The recent events in Georgia over South Ossetia have got me resurrecting an old idea I had for a conspiracy thriller...The drama queen in me loves to daydream about juicy, Tom Clancy-like scenarios that make for good storytelling. A tool frequently used by him and many other thriller/suspense authors is to imagine a plot in which a huge international event affecting billions of people worldwide starts off as a tiny, easily-overlooked side note in world events, exacerbated slowly into an escalating incident through a series of complex cause/effect precursors and, often times, unbelievably bad luck.
It's oft-times a cheap trick, ultimately, since the interlocking triggers are sometimes so unlikely that it can be hard to suspend disbelief. But, in the hands of a skilled writer, the pay off can be something memorable. Sure is a great way to build tension, and to impart the idea that, at any given moment, you never know what shit is about to hit the fan. That much is very believable, don't you think? We've all seen enough shit hit the fan in recent decades to prove that theorem.
Back in the early 90's I had a tinge of an idea for a fictional Clancy-like thriller...
I thought, back then, watching events in the crumbling Soviet Union that this was all happening too quickly and effectively to fully believe. I mean, I grew up in the midst of the Cold War. It was assumed that the "Red Menace" would not be something that would easily just "go away". Certainly not in my lifetime, let alone before the end of the century.
And then, when it did actually "go down", it was not over the course of decades, but within just a couple of years. I mean, there had been Gorbachev and the glasnost and perestroika bullshit but I thought those were just Kremlin spin tactics to put on a new face of communism in preparation for the new millennium. It's when the wall came down, the Germanys reunited, the Baltic nations seceded successfully, and then the rapid cascade within Russia proper from the failed coup, the eventual resignation of Gorbachev, the rise of Yeltsin and the dissolution of the USSR. I may have these events a tad jumbled but that would be because they happened so close together in time, it was hard to keep up.
It was a sad time for the hardliner hawks.
For both sides.
So I thought, what if the military apparatchiks that organized the "failed August coup" in 1991, actually did succeed. No, not in some other parallel universe, but in our own. What if the reassertion of the government by Gorbachev, as it appeared, was all an elaborate illusion.
How could that be?
Well, as corny as it sounds at first, if you were good at detailing it's potential plausibility in some way, the easiest solution would be a perfect double of Gorbachev.
Yes, that's right, it's a tired plot point but, what the hell, it still works!
So this doppelganger, of course just a tool of the KGB and military, would have "taken back" the Kremlin, and then in dramatic overtures, as part of the intricately-complicated plan of deception, dismantled the Soviet Union, as the world then knew it. All the while, of course, the true Soviet Union would live on, in secret, conducting it's never-ending plans for world domination behind securely-closed doors.
Meanwhile, in the US, a highly-confidential faction within the Pentagon, who, being fellow hawks like their counterparts in Russia, collaborate with the KGB and put the same plan into effect in our country. They secretly kidnap the President of the United States and replace him with an exact look-alike who is under their control. This virtual clone (or maybe they are real clones?) of George Bush (the elder). The puppeteers then secretly give the go ahead to Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait, all along knowing they would betray the deal with him and open the door for the US, under their puppet Bush, to repel the Iraqis, win an almost "Wag the Dog" war in a few hours and elevate the popularity of the president so he could easily be reelected.
Unfortunately, Bush's popularity took a nose dive for other reasons, and he lost the election to Clinton who was not a part of the Hidden Cabal.
Around the same time in Russia, their new man Yeltsin drank too much vodka one night and wiped out all his "Manchurian Candidate" brainwashing and he was suddenly a loose cannon. He figured out what was going on and was about to reveal the Russian Cabal Network to the world when the "Civil War" broke out. During the height of the chaotic days of this showdown, Yeltsin was captured and drugged. They couldn't re-brainwash him so they just made sure to wipe his memory of their existence and let him lead the nation without their direct manipulation.
So it was a rough bunch of years through the mid to late 90's for the Cabal New World Order, but, being very Illuminati-like, they would wait patiently for their time to come again.
Eventually, they were able to reinstall their control over the two nations by the early 2000's, placing both Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush in their respective offices. It was easy, really. They secretly poisoned Yeltsin with an untraceable substance which made him appear as if his alcohol abuse was worsening until it killed him. In America, it was just a matter of getting one of their best female agents, Monica Lewinski, to open up a cigar box full of mistrust towards Clinton and the Democrats in general in order for their man Bush to win.
So now with free reign, the Cabal wasted no time in laying the foundation for world domination. They made a secret pact between the Russian and US factions of their Alliance to split the world between them. But, to literally fuel their respective marches of conquest, they would need the oil-rich Middle East. So they drew a twisted line through the region, partitioning it like Prussia, Austria and Russia had done to Poland over 200 years before.
Like a game of RISK, each side staked their claim.
For the US, they had already asserted a presence with the Cabal's secret connections to the Arab kingdoms and emirates of the Persian Gulf, it was just a matter of grabbing Iraq from Saddam, who had, so conveniently, been left in power.
For Russia though, they had just two choices to assure a securely connected empire. Bomb the vast territories of the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan into submission in order to conquer Iran, or, gobble up the much smaller countries of the Caucasus to reach Iran via that route. The latter was the more logical path.
And it all would start with Georgia...