Thanks. But please note that what I’ve written in this thread to date is a very small snap shot of what I’ve done for this scenario. There is a lot more and when I have more time and am less sick I hope to present it all in various Shipbucket formats. But I will try and address each of your points and provide a bit more background as well.
Excellent. I was half fearing that you would consider my comments and not like them, which I was trying to avoid. I frequent a few AH sites and Southern Africa is one of my specialities, owing to my father, who was born in Salisbury and spent the first eighteen years of his life living on a large farm near Bulawayo.
RENAMO was established by the Rhodesian CIO in the late 70s after Rhodesian forces realized how unpopular the FRELIMO regime was in Mozambique. After the fall of Zimbabw-Rhodesia under the Lancaster House agreement support of RENAMO was transferred with Rhodesian expats to South Africa. In my scenario RENAMO (then called MNR) was established during the ‘go it alone’ period by Rhodesia after South Africa closed its borders in a failed – and misguided – attempt to enforce détente on Rhodesia. In this period 1978-80 the counter insurgency battle in Rhodesia is totally different to that in the real world due to the success of sensor fuzed minefield CORSAN surrounding Rhodesia’s borders. So Rhodesia is putting a lot more effort into external operations and has little or no need to be politically and economically restrained by western, Soviet and Afro-Asian bloc world opinion. So the combination of RENAMO auxiliaries and Rhodesian forces sees them roll back FRELIMO control across most of Mozambique from their Maputo heartland.
Again,k you have done your homework, but you have two crucial problems - Rhodesia's civilian economy and RENAMO's support among the people of Mozambique.
RENAMO never had a lot of support among the people of Mozambique, largely because they never accomplished much aside from killing people, and it was well known that Pretoria and Salisbury were behind the organization. Without dramatically changing their tactics and somehow reducing the support FRELIMO had, RENAMO would have virtually no chance of taking over Mozambique.
The problem of the high costs of their wars would be reduced by the government having a much bigger indigenous arms industry, but the costs of mobilizing virtually every white male in Rhodesia, which was the case by 1975. Even if you manage to stop the problems raised by ZANLA and ZIPRA (which will still have very wide support among Rhodesia's black population, which was 96% of the population in 1978), these external operations will still cost a very large amount of money. Rhodesia's economy was being strangled by the sanctions, even with the South Africans allowing goods from Rhodesia to go to the ports at Durban and Port Elizabeth. What killed Rhodesia's economy, just as ultimately did in South Africa as well, was the problems selling its civilian products. Rhodesia, because of the sanctions, was forced to sell its products at a discount and purchase at a premium, and between the Labour Governments' hatred of the Rhodesians and Thatcher and the US State Department convincing Reagan that Rhodesia / Mozambique / South Africa was not a front against communism and that strangling Rhodesia was beneficial to those involved, Rhodesia had very few allies and even fewer customers. With substantially growing Rhodesia's economy, they could not handle the costs of the Bush War.
The Soviets and Tanzania do try and respond to prop up ZANLA and FRELIMO in Mozambique leading to the big battles in 1983. But this is very different to Angola where Cuban troops had been flooded into the country since 1975 to prop up the MPLA regime. There is no direct air link from Cuba to Mozambique and Cuba is already overstretched in Angola. So the same kind of reinforcement is not possible. Also the geographic nature of Mozambique is very different to Angola and holding Maputo is not the key to the rest of Mozambique. Maputo is the key to Joh-Berg and the South African high veld but that’s another issue.
Cuba's forces in Angola were supplied and paid for by the Soviets, who liked the fact that they could make a lot of trouble for the South Africans for very little cost. These haven't changed in Mozambique or Rhodesia, and Cuba's armed forces still had lots of troops, and was mostly using equipment that old Red Army stuff, which they practically gave away. Cuba was overstretched in Angola, but with the Soviets being willing to help them as much as they were willing to, they could commit more forces to the region, and they would almost certainly gain plenty of international approval for helping Mozambique against what would widely seen as stooges of Salisbury and Pretoria.
The Rhodesian air force is a very different beast in my scenario thanks to a domestic aircraft industry. Started in 1960 building what in our world was called the Malmö Flygindustri MFI-9 Junior it develops over the next 30 years into a company to rival IAI and one of the best aircraft companies outside of Europe and North America. Also without the RRhAF aircraft sell of at the end of the federal government era and additional aircraft acqusitions they have a total of 40 Canberras (including 24 B-57Bs) and 48 Hunters at UDI. Both of which are rebuilt during the 1970s to provide better capability and zero hour airframes.
But where would the customers come for this? Rhodesia was not strong enough economically to support a major aircraft industry. And where would they get the upgrades from to provide major upgrades in the 1970s? The country simply hasn't got the money or technological skills base to do these. In conjunction with Atlas in South Africa and/or IAI in Israel you could do this, but on their own the cost of it was way too high.
The details of the strike on the Soviet carrier battle group I’ll keep to myself for now (for dramatic effect) but the Soviets reliance on SAMs leaves them open to a coordinated strike package using precision guided weapons.
Where would the Rhodesians get precision weapons from? The Israelis? Washington would go apeshit if Tel Aviv sold missiles to the Rhodesians and they used them to attack a Soviet CBG. The Russians always saw Pretoria and Salisbury as Western stooges, and a major strike on a Soviet Navy CBG could well cause WWIII, or at least cause the Soviets to strike back against the Rhodesians a whole lot harder than a bunch of missiles on industrial facilities, and Tanzania and Zambia would in this case probably be happy to host Red Army units to attack Rhodesia, just to keep Salisbury and Pretoria from screwing with them like they here are doing to Angola and Mozambique.
