Epilogue V: The Arisen Phoenix
Europan soldiers parading through Vienna following the ratification of the Treaty of Munich, circa March 1943.
The end of the Second Great War marked the beginning of a new period in human history, the one that we find ourselves within to this day. Gone were the days of the petty squabbles of European empires that had dominated history since the discovery of the New World. The horrors of the Second Great War has caused the great powers of the world to detest large-scale warfare, and the discontent of the war-weary masses of the world made waging a Third Great War impossible for the time being as the world rebuilt itself. If the new superpowers of the world sought to extend their influence, they would have to resort to subtle and cautious games of international intrigue, diplomacy, and proxy warfare.
The world did not know it, but as Europe was being rebuilt, the Great Game was beginning.
The tensions of the post-Second Great War world primarily coalesced around two superpowers and their sphere of influence. The Treaty of Munich had ceded an impressive amount of authority to the Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation, which had become the unquestioned authority in Iberia and South America. The totalitarianism and violence (especially towards monarchism) of comunacionism had terrified the powerful constitutional monarchies of the world since the Portuguese Civil War, which fell primarily into a sphere of influence around the Commonwealth of Europa, and to an extent the Mexican Empire, both of which had become close allies following the Second Great War. The Europan-Mexican alliance was only further solidified when, in 1944, Emperor Maximilian I of Europa married Princess Rosemary, the heir to the Mexican throne, at the surprisingly old age of forty-one. The two had met during the numerous meetings between their governments during the Second Great War and had grown to have a strong connection, particularly following the death of Macimilian’s wife in 1941. Therefore, the two were the best candidates for securing a Europan-Mexican personal union, an opportunity which may not be presented for many more years.
Emperor Maximilian I of the Commonwealth of Europa.
While the union of Maximilian and Rosemary was celebrated as the beginning of a new era of peace amongst the great monarchies of Earth, this was a peace secured in retaliation against the rising forces of comunacionism. The numerous ethnic cleansings conducted in territory occupied by the ANCN following the Treaty of Munich was condemned by international newspapers, which declared comunacionism the post-war threat to peace. The border Europa shared with the recently-established Portuguese puppet states of Aragon, Castille, and Basque began to witness military buildup from both Europan and Portuguese military forces alike, while the waters encircling Iberia were ruled by warships, prepared to attack at a moment’s notice.
For the next handful of years, this was the situation the world found itself within. Rival global superpowers built up their military stockpiles, choosing to keep their large forces from the Second Great War, while simultaneously funding international reconstruction efforts. For the majority of the world, however, the so-called “End of History” era that had emerged from the chaos of the Great Wars was a period of economic prosperity. New technological developments turned the ruins of Europe into beacons of industry and commerce of the Commonwealth of Europa, and reconstruction efforts would create millions of new jobs. Even the United States of America, which had not participated in the Second Great War, felt the beneficial effects of the End of History as new wealth and innovation poured in from across the Earth. As the American economy flourished, President Arthur Vandenberg easily secured a second term in 1944 in a campaign against the fiery Liberal Unionist John Llewellyn Lewis on the promise of “the beginning of the end for poverty.”
President Arthur Vandenberg of the United States of America.
This prosperity would not, however, last for long. In August 15th, 1946, the Xuantong Emperor of China was assassinated by a man by the name of Hua Guofeng, and the Qing Dynasty was left without a head of state. The Xuantong Emperor had ascended to the throne of China shortly after the First Great War had ended, and had managed to preserve the dying Chinese monarchy in a humiliated and increasingly unstable state by providing progressive policies, such as welfare, to his people. However, the Qing Dynasty could never reclaim its lost glory, and under the Xuantong Emperor even the days within the Japanese sphere of influence seemed to be a lost age of better times for China. In the Interwar Period, discontent with the status quo began to build up within the Chinese masses, who started to turn to populist alternatives, such as republicanism and comunacionism. The National Workers’ Party (QGD), the largest comunacionist political party in China, thrived in the early 1920s, however, the rise of the Federation of Japanese Communes caused the QGD to lose popularity due to the new Japanese government’s hostility to the Qing Dynasty, and for that matter the independence of China from the Japanese sphere of influence.
By the time the Xuantong Emperor was assassinated, however, the QGD was on the rise yet again. The terrors of stratosism in eastern Asia had caused the Federation of Japanese Communes to be depicted as, at the very least, the lesser of two evils, which was interpreted by the QGD as a justification for the support of comunacionism. Therefore, when the news of the Emperor’s assassination (by a comunacionist, no less) arrived in the newspapers of China the eyes of an unstable empire turned to the National Workers’ Party and its chairman, Lin Yurong, a prominent military commander who had assumed control of the QGD during the Second Great War. Yurong had since both centralized the Chinese comunacionist movement and had established a strict militia for the QGD, called the Eastern Vanguard (D

), in order to defend the QGD from the suppression of comunacionists, although in reality the D

would often operate as a questionable vigilante force that attacked ethnic groups deemed “inferior” by the QGD.
