NATO’s role has been seriously disappointing up until now.
Firstly, they moved practically all of their warships out of sol, where not only their largest and most vulnerable assets were located (on earth in particular), but also where not one, but two potential enemies resided. Under any circumstances, NATO’s main objective would have been to safeguard these assets from the only identified potential enemies.
Instead their substantial fleet was spread out to some backwater locations where no enemy could be believed to be in force. Even if there would have been a credible enemy presence there, it would not have warranted to move more than a small proportion of the forces there, let alone the whole fleet on a fishing expedition. That’s a bit like suggesting that the entire Spanish Navy would have departed for America after the discovery of that continent, just to supervise the development of the colonies, rather than observing the other powers of the time.
To make matters worse, NATO took a defensive posture on the Epsilon side (defending what exactly?) of the Sol-Epsilon Jump gate. Even the second grade Chinese fleet could have bottled them up there, by being stationed on the sol side, let alone the Soviets.
Additionally, NATO analysts must have been watching the Soviets before the war. Not only the Soviets must have recognized that they are falling behind, but equally the other nations. Seeing this weakness, NATO and even the Chinese would have been extremely conscious to provide the Soviets with an opportunity that would have at least have left the opportunity that they don’t become completely dominated.
You seriously do not want your nuke-armed enemy-in-being feel that in the long run he will be worse in peace of than under the alternative of a nuclear war.
You would offer him some economical support, and importantly you would not reduce his costs of a war by moving away all retaliation assets. You can see this in real world examples: South Korea frequently aids North Korea, because they understand that its not in their own interest to get their enemy’s back against the wall. Actually NATO understood this in your game earlier, when it provided a jumpgate to Alpha Centauri for the Soviets.
It would have been incredibly easy for the Soviet Union to even steamroll NATO in this situation. A small detachment of fighters could have prepared an ambush at the jumpgate relatively undetected and a larger proportion of the Soviet Battle fleet could have easily bottled up NATO forces outside of the system.
But even so, NATO’s conduct in the war itself is quite questionable from an analyst’s point of view. The Soviets had just launched a devastating first strike against China, while suffering some losses. China had most of its fleet destroyed, the remained helpless against Soviet forces, and no large safe secondary positions where it could recover. They had lost any initiative and had no way to regain it. It was clear that they were deemed to loose this conflict. At best it could hope to extradite some concessions by its residual fighting capacity, but winning by themselves was out of the question.
This must have been obvious to NATO. It was therefore clear that the Soviets were destined to make some gains from this war. If NATO does not want to find itself entirely outpowered, it must have every interest to limit the gains of the Soviets.
The longer the war progresses and the further it expands, the more the Soviets will gain, so NATO would want to limit this as much as possible, but did it possess the power to do so?
Yes! The Soviets were on path that led them to further growth, but they were also severely weakened in the short term: They had lost all shipyards, they had to devote a part of the fleet to guard against the fleet-in-being of the Chinese in the next system, most of their ground forces were engaged actively, and most importantly they had spent a significant part of their missile stocks in the first strike. Even if NATO could not now how much exactly remained, it would have been clear that the Soviet battle fleet was - momentarily - very weak.
Of course NATO had a weak presence itself, so it was not in a position to immediately engage in the fighting. Still a state of war between NATO and the Soviets would have hurt the Soviets more than NATO, as the Soviets could not have possibly fought the rest of the universe at the same time. For NATO war might still be more costly than maintaining the status-quo, but not more costly than seeing the Chinese go down entirely and being left to face a strengthened Soviet Union on their own later.
The clear response is to attain an aggressive posture without actually engaging in war. Bring back the fleet in groups, what are the Soviets going to do about it - Start a war that they know they cant win in the long run? Declare Mars and other systems off-limit to the Soviets and posture vessels to enforce this. Support the Chinese financially, with missile designs, or other tech – or even “privately built” ships. Because the Soviets cant risk a war, NATO knows that it can actually enforce these measures without actually becoming embroiled in the war. Think about Chinese support to North-Korea in the Korean war.
Even if any measures against the Soviets would have been considered too risky, the next best alternative would have been to double up, and engage the Chinese as well. Make a “protectorate” of Mars and Mercury purely to avoid them falling into the hands of the Soviets. Force the surrender of Chinese civilian traffic at least…
NATO has done a disappointing “nothing” action in game. Incidentally they did the opposite. When the cost of peace had become higher (facing a stronger Soviet Union in the future), and the cost of war had become lower (weakened short term military capacity of the Soviets, already embroiled in another war), NATO became more susceptible to Soviet pressure. Not only did they do nothing to help the Chinese directly, or indirectly, no they also accepted Soviet surveillance of NATO’s only Jump point to Sol (a major issue for NATO, minor for the Soviets) and actively backed down from savaging the wrecks of Chinese ships.
/Rand
Oh, but nice read so far enjoying it mostly quite a bit!
