Given that the Population Reduction would have been happening to a group that lacks a wealthy, media-savvy diaspora expect MUCH less emphasis on it than say the holocaust. Basically much less of a discrediting of the prewar right, racialism, nationalism than OTL post-1945.
Japan will make is TL191 East Asia into OTL Eastern Europe with the Massive migration, generational loss and Horror of the Rising sun
this is relevant for both here and KR
Guderian2nd said:So, let's talk about Japanese leftism for a moment.
Japan in the 1960s was a place of immense social unrest and upheaval, full of student movements demanding social and political reform. In this sense, you could say it was similar to anti-war/civil rights movement that was in full swing in America, and the rise of the "New Left". However, we need to very clearly distinguish the American conception of the "New Left" with the Japanese "New Left" of the 60s. The American New Left is characterized by a focus away from the traditional economic focus of the "Old Left" onto social issues like racial or sexual discrimination, with a focus on a social revolution rather than a violent one. The Japanese New Left was practically the opposite - their concern was that the "Old Left" of Japan weren't focusing on the economic class-struggle and violent revolution that was supposed to be what Marxist-Leninism was about enough.
At the center of this broad left-wing sentiment amongst the Japanese intelligentsia was the infamous Zenkyoto. These student groups - since they were more of a loose confederation of various different left-wing student factions, which will come to bite them in the ass later - were at the forefront of the left-wing wave that hit Japan in the 1960s. And they were not f*cking around. Their preferred tactics weren't that of non-violent protests. No, they would come and install barricades around buildings and areas relevant to their demands, and beat the sh*t out of people who tried to remove them until their demands were met. They would engage in these days-long sieges with the riot police, exchanging rocks and forming battle lines. Their weapon of choice was the steel-pipe or the wooden stick; their uniforms consisted of the construction worker's helmet. Yes, they had uniforms, because I mean, how else are you supposed to tell apart allies and tools of fascist oppression? They weren't the proletariat - they were students. But they could at least show solidarity with those they believed to be the actual true centers of the revolution, the working class.
In comparison to the grandiose rhetoric the Zenkyoto often used and the way I describe them here, the actual concrete demands of many of their protests seem small and modest in comparison. Often the demands asked were highly local to the university these protests occurred in, such as the resignation or the dissolution of university boards and councils. This was partly due to their own theoretical limitations - remember that these were students. In orthodox Marxist theory, the intellectual bourgeois were most certainly not the leaders of class struggle - even the vanguard party had to be of the working class. The focus of their demands was partly based on an attempt by these students versed in left-wing theory to reconcile this inconsistency, and find a place for themselves in their model of social change. They couldn't be the meat of the actual socialist revolution, but they could try to dismantle to tools of oppression immediately around them and help the process along. Another factor was probably the fact that it was considerably easier to recruit students loyal to the cause when the issues were local instead of far-fetched ideas of social change.
So, why do I bring this up? Well, the Zenkyoto and other associated leftist movements in Japan in the 1960s obviously had a massive impact on Japanese culture as a whole. After the immediate post-war recovery period in the 1950s, Japan had just entered the 1955 system. It seemed like the new center-right conservative coalition was unstoppable. Enter the Zenkyoto. These were the youngest generation of Japan, and the most educated. And they were pissed. And they were not afraid to speak out against what they saw as injustices of Japanese society. Not only did they speak out, they were actually doing sh*t! The violence of the Zenkyoto actually managed to lit a fire of passion to Japan. Was this finally it? Was Japan finally going to progress into a more enlightened society? Was the future finally here?
This was quite clearly reflected in the comics of Japan at the time. Remember that "otaku culture" or "sub-culture" did not exist yet; manga(comics) were absolutely part of mainstream Japanese culture. It was a medium through which newspapers and magazines lampooned and addressed complex political and social issues of the day, and the issues that Zenkyoto had brought to the fore of the consciousness of Japan was no exception. Short strips of comics were actually one of the primary means through which the Zenkyoto recruited new members and spread their ideology(-ies). Comics in general began to adopt a more gloom, realistic tone.