Many QGD members argued that the time for revolution had arrived as the Chinese monarchy fell apart, and their cries for war were further fueled by the anti-comunacionist public reaction to the reveal of Hua Guofeng’s political views. Yurong, would not, however, openly declare revolution against the Qing Dynasty yet, opting to encourage numerical and resource buildup of the D

instead. However, soon enough more chaos would emerge. The younger brother of the Xuantong Emperor, Pujie, was coronated as the Guang Emperor only a few days after the assassination of his brother, hoping to restore order. However, the rise of the the Guang Emperor was met with the simultaneous rise of General Jiang Jieshi, who would take advantage of the apparent incompetence of the Guang Emperor by manipulating the Emperor, eventually becoming the leader of the entire Chinese military. For the next handful of months, the Emperor and Jiang Jieshi would jockey for power within the Chinese government, with the moderates of the reign of the Xuantong Emperor aligning with their monarch while militant reactionaries, primarily within provincial and militaristic bases of power, would become the pawns of Jieshi. By the January of 1947, the Emperor and General Jieshi had become obvious rivals, however, by this point Jiang Jieshi was by far the stronger force, with the last pocket of provincial resistance residing within the south, where cultural and political differences guaranteed local opposition against the authoritarian and centralized policies of Jieshi.
Ultimately, the unimaginable would occur in the January of 1947 as a quick collection of events shook both China and the world. First, on January 10th, 1947 General Jieshi would order that the National Workers’ Party be banned. This news was retaliated against only a few hours later, when Lin Yurong declared that the QGD would enter a state of rebellion against the Qing Dynasty, and soon enough the D

had taken up arms against the Guang Emperor. Believing that a strong executive was necessary for the comunacionist rebellion to be repressed, General Jiang Jieshi would arrest the Guang Emperor and his followers, and the emperor was forced to abdicate in favor of Jieshi, who became the Shengli Emperor of the Jiang Dynasty on January 15th, 1947.
Jiang Jieshi, the Shengli Emperor of the Jiang Dynasty.
While the declaration of the Jiang Dynasty was celebrated within northern China, where General Jiang Jieshi was popular and viewed as the last defender of China from comunacionism, southern China rejected the new dynasty. As the Jiang Dynasty began to stabilize, the provinces of Yunnan, Guangxi, Guizhou, and Sichuan all seceded from the grip of the Shengli Emperor to confederate into the League of Free Provinces (LFP), which was a de facto coalition of warlords, many of which held republican sympathies and sought to establish a Chinese Federation from both the destruction of the Jiang Dynasty and the National Workers’ Party. After many months of subtle buildup, the world turned in shock as Chinese soldiers turned their weapons upon each other, for the Chinese Civil War had begun.
Almost immediately, the National Workers’ Party took over the area surrounding Shanghai, the capital of China, which forced the Jiang Dynasty out west. With the utilization of complex and fierce guerrilla tactics, Lin Yurong would swiftly conquer the Chinese coastline, therefore bringing the mouth of the Yangtze River under the occupation of the D

by the start of the April of 1947. The success of the QGD in the Chinese Civil War would prompt the Federation of Japanese Communes to support the QGD by announcing official intervention within the Chinese Civil War on May 8th, 1947. The arrival of Japanese reinforcements was celebrated by the QGD, as the PJA veterans of the Second Great War moved south from Japanese China and landed in Chinese ports as the PJN patrolled the coast of China. A few days after the entry of Japan into the Chinese Civil War, the Japanese puppet states formed from eastern Russia following the Second Great War would also declare their support for the QGD, and the ANCN would officially announce that all member states would be supplying the QGD in some form, typically through the deployment of weapons. However, the Proletarian Union would take intervention further by sending military forces to China, and by the July of 1947 thousands of Portuguese soldiers were following the Yangtze River.
As the Jiang Dynasty fell in the east, it simultaneously faced an invasion from the south via the League of Free Provinces, which would push into the Shaanxi Province. The success of the Shaanxi Campaign, which captured Xi’an on September 5th, 1947, attracted the attention of the Europan-Mexican sphere, which had been keeping a close eye on China ever since the declaration of the Jiang Dynasty. The support of democracy within the League of Free Provinces had made the LFP the preferred faction amongst the constitutional monarchies in the west, however, the Europans, Mexicans, and their allies had chosen to remain outside of the Chinese Civil War for the time being, in part due to China not really being relevant to the west, and in part due to a fear a risking a war with the ANCN by funding an entity in direct opposition with a comunacionist organization.
But politics were changing in Europe. Ever since the establishment of the Commonwealth of Europa, the head of government of the new global superpower had been Italo Mussolini, who was elected as the first chancellor of Europa in 1943 by Parliament (the Austro-Italian system of two heads of government had been scrapped by Europa in favor of a deputy chancellor and a stronger democratically elected judicial branch). As the leader of the Populist-Royalist Party (PRP), Mussolini had easily managed to keep control over the Commonwealth of Europa upon its first four years of existence, however, as the ANCN began to assert more and more power around the world, the Europan opinion on the role of the Commonwealth in post-war international affairs was up for debate. In fact, support for a more harsh stance towards the ANCN prompted the second parliamentary election in Europan history on September 12th, 1947, in which a coalition of liberals and centrists secured a substantial amount of seats within Parliament (just barely under the amount needed to usurp the PRP and secure a majority), although Italo Mussolini remained chancellor for the time being and the executive branch barely underwent any change after the 1947 parliamentary election.
