alternatehistory.com

The beginning of the Braunplan as well as the escalating Great Asian War gave leeway to a past naval tactic, covered with dust from the old times - submarine warfare. Although the Indian Navy had always payed more attention to its surface navy, the knowledge about Chinese submarine carriers as well as the possibility of thwarting enemy foreign trade with convoy harassing meant that from 1955 onward, the Unitarians began to swiftly and secretly build up their submarine corps. These hunter packs participated a bit in the Battle of the South China Sea, sinking a few ships, as well as in skirmishing actions across the Nusantara Archipelago, but their primary power came in July of 1957, when the foreign ministry of Amrit Ahuya declared the Western Pacific Ocean, from the eastern shores of Xiboliya to the Nusantara Archipelago, to be a no-go zone for ships carrying any flag except the Commonwealth ones. Even neutral ships carrying no flag were not safe.

The international community immediately and almost universally lodged protests at this violation of the freedom of the seas. Veterans of the War of the Danube remembered a similar situation in the Mediterranean during that time - Turkish submarine packs hunted down almost any ships passing their way, even boats of refugees from Tripolitania. Many of the executors of this plan later ended up punished for such acts of brutality afterwards, but many others successfully fled east. However, short of war, there was little that the world could do to stop this unrestricted submarine warfare. The executors of the Braunplan bet on the possibility that this might be a bluff to scare the aid shipments away, though they also put forth some precautions, like to organize the shipping in convoys, with a few escort destroyers armed with empty shells and signaling to deter submarines away.

Bet failed.

The first transport ship sunk in the Western Pacific was the German vessel Hessen, carrying camouflage uniforms for the EASA military and struck by an underwater torpedo not far from the island of Iwo Jima, a minor Japanese naval base. While a few escape boats survived and were later found by Japanese fishing trailers, the ship itself and 70 sailors, most of them German, perished in the endless Pacific. The incident was publicized across the world and the eyes of the world turned to India - Hessen did not carry munitions or weapons, thus it counted as a civilian casualty, and the governments of the Defense Commission, France, VFS and others lodged diplomatic protests for this attack. However, Ahuya's diplomatic corps rebutted these claims with the statement that the Western Pacific being declared as a no-go zone was well known, and should have been respected by the transport ship. The West decided to continue not respecting it, however, - Volker Braun and other heads of government maintained the position that India has no right to freely destroy neutral ships, even if they are travelling to belligerent nations. The diplomatic crisis would only grow more tense with each passing Indian underwater attack on neutral convoys - in some cases even causing environmental crises, such as what happened when the Mejican oil tanker Teotihuacan was struck not far from Palau. The spilled oil would cover miles of ocean surface around the island, causing mass dying of local ocean life and marking the first petroleum-based environmental disaster in Pacific history. Lithuanians did not avoid getting shot down, either - the civilian ships Perkūnas and Svajonė, both carrying linen for the Chinese textile industry, were sunk in August, with 150 casualties.

Of course, it's not that foreign convoys were the only target of the Indian submarine packs - the Chinese navy was working it's back off trying to combat the underwater scourge, while constant torpedo attacks on Japanese and Korean fishing trailers severely neutered the fish yields and thus shaking the fragile food situation in both nations - but the convoy raiding was the most publicized. Quickly, public opinion across the planet turned against India, and even the growing anti-war crowd in, say, Germania or France, was starting to reconsider their position on the issue. Unitarian embassies in many of the world's nations, especially in Vespucia, were recalled and their embassies evicted. However, despite all this, war was not yet declared. The governments of Braunplan executing countries feared that such a declaration would be symbolic, and potentially only worsen the situation of the war - especially while India maintains a monopoly on nuclear weapons.

Feeling the lack of initiative across the planet, and in the face of continuing Indian aggression in the Great Asian War, Prime Minister Volker Braun opted to call an unprecedented event in geopolitical history - organizing an official organization composed of the world's great powers to organize international actions against the Indian Unified State and the Commonwealth, composed of Germania, France, Italy, Lithuania, Vespucia, Britannia and China, and named the United States. After all, if none of the participants (outside of China, obviously) were willing to make any direct actions against the Commonwealth all by themselves, the logical action is to have them cooperate to lessen this lack of initiative. The first meeting of the United States was organized on September 1st, 1957 in Rome, with Prime Minister Amerigo Togliatti of the Italian Confederation serving as the meeting's chairman - as the politician and Italy itself would later become an important glue holding the group together, the entire organization was jokingly nicknamed "the United States of America" after a feminization of the chairman's first name, especially by the organization's opponents. The Indians made up a different nickname, however - "Gang of Seven", denouncing the organization as an international capitalist cabal.

Since the US was gathered to solve the issue of the Great Asian War, that was the primary topic of discussion in the meeting - however, the United States were definitely not united on the actions that had to be taken. Some members of the organization, most notably China, though also Germania and partially France, wished to see the US to go on the offensive and declare war on India immediately, but this view was not share by the more isolationist Italians and Vespucians, who preferred diplomatic and economic pressures to stop the convoy raiding in the Western Pacific. However, a consensus was soon reached, and the plan of the United States was laid clear:

1. A collective ultimatum of the United States shall be laid out to the Commonwealth, demanding an immediate end to unrestricted submarine warfare in the Western Pacific, with the alternative being that the navies of the United States mobilize to protect their shipping and thus meet the Indians and their allies head-on.
2. All members of the United States shall cooperate on the construction of a nuclear weapon, expanding the Tianjin Project to an international project.

The second point raised many eyebrows, especially when the naturally arising question popped up - once the nuclear weapon is developed, who holds it? Amerigo Togliatti argued that nuclear weapons should be a collective "last resort of the free world" to defeat totalitarian regimes such as India, and not something to be controlled by any of the world's nations. Lourens Cappenberg, on the other hand, believed that once the Great Asian War is won, all nuclear weapons should be dismantled and research in the field diverted solely towards peaceful construction - after all, the idea of harnessing nuclear power in nuclear plants had been popping up more and more often ever since nukes struck Changsha and Kunming. Both of the ideas were opposed by Germania and China, who secretly sought to acquire nuclear weapons themselves.

The ultimatum was presented to the Indian foreign office on September 5th, and was immediately met with confusion from the Indians and from other neutral countries. Since when are all these great powers cooperating, and under the title "United States", too? Indian politologists found it hard to assess the threat of the ultimatum - was it real or was it just a bluff, how many of these seven nations were actually willing to take military action if declined, and how would they be able to participate outside of naval support? Germania, France, and arguably Vespucia and Britannia had adequate naval power projection to participate in the naval warfare of the Great Asian War, but Amrit Ahuya's government dismissed the possibility of them being able to actually land boots on the ground in order to meaningfully help China. With all this logic set in place, the Indians ignored the ultimatum, even unofficially showing their declination by sinking three German and French transports to the east of Lusang on the 7th.

But that day was important not for the 100 or so men lost in the torpedo attacks, but for the diplomacy taking place. The members of the United States officially declared war on the Commonwealth.