Enter the boom of Gekiga. The idea of comics directed towards older audiences, those at least in their teens if not adults and students predated the Zenkyoto, but they really began to dominate the genre in the 60s. You can actually see this by the way that long-running series like Astro Boy suddenly begin to directly address the political issues of the day in their later chapters. The primary consumers of the genre - the students protesting out in the streets - wanted to see mature fiction, dealing and tackling the emotions and issues plaguing Japanese society. And so the writers and artists delivered.
It is not coincidence that when the Sekigun-ha, a subfaction of the Zenkyoto hijacked Flight 351 in 1970(for those of you wondering how students barricading places turned into plane hijacking, uh, I'll get to that in a minute), their manifesto ended with the words "We are Rocky Joe(われわれは明日のジョーである)". Kajiwara Ikki may have been a man with conservative leanings, but the idea of Joe, a low-class member of society literally punching his way through against the seemingly insurmountable challenges society laid in front of him to the point of death/near-death, was extremely appealing to the student activists of the Zenkyoto. That spirit of anti-authoritarianism resonated within them.
Now you see, here's the problem. The 1955 system continued until 1994. Clearly, there was no wave of leftism that swept through Japan. What the hell happened?
Well, long story short, the Zenkyoto lost. The LDP were many things, but incompetent was not one of them. They could see the writing on the wall, and they decided this movement had to stomped on, hard. In 1969 they passed the Temporary Measures Concerning University Management Act, which authorized the Ministry of Education to shut down universities at will and thus enabling the riot police operations to break up these student barricades. Key figures of the student movement were arrested for any reason they could stick them with. Literally thousands of riot police were involved in these "pacifying" operations, and in many cases despite their steel pipes and wood sticks, the students were no match for them.
The response of the Zenkyoto was varied. Remember, the Zenkyoto was a loose confederation of various different student movements with vastly different interests, tactics, and goals. Some of the students decided they needed to double down, ramp up the violence and the threat they represented to those in power by engaging in what were basically outright acts of terrorism. A prominent sub-faction pursuing this goal was the before-mentioned Sekigun-ha, thus the fight hijacking. The remnants of the Sekigun-ha would later form the Japanese Red Army. Predictably, other factions disagreed with this approach, while some factions disagreed on the exact methods of violent revolution. You know what this means! Circular firing squads ahoy! Demands for greater ideological purity and internal politicking between the various factions began to tear the Zenkyoto apart, something that the LDP and it's legions of riot police were quite gleeful in exploiting. Outright infighting began to break out amongst the great sieges, different Zenkyoto groups with different colored helmets fighting against each other. Anarchists against Marxists, Maoists against Trotskyists, etc. You can actually see this captured in some documentary footage:
Some like to say that the protests against Narita airport was the crowning moment of the Zenkyoto, but in truth it was more like the last hoorah. In the end, it failed too, as you can tell by the fact that Narita International Airport is quite operational today. It would be the last of its kind in Japan until the 21st century, a massed, organized left-wing protest led by students. And just like that, as the 70s came along, the Zenkyoto disintegrated, and it took the entire leftist student movement with it. What initially appeared to be the birth of a new, vitalized left-wing in Japan was brutally murdered in its cradle.
How does this relate to anime and manga? Well you see, take a look at all the big industry names of the 70s and 80s, and you start to see a pattern. Miyazaki Hayao, Tomino Yoshiyuki, Oshii Mamoru - all of them either spent their 20s either directly during the rise and fall of Zenkyoto or in its immediate aftermath. The manga and anime they read while growing up or as they were entering the industry as novices were the Gekiga of the 60s, a genre not afraid to depict modern Japan as a dark and troubled society and depict protagonists fighting against injustice with grim determination, against all odds. And then they saw this hope for social reform get torn apart. As left-wing activism died, so did left-wing comics. Magazines focused on delivering socialist messages began shutting down one by one, and student comic clubs, once focused on creating fiction to bolster the cause, were scattered into the wind.
