Happy that Armenia hasn't suffered from all the chaos. Hoping for better treatment of North Koreans now that the main scapegoat is available for judgement. Then again, LMB was a horrible person, so, my hopes are probably in vain.
Bush vs. The Axis of Evil - TL
Kissinger really damaged his reputation with his endorsement of Putin's invasion of Ukraine and would probably have not been as hated when he died if he didn't do that. However, he was always at best a controversial figure. His association with the Vietnam War was well known, along with the Watergate Scandal, both of which tend to give a rather negative impression. While his China policy was still regarded as a net win for the United States, those would be the things that most Americans would think of when they think Kissinger.
IOTL, after North Korea bombarded Yeonpyeong Island in November 2010, LMB contemplated a massive retaliation with air strikes and bombings in the North, until the Obama administration talked to the Chinese to make both North and South deescalate. Tough guy LMB was.
Which is why he's a fitting figure to be the South Korean President who authorizes this brazen operation at the middle of the Olympics that is taking place here.
Oh, ok, that makes sense.
What has happened to Kim Jong-Un then ITTL? And who was the second person in the box? The defector?
Perhaps the same as in The Death of Russia - he remains an obscure and low-profile figure living a seclusive life somewhere in China.
The other guy was the guard who was voluntold (along with his wife) to drug Kim and allow the agents to get him out of China. Kim's family's fate will be discussed next chapter.
That is pretty likely. Without his father in power him has not any chances to take power. And Chinese government is not going to allow him to take any notable role. So in 2024 he probably lives pretty nice (altough probably very unhealthy) private life on some nice house and he is not allowed to take any contacts with media.
Probably writing memoirs or living as a gardener or street sweeper.
Just like Aisin Gioro Puyi
I can't see her wouldhas any notable career. China is not going to allow any visibly for the Kims.
North side of the river is as before mentioned sealed off, the south side is like Berlin in the 1950s, coming back to life but the kids still play in the ruins.
I'm gonna quote my comment on how all the suffering the North Koreans were put through under Jong-il will radically change their ideological perception; contaminated North Pyongyang being one of them.
Havoc in Heaven
Havoc in Heaven
Extract from 'Korea After Kim' By Yang Wen-Li
Extract from 'Korea After Kim' By Yang Wen-Li
“Panda-monium’ was the memorable headline of the New York Post in reaction to Kim’s abduction during the Beijing Olympics, but it was no laughing matter. While Beijing scrambled to find out what was happening, they were as stunned as everyone else when Seoul broadcast footage of a black-eyed Kim sulking in his jail cell. South Korea, at the moment the whole world was paying attention to China, violated Chinese sovereignty and kidnapped someone China had promised protection to. The outrage was fever-pitch. South Koreans living in China were ordered by their government to leave immediately, with China ordering the South Korean team’s expulsion. On August 9th, as the games continued, nationwide rioting swept China, burning Korean owned homes and businesses. Samsung and Hyundai stores were sacked by mobs, with some ninety-five people killed by Chinese mobs in the coming days (a mix of Chinese bystanders and employees, ethnic Koreans and Korean nationals). China’s positive publicity that they hoped to receive from the games was dashed as journalists saw xenophobic riots in the centre of Beijing burning Korean and Japanese flags. As one Guardian columnist put it, “At the 1936 Games, the Nazis succeeded in masking their hatred of their racial enemies - this time around, it appears the Politburo has been unable to do the same thing. The xenophobia that has been quietly cultivated in China as a substitute for class consciousness could not hide its ugly face on the streets of Beijing.” The only Koreans who faced approval in China at the time were Kim’s family, who were sent on a plane to Cuba where they remain as guests of the Communist government to this day.
Japan and Taiwan (under the Chinese Taipei moniker) would be the only countries to announce their solidarity with Korea on the expulsion and would pull out voluntarily. Similar calls rose all across Western countries but a mix of corporate sponsorships and political interference would make sure they stayed. The Olympic Committee insisted on the game’s continuing (while meekly cautioning Korea’s removal), in a move that brought an outrage that paradoxically increased Olympic viewership. News effortlessly switched between the Olympics and the contours of the upcoming trial of Kim Jong-Il, who would be tried in Seoul for crimes against humanity with the death sentence permissible. President MB insisted that the trial would be an entirely South Korean affair, with no UN, US or Japanese presence except for journalists - they especially didn’t want UN involvement considering that not only had the UN Mission in Korea been terminated by the war, but relations between the ROK and the UN had plummeted due to their treatment of North Koreans, resulting in the Republic of Korea being the second most condemned country in the UN behind Israel. While the trial would not begin for another six months, the South Koreans began to interrogate Kim about what he knew. Unfortunately, Kim had his own tricks up his sleeve.
