The pics should show how radically different internet culture is in comparison to otl.
Also hoping that Iraq does break up since the Kurds deserve their own country, with turkey throwing a tantrum
Bush vs. The Axis of Evil - TL
Also hoping that Iraq does break up since the Kurds deserve their own country, with turkey throwing a tantrum
Did you read the rest of the conversation? Answering "No" is an acceptable answer.
You know, the part where I established that this and other similar mentions of Tatmadaw are my response to the previous proposal "WESTERN pop culture may decide to use Tatmadaw as the new villains."
So yes, I think it is perfectly reasonable to focus on the West to respond to a question raised by focusing on the West.
I also get the impression that you're trying to pick some kind of fight, I'm not sure why, and I don't really care either.
Also the "West" at least as a rhetoric is very much real, you'll see it being quoted on the wiki or in things such as BBC all the time so wheter it existed in any fundamental way before that now the concept is a thing even if just culturally, and politically NATO is very real as well
Plus Mitridates is from Spain
So very much part of the West
Plus Mitridates is from Spain
So very much part of the West
Not sure about the relevance of the last date but yes, now I'm sure about the response will be a disertation about "my self-hate" or something similar
And yes, "the West" is used so frequently that trying to claim that "the West don't exist" is seen as naive at best and dishonest at worst. Something that has more in common with trying to deny [insert your favorite example of a painfully obvious concept] than anything else.
I felt it was relevant because a lot of times when people considered outside of the perceived West like yours truly(since there's quite a few peeps who claim latin america to not be western) say this kind of thing the response is that we're only being hateful and/or envious towards it
Oh that makes sense.
Although I'm sure that will suddenly make me read as "ignorant Westerner believing his prejudices to be absolute truths" even though I'm reasonably sure that many people who are fanatical about "the West" believe in that stupid and false saying "Africa begins at south of the Pyrenees"
Although I understand what you mean, I have seen that belief often, it is one of those things that is the fault of the Napoleons...
I’m not trying to pick a fight, hold anything against you, or meant any to insult you (although if you really didn’t care what I said why would you respond to me at all). I apologize if I came off like that. I’m just not sure if the “West” not caring really about Burma really mattered or made a difference before the 2000s. I also dislike this monolithic “West” being discussed because it’s always used to link the public to the government beliefs, and always given power it shouldn’t have. The Neo-con administration trying to launch an invasion of Burma would be insane.Oh that makes sense.
Although I'm sure that will suddenly make me read as "ignorant Westerner believing his prejudices to be absolute truths" even though I'm reasonably sure that many people who are fanatical about "the West" believe in that stupid and false saying "Africa begins at south of the Pyrenees"
Although I understand what you mean, I have seen that belief often, it is one of those things that is the fault of the Napoleons...
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Since ITTL is still in the 2000s it makes sense to talk about what was thought then because it is doubtful that at that time they already had opinions of 2024 about Burma (or something).
And it makes a very important difference in the concept that is being discussed ("Do the Western -mainly American- authors would use Burma as the new supplier of villains after the disappearance of the usual 'bad guys'?") because you can't make a reference to something if your audience isn't going to understand it because they don't know the concept you're referencing.
Likewise, given that the conversation was about movie producers, video games, and artists in general rather than government officials, I don't think it has any bearing on any link between the public and the government that might come from the word "West." (Although generally the public tends to align at least partially with the government's beliefs but that is another topic).
Regarding the neocon administration trying to invade Burma, this is the conclusion I thought the public would draw if something like that was attempted ITTL.
The sequence is simple:
1) Hollywood has a reputation for aligning itself very closely with American politicians and using their productions to propagandize their ideas.
2) Hollywood is dedicated to vilifying Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
3) (ITTL) The United States invades and destroys these countries.
4) Hollywood suddenly decides, when until then they had not cared about, to start vilifying Burma...
I think it is very likely that many people assume that point 5 of the sequence is "The United States will invade Burma as soon as they find something that they (believe the) can (try to) pass off as a reasonable excuse."
"But they wouldn't because it's too stupid" ITTL isn't going to fly because, well, they already did against the Axis of Evil. And since the public will rightly consider this to be crazy, they will want to stop it.
One thing. Why would the Pop Culture industry go after Burma when the entire War on Terror is right there ?
If anything, they would milk the period of all it's worth for the next decades to come similar to the Vietnam war, as unlike the OTL Iraq and Afghanistan war, which were too disconnected to the general public, this War in Terror had a much more direct emotional impact on America thanks to the draft.
If anything, they would milk the period of all it's worth for the next decades to come similar to the Vietnam war, as unlike the OTL Iraq and Afghanistan war, which were too disconnected to the general public, this War in Terror had a much more direct emotional impact on America thanks to the draft.
The only reason people talk about Burma here is that the Neo-cons are so crazy, that they would ITTL generally think invading Burma for “freedom” (actually oil) would boost their popularity among the public (thus help them win elections). The reality is that the War on Terror is so much worse than OTL the public backlash would lead to a huge turnout in the polls leading to a Democrat election. The talks on the pop culture are the linking between politics/military to civil culture, in the attempt to convince the public to go through with this (as saying let’s invade Burma for oil would never work ITTL). It would be like if there was a crisis between let’s say Guyana and Venezuela, the Annexationists (both right and left) in Venezuela would use Venezuelan pop culture to align their political/economic interests to the public interest.
