The "Twilight War" falls in the category of "alternative history" now. In the Twilight War world, Gorbechev died in the 1980s and the Soviet Union did not fall apart at the beginning of the last decade. Instead, the Soviet Union drifted into a war with China. This war went badly, and an attempt at German reunification lead to war in the West as well. In 1997, the war went nuclear, not a massive exchange but a gradual escalation. The U.S. government was devastated by a strike on Washington that took out both the President and the Vice-President.