Once Kim heard about events in China, knowing his fate was already sealed, it is widely believed Kim decided to stir the pot one last time so that all his enemies would choke on their own blood, even if he went down with them. Given his solitary confinement with the only meals of gruel instead of the lobster he had gotten used to, he had to be force-fed for the first two months. Kim alleged that not only had China privately supported the invasion of South Korea with aid, but that he had been encouraged to do so as part of a plan to expel US influence from East Asia. To this day, this belief is the majority belief of Koreans, though it is a minority belief among the academy. However, the hard-right government of Korea under President MB and the increasingly influential Unification Party offshoot of the Unification Church were ready to believe it. These allegations came out while the Olympics were still ongoing, leading to further disbelief and uproar. It was under these occasions that Sun Myung Moon would deliver his ‘final prophecy’ in 2010. He alleged that Russia and China were the kingdoms of Gog and Magog from the Book of Revelation and that with the Antichrist of Kim defeated, the final enemies to the Kingdom of Heaven would be found in them. President MB was willing to tank the economic hit from China in a way that the previous leadership was not, with Korea having a full embargo slapped on it by China. Thousands of Chinese people in Korea were recalled as relations fell to the worst since the First Korean War. In a final insult, China even expelled the Korean ambassador in response to their alleging they were behind Kim’s invasion, leading to the ROK to respond identically. China surged troops over the border into the zone of occupation into North Korea in defiance of previously existing agreements - South Korea responded by sending troops over the former DMZ in defiance of its obligations. At the instigation of Sun Myung Moon, North Koreans would passively resist the Chinese within the occupation zone, blocking roads, misspelling signs and refusing to help the Chinese occupation force in any capacity. This made the Unification Church enemy number one to the Chinese, especially given the Anti-Communist and nationalistic zeal of the movement neatly coincided with Anti-Chinese feeling for the occupation of the Korean homeland. This helped greatly to mollify fears that North Koreans represented a fifth column and led to a slow reevaluation of North Koreans as loyal after all. An exodus already began from the occupation zone towards the now somewhat preferable South Korean zone, especially as Chinese persecution in the region began to increase. By the time the Olympics concluded, relations between Korea and China had reached what historian Stephen Kotkin called, “The closest we’ve ever seen anyone come to war without firing a shot - we were one lousy soldier away from two nuclear powers in direct conflict”.
The sheer threat of this had compelled the Wellstone Administration to cancel campaigning and call up Seoul and Beijing day and night to try and stop the escalation before two nuclear powers were shooting at each other. The European powers loudly announced that they were staying out of it, so badly burned had they been by American adventurism before, further putting pressure on Seoul, with only Japan offering diplomatic backup. Brought along to the American negotiation team was honorary member of the Harlem Globetrotters, Henry Kissinger [1], summoning all the good will he had left in China to try and calm the Politburo down. This greatly angered many of Wellstone’s base given Kissinger’s involvement in some of America’s darkest actions during the Cold War, but Wellstone was conscious of the upcoming election and was desperate to continue his mandate of keeping America at peace. Wellstone was also angry at Seoul, however, as not only had the ROK undermined its reputation by refusing to give a path to citizenship for the North Koreans, but they had picked an otherwise suicidal fight against China in the expectation of American support. American appetite to defend Korea was deeply divided, with polls suggesting a partisan split with Republicans eager to defend the Koreans and Democrats not wanting to send more Americans to die, let alone against a nuclear power. Wellstone would pointedly relay this fact to Seoul and would refuse to publicly commit to defend South Korea anywhere north of the former DMZ, implying he might be okay with Chinese actions to seize the rest of the former North Korea. Wellstone was hardly over the moon at this (he would later claim outside of office that he probably would have intervened even if the fighting was just in the former North) but Wellstone thought it necessary to calm the South Koreans down, especially when their nightly news was dominated by videos of lynchings and flag burnings in China. Mercifully, Wellstone’s Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, had structured his campaign entirely around Wellstone’s economic policies, leaving him ill-equipped to strike on foreign policy. Romney even cancelled campaigning during the height of the crisis, a fact Wellstone would hit back on Romney in subsequent debates as it implied Romney was confident in what he was doing. Unfortunately for the Romney-Palin ticket, the truth about Jon Edwards would not come out until the election was over.
