Map Thread XX
- Thread starter Balkanized U.S.A
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Ours is not to wonder why. La Florida es argentina, pirata.
"Playa Rubi", wherever that is, is the Argentine concession. "Other nations", bottom row.
"Afrikaner Juche" — The South African Federation, 1991
"When our children ask, 'why didn't you stop it?' how will we look them in the eye and answer?"
The old order is dead. The waning years of the 1980s saw a crumbling Soviet regime, desperate to cling on to whatever power they had left, call NATO's bluff and invade central Europe. The "Seven Days to the River Rhine" plan proved a wildly unexpected success—the Warsaw Pact reached the eponymous river in 36 hours, all without using a single nuclear weapon. NATO, the United States especially, was utterly unprepared for invasion and unwilling to launch the first warhead. In late 1988, just a few months after the 'reunification' of Germany, NATO was dissolved, the US choosing to focus on internal matters, the stumbling giant unceremoniously ending all its international engagements.
Despite what one would expect, the USSR did not fare much better. The destruction of NATO was a victory for Communism to be sure, but how was the regime supposed to explain the opulence of a West German supermarket to the malnourished soldiers of the Warsaw Pact? Their successes did nothing to bolster the regime as faith in their glorious system dissipated to nearly nothing. So too did Soviet Russia, ostensibly the world's sole remaining 'superpower' find itself looking inward, trying its absolute hardest to keep itself together, let alone its empire of satellite states.
The world was without a hegemon for the first time in centuries. The great navies were rusting at port. The jets were grounded for the foreseeable future. The military bases, once the muscle that enforced the will of the worlds' two superpowers were now evacuated, left crumbling and unmaintained. It would not take long for someone to take advantage of the situation.
Enter South Africa. When we last left our rogue state, it had just bankrolled a coup in the nascent Moçambique Free State, fighting to protect its new satellite state in the face of native communist "aggression." In the proceeding decade, their puppet mastery over Rhodesia and Moçambique was formalized as both states entered into the new "South African Federation," while the legal fiction of Botswanan independence, surrounded on all sides and kept afloat only by the threat of NATO invention, was ended by the stroke of a pen and military occupation. South Africa now had total control south of Azania and Angola. A brief border war with Azania, now reeling without its Soviet funding, saw South Africa seize the city of Livingstone, its first real encroachment beyond the northern frontier.
Beyond imperialism, South Africa's greatest shame is one it has always had. This new South African government, now unhindered by threats of international intervention, is far more bold in its wickedness. The "native" problem, something only more exacerbated by annexing its neighbours, is less of a problem and more of an existential crisis. The black population hovers around 80%, and the "tribal homelands" (Bantustans) utterly failed. Carving up Botswana (now referred to as "Stellaland") and South West Africa, a new, mostly inhospitable province was added to the South African Federation. The Caprivia Reserve, named after the Caprivi Strip which surrounded former Botswana, is now designated as the new homeland for all black South Africans, whether they like it or not. Without going into much detail about the atrocities, it is safe to say that the process by which 80% of a nation is relocated can only be abhorrent. Forced marches through the Kalahari, family separation, wanton murder, arbitrary executions—it is the worst human rights violation in history.
Rogue state does not even begin to describe this horrid new South Africa. Its imperial designs surely do not end at the Zambezi as the conquest of Livingstone proves, and God only knows where they will stop. Worst of all? South Africa had no reason to surrender its nuclear arsenal, like it did in our timeline. It will defend itself with nuclear force if necessary, and nothing, it seems, is capable of stopping it.
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This is admittedly a super unrealistic scenario. I originally had the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging take over the whole country, with Eugène Terre'Blanche as a Hitler figure and referring to the annexations of Rhodesia and Moçambique as "verbinding" as a translation of anschluss. It was incredibly stupid, though, just sounded silly. On the far end of my ideas was mass post WWII German migration to SWA/Namibia, and the province actually run by "former" Nazis. Bit on the nose, though.
The idea of getting rid of large amounts of their workforce was based around a return to traditional Boer lifestyles, Stellaland (despite how dry it is) is marketed as an opportunity for every man to have a farm, harkens back to the old Voortrekker republics, etc. Like the Day of the Vow it's an attempt to create a national myth where one doesn't organically exist.
To answer your next question, Rhodesia was basically conquered. It doesn't fit into the society. The whole federation is supposedly based on the principle of provincial sovereignty (more so than the modern US's states, for example) so certain allowances are made to let the English and Portuguese provinces exist, on paper at least, without the Afrikaner supremacy that's seen in the rest of the country. The reality, though, is that Salisbury and Lourenço Marques struggle with maintaining a separate identity in a world of mandatory Afrikaans education, a government that's outright hostile to the legacy of the British Empire, and having their borders "defended" by SA soldiers.
Its more Argentina being opportunistic in guaranteeing Florida's independence (who managed to secure most of their territorial integrity through conceding to the rebels) so they can have a port in the North Atlantic and the Caribbean.
(Also, the concession is in Jacksonville Beaches, which is colored as a US ally)
Absolutely excellent map, and the flags are a very nice touch! The only real issue I have is that the map could use some numbering vis-à-vis the former CSA states; some of the names are so non-specific that it's hard to put one to a state.And shamelessly filled with many inspirations from other works (that i don't think anyone can guess -all- of them, though you're welcome to try) that i can claim it as original
(though some of those flags were a paaain to design)
That said, there are some details which interest me more than others, such as the alternate US states (the Utah division and the St. Louis territory check out), and the fact that there are apparently nations called Babylon and William Walker - what's up with that?
Interesting map and scenario, but I find the following rather improbable.
The waning years of the 1980s saw a crumbling Soviet regime, desperate to cling on to whatever power they had left, call NATO's bluff and invade central Europe. The "Seven Days to the River Rhine" plan proved a wildly unexpected success—the Warsaw Pact reached the eponymous river in 36 hours, all without using a single nuclear weapon. NATO, the United States especially, was utterly unprepared for invasion and unwilling to launch the first warhead. In late 1988, just a few months after the 'reunification' of Germany, NATO was dissolved, the US choosing to focus on internal matters, the stumbling giant unceremoniously ending all its international engagements.
Ultra-Apartheid, arch enemy of Super-Integration.
Integralist Brazil-Angola as its main rival in a post-*WW3 world where much of the Northern Hemisphere was wiped out? I mean both nations feature as powers in post WW3 scenarios to varying degrees, and South Africa's racial ideology would find a near-perfect bogeyman in Brazil's large Black, native and mestico populations after the nuclear destruction of communism. I don't think post-WW3 Australia will be any shape to be a major power, and India will have internal issues
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hm, thanks for the advice!
it was pretty hard to find a good name for Babylon, it was either that or Mesopotamia, or Douglass or Tubman or something like that.
For William Walker, well, thought it was a fun name
, Baja was one of Walker's first filibusters, so i thought it would be named that by people who considered him a hero for the southern cause.
Well, the Soviets kinda had to stop there, and the Rhineland would not be part of the GDR unless it's demilitarised.
That and this would have seen the French unleash the Force De Frappe and fuck what NATO and the US want.
They probably attacked when every member of every armed forces of NATO had took a vacation as it's the only rational answer on why late 80's Red Army had got this kind of perfomance...hell even the seven days scenario was the wildly optimistic one; 36 hours it mean that the Warsaw Pact forces don't found any resistance
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