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Full disclosure: I only thought of Myanmar/Burma as a pop culture villain due to the whole “who replaces NK as the nasty/crapsacky Asian dictatorship used to dodge Chinese censors” question.
They could just use a "Secret North Korean hidden army" or something
North Korean Iron Skies or ODESSA when? And then again, the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya would most likely be the country used as an international punching bag/villain in pop culture works.
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I don't think Hollywood would be in want of bad guy material for action flicks, considering the likely postwar insurgencies in Iraq and Iran and the carnage of the War on Terror ITTL. The Middle Eastern Terrorist archetype was and is very much a common character in American action flicks IOTL already, primarily concentrating on Iraq and Afghanistan, since that was where the people we were actually fighting were. Same thing will apply ITTL, combined with Vietnam War movies anti war/fatalist messaging.
Also, since the Myanmar junta was/is largely content to not meddle in the affairs of its neighbors or antagonize the US (unlike pre 2003 Iraq, Iran, and North Korea), it is thus out of sight and out of mind for the majority of Americans and thus the majority of Hollywood action flicks.
TLDR: Hollywood action flicks already have plenty of material as is and Myanmar hasn't given the US public a reason to care about it in a foreign policy sense.
And Muammar Gaddafi's Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, especially with both Lockerbie and the eccentrities that Gaddafi was infamous for in mind, could be another country people could use as a villain figure, even if the Colonel himself is keeping a low profile and all that.
That would work. Perhaps The Interview takes place in Libya instead of North Korea?
An idea for the totally not Chinese East Asian villains. Perhaps it could be a shadowy cabal of North Koreans who have managed to enter into the business sphere, attaining wealth and power while still remaining loyal to Kim. Also they have mysterious benefactors, who are implied to be the CCP.
That probably works, though it probably depends on whether the Arab Spring is still a thing ITTL or not.
The Resurrection
The Resurrection
Extract from ‘Kim’s Footprint: How the War on Terror Changed Asia’ by Saeba Ryou
Extract from ‘Kim’s Footprint: How the War on Terror Changed Asia’ by Saeba Ryou
While Kim’s house arrest (meaning de facto getting away with it) greatly embittered South Koreans, President Lee told his cabinet it was no use. To Lee, Chinese support was essential to rebuild the South Korean economy and return prosperity to the country. The Americans were happy to hear it, with Bush setting up a multi-party meeting on August 15th in Singapore between South Korea, China, and the United States. The result of two weeks of talks was the Singapore Treaty, a document which would create an outline for a Post North Korean world. Kim’s disestablishment of the North Korean state had left a country-sized hole in the map for the parties to fill, with one obvious party to fill it but with another wary about its implications. South Koreans insisted that no country could ever be allowed to threaten them, especially not their capital, ever again, while the Chinese insisted that they would not let their martyrs, including Mao’s son, who perished in the First Korean War, have their sacrifice be tossed aside.
In terms of what would become of North Korea, South Korea successfully lobbied for full civilian control of the territory. However, China would occupy North Pyongan, Chagang, Ranggang, North Hamgyong, Rason, and half of South Hamgyong, with the border between Chinese and South Korean control split along the county lines of Yonggwang, Hamhung and Ragwon. This ensured significant defensive depth for China, but that was not all. The UN Mission in Korea was to be abolished and no foreign troops could deploy north of the former DMZ, though American troops could stay in South Korea. One thing that wasn’t an issue was getting the Americans to leave. Many American soldiers north of the DMZ were relieved to hear that the Korean situation seemed resolved forever, only to get very mad when they heard that instead of going home that they would now be sent to Iran or Iraq to deal with insurgencies instead. Recognising the potential for backlash, Bush forbade draftees who had gone to Korea from any further duty, only recycling volunteers to send them to the Middle East. America’s troop presence in the Korean Peninsula would continue to fall, bottoming out in 2009 at barely more than a few thousand. The UN Mission was furthermore glad to finish duty, its members glad to rid themselves of any association with the American military. The new border between the Chinese and South Koreans in North Korea would be no more serious than the initial split of Berlin after World War Two, with people able to move freely in and out at will. The Chinese would be forced to allow full religious and civil liberties that the South Korean ‘Temporary Government’ located in Nampo would allow. Crucially, the Unification Church would be allowed to continue their activities unmolested. At the same time, this liberty did not extend to being able to travel from North Korea to the South, with North Korea officially labelled as an ‘Unresolved Territory’ by the South Koreans to sidestep certain regulations on occupation. No official timetable for annexation of North Korea was given, except vague statements about it being possible after ‘Resolving the current difficulties’. This would begin a long-running dispute that would frequently play out in the UN, with the UN demanding a path to citizenship for the North Koreans while South Korea would insist that the time was not right.
