Until the whole country drinks the Kool Aid and gets occupied by Venezuela, Suriname and Brazil.
An Examination of Extra-Universal Systems of Government
- Thread starter Ephraim Ben Raphael
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Deleted member 108228
What about a surviving Roman Tetrarchy, where it somehow works with reforms over the centuries/millennia, And it instead evolves to to a council of the Tetrarchs where each Tetrarchy has a Vice Tetrarch. It doesn't need to include all the existing territories of the Roman Empire
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Skallagrim
Banned
The whole idea of a basic income is that everyone gets it.
The idea of those receiving other (non-universal) kinds of social security being excluded from voting has, of course, been proposed from time to time. The most typical proposal is to just have some really easily 'traceable' taxes, so you can easily see how much any one person adds to and receives from the public funds: and then only those who are net contributors get to vote. Some such proposals could get particularly interesting in the context of this thread, by the way. I've come across one that used the aforementioned approach, and then went on to point out that any one paid with taxpayers' money (i.e. everyone in the public sector) is a net receiver almost by definition, and should thus not be allowed to ever vote.
Obviously, these proposals tend to come up among classical liberals and "small government" types of libertarians. The most likely (and indeed, usually the intended) result is to concentrate voting in the hands of the relatively well-to-do, so that the redistributive state can be easily dismantled and a night watchman state can be put in place.
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It doesn't necessarily have to be - don't know why someone would want a non-Universal version, but it could exist - and they did remove the Universal prefix.
tehskyman
Banned
I don't think the universality of Basic Income is a necessary requirement for it's implementation. The whole idea behind BI is that those who get it, have enough money to live.
The point on the restriction is that ,if you are on BI then what is to stop you from voting for more BI?
Sounds like something Heinlein would come up with. Not sure about a world government, but maybe a Western democracy. Spain?
A post-PRC China.
Perhaps, but one must never forget the greatest cults of all time.
I think a more interesting take would be Jones (or a man like him) leading a cult of personality in a post-collapse US, sans nukes. Think the fall of Yugoslavia on an American scale.
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Skallagrim
Banned
I admit, an basic income that's not universal could of course be done. I just don't see any scenario where anyone would.
Consider it: basic income for everyone who makes less than (just for example) 1000 dollars a month gets a basic income of that same amount. Suppose you make 900 dollars per month after taxes, you end up with 1900 dollars per month. Now suppose you make 1001 dollars a month instead. No more basic income? You are actually left with 899 dollers fewer? Your incentive would be to work less, so you can keep the basic income! It's this exact trap that the basic income was supposed to prevent.
Of course, you could create a system where if you make over 1000 dollars a month, your basic income is lowered to a matching extent (so if you make 1001 dollars, your basic income is reduced to 999 dollars, etc.) -- and that would lesses the slope of the sudden financial 'cliff', but would also demand that detailed administration is in place to determine what everyone should get. And removing such bureaucratic hassle is another thing the basic income is supposed to do. (lso, this system would be difficult to tie to voting rights anyway. You don't get to vote if you get the full basic income... but what if you work enough to only get three bucks a month, eh?)
All in all, regardless of what thinks of a basic income, I'm fairly sure that not making it universal defeats the purpose of the concept. And tying it to a 'limited franchise' plan seems very difficult.
tehskyman
Banned
I mean, you could make it such that beyond a certain level of income (this might be any official income), for ever X dollars you make you receive Y dollars in BI/ reduced taxes such that X > Y. This isn't a huge bureaucratic hassle because it would be linked to your income taxes and would basically be a tax break for the "middle class". I think the principle would be the same, if you take the tax break/BI stipend then you aren't qualified to vote. If you qualify for BI but don't take it, you still have a right to vote. I guess in essence it would be the middle/upper class paying for their right to vote with a smaller cost the wealthier you are.
I think the way it would come about might be a highly stratified post-automation society. Perhaps a small European state might do the trick.
