Based on the last map, the world of Reds vs. Blues is now in the year 2013.
By now, the cold war that gripped the post-Revolution world has more or less abated. With the splitting of the LISS in 1980, the League of Nations has slowly slid into irrelevance – certainly, it is less of a military bloc than it was before, and has now become something more like a badass UN than the Allies from Red Alert.
Nowadays, the “Reds vs. Blues” thing is a dick-measuring contest between the 3rd International, led from Moscow, and the 4th International, led from Berlin.
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The British Commonwealth is now more like it is IOTL, an old boy’s club, where people like to wax lyrical about the days when they were the 400lb gorilla. There are still a number of dominions, though they have reduced in number – many have since voted to become republics, or a federated monarchy in the case of Malaya. However, several former colonies have federated into the UK, similar to the Overseas Departments (etc.) of France IOTL, like Gambia and most of the Pacific and Caribbean Islands. On the other hand, Fiji and British Guiana have now joined the dominion club. Much like IOTL, only the Middle Eastern former protectorates declined joining the Commonwealth, though the area around Aden was attached to the UK and has more or less found its peace with that.
The Indian Commonwealth states have all formed into a regional bloc – the imaginatively entitled Indian Union – based on trade and mutual defence against the still Red Hindustan (despite being a tad more mellow these days).
The UK is far from a waning power, though. With less focus on hard power (though it still has lots and lots of nukes), it refocused its energies towards modernised industry and technology. It is a world leader in science, and the world’s 4th largest economy (Japan has recently overtaken it…again).
Similarly, Japan had to reign back its more overtly expansionist dreams. The *GEACPS is now like a Far Eastern EU, with Japan as France in terms of military power, and Germany in terms of industrial power. Many states formerly in the British sphere have migrated into it over the past two decades, though they have largely still also remained in the Commonwealth. The rump of the Dutch East Indies is now a rather shaky federal republic, and is also a member of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, helped to stay there by lots of Japanese-made arms and yen being thrown at them.
A rising force in the LoN is the newly forged *Arab League. They are ruled either by broadly secular or classically traditionalist Islamic governments – Wahhabis are confined to the Nejd, and Hashemite-ruled Arabia is more than happy for them all to stay there. Instead of radicals and extremists, they are more than happy to export petroleum – not much need for an Arab Spring here, except maybe in the Sudan (which isn’t that nice ITTL either).
Portugal managed to wean itself off Spartacist ideology just in time. Like Britain, it has integrated the majority of its smaller colonies into itself, with a degree of local autonomy. Angola and Mozambique are what is ambiguously termed “co-republics”, which no-one really gets, but are effectively the republican version of dominions, or like the relationship between the US and Puerto Rico, only on a more equal basis.
The Dutch government in exile has had to reconcile itself with never being able to get the Netherlands back, especially after granting the rump East Indies’ independence in 1984. Fortunately, they were not happy with *Communist Indonesia’s overtures for unification, and have stayed the hell away from Jakarta.
Similarly, the Spanish government in exile has had to adapt itself to the modern world. The Philippines have now become a dominion rather than an integral province, due to the distance and problems of communication between them. The Filipino government is still very conservative, while the Greater Antilles are moderate, bordering on fairly liberal.
The Kingdom of Italy is now mostly democratic, despite getting there via a more hardline Spartacist government during the ’80s. However, with the north becoming more open, there was less need for the south to be quite as militarised. Abyssinia is now a dominion, with full independence – the only real connection now is a personal-union and an intricate system of trade and mutual-defence treaties. With south Abyssinia is still red, the north stayed loyal (also thanks to the large Italian settler population).
France (the African one), on the other hand, has fared rather worse. Inter-ethnic and religious turmoil forced it to loosen its structure a bit. What’s more, Chari and Ouadai provinces voted to become independent, though Algiers had the sense to just let them go – fortunately, the three states remain on (mostly) friendly terms. Similarly, its protectorates were allowed to slip out of its sphere because they simply couldn’t afford the costs of occupying them any longer.
While the Scandinavians (well, Denmark, really) rejoiced at the thought that hordes of rampaging Atomic German Commies™ weren’t suddenly going to start parachuting from massive zeppelins with shark faces painted on the front to the sound of funky music at any moment, the Balkan League suffered a huge crisis of conscience. After all, with the European *Communists suddenly turning out to be mellow, intellectual socialists and (shock horror) the good guys, they didn’t have much reason to not turn on each other instead. However, Finland has a very, very large collection of brown pants, because Russia is still leering at it in a rather creepy way.
