Short Fiction: The Decision Points of the November War
A brief discussion of a regional nuclear war in a history that never happened
Author’s Note: This takes place in an alternate history timeline, which you can read here for the full context.
The Decision Points of the November War: A Report of the Federation of American Scientists (1999)
by Dr. Edward Healy
Even in hindsight, the November War was not inevitable. Given the later Taiping instability and Peking’s longstanding desire to reunite All Under Heaven, the conflict or something similar was likely, but what ultimately transpired was not the only possible outcome. This paper will look at the different points of decision in the 1973 crisis that ended Taiping rule over southern China, led to the first use of nuclear weapons in combat since the Second World War, and required international intervention to prevent a conflict that could have killed billions and destabilized the climate in a period where space-based production was not advanced enough to pick up the slack.
Though China was divided along the Yangtze River between the Manchu Qing Dynasty and the syncretic Christian Taiping government in 1863, the roots of the conflict actually date back to the Second World War. The Míngzhì Emperor, who had been enthroned in the Taiping capital of Tianjing only four years before, was killed in a Japanese bombing raid on Ningbo in 1939. Owing to his chosen successor dying before him and unable to agree which of their number should succeed him, the government’s twelve leading elders chose Hu Bolin, one of the late emperor’s many sons rather than follow the process adopted after Taiping founder the Shénshèng Emperor killed his own son in 1874. This is the first of such points — the disastrous later reign of the Yúchǔn Emperor could have been avoided entirely if the Taiping had not reverted to traditional Chinese imperial practice.
Surprisingly, Bolin proved worthy of his new position, leading the Taiping through the conflict and even gaining territory from the decaying Qing Dynasty that had in desperation thrown in its lot with Japan, but he died in 1967. Though his strong leadership had earned him the posthumous title of Jiāndìng Emperor, he failed to properly ensure the education of his grandchildren. He was succeeded not by his eldest sons, who predeceased him, but by his grandson Hu Josiah, known to history as the Yúchǔn Emperor. The new emperor combined an excess of zeal for persecuting southern China’s non-Christian majority with deferring important decisions, administrative incompetence, and an intolerance for the meddling of the Afrikaner Confederation, leaving the Afrikaner-dominated Compact of Self-Determination in 1969. Had the Taiping remained within the Compact, the rebellion that overthrew them and reunited All Under Heaven — and led to the November War — might not have occurred at all, or been repressed quickly.
This was not to pass. After years of muddling, a rebellion by one of many Taoist sects broke out in Suzhou close to the Yangtze border in January 1973. A full third of the army sent to crush it switched sides outright, another third deserted, and the remaining third bloodied itself trying to take the city and retreated. Recognizing that even with this victory the odds were against them, the rebels called upon the Shènglì Emperor of the Yong Dynasty, which had overthrown the Qing in 1950, for help. Although the Yong did not immediately intervene, arms and “volunteers” soon began flowing across the Yangtze. As the rebellion spread across southern China, the Yong intervened openly in August. The Afrikaner Confederation’s Great Volkstadt debated assisting its former ally in its darkest hour but ultimately decided that, having made his bed, the Yúchǔn Emperor should sleep in it. The Taiping lost their capital of Tianjing — soon regaining its old name of Nanjing — by September. The foolish emperor died in the fighting, but his sons, daughters, and five of the ruling twelve elders escaped the city to continue resistance. The Confederation’s government, seeing God’s judgement apparently completed, allowed Afrikaner volunteers to serve the new Taiping Juéwàng Emperor and began providing military aid. Seeing a threat to their control of Formosa, the Japanese provided assistance as well, albeit with much less enthusiasm. This slowed the Yong advance, but did not stop it.
On August 18th 1973, the Taiping attempted one of the most foolish and desperate acts in the 20th Century — a nuclear decapitation strike on Peking. Owing to the weakness of their nuclear program, the attack consisted of a single megaton-class nuclear weapon delivered on an intermediate-range ballistic missile. Yong interceptors crippled the missile but did not destroy it, driving it off-course. The missile detonated in Wuhan, killing 200,000 people. Had the Juéwàng Emperor and the surviving elders been less fearful and reckless, the resulting backlash would not have led to the collapse of his regime. Instead, the resulting popular outrage in southern China caused the Taiping to crumble, especially when the Shènglì Emperor gave cities in the path of Yong armies the choice between surrender and nuclear strikes. It was the rapid implosion of the Taiping regime that likely deterred the Yong from using nuclear weapons on Chinese soil. Taiping authority collapsed almost everywhere and, after a brief siege, Shanghai fell to internal revolt. The remaining Taiping — several members of the former Imperial family, some of the elders, and their Afrikaner praetorian guard — fled their final redoubt in Nanning to loyalists in Vietnam. By mid-September, the Yong controlled all of China.
