Look to the West Volume VII: The Eye Against the Prism
- Thread starter Thande
- Start date
The closing of the American frontier, the opening of India and keeping Chinese expansion in-check.
#222 shows the pre-Pandoric war situation
I recall once seeing a ludicrously revanchist and grandiose map produced by the Islamic State about proposed expansion, and it got me wondering: is there any way we could see the "ideal" map of the Combine, with all the proposed zones? Aside from the fact it would make Societist jargon slightly easier to parse it wouldn't really spoil anything because it's a work of idealized political propaganda (unless the Combine does a hell of a turnaround and swoops in to conquer the world in the final chapter, of course). The format of the current updates seems conducive to it, and what better way to horrify the Diversitarian audience than by saying "if you're not a completely unique individual this'll happen to your beloved nation!" Also I somehow got it in my head the Zone numbers were assigned randomly to eliminate bias in naming conventions but I have no idea if that's correct.
To opportunistically expand Russia's influence. This was why Russia entered the Pandoric War, and presumably also the reason why it decided to draw Qing China into its sphere of influence.
India provides much better opportunities for that.
Russia joined the war in order to expand at the western American frontier by taking advantage of the ENA being distracted.
The situation in Central Europe is the opposite.
Have you noticed that Danubia was distracted by the post-war Hungarian revolt yet no more territory was lost to their eastern neighbours?
The main threats to Central Europen states are domestic, not foreign.
The late Beiqing was in a much worse state than post-war Germany.
Expansion in India does not prevent Russia from trying to bully Germany though.
The ENA was more or less Russia's peer. Prewar Russia already had a larger military industry than Germany and the acquisition of large areas formerly in Germany's orbit will have only increased this difference. Postwar Germany will therefore look like a much easier target to bully than the ENA did.
Russia probably wanted some time to recuperate immediately after the war. But 10 years or more down the line it may feel ready for new adventures, and will be likely suffering from victory disease.
Did you notice that the Russian Empire is likely going to be very busy in Asia?
Aside from India, there is also the need to deter Feng China elsewhere and deal with Persian shenanigans in Central Asia and insurrections in Yapon.
And how is that supposed to work? Even reduced, Germany cannot be overwhelmed quickly and if that is not possible, others are going to be involved on Germany's side.
What victory disease? The last war was a very costly war in which the Russian Empire jumped on by several different powers and ended up accepting making numerous concessions in the peace negotiations.
It is not something that the people in-charge would want to see repeated.
I also asked in the last thread about a map of what these zones are like particularly after it was explained that there organized so none are self sufficient in order to foster cooperation in line with Societists ideals
I remember that, I imagine there's plenty of lines cutting right through mountain ranges and rivers
Clearly the fact that (most of) Platinea happens to be Zone 1 just screams that some bias exists.
I am under the impression that numbering of cities within a Zone follows a discernible pattern, probably by decreasing population. For instance, Buenos Aires and Cordoba are Urb1 and Urb2 respectively in Zone 1, Sao Paulo and Rosario Urb1 and Urb4 in Zone 3 (suggesting that Parana River is the border between Zones 1 and 3), Batavia Urb1 in Zone 7. This seems consistent with a ranking by population (or some other comparable "objective" measure of significance), although Valdivia being Urb2 in Zone 14 may imply alternative explanations (but we don't know how much of Chile is part of Zone 14 - maybe it is the zone of Patagonia and *Antarctica, huge but sparsely populated, and Valdivia just happens to be its second largest population centre; or Valdivia may be just more important ITTL relative to, for instance, Valparaiso).
Tambora being Mont1 in Zone 7 suggests that mountains are not numbered by height, but even then, there are multiple explanations: for some odd reason, they are going by pre-eruption height, which seems weird even by Societist standards, or perhaps it is still the highest peak within (formerly?) Combine-controlled Indonesia (or the part thereof falling under Zone 7 anyway). Or they called it Mont1 for whatever other reason.
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Actually Societism and Diversitarianism remind me of the straw versions of Communism and Capitalism respectively.
I'm sure if you tried to explain them to some random person that's what they'd think, and then you hit them with "But actually here's a million words building up to how much more it is than that!" to barely subdued horror.
I think that's part of the point, really. Especially since LttW is all about historiography more than anything else, the fact that people when explaining history so often resort to straw versions of their own ideologies, or that of which they're opposing, is something that is just uncritically accepted no matter where you are. The people actually living in these times and conflicts and places no doubt have far more nuanced views, but consider every single entry in this timeline has been told from a book or a piece of fiction or etc that is all about taking complex history and distilling it into something comprehensible; generalizations and assumptions are just going to happen and they're going to feed into themselves.
This still does not mean that Russia must focus only on Asia. Although it might.
Who can those others be? Danubian and Ottoman help wasn't enough in the Pandoric War. France was not willing to actually fight Russia to defend a non-Protocol member. And after the Pandoric War intercontinental alliances are unlikely to be valued.
Russia's almost single-handedly defeated Germany, Danubia, Poland and the Ottomans while fighting on several additional fronts. Many will interpret this as a sign of great strength.
They have to. In several Asian regions, they are on the defensive and have to reinforce what they have. Much of the expansion in India has to happen in the next decades.
Plus Persia, China and the ENA.
It was not necessary. But would France not fight to ensure that there is no big threat bordering them and would Germany not join them anyway?
As the troop contributions to the IEF showed, France's alliance is quite Europe-centric.
At great costs, and with substantial help from Scadinavia and Belgium against Germany which is likely not going to be available next time.
Not to mention they lost in continental East Asia.
Danubia and the Eternal State aren't Combine but they are still Societist