Montenegro is now an even bigger whiner than it was previously, and underground anarchists and crypto-communists groups are abound (well, that’s what the Government says, anyway[1]). Bulgaria decided to pack away its “haters gotta’ hate” t-shirts and matching caps and decided to open up for business – turns out the Euro-Commies actually just wanted to trade after all, who knew. On the other hand, Romania, thankful that it has one fewer front to worry about, can still see Russia from its house. And the Greeks still really don’t like the Turks, about the only people they hate more than the Brits, who didn’t let them have Cyprus (still a dominion) or Constantinople.
The much hyped reunification between the Russian Free State and the Empire of Russia (Alaska) never happened. After so long apart, they just didn’t have enough in common to bring themselves closer together. The former state is now in the Japanese sphere, while Alaska is now one of the last remaining properly Spartacist countries, along with Transcaucasia and Turkestan.
By the present day, the various LoN mandates have voted on their futures. Shanghai has joined nationalist China, the Marshal Islands and Nauru have become dependencies of the Spanish monarchists and formerly German New Guinea has become a state of Australia (along with Papua), while formerly German Samoa became a dependency of New Zealand – none of these were terribly surprising. Tsingtao is now Japanese[2], run as an autonomous prefecture all by itself (again, no big surprise there). Formerly Russian Obock has joined with royalist Abyssinia (odd, but not hugely controversial), while Tangier declared itself a Free City[3]. However, no one expected the Straits Zone to vote themselves into becoming a dominion, not least the British (who were pleasantly surprised, though the Russians are still rather narked at this). [4]
And all the while, the US is getting richer and richer, desperately holding on to the #1 Most Biggest Economy position. Not having spent so much on a big-arse defence budget and enough nukes to sterilise a whole solar system, it has minded its own business flogging its business elsewhere, making bucket loads of cash in the meantime. However, it is regarding the new European project with interest, and the Latino socialists (who adhere to the 2nd International) are developing very quickly. If only Alaska would pay attention to it, instead of glaring at Russia, the US would like very much to get its hands on those (mineral) assets…
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Meanwhile, the Russo-European split finally happened in 1979. The EFSR held on to most of the more solidly *communist states, but the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Persia, Uighuristan, Somalia, South Ethiopia and (the biggest blow of all) France sided with Moscow.
Strangely enough, unlike the USSR IOTL, the EFSR is actually bigger now that it is a properly democratic socialist state than when it was the iron heart of Europe. Croatia and Lithuania both voted to join the federation not long after the Split, partially prompting a further split amongst the remaining LISS members. The African provinces are also all still inside the federation – one thing they did really well was the whole anti-racist thing, and they are quite well developed, though with different problems to OTL.
The KMT decided that it had finished pretending to be even remotely communist in 1986, when its economy started blossoming properly. Though nationalist China isn’t the economic powerhouse the PRC is IOTL, it’s still about equivalent to OTL Brazil.
The former LISS split even further in the late 1980s and early ’90s between those still adhering to the *Third International (the unreconstructed), and those members of the newer Fourth International (reconstructed, more like the Nordic Left than Leninism). However, Libya was the only non-European member of the old LISS that stuck with the EFSR, thankfully run by technocrats rather than a Gadhafi-type dictator, though it isn’t quite as progressive as the others.
Spain is technically a 4th international state, though it isn’t that friendly with the EFSR. It held a series of referenda throughout its overseas provinces in 1987 – most of them voted to stay in, but with a decent level of autonomy; only the Saharia district chose to become independent, and has joined the *Arab League (no tensions with Morocco ITTL, with no contiguous border).
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The remainder of the 3rd International have stuck fast to Russia, who is still proud to call itself a True Inheritor of the *Communist Revolution™ in public, while the grandees make boatloads of money, sip cognac and smoke big cigars in penthouse apartments with various women with negotiable degrees of virtue.
Red France is now in a big sulk. Not only did its (multiple) overtures to its African counterpart to unify with it fail miserably (similarly with Wallonia, who likes being a separate country too much), it has still to find a proper place for itself. It is still the second most industrialised member of the 3rd International, and is catching up quickly with Russia, but it is sure that nobody really gets them, or loves them, or cares, and it has lots and lots of nukes…
Italy has still stuck with the tried and tested *Fascist model, at least publically. However, it is now 33.3% less authoritarian, and about 1500% more capitalist than it was back in the ’70s. With greater economic freedoms, it has also boomed, though some are considering it to be still rather shaky. Fortunately, though, it is no longer compulsory to have massive classical-styled statues of the Dictator absolutely everywhere, and people can be excused for only having the odd one or two portraits of him about the place, instead of in every room. They do still love their big posters and outside murals of party bigwigs, though.