On August 25th, one day after the Olympics concluded, the athletes worried all the while that they were about to be at ground-zero of a war between the West and China, South Korea and China would make an official de-escalation pledge, with both parties rescinding their troop numbers in North Korea while South Korea pledged to be ‘more objective’ about the claims coming out of the mouth of Kim Jong-Il in relation to China. No agreement was reached on a return of ambassadors - to this day, the two countries have not exchanged ambassadors since the 2008 Olympics. South Korea was also forced into a half-hearted apology for violating Chinese sovereignty while still keeping Kim in his cell for trial. To the anger of many in the Politburo, Hu did not insist on no death sentence being placed on Kim. Hu was furious at Kim for accusing him of orchestrating the War and actually wanted Kim to die for the slander he’d smeared him with (in addition to exposing the real collaboration between China and North Korea), while the rest of the Politburo felt it utterly emasculated China on the world stage. This, ultimately, would be the last straw for the hardliners when it came to Hu, and the world was about to enter a monumentally more dangerous phase.
Wellstone’s reticence to defend South Korea would not be forgotten by President MB, nor for that matter many other of America’s front-row allies. As many in the Korean security establishment feared, America had been so exhausted in its role as global policeman that a sense of isolationism had continued to grow at home. Especially with the ill-treatment of the North Koreans given increased scrutiny at home, something that enraged much of the Korean diaspora who could tell stories from their families about the conduct of the North Koreans compared to their own army. Korean-Americans have come to be known as the ‘Asian-American Cubans’ owing to their strong support of the Republicans in an otherwise Democrat-leaning group, with the Republicans winning the Korean-American vote by at least ten points in every Presidential election since 2008. But to the South Korean government, preparations were made in the form of Operation Dangun, wherein certain Kim-era North Korean figures would see their jail-sentences reduced in return for their ‘cooperation’. In what was eerily similar to how Unit 731 and the Peenemunde scientists were plucked from doom, so did these North Koreans eagerly take the deal. It would prove to be one of the most momentous decisions in East Asian history.
In Korea, the explosive economic growth that characterised the previous years imploded in days. The South Korean economy fell into a rapid year-long recession as their largest export market vanished, with Wellstone and the EU agreeing to liberalise trade with Korea to make it easier for Korea to sell their material in their markets. India also became a growing market for Korean exports, though Korea is still likely not as rich as it could have been if trade with Beijing had continued. India and Vietnam also became crucial import sources due to the loss of cheap Chinese products and labour, leading to critical technical assistance being sent their way. Korea has been very energetic in cultivating ties around South-East Asia, and is often seen as the Nowadays, however, the still-ongoing mutual embargo between Korea and China is looked upon positively in Korea, as it has increased its political independence from Beijing. Korean culture is more defiantly Anti-Beijing than either Taiwan or Japan. One unintended consequence of the squeeze on the Korean economy was the further consolidation of Korean assets under the command of the Unification Church, who supposedly even made business deals with the Scientologists to pool their resources together to buy out struggling Korean firms. North Koreans celebrated the Church for not laying off workers from their factories in the occupied North unlike many other major firms - a result of the Church using their warchest as well as utilising the cult-behaviour of many believers into willfully working far beyond legal hours sometimes for no money at all. In 2010, the Unification (and the Nation of Islam) would even endorse dianetics, a practice the Church has since used to blackmail dissenters by amassing a record of unmentionable acts of any senior member to hit them with in case they went rogue. The Church-owned factories proved so successful that many Chaebol receded from owning factories in the occupied North Korea and simply ordered produce from the Church owned factories, since the Church could convince the workers to go harder than anyone else. The Church’s sociopathic exploitation of its own membership was drowned out due to their steadfast opposition to the Chinese occupation, and would turn the once struggling group into a group that was rapidly becoming something of a Chaebol itself.