This is where the Yong could have stopped. The Taiping elite had fled, and China was united for the first time in over a century. However, the Yong were in no mood for living and letting live after Wuhan and how, even after Yong victory was becoming increasingly inevitable, the Japanese and Afrikaner Confederation and its regional allies continued supporting the Taiping. Owing to encouragement by the League of Democracies (which did not want to be dragged into a war between a longtime member and a country with just under 20% of the world’s population), Japan recognized the Yong as the sole rulers of China after the fall of Shanghai and offered generous “reconstruction aid” for Wuhan. The victorious Yong interpreted this gesture as becoming a Chinese tributary, as Japan had been in the past. This left the vindictive Shènglì Emperor with only one target — the Confederation itself. But the Yong had little navy, even with the captured Taiping fleet. Unfortunately Vietnam, situated between China’s new border and the Afrikaner-allied Thai and Cambodian monarchies, had hosted Taiping garrisons and allowed the defeated Taiping leadership to escape to the Confederation through their territory. For that, they had to pay.
On October 20, once all the major cities of former Taiping China were safely garrisoned, the Yong demanded the Vietnamese repatriate the Taiping garrisons and any Taiping officials or members of the royal family still on their soil, especially those involved in the Wuhan attack. They also demanded any Afrikaner mercenaries who’d helped maintain the Taiping in power against their own people. The Confederation, Thailand, and Cambodia, however, wished to maintain Vietnam as a neutral buffer state rather than, as it had so often been, a Chinese vassal. The Afrikaners and the Compact issued an ultimatum of their own, warning the Yong to avoid violating Vietnamese sovereignty. Despite United States and United Nations efforts to create a face-saving compromise, the November 1st deadline passed. In the opening hours of November 2nd, Yong forces invaded Vietnam. The main target for invasion was Hanoi, perilously close to the Chinese border. At this point it was becoming clear the Yong intended to make Vietnam a Chinese vassal state, as many previous Chinese dynasties had done.
For the first time the Compact was activated against an external foe, even though Vietnam was not a member. Huge air battles between Afrikaner and Yong broke out over Vietnam. Thai forces were the first to engage the Yong on the ground, although Tibetan and Turkestani forces began border raids soon afterward. The Afrikaners had not wasted the two weeks after the Yong ultimatum — a massive and air sea logistical bridge had been set up between Afrikaner possessions in the East Indies and the Vietnamese port of Saigon and the naval base at Cam Ranh Bay. Buoyed by Afrikaner arms and logistical support, the besieged Vietnamese emperor ordered the rest of Vietnam emptied of armies to relieve Hanoi. This was facilitated by extensive use of Afrikaner transport planes to move troops and even armor northward under heavy escort.
Unfortunately, Vietnam’s small and outdated army was not up to the task of breaking the siege. The Afrikaners unleashed their own troops in a pincer movement from eastern Thailand and southern Vietnam, intended to eject the Yong forces from the Red River Delta.
What resulted, initially, was a bloody stalemate. The Yong forces were more numerous, had been blooded by the war against the Taiping, and operated close to their bases of supply. The Afrikaners, though less experienced in large-scale fighting, were better-equipped and were heavily supported by the Vietnamese government and people who had long resisted Chinese domination. The two armies gridlocked west of Hanoi, taking pressure off the capital’s northern defenses and the port of Haiphong.
Having prevented the Yong from swiftly installing a client regime in Hanoi, this is where the Afrikaners could have offered terms. Given how occupied Taiping territory had only begun being integrated into the Yong Imperial system, the Chinese would have been wise to accept a status quo ante peace. However, between desire to make the strongest possible impression on a non-white, non-Christian foe that had toppled an Afrikaner ally and fears Yong intransigence might lead to a a prolonged war that would inspire discontent among their subjects, the Afrikaners deployed the first nuclear weapons in battle since the final Central Asian campaign against the Soviet Union in 1947.