The whole concept of the scenario is that Rhodesia’s war economy is completely turned around by having a domestic defence industry before UDI. Domestic production of armoured cars, small arms, aircraft and ammunition means that the huge expenditure on acquiring like externally through an international embargo is just not needed. All that money that Rhodesia had to spend outside Rhodesia in the real world can be spent inside Rhodesia on much cheaper domestic weapons resulting in more tax base and reinvestment in the country. External acquisitions can be focused on production investment like new tooling and engineering equipment to generate more income inside Rhodesia rather than to be wasted (in economic terms) on non production weaponry.
That would certainly do much to help the economy, but it wouldn't stop the problems. Rhodesia's white population was too small for the size of the economy and munitions industries you have in mind, and without substantially growing the number of whites or bringing several hundred thousand blacks into the major economy, Rhodesia's economy is too small, the costs being much for these big external operations, much bigger air and ground forces and a smallish but still undoubtedly expensive Navy.
As to the recognition of Rhodesian independence on Rhodesian terms by the UK in 1991 this comes about for a range of important reasons. For one the South African Government is not crumbling, if anything it is much stronger, especially as Rhodesia has installed a friendly government in Mozambique and joint efforts in Angola result in the fall of MPLA and Cuban forces in 1989.
If the Rhodesians and SADF have installed UNITA in command in Angola and have caused problems in Zambia and Tanzania, you better believe that the British would have more than distaste for them. South Africa would probably have formally annexed South West Africa. You'd have PaxPretoriana in this case, which is not good news for black populations across Southern Africa.
Hopefully the South African government is winding back the racist policies of Apartheid and restoring the Cape qualified franchise system to South Africa as in Rhodesia to provide for a non racial political system that recognises the immense economic and social disparity within these mixed countries of Southern Africa that promotes gradual political enfranchisement in keeping with gradual economic and social evolution so as to avoid the terrible malaise that has inflicted itself upon the rest of decolonised Africa. While there is a lot of cultural and political isolation of South Africa and Rhodesia in the western world in the late 1980s there is equally a lot more economic integration (as with South Africa in the real world).
With their economies being much bigger and more stable and no more external threats, the chances of apartheid being narrowed down are close to zero. The more likely scenario is that you'd have the South Africa doing more of the homelands style black republics, and this scenario would for all intents and purposes make apartheid permanent. The South Africans began narrowing apartheid in the early 1970s, only to have that come to a screeching halt due to the war in Angola and the Soweto Riots. The Afrikaners who dominate the government in Pretoria would never let that happen again, and they got astoundingly paranoid in the 1980s. The ultimate result in this case is that apartheid lasts for a couple decades more, with the Russians probably quite happily in this case providing lots and lots more guns to the ANC, MPLA, ZIPRA and plenty of other black opposition groups, and both Washington and Whitehall seeing the fact that Pretoria and Salisbury can spite them as a big, big insult. Apartheid would probably last another decade, but when it finally cracks, it won't end as nicely as it did in our world. It would almost certainly end with a race war. Rhodesia might move towards greater rights for blacks, but that would be a very slow process, if it was progressing at all. UDI came about out of a demand to never give up Rhodesia to the blacks, why in this case would they give up much, if anything, of their own wealth and influence?
But the UK the reason to recognise Rhodesian independence is based a lot more on real politic rather than wishful thinking and concern for the interests of the African one party regimes in the Commonwealth. That is Rhodesian support for the IRA that has seen the British Army driven from South Armagh and a massive wave of Irish bombing in Great Britain. Rhodesia without an insurgency war to fight in the 1980s has a lot of surplus military power to expend chasing down its enemies in Tanzania, central Africa and Libya. The Rhodesian Navy and their increasing control over the western Indian Ocean is a symptom of this. After 25 years of failed policies to destroy Rhodesia since UDI and facing direct threats from the Rhodesians its time for the UK to cut their losses. Legal status for Rhodesia won’t change things too much, as there is no way the corrupt regimes of the UN would allow their membership but it does go a long towards normalising life in southern Africa.
OK, you jumped the shark big time here. Rhodesian support for the IRA would make the idea of realpolitik a thing of the past, and if the IRA was bombing targets with greater capability because of Rhodesian actions, in Thatcher's mind that would probably be a causus belli right there, especially as they tried to kill Thatcher more than once. Whitehall would in this scenario NEVER support Rhodesia, and would probably more likely in this case support MI6 actions to try and cause problems for Salisbury. Part of the reason Britain allowed the US to use British bases for attacking Libya in 1986 with F-111s was because Gaddafi was giving arms to the IRA. In this case, Tanzania, Zambia, Kenya, Madagascar and others would probably find themselves getting substantial amounts of aid from Whitehall, and probably Washington as well. As for direct threats, The British COULD attack Rhodesia, using either the Royal Navy's submarines and/or aircraft carriers to annihilate the Rhodesian Navy, and probably Royal Air Force Avro Vulcan bombers to bomb Rhodesia itself, as they did to the Argentines in 1982. Rhodesia is considerably closer to the UK than the Falklands are. Britain would in this case probably beef up its forces substantially as well, which means the prospect of them buying stuff like B-1 bombers from the Americans for the sole purpose of getting the people who effectively declared war on them is real.