There were many difficulties to say the least. The population of Pyongyang was then frying in the summer sun in makeshift tents, relentlessly and humiliatingly tested by South Koreans to make sure they weren’t poisoned, thinking back to even the simple things they used to have in their hometown, a hometown many could never return to. Ironically, the Chinese zone was initially the more popular choice for North Koreans to move, given that there was less destruction to the infrastructure as the south, though the Chinese treated North Koreans with a similar level of disdain as did the South Koreans. North Koreans found two kinds of work primarily: working on extracting minerals for their Chaebol-oriented export industry, or getting work-permits to the South (a deal that was only allowed for women). Copying President Park’s strategy of artificially keeping wages low and re-doubling on exports, those with South Korean work permits were often paid lower than the South Korean minimum wage, although it was still materially better than what they were used to. The bigger problem was the discrimination, with one of the contract workers recalling, “I don’t know what was worse: whether it was when we all ducked on the bus after crossing the border when they threw rocks at the windows that we weren’t welcome, or the simple mundanity of sweeping the streets and seeing a child stop and point at you while his mother hushes him away while not making eye-contact with you. One frightens you, the other makes you feel worthless.” In the former North Korea itself, ‘Hyundai Towns’ sprouted up around the ruins of the old cities and villages, on some occasions offering a choice between lower payment in South Korean won or higher payment in ‘company money’ that could only be spent in the company stores. It was a dark but common joke among the North Koreans that ‘Everything the Kims told us about Communism was wrong, but everything they told us about Capitalism was right.’
While it was a deal with the devil, the devil still paid his dues. The low labour costs in North Korea coupled with less need to import materials gave Korean industries a critical edge. On top of a global investment package from America, China, Japan and the EU, the South Korean economy became the world’s fastest growing economy in 2004 with a barnstorming 25% GDP growth-rate (admittedly not as impressive as it could be given the destruction of GDP in the intervening years). While Pyongyang remained a wasteland, by 2008 Seoul had returned to its old glory. Now sitting on significant uranium deposits, South Korea observed their issues of oil dependency and decided to embark on a peaceful nuclear program to domestically power their industrial sector, something whose significance could not have been imagined in 2004. President Lee would also make a deal with incoming Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose popularity had exploded owing to his strong stance on North Korea and the abductions before the war. Japan would renounce their claim to the Liancourt Rocks and give compensation to the Comfort Women of WW2. In return, South Korea would endorse Japanese rearmament and the abolition of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution (Abe’s long-time agenda), the naming of its eastern sea as ‘The Sea of Japan’, accepted the use of the Rising Sun Flag by the Japanese Navy and, off the record, would pressure schools to minimise their focus on Japanese crimes during the colonial era and instead focus on Japanese collaboration during the Second Korean War. By 2004, 70% of South Koreans recorded a positive opinion of Japan, whereas only 10% had a similar view of China. While the South Koreans were mostly content with the Post-war settlement (regardless of their anger that Kim was only a stone's throw away), the North Koreans were told that they should be grateful merely for their freedom and not starving. China correspondingly recorded lower and lower positivity towards South Korea, feeling that they were ungrateful for China's help in saving their kids. To those who wanted more, a ‘saviour’ inserted himself.
On January 1st 2004, ‘God’s Day’ in the Unification Church calendar, Sun Myung Moon performed his first mass prayer rally in North Korea since he had been imprisoned by the Communists years ago. It was in Chongju, the rally taking place at what was supposedly the very spot he had first received his revelations from Jesus. The turnout was beyond imagination - one and a half million people showed up, making it the largest religious event in the history of the Korean Peninsula. Roughly 7% of the entirety of the surviving North Korean population had attended the rally, alongside a collection of South Korean believers as well. The Chinese guards looked upon the population with a bizarre mix of eye-rolling contempt for the superstitious and awe-struck wonder at the sheer size of the voluntary gathering. A month later, the famous preacher Billy Graham would arrive in Nanpo and perform his own ‘Crusade’, netting a still extremely impressive audience of 800,000. Christianity, much to the delight of Bible Belt America, was making big strides in North Korea, although many obscured themselves to the fact that the Moonies were not the humble altruists they portrayed themselves as. On January 13th, the anniversary of the Church’s founding, Moon would announce the formation of ‘The Unification Party’ [1] to stand in elections both north and south, a play on his church’s name and his desire to unite Korea.
The Unification Party promoted North Korea’s rapid annexation into South Korea with full citizenship rights with exceptions made for those who pledged loyalty to the old regime. Its economic policies were generally capitalistic with tax incentives granted to religious groups to provide for the poor instead of the state. While avoiding the word ‘Theocracy’, Moon would favourably compare himself to Pat Robertson, the American Televangelist who dabbled in politics. He said that if Korea converted en masse to the Church, ‘Our simple prayers could make Mount Paektu as flat as a sheet of paper’. Controversially, they called for the expulsion of Chinese troops from northern Korea on the basis that Korea was a special state with people of a divine purpose. This, to say the least, did not endear the Church to the Chinese occupation force, but there was nothing either party could do about it since religious and political freedom had essentially been guaranteed on China’s end and Chinese presence was guaranteed on South Korea’s end. At the same time, Moon also received some support from older South Korean Right-Wing voters who either grew up in North Korea or kept close ties with family there.