The biggest effect of the success of the Centrist Coalition, led primarily by the Liberal Party, was a shift in foreign policy towards comunacionism. Under the leadership of MP Pierre de Gaulle, the Centrists argued in favor of supporting the League of Free Provinces, and by winning over a select few allies within the PRP, who voted for a new Minister of Foreign Affairs, with the Liberal Konrad Adenauer becoming the new leader in Europan foreign policy. With his new position of power, Adenauer organized meetings between the League of Free Provinces to negotiate potential Europan intervention, and also met President Hector Long of Mexico due to a belief that Mexican support would be paramount to aiding the LFP, which bordered a few Mexican puppet states established once China capitulated in the First Great War. In the October of 1947, Konrad Adenauer proposed a bill to Parliament that would guarantee Europan military support for the LFP, which passed by a majority and was later ratified by Italo Mussolini, therefore meaning that Europan soldiers would soon be arriving in southern China alongside Mexican forces, due to Hector Long passing a similar resolution a few days later.
The first proxy war of the Great Game had begun.
The Chinese Civil War would continue for many more months as the three factions clashed for control of the decaying China. While the QGD and LFP proved to be competent against their opponents, the Jiang Dynasty was much worse off. Without foreign aid, the already weaker empire of the Shengli Emperor, which lacked access to any coasts and had few competent military commanders, was conducting a guerrilla war down to the very last man out in western China by the time 1948 began. It was at the Battle of Shangluo on January 19th, 1948 where the Jiang Dynasty made its last stand against the League of Free Provinces under the leadership of the Shengli Emperor himself, who commanded trench defenses encasing the western border of Shangluo against the onslaught of the LFP and her allies. After many hours of combat, the LFP found an opening in Jiang defenses, therefore storming Shangluo and forcing the Shengli Emperor to capitulate by the end of the day.
With the Jiang Dynasty defeated, the Chinese Civil War became a clash exclusively between the League of Free Provinces and the National Workers’ Party for control of China. After Jiang Jieshi was defeated, the tides appeared to turn in favor of Yurong’s QGD, which rapidly advanced into southwestern China via the March Campaign, in which the D

made it as far as Bijie before slowing down by the end of the March of 1948. Following the March Campaign, General Du Yuming was forced to step down from his position as the supreme commander of the military of the League of Free Provinces and was succeeded by Chen Cheng, who quickly amassed a large coalition of forces from the LFP and her allies.
General Chen Cheng of the League of Free Provinces.
With a vast army under his command, General Chen led a retaliatory offensive against the D

, and by brutally striking the war-weary army, the LFP soon found itself leading its own offensive, known as the April Campaign. Under the leadership of Chen Cheng, the League of Free Provinces and her allies would make rapid gains in a way that mimicked the success of the D

only a month earlier. However, the League of Free Provinces could not fight on forever, even if it did have two of the most powerful nations on Earth for allies, for resources were dwindling day by day, as was manpower. Therefore, the LFP and her allies concluded that a ceasefire with the QGD was necessary to ensure the survival of Chinese democracy, even if it meant that half of China would remain within the iron first of comunacionism.
On May 28th, 1948 the Treaty of Guangzhou was signed, thus securing an end to hostilities in China. The League of Free Provinces was to remain in control of its original four provinces, while also annexing Hunan, Chuanbian, and all of Hubei south of the Yangtze River, while the rest of China became territory of the Chinese People’s State (CPS), an ultra-totalitarian comunacionist regime led by the QGD and Lin Yurong, who became the first Premier of the Chinese People’s State following the conception of the new government.
Premier Lin Yurong of the Chinese People’s State.
Not long after the Treaty of Guangzhou ended, the League of Free Provinces would centralizing itself by forming a new government, the Federal Republic of China (FRC), or South China (The CPS would go on to be known as North China). In accordance to an agreement with the Mexican Empire, referendums would also be held in its puppet states on whether or not they would want to join the Federal Republic of China as a response to growing nationalism in the puppet regimes since the Chinese Civil War, with Hector Long arguing that “one strong democratic China, united in freedom with like-minded nations abroad, is much better than many weak subservient Chinese puppets.” All Mexican puppet states in China would vote to join South China, with the exception of Guangdong, which just barely voted to become an independent republic instead.
The Chinese Civil War was significant in that not only was it the first time since the Portuguese Civil War that western democratic powers were engaged in fighting comunacionism, but that it was also the first time since the Second Great War that western powers were militaristically collaborating. And with comunacionism expanding into every corner of the globe it could squeeze into, the democratic nations of the world decided that the Proletarian Union and the Alliance of National Communist Nations had to be countered with a new coalition. Thus, in the June of 1948, representatives of Europa, Mexico, Sweden, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Ukraine, Belarus, Livonia, Estonia, Karelia, the Don Republic, the Kuban Republic, Georgia, and South China would arrive in Brussels to negotiate the founding of a mutual defense alliance called the Global Defense Organization (GDO), a pact that would counter the ANCN and sought to protect global democracy. In the following years Denmark-Norway, Greece, Egypt, Guangdong, and Korea would also become members by the end of the 1940s, therefore turning the GDO into a true force to be reckoned with.
One of the most apparent nations not within the GDO was the United States of America, a nation that appeared to be endorsing neutrality ever since the end of the First Great War, and especially during the Second Great War and the Vandenberg administration. As the international clash of ideologies and influence known as the Great Game became apparent to the entire world, Arthur Vandenberg insisted that American isolation was necessary for the preservation of American international sovereignty in the face of the growing power of Europa and Mexico. Near the end of his presidency, President Vandenberg would enact perhaps one of his most influential policies, the Vandenberg Doctrine, in which the United States officially became a neutral power within the Great Game and encouraged other nations to declare their neutrality in the face of a possible Third Great War. The Vandenberg Doctrine was celebrated by the American government, which wanted nothing to do with the squabbles of the GDO and ANCN, and even after the Liberal Unionist senator Henry Wallace was elected president in 1948, beating the Democratic nominee Arthur MacArthur III, the Vandenberg Doctrine stayed in place.