What makes the “Third” even more pissed off is that the LoN countries in Europe have invited the “Fourth” countries in central Europe to join in with their new-fangled Common Economic Market[5], based in London, without inviting them as well. I mean, of course they wouldn’t accept joining the Bastion of Bourgeois Imperialist Capitalism, but there is such thing as manners, after all…
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During the 1980s, with the LISS in tatters, the LoN loosing much of its militaristic basis and decolonisation firmly underway, the (more) democratic nations of Europe banded together for the purpose of trade. Britain had already formed bilateral agreements with Portugal, the Scandinavian countries, the Kingdom of Italy and the Balkan League, and they with most of each other. The Treaty of Stockholm (1984) formalised this interconnected set of trade agreements into a single Common Economic Market, which was joined by both the Spanish and Dutch exilic governments by the early ’90s, and by Tangier in 1999.
It wasn’t without some setbacks, though. Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands rejected membership at first, though Iceland joined in its own terms in 2005, thanks to guarantees in regards to its fisheries. Concerns by the rest of the Dominions that the UK and the rest of its European members would focus too much on trading with the continent were abated by the Treaty of Wexford (1994), began to establish bilateral trading agreement between members of the Commonwealth Economic Forum (created in 1967) and the Common Economic Market. The Indian Union acceded to these in 2001, and the final Commonwealth members to join – Burma and the Cantonese Republic did so in 2010.
Further bilateral agreements have since been made with France-in-Africa (1991), the Philippines (1993), Angola and Mozambique (1995), north Abyssinia (1996), the Arab League (2004) and Japan and Korea (2006 and 2007 respectively) have connecting existing trade networks further. However, the most controversial measure yet was in inviting those countries that acceded to the 2nd and 4th Internationals to join talks[6]. The former was easier to stomach – the existing members all had prominent left-wing parties that were in favour of this, and they had done a lot of trade with the Latino Socialist nations in the past. Talks with forming bilateral trade with the Organisation of Socialist States (which by now also included Guatemala and Haiti) began in 2009, and was finalised in February 2010.
The latter proposal, however, caused a lot of consternation. There was still a lot of bad feeling by the largely defunct Balkan League towards the Central European *Communists, and they have threatened to walk out of talks several times without agreement being reached. The Royalist Spanish were furious at Britain and Portugal’s suggestion of inviting Red Spain to join the CMS, even as an observer, and while the Scandinavians were broadly in favour of the EFSR joining, Britain was wary of such a big industrial power (the world’s 2nd biggest economy) disrupting its trading dominance within the bloc. Only time will tell whether the capitalist nations of Europe can set the past aside and join hands with former rivals, even ones that have changed so much.
All the while, Paris and Moscow are fuming, and are carefully considering a response to the possible expansion of the Bourgeois Capitalist™ trade bloc on their doorstep. Meanwhile, they are also turning their eyes towards the various unaligned countries scattered about, and dream of driving a wedge between the members of Japan’s sphere of influence. The Co-Prosperity Sphere is becoming increasingly unbalanced – that is, away from Japan. As the Chinese states industrialise and rapidly grow their economies, calls for reunification are becoming increasingly loud.
And the global atomic arsenals are still on hair triggers…
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[1] But that’s just what they want you to think…
[2] This is completely unsurprising as (a) the place is packed with Japanese nationals, (b) the Japanese presided over a long period of prosperity, and (c) they weren’t that bothered about joining up with the Ch’ing.
[3] It was a close-run thing, though, only winning by a 10% margin over joining up with Red Spain. Tensions continue over its status to this day.
[4] The Dominion of the Bosporus is like a giant-sized Hong Kong, which is a liberal democracy, really, really doesn’t want to go back to the Turks (still Communist), and doesn’t particularly want to end up being a token autonomous province of its former parent. Unlike Hong Kong on the other hand, it would take a lot more than a platoon crossing the street to take the straits back, which the Red Turks can ill afford at the moment. Especially with their German paymasters having embarrassingly forgotten where they put the key to the deposit boxes…
[5] Think the EEC, but with more non-European members.
[6] No one particularly wanted members of the 3rd International to join in just yet.