All seemed lost. Despair was prevalent, so was a sense of disappointment. It seemed like the center-right consensus was invincible. Even worse, the Japanese economy was fairing quite well. Despite all that criticism by the Japanese left during the 60s, the right-wing LDP coalition was leading Japan towards seemingly infinitely growing prosperity. Leftism seemed to have been proven wrong. Were their struggles really worthless? Were they really just wrong all along?
It was during this period that manga and anime began to become a sub-culture, drifting away from mainstream interests. Initially the post-Zenkyoto generation deliberate choose to adopt counter-cultural codes that were not commonly found in mainstream culture of Japan, like Sci-Fi, Mil-Fi, etc. They were in a sense continuing the revolutionary student movements through subverting culture, since evidently physical activism had failed. We don't have to guess this, because the founders of Comiket were quite explicit in labeling their efforts as an explicitly counter-cultural movement aimed at changing society. The theme of anarchism, pacifism, and anti-totalitarianism commonly found in Miyazaki's works are just another example of how the Zenkyoto spirit continued to live on. These guys are referred to as the "first generation" of otakus in some academic works.
This is the environment that the post-Zenkyoto generation operated in. Both the consumers and creators of the industry in the 70s and 80s were former-student activists; they had seen the cause they had fought so hard for be destroyed utterly before their very eyes. Despite the initial hope at continuing the revolution, as the 80s approached a sense of melancholy if not defeatism in regards to social change and self-doubt plagues a lot of works. When you see the dysfunctional government of the Free Planets Alliance in Legend of Galactic Heroes, that depiction of the fail state of democracy is intended to be a direct reference to what the author viewed as the current state of Japanese democracy - clearly wrong, and clearly off the rails, yet it still receives popular support. And the author stand-in character, Yang Wenli, is powerless to stop the FPA from essentially destroying itself. And it turns out, holy sh*t, the autocratic dictator apparently does actually make things better! Was Yang Wenli actually wrong all along? When you see the obvious jabs of militarism in places like Mobile Suit Gundam or seemingly idealistic pursuits in works like Galaxy Express 999what you see are essentially a deep sigh, arguably a form of escapism by the post-Zenkyoto generation, expressing hope that despite their loss in reality they can continue their fight on the manga pages and on the TV screen. There's a reason why the works of this era places these immense tasks of great political, historical and philosophical importance on the extremely young protagonists; the creators were quite well aware of the fact that their own generation had failed, and thus they wrote down these dreams of accomplishing great dramatic change by the generation after them. In a certain sense, anime and manga of this period are post left-wing; they aren't quite left-wing in the same way the works of the 60s were, but they still existed as an extension of it.
Then something new happened. You see, until now, the people making anime and manga were the same group of people consuming them. Ie. both were either students or the post-Zenkyoto generation of students, still clinging to the memories of struggles and dreams of progress. But now, a new group of people were starting read and enjoy these works. By making the protagonists of the new generation, it is no surprise that the actual new generation, those teens, middle and high-school students, would be drawn to anime and manga. The problem was that these new group of consumers, the "second generation" so to speak, had zero interest in the politics encoded into the works of the post-Zenkyoto generation. They were post-post-Zenkyoto, and they grew up in a highly hedonistic and materialist Japan, where center-right neoliberalism dominated and Japan was prosperous. They liked the works not because they depicted the fulfillment of socialist causes they longed for but because it looked cool, it was different, and it made them feel special in the face of things like bullying and social pressure. The escapist nature was not lost on these new breed of otaku, but in fashion unintended by their creators. The industry was quite aware of this, which is why in the 80s things like moe and sexual topics started to pop up, a reflection of the immensely consumerist culture of Japan at the time.