President Henry Wallace of the United States of America.
In fact, President Wallace would take the Vandenberg Doctrine a step further by forming a league of neutral nations, named the League of Non-Aligned Nations (LNAN), in the March of 1949, with the founding members being the United States, India, Madagascar, and Mozambique. The LNAN was not a mutual defense bloc like the GDO or ANCN, however, if a member was at war a simple majority of members would be able to guarantee LNAN support to said nation. Instead, LNAN primarily focused on economic cooperation and promoting the “right to international neutrality abroad,” which ranged from resolutions condemning proxies of the Great Game to signing non-aggression pacts with nations whose sovereignty was threatened by the Great Game.
It was in these early years of the LNAN’s existence that the world became even more dangerous and the Great Game became all the more risky. Ever since the Second Great War, both Mexico and Austria-Italy (later Europa) had been looking into a theoretical weapon as a way to potentially end the bloodiest conflict in human history relatively quickly by harnessing the hypothetical power of nuclear fission, however, such projects were shelved after the Battle of Moscow and consequential end of the Second Great War. The Mexican and Europan governments hoped that their respective projects on nuclear fission would remain classified from the world for decades, however, with the start of the Great Game it became obvious to the world that warfare was far from over in the 20th Century.
Thus, scientists from Europa and Mexico would come together to work on an international project that could very well turn the tide of the Great Game in what became known as the Havana Project. After a few years of testing, the Havana Project had constructed a working atomic bomb prototype, which was tested in the Australian desert on July 9th, 1951. A few days later, news reports that revealed suspicious tremors in the ground originating from a Mexican military base began to circulate across the world, which caught the attention of the entire planet. Therefore, the Europan and Mexican governments, under intense public pressure, had to reveal what they had been working on since 1948. In the July of 1951, the people of the world woke up to joint Europan-Mexican statements on a new type of weapon, accompanied by photographs of a large cloud shaped like a mushroom emerging from the desert of Australia.
The Atomic Era had begun.
First atomic bomb test, nicknamed the “Izzie Bomb,” circa July 1951.
The development of the A-Bomb shocked the entire planet, which would become aware of its destructive power as more reports were released to the public in the upcoming years. The GDO would begin stockpiling its militaries with A-Bombs while the Proletarian Union would develop its own secretive nuclear fission project, which bore fruit with the first Portuguese nuclear weapon test in 1954. Even the United States would reluctantly develop its own nuclear arsenal, however, this occurred a decade later than the other global superpowers due to hesitation from the Wallace administration, therefore meaning that the Phoenix Project began in the late 1950s, and the first American nuclear bomb was tested in 1962.
A-Bombs, and for that matter the technological potential of nuclear fission would permanently alter society, for better or for worse. On one hand, a great excitement emerged due to the possibilities opened by nuclear fission in regards to energy sources. Scientific magazines would begin to promote nuclear fission as a source of vast clean energy and science fiction would perpetuate the idea of a nuclear-powered future. But on the other hand, the governments and scientists of the world would warn of the destructive potential of A-Bombs, which would mean that bomb shelters were soon being constructed potential targets of a Third Great War and public service announcements describing what to do in the case of nuclear war became commonplace in schools.
In the meantime, the reconstruction of Russia began to end not long after the Chinese Civil War. Upon announcing his resignation following the Treaty of Guangshou’s ratification, Italo Mussolini declared that he hoped that his successors would ensure that a peaceful, stable, and democratic Russia would be established in the near future, although his successor, the Liberal Amedeo Gasperi, who assumed office on September 3rd, 1948 prioritized continental economic development and militarization in the face of comunacionist aggression over the establishment of a new Russian Republic. However, Gasperi’s reign as the chancellor of Europa was not as long as one might expect, and on December 2nd, 1951 Amedo Gasperi resigned due to health issues and was succeeded by Pierre de Gaulle as the chancellor of the Commonwealth of Europa.
Chancellor Pierre de Gaulle of the Commonwealth of Europa.
Even though Gaulle had once been the leading force of the Liberal Party in Parliament, therefore once being regarded as a nuisance for Italo Mussolini and the Populist-Royalist Party, Pierre de Gaulle entered the chancellery as a supporter for the formation of a democratic Russia after over seven years of Europan-Mexican military occupation. In the January of 1951, Chancellor Gaulle announced a budget plan that would increase spending on the reconstruction of Russia, named the January Plan, which ended two years later when he and President Hector Long of Mexico, who had recently been re-elected in a controversial fifth term in 1952, announced that the reconstruction of Russia had ended and it was time for a Russian government to be established. On May 8th, 1953 the politically independent Alexandra Pregel assumed the leadership of the recently formed Russian duma that elected her as the prime minister of a new Russian government, the Federation of Russia.
Flag of the Federation of Russia.
Not long after the declaration of the Federation of Russia, the new Russia government would join the Global Defense Organization, therefore solidifying a unified European continent in the face of comunacionism. In the upcoming years, Russia grew into one of Europe’s strongest economies, and by the 1970s had overtaken nearly all of its neighbors economically, with the exception of Europa and Sweden. But even with its growth into a booming industrial center, the Federation of Russia put very little money into its military, just barely meeting the minimum requirement for a military budget to be a member of the GDO, and even then the Russian constitution ensured that the military could only be used for defensive combat. This was done in order to reject the horrors of the Union of Greater Rus and the Nasok Party, which had become despised by the people of Russia, who had grown to regret and be ashamed of the atrocities of the Nasok Party.
