Part Eleven of my Rebel North Map Series;
Previous maps;
https://www.alternatehistory.com/disc...postcount=2236
https://www.alternatehistory.com/disc...postcount=2282
https://www.alternatehistory.com/disc...postcount=2305
https://www.alternatehistory.com/disc...postcount=2465
https://www.alternatehistory.com/disc...postcount=2505
https://www.alternatehistory.com/disc...postcount=2527
https://www.alternatehistory.com/disc...postcount=2546
https://www.alternatehistory.com/disc...postcount=2662
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=7792608&postcount=2702
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=7796640&postcount=2741
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=7815358&postcount=2861
Contrary to everyone's fears World War Five did not involve the use of nuclear weapons, Oceania elected to wait until Eurasia went nuclear first (they had no one with the authority to order a nuclear first strike anyway) and fortunately Eurasia did the same. About two months into the war Eastasia invaded India, hoping to absorb the highly populated and industrialized region and both Eurasia and Oceania promptly declared war on it. Fighting raged back and forth throughout Africa, South Asia, the Middle East, Central Asia, Mongolia, Manchuria, parts of Siberia, and the Pacific islands. Protected by its oceans and the world's most powerful navy most of Oceania was safe from attack, protected by its vast expanses of land and the world's largest air force Eurasia could defeat any invasion of its soil eventually, and with the world's largest army Eastasia can crush any advance into China proper with numbers alone.
As a consequence the above-mentioned fringe areas traded hands again and again as no one was capable or willing to invade anywhere that was actually important. At first friendly states in Africa and South Asia were propped up by occupying powers and puppet states erected over the native population, but as Oceanian puppets were overrun by Eurasia and Eurasian puppets were overrun by Oceanian, and ditto for Eastasia they quickly stopped bothering. The native countries of the Disputed Territory have been wiped out, crushed, plowed under, and seen their fields sewn with salt. Most of the surviving inhabitants are corralled up in cities or huge camps, used as forced labor to extract resources or mass manufacture basic war goods. Of course the superpowers' control is not total, as the territories keep switching hands and plenty of small villages and resistance fighters survive off in out of the way places. You even have the occasional petty warlord- and of course there are the refuge states of Antarctica.
The year is now 2013 and World War V has been going on for 29 years. The alliances have changed many times since the early free for all, but each superpower is too powerful individually for even an alliance of the other two to defeat them. No one appears to be winning and there is no end in sight.
The government of Oceania is still administered in secret by powerful members of the Inner Party with long dead Big Brother's face plastered up on every building. There are three major factions- the Northern Faction based in New York and controlling the old United States, the Southern Faction based in Lima and controlling South America, and the Outer Faction a disparate alliance of local party leaders in Australasia, the British Isles, Iceland, and South Africa. The divisions are very emphatically along national lines, the Southern Faction uses Spanish and Portuguese when it doesn't use newspeak and deeply resents efforts by the Northern Faction to force American culture on them, the Northern Faction wants to defeat the other factions and control all of Oceania, and the different Outer Faction leaders quite like being de facto rulers of their own little fiefs and fiercely resist efforts to centralize control. The only thing preventing a civil war is the knowledge that a divided Oceania would certainly fall to Eastasia and Eurasia and that would benefit no one at all. The other rising power in the hierarchy is the military, there being no Oceanian leadership capable of putting into place a single strategic plan the country's military has been operating autonomously for a very long time. So far the Thought Police have been able to catch the more independent minded soldiers but only at the cost of building up a major resentment to the TP in the Oceanian officer corps.
Unlike Oceania where the proles are generally kept ignorant but otherwise left alone Eurasia strives to control every citizen with mixed results. The country is Russian dominated in all but name but Russians only make up a third of the total population. So far brutally repressive measures by the military (Eurasia is run by its military, the civilian positions like Chairman that Voroshilov used to occupy have become mostly powerless prestige posts) have kept all those Germans, Spainiards, Kazakhs, Fins and others down but it's hard. A common tactic is to deliberately bomb schools and hospitals within their own territory and then blame the attacks on Oceania or Eastasia (whoever happens to be the enemy at the time). It won't make non-Russians love Eurasia, but it will make them hate the enemy more than the state (since the "enemy" killed their kids and family).
In Eastasia "Two Billion Hearts Beat as One!" in devotion to the Emperor and commitment to victory in the war. 自已的歼灭 keeps the masses in line and while resentment still simmers in Indochina those not Chinese or Japanese are very much in the minority. However the country is not as united as its propaganda claims. Unknown to the adoring populace the Emperor (Son of Heaven and the Sun made Flesh, descendent of Amaterasu and god, etc.) is only a figurehead and his court in Tianjing is riven between two factions; Japan and China. The Japanese leadership fears their culture is being drowned in a flood of Chinese influence and the Chinese leadership resists what they perceive as an unfair amount of power being concentrated in the hands of the Japanese (who are after all the smaller partner). Both countries struggle for dominance within their union, neither able to triumph over the other. As in Oceania and Eurasia, Eastasia requires the continuation of the war or it is feared it would fall apart.
