Literature / Spiralling Out of Control

The Cold War may have been as close to utopia as we are ever likely to get.

—Robert D. Kaplan, The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War, 2001, p. 169

An Alternate History timeline written by user "Jack Hawksmoor" on the site AlternateHistory.com.

The full title of the timeline is Spiralling Out of Control: the Axis lies Broken, a reference to a song written by Muse in this timeline.

The timeline depicts alternate The '90s that evolve to either Crapsack World or A World Half Full. It features a healthy dose of deconstruction and Be Careful What You Wish For.

Can be read here

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Historical characters who appear or are referenced in the timeline:

• Donald Trump: He becomes governor of New York.
• Slobodan Milošević:
• George H. W. Bush: Gets to define US foreign policy.

Tropes

• 0% Approval Rating: General Blagoje Adzic manages to alienate the entire world and most of his allies.
• The Alliance: Some updates foreshadow that NATO evolves into PATO (Pacific-Atlantic Treaty Organization).
• Allohistorical Allusion:
  • The name George Bush will not be associated with unilateral intervention without international support.
  • Boris Yeltsin supports airstrikes against Yugoslavia due to different context.
• Alternate History: Naturally.
• American Gun Politics: It is hinted that due to future rise of Patriot Front gun lobby uses Internet as a scapegoat.
• America Saves the Day: Subverted. The USA ignores multiple calls to intervene in Yugoslavia (like in real life), this time including Germans invoking the NATO charter, US ambassador to Yugoslavia warning that Adzic is AxCrazy and one of its former governor assassinated in front of cameras. George Bush begrudgingly attacks Yugoslavia after Azdic's disastrous attack in Slovenia.
• Argentina Is Nazi Land: Invoked. As the situation in Yugoslavia deteriorates, various far-right, ultranationalist militias begin cropping up in Croatia. One of the young leaders of these militias is said to have "travelled back from South America", suggesting one of his ancestors was associated with the World War II-era German puppet state in Croatia and fled to South America following the War.

• Black-and-Grey Morality: Yugoslav army under Adzic versus other republics.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: A lot of people blame real life Yugoslav wars on nationalistic politicians. In this timeline they get killed off in 1991. The result is not nice.
• Balkanize Me: There are hints that many countries will undergo this.
  • Yugoslavia has managed to completely fall apart in two months, a process that in real life lasted for 15 years.
    • This may include Croatia and Bosnia splitting into multiple republics.
  • Inverted with Central European Confederation, and Dick Cheney's proposal to form a pan-Yugoslav state, minus Serbia.
• Bystander Syndrome: The US is quite content to ignore Yugoslav Wars (like in real life) until Adzic levels the nuclear facility in Slovenia.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Internet is known as the 'World Web'.
• The Cassandra: US ambassador to Yugoslavia, Warren Zimmerman. As in real life.
• Chekhov's Gun: Many. If a detail seems out of place, it will be important later.
  • The entire Yugoslav breakup seems to be this for the global history.
• Crowd Panic: half the Slovenia flees the country after its nuclear power plant is attacked
• Conspiracy Theorist:
  • Bobby Fischer becomes the main proponent of the "Lowell Conspiracy", which posits that the city of Lowell, Massachusetts is the center of a global New World Order conspiracy.
  • Serbian General Blagoje Adzic believes that the German government (which tries to get the NATO powers to intervene in Yugoslavia) secretly hopes to resurrect the World War II-era Nazi puppet state of Croatia, fueling his hatred of both NATO and the Croatian nation as a whole.
• Conveniently Interrupted Document: Chronologically later updates deliberately omit what happens to USA and Russia.
• Deconstruction: Of many tropes.
  • Declaring the entire country under martial law doesn't work for Yugoslav Army which lacks the manpower to effectively maintain it.
  • America refuses to save the day even after Germany tries to activate the NATO charter.
  • Removing nationalist politicians in Yugoslavia does not prevent ethnic conflicts. Instead, it removes the OnlySaneMan on each side as the political establishment and population are still there.
• Decapitated Army: Subverted - does not work for the Yugoslav Army.
• Different World, Different Movies:
  • Star Wars episodes 1-3 and 7-9 are made by Spielberg after George Lucas is killed in an assassination attempt on Spielberg. They follow Timothy Zahn's bestseller novels.
  • Mel Gibson plays James Bond in a movie replacing OTL GoldenEye
• Disproportionate Retribution: Adzic promises rivers of blood and wants to destroy Croatian identity and culture in revenge for having witnessed his entire family killed by Croat partisans as a boy during World War II.
• Enemy Civil War: Pick any side in the Yugoslav War, it is true from their point of view.
• Door Stopper: Oh sweet Jesus yes. The author himself has boasted that some of his individual updates are longer than entire timelines.
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: George H.W. Bush's speech on the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor attacks (identical to OTL speech) is taken to support interventionist foreign policy, although Bush actually had free trade in mind.
• Everyone Has Standards: Adzic manages to alienate many of the Serb nationalists, although it may be just them staying away from AxCrazy

• For Want Of A Nail - The initial Point of Divergence is having a Croatian politician deciding to say a few words more.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Like in real life, it seems that Yugoslavia may be foreshadowing for the rest of the world.
  • A glimpse at TTL's version of alternatehistory.com implies some truly chilling things about Spiraling's alternate 1990s:
    • The world will plunge into a Second Great Depression.
    • By 2018, the Nuclear Weapons Taboo will have ceased to exist.
    • Something very bad and very undefined will happen to Brazil.
    • Somewhere, oil stops flowing in 1995.
    • More heads apparently get added to Mount Rushmore.