Moon’s agenda was generally met with rejection in South Korea, since many had just seen their livelihoods ruined and demanded to know why the nation that started the war should get a cent of any reconstruction funds. But Moon, using all the political tact he had developed in his years at the top, knew what he was doing. At his January 1st Sermon, he began his speech with ‘My Fellow Koreans’, to deafening cheers from a population that had never heard those words in the last year from South Korean administrators. He continued, “You must be strong. Even if not a soul on this Earth cares for you, Jesus Christ will. If you believe in Jesus, he shall not only make man whole again, but he will make Korea whole again.” Starved of compassion, the North Koreans fell in love with Moon. In the 2004 South Korean Parliamentary elections, Moon’s Party won a mere two seats, one being Moon himself with his wife taking over the directory of the church. However, in the North Korean Council elections that had rapidly been established to act in de facto nothing more than an advisory role to the South Korean administrators, the Unification Party won an astonishing 60% of the seats, many of whom didn’t even understand Moon or Christianity but voted for him because he wanted to unite North and South Korea and thus give them more rights. In said election, all Communist Parties had been banned and none of the other Korean Parties had genuinely tried to run, meaning most of the remaining seats were furthermore malleable independents. Moon used his opportunity in the South Korean Parliament with all the skills he had built as a preacher to elucidate the plight of the North Koreans by means of the aforementioned councils as witnesses, talking about the need to make them citizens again. Even the left-wing Millennium Democrat Party was scared to go as far as Moon, worried they’d feed the stereotype of the weak leftists turning a blind-eye to Communism. Moon’s Anti-Communist credentials protected him, with President Lee complimenting ‘his boundless optimism, which sometimes comes at the expense of his reason’. At the moment, the Church was generally considered as a joke by Korea’s Right-wing Establishment, who thought Moon was at least helpful in making the North Koreans more compliant with military edict, and was also generally ignored by the left since they appreciated his attempts to help the North Koreans when the government did not.
The South Korea-China understanding, based on top of corporate exploitation of the North Koreans, would continue. Until, of course, it couldn't.
Extract from 'Here We Go Again': How the Battle Lines of the Second Cold War Were Drawn' by Jonathon Brando
America’s intervention had been a wrecking ball across the regional balance of power in the Middle East, with the big winners being the Gulf States and Israel, both of which fell into complacency. For Israel, interest in the Two-State Solution stalled since the liberation/fall of Iran along with the collapse of Hezbollah radically altered the security situation in their favour. Sharon’s government, determined along with much of the Israeli Right to ‘reclaim Judea and Samaria’, had not as strongly enforced civilian protection measures as before since the eyes of the world were distracted and Israel’s technical help was met with a tacit agreement to not mention the Intifada. To this end, the result was a Palestinian population in 2005 that had otherwise been placed at a more serious military disadvantage but also one that was angrier. In a self-reinforcing spiral, the anger undermined support for the Two-State solution which led to more violence which undermined the solution and so forth. However, in its place, the Palestinians had begun to lean more heavily on Turkey and the Gulf for support, with newfound leader of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas officially apologising to Arab leaders over the PLO’s endorsement of Saddam in the Gulf War in humiliating fashion. However, by early 2005 by the hand of the outgoing Bush Administration, both Israel and Palestine agreed to end the conflict and hold elections. Unfortunately for all parties, these elections would only be the beginning of new woes.
The collapse of the Shia Bloc in the Middle East was much lauded in the Sunni States, some of their more incendiary TV anchors arguing that this was proof of the Shia’s non-compliance with God’s will. Hezbollah had been dismantled, Syria had flipped and Iran was seen to have fallen. This emboldened Salafist Jihadist organisations who felt that the collapse of Shia power in the Middle East would correspond with a Salafist revolution. In Iraq, this manifested itself in the rise of the JMT in the outskirts of the nation’s western deserts. The JMT played on fears that the al-Maliki government was discriminatory against the Sunni (partly true, though obviously nowhere near the extent of the JMT) and that this justified a sectarian war against the Shia in Iraq while their Iranian patron couldn’t save them. American soldiers who tried to stop them were getting in the way, and so in late 2003, JMT began its formal campaign against the Americans with the intention of bleeding the Americans out and beginning a war to ‘cleanse the Middle East of apostasy’. JMT’s explicitly sectarian focus of prioritising Shia as the target would hurt their support even among more violent Islamists around the world since the target of their anger was the United States - to that end, the group’s propaganda in the 2003/2004 period focussed mainly on removing American/Coalition presence from Iraq.