As Russia had finally been rebuilt, the western world continued to undergo many changes. In 1954, President Hector Long suffered a heart attack, resulting in his death after leading Mexico for eighteen years. President Long was succeeded by his vice president, Miguel Valdez, who became an easy target for the Eterian Party in the 1956 presidential election. Valdez would ultimately serve as the president of Mexico for a maximum of two economically prosperous, yet otherwise insignificant, years and would be succeeded by Gustavo Ruiz Cortines, the Eterian governor of Veracruz, on May 2nd, 1956. President Cortines would continue to implement the popular welfare policies of the Long administration, however, the state-sponsored pushes towards socialism of Hector Long’s years in office came to an end. The success of Cortines earned him a second term in 1960, although in a much more contentious race than 1956.
In the Commonwealth of Europa, the late 1950s were also a time of social and political change. After spending nearly half a decade fighting the bloodiest war in history in the name of democracy and liberty, the people of Europa’s vast colonial territory in Africa had become frustrated with the apparent hypocrisy of the Europan government, which claimed to defend freedom and equality abroad, but domestically had not even ensured equal rights for a large portion of its people. Of course, colonial discontent against European oppression had existed ever since Europe had decided to claim Africa for itself, but with the rise in egalitarianism within Europa itself calls for liberation grew, and with media outlets becoming increasingly available to the public, these movements suddenly gained a much wider audience than they ever could have even a few decades ago. By the end of the 1950s, Native Africans were calling for liberation, with demands ranging from equality within the European government and the abolition of the colonial structure to calls for colonial secession.
Regardless of the demands of these movements, their tactics of protest were almost always peaceful. Boycotts and civil disobedience became some of the most common forms of protest, and violent responses from law enforcement would make protesters seem sympathetic to Europans across the Mediterranean Sea. In fact, many members of Parliament, especially within the Populist-Royalist Party, would become supporters of the abolition of colonialism in favor of an egalitarian Commonwealth of Europa. This movement would culminate in the March of 1957, when Parliament voted to approve of a bill that would partition the colony of Algiers into provinces fully integrated within the Commonwealth of Europa in which all citizens were guaranteed the same rights as Europan citizens back in Europe.
This proved to protestors in Africa that the most realistic way to achieve their rights was, for the time, to campaign for equality within Europa. As a consequence, the campaign for the abolition of the colonies in favor of provincial status gained traction, even after Pierre de Gaulle stepped down from the chancellery in the December of 1959 and was succeeded by the Populist-Royalist Renato Zangheri, who championed colonial integration. Next, Sahelia would integrate, and then the Gold Coast, and so on until all Europan colonies had been replaced with democratic provinces with representation within Parliament back in Vienna, with the colonial integration ultimately ending in 1964.
At long last, the Commonwealth of Europa could legitimately call itself a democracy.
By the time colonial integration did conclude, the world had dramatically changed. The socialist Liberal Unionist Alexandria Gurley Flynn had been elected as the first female president of the United States in 1957 and would implement radical policies, such as the Worker Representation Act, which guaranteed that all workplaces would have elected representatives of their employees within the leadership. Flynn also presided over the dawn of the Phoenix Project, and by the end of her administration the first confidential American nuclear power plants were being constructed in the Northwest away from the eyes of the public. The advancement of American nuclear power was fueled by the establishment of the Royal Atomic Energy Administration (RAEA), which would oversee American nuclear weapons and public nuclear infrastructure projects, and would strongly benefit the United States of America within upcoming years.
President Alexandria Gurley Flynn of the United States of America.
Surprisingly enough, the popular Alexandria Gurley Flynn would not run for a second term due to declining health (if Flynn had run and won in 1960 she would have died near the end of her second term in 1964), and her secretary of treasury, Gerald Baines Johnson, was nominated in 1960 instead on a surprisingly moderate platform that had won a plurality of support in the Liberal Unionist primaries. The Democratic Party would nominate Governor Harold Stassen of Superior, who campaigned on a moderate liberal platform that especially appealed to agrarian Northwesterners. In the November of 1964, Stassen just barely won a majority of electoral votes in one of the most unexpected victories in American electoral history. Thus, in the March of 1965 Harold Stassen was inaugurated in Washington DC and became the next president of the United States of America, succeeding the very popular Alexandria Gurley Flynn.
Stassen’s administration often found itself incapable to pass much legislation due to the House of Representatives and the Senate both being controlled by the Liberal Union Party, which refused to pass anything too conservative proposed by Harold Stassen. Aside from increased military budget spending and a major tax cut in 1967, the Stassen administration was not very significant and the relatively conservative Harold Stassen was considered both incompetent and a relic of a more conservative time in American history. Therefore, when 1970 came around it appeared unlikely that President Harold Stassen would win a second term against the socialist Senator Nelson Rockefeller, one of the most far-left mainstream members of the Liberal Union Party. Surely enough, Rockefeller would win the presidency in 1970, and was inaugurated a few months later.
President Nelson Rockefeller of the United States of America.
The Rockefeller administration was defined by socially progressive policies, such as the 20th Amendment, which was passed on February 12th, 1972 and granted homosexual couples the same marriage rights as heterosexual Americans, as well as ensuring the protection of all orientations of members of the LGBTQ community within the United States constitution. President Rockefeller would also advance the American clean energy surplus by passing the Energy Welfare Act in the January of 1973, which established numerous public works programs to build American renewable energy sources, later either put under the control of the Royal Energy Department (RED), a public energy supplier, or new cooperatives formed from the employees of the Energy Welfare Act’s respective public works departments.