(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.)
Tactical nuclear strikes were delivered via aircraft and short-ranged ballistic missiles in an arc from just north of Thái Nguyên to Lang Son. Multiple army groups were devastated, including heavily-corseted divisions that had until recently fought for the Taiping. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians and military remnants died as well, proving right the old African proverb that when elephants fight, it is the grass that is trampled. The only reason civilian casualties weren’t even worse is that the Afrikaners focused on the Chinese supply lines and second echelons that passed through relatively-unpopulated areas. Unable to immediately retreat into rear areas seething with radiation, the most forward Chinese formations stood and fought despite worsening sickness and depletion of food and ammunition. Radiation-suited Afrikaner soldiers soon forced them out of Thái Nguyên. Ejecting the Yong from northern Vietnam entirely seemed to simply a matter of marching.
Then the Yong retaliated with tactical nuclear weapons of their own, devastating Afrikaner forces spread thinly to sweep up as many demoralized and dying Yong soldiers as possible. Chinese forces outside Thái Nguyên had buried a much larger nuclear weapon (apparently brought along just in case) before retreating and set it off once they were far enough away. The detonation soaked entire surrounding area in fallout and prevented the city from being used as a transport hub for the foreseeable future. The Afrikaners and Vietnamese fell back, leaving the provinces northeast of Hanoi a ravaged no man’s land. For days there was no large-scale combat as both sides treated the wounded and sick as best they could and wondered what would come next. With the Yong able to answer Afrikaner nuclear usage in kind and the fighting in Vietnam largely stopped, this would have been the perfect time for a more permanent ceasefire.
But the Shènglì Emperor doubled down. Although the Yong still have not released the relevant records, historians and strategists believe the Emperor thought he could defeat the Afrikaners in a prolonged war, especially if they suffered unrest in their core territories. This would allow the Yong to secure Chinese domination over Vietnam and perhaps intimidate the Confederation’s Thai and Cambodian allies. Unable for the moment to grapple with Afrikaner forces in Vietnam, he ordered nuclear attacks on the Afrikaner naval bases in Singapore and Batavia as well as the fleets in transit between Saigon and the major Afrikaner logistics hub at Cam Ranh Bay. Even with the Taiping navy in their hands and the Japanese authorities in Formosa hoping to avoid trouble by looking the other way, the Yong’s naval weakness meant most of their fleet was required to blockade Haiphong. Submarines could square that circle, but the Yong didn’t have the numbers to cut the sea lanes completely and submarines could not attack aerial transport in any case. Nuclear weapons were a force multiplier and the Yong were willing to gamble the Afrikaners would not escalate if their core possessions in India, southern Arabia, and Africa were off-limits. This was something Chinese representatives made very clear after the attacks began.
One Afrikaner surface convoy was all but annihilated by Yong submarines equipped with nuclear torpedoes and another took roughly 50% casualties, but the Afrikaners heavily guarded their fleets with destroyers and anti-submarine aircraft and had orbital kinetic weapons available to assist. This helped foil most attacks. Singapore, Saigon, and Cam Ranh Bay were obvious strategic targets, and the Chinese submarines (and bombers launched from the largest surviving occupied Vietnamese airfields and even southern China) were intercepted well in advance. Only one submarine managed to fire one missile, and it was destroyed by kinetic fire from orbit before it could reach Cam Ranh Bay. It initially appeared that the Yong plan to cut the supply lines to Vietnam had been foiled. Either party could have offered terms at this point, the Afrikaners pointing out the Yong effort had failed and offering some sort of “off-ramp” or the Yong simply conceding defeat. The last great terrible act of the November War could have been avoided.
But one Type 093 submarine, captained by Bai Qiang, had managed to approach Batavia, the Afrikaners’ great fortress in the East Indies. The northern straits between the various islands represent natural choke points and were well-patrolled by Afrikaner ships and aircraft; some speculate the submarine had actually deployed to the Indian Ocean earlier in case the Afrikaners planned to assist the Taiping and had approached from the west. To avoid missile interception from air and space, the submarine struck not with missiles but with a single torpedo carrying a twenty-kiloton nuclear warhead. The Afrikaner ships in Batavia had largely been kept in reserve rather than deployed like those in Singapore, and the results were catastrophic.