However the system is implemented the idea is that if you take money from the Government, you are not qualified to vote. Perhaps your vote is weighted based on the amount of Basic Income you receive.
Skallagrim
Banned
Now I actually want to see this in the context of a highly developed post-automation society, aided by AI.
Deleted member 108228
Do we make the War in Vietnam worse? Make it more authoritarian? Or if the US collapses due to an economic bubble on the scale of the Great Depression such as the Oil Crisis.
"President - Mostly harmless."
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Japanese Federation.
They don’t run Japan poorly (well, any worse than any other bureaucracy) and they have no compulsion to abuse their citizens.
Loose Ends, Tight Beginnings
My cover of @KuboCaskett's EEUSG entry, the Japanese Principality of Formosa. Many thanks to him for getting me the material, particularly most of the text below.
The PoD is the French holding their ground on the mainland in May of 1940, which prevented the fall of Paris. This leads to a pretty bloody stalemate a la WWI, where the Germans, while close to capturing Paris in some cases, pay a heavy price and the French able to repulse them by the beginning of 1943. Italy still gets involved in the war, but in 1941, and are able to get slightly further in North Africa than they do IOTL. Italy still loses, but to a joint Anglo-French invasion that deposed the fascist regime, and leads to another stalemate. The war ends with a Valkyrie-style coup which sees Hitler and most of the Nazi leadership killed off in a bombing, with the coup plotters able to take power thanks to the war weariness and signing an armistice that had Germany withdraw from the Low Countries, Italy, and France. However, the urge for lebensraum and antisemitism are not removed due to the new leadership, although at least the death camps are shut down due them being considered a waste of resources and the SS is dismantled. The new leadership, a military junta at this point, needed to use the power of the Jewish people, and determined simply to enslave them. By the end of the war, Norway is still under German occupation, and the Netherlands is divided into two nations along the Rhine river in the center, with the west under the Allies and the east under the Germans.
In Asia, the Second Sino-Japanese War stays contained thanks to the French ability to reinforce their forces in the Far East, turning Imperial Japan away from taking over the Allied colonies of Asia and focusing on just defeating China. The war still brings in the concerns that both the USSR and the USA, both of which adopting a platform of non-interventionism while providing support for the Allies and China. While tensions rise between Imperial Japan and the USA, there is no need for Japan to attack the US. Meanwhile the tide had slowly begun to turn in China’s favor, with the Japanese slowly pushed back towards the borders of Manchuria. The war itself does end in 1946 with a more “pragmatic” leadership emerging in the Japanese government having a ceasefire with the Republic of China after knowing further fighting would eventually harm Japan in the long run, with the borders returning to what they were in 1937 before the war. The KMT leadership reluctantly accepts this, for similar reasons and to focus on defeating the Chinese communists of which they do in the early 1950’s. However, Manchuria and Inner Mongolia are still under the Japanese thumb and continue to be one of the points of contention between Japan and China, with the latter still refusing to recognize them.
With both wars coming to an end with no resolution in sight, tensions still remain between the formerly warring countries, and the introduction of atomic weapons by the UK in 1948 officially begins the Still War. The Germans and Japanese would cement their alliance, called the Axis, to make up for the lack of cooperation in the Second Great War and even create atomic weapons of their own. The Germans succeed in 1951 and the Japanese a year later; France would have some by 1958, with the USA by 1950. The Soviets would become a key player in the Still War, technically on the side of the Allies, called the Anglo-French Alliance since 1946, yet it has its own ambitious being a communist state opposed to both the fascist Axis and the democratic, capitalist Allies, much to the annoyance of the latter. While neutral in the SGW, they backed communist insurgents and uprisings in the Balkans, mainly pro-German countries, to maintain its influence in the region and to keep the Germans on their toes on the east. Yugoslavia and Turkey were neutral during the SGW yet are brought to the Alliance’s side, though Turkey was quite more untrustworthy than Yugoslavia was, considering the tensions with the USSR over the Turkish straits and Armenian borders. Finland on the other hand became more pro-German to the point of joining the Axis in the late 40s and wanted to spite the Soviet Union. Spain was also pro-German yet stayed away from joining the Axis due to being surrounded by the Alliance, though Portugal stayed neutral for most of the time.
