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In the primary front of the Great Asian War, the Southeast Asian Front, the primary focus of the both sides was the grueling, painful, costly Battle for Guangxi for the southern coast of the Shun empire. Both sides had goals of their own - India salivated at the prospect of eliminating Chinese presence in the South China Sea by capturing their ports in the Pearl River and around it, and perhaps turn the ports against them by pushing Indian naval domination to the East China Sea - and if the majority of the Shun coast is dominated by Indian warships, proposed operations such as landings in Lusang, Japan and Korea would not be an impossible endeavor. The Chinese, on the other hand, fought to maintain the frontline in the defensible mountainous Guangxi periphery, and their strategy of building extended trench networks, repurposing their landships as static artillery in strategic positions and countering opponent air superiority with extensive AA equipment. The Battle for Guangxi began in mid July of the year, starting out with two Indian nuclear strikes on tactical enemy positions and immediately followed by a massive Unitarian offensive across the entire wide front.

130 thousand soldiers were incapacitated on the very first day of the offensive, and while the kill count lowered somewhat in the days that followed after, it would still end up as one of the, if not the most deadly military operation in world history. The gigantic mass of the offensive and the surprising tactical nuclear strikes gave India the initial advantage, but the Chinese were able to recuperate after the capture of Nanning, the capital of Guangxi, successfully pushing back a few smaller scale offensives alongside the coast of the South China Sea. Still, Xiao Xuegang and the Chinese government were well aware of just how threatening the situation is - and knowing that this was about the time when the United States formed and began considering an ultimatum towards the Commonwealth, you can imagine that the Chinese mission to Rome was pressing for war against Indian for a good reason. As August rolled around, and then September following it, Chinese positions in Guangxi were turning more and more fragile however, despite the enthusiastic and fierce opposition they put up against the combined arms Indian offensive. It may sound weird, but Chinese manpower reserves were depleting - or, at least, their reserves of trained volunteer manpower. Incapacitated veterans were being replaced by fresh conscripts from China, who, while motivated, were certainly not as effective, thus the beginning of autumn saw the Shun lose ground across the whole front. It should be noted that India, which had army personnel counting in the millions for years before the war, did not suffer from this problem, at least not yet. The most notable piece of land lost to the Unitarians was the Leizhou Peninsula, a critical connection between the mainland and Hainan. This was followed by successful, although extremely costly Indian pushes towards Maoming and then Yangjiang, a bit to the east.

However, though it can be said that India won the Battle for Guangxi, the offensive failed to capture two critical objectives laid out by the general staff. The Pearl River Delta was in no danger of being taken by the Unitarians, and Indian field generals decided to take no risks trying to push further across Guangdong - at this point, after three months of life-or-death battle, forced marches and hundreds of thousands of casualties, the Indian armies were getting close to mutiny (luckily for them, the Chinese were just as exhausted). Finally, the island of Hainan remained EASA-controlled like a thorn in India's side. Indian attempts to land on the island were thwarted with hastily erected coastal fortifications and Chinese naval operations, thus the Unitarians opted to just besiege the island, hoping to starve it away. Hainan had some local food production to stay alive for at least a while, however, and the mainland organized a supply airlift for help, and thus the governor of the island declared his intention to stay barricaded here until the war is won - even nuclear bombs, which Hainan had already suffered before, were no longer a threat to their morale. To India, the existence of this Chinese forward naval and air base was triggering, but there was little they could do about it.

Before the US can be talked about, however, eyes need to be diverted to a forgotten front of the Great Asian War - the Himalayan Front. As a member of EASA, Tibet joined the Chinese side of the war almost immediately after it began, and, if a person knew nothing about geography, they might think that Tibet would be a vital part of the war - after all, isn't it only a few hundred miles from Lucknow? Well, that is technically true, but with the tallest mountains of the world, the Himalayas, in the way, it might as well be an ocean away. Despite the inhospitable terrain, war continued even here, in the form of skirmishes in valleys and mountain paths across the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau. Both sides had something to offer - the Tibetan Army, although small and poorly equipped, was acclimated to the mountainous terrain, while the Indians threw their elite mountain troops recruited from Nepal, the Gurkhas, to counter that. The biggest battle of the front was the Battle of Gora La, taking place in the primary and lowest mountain pass in the Himalayas, and after months of low scale warfare, the Indians proved to be victorious, pushing the Tibetan defenses aside and capturing Lhasa in the center of the Khanate. The Khan, his government and most religious leaders fled east, however, but the loss of the capital meant that most of Tibet was now ripe for Indian taking.