100,000 people, including 20,000 Afrikaners, were killed immediately, with tens of thousands dying in the weeks afterward from injuries and radiation sickness. Despite attempts to put to sea in the minutes before the blast, the fleet was ravaged. Fourteen warships sank outright and others so damaged they were scuttled later. Sixty civilian ships, not all of which were carrying military cargo, were sunk as well. Personnel losses aboard the affected ships were virtually total, especially once later deaths from radiation are taken into account. The docks and shipyards in the central part of the city were devastated and most of the workers were killed, although the facilities in the eastern sections survived physically intact. It is fortunate the torpedoes detonated underwater, largely limiting the physical destruction to the coastal zone, and the prevailing winds blew most of the fallout into the Java Sea rather than coating the rest of the island. Although it took years to fully decontaminate the port itself and rebuilding its shipbuilding capacity, most of the city was spared and enough medical facilities remained functioning that the many, many wounded and sick were able to be treated. The southern end of the Afrikaners’ supply lines to Vietnam ceased functioning as surviving ships and aircraft were dedicated to relief work. Owing to Yong secrecy in these matters it is not clear if the Chinese Empire offered terms at this point, but having destroyed one of the Afrikaners’ three major supply lines, this would have been a good time to negotiate from a position of strength.
The Afrikaners’ immediate reaction was saturation kinetic bombardment of the sea around Batavia, which is widely believed to have successfully sank the submarine. This and continued Yong secrecy around Bai, widely revered in China to this day, explains the lack of certainty. The Afrikaners followed up with tactical nuclear strikes on blockading forces near Haiphong and the remaining Yong forces in northern Vietnam, with a focus on airfields and other potential nuclear launch sites. To further degrade Yong naval capability, Sanya and Haikou on Hainan Island were struck by larger weapons. The Afrikaners also attempted a city-destroying attack on Nanning, but Yong interceptors foiled it. It is fortunate the Afrikaners avoided Chinese-occupied Vietnamese cities as much as possible or else that poor country would have suffered even more. Unfortunately for the residents of Hainan Island, roughly five hundred thousand were dead by the end of the year.
Although the United States had been trying to mediate an end to the crisis since the Taiping strike on Wuhan, the situation had become much more urgent with two Great Powers attacking one another’s population centers. To forestall a general nuclear conflict, the United States summoned both the Afrikaner Confederation and the Chinese Empire before the United Nations and, after an acrimonious session, the General Assembly — the Compact and a tiny number of others excepted — condemned both states and imposed a total trade embargo and asset freeze. Although both societies were largely self-sufficient in essentials, the war was burning through their reserves at a rapid rate, the sanctions kept them from borrowing abroad outside of their own allies (on top of massive spikes in interest rates the war and especially the use of nuclear weapons had caused), and the disruption of trade put millions out of work.
More threatening still was the League of Democracies’ mobilization, which had begun as soon as the Chinese Empire and Afrikaner Confederation went to war and shifted into overdrive now. Nuclear-armed submarines were put to sea and additional defensive satellites were launched into orbit. Any reservists not yet called up received their orders. Member nations lacking peacetime conscription began activating their draft mechanisms, some for the first time since the Second World War. League forces in Japan, the Sokoto Caliphate, British West Africa, Egypt, and the Central African Ouaddai Sultanate were built up as rapidly as aircraft could deliver men to equip from existing in-country stockpiles.
And although the Afrikaner Confederation mobilized its own conventional military and nuclear forces, it faced a problem the League largely did not — a restive population largely disloyal to its government. The fact the Confederation is a more open society — at least for its ruling class — meant it was impossible to isolate the subordinate population from outside news like it had been in the Soviet Union or, to a lesser degree, the later Yong. The disenfranchised four-fifths of the Confederation’s population were in the firing line and they knew it.