Of course even if their respective leaders wanted to win such a thing is impossible. Each superpower has an arsenal of nuclear weapons (both fission and fusion) larger than America's ever was OTL and powerful enough to destroy all life on Earth several thousand times over (America's arsenal peaked at around 30,000 warheads). If anyone were seen to be winning the conventional war an un-conventional war would soon ensure that no one did or ever could.
As mentioned there is still resistance to the superpowers, the Brotherhood for Socialist Revolution was finally eradicated when Oceania captured Emmanuel Goldstein in East Africa during the war's opening stages (a fact kept carefully buried) but there is a new Brotherhood- this one inspired by state propaganda and entirely unrelated to the original. Grown out of the Australian pro-democracy underground, the Australian Brotherhood is very quiet and devoted more to passive resistance than anything else. Their members memorize great works of literature that have been banned or censored by the state and run underground schools that teach critical thought and democratic ideals. They also preserve works of art and objects of symbolic value. If the occasional Brotherhood member asks about carrying out violent actions against the state they are told that the "military wing of the Brotherhood handles that, but your work is much more important" and they usually aquiesce. After all the news is full of reports of the Brotherhood carrying out acts of murder and sabotage so clearly the struggle is being well represented.
The Australian Brotherhood's leaders are aware that the "Other Brotherhood" does not exist, but they keep it from their followers for fear of demoralizing them. Preserving culture is important and it keeps them from being noticed by the watchful eye of the state.
The biggest threat to the balance of power however is not the different resistance groups (most more violent than the Brotherhood) but something far more insidious. Technology has stagnated and unlike in OTL where improved science increased the production of resources whenever we though those resources might be becoming exhausted, serious resource shortages have become endemic. For a long time this hasn't been a problem (who cares if the Proles have no standard of living to speak of?) but it's beginning to impact military and industrial production and that is a problem. Holes in the ozone layer caused by the unrestricted use of CFCs (these are banned in OTL because of how destructive they are) plus severe pollution and much more severe Global Warming are causing crop failures and petroleum shortages mean that the fight over who controls the Middle East has reached a new level of intensity.
The Earth seems to be cruising for a Malthusian Catastrophe.
Map below shows the world in 2013, an Eastasian offensive into Eurasia and South Asia is about to crest and fall back on itself, a Eurasian offensive is picking up steam in Africa, and an Oceanian offensive is just beginning in the Pacific.
Previous maps;
https://www.alternatehistory.com/disc...postcount=2236
https://www.alternatehistory.com/disc...postcount=2282
https://www.alternatehistory.com/disc...postcount=2305
https://www.alternatehistory.com/disc...postcount=2465
https://www.alternatehistory.com/disc...postcount=2505
https://www.alternatehistory.com/disc...postcount=2527
https://www.alternatehistory.com/disc...postcount=2546
https://www.alternatehistory.com/disc...postcount=2662
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=7792608&postcount=2702
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=7796640&postcount=2741
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=7815358&postcount=2861
Contrary to everyone's fears World War Five did not involve the use of nuclear weapons, Oceania elected to wait until Eurasia went nuclear first (they had no one with the authority to order a nuclear first strike anyway) and fortunately Eurasia did the same. About two months into the war Eastasia invaded India, hoping to absorb the highly populated and industrialized region and both Eurasia and Oceania promptly declared war on it. Fighting raged back and forth throughout Africa, South Asia, the Middle East, Central Asia, Mongolia, Manchuria, parts of Siberia, and the Pacific islands. Protected by its oceans and the world's most powerful navy most of Oceania was safe from attack, protected by its vast expanses of land and the world's largest air force Eurasia could defeat any invasion of its soil eventually, and with the world's largest army Eastasia can crush any advance into China proper with numbers alone.
As a consequence the above-mentioned fringe areas traded hands again and again as no one was capable or willing to invade anywhere that was actually important. At first friendly states in Africa and South Asia were propped up by occupying powers and puppet states erected over the native population, but as Oceanian puppets were overrun by Eurasia and Eurasian puppets were overrun by Oceanian, and ditto for Eastasia they quickly stopped bothering. The native countries of the Disputed Territory have been wiped out, crushed, plowed under, and seen their fields sewn with salt. Most of the surviving inhabitants are corralled up in cities or huge camps, used as forced labor to extract resources or mass manufacture basic war goods. Of course the superpowers' control is not total, as the territories keep switching hands and plenty of small villages and resistance fighters survive off in out of the way places. You even have the occasional petty warlord- and of course there are the refuge states of Antarctica.
The year is now 2013 and World War V has been going on for 29 years. The alliances have changed many times since the early free for all, but each superpower is too powerful individually for even an alliance of the other two to defeat them. No one appears to be winning and there is no end in sight.