But the international drama was not over - indeed, it would only escalate. On November 19th 2008, Beijing announced the shock resignation of President Hu over ‘health concerns’ and the ascension of Vice-President and hardliner Xi Xinping. It was essentially a repeat of the Khrushchev-Brezhnev coup, with Hu sent into early retirement. His more lax policy of trying to ensure cooperation with Western countries through trade was seen as having been weak and had invited the abduction of Kim, an event that thoroughly humiliated Chinese security services and was seen as a treaty violation from an ungrateful Korea. Xi by contrast was a hardliner, who felt that Capitalism had weakened China’s resolve and that for now it had to be combed back to bring back a more totalitarian form of control over the country. In Xi’s first announcement to the Chinese nation, he reiterated his outrage at Korea and announced an ‘All-out war against spies and fifth columnists’. Few could have fathomed just what he meant at the time. While it started with an all-out purge of ‘incompetents’ in the security services (tellingly, almost all ethnic Koreans began to vanish from major positions in the Communist Party), Xi was ready to enshrine himself in infamy almost immediately.
On February 2nd 2009, in defiance of prior arrangements, Xi announced that Chinese law would apply to the Chinese occupation zone of North Korea. Restrictions on speech would be strictly enforced, with the Unification Church (which had been banned in China) proving a major target. The Chinese attempted to destroy the churches, causing riots across the occupation zone. Once three Chinese soldiers were killed destroying a church in Chongju, the Chinese clamped down and declared martial law within the region. North Koreans scrambled to leave the zone while they still could, leading to a surge into the South Korean occupation zone (and attempts to get over the old DMZ which were fiercely rejected by South Korean border guards). Xi alleged that Korean spies were getting into China over the Yalu by the help of the local Koreans, and so China would ‘attempt to resolve the matter’ by filtering the local population for their loyalty. On February 28th, North Koreans still left in the occupation zone within the first fifty miles or so of the Yalu began to be sent to the old concentration camps erected in the Kim era. Some North Koreans reportedly died of heart attacks or had complete mental collapses seeing the old barbed wires, cellrooms and watchtowers again. ‘Could you imagine,’ one North Korean recalled, ‘To be a Jew, dragged back to Auschwitz? I don’t have to imagine - I lived it.’ The conditions were every bit as bad as they were ten years before, with dozens crammed into rooms that would fit two, decreasing food and increasing dysentery, along with the most resistant Koreans simply being shot. And not in thousands, but hundreds of thousands, with the entire male population in some villages arrested and dragged to the concentration camps. Those who were seen as ‘irredeemable’ were blindfolded and put on trains that carried them over the Yalu, into the dark emptiness of China - some of whom were never to be seen again. China, in its rage against Korea’s audacity, proved it was willing to cross the moral Rubicon.
Those who thought such atrocities would stir the world to action would be greatly disappointed. South Korea in virtually all its political parties called for a global boycott of China, but only Japan was content to put words to action and announced a three year plan to urgently reduce dependence on Chinese industry. The UN would express their ‘grave concerns’ while the US and Europe would condemn it without doing much of anything as the Chinese economy was too important at a time when their own economies were hurting so bad, thus simply sanctioning the hierarchy of the CCP and Chinese companies who intimately survived the occupation in North Korea. Some European leaders almost completely ignored it, having come to power on a wave of Anti-Americanism and not wanting to immediately sink back into the Atlanticist fold. Russia would outright support the measures, saying the worst accusations were untrue and that it was necessary for China to defend its borders, going as far as to hand over defectors who crossed into Russia back to the Chinese, who would send them to Kim’s camps again. Unfortunately for China, they had to do this action in the face of President MB, a man who was determined enough to abduct Kim Jong Il during the Olympics. He had launched Operation Dangun for that very reason, and faced with what was the greatest outrage visited upon the Koreans by foreigners since the Japanese occupation, he decided to choose going too far over not going far enough. Utilising the remains of Kim’s longest-running project, on March 21st 2009, a nuclear explosion lit up South Korean territorial waters inside the Sea of Japan. The Republic of Korea had joined the nuclear club. That evening President MB would deliver a television message where he would ‘call upon China to come to its senses and treat our fellow Koreans with the dignity they deserve. Given that China was content at the thought of Kim Jong-Il to possess nuclear weapons, we hold no weight in its concerns that these weapons have made their appearance in this peninsula. The only concerns they should feel are if they continue their path towards national disgrace in occupied Korea, and the havoc that could be unleashed.’ A return to nuclear brinkmanship, a sight thought relegated to the world of the Berlin Wall, had returned.