By 1974, President Nelson Rockefeller was boasting large approval ratings and easily won a second term in that year. Afterall, President Rockefeller was credited with preserving the American economy thanks to the Energy Welfare Act, even as a natural gas crisis caused by an emerging proxy war of the Great Game crippled the international economy. In the years since the Chinese Civil War, the GDO and the ANCN had not fought each other in another large proxy war, opting instead to quietly build up their nuclear arsenals. However, times were changing in the Proletarian Union. After the death of Antonio Carmona in 1951, Antonio Salazar, Carmona’s minister of war, took over as the general-secretary of the Proletarian Union and reigned with an iron, yet internationally quiet, fist until his death in 1970. Salazar was succeeded by Americo Tomas, the Portuguese Minister of Navy and outspoken supporter of the expansion of the ANCN.
The reign of Americo Tomas marked the immediate rise of comunacionism in every accessible corner of Asia, with ANCN-backed comunacionist coups being staged in Nepal and Bhutan in 1971 and 1972 respectively. As the Red Army moved into the southern Himalayas, the Global Defense Organization panicked. A new slew of trade embargoes on the ANCN were released under the advision of Europan Chancellor Helmut Kohl of the Liberal Party, who had been elected in 1970, around the same time that Americo Tomas assumed leadership of the Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation. Kohl would eventually get a chance to send forces off to fight the armies of comunacionism when the Turkish People’s Republic invaded the Emirate of Diriyah on September 27th, 1972 after an ultimatum demanding the cession of Hejaz had been refused. Within a matter of days following the Turkish invasion of Hejaz, the GDO had entered negotiations with Diriyah permitting the deployment of an army of forces on the Arabian Peninsula, the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the 1940s.
The Arabian War had begun.
Turkish soldiers evacuating Europan aerial bombardment in Tabuk, circa September 1974.
The retaliation by both the GDO and ANCN in the Arabian War was vicious. Within just a few days, the Europan Imperial Navy was sinking ships in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and Mexican aeromobiles were bombing Turkish military bases to rubble while Portuguese panzerwagens were racing for the Red Sea. After numerous failures in 1973, in which the ANCN had reached Tabuk, Helmut Kohl instituted a controversial draft in which thousands of young men were sent off to Hejaz. This proved to be an unpopular, yet somewhat successful, move. As anti-war protesters took to the streets of Vienna, the GDO coalition led an offensive in the Levant from naval landings nearby Egypt in the December of 1973 which proved successful, however, Turkish soldiers in northern Hejaz refused to fall back and all land north of Tabuk remained in the hands of comunacionism for the foreseeable future.
However, as the invasion of the Levant raged on, Turkish and Proletarian bombers would annihilate infrastructure across Diriyah, especially oil refineries. After over a year of fierce combat, the infrastructure of the Emirate of Diriyah, the world’s largest natural gas producer, was in ruins and became incapable of selling oil at the demanded rate by much of the world. By the spring of 1974, a global recession that had already been anticipated by a handful of economists for awhile (hence the approval of the Energy Welfare Act in the United States) had set in, and without a stable source of fossil fuels the international economy plummeted, especially within the GDO.
This therefore made the Arabian War even less popular, and a successful Turkish offensive for Medina in the October of 1974 was the straw that broke the camel’s back. After Helmut Kohl was usurped from the chancellery on November 4th, 1974 in a parliamentary election, the PRP Chancellor Josip Broz, the famed veteran general of the Second Great War, entered peace negotiations with the Turkish People’s Republic to conclude the Arabian War. The Treaty of Damascus would ensure that Turkey would annex Hejaz and all occupied Levantine territory, as well as a sect of northern land from the Emirate of Diriyah, however, both the GDO and ANCN would have to pay war reparations to rebuild destroyed infrastructure in Diriyah, particularly oil refineries.
By the account of most historians, the Arabian War was a failure for the GDO and a victory for the ANCN. Not only had the Emirate of Diriyah lost territory to Turkey, but the economies of the Free World taken a bullet as well, and with Diriyah opting for neutrality following the Arabian War (The Emirate of Diriyah would join LNAN in 1978) alternative sources of energy would have be found. Before resigning from the chancellery in 1979, Josip Broz would implement a Europan equivalent to the Energy Welfare Act called the Energy Independence Movement, which would develop Europan public renewable energy sources, albeit on a much smaller scale than Nelson Rockefeller’s project. Similarly, the Mexican Empire would also implement its own renewable energy public works program called the New Deal under the leadership of President Cesar Chavez, a trade unionist who had been elected in 1976 on the basis of workplace democracy and populism. In fact, within the Chavez administration, Mexico would pass its own Workplace Representation Act, called the Workers’ Democracy Act, in 1978.
President Cesar Chavez of the Mexican Empire.
The Tito and Chavez administrations were also defined by the Siamese Civil War, in which a comunacionist military junta seized control of Bangkok in the December of 1975, declaring the National Union of Siam, while the Siamese monarch fled north to Phitsanulok. Through a brutal three year campaign, the junta of the National Union of Siam was defeated on December 23rd, 1978, therefore restoring the Kingdom of Siam, which would join the Global Defense Organization in 1979.