While the Americans tried to build a broad base of support, unfortunately, the al-Maliki government wasn’t the one to do it. Al-Maliki passed over both Kurds and Arab Sunnis for key positions, continued to allow Shia paramilitary groups to operate independently in the name of ‘self-defence’, and received much outrage in America when he described Ayatollah Khamenei as ‘A martyr’, something that he was forced to give an apology for. Al-Maliki’s rule was marked by continuing deepening of Iraq’s sectarian problems, with tit-for-tat bombings escalating in Baghdad between Shia and Sunni Islamist groups with ordinary Iraqis caught in the middle. The Kurds meanwhile had given back their Arab territory in return for perhaps the ultimate confirmation of statehood: an allowance to play as an independent group at the FIFA World Cup (as ‘Iraqi Kurdistan’ since Turkey threatened to pull out of FIFA without the clarification). The Kurds had also agreed with the Americans to help jointly administer Kurdish territory in Iran to help relieve pressure on the Americans, though the Iraqi Kurds would quickly clash with the Iranian Kurds when they realised that while Iraqi Kurds had been subject to genocide and thus felt disconnected from the Iraqi whole, Iranian Kurds had suffered alongside their fellow Iranians and thus in many ways felt closer to their fellow Iranians than to Iraqi Kurdistan. This was something that engendered contempt from many Iraqi Kurdistanis, who felt that the Iranian Kurds had betrayed their nation in their struggle for independence and recognition. All the same, Iraqi Kurdistan had essentially completed all their goals outside of a UN Seat.
In Iran, however, the most seismic events were taking place that would change the Middle East for decades to come. The United States had agreed to reconstruct Tehran and other large areas of the country, but most Iranians would rather the Americans handed over the money and then just leave so they could fix it themselves. While the IRM was no existential menace, they continued to harass US soldiers, and indeed PMEK groups, who often dealt with the IRM ruthlessly. The PMEK instead focussed on labour action to try and pressure the Coalition forces, employing strikes and civil disobedience that was widely observed by the Iranian public to reduce the presence of American troops from Iranian cities. By the end of 2003, the PMEK officially established their political wing as the ‘New Tudeh Party’, with the old Tudeh Party’s aged leadership meekly complying. Their ideology would be similar to the Euro-Communism of Enrico Berlinguer in Italy, it pledged that Iran would be internationally neutral and perhaps most controversially to employ Ataturk-style separation of religion from politics. Ashraf Dehghani, a former guerilla fighter who had been tortured by the SAVAK and fought the Islamists thereafter before fleeing to the UK, would return to Iran and she quickly become a key member of the organisation and one of the main faces of the Iranian Left. However, she wasn’t the only person who had returned to Iran.
Reza Pahlavi, son of the former Shah, had been pushing the Bush Administration to at least allow a referendum on the return of a Shah to Iran, but Bush adamantly refused, saying it would undermine any idea that America had come to free the Iranian people. The plan was to have a Parliament and President, no king involved, along with strict bans on parties that promoted a return to the Islamic Republic as sternly as the new Iran was banned from having WMDs. Pahlavi had publicly butted heads with the Administration, eventually calling for American withdrawal from Iran shortly before the Christmas Truce, something that earned him criticism from some Iranian-American groups. Upon arrival in Iran, while most Iranians understood that he was not his father, they saw no relevance to him either. Reckoning with this reality, Pahlavi made a difficult decision and on February 10th 2004 would announce his permanent renunciation of his royal titles, and announcing his intention was to become Iran’s first democratically elected President. He took the name of the old Pro-Monarchy party, however, declaring his party as the Resurrection Party, using it as a play on ‘resurrecting’ Iran from the destruction it had endured. Its policies were to ensure Iran was a regional military power, friendly but not subservient to the West, and to leverage the business acumen of the diaspora to make Iran a thriving commerce centre that was doing business all over the world. It opposed a blanket ban on the separation of religion and state, arguing that religion in small doses was beneficial to Iran, and that it would be a disservice to ‘Sever Iran’s connections to its ‘Zoroastrian-Islamic heritage’, and aimed to uphold the two heritages in the same way the American Republicans would talk of a ‘Judeo-Christian heritage’.
Some were surprised by this, especially those in the West, who had assumed that Iran had essentially become a uniformly atheistic nation in the aftermath of the regime’s discrediting. Instead, Iran was actually more religious than it had been only a few years ago. The imminence of death, the loss of loved ones and the despair of war all turned people towards religion, albeit one that was highly sceptical of religious authority figures and of religion in government. To that extent, a particular strain of religious thought had grown in Iran, one emphasising a personal connection between God and the believer. It was because of this that of all the culturally Islamic nations, Iran records the highest number of self-professed ‘Quaranists’, that is to say those who believe in only following the word of the Quran and generally ignoring the Hadith and other Islamic books. Iranians had grown more accepting of religion, but increasingly sceptical of religious authority. To that extent, a religious Shia Muslim like Reza Pahlavi was able to speak deep to the heart of many rural Iranians in a way the more urban Tudehists could not.
The US State Department did everything they could to get Pahlavi to win the election, continuing the parallels to post WW2 Italy that had been established with Khamenei’s Mussolini-style execution. The Americans focussed on building high-quality homes to encourage diaspora Iranians to re-settle in Iran, while establishing that Iranian citizens abroad could vote in the new constitution. Letter-writing campaigns also intensified with diaspora Iranians encouraging their family in Iran to vote for the Resurrectionists over the Tudehists. The Islamic clergy in particular were eager to jump on the bandwagon, many having sentences reduced from their endorsement of the Ayatollah in return for endorsing the new democratic (and non-Tudeh) Iran, with many of the clergy worrying that the mosques would all be destroyed if the Tudeh Party came to power. In one of the more astonishing twists of the 21st Century, the grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, Hussein Khomeini, would formally join the Resurrectionist Party and hug Reza Pahlavi, son of the Shah, on stage. [2] Hussein would denounce his grandfather’s regime as ‘Contrary to the letter, spirit, and entirety of Islam’ and called for ‘Religion from the bottom’. This friendship between a Pahlavi and a Khomeini was front-page in the name of (mostly) secular democracy was eye-grabbing stuff, and eliminated the Left from the national zeitgeist, with one Tudehists commenting, “We threw out the Shah and the Islamists stole power, then we took out the Islamists and the Shahists come back - few peoples on this Earth are as cursed as the Socialists of Iran’. Pahlavi also received support in unexpected circles as well, especially in religious minority communities in Iran such as Sunni groups like the Kurds, who feared that an atheist government would just be repression by other means.