The world collectively fell out of its chair in disbelief. Xi had never thought Seoul would go that far, and neither did most of the free world. Wellstone would send out a statement condemning both China’s action and South Korea’s ‘decision not to follow the non-proliferation agreement, although we can certainly understand their decision’. The EU and Russia would put out a joint-statement calling for ‘reasonable discussion instead of bellicose talk of war’. Japan remained silent. South Koreans by contrast were infuriated with the West seemingly more angry with their attempt to defend ‘their people’ (an important evolution in healing the scars of the Second Korean War) than China’s atrocities against ‘their people’, and were further outraged at word America was trying to push a grand deal to have South Korea remove the nukes in return for Korean law to be re-established in the Chinese occupation zone. Ultimately, neither Seoul or China were totally willing to budge, but neither were willing for a war either. Thus, after rapid negotiations between Beijing and Seoul, it was agreed that China would open the concentration camps and give North Koreans living in the Chinese occupation zone two months starting from April 15th to June 15th the right to move out to the South Korean occupation zone. South Korea would maintain their nukes (something Beijing was privately mixed about, since it theorised it would weaken US presence in the Pacific) while Chinese law would remain in force in the zone, although China agreed to ban Israeli-style Chinese settlements within the occupation zone and an otherwise total ban on non-military presence, something that it had no interest in as they wanted to create a buffer, not to ultimately annex the territory instead. On April 3rd, the ‘Hanoi Understanding’ (named after the negotiation venue) would be announced, ultimately leading to an exodus of North Koreans from the Chinese occupation zone, with some 95% of Koreans leaving the zone towards the now rapidly overpopulating South Korean occupation zone.
The Chinese occupation zone remains almost a ghost-country, with only the road network maintained while most of the major cities are going the way of Chernobyl (though Chernobyl is accessible and the Chinese occupation zone of former North Korea is not). The remaining few Koreans, cursed out by Koreans worldwide as collaborators, make absurd money from China as the labour supply is so limited while the demand of Chinese troops is so huge. Some argue that the Chinese occupation zone itself is a concentration camp, as it is essentially a fenced off military region under military rule. Not wanting to annex the region and just wanting a buffer, the Chinese have laced the region with landmines, and have essentially turned the region into such a death trap that even if China were to vanish into the sky, it’s still doubtful whether taking the land would be worth it. The ‘New DMZ’ that divides the South Koreans from the Chinese is every bit as tense as the old DMZ was, though there have been far fewer incidents owing to the significantly saner leadership in Beijing compared to Pyongyang. It has become the front line of the Second Cold War.
In response to the influx of North Koreans, their evident loyalty to the Korean state with the accompanying evolution of South Korean views on the North Korean integration issue, and ultimately the transfer of negative feelings towards North Koreans as a continuation of Kim hatred towards China instead, President MB would finally announce a liberalisation of North Korean citizenship policies on July 17th 2009. First, birthright citizenship to the ROK was issued to North Koreans born the day of the proclamation, meaning that once they became adults they were guaranteed access to South Korea no matter their status. While the only ones who would be affected by the change were still in the womb, for the ones already alive, voluntary membership in the ROK army for three years would guarantee citizenship to the soldier and family, as would establishing a successful business. A handful of more heroic resistors against the Chinese were given citizenship directly from President MB himself. While it was hardly everything the North Koreans wanted, a light out of the tunnel was in sight, and hope had been given that they would finally be treated as fellow Koreans again. As Koreans united against a new enemy, the divisions that were established in the aftermath of the war began to fade away.
As the Kim trial began, South Koreans and North Koreans alike would sit alongside one another, silently watching the trial of the century.
