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Sunday, Dec 03, 2023 - 00:39 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

When November Ends

If the pause in Twilight Struggle: New Moon since late October was awaiting meaning, it has been found with the passing of Henry Kissinger on November 29, several months after what would be his final visit to Beijing, as analyzed in Action Round 3 of this Turn (and with his Shuttle Diplomacy remembered by the WSJ). As asserted at the beginning of Turn 12 last September, Kissinger's death definitively ends the previous (post-Cold War I) era (and world order), from the yet-unequalled Influence that he wielded in its crafting.

There has surely seldom been as stark of a deviation between (political) elite and populist opinion on any matter, as there has been on Kissinger's legacy; while a bevy of global leaders honoured the former U.S. Secretary of State, with China particularly effusive in their praise - as were our (now-multitasking) President and Prime Minister - the plebs were... far less appreciative. The sentiment of Rolling Stone's headline of Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America's Ruling Class, Finally Dies has found widespread resonance on various subreddits and forums throughout the Internet, and Bloomberg's verdict of "a complex man for a complex century" might make a fair epitaph for "Super K".


Turn 14, Action Round 7 (Team Blue)

Team Blue plays Southeast Asia Scoring, as expected:


ASEAN represent!
(Original sources: twilightstrategy.com)


And let's get to the board situation, without undue delay:


Finely poised...
[Click to enlarge]


Unlike the other regional scoring cards, Southeast Asia Scoring doesn't bother with overall Presence, Domination and Control - perhaps a nod to the ASEAN Way of non-interference in member states' internal affairs, and deliberate lack of (legally) binding mechanisms. Instead, VPs are awarded for Control of individual countries, with six of the seven states worth 1 VP, and 2 VP for the Battleground State of Thailand, referencing its pivotal role in halting the Red advance down south about the Vietnam War era. In terms of present-day ASEAN, Singapore and Brunei are not explicitly represented, with Singapore part of [British] Malay[si]a until 1965, and Brunei only gaining full independence from the British in 1984.

Other than that, Cambodia and Laos are combined into a single entity, which is perhaps not entirely unreasonable given their generally-consistent Alignment, and which is where Kissinger comes in again. His advocacy for the (joint) carpet bombing of the two countries is often considered one of the darkest doings of his career, with Laos becoming the most-bombed country in history with over 270 million cluster munitions dropped there, many of which remain unexploded to the present day. Remarkably, Laos was not even at war with the U.S. then, and the (secret and illegal) CIA bombing campaign was largely to destroy Viet Cong supply lines, which failed anyway. This might or might not explain their settling in the Red camp, then.

With the additional Stability assigned to Vietnam and Indonesia, neither country are under Control of the superpowers as yet, and this leaves Burma and the Philippines to cancel each other out, for a net 1 VP to Team Red.


The long red V
(Source: nlb.gov.sg)


As the Teams file out for a deserved break before the next Turn, we might as well add some commentary on regional history. It is perhaps not very well-known nowadays that Southeast Asia had been carved up by two external (colonial) powers as recently as the nineteenth century. Decades before the French claimed Laos/Cambodia, the British and Dutch had contracted a treaty in 1824 (soon after Singapore's founding), which basically assigned (Peninsular) Malaysia and Singapore to the British sphere of influence, and Indonesia to the Dutch. Another attempt to divvy up the region in Cold War II should not be counted out, then, and has arguably been tried by Team Blue already with the IPEF from last May - which is however sadly crumbling due to America's continued reluctance to grant actual trade concessions, probably as they want to get something concrete (and enforcable) against the Reds, out of the deal.

The recent revival in interest on a Taiwan blockade has only reemphasized the geopolitical importance of the Strait of Malacca, and with the last and possibly the greatest of the original Cold War I 中国通 deceased, there may no longer be anyone of Kissinger's stature able to bridge the gap between the two main players. Xi's supposed reconciliation with Biden at APEC, where he again wined and dined American business doyens, surely did little to assure their strategic set that he was not simply looking to run the U.S. down on the economic clock, as expounded on at the beginning of this Turn. Well, if it's any consolation, there happens to be a newly-available opening for Grandmaster of The Greatest Game...



As was long foretold
[N.B. With Chinese fentanyl exports to the U.S., U.S. instigation in Hong Kong, China's potential human wave immigration tactic, and even coordination in "population control" (ahem pandemic), have all been duly* predicted, alongside some sniggering at the attempted assassination of Chen Shui-bian]
[*Easy riddle: what do the white and black cats reference here?]
(Source: manhuagui.com)




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