#balkanization

Terry Moran at Real Patriotism:

Any sane and decent person wants this war to be short and the Iranian people to be free from the brutal theocracy that has ruled them for half a century. But hope is not a strategy. At this point—Day Five of Donald Trump’s war of choice against Iran—both of those outcomes look unlikely. We Americans have learned the hard way over the last 60 years that it is easy to start wars, and hard to end them. And wars rarely end the way their architects imagine. That familiar line of military strategists is worth calling to mind again: No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. Or, as Mike Tyson put it, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

The US military is the best in the world and it’s not close. Our forces have demonstrated that fact in spectacular ways during this presidency; Trump has ordered them into action more than any president in the modern era. But Iran is different. It is a proud, mountainous, heavily defended nation of 90 million people with an armed force of over a million active-duty and reserve personnel and a vast, indigenous arsenal of ballistic/cruise missiles and drones. Iran’s forces are no match in a direct confrontation with the combined power of the US and Israeli attack—but the leadership has long recognized that fact, and prepared extensively for an asymmetric fight.

The likely ending

A short war that topples the regime and triggers an uprising that liberates the Iranian people is possible, but unlikely. The more realistic scenario is a conflict that ends unsatisfactorily without becoming catastrophic. It may well be the best that can be hoped for at this point.

[...]

Nightmare No. 1: The Kurdish War of Independence

The chaos of war inside Iran could ignite ethnic uprisings inside and outside its borders. In western Iran, the Kurds have been fighting Tehran on and off for decades. Now, according to several reports, the US and Israel are in active talks with Kurdish forces in Iran to arm them and foment an uprising aimed at overthrowing the regime. But Kurdish revolts rarely stay confined to one country. There are an estimated 25-30 million Kurds; they are the largest ethnic group in the world without a state, spread across parts of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Armenia. In each of those places they already possess armed movements, political organizations, and—in northern Iraq and northeastern Syria—semi-autonomous territory.

[...]

Nightmare No. 2: The Yugoslavia Scenario

Another dark possibility involves not a Kurdish state but the fragmentation of Iran itself. Iran is not a homogeneous country. Roughly half its population belongs to ethnic minorities—Kurds, but also Azeris, Arabs, Baluchis, Turkmen and others—many living in border regions with strong cross-national ties. Western imperialists drew borders for generations in the Middle East as they saw fit, but those lines are still resented by many in the region. There are those in Washington and Tel Aviv who quietly speculate that a weakened Iran might break apart along these lines. 

[...]

Nightmare No. 3: The War That Doesn’t End

The third scenario is less dramatic but more likely. The Islamic Republic survives. Iran’s leaders have spent decades preparing for precisely this moment. They anticipated air strikes, regime-change rhetoric, and attempts to decapitate their command structure. If the regime survives the opening phase of the war—as looks likely now—it will shift into a long campaign of attrition. That war has in fact already begun. Iran’s missiles and drones are a real problem for the the US, Israel and the Gulf states. Our missile/drone defense systems inventories are not infinite. And Iran can still activate proxies in the region for attacks against American bases and businesses. The shipping lanes of the Persian Gulf and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait remain vulnerable.

Terry Moran has a look at the various nightmare scenarios for Iran.

See Also:

“Analysts have expressed concerns that relations between Serbia and Kosovo — tense at the best of times — have become increasingly hostile in recent months. Violence erupted in northern Kosovo in September, and Belgrade responded with a military buildup on its border with its neighbor.

Now there are concerns that the volatility in this southeastern region of Europe could tip into an armed conflict while the world is distracted by the war in Ukraine.

(…)

"Resolving the dispute between Kosovo and Serbia is no longer just a political matter, but a serious security issue for the region and for Europe," Engjellushe Morina and Majda Ruge, senior policy fellows at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), wrote last week.

