And now to bring us to TTL's 2023:
Chapter XVI: Developments in the US, Nuclear Proliferation and China’s Reawakening, 2014-2023.
The Internet first arrived in the United States through the world of academia in 2014. The University of Oklahoma and the University of Tulsa were ranked as the best of the few remaining qualitatively respectable institutions of tertiary education and scientific research in the US. Thanks to the generosity of foreign universities both became the first nongovernmental institutions in the country that went online. Educational institutions, libraries and internet cafés in major cities were the places where Americans could access the Internet. Those living farther away from said cities and institutions just didn’t have that access.
As to American politics, things were changing after Democratic candidate Dick Gephardt was elected President in 2008 and re-elected in 2012. His Vice President and former Arkansas Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton became the first female US President after the 2016 elections (her Vice President was former Connecticut Senator Chriss Dodd). She defeated her opponent Georgia Governor Newt Gingrich (despite the defeat, it was the biggest Republican success so far). Securing America’s access to the internet was heralded as yet another great success in the country’s reconstruction under an uninterrupted string of Democratic Presidents since 1984.
The tone of the 2016 US Presidential elections was different, however, because a few things had changed over the past few years in the Republican Party. After the Democratic landslides from 1984 onward the Republicans had wallowed in self-pity. For years they had considered themselves the victims of Reagan’s provocative tone towards the Soviet Union, which had led to the war that the people blamed the Republicans and punished them for by one electoral hammer blow after the other. They made Reagan the scapegoat for their decline instead of developing some kind of consistent story criticizing the incumbent administrations. Their candidates for the Presidency prior to the 2016 US Presidential elections had therefore generally been paper candidates. That changed between 2012 and 2016.
The person who wrote a new consistent narrative for the Republican Party and revived it was New Gingrich, who had risen through the ranks. He’d run for Governor of his home state of Georgia after serving as a Congressman, winning the 2010 gubernatorial election and becoming the first Republican Governor of that state since 1872. He had a socially conservative agenda and favoured government deregulation and lowering taxes, i.e. a laissez faire economic policy. In early 2015, Gingrich announced that he would be seeking the nomination for the Republican Presidential candidacy.
The 2016 US Presidential election, an innovative one because the Internet played a significant role for the first time, was the first once since 1984 in which the Republicans put up a strong fight rather than just going through the motions. Gingrich entertained a range of conservative notions, such as opposition to abortion and the conviction that life begins at conception (he made exceptions to his abortion stance for rape, incest and in the case that the mother’s life was at risk). Needless to say, he saw family as the cornerstone of a society in which many other structures ranging from the police and the judiciary to federal institutions were corrupt shoe-string organizations. Given that he saw marriage as solely between a man and a woman, he advocated against the “normalization” of same sex relations and intended to forbid education on that topic. While that enflamed the LGBT community, the Bible Belt rallied in support to that. Much more effective nationwide was Gingrich’s announcement that upon his election he would seek to overturn the Clinton Act which had paved the way for the legalization of prostitution in the US. Given the constitutional ruling, he intended to install conservative justices in the SCOTUS upon the retirement of several of those appointed over the past decades. He denounced the judiciary as much too powerful in general. His position on crime, particularly the drug epidemic, was clear: drug smugglers and dealers should be given the death penalty in his opinion and “enhanced interrogation techniques” ought to permitted for some crimes.
As to the economy, he advocated deregulation and lower taxes to help create jobs while, as part of his deregulatory agenda, favoured a private health insurance plan over state run plans. Besides that, his plans for the economy would allow children to work at an earlier age next to their educations to empower them financially. He clarified his position by saying he did see education as the means for children to elevate themselves beyond the socioeconomic status of their parents. Besides more emphasis on mathematics and science instruction in schools, he also supported public school prayer and the right of schools to teach Creationism over Evolution. Closely related to his economic views was his scepticism of climate change and his position that coal, oil and natural gas should be used more to deal with the country’s electricity shortages. Politically, his main goal was to have the Electoral College curtailed and let the popular vote decide the winner of Presidential elections, as he considered that more democratic.
The 2016 US Presidential elections were the first since 1980 to actually be competitive, so competitive in fact that the televised debates and the campaigns in general bordered on mudslinging, threatening to polarize the country. Gingrich heckled Clinton for allegedly being atheist, an accusation she denied, and called her amoral for being the driving force behind a piece of legislation legalizing women selling their bodies and leading married men astray. Given America’s status as the world’s largest sex tourist destination, Gingrich said the Democrats had turned the US into “the world’s whore”. He further criticized dirigiste economic policies for holding the country’s recovery back and favoured the free market instead, emphasizing the individualist freedom of the American Dream. He was clear in his beliefs that government interference generally did more harm than good. With the war more than thirty years ago, it was time for the United States to return to “normalcy”. According to Gingrich this meant the federal government should give up its control of key industries and utilities. He argued that by now this control was “dictatorial”. To emphasize his conservative stance while also trying to appeal to female voters, Gingrich chose Congresswoman Michele Bachmann as his running mate.