In other parts of the world, the USA began to create more ties with Canada and Brazil, and created the Honolulu Pact with its client states in the Americas (Canada excluded) and considers itself an ally of the Alliance. It merged with the Alliance to create the Oceanic Treaty Organization in 1955, in response to the Axis-Soviet war. Decolonization got delayed by a decade due to the Allies being able to hold to their colonies throughout the war yet still recognize the need to lessen control over them over the years, India got made into a dominion of the UK in the 1950s along with some other countries like Malaysia and East Africa. France still had trouble in Indochina with Japanese-backed insurgents trying to break off, yet was able to maintain a good hold elsewhere, even in Algeria. Of course, independence would be granted to the region of some sort by the French in the 1960s of which would become Chinese client states and subsequently battlegrounds for Chinese and Japanese interests (though the French kept Cambodia and Cochinchina). South Africa was still loyal to the UK though it still has Apartheid happen, though the Alliance is less worried about it given that racism isn’t widely discredited in the West. Brazil still had Vargas in power along with his Estado Novo long after 1945 yet he is getting pretty old by the 1950s and has his like-minded successor take power after his death in 1961. And of course his successor has a bit of a love affair with Integralism and is happy to work with such people much to the annoyance of the OTO powers, of which would sow the seeds for the Brazilian-American split. There was a “yellow scare” in the 1950’s due to some Japanese-Americans caught spying for Imperial Japan, with some lynchings happening and some areas having stricter Jim-Crow esque laws in populations with Asian people. And as for Brazil, racial laws aren’t present yet there are those that advocate such, only in favor of whites.
In 1953, German spies have discovered that the USSR is working on its own atomic weapons project and feared that their chance to drive eastwards and colonize it would fade quickly if it is to be completed and alerted its Axis allies, including Japan to take action. So sometime in April 1953, the Japanese staged a Nomohan-style skirmish in the Soviet-Manchurian borders that escalated into a shooting war with the Axis with the Germans launching a full scale attack on Soviet Europe in what became the Axis-Soviet War. And it didn’t last too long, with the Germans dropping atomic bombs in key Soviet cities in the early stages of the war, fatally crippling the Soviet war effort, though Moscow and a few others were spared, mostly due to the German junta’s decision and that some strategic bombers were shot down by Soviet air defenses in the process. Japan would do the same in Soviet Asia, though it had fewer atomics than Germany had; also hurting the Soviet war effort there and the Axis proceeded to invade the USSR. For over three years, the Axis were able to overpower the Soviets despite the fierce resistance by the communists and the Russian winter, though the fighting still rages for over two more years after the Axis took over key cities. The Axis-Soviet war is the first notable proxy war in the Still War, with the Alliance providing aid to the USSR even though it wasn’t much considering their distaste for Stalin’s regime. Stalin and his gang would be killed off during an air attack by the Axis in 1958, sapping the morale of the Soviets to the point of surrender. On August 1959, the last of the Soviet forces opposed to the Axis surrendered unconditionally in the Ural region.
After the war, the Axis divided up the former Soviet Union into their spheres of influence, and the Germans finally get their own “lebensraum” there. The Germans were sane and smart enough to exploit the ethnic tensions within the USSR during the war, with some groups like the Ukrainians treated better than others like the Russians. Though they took ideas from Imperial Japan in suppressing Slavic culture to help maintain their rule yet did not go out of their way to exterminate most of them and reduce the rest to slaves; they even allowed many structures in the region intact including Moscow. The Japanese, on the other hand, didn’t want the Slavs around and expelled most of them towards the German side, some ended up in slavery of sorts. China would also have a slice with most of Turkestan as a client state of the ROC and Mongolia divided up between it and Japan, of which would create a powder keg in the region between the two powers. Persia and Turkey joined in despite OTO protests and carved up their own spheres of influence in the region, and became more loyal allies to the Axis in response. The war would not only be the first primarily-atomic war, but also change the dynamic of the Still War.
