Economic upheaval around the world in the early 1990s becomes an opportunity for France and Germany to consolidate their power in Europe through an alliance called the European Confederation or EurCon.

Because North African immigrants are flooding Europe looking for work, riots in France and Germany prompts both countries to force a number of former Warsaw Pact nations to accept them in various factories.

Because of heavy opposition, the Poles figure out that the EurCon armies plan to envelop Polish forces in a pincer movement and pull them out to safe havens in Eastern Poland.

The failed nuclear attack forces the US to launch Operation Counterweight - a concerted strike on enemy facilities in France and Germany proper.

A B-52 raid levels French resupply facilities in Metz while a surgical strike destroys France's S3 IRBM silos in the Plateau d'Albion, Vaucluse.

Behind the scenes, the French seeks Russian intervention against the anti-EurCon forces, which are fighting delaying actions to buy time for the American troops disembarking in Gdańsk.

CIA operatives make contact with loyalist Russian officers and learn that the EurCon-Russia treaty will both lead to a massive Russian invasion of Europe and French support for an ultra-nationalist plan for Russia to forcibly re-create the Eastern Bloc; the CIA agents are shocked when the lead loyalist officer bluntly says that the treaty can be killed off by wiping out the top conspirators before they can send enforcement orders from Moscow.

The EurCon offensive is finally stopped when elements of the US 101st Airborne Division hold the line in a wooded area near the town of Swiecie in time for other US armored units to reinforce them.