Clinton rebutted that women ought to have the final say on what happened to their bodies, denouncing Gingrich for wanting to throw women’s rights back by fifty years. As to his stances on education, LGBT rights, “enhanced interrogation techniques” and his plans to reform the judiciary, Clinton denounced him for intending to infringe on the constitutional rights of minorities and on the independence of one of the three branches of government. Countering his accusations of atheism, Clinton in turn declared Gingrich would turn the country into a bigoted theocracy that practiced corporate welfare and placed outdated notions ahead of scientific facts. She furthermore said Gingrich as President would have little to no consideration for the rights of women and minorities and could possibly even criminalize what happened between consenting adults, forcing his reactionary interpretation of Christianity on people who didn’t share these beliefs. She concluded by stating that Gingrich’s free market plans would place the profit of rich individuals and multinationals ahead of the prosperity of working class Americans. That would amount to a plutocracy.
The electoral result of 2016 showed that the country was becoming more divided. This dividedness had a lot to do with the fact that – thanks to only facing token opposition for decades – the Democrats had become more and more leftist, passing increasingly liberal legislation with no consideration for more conservative opinions. Clinton won 50% of the popular vote, carried 23 states and had 275 electoral votes. Gingrich won 48.1% of the popular vote, carried 27 states and obtained 260 electoral votes.
Clinton became the next President, but she realized the electoral result was a conservative backlash that would force her to be more moderate in her liberalism if she was to be re-elected in 2020. The Republicans in turn realized they had to tone down their conservatism a bit to win, allowing them to pull moderately conservative forces away from the “big tent party” that the Democrats had turned into. Both sides didn’t want polarization that could lead to a civil war. The Democrats lost the 2018 midterm elections, with slight Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. In 2020, Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum campaigned as a light version of Gingrich and became the first Republican to win a Presidential election since 1980. As a result, Hillary Clinton became both the first female US President as well as the first Democrat since Carter not to win re-election.
In the meantime, decades of multilateral nuclear disarmament talks to prevent another nuclear holocaust from taking place had amounted to naught. No consensus could be reached, as evidenced by multiple countries walking out of the last of such conferences in 2014. All of the participants had their reasons to hang on to their existing nuclear arsenals or to develop nuclear weapons of their own. Pakistan had tested a nuclear weapon in 1999 and in the context of the Indian-Pakistani rivalry over Jammu and Kashmir India was a lot less interested in dismantling its stockpile of warheads. Like China, India adopted a no-first-use policy and Pakistan committed to the same. As to China, it remained committed to its own no-first-policy as well, but rejected disarmament thanks to the national trauma caused by the USSR attacking it unprovoked and leaving it only a few steps away from disintegration. Israel was certainly not going to give up its “Samson Option” as long as hostile Arab countries surrounded it, and definitely not when Iraq went nuclear.
And of course, the pre-1983 nuclear powers hung on to a handful of warheads. The US Navy had managed to keep three boomers in service with foreign help. Several of these submarines remained docked with their nuclear reactors hooked up to whatever remained of the electrical grid. They, along with surviving nuclear power plants, contributed to the desperate demand for electricity.
Iraq detonated a 20 kiloton device in 2015 in a surface test, becoming the second post-war country to join the nuclear club and the sixth overall nuclear weapons state after China, India, Israel, Pakistan and South Africa. Decades later it became clear Saddam Hussein and his ilk had no issues about using them as a last resort, taking down the entire country with them rather than give up power. An entire hardened subterranean palace had been built underneath hundreds of metres below Baghdad with twenty years’ worth of food supplies, a nuclear reactor that would last for the same amount of time and aggregates that could be fuelled by hundreds of barrels of diesel. This bunker included saunas, whirlpool baths, a swimming pool, a lounge, a bar, a discotheque and a library, and stocks of excellent South African and Chilean wines as well as Australian whiskeys. If it was ever activated, it would house a staff of hundreds of bodyguards, lackeys, cooks, masseuses, prostitutes and so on to cater to the wishes of Saddam Hussein and his inner circle.
As the only great powers without nuclear weapons, Brazil, Japan and Australia felt themselves compelled to launch their own nuclear weapons programs due to the lack of progress of disarmament negotiations. Australia joined forces with New Zealand to develop the bomb, and nuclear weapons could only be released if both authorized that. Of course Brazil, Japan, Australia and New Zealand said they would dismantle if everybody else did too and adopted no-first-use policies as several other countries had already done before them. Nonetheless the fear remained that nuclear weapons might one day be used again, and the fact that countries continued to threaten each other and even wage war fuelled that fear.