In the Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation, chaos was brewing beneath the reign of General Secretary Americo Tomas, who more or less ruled unopposed over the great comunacionist superpower of the world. Upon the end of the Siamese Civil War, General Secretary Tomas appeared healthy, and therefore he had not taken any steps towards declaring a successor. Instead, the factions beneath the authority of Americo Tomas jockeyed for influence in order to eventually seize power the day the general secretary did die. However, this day came much closer than anticipated when on February 27th, 1984 the bullet of a disgruntled worker pierced the chest of General Secretary Tomas at a rally in Rio de Janeiro at a rally.
With the general secretary dead, the Proletarian Union was thrown into pure chaos.
Suddenly, the two primary factions that had been assembled under the years of Americo Tomas lurched for each other’s throats. These two factions were the Ultranacionalistas, under the leadership of the Counter-Revolutionary Resistance Committee Executive Levy Fidelix, who sought a reinforcement of Portuguese totalitarianism, racism, and militarism, and the Modernistas, a group led by the relatively moderate Francisco Dornelles who argued in favor of more economically liberal policies to aid the stalling centrally-planned Portuguese economy and was opposed to the segregation of the PUPN along ethnic lines geographically, however, not because he was morally opposed to the practice, but because he believed that local slums of “inferiors” would serve as a better source of cheap labor (obviously, Dornelles was still a disturbing man, however, for the Proletarian Union high command he was considered a progressive). In the end, Fidelix came out on top by killing numerous prominent Modernistas through the use of the CRCR, and would become the next general secretary of the Proletarian Union on March 24th, 1984.
General Secretary Levy Fidelix of the Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation.
The reign of Fidelix was doomed to extreme tyranny. Almost immediately, Modernistas were purged by the CRCR, either being forced into exile (as was the case with Francisco Dornelles), or bring straight-out killed. Within the first few months of the Fidelix regime, hundreds had been killed by the CRCR and hundreds more had lost their reputations and positions of power. However, the people that were by far the worst off were the “inferiors,” who faced increasingly brutal and deadly conditions. Food, shelter, and other basic necessities in the Inferior Zones were substantially decreased, and as a consequence thousands would die. This would cause a riot to break out in the Inner Angola Inferior Zone, which grew into a full-out guerrilla war against the Proletarian Union after the Red Army failed to retaliate fast enough. By the January of 1985, Inner Angola had descended into a full-blown rebellion.
The Inner Angola Rebellion, coupled with a declining economy, caused Levy Fidelix to become increasingly disliked amongst his people, including high-ranking members of the Partido Comunacion and the Red Army. The situation got so bad that riots began breaking out across the PUPN, riots that called for the dissolution of the Proletarian Union and the establishment of a free market replacement. Eventually, one of these riots overran Cidade de Pureza, the capital of the Proletarian Union, on March 27th, 1985 and as the streets of Pureza became violent, the rioters demanded the overthrowal of Fidelix. Levy Fidelix ordered the CRCR and Red Army to suppress the riot, however, this backfired as many soldiers and police officers defected to the riot. The most prominent of these defecters was the regiment under the command of Antonio de Spinola, which upon being ordered to to attack rioters turned its weapons upon Fidelix’s mansion and arrested the general secretary.
Without any centralized government, the Proletarian Union fell within a matter of days. Local governments would either capitulate to the rebels occupying Pureza under the leadership of Spinola or they would succumb to their own rebellions. The guerrilla forces in Angola, named the Angolan Liberation Army (ALA), occupied both all of the Inner Angola Inferior Zone and Outer Angola within a handful of days, declaring the Republic of Angola on April 8th, 1985, while similar guerrillas would rise up in the Amazon Inferior Zone and proclaim the Amazon Federation on April 11th, 1985. As for the rest of the Proletarian Union, a group of delegates would write up a new constitution, proclaiming the Christian Republic of Lusitania on April 22nd, 1985.
Flag of the Christian Republic of Lusitania.
While Lusitania called itself a republic, it was more oligarchic than democratic. Antonio de Spinola became the president of a de facto corporatist military junta in which only Christians had complete rights. The Christian Republic of Lusitania was definitely less totalitarian than the Proletarian Union and the disgusting atrocities conducted towards “inferiors” had ended, however, it was still not a free nation and racism, both institutional and social, was rampant throughout Lusitania upon its inception.
With the PUPN gone, the rest of the ANCN crumbled within a matter of days. First, the Basque National Republic was overthrown and the Free Basque Republic was established in its place as a liberal democracy on April 14th, 1985. Then Aragon succumbed to democracy, and then Castile, at which point Iberia has been liberated. As Portuguese panzewagens left puppet regimes in South America, liberal movements took to the streets of South America, thus leading to democratic revolutions across said continent. Even a handful of puppet regimes in Asia would be liberated, leaving only Turkey, Japan, and their limited spheres of influence as the remaining comunacionist regimes on Earth by the June of 1985. The ultimate nail in the coffin was the dissolution of the ANCN on June 2nd, 1985.
After nearly half a century of combat, the Great Game was over.
Siberian citizens celebrating the collapse of the Siberian People’s Commune, circa May 1985.
With the Great Game over, the world of the present day would begin. Resources within the uncontested GDO would become less directed towards containing comunacionism militaristically, and as a consequence emerging technology would flourish. The Imperial Ministry of Space and Aerodynamics (IMSA) of the Commonwealth of Europa, which was established under the Broz administration in 1978, especially prospered from increased funding, and sent cosmonaut Ulf Merbold to the surface of the Moon and back on May 16th, 1986. Progress on an emerging invention in Mexico, called the computer, would also occur in this time period, and as large bulky computers began to wind up in public markets, the 1990s became defined by the advent of the interweb, an online server accessible to anyone who owned a computer.