But the chief way the US sought to weaken the PMEK was to find and take out Solemani and his IRM before the PMEK did. The Administration fought the simultaneous demands of getting the troops home and trying to stamp out the IRM before it became any kind of threat to the nascent Iranian state. Burned by the experience of creating an Iraqi government before everything was properly ready, the Iranian Presidential and Parliamentary elections would be delayed into 2004 when ‘full order was restored’. The IRM had proven vicious in their attacks on Coalition troops and occasional strikes on the PMEK while being despised by 80% of Iranians. Then the Americans got some interesting information, and on May 8th 2004, a rather large bomb was dropped on a cave complex in western Afghanistan, the first combat use of the MOAB bomb. It is widely believed that this is the bomb that killed Solemani, though the Taliban government firmly denied he had ever been sent and the IRM never confirmed his death. Despite that, most observers are certain that this was the end of Solemani, though the last remaining holdouts in Iran that still cling to the Counter-Revolution often insist that he is still alive, waiting for his moment to return.
The announcement by President Bush of Solemani’s death and the denials without hard evidence by the IRM would lead to the slow death of the organisation over the next few years. By now most of the clergy had conveniently forgotten their prior support of the regime and were promoting ‘national reconciliation’ in its place, thus avoiding many embarrassing trials. Much like Japan after World War Two, elements of the old regime were maintained in an attempt to knee-cap the domestic Left, with the Conservatives, Nationalists, some ethnic minorities and now the religious coming together under the big tent of the Resurrection Party to challenge the Tudehists. To further tilt things in Pahlavi’s direction, the Presidential election would be held on October 8th on the festival of Mehregan, an ancient Iranian festival celebrating the Goddess Mithra in the hope that the Iranian festival would foster nationalistic feelings.
Unfortunately for Pahlavi, slightly more people in Iran decided the Tudehists would be a better option and voted for Ashraf Dehghani on October 8th - but he didn’t care about that much because the diaspora swung the election for him by overwhelmingly voting for Pahlavi, with no party achieving a full majority in Parliament, and many of the parties demanding secession for their own group. Others boycotted the elections, saying they did not recognise Tehran's authority in any case and were simply going through the motions before seceeding from Iran. The elections were a disappointment for the Left, but they had taken over councils all across Iran, including in Tehran. Reza Pahlavi became the first President of the new Iran, with Hussein Khomeini as its Prime Minister. And, in perhaps one of the most incredible visuals of the 21st Century, the first official diplomatic visitor to the new Iran would be an Iranian himself: Moshe Katsav, the President of Israel. Born to Persian Jews, Katsav would unfortunately spoil the incredible memories of the photo by his appalling personal conduct with his secretaries, but the moment still marked an unbelievable swing in the geopolitics of the Middle East. Israel would one more receive diplomatic recognition from Iran, although they had to do so from a new embassy as the original Israeli embassy had been handed over to the PLO after the 1979 Revolution and Pahlavi didn't want to be too partisan in the conflict by kicking the Palestinians out of the old Israeli one.
But the new President had no honeymoon. As American troops began pulling out in 2005, ethnic militias who had only temporarily been quiet rose up to try and break free from Tehran. Kurdish groups with help from Iraqi Kurdistan, Balochis with covert assistance from Pakistan, Azeris with help from the Azerbaijani government hoping to trap Armenia, and Arab-nationalist Khuzestani groups. As if united as one, they would move into the gaps American troops created. American troops in many ways rushed out much like the British did from the Holy Land on the eve of the First Israeli-Arab wars, not knowing if they were cutting and running, or leaving much too late. After years of blood from the Revolution to the Iraqi Invasion to the American invasion, now came the most tragic part of the Iranian conflict, as Pahlavi would remember it. “Iranians fighting Iraqis is sad, Iranians fighting Americans is also sad, but Iranians fighting Iranians? That is a tragedy.” Pahlavi, having felt he had been born to power as his responsibility and not his privilege, now felt all that responsibility fall on top of him: all by himself, he was the man on whose shoulders rested the very survival of Iran. If he failed, then he would go down as worse than his father, Khomeini and even Khamenei put together. On the eve of the War of Iranian Reunification, Pahlavi would declare in a televised announcement, “The Iranian nation is not one race or religion, it is a mosaic of the finest peoples on Earth. To those who would tear this family apart, be warned. As President, it is my duty to defend this country. As a Muslim, it is my duty to uphold what is good. And there can be no finer manifestation of those two responsibilities, to my fellow Iranians and to God, than to defend this nation from destruction and separation. Iran will live.”