Extract from ‘Kim’s Footprint: How the War on Terror Changed Asia’ by Saeba Ryou
Shinzo Abe was not simply a member of the Japanese Right, but of the Nippon Kaigi, the infamous Japanese Ultraconservative organisation. His ascension and massive popularity on the back of the Second Korean War had allowed the Japanese to pursue rearmament, particularly in the naval field. Article 9 was removed by a referendum in which some 70% of the population agreed that it had outlived its usefulness, and its removal has generally been accepted as fait accompli by the Japanese population. The Japanese Navy as of today is considered the equal of China, even putting the Americans to one side. But with Korea’s announcement of nuclear weapons, a much more intense debate began in the halls of power inside Japan - was it time for Japan to join the nuclear club? At a secret meeting of the Nippon Kaigi on April 23rd 2009, with Shinzo Abe present, the arguments were reportedly pushed back and forth about the best way to go about it. Everyone knew the sensitivity of the issue given Japan’s history, but no one wanted to see Japan reduced to the minnow between Korea and China. Putting US nuclear weapons on Japanese soil was considered, but it was considered something that would effectively officialise Japan’s inferiority in East Asia. On the other hand, already humiliated by Korea’s ascension to the nuclear club, it was feared that China might overcompensate and lash out at Japan. Finally, the idea was floated to give an Israel-style nuclear program, which was to say create a nuclear stockpile but only to imply they had it. This was seen as solving some of the problems inherent in the other options and giving Japan both a road to quietly retreat and the chance to move into the open if that would be helpful either. Reportedly at a meeting in Tokyo between Abe and Korean President MB on April 5th, Abe asked the Korean what his opinion of a Japanese nuclear program would be, to which MB reportedly shrugged and said, “That’s my response.” To MB, Japan getting nukes would limit the international heat that had fallen on South Korea and help legitimise their decision. Abe took the decision to heart, and it’s widely believed that the Japanese successfully constructed a small nuclear stockpile in June 2009.
While China was initially ignorant, alarm bells were screeching in Washington, with a noticeable upturn in chatter between Japan and America. Japan also announced the construction of ‘defensive long-ranged missiles’ and nuclear submarines, things which further contributed to growing rumours that the Japanese had developed nuclear weapons. When asked by China at the United Nations in July if Japan had developed nuclear weapons, the Japanese Ambassador replied, “We can neither confirm nor deny this accusation. Although given the history of our country, we would perhaps be the most justified in possessing these weapons.” This led to an explosion of speculation in Japan about whether the country had developed nuclear weapons or not, with a rapidly increasing segment of the population thinking and fearing that they did. The Democratic Party and Communist Party of Japan staged a joint sit-in at the Diet demanding answers about the supposed nuclear program. The Hiroshima Peace Museum staged a strike on July 15th which was resolved when the staff were fired, leading to further protests. One person who made their opinion very clear was Japanese film director Hayao Miyazaki, who renounced his Japanese citizenship and moved to Sweden. On August 6th 2009 (the anniversary of the Hiroshima Bombing), nearly half a million Japanese people protested, becoming the largest protest in Japanese history. Downtown Tokyo was paralysed and Narita Airport was temporarily shut down. Polls showed that roughly 40% of Japanese people wanted Japan to have nuclear weapons, or more specifically ‘if Japan does indeed currently possess nuclear weapons, it would not seek to remove them’.
This was the highmark of the protest, but quickly the wheels would fall off, with the Liberal Democrats reaching to their reliable ally in the Yakuza. The first riots seen on Japanese streets in decades occurred, as the student left fought both the police and the Japanese Far Right, with one Japanese female student protestor infamously murdered by a Far Right Yakuza member, leading to national condemnation. The Yakuza were also called up by the Japanese government to disrupt potential strike action by the national unions, using a mix of physical intimidation and simple blackmail. The Japanese police also targeted the most charismatic and intelligent student leaders, detaining them for a long period of time under trumped up charges to have the protests taken over by the fanatics and ill-tempered who simply charged at the police and further blackened the cause of the protests. The protests further broke down between the Democratic Party, who had made peace with the removal of Article 9, and the Communists, who demanded Japan become a neutral country and to renounce its alliance with ‘Korean Apartheid’. The protests battered Abe’s popularity, but they also gave China hope that the implied Japanese nuclear program could be reversed. Once it became clear that it would not, Chinese state propaganda turned on a dime, and started to imply that Japan was only pretending to have nuclear weapons and that they were actually just American weapons. It was a cope, but it was also in the CCP’s interest, with its internal program of nationalism further purging China of Korean and Japanese influence. Jokes about sending Anime and K-Drama fans to China persist to this day, owing to China’s near blanket ban on both. To the disappointment of the Japanese Left, just like the Anpo protests of 1960, they had come up short against the Liberal Democrats.
Of the three countries that got nuclear weapons in 2009, Japan was the only one who saw severe internal dissent, but it was ultimately for naught. Despite a renewed interest after the Fukushima disaster, Japan has held onto its as of yet undisclosed nuclear program. The change has deeply shaken some of the core beliefs of the Japanese people, but most Japanese were willing to admit that the Second Korean War had created a new world and that Japan had to respond differently to it. Over time, both school trips and personal trips to the Hiroshima Peace Museum have reduced, and trips to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo have gone up. The Japanese Right have succeeded in creating a country in its image - the question of what Japan will soon become is still up in the air. And indeed, if the much feared Chinese invasion of Taiwan would happen, would the only country to have nukes used upon them be the first to bring them back?