With a stronger globalized economy, the 1990s and early 2000s were dominated by an economic boom that especially fueled new GDO member states, such as Catalonia and the Free Basque Republic. The growth in the economy spurred the election of Senator John McCain of the Democratic Party in 1996, whose policies of expanding the LNAN proved successful as New Granada, Venezuela, and Angola all became member states by the end of his eight-year administration in 2005. For the Free World, the early 2000s were a time of economic growth and prosperity, especially once the reign of Emperor Augustus I of Europa and Mexico began in 2001, therefore securing a personal union between the two global superpowers. After decades of Europan-Mexican cooperation, the two most powerful nations on Earth were united under one head of state.
While the Free World flourished in the post-Great Game era, the remnants of comunacionism struggled to survive. The Federation of Japanese Communes and its allies, such as North China, would form an alliance called the Edo Pact in 2003, however, even the Edo Pact did not rise up the comunacionist economies of the Far East back to their position of power from before the collapse of the PUPN. The Turkish People’s Republic experienced by far the worst effects after the fall of the Proletarian Union, and the Turkish regime found itself surrounded by capitalist powers on all sides, many of which were GDO members. As economic sanctions fell upon Turkey from around the world, the grip of the National Marxist Party would start slipping, and in the June of 2004 a riot within a Kurdish ghetto would escalate into complete revolution within a matter of days. Soon enough, secessionist guerrilla armies would sprout up alongside the Kurdish Freedom Coalition (KFC), and in the August of 2004 the KFC would form the Arab Liberation Alliance (ALA) with the Shia Army of Iraq, the Free Hejazi Army, and the Federation of Syrian Liberation as a a coalition of Arab liberation forces.
But the Turkish Civil War would not stop with the uprisings in Arabia. In Anatolia, a group of underground Turkish democratic movements, with typically left-wing leanings, would rise up in the March of 2005 and form the Turkish Republican Army (TRA). The TRA would quickly seize many western Turkish cities, primarily the area surrounding Constantinople, and the strategic importance of the Strait of Bosphorus alone made the TRA a threat not to be taken lightly by the Turkish People’s Republic. The weakness of Turkey caused the comunacionist Bulgarian puppet regime to be overthrown in the August of 2005, which led to the establishment of the Republic of Bulgaria, the most recent GDO member following entry in 2013. Things got even worse for Turkey when a reactionary group seeking to re-establish the Ottoman Empire, called the Order of Osman, rose up in the July of 2010 and quickly seized significant cities in southeastern Anatolia, such as Adana.
As of 2019, the Turkish Civil War has been raging on for over fourteen years. Alongside news of Japanese economic growth and a potential recession, the war in Turkey has been under much scrutiny in the eyes of international media, even if no foreign powers have joined the Turkish Civil War outside of GDO humanitarian aid to the TRA. The world has also been focusing on the numerous new leaders of nations around the world, including the United States. After the McCain administration, the upstart Democratic representative from Georgia, Robert Wells, became president in 2005, however, failed to win a second term following a slight economic recession in 2008, which the conservative Wells failed to respond to. His successor was Liberal Unionist Al Gore, who campaigned on combating the ever-looming threat of climate change. Throughout his two terms as president, Gore would increase funding in the RED, and the United States is currently on track to become the first nation to completely run on clean energy by 2030. In 2017, President Gore was succeeded by Suzanne Baldwin, a Liberal Unionist senator from Wisconsin who has campaigned for continued social welfare and has even announced support for a universal basic income, which was implemented with the American Income Act in the January of 2018.
President Suzanne Baldwin of the United States of America.
In Europa, the declining global economy of the 2010s has recently led to a return of power from the Populist-Royalist Party, which replaced Chancellor Angela Merkel in a 2012 parliamentary with a new progressive from the province of Quacentina named Abdel Sellal on July 2nd, 2012. The election of Sellal marks a historic event in Europan history, as Abdel Sellal is the first Europan chancellor to originate from Africa. In the years since the beginning of the Sellal administration, the current chancellor has grown in popularity due to numerous welfare programs to recover from recent economic decline, as well as populist reformations that have given workers more representation within the Europan workplace. As of 2019, Abdel Sellal is boasting high approval ratings, and has begun to shift Europa’s attention towards the looming crisis presented by climate change.
Chancellor Abdel Sellal of the Commonwealth of Europa.
And so, our story has reached the present day. As of 2019, the world is beginning to change and our future is uncertain. War rages on in the Middle East, comunacionism still reigns over eastern Asia, and climate change threatens the well-being of each and every single human being alive. But for all the threats presented in the face of the Free World, we know that we can overcome whatever terrors will dominate the headlines of the 21st Century. We know this because we have overcome these terrors in past. In the American Civil War, equality and democracy overcame slavery and oppression. In the Second Great War, the rights of all human beings overcame stratosism. And in the Great Game, the support of these rights overcame totalitarianism and racism.
Even though the world of the present day is less than ideal, from the exclusion of non-Christians from equality in Lusitania to the continued oppression of millions under the boot of Japan, there is and always has been hope that democracy will overcome all of these tyrannies. The future is, without a doubt, uncertain, and the story history has to tell is not yet complete, but as long as we advance and cherish the rights of all humans, history will continuously progress down a better and better path.
Map of the World circa 2019.
Das Ende