Excerpt from ‘Broken Dreams: How the War on Terror Changed America’ by Linda Reins
The 2004 Democratic Presidential Candidate race was dominated by two characters: John Kerry, the moderate/establishment candidate depending on your view, and Paul Wellstone, the liberal champion/radical depending on your view. Wellstone quickly co-opted the antiwar movement and presented his program as a response to the war. He promised an America ‘fit for its heroes’, by proposing a Second GI Bill, universal healthcare, universal pre-K, maternal leave and a bevy of other social programs. He claimed he would be able to do this by ‘Dismantling the Military Industrial Complex’ and instead spending the money on social programs, as well as further raising taxes on wealthier Americans. He also supported a virtually immediate and total withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, Iran and North Korea beyond a few advisors at most, along with an abolition of selective service and full amnesty for anyone who had dodged the draft. He argued that American presence itself was a destabilising factor and that the countries not only wanted America out, but that it would help them develop as well. He toyed with the conspiracy theory that oil was the primary motive for Iraq and Iran’s invasion since many of his supporters bought it, but never publicly committed to it. It was a part of his agenda to radically increase green energy in the United States as a way of cutting dependence on the Middle East and getting thousands of ‘Shovel-ready jobs’. Wellstone quickly became the embodiment of evil on the American Right as the man who would bring socialism to America, something a few of his supporters wanted though Wellstone himself rejected the label and called himself ‘A Social Democrat’.
While Kerry won the support of most major Democratic figures, including the Clintons and Al Gore, he struggled to channel the same energy and enthusiasm of Wellstone, claiming that Wellstone’s numbers did not add up and that he was more capable of winning an election against whoever the Republican nominee would be. However, given the anger of Wellstone’s key constituency, they were not easily swayed with arguments that failed to reach them emotionally. In the limited debates they had, Wellstone was generally seen as having performed better. However, this too became a long running debate within the Democrat Party, with those on the Party’s left alleging a favouritism within the major liberal-leaning outlets to support and prop-up Kerry at the expense of Wellstone. The use of super-delegates was also criticised as favouring Kerry, and Kerry also received significant backing from financial institutions and companies who were convinced he would ultimately win, while the Wellstone campaign was primarily funded by mass donations, becoming one of the first internet-leaning campaigns.
At the same time, in the Republican race, the candidate who stole the race’s momentum was Mike Huckabee. This was because McCain was more vitriolic about the success of the War on Terror and wanted to campaign on it, while many Republicans felt that the War had been a painful experience and not something they even wanted to think about again even if they thought it was worthwhile. As a result, Huckabee’s laser-focus on Wellstone’s economic policies became ‘comfort-food’ to the Republican base, allowing him to become the surprise front-runner, while Mitt Romney was considered too out of touch with the average American for being a millionaire from Massachusetts at a time of economic suffering, especially after the collapse of the housing market in early 2003 which was saved from total implosion due to war-time measures by the Bush Administration but still left millions of Americans in a terrible financial state. Huckabee also hit Wellstone on his support for gay marriage, something that remained a minority opinion in 2004. At the same time, Huckabee stayed clear from any Anti-Semitic baiting, although some of his supporters certainly engaged in it.
At the same time, it was clear who had the momentum, and when Wellstone won the initial Iowa Caucus, all bets were off. While initially written off as a fad, Wellstone’s support continued to swell, becoming the first ray of hope in a long time for many young people. Crowds upon crowds, some entirely of veterans, turned out for Wellstone and became an enthusiastic base of support that can easily swing a primary, though not necessarily a general election. The two traded states for months, until Kerry finally surrendered in May. The same month, John McCain and Mitt Romney would likewise announce their capitulation to Huckabee. At the Republican Convention, it was announced that Rudy Giulliani, a hero of 9/11, would be the Vice-Presidential candidate, something that ticked off Pro-Lifers but Huckabee’s credentials on the issue generally kept the Evangelicals loyal. At the Democratic Party Convention, with Jon Stewart giving Wellstone’s introduction, the Vice-President of the Democratic Party was announced. Kerry had been suggested, but even Kerry was considered too ‘liberal’ to balance out Wellstone, with an insistence the candidate would have to be a Southern WASP to balance out a Progressive Jew. That was the reason John Edwards was picked.
In the election between Huckabee and Wellstone, the mood was certainly fouler than in 2000, with Huckabee saying Wellstone would bankrupt America with excessive spending while leaving it vulnerable to attack from abroad while Wellstone said Huckabee wanted to invade Venezuela and Cuba and to resume the draft. Their debates produced no clear winner, and it was an ultra-tight race heading into the election. However, Americans began to sink into habit, increasingly thinking that Wellstone was too out there as a candidate and that Huckabee would be a safer choice. However, thrown into the mix was perhaps the quintessential October surprise - the confirmation that Hassan Nasrallah was dead.