• Istanbul (Not Constantinople): Slovenia is known as Central European Confederation
• Karma Houdini: Montenegro declares independence after participating in Serbian offensives and escapes NATO airstrikes.
• Killed Off for Real:
  • most of OTL Croatian leadership, including the first two presidents
  • George Lucas
  • Slobodan Milosevic
  • Andreas Papandreou
  • Alija Izetbegovic
  • Rudy Perpich
  • Boris Yeltsin
• Finagle's Law: Breakup of Yugoslavia, well, spirals out of control.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: George H. W. Bush is very popular in Croatia since he eventually intervenes against Adzic.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: quite a few.
  • Serbian general Blagoje Adzic. {{Ax-Crazy.}} In-universe he is referred to as 'Serbian Hitler.' It is quite telling when Radovan Karadzic refuses to deal with him.
  • His predecessor, general Kadijevic embodies PragmaticVillainy.
  • Croatian commander Branimir Glavas
  • American chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer, although it may be accidental.
• Hope Spot: After NATO finally recognizes breakaway republics and Yugoslav army has to deal with war on multiple fronts it seems that the worst is over. Then Krsko happens.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: The fate of Macedonia during the breakup of Yugoslavia.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Debatable. Adzic provokes the NATO to intervene against him by causing the largest nuclear energy disaster in history.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: with NATO countries recognizing the breakaway republics, and Serbia facing international isolation and war on multiple fronts everyone believes Adzic's neutralised. He proves them wrong.
• Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Is implied to no longer exist by TTL's 2018.
• Propaganda Machine: Yugoslav army believes its own propaganda that it is fighting the Fourth Reich.
• People's Republic of Tyranny: By 1998, there is a successor state to the Soviet Union whose Russian name translates roughly to "Union of Sovereign Prosperous Republics".
• Real Time: This timeline actually runs at one-fifth the speed of real time. The first entry to the main story was posted on January 25, 2014, and is set in July of 1991. As of June 2019, the most recent update is set in August of 1992. This means that in 5.5 real-life years, the author has managed to cover 1.1 years in-story (in excruciating detail, of course).
• Richard Nixon, the Used Car Salesman: Donald Trump becomes governor of New York in the nineties. ^note This was written before his real-life Presidential campaign.
• Riddle for the Ages:
  • No one knows what started the incident at barracks that causes the death of former Minnesota governor Rudy Perpich in Zagreb. Russia believes it to be a work of a US conspiracy.
  • Why the pilot that killed Milosevic and Kadijevic rammed his fighter plane instead of using weapons.

• Sickly Green Glow: There develops a stereotype about 'radioactive Slavs.' One update mentions common Englishmen believing their Slovakian neighbors glowed in the dark.
• Spanner in the Works: US ambassador to Yugoslavia Zimmerman manages to do this to Milosevic and US Secretary Baker. He rephrases Baker's approval of the military coup to encourage general Kadijevic to also remove Slobodan Milosevic.

• Tempting Fate: George H.W. Bush ponders who would appoint an incompetent buffoon to be second in command line.
• Title Drop: Subverted. When the US ambassador to Belgrade makes an urgent appeal to Washington he writes that situations is getting out of control.
• Viewers Are Geniuses: The author likes to drop clever hints.
  • An example: in an early update it is mentioned that Lawrence Eagleburger will feature in a 60 Minutes interview after the 1992 Super Bowl. Readers familiar with American politics will notice that OTL guests were Bill and Hillary Clinton in the wake of the Gennifer Flowers accusations.
• Vindicated by History: As the opening quote says, it does so for the Cold War.
• Western Terrorists: Patriot Front appears to be. You are never going to believe who inspires them...
• We ARE Struggling Together:
  • like in real life, all the other Yugoslav republics versus Serbia.
    • Deconstructed and subverted by showing that Serbs are also like this. So it is more like We Are Struggling Together vs We Are Struggling Together.
• Wham Episode: The entire update when attack on Krsko power plant happens counts as one. Thousands of dead to radiation, massive panic gripping the Europe and only several obscure references to it in the preceding updates.
• Wham Line: 'If we cannot give them Hiroshima, we'll give them Chernobyl.'
• Zerg Rush: Albanians try this against the Serbs, lacking weapons (unlike real life where their rebels armed slowly for years).