By now, the cold war that gripped the post-Revolution world has more or less abated. With the splitting of the LISS in 1980, the League of Nations has slowly slid into irrelevance – certainly, it is less of a military bloc than it was before, and has now become something more like a badass UN than the Allies from Red Alert.
Nowadays, the “Reds vs. Blues” thing is a dick-measuring contest between the 3rd International, led from Moscow, and the 4th International, led from Berlin.
--
The British Commonwealth is now more like it is IOTL, an old boy’s club, where people like to wax lyrical about the days when they were the 400lb gorilla. There are still a number of dominions, though they have reduced in number – many have since voted to become republics, or a federated monarchy in the case of Malaya. However, several former colonies have federated into the UK, similar to the Overseas Departments (etc.) of France IOTL, like Gambia and most of the Pacific and Caribbean Islands. On the other hand, Fiji and British Guiana have now joined the dominion club. Much like IOTL, only the Middle Eastern former protectorates declined joining the Commonwealth, though the area around Aden was attached to the UK and has more or less found its peace with that.
The Indian Commonwealth states have all formed into a regional bloc – the imaginatively entitled Indian Union – based on trade and mutual defence against the still Red Hindustan (despite being a tad more mellow these days).
The UK is far from a waning power, though. With less focus on hard power (though it still has lots and lots of nukes), it refocused its energies towards modernised industry and technology. It is a world leader in science, and the world’s 4th largest economy (Japan has recently overtaken it…again).
Similarly, Japan had to reign back its more overtly expansionist dreams. The *GEACPS is now like a Far Eastern EU, with Japan as France in terms of military power, and Germany in terms of industrial power. Many states formerly in the British sphere have migrated into it over the past two decades, though they have largely still also remained in the Commonwealth. The rump of the Dutch East Indies is now a rather shaky federal republic, and is also a member of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, helped to stay there by lots of Japanese-made arms and yen being thrown at them.
A rising force in the LoN is the newly forged *Arab League. They are ruled either by broadly secular or classically traditionalist Islamic governments – Wahhabis are confined to the Nejd, and Hashemite-ruled Arabia is more than happy for them all to stay there. Instead of radicals and extremists, they are more than happy to export petroleum – not much need for an Arab Spring here, except maybe in the Sudan (which isn’t that nice ITTL either).
Portugal managed to wean itself off Spartacist ideology just in time. Like Britain, it has integrated the majority of its smaller colonies into itself, with a degree of local autonomy. Angola and Mozambique are what is ambiguously termed “co-republics”, which no-one really gets, but are effectively the republican version of dominions, or like the relationship between the US and Puerto Rico, only on a more equal basis.
The Dutch government in exile has had to reconcile itself with never being able to get the Netherlands back, especially after granting the rump East Indies’ independence in 1984. Fortunately, they were not happy with *Communist Indonesia’s overtures for unification, and have stayed the hell away from Jakarta.
Similarly, the Spanish government in exile has had to adapt itself to the modern world. The Philippines have now become a dominion rather than an integral province, due to the distance and problems of communication between them. The Filipino government is still very conservative, while the Greater Antilles are moderate, bordering on fairly liberal.
The Kingdom of Italy is now mostly democratic, despite getting there via a more hardline Spartacist government during the ’80s. However, with the north becoming more open, there was less need for the south to be quite as militarised. Abyssinia is now a dominion, with full independence – the only real connection now is a personal-union and an intricate system of trade and mutual-defence treaties. With south Abyssinia is still red, the north stayed loyal (also thanks to the large Italian settler population).
France (the African one), on the other hand, has fared rather worse. Inter-ethnic and religious turmoil forced it to loosen its structure a bit. What’s more, Chari and Ouadai provinces voted to become independent, though Algiers had the sense to just let them go – fortunately, the three states remain on (mostly) friendly terms. Similarly, its protectorates were allowed to slip out of its sphere because they simply couldn’t afford the costs of occupying them any longer.
While the Scandinavians (well, Denmark, really) rejoiced at the thought that hordes of rampaging Atomic German Commies™ weren’t suddenly going to start parachuting from massive zeppelins with shark faces painted on the front to the sound of funky music at any moment, the Balkan League suffered a huge crisis of conscience. After all, with the European *Communists suddenly turning out to be mellow, intellectual socialists and (shock horror) the good guys, they didn’t have much reason to not turn on each other instead. However, Finland has a very, very large collection of brown pants, because Russia is still leering at it in a rather creepy way.
