Eastern Alliance

The Eastern Alliance is a militaristic and totalitarian human interstellar state in the original Battlestar Galactica television series. The Alliance is opposed by the Western Coalition. It is primarily located on the planet Terra.

Depiction
The Eastern Alliance appears in "Greetings from Earth", "Baltar's Escape" and "Experiment in Terra".

"Greetings from Earth" reveals the Alliance uses neutron (nuclear) weapons to clear habitable planets of Western population. "Experiment in Terra" reveals the Alliance has been wiping out the populations of every Western satellite. Later in the episode, the Alliance launches a surprise nuclear strike to wipe out the West after having maneuvered the Western Coalition president into a questionable peace treaty. They attack during the President's speech about the worthless peace treaty, and move the "critical and loyal" part of their population into bomb shelters. The Commandant refuses to warn the general population of the Alliance, saying that losses will be acceptable and that overpopulation is one of their biggest problems..

The Eastern Alliance has space-faring ships, force fields, laser guns and cryogenics. They use wheeled vehicles, lack ships capable of light speed, and cannot defend themselves against nuclear warfare. The Alliance favors a large laser rifle with a red pulsing strobe light.

The standard Alliance ship is the destroyer. Destroyers are numbered and patrol areas in and around Terra and the various satellites. The destroyer is small enough to land in the Galactica's landing bay and is crewed by approximately six men and an officer. While questioning Commodant Leiter in "Baltar's Escape", Adama states that the Alliance "would need a thousand such destroyers to attack the Galactica".

The uniform worn by Commondant Leiter is a mix of Soviet and National Socialist influences. The shoulder boards are almost exactly the same as those used by Soviet officers. The unit marking above the right cuff is from the Nazi practice of an identical type of band that denoted named Wehrmacht divisions, such as "Panzer Lehr." Other items such as the hat are hybrids of the Soviet's officer's cap and the Nazi schirmutze. Apparently the idea of the Eastern Alliance officer's uniform was to hybridize the uniforms used by Fascist/Socialist states; the National Socialists of Germany and the Communists of the Soviet Union are the two most obvious influences on the uniform.

Reception
Josef Steiff identifies the "Eastern Alliance" as a stand in "for the 'Eastern Bloc' countries of the Soviet Union", while John Kenneth Muir sees this "enemy as ruthless as the Cylons" as "fascistic."

Josef Steiff argues that the show "suggests that Evil is universal (existing in...the Eastern Alliance, per 'Experiment in Terra') and that its agenda is to lead humanity astray, away from the light and the universe of the spirit." John Kenneth Muir writes that Eastern Alliance forces have "little impact" and that "in execution, the Eastern Alliance baddies were not really much more interesting than the faceless Cylons".

Analysis
In spite of the prior comments, many fans found the idea of the Cold War continuing to its logical conclusion a fascinating one.

What is frightening is that it could have happened if the Soviets had adopted the limited Socialist/partial capitalism economic model of the National Socialists rather than clinging to all-economic-controlling Communism. The resources of the USSR were immense compared to the Reich and the idea of a Hitler-type Socialism controlling those resources, versus an inherently inefficient Communist one, one that combined Socialist ideology with the economic model of the Nazis, they might have taken half the world as depicted by the Eastern Alliance— like Hitler tried to. WW2 was largely a supply war and the Germans were forever running short on everything. The Soviets had an abundance of metals, oil and other strategic resources that Germany lacked.

That idea of such evil taking half the world is hard to put into words.

One fascinating parallel is that the President of the Western Coalition is very much like President Clinton was a decade later.

The planet Terra itself was an exact duplicate of Earth. That requires an act of deliberate creation by someone. Such could not happen by accident.

Like the rest of the series, distances and velocity appear to ignore the known laws of physics.

Characters

 * The Eastern Alliance Leader was played by Nehemiah Persoff.
 * Commandant Leiter was played by Lloyd Bochner.
 * Krebbs was plays by Curt Lowens.