In the years after the Axis-Soviet War, the OTO powers had invested in improving their conventional and atomic arsenals, and that Yugoslavia joins OTO in response to concerns about Bulgarian irredentism. There is still a space race but is slower and more troublesome though Germany had a lead at first only for the UK to beat them to the moon in the 1970’s. There was also a détente happening in the same decade as the leaders of both sides at the time the danger of atomic warfare and sought to have some good relations with each other, though Germany’s Jim Crow-esque treatment of Jews and Slavs would be a thorn in their relations. After the Axis-Soviet War ended, India opted to have good relations with Japan after concerns about China’s territorial claims in India and their harsh treatment of Muslims and other non-Hindu minorities, of which concerns OTO to the point of having a split in the 1970’s with OTO personnel and diplomats leaving the country and cutting ties, making India take the side of the Axis. Even China would get on OTO’s bad side with their equally bad treatment of the Turkic and Mongolian populations, though it stayed a technical ally of OTO nevertheless. Japan on the other hand was outraged at the détente between the Axis and OTO and began to part ways with Germany beginning in the late 70’s, and leaving the Axis by the 1980’s. South Africa didn’t really split with OTO yet had drifted more and more away from them regarding its desire for a “Greater South Africa” that rubbed the UK the wrong way and was secretly forming ties with the Germans. Most of those splits are partly related to the growing revulsion to racism, both systematic and non-systematic, that had still persisted since the end of the SGW.
Jim Crow still lasted well into the 1980s in spite of various attempts to dismantle it yet cracks are starting to show with the race riots taking a toll on the US economy of which led to a civil rights movement analogue that mostly used non-violent resistance along with a civil rights act being created in 1989 by a president opposed to the systematic racism in the country who would go out of his way to have non-white people in the White House. It would become a turning point in race relations for 20th century USA and it would lead to worse relations with some countries with systemic racism like Germany, South Africa, and Brazil. The two countries had been rivals since the 1960s, over Brazil’s turn to Integralism since Vargas died that rubbed the USA the wrong way and Brazil going rogue in response and turning to the Axis. That and Brazil having its own Jim Crow laws in response to mixed race riots and the Integralists taking some white-supremacist viewpoints and subjecting the mixed race people to conditions bordering on slavery. The Integralists are “kind” enough to let some non-white people into the upper levels of society if they are “good” enough in their eyes. Argentina sought neutrality for the sake of survival despite being pro-Axis long after the SGW ended though it doesn’t get along with Brazil very well. Same for Turkey and Persia, despite both of them pro-Axis, with Turkey in the Axis and Persia independent; though there was a brief war between them in the 1970’s that was quickly put down by German mediation. The Germans let Spain go when the latter was having a revolution that disposed of the Francoist regime, which began a bloody civil war in the 1980s that saw its colonial possessions breaking off and the country Balkanized into pieces and OTO intervening. The Second Spanish Civil War would spread to Portugal with the Estado Novo regime falling and its “provinces” declaring independence from the newly democratic nation, yet are merely remnants of the Portuguese Empire. And of course the Zambezi War would further change the relationship between OTO and the three powers.