Montenegro is now an even bigger whiner than it was previously, and underground anarchists and crypto-communists groups are abound (well, that’s what the Government says, anyway[1]). Bulgaria decided to pack away its “haters gotta’ hate” t-shirts and matching caps and decided to open up for business – turns out the Euro-Commies actually just wanted to trade after all, who knew. On the other hand, Romania, thankful that it has one fewer front to worry about, can still see Russia from its house. And the Greeks still really don’t like the Turks, about the only people they hate more than the Brits, who didn’t let them have Cyprus (still a dominion) or Constantinople.
The much hyped reunification between the Russian Free State and the Empire of Russia (Alaska) never happened. After so long apart, they just didn’t have enough in common to bring themselves closer together. The former state is now in the Japanese sphere, while Alaska is now one of the last remaining properly Spartacist countries, along with Transcaucasia and Turkestan.
By the present day, the various LoN mandates have voted on their futures. Shanghai has joined nationalist China, the Marshal Islands and Nauru have become dependencies of the Spanish monarchists and formerly German New Guinea has become a state of Australia (along with Papua), while formerly German Samoa became a dependency of New Zealand – none of these were terribly surprising. Tsingtao is now Japanese[2], run as an autonomous prefecture all by itself (again, no big surprise there). Formerly Russian Obock has joined with royalist Abyssinia (odd, but not hugely controversial), while Tangier declared itself a Free City[3]. However, no one expected the Straits Zone to vote themselves into becoming a dominion, not least the British (who were pleasantly surprised, though the Russians are still rather narked at this). [4]
And all the while, the US is getting richer and richer, desperately holding on to the #1 Most Biggest Economy position. Not having spent so much on a big-arse defence budget and enough nukes to sterilise a whole solar system, it has minded its own business flogging its business elsewhere, making bucket loads of cash in the meantime. However, it is regarding the new European project with interest, and the Latino socialists (who adhere to the 2nd International) are developing very quickly. If only Alaska would pay attention to it, instead of glaring at Russia, the US would like very much to get its hands on those (mineral) assets…
--
Meanwhile, the Russo-European split finally happened in 1979. The EFSR held on to most of the more solidly *communist states, but the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Persia, Uighuristan, Somalia, South Ethiopia and (the biggest blow of all) France sided with Moscow.
Strangely enough, unlike the USSR IOTL, the EFSR is actually bigger now that it is a properly democratic socialist state than when it was the iron heart of Europe. Croatia and Lithuania both voted to join the federation not long after the Split, partially prompting a further split amongst the remaining LISS members. The African provinces are also all still inside the federation – one thing they did really well was the whole anti-racist thing, and they are quite well developed, though with different problems to OTL.
The KMT decided that it had finished pretending to be even remotely communist in 1986, when its economy started blossoming properly. Though nationalist China isn’t the economic powerhouse the PRC is IOTL, it’s still about equivalent to OTL Brazil.
The former LISS split even further in the late 1980s and early ’90s between those still adhering to the *Third International (the unreconstructed), and those members of the newer Fourth International (reconstructed, more like the Nordic Left than Leninism). However, Libya was the only non-European member of the old LISS that stuck with the EFSR, thankfully run by technocrats rather than a Gadhafi-type dictator, though it isn’t quite as progressive as the others.
Spain is technically a 4th international state, though it isn’t that friendly with the EFSR. It held a series of referenda throughout its overseas provinces in 1987 – most of them voted to stay in, but with a decent level of autonomy; only the Saharia district chose to become independent, and has joined the *Arab League (no tensions with Morocco ITTL, with no contiguous border).
--
The remainder of the 3rd International have stuck fast to Russia, who is still proud to call itself a True Inheritor of the *Communist Revolution™ in public, while the grandees make boatloads of money, sip cognac and smoke big cigars in penthouse apartments with various women with negotiable degrees of virtue.
Red France is now in a big sulk. Not only did its (multiple) overtures to its African counterpart to unify with it fail miserably (similarly with Wallonia, who likes being a separate country too much), it has still to find a proper place for itself. It is still the second most industrialised member of the 3rd International, and is catching up quickly with Russia, but it is sure that nobody really gets them, or loves them, or cares, and it has lots and lots of nukes…
Italy has still stuck with the tried and tested *Fascist model, at least publically. However, it is now 33.3% less authoritarian, and about 1500% more capitalist than it was back in the ’70s. With greater economic freedoms, it has also boomed, though some are considering it to be still rather shaky. Fortunately, though, it is no longer compulsory to have massive classical-styled statues of the Dictator absolutely everywhere, and people can be excused for only having the odd one or two portraits of him about the place, instead of in every room. They do still love their big posters and outside murals of party bigwigs, though.