The government of Oceania is still administered in secret by powerful members of the Inner Party with long dead Big Brother's face plastered up on every building. There are three major factions- the Northern Faction based in New York and controlling the old United States, the Southern Faction based in Lima and controlling South America, and the Outer Faction a disparate alliance of local party leaders in Australasia, the British Isles, Iceland, and South Africa. The divisions are very emphatically along national lines, the Southern Faction uses Spanish and Portuguese when it doesn't use newspeak and deeply resents efforts by the Northern Faction to force American culture on them, the Northern Faction wants to defeat the other factions and control all of Oceania, and the different Outer Faction leaders quite like being de facto rulers of their own little fiefs and fiercely resist efforts to centralize control. The only thing preventing a civil war is the knowledge that a divided Oceania would certainly fall to Eastasia and Eurasia and that would benefit no one at all. The other rising power in the hierarchy is the military, there being no Oceanian leadership capable of putting into place a single strategic plan the country's military has been operating autonomously for a very long time. So far the Thought Police have been able to catch the more independent minded soldiers but only at the cost of building up a major resentment to the TP in the Oceanian officer corps.
Unlike Oceania where the proles are generally kept ignorant but otherwise left alone Eurasia strives to control every citizen with mixed results. The country is Russian dominated in all but name but Russians only make up a third of the total population. So far brutally repressive measures by the military (Eurasia is run by its military, the civilian positions like Chairman that Voroshilov used to occupy have become mostly powerless prestige posts) have kept all those Germans, Spainiards, Kazakhs, Fins and others down but it's hard. A common tactic is to deliberately bomb schools and hospitals within their own territory and then blame the attacks on Oceania or Eastasia (whoever happens to be the enemy at the time). It won't make non-Russians love Eurasia, but it will make them hate the enemy more than the state (since the "enemy" killed their kids and family).
In Eastasia "Two Billion Hearts Beat as One!" in devotion to the Emperor and commitment to victory in the war. 自已的歼灭 keeps the masses in line and while resentment still simmers in Indochina those not Chinese or Japanese are very much in the minority. However the country is not as united as its propaganda claims. Unknown to the adoring populace the Emperor (Son of Heaven and the Sun made Flesh, descendent of Amaterasu and god, etc.) is only a figurehead and his court in Tianjing is riven between two factions; Japan and China. The Japanese leadership fears their culture is being drowned in a flood of Chinese influence and the Chinese leadership resists what they perceive as an unfair amount of power being concentrated in the hands of the Japanese (who are after all the smaller partner). Both countries struggle for dominance within their union, neither able to triumph over the other. As in Oceania and Eurasia, Eastasia requires the continuation of the war or it is feared it would fall apart.
Of course even if their respective leaders wanted to win such a thing is impossible. Each superpower has an arsenal of nuclear weapons (both fission and fusion) larger than America's ever was OTL and powerful enough to destroy all life on Earth several thousand times over (America's arsenal peaked at around 30,000 warheads). If anyone were seen to be winning the conventional war an un-conventional war would soon ensure that no one did or ever could.
As mentioned there is still resistance to the superpowers, the Brotherhood for Socialist Revolution was finally eradicated when Oceania captured Emmanuel Goldstein in East Africa during the war's opening stages (a fact kept carefully buried) but there is a new Brotherhood- this one inspired by state propaganda and entirely unrelated to the original. Grown out of the Australian pro-democracy underground, the Australian Brotherhood is very quiet and devoted more to passive resistance than anything else. Their members memorize great works of literature that have been banned or censored by the state and run underground schools that teach critical thought and democratic ideals. They also preserve works of art and objects of symbolic value. If the occasional Brotherhood member asks about carrying out violent actions against the state they are told that the "military wing of the Brotherhood handles that, but your work is much more important" and they usually aquiesce. After all the news is full of reports of the Brotherhood carrying out acts of murder and sabotage so clearly the struggle is being well represented.
The Australian Brotherhood's leaders are aware that the "Other Brotherhood" does not exist, but they keep it from their followers for fear of demoralizing them. Preserving culture is important and it keeps them from being noticed by the watchful eye of the state.
The biggest threat to the balance of power however is not the different resistance groups (most more violent than the Brotherhood) but something far more insidious. Technology has stagnated and unlike in OTL where improved science increased the production of resources whenever we though those resources might be becoming exhausted, serious resource shortages have become endemic. For a long time this hasn't been a problem (who cares if the Proles have no standard of living to speak of?) but it's beginning to impact military and industrial production and that is a problem. Holes in the ozone layer caused by the unrestricted use of CFCs (these are banned in OTL because of how destructive they are) plus severe pollution and much more severe Global Warming are causing crop failures and petroleum shortages mean that the fight over who controls the Middle East has reached a new level of intensity.
The Earth seems to be cruising for a Malthusian Catastrophe.
Map below shows the world in 2013, an Eastasian offensive into Eurasia and South Asia is about to crest and fall back on itself, a Eurasian offensive is picking up steam in Africa, and an Oceanian offensive is just beginning in the Pacific.