Extract from 'Here We Go Again': How the Battle Lines of the Second Cold War Were Drawn' by Jonathon Brando
The Yanukovych victory of 2004 led to Ukraine further sinking into the Russian orbit. The EU leaders at the time had little interest in bringing in Ukraine anyway, with German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder going as far as to say that Ukraine was ‘Only as European as Vladivostok’, as he continued to implement an energy and ‘Carbon-cutting’ policy that has since been described by current German Chancellor Merz as ‘An act of national sabotage so immense that our grandchildren will curse us with their every breath.’ At the same time, the political institutions of Ukraine were slowly defanged, with Yanukovych (a petty thief in his prior days) launching one of the most biblically corrupt administrations on the European continent, or indeed any continent. The administration was staffed almost entirely by people from the Donbass region in Ukraine’s South-east, with the vast majority of state funds directed in that direction, fueling resentment in the more European-facing West. The Berkut police force that had originally been a fairly neutral party was now increasingly utilised in mob-like fashion against nationalist politicians and any others suspected of Pro-West sympathies, leading to widespread anger among much of the younger populace. In August 2009, the Pro-Russian tendencies of Yanukovych were fully metastasized when he announced that he would join the Union State confederation already used by Russia and Belarus. The move sparked widespread concern in Eastern Europe, especially in Poland, where President Lech Kaczyński began sounding the alarm to the European Parliament, but was widely dismissed by President Sarkozy and particularly Chancellor Schröder as Polish paranoia. As if to rub it in Poland’s face, Schröder ordered further Russian gas and ordered the construction of a Second Nord Stream Pipeline between Russia and Germany.
But one group who was not taking it lying down were the Ukrainians themselves. An impromptu alliance between right-wing nationalists and social liberals had formed against the Yanukovych government, seeing membership of the Union State as a de facto surrender of Ukrainian sovereignty. Meeting after the initial announcement came what initially amounted to a mass of students protesting in Maidan Square every day. It petered out, but just as the protests seemed to be fading away, on August 27th the Berkut launched a vicious clearing effort from Maidan Square, delivering some of the worst open repression since the Soviet days. This incensed the student's parents who now joined the protests, propping up a previously failing movement. Maidan Square turned into a scene of day and night battles between the protestors and Berkut with escalating deaths as a result of police sniping. However, over time, the protestors continued to overwhelm the police. On September 2nd, Yanukovych ordered the Ukrainian army to join in the repression. To his dismay, the Ukrainian army told him they would not join in such repression. It was in this desperation that he got a call. A call that would change history.
On the morning of September 3rd, Yanukovych would announce from his retreat in Sevastopol that he was requesting the assistance of the Russian army in dealing with the ‘Out of control extremists that have taken over Kiev’, and ordered the Ukrainian army to stand down and allow the Russian army in while ordering national martial law and a curfew to be imposed by both the Ukrainian and Russian army. To the minute that the speech ended, the Russian army crossed over the border in full force. Russian paratroopers arrived in Crimea, where they got a strong reception though this reception continued to get frostier the farther the troops moved West. Overwhelmingly the relatively few understaffed, overwhelmed and chronically underfunded members of the Ukrainian army simply opted to let the Russians pass, knowing there was nothing they could do about it. Russian troops arrived in Kiev at nightfall, having warned the protestors that they had the right to use lethal force to disperse the encampments at Maidan. At 22:00, the Russian army met the front line of the Ukrainian protests in Maidan, and with little hesitation, charged their tanks into the barricades. The subsequent Maidan Massacre would kill roughly one hundred and ninety people in the next two hours, with Russian troops crushing the protests. Less publicised killings would occur in Lviv in the early hours of the subsequent morning, but by midday of September 4th, Yanukovych had announced that ‘Order has been restored in Ukraine’. So began the new era of occupation, which lasts to this day.