In July 2004, a French investigator in Lebanon realised that a mansion in the outskirts of Beirut was producing significantly more garbage than would be expected for the supposedly two people that lived there. Upon investigation, it revealed that the owner was a Christian militiaman who had fought in the Civil War, but also one who had supported Hezbollah’s wars against Israel. His house had never been searched in the initial raids to try and discover Nasrallah, which had disproportionately fallen on the Shia community. The house was also surrounded by a wall of security systems that may have been explicable if he had grudges from the Civil War, but still seemed excessive. Finally, after finding enough evidence, the question was put to President Chirac on whether to proceed with the raid, and whether they should tell the Americans. Ultimately, perhaps due to lingering resentment over American conduct, or, as Chirac explained an altruistic attempt to keep the Americans out of a potentially incorrect assumption, the French First Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment raided the compound. Killing first the owner, the squad shot another male caught trying to escape while running down the stairs to escape. They took a look at the now dead body and confirmed it was the man they were looking for - Hassan Nasrallah.
With the perpetrator of 9/11 dead, some may have expected a boost to the Republican Party at the polls, but this was far from the truth. Americans complained that the French had ‘stolen’ the Nasrallah hit to make themselves look internationally important. They then complained among themselves that not only had the French worked out where Nasrallah was before they did, but that they had fought a whole war in Iran with one (albeit not all) of the justifications being that Nasrallah could have been there. It made grieving families, especially of draftees, feel that their sons and brothers’ deaths had been even more pointless. Many conspiracy theories began to float that Bush and the Neocons had deliberately sat on the information to have an excuse to take out their old enemy in Iran - many Iranians suspect that to this day. French citizens in the meantime rejoiced at the news, feeling that the ‘Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkey’ stereotype was wiped out in a single raid. This would engender a new, much more internationally daring France than had been since in decades. Chirac has since become remembered among some in France as the man who reversed French decline in geopolitics. Certainly, France would play a much more active foreign policy role in the coming years in Europe and the Middle East, admittedly not always in the altruistic fashion.
Ultimately, the anger over failure of Americans to score the kill on Nasrallah resulted in a minor victory for Wellstone - some joke that if the British had killed Nasrallah then Huckabee would have gotten away with it, but that losing to the French was a step too far. He got 298 electoral points with the taking of Florida and Ohio among the battleground states. Upon Wellstone’s election, Huckabee gave his congratulations and talked about how inspiring the United States was for having a Jewish President and for his supporters to appreciate how important it was for Jewish people around the world. At the same time, the narrow majorities of Democrats in the House and Senate knew they would be faced with severe issues in trying to bring Wellstone’s program to life. However, this would be the first and primary electoral effect of the War on Terror, a victory for Paul Wellstone celebrated not just in quarters of America, but around the world. Meanwhile, accepting his party’s loss with grace, President Bush firmly shook Wellston’s hand at the inauguration and retired to his Texan ranch, not leaving it for six months. After that, he decided at the advice of his friend, former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, to become a preacher in his local community. The humility of his choice improved his reputation among Americans, who thanks to pop culture depictions increasingly shifted blame for the wars away from Bush and onto the various Neocons of the Administration like Rumsfeld and Cheney while empathising with Bush as someone forced into a world he wasn’t ready for. Of an idealist caught in the midst of vipers.
All across the world, backlash to the War on Terror brought itself into electoral politics, particularly in Latin America where the Pink Wave would sweep the continent, but also in Western countries too. The BRICS group of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa was formed, with Russia and China increasingly being seen by the developing world as a counterweight to an exploitative and mad West. In 2005, Tony Blair’s Labour would come in third behind the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats with the latter picking up the Anti-War mantle. However, due to the ludicrousness of British First Past the Post politics they still had more than a hundred seats in excess of the Lib-Dems, who got 98 seats, a massive gain but still not much in the grand scheme of things, leading to the creation of a Conservative-Lib-Dem Coalition with Michael Howard as the new Prime Minister (ironically a supporter of the war) with Charles Kennedy as the junior partner, though he would quickly have to resign due to his alcoholism to be replaced by Menzies Campbell. The existence of a Jewish American President and Jewish British Prime Minister was both seen as a mark of progress by some, and unfortunately as proof of Jewish global dominion by others despite opposing politics. On the European continent, Chirac’s butting heads with Bush brought electoral support, while Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s backlash to the Americans would result in a popular campaign to improve relations with Moscow, particularly in the realm of economics where Germany became highly dependent on Russian gas to fuel its economy. Schröder’s Anti-Americanism fit the times and resulted in a further victory in the 2005 German Parliamentary elections.
But it was also around this time that an extremely important election would be held, one whose result would change European history. It was the 2004 Presidential election in Ukraine, between Pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych and Pro-American Viktor Yushchenko. Owing to backlash against the West and a relatively decently performing Russian economy compared to Europe due to the price of oil, Yanukoych won the election freely and fairly by all estimates. While the Baltic States had looked westwards and had joined NATO and the EU, Ukraine resisted the westward impulse. Unfortunately for the young country, it would be their last free election.
[1] OTL, he did start a political party in 2003.
[2] The two are legitimate friends OTL.
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Looks like Pahlavi is going to be the Iranian Simeon of Bulgaria, which makes me wonder whether any comparisons to Simeon's political career in post-Communist Bulgaria were deliberate or a coincidence, with that in mind.
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