The Zambezi War involved the Portuguese Provinces invading Rhodesia in December 1991 to back the white-minority led Apartheid regime that was facing non-white uprisings backed by OTO and the USA enacting an embargo on the Provinces in response. The Provinces did not bother letting go of Rhodesia in spite of the embargo taking a took on its economy, so the UK, the USA, and its OTO allies attacked and invaded the Provinces in January 1992 and it was quite a short war, with the Provinces’ military being behind that of the OTO’s technologically. The OTO forces first invaded Rhodesia to free it from the Provinces’ occupation then followed up with an invasion of the Provinces themselves in Angola and Mozambique. While the OTO made quick work of the Provinces’ military forces there, they got bogged down in a bloody insurgency by the remnant forces eventually found to be backed by South Africa. While the war was a success to the people of the OTO nations, the long low-intensity conflict that followed had economic and social repercussions well into the 21st century with frequent race riots and an economic recession in the late 90s. Germany had slowly begun to be enemies with OTO once again after word got out about them having ties to South Africa, thus bringing détente to an end. With the tensions rising in Southern Africa and in Western Europe, fears of an atomic war would once again be on the rise.
None of that compared to what happened between China and Japan in the 1990s. While some attempts to have a détente between the two powers after almost two decades of constant saber rattling in East and North Asia, the two powers still did not trust each other and had enough atomic weapons to destroy each other. Both their respective alliances had shunned them to an extant for not following détente their Western counterparts had. Japan having economic and social issues regarding the non-Japanese minorities who were getting fed up with the increasingly stagnant economy and harsh racial policies, and there were frequent uprisings in former Russian Far East by the Slavic peoples. All of it led to a power struggle in Japanese between the hardliners and the reformists, during which a "middle of the road" leader emerged victorious and had led Imperial Japan into a sort of mostly hardline route with some reformist elements. China was better off in comparison yet it had its share of economic and social issues. China was led by Chiang Ching-Kuo who was more reformist and part hardline, yet he became a frequent target of various factions in many failed assassination attempts. Add to the frequent tensions around China’s sphere of influence in Central, North, and South East Asia, and the after mentioned powder keg seems ready to be lit.
In April 17th, 1996 a Japanese recon plane was downed by Chinese anti-air units and crash landed on the Chinese side in Mongolia. A Japanese division was sent there to retrieve the wreckage, yet the Chinese refused entry and a firefight broke out, leading to a brief skirmish between the Japanese and Chinese border units. While it ended in a ceasefire on that day, the next day on April 18th, 1996 the Japanese launched an all-out attack and invasion of China along the Eastern side, with an invasion of Hainan and raids on Chinese coastal cities, of which begins the Third Sino-Japanese War. Oddly, atomic weapons didn’t start to be used right away given that both sides feared their use and resorted to conventional means of which would have devastating results. The Chinese were able to hold the invaders at the bay just near the Yellow River by May and thus a stalemate broke out. There were intense air battles and some naval ones too, despite the Japanese advantage in the naval department. However, Mongolia and North Asia would frequently change hands, and Manchuria and the Japanese territories in the former Russian Far East still held. Both the Axis and OTO backed Japan and China respectively yet even they need to have both sides back down and once again have peace or risk getting dragged in to the apocalypse.
After five months of war, in September 1996, the Chinese were slowly turning the tide yet was unable to truly push the Japanese back again. A rogue Chinese bomber unit opted to take matters into their own hands and nuked some Manchurian bases in that same month. After the atomic attacks, Japan launched most of its atomic arsenal of ICBMs toward China and some of its client states in Asia with the Chinese doing the same. Both of them would suffer great damage in the process, in spite of them preparing for such a thing via ABMs to shoot down missiles and evacuating most cities in the process, It also did not help that both sides’ economies were collapsing before the nuclear exchange. Many of their bases, and cities would be destroyed in the process, with even most of the Japanese Imperial Family getting wiped out in the process. Both Japan and China technically still kept fighting at the beginning of October, though their respective unity would deteriorate with one half wanting to stop and recover and the other wanting to finish the fight, leading to like a multi-sided conflict with both sides having civil wars with each other. The fact that both of their inability to communicate with their respective leaders didn’t help, turning East Asia into a big warlord zone, all while poverty spreads and the radiation taking a toll on the health of the people involved and the environment there. This whole disaster would immediately lead to both the Axis and OTO to intervene and do some serious peacekeeping, along with India picking up some of former Chinese pieces. They eventually get both the Chinese and Japanese factions to have a ceasefire in October 30th, 1996 after some violent attempts in the past.