The response varied from region to region — Afrikaners and non-Afrikaners alike in the East Indies were horrified by the devastation of Batavia and supported the government’s retaliation, but in the Confederation’s African core widespread protests, strikes, and rioting broke out among the black population. The governments of the various African staten cracked down hard, but it proved a dangerous distraction and interfered with military production and especially mobilization. There were also widespread divisions in the Indian staten between those — both ruling-class and subordinate — who wanted to avenge Batavia and those who feared sharing its fate. Given the relatively decentralized nature of the Confederation, the possibility existed individual staten might rebel or attempt to secede in hopes of avoiding thermonuclear Armageddon. The Yong might not possess weapons capable of reliably reaching eastern and southern Africa, but if fear of nuclear firestorms ravaging Bombay, Delhi, or Calcutta provoked a cross-class secessionist crisis, they might not need to.
For nearly a week the world watched, wondering if the League would go to war against the Afrikaner Confederation, the Chinese, or even both at the same time. American plans from the time remain classified, but more cynical historians think the Chinese, which were the first to deliberately attack population centers, would have been targeted instead. It would have been easier to launch a disarming first strike on a country with little naval capability and significantly fewer nuclear weapons than the sprawling, sea-linked Confederation. Furthermore, the reunification of China upset the global bilateral status quo and one could argue it would be in both the Afrikaners’ and Americans’ interest to hobble the Yong even if in hindsight re-dividing China would prove impractical. In that case, the mobilization on the Confederation’s borders would have been an expensive and risky act of Kabuki theater to distract from the real target.
Ultimately, the Confederation and Yong agreed to a face-saving compromise in early December with the Peace of Singapore. Vietnam was to be a neutral buffer state and both the Confederation and Yong would contribute to its rebuilding. The most immediate need was enormous quantities of food and pesticides, since with so many birds dead of radiation poisoning, multiplying insects swarms were devouring unaffected crops and threatening famine. Religious freedom for Chinese Christians was guaranteed, but millions decided not to risk Yong reprisals and emigrated. Many followed the path of prior overseas Chinese migrations and settled in the East Indies, where the Afrikaner staten granted them full citizenship despite their ethnicity and questions about the orthodoxy of their faith. But no small number came to the United States, where there were no religious requirements. The escaped Taiping elites and their die-hards were allowed asylum in the Confederation, but to assuage Yong paranoia they were relocated to Arabia. Although unrest continued in the Confederation (and in some formerly-Taiping regions of China) for months afterward, both the Afrikaners and the Yong could credibly claim victory and peace has held in East Asia for nearly three decades.
Although the world was was spared the long-feared general holocaust, the November War was no small thing. Four million people were dead by the end of the year, with many millions more injured. The rates of cancer and birth defects in the radiation-afflicted regions rose dramatically over the following decades. Decontaminating and rebuilding Wuhan, Batavia, Hainan, and the parts of Vietnam where the fighting was fiercest was the work of years and cost billions of dollars. The economic effects of the war and the (brief) sanctions regime caused a worldwide recession.
And the world was lucky to avoid a climactic disaster. Computer models have demonstrated that as few as one hundred city firestorms could loft enough ash, smoke, and debris into the upper atmosphere to drastically reduce sunlight and thus global temperatures. A new ice age on top of the more obvious devastation a nuclear war would bring risks the survival of civilization, if not the human race itself. Fortunately no large cities experienced firestorms, but localized drops in temperature were observed in northern Vietnam, particularly around Thái Nguyên, and as far north as southern China and as far south as Hanoi.
Although the horrors of the November War could have deterred both the U.S. and its allies and the Afrikaner Confederation and its vassal states from further confrontation, this did not last. Both alliances openly clashed in the Timor Gap in 1986, although it did not escalate beyond a few lost aircraft. The rise of the belligerent Theonomic Party in the Confederation and election of Jeremy Roberts in the United States in response risks another crisis and possibly a worse conflict. It is FAS’s recommendation that both sides take steps to reduce global tensions and their nuclear arsenals. It is possible large-scale deployment of kinetic weapons in orbit will provide the same deterrent that existing nuclear arsenals do without the dangers of extreme environmental damage.
Did the November War scare the two major blocs straight? This question is answered in my short story “Coil Gun,” which appears in this collection of stories published by Digital Science Fiction. It was later republished in my short story collection Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire, available here on Amazon and on other retailers like Kobo, Barnes and Noble, etc. here. The alternate timeline of the Afrikaner Confederation, a homage to and critique of S.M. Stirling’s Draka, can be found here.