving info, is going to critically damage Vic media credibility among the local population.
That is likely to be a medium to longterm Vic problem if Blackwell wins.
Yes absolutely. Even if they don't, is there anything stopping them from taking control of everything up to the border with Victoria? Without the the threat of the Victorians they have nothing stopping them from rearming as they've got the money and people to do so. Wasn't the Free city of New York super cramped as well? So yeah New York probably already has a couple of new suburbs.
The people living there. Its not empty.
FCNY is not Victoria; cant just walk in and declare the clay yours.
Good point about the CMC's number problem. I do wonder if they are really just 2 divisions against a whole country though...
Two mechanized divisions armed with T-55s and BMPs; given they actually had a professional logistics doctrine for the CMC, assume they are a little bigger than standard Army divisions to account for the logistics train. 12-13k, say, instead of 10.
So call that 20-25k for two divisions.
Abraham Division took around 20,000 men from Buffalo when they left the city.
Assume David Division acquired that same number in conscripts. Of that combined 30,000 troops number they could have raised two regular Army divisions of 10k each, with the rest being forced into a logistics role.
Especially given all the techs and logistics workers they looted from Buffalo.
45,000 combat troops. 20,000 logistics.
They really could win a civil war with that many troops. IF they could secure a reliable logistics supply line
ISIS almost bumrushed Iraq and Syria with those numbers.
www.nationalgeographic.com