The United States declaration of war on the Commonwealth on September 7th came as a sign of relief for the distraught of the EASA - the light in the black came quite literally during their darkest hour. All of Borneo was lost to Indian troops. The Battle of the South China Sea was tipping towards the Unitarian side. The invasion of Guangxi was only stopped with hundreds of thousands of Chinese boys lost. Tibet was collapsing. Four EASA members were already fully occupied, with a fifth coming soon. However, the initial high wore off as quickly as someone raised the question of "uh, how exactly are a bunch of distant Westerners going to help us any more than they already do now?". Outside of some French islands, New France ports in northern South Vespucia and some British colonial holdouts, the Western members of the US had no way of projecting power in the Pacific, which is where the absolute majority of the fighting took place. Transporting troops to China across the gigantic Pacific Ocean was not a good idea, either, not with Indian submarine packs running around.

Knowing the potential answer to the parable, the foreign ministry of France contacted the Popular Union of East Africa. The oddest duck in the Commonwealth lineup, East Africa was a member of India's alliance and was at war with EASA like any other members of their faction, having even sent a 5000 men large expeditionary corps to die in Guangxi - but the possibility of war right at their home was a much more difficult dilemma to answer. The monarchist Unitarian state had always held revanchist tendencies towards the French colonies around them, hoping to unite all of East Africa under their unitarian wing, but following India's lead and entering a war with France would mean entering a war with all of the United States, a war which Gebeyehu predicted to be an ultimately losing one. The French had no desire to embark on a yet another manpower draining campaign in the Ethiopian Highlands while their allies were in danger, either - and when both sides do not seek to enter war with each other, you have an agreement. In their case, it was the secret Gondor Agreement in late September of 1957. East Africa would cease all military actions against the United States (despite officially being in war as a member of the Commonwealth), and the US would do the same to them, as an unofficial non-aggression pact of sorts. What was the catch? To compensate for gaining East Africa's unofficial neutrality, the Director of France, Henri Simon, promised Gebeyehu granting democratic self-determination for the peoples of East Africa on whether they want to join the Popular Union, become independent or remain as French colonies and protectorates. You can immediately tell how this could turn problematic in the future, but in the end, Gebeyehu, placing the survival of his nation as a priority (and secretly hoping for a blood-draining quagmire in India to weaken the French), was placated by the terms.

With their back secure, the French would begin to turn Mogadishu into what it was set out to be in this war - the trampoline for a US invasion of the Hindustan Peninsula. Billions of livres would end up pumped into improving the city's infrastructure, ports, defenses, airbases and the surrounding areas under a strict government-organized plan, lifting the city up from poverty and into one of the most powerful naval bases in the world metaphorically overnight. Nouvelle-Lyon also received significant improvements as a secondary, backup port in case Mogadishu's capacity is not enough or it is captured, though it being surrounded by East Africa from three sides made its position precarious.

However, before Mogadishu was even fully upgraded and all of the US nations could participate in full capacity, France, Italy and Germania executed what was possibly the most ballsy move in the entire conflict.

In December of 1957, the Indians were still reeling from the impact of the Battle of Guangxi and shifting their forces towards trying to subdue China, believing that French efforts to upgrade Mogadishu will take a while and thus gives them a window of opportunity to weaken the Chinese. The US knew that, and in what was a surprising move for almost everyone involved, Director Henri Simon and Prime Minister Volker Braun approved the plan pushed by the commander of France's Marine corps, General Damien Robillard, to surprise the Indians with an attack on Ceylon. At the time, French Somalia held the African Unit of French Marines, 6000 soldiers strong, as well as the fairly recently shipped German 3rd and Italian 31st Infantry Divisions, supported by roughly 700 aircraft, the French Mediterranean Fleet and sufficient transports for sending 15 thousand soldiers - a fairly formidable force for an operation, if it wasn't done almost completely on the fly with only a few weeks of hasty preparation. Still, General Robillard told himself and everyone else that such a chance only comes once in a lifetime, and one of his quotes to his troops ended up immortalized: "If we fail, we sink 10 thousand youngsters to the sea. If we succeed, we win the war. I'm betting on these odds."

Almost everything could have gone wrong with what was dubbed as Operation Sea Horse (Operation Hippocampes) - the Indians might have caught the plans and sent sufficient naval power to thwart it. There could have been a storm in the Arabian Sea postponing the operations. Stray Indian bombers could have taken down at least a few of the overmanned transport ships. They could have run out of supplies or high command support for the mission. Ceylon itself could have defeated the invaders somehow, heck. However, none of this happened, and on the bright warm day of December 16th, French, German and Italian troops poured on the shores of the tropical island and former French colony, subduing the undermanned local Indian garrison, composed on fresh conscripts, in a matter of days. Many of the air wings staffed in Ceylon ended up destroyed on land, before they had a chance to take off, and within a matter of days, the island fell under complete US military occupation (outside of a few isolated mountain areas). The speed and success of the operation surprised both the Indians and the French themselves, who expected it to turn into a bloodier quagmire.

Still, even if Operation Sea Horse succeeded, there was nothing telling that a similar heap of luck could be repeated for the actually important mainland.