What makes the “Third” even more pissed off is that the LoN countries in Europe have invited the “Fourth” countries in central Europe to join in with their new-fangled Common Economic Market[5], based in London, without inviting them as well. I mean, of course they wouldn’t accept joining the Bastion of Bourgeois Imperialist Capitalism, but there is such thing as manners, after all…
--
During the 1980s, with the LISS in tatters, the LoN loosing much of its militaristic basis and decolonisation firmly underway, the (more) democratic nations of Europe banded together for the purpose of trade. Britain had already formed bilateral agreements with Portugal, the Scandinavian countries, the Kingdom of Italy and the Balkan League, and they with most of each other. The Treaty of Stockholm (1984) formalised this interconnected set of trade agreements into a single Common Economic Market, which was joined by both the Spanish and Dutch exilic governments by the early ’90s, and by Tangier in 1999.
It wasn’t without some setbacks, though. Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands rejected membership at first, though Iceland joined in its own terms in 2005, thanks to guarantees in regards to its fisheries. Concerns by the rest of the Dominions that the UK and the rest of its European members would focus too much on trading with the continent were abated by the Treaty of Wexford (1994), began to establish bilateral trading agreement between members of the Commonwealth Economic Forum (created in 1967) and the Common Economic Market. The Indian Union acceded to these in 2001, and the final Commonwealth members to join – Burma and the Cantonese Republic did so in 2010.
Further bilateral agreements have since been made with France-in-Africa (1991), the Philippines (1993), Angola and Mozambique (1995), north Abyssinia (1996), the Arab League (2004) and Japan and Korea (2006 and 2007 respectively) have connecting existing trade networks further. However, the most controversial measure yet was in inviting those countries that acceded to the 2nd and 4th Internationals to join talks[6]. The former was easier to stomach – the existing members all had prominent left-wing parties that were in favour of this, and they had done a lot of trade with the Latino Socialist nations in the past. Talks with forming bilateral trade with the Organisation of Socialist States (which by now also included Guatemala and Haiti) began in 2009, and was finalised in February 2010.
The latter proposal, however, caused a lot of consternation. There was still a lot of bad feeling by the largely defunct Balkan League towards the Central European *Communists, and they have threatened to walk out of talks several times without agreement being reached. The Royalist Spanish were furious at Britain and Portugal’s suggestion of inviting Red Spain to join the CMS, even as an observer, and while the Scandinavians were broadly in favour of the EFSR joining, Britain was wary of such a big industrial power (the world’s 2nd biggest economy) disrupting its trading dominance within the bloc. Only time will tell whether the capitalist nations of Europe can set the past aside and join hands with former rivals, even ones that have changed so much.
All the while, Paris and Moscow are fuming, and are carefully considering a response to the possible expansion of the Bourgeois Capitalist™ trade bloc on their doorstep. Meanwhile, they are also turning their eyes towards the various unaligned countries scattered about, and dream of driving a wedge between the members of Japan’s sphere of influence. The Co-Prosperity Sphere is becoming increasingly unbalanced – that is, away from Japan. As the Chinese states industrialise and rapidly grow their economies, calls for reunification are becoming increasingly loud.
And the global atomic arsenals are still on hair triggers…
--
[1] But that’s just what they want you to think…
[2] This is completely unsurprising as (a) the place is packed with Japanese nationals, (b) the Japanese presided over a long period of prosperity, and (c) they weren’t that bothered about joining up with the Ch’ing.
[3] It was a close-run thing, though, only winning by a 10% margin over joining up with Red Spain. Tensions continue over its status to this day.
[4] The Dominion of the Bosporus is like a giant-sized Hong Kong, which is a liberal democracy, really, really doesn’t want to go back to the Turks (still Communist), and doesn’t particularly want to end up being a token autonomous province of its former parent. Unlike Hong Kong on the other hand, it would take a lot more than a platoon crossing the street to take the straits back, which the Red Turks can ill afford at the moment. Especially with their German paymasters having embarrassingly forgotten where they put the key to the deposit boxes…
[5] Think the EEC, but with more non-European members.
[6] No one particularly wanted members of the 3rd International to join in just yet.