The Third Sino-Japanese War would shock the world into not only reducing atomic arms but outright banning their use and manufacture. Both the Axis and OTO leaders signed the Atomics Arsenal Reduction (AAR) treaty in 1997 and later the Atomics Arsenal Elimination and Prohibition Treaty (AAEPT) in 1999, making atomic weapons almost a thing of the past. Yet some nations still held on to them, which made them rogue states in the eyes of most of the world and subject to embargoes by the League of Nations. The leading blocs would invest in other ways to deter each other from going into all-out war, including other WMDs and economic warfare. However the two blocs are somewhat more cooperative at least in the economic sense, though the issues over Germany’s race laws and treatment of Slavic people in Germany’s colonies in Eastern Europe are a thorn in relations with OTO, ensuring that the Still War continues at least well into the 21st century.
Fast forward to 2011, the UK is still a superpower in spite of an encroaching economic downturn and the USA slowly overtaking its role, though its economy had been hit by the wars in Angola and Mozambique. Germany and France are still superpowers to this day, though India is rapidly becoming one in the wake of the Third Sino-Japanese War and so is Brazil. The Philippines has the benefit of using refugees from the Sino-Japanese proxy wars and the Third Sino-Japanese War to booster its economy. Italy got punished harshly and was balkanized into a few pieces, with Sardinia and Sicily going to the Allies and Italy proper becoming a neutral state that’s bent on discouraging fascism for the foreseeable future and is one of the most progressive nations in the world, going as far as to have a female for a prime minister.
After the Indochina countries were granted independence, France did the same for most of its overseas possessions. The UK did the same, though many of them are more of dominion allies than completely independent, yet some like Egypt, fell into civil war. Many of these Malay Emergency-esque conflicts served as the proxy wars of the Still War and also as test beds for various military hardware just short of atomics. Saudi Arabia is still loyal to OTO though some Middle Eastern states weren’t so fortunate, with Syria being split into a pro-Turkish north and a pro-OTO south, and Iraq still in a civil war between the pro-OTO and pro-Axis factions, the latter backed by Turkey and Persia. Libya, Algeria, and Morocco are still allies of OTO yet are considering breaking off to find their own path free of western influence. Oddly, Persia and Turkey are becoming enemies ever since the TSJ war and that Persia is seeking to be friends with OTO to counterbalance the Axis in Central Asia yet issues over the Persian gulf are complicating relations with the West.
Germany still has a grip on former Soviet Europe, stretching all the way to the Urals, and it has plenty of “bantustans” for the Slavic peoples that are more akin to the Native American reservations of the United States. Brazil is slightly more developed than OTL’s, has been engaged in a war against Peru and has put Bolivia under its thumb, mainly by annexation of which had begun to “de-Hispanicize” the region and replacing it with a Lusophone culture (and is subjected to racial laws there favoring the white “Lusitanian” populace). It’s often at odds with Argentina which is now considering allying with OTO though it would have to give up its claims to the Falkland Islands to do so and it’s a big debate within the still-Peronist government. Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador are allies of OTO and after the Amazon War are considering membership with the alliance to counter Brazil.
South Africa still has apartheid well to the present and is seeking to be a superpower yet is kind enough to dispose of nuclear weapons by the time the 2000’s ended. Yet it is considered the rival to OTO interests in Africa and perhaps more so since the Zambezi War, with its influence expanding to Angola and Mozambique. The ongoing civil wars still wage there yet US and UK influence are waning yet the pro-OTO black majority governments are still holding on. The rest of Africa are either aligned with OTO or are neutral states that want nothing to do with the West, yet are at least more stable and richer than OTL’s given the death of communism here and delayed decolonization. Congo is one of the neutrals and had been independent since the late 60’s and seeks to be a regional power in Africa to counter South Africa. There is another rogue state in the form of an ultra-nationalist but communistic Abyssinia that hates the West, despite the fact it was once a loyal ally to them before the leftist revolution in the 1980’s overthrew the monarchy and expelled foreign influence.