"For the U.S. and EU, the choice is no longer just between the failure and success of the dialogue but between stability and a further escalation of violence. The latter is most likely unless they finally acknowledge Belgrade's role in destabilising Kosovo and adopt a robust approach to counter it."

(…)

Northern Kosovo, which borders Serbia, has an ethnic Serb majority whereas the country as a whole is around 93% ethnic Albanian. Serbian capital Belgrade does not recognize its neighbor as an independent state.

A key recent tipping point was local elections in the spring that saw ethnic Albanians elected to a number of municipalities in northern Kosovo. The results caused outrage among the ethnic Serb community in the region who had boycotted the votes, saying their demands for more autonomy had not been met.

Tensions ratcheted up further over the summer and erupted in late September following a shootout between a heavily armed group of ethnic Serbs and Kosovo special police forces in the northern Kosovo village of Banjska in which one police officer and three gunmen were killed.

NATO has had a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo since 1999 following a bloody conflict between ethnic Albanians opposed to ethnic Serbs and the government of Yugoslavia in 1998. The military alliance reacted to the September incident by deploying additional peacekeeping troops to the region, while Serbia bolstered its military presence along its border with Kosovo.

(…)

"From zero land wars in Europe, we could conceivably be looking at two very shortly," Ian Bremmer, founder of the Eurasia Group, said in a note Monday.

He likened the tensions to the recent lightning-fast conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which culminated last month with the Azerbaijani military seizing the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh in a rapid offensive with little outside intervention.

"You have a long-simmering and unsustainable status quo being challenged by the dominant military, looking to see if anybody else cares enough to intervene," Bremmer said.

"In this case, that's NATO — less distracted than Russia, and much more likely to intervene directly — but the prospects of an invasion have gone way up over the past few days."

(…)

Tensions between Serbia and ethnic Albanians culminated in the 1998 Kosovo war between Yugoslav forces, led by Serbia, and a Kosovo-Albanian rebel group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army, who opposed the Serbian authorities and oppressive policies of Serb leader Slobodan Milošević.

Hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians were displaced by the conflict and numerous war crimes were committed by both sides, although the majority were attributed to Serbian and Yugoslav government forces.

The conflict ended when NATO intervened in 1999, launching air strikes on Yugoslav armed forces until their withdrawal from Kosovo. NATO's aerial bombing campaign remains controversial to this day although it is credited with bringing the war to an end.

Kosovo declared itself independent from Serbia in 2008, a proclamation that Serbia rejected, and tensions have simmered ever since, not helped by the election of nationalist leaders in both Serbia (President Vučić) and Kosovo (Prime Minister Albin Kurti).

Nonetheless, Serbia has aspirations to join the EU and is unlikely to want to jeopardize this, or to tempt a direct response from NATO, according to Andrius Tursa, Central and Eastern Europe advisor at risk consultancy Teneo.

"A direct military offensive by the Serbian army on northern Kosovo is very unlikely due to the presence of NATO peacekeepers and the risk of punitive Western sanctions as a result of such action," Tursa said in a note Tuesday.”

“An armed band of Serb militants recently ambushed police in Kosovo. In the resulting firefight and retreat, four people — including a police officer — died from their wounds.

The incident sparked official recriminations from both Kosovo and Serbia, culminating in Serbia moving its armed forces towards the countries’ shared border only to subsequently withdraw them due to pressure from the United States.

Tensions between the two countries are nothing new. Serbia and Kosovo were previously united under Yugoslavia. The collapse of the country in the 1990s, however, caused Kosovo to push for independence.

Kosovar forces, backed by NATO, expelled the remnants of the Yugoslav army in 1999. Kosovo, however, remains central to Serbian national identity and Serbia has never truly reconciled itself to Kosovo’s independence.

(…)

The overthrow of former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, and the EU identifying Serbia as a candidate for expansion to join the union in 2003, provided Serbian politicians with an alternative policy to the nationalism of the past.