It was clear by 2019 that the Middle East was an obvious candidate for a regional nuclear war if things went south. Israel had anywhere between 75 and 400 nuclear warheads while Saddam had an estimated stockpile of about 50-60 warheads and missiles with a range of 2000 km to deliver them with. After annexing Kuwait and part of Saudi Arabia and thereby securing the bulk of the world’s oil supply in the 80s, Iraq had become a major player that had to be respected despite the distaste for the abuses of the Baath regime. Iraq’s Arab neighbours – Syria, Syrian-occupied Lebanon, Jordan, rump Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states – became satellite states to a greater or lesser degree. Baghdad also had good relations with Egypt and the Maghreb powers, exerting influence over them. Fortunately, Iraq limited itself to arming Palestinian insurgents.
Far more important was the outcome of the power struggle between Saddam’s two sons as it slowly became clear from 2017 onward the old man was becoming increasingly senile, perhaps no surprise given that Saddam was 80 years old at the time (he finally passed away in 2020). Qusay headed the Special Security Organization. It was the most powerful Iraqi security agency, responsible for the security of high-ranking officials, authorized to carry out abduction, murder and intimidation, and an umbrella organization for internal and external intelligence. Because Saddam had only ever allowed the volatile and psychopathic Uday to be in charge of the insignificant Iraqi Olympic Committee, the power struggle was brief and there was never any threat of a civil war that could result in the release of nuclear weapons. The Republican Guard and the army sided with Qusay Hussein, who exiled his brother to the post of Ambassador to Libya. Gaddafi provided Uday with all the women he could ever need, but couldn’t do much about him getting drunk or high on cocaine and scandalizing Tripoli with car accidents.
Qusay recalled Uday back to Iraq and confined him to house arrest in one of the palaces their father had built in Baghdad. Uday complained about a “gilded cage” despite the fact that his brother paid for expensive call girls to “service” him one time daily while he also enjoyed good wines, whiskeys, cognacs and steak dinners whilst enjoying access to whirl pools, massages, gym equipment, a personal trainer and a private zoo. He whined about being a “political prisoner” but couldn’t be farther removed from being one. Uday was unfit to win the political game: he was much too erratic, while his brother was just as icily cool as Saddam himself and strategized to take power.
Far more concerning was China as it slowly rose from its own ashes like a phoenix, aspiring to becoming a rival to India again one day. China had been heavy hit by the Soviets, who had wanted to prevent China from stepping into the power vacuum caused by the USSR’s demise. Were it not for its heavy militarization under the “military first” policy, the country might well have broken apart again in another warlord era. China’s solution had led to the Communist Party of China and the People’s Liberation Army becoming increasingly intertwined, to the point that not the CPC General Secretary but the Chairman of the Central Military Commission was the de facto leading position in the regime. Almost a quarter of the entire economy was geared towards the needs of the armed forces, which held back economic growth and slowed the country’s recovering down. While India had seen double digit growth rates in the 90s, China had initially seen stagnation and later 2-5% growth rates later in the 90s (though the cause in this difference was obviously that India had never been nuked).
After a long time in isolation and looking inward, China felt powerful enough militarily to take on a larger role in Asian affairs. This resulted in the 2014 Sino-Yakutia Treaty of Friendship, signed between the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of Yakutia. Yakutia was a breakaway state of the former USSR, controlling most territory east of the Yenisey River while most of the RSFSR’s territory to the west of that was part of the Tsardom of Russia. The CPSU and KGB had withered away quickly in the years after the war, with the country breaking up in post-Soviet fiefdoms (Zhirinovsky chose an ultranationalist rather than a communist discourse, ultimately proclaiming himself Tsar). Earlier China had granted it diplomatic recognition in 2009, fifteen years after it had formally declared its independence. The Treaty of Friendship had provisions in it that essentially opened up the Republic of Yakutia to Chinese colonization to exploit Siberia’s vast mineral wealth which included deposits of nickel, gold, lead, coal, molybdenum, palladium, diamonds, silver and zinc as well as massive unexploited reserves of oil and natural gas. It’s telling that of the country’s population of 6 million people 10% was Chinese, making them the second largest ethnic group in Yakutia after ethnic Russians. Similar arrangements were made with the Central Asian Republics that had seceded from the USSR, forming the Confederation of Turkestan. China also reached out to Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Chechnya and Dagestan which had all declared their independence (China in fact helped mediate in the looming conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh).
A de facto Chinese Empire emerged that dominated Northern and Central Asia. China, Yakutia and Turkestan formed the Nanjing Cooperation Organization, which harkened back to imperial times and which was to rival ASEAN. China was the leading state and the other two were de facto tributary states, paying tribute to the Chinese in the shape of mineral wealth in return for protection. Besides that, China and Pakistan came to a mutual defence pact and thereby made it clear China was challenging India’s dominance in Asia. As of 2023, India’s economy remains much larger than China’s and ASEAN in GDP terms is much larger than the NCO. In fact, China is only the world’s third economy behind India and Brazil. Moreover, India formally decided to end its neutrality by joining the Pan-Pacific Defence Pact. China, however, was thinking long term and intended to surpass India no later than 2060. Time will tell if they succeed in that and if the Sino-Indian rivalry will become a new Cold War.