As for East Asia, both China and Japan broke up into several states due to the chaos of the war and its aftermath, yet some of them were able to defeat others and expand. In China there are technically three big powers there that aim to unify China in the future, if they could do it that is. The Han Empire, borne out of the hardline Chinese forces that seek to finish off the remnant Japanese forces off of mainland Asia and the world once and for all and is run by a pseudo-monarchist dictatorship not unlike Imperial Japan’s, they follow the ways of Yuan Shikai who is regarded as the “hero” that China needs and not Sun Yat-Sen and is unsurprisingly hostile to anything Japanese and Western. The Second Republic of China, which is often hardline yet reformist at times, is a continuation of what Chiang did before the war and has renewed its relationship with the USA and OTO, yet has all the same issues of corruption and racism the first ROC had though the USA is trying hard to rectify that and is still more or less a dictatorship. Some of the coastal areas held by Western powers that were annexed by China before the war were transferred to the USA after the nuclear exchanges. The People’s Federation of China, which despite the communist sounding name, is actually the most democratic of the three and is aligned with India, though it’s the poorest and has corruption issues worse than the SROC. The Chinese Soviet Homeland is the “rebirth” of the Chinese communist movement that was once thought completely crushed in the 1950’s and believes that the right-wing ways of the FROC is China’s “downfall," but is too weak to challenge all the three powers for supremacy over China. Tibet is independent but is a client state of India and given the mistreatment by the ROC before the war, the Tibetans are happy that way; Yunnan also broke off after the war and became an Indian client state too. Shanghai broke off after the exchanges and is probably the most neutral state out of all of them though it’s somewhat backed by OTO in case the Han Empire invades. There is a Hui nation called “Huide” and is also a neutral state. Uyghurstan broke off to join Turkestan, which also threw off the Chinese shackles and is aligned with the Axis to the point of considering joining the alliance (thanks to ties with Turkey).
Elsewhere in East Asia, Mongolia became independent in the aftermath of the exchanges by throwing off the Chinese and Japanese chains and expanded towards areas with plenty of Mongols, making itself the largest landlocked nation in Asia next to Turkestan. It is run by a monarchist Khanate that revived the ways of the old Imperialistic days yet is not much richer than the PFC. The Second Empire of Great Manchuria is the most stable despite being struck by some nuclear weapons, and is still at odds with the post-FROC states and it’s “neighbor” Korea. It even seems to resemble elements of Taisho-era Japan in terms of prosperity yet is still ruled by a dictatorial monarchy. The Second Empire of Korea is born from oddly enough a compromise between the Japanese warlords and the Korean independence and autonomists, yet still has many of the elements of its former Japanese master, right down to the emperor worship and militaristic tendencies. It is enemies with Manchuria over who gets to inherit Japan’s lands in mainland Asia, and fought a war with Manchuria in what became known as the Koreo-Manchu War in 1998 over the former Japanese territories in the former Soviet Far East. The Koreans won after a few months of fighting, taking chunks of Manchurian territory in the process. Of course both nations would warm up to the USA yet still are at odds with each other and are alleged to have nuclear weapons hidden away. There is also an independent Yakutia that broke off from Japanese rule and became a US client state along with the rest of former Russian Far East that were once part of Imperial Japan prior to the war.
Japan broken up into warlord states after the nuclear exchange and some emerged victorious over others, and a few became independent nations. The Republic of Ezo is one of them, along with the New Kingdom of Ryukyu, of which the latter became a US ally and is surprisingly cooperative while Ezo remained non-aligned yet is having a revival of old Ainu ways to leave behind the former Japanese past. There is also the East Joseon State, where Chuogoku used to be, comprised of many Korean laborers that broke free from Japanese rule and also sought non-alignment, and are left-wing socialist authoritarians and are not fond of anything Japanese. Nagasaki is another “independent” city-state that has ties to OTO in case of an attack. The rest are US client states more akin to those in Central America, and the US makes sure they stay independent for a long time and any such notion of Japanese reunification is discouraged and sometimes outright banned.