Putin had grown deeply suspicious of the West as a result of the War on Terror, and worried that the West was planning to disintegrate the Russian Federation like the Soviet Union had before. This was part correct, as the Neocons had set out in the War on Terror to eliminate potential allies for any enemy superpower to the United States before it was too late. However, while America could play attack, Putin rationalised that so could he. His pseudo-mystical obsession with the Kievan Rus, St. Lavra’s and uniting Orthodoxy further inspired his choice of target. Putin would recall on an interview for Russian state TV that his advisors had considered just taking Crimea and the Donbas to ‘save Russian minorities from Ukrainian Nationalism’. Instead, Putin felt that the Americans and British and so exhausted themself that they had left themselves weak to a full-on geopolitical counterattack. Anti-West feeling was at its peak, American-isolationism was at a Post-War high, his relative economic position was at its zenith due to Gazprom, so there would be no better time to bring Ukraine back under Russian heel than right now. With that, Putin had gambled his Presidency on restoring Russian dominion over Ukraine, and unfortunately for the Ukrainians, he succeeded.
As Yanukovych was agreed to be the legitimate democratically elected president by the West, Russia had any easy time justifying their presence at the UN with the Chinese likewise giving their full support to crushing the Pro-West protestors. However, the videos of the massacre shocked and appalled the world and led to public outcry in Europe. Except where it mattered. Because of Anti-Western feelings among certain European countries and exhaustion due to the War on Terror, and above all due to the dependence that Germans especially had on Russian gas, the response to the de facto conquest of Ukraine was, to say the least, uninspiring. While President Wellstone would condemn Russian actions, this was not followed up by much action, given that he was already overwhelmed with the situation in the Middle East and East Asia, not to mention the domestic fallout of the John Edwards Scandal, unleashed almost as soon as his second term began and reducing his second term into a long lame-duck. This was, to say the least, inspiring feelings of utter terror in the Baltic States and Poland, already horrified due to the limp response by the West to the Georgian war in 2008. The massacres of years gone by under the Russian Empire and USSR now flashed before their eyes. Fearing they were about to be thrown to the wolves again, and that not even a NATO agreement was sufficient to protect themselves, drastic measures were undertaken. These measures would utilise Poland's strong nuclear program that had massively expanded with French aid during the high water mark of the oil prices during the War on Terror, as well as their budding arms contract clauses with Israel and South Korea, who were more than happy to trade 'experts'.
Inspired by events in East Asia opening the floodgates to nuclear proliferation and the indifference of the United States, Poland would announce on November 10th that they had developed nuclear weapons, throwing the European order into yet further bedlam. The Russian state media was outraged, calling it ‘The birth of a new Nazi power on the continent’. Germany (or more specifically the Schröder government) condemned Poland’s decision in language more colourful than its condemnation the Maidan Massacre, a decision that was met with disgust by not just the Polish but indeed the German electorate, who saw the Polish nuclear response as unfortunate but entirely understandable. It would ultimately lead to the SDP finally deciding to remove Schröder. However he would continue to serve on the Nord Stream 2 board, something Germany’s new Christian Democrat Coalition refused to cancel, simply due to how deeply entwined the German economy had become with Russian natural gas. Instead, the CDU emphasised the need for negotiations to assure Ukrainians of maintaining autonomy, something which the Poles considered almost as bad as anything Schröder had said.
The United States would convene an emergency UN meeting two weeks after Poland’s sudden ascension to the nuclear club, where both they and the rest of the Security Council would urgently begin to prop-up whatever was left of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty. Three countries had joined the nuclear club in a single year, all nominal American allies but America was hardly celebrating. They knew that the consequence of a free-for-all for nukes was the rapid escalation of chance that a country would deploy them, thus ending the taboo and risking human extinction at the foot of a mushroom cloud. Though Wellstone’s powerful speech condemning nuclear weapons and the need for further arms control was well-received, it had grown increasingly obvious why this proliferation had happened. The world had demanded America step back from policing the world, only for the vacuum left behind to be filled with the countless opportunistic dictatorships to devour and conquer their victims, leading to the smaller nations to resort to the only home-grown deterrence that made anyone sit up. Wellstone had only done what the American people asked him to do, but now the American people realised that maybe they’d been a little too hands-off, now that nuclear states were popping up all over the world, especially in the more dangerous locations. Wellstone’s already troubled term would see him pounded day and night by Republicans for not being strong enough. The contours of the next global standoff were already taking shape - the one we still find ourselves in today.
[1] OTL, believe it or not
Last edited:
Not at all - he moved American domestic policy much to the relative left and his open support of gay marriage and the like will age well. Wellstone's reluctance to intervene in foreign affairs was shared even by many Republican voters after the War on Terror debacle, it's just that he was unlucky enough to be in charge when these events started happening.