Serbia officially submitted its application to ascend to EU member status in 2009. Unfortunately, Serbia’s progress towards that goal has been painfully slow.

Slovenia and Croatia, two other former Yugoslav states, ascended to the EU in 2004 and 2013, respectively. From formal submission to full member status took each country 10 years or less.

Serbia’s application, now in its 14th year, shows no sign of being formally processed as it fails to meet many of the judicial, economic and political standards the EU requires for membership.

Serbia has made several gestures towards achieving EU membership. Most notably, it agreed to a plan to normalize relations with Kosovo. For many Serb nationalists, the question of Kosovo’s independence elicits visceral reactions due to Kosovo’s prominence in Serb nationalist identity.

(…)

In Serbia, EU membership remains a distant possibility that will probably only benefit future generations. Today, Serbians are seeking alternate ideologies that promise more immediate returns.

Given the EU’s association with liberal democracy and globalism, some Serbs are embracing populism and anti-western nationalism.

(…)

The EU’s problem is that its domestic and international problems not only limit the ability to deal with Serbia, but Serbia-Kosovo tensions magnify the EU’s own issues. Hungary’s Viktor Orban, for example, has already stated his country — an EU member — would veto any sanctions against Serbia.

Serbia’s provocations against Kosovo also provide Russia with a potential wedge issue in its efforts to divide the EU, as demonstrated by Orban’s statement.

EU support for Ukraine is already facing challenges from members like Slovakia. The EU’s failure to deal with Serbia in the past will only stoke such challenges, and further inhibit the organization’s ability to respond to crises like Ukraine.”

“On Friday White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said the US had observed an “unprecedented staging of advanced Serbian artillery, tanks and mechanised infantry units” on the Kosovo border and called it a “very destabilising development”.

“We are calling on Serbia to withdraw those forces from the border and to contribute to lowering the temperature and the tension,” Kirby said, adding that Vučić and Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, had spoken about ways to defuse the situation.

International efforts to cool the tensions have mounted in recent days after a violent stand-off near a monastery in the Serb-majority north of Kosovo left at least four people dead, including a Kosovo police officer.

(…)

In a statement late on Saturday, the government of Kosovo said the Serbian army had indeed placed extra troops and equipment in 48 military and police bases within a few kilometres of the Kosovo border.

“In this placement, the placement of anti-air and heavy artillery is included… These bases serve to support possible military aggression against the Republic of Kosova,” the Pristina government said.

This is the flag of The Commonwealth of California.  It comes from a world where the Constitution was never ratified, and the Articles of Confederation remained the primary governing document for the United States.  Unfortunately, this meant that the federal government remained weak and ineffectual.  The states soon began to question why they needed to take orders from Washington, and regionalist movements began to spring up.  By the early 19th century the United States had completely collapsed.  Each state became its own nation, with smaller states joining bigger ones either willingly or by force.  Though the United States had failed as a nation, the idea of the United States inspired other colonies to rebel against their mother nations and seek independence.

The ideal of Manifest Destiny never really became a thing, but there was a general westward movement among the peoples of North America.  However, how they got westward was considerably different than in our world.  That brings us to California.  It was primarily settled by British colonist from the Oregon Territory.  This had multiple effects on California's development.  For example, California is governed by a parliament, led by a prime minister, and the Queen's Birthday is a national holiday.  California is also a proud member of the Commonwealth of Nations.  Just as in our world, California has a significant Mexican minority, and most Californians are bilingual. 

California is one of the most prosperous nations in North America. It has a booming tech sector, and it's farms help feed people across North America. In the past, California had a history in intervening in wars, but it has backed off from that in more recent times.  The big focus now is space exploration.  California has launched multiple missions to the Moon and now there's talk of a possible Mars mission.

California's British heritage is very much reflected on its flag with the blue background and St. George's canton.  The seal hearkens back to the early days of British settlement, all under the watchful eye of Britannia herself. The tree in the canton is a California Redwood.