In addition, Thailand, while an ally of Japan before and during the Third Sino-Japanese War, did not get directly involved because of the nuclear factor, did take advantage of the post-exchange chaos and brought most of Indochina in its grasp, and even annexed Laos. Indonesia was granted independence, albeit in the 1950s and was the subject of proxy wars between the Japanese rebels and the pro-Western government since the 1960s which continued well into the 1990s and that the latter won by the late 90s.
Tech level is about between the late 90s to the early 2000s, though there is still the equivalent of the Internet, cell phones, and video games. There are more space stations than OTL yet are much cruder and less sophisticated.
Viracocha Weeps
This is my world map cover of the Tupamarist Republic of Peru EEUSG entry by kyuzoaoi from deviantArt. Many thanks to him for helping out.
- The Soviet Union fell harder, with a coup briefly succeeding in ousting Gorbachev but ultimately failing to prevent the secession of the Soviet Union's constituent republics. There were more violent conflicts, particularly within the former RSFSR. Kaliningrad becomes independent, but Russian forces managed to secure Crimea from Ukraine. The Caucasus were more of a mess, with the region still experiencing occasional violence.
- China experienced another major protest on the heels of the Tiananmen Square massacre, which led to the Chinese government once again putting down the protesters violently. This damaged Chinese-Western relations severely, leading to the Chinese to form an alliance with the new Russia as a counterweight to the now-hegemonic United States.
- Post-communist instability led to a war between Romania and Hungary, which led to the formation of a Roma-led state between their borders.
- Yugoslavia fell harder, with more post-Yugoslav states existing into the 21st century.
- South Africa fragmented into three major states - one Mandela-led, a militant Azania, and the Volkstaat - plus all the Bantustans going their way.
- There was a brief, limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan. All of the targets were military, and the war ended with a UN-mandated status quo ante bellum. The Indian and Pakistani governments collapsed soon afterward and have been replaced with new governments.
- Mexico dealt with the Zapatista problem more peacefully and the Zapatista rebels have largely stood down and left to themselves, thanks to their part in stopping the Quetzal Roja of Guatemala.
- Japan has a lot of Japanese-Peruvian and former North Korean refugees.
- The Philippines had seen Miriam Santiago instead of Fidel Ramos winning the 1992 election. She was dubbed the Margaret Thatcher of the Philippines and it shows: the New People's Army insurgency was soundly defeated by being caught in the act receiving Shining Path aid. The mostly true if exaggerated excesses of the Shining Path and the Quetzal Rojo proved to be a powerful propaganda weapon.
- The US did not invade Iraq in 2003, but had supported covertly Kurdish separatists. After Kurdistan become full independent, it was a cause for Saddam to be overthrown by the military, which led to some liberalization.
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Two questions:
--Why are the Taliban the Islamic Republic rather than the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan? They love to hearken back to traditional Arab power structures rather than Western ones.
--In the entry itself (I know this one is on the original author rather than on you), how does Fujimori not taking power help the Shining Path? OTL he came in while the Shining Path was on the decline and fucked up the end phase with needless brutality and gratuitous human rights abuses that probably gave the group more ammo even as it went deeper into crazy town.
Otherwise, nice if grimdark timeline!
--Why are the Taliban the Islamic Republic rather than the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan? They love to hearken back to traditional Arab power structures rather than Western ones.
--In the entry itself (I know this one is on the original author rather than on you), how does Fujimori not taking power help the Shining Path? OTL he came in while the Shining Path was on the decline and fucked up the end phase with needless brutality and gratuitous human rights abuses that probably gave the group more ammo even as it went deeper into crazy town.
Otherwise, nice if grimdark timeline!
- Status