The collapse of the Japanese bubble did not help. The latest generation of manga and anime creators, the most prominent example being Anno Hideaki, were dyed deep in the influence of the post-Zenkyoto generation. He might not have experienced the 60s directly, but when he learnt beneath those who did like Miyazaki, Anno absorbed all the tropes and conventions that were motivated by the desire for political reform all the same. He might not have even understood the political implications of these cultural coding(remember that Miyazaki Hayao thinks Neon Genesis Evangelion is "empty/demonstrates nothing" - it uses these conventions that Miyazaki is all too familiar with, yet since it does not express the left-wing political message and sense of frustration at its failure in the 60s that said methods were meant to encode, Miyazaki does not understand it), but nonetheless he still spoke the same language. But the commercial failure of the pinnacle of post-Zenkyoto works like AKIRA or Royal Space Forcewas a rude awakening for the industry. For one, their new readership was completely uninterested in political commentary. No, they wanted that escapist fantasy, they wanted giant cool robots and they wanted cute girls. The bubble burst also meant that the industry now no longer had the luxury of being able to produce whatever it wanted to produce. Ironically, it was the same materially abundant center-right culture that had allowed these artists to create whatever works they wanted regardless of commercial attractiveness. Now they had to cater to their markets in a much more sensitive way.
Finally, the collapse of the Soviet Union was also a more non-physical blow to the psyche of the post-Zenkyoto generation. You see, the Zenkyoto students were quite convinced in the 60s that the USSR was a socialist paradise - an opinion that was shared by many western intellectuals at the time, mind you - and the post-Zenkyoto generation weren't that hugely different in their impression of the USSR. The Soviet Union was the bastion of global revolution, the stronghold of leftism and center of the class struggle. I mean yes, the bubble burst, but with the USSR gone, was it really meaningful? America had won. Capitalism had won. And apparently, the USSR had collapsed on it's own. Just like the Zenkyoto. Was there any hope for the left at all?
Come the 90s, and Neon Genesis Evangelion. Anime and manga were no longer about referencing reality and contemporary social issues - no, it had become a thing-in-itself. Anime and manga referenced other anime and manga instead, and it was becoming a self-perpetuating cycle. The post-Zenkyoto generation might not have liked it, but this was the future of Japanese sub-culture now. The former-ideologues were slowly being replaced, by the second generation otakus who were now coming of age to enter the industry and create the manga and anime they so enjoyed as teens.
As the 21st century came along, and as anime and manga became more and more "empty" as Miyazaki would've called it, the rest of Japanese society was struggling too. You see, an entire decade had been lost, and it seemed like another would be lost as well. The third generation of otakus - generally identified as being post NGE - who were the main consumers by this point were no exception to this, and they grew up in a society where the future was uncertain and everyone was trying to shift the blame away from themselves. Their political concerns, if they had any, had very little to do with class struggle and were considerably more individualistic and personal. I've talked about the modern rise of the Japanese far-right post-Heisei recession on SB before, and as much as the otakus shunned mainstream society, they were ultimately still a part of it and still suffered from the same problems and were being subject to the same kind of rhetoric by demagogues. Anime of the 2000s was a place full of much turmoil; it was growing more and more self-referential, while at the same time the post-Zenkyoto relics were having their own last hoorah in an attempt to stop this cycle away from what they viewed as the true meaning of anime.
Slowly but surely, as the 2010s rolled along and the post-Zenkyoto generation finally all grew too old and began to retire(as well as their immediate successors who at least tried to be faithful to that sense of left-wing counter-culture), the subconscious world views of the youngest otakus began to creep into the medium. They still wanted escapist fantasies, cool robots, and cute girls, but now they encoded a different kind of political idea, the kind that was equally frustrated at the current status of Japanese society but in a different direction, the kind that was beginning to be shared by a significant portion of the Japanese populace. They wanted their anime and manga to tell them they were special, but also to give them purpose, to make them feel a part of something greater, that they weren't alone. The most obvious phenomena is the Isekai boom, of which one could argue has a lot of unfortunate right-leaning notions baked into it, but even that aside it seems difficult to deny that a lot of anime and manga in the modern age are now quite explicitly adopting tropes and conventions traditionally utilized by the Japanese right, a sight that would've been unthinkable in the 70s.
With anime and manga in Japan now also becoming more mainstream than it ever was, it's now starting to loose its sense of being a subculture as well. The immense success of your name in Japan - this is not to say that I believe that your name has right-wing views coded into it since that would be ridiculous, merely that it is considerably more successful in addressing the issues dear and personal to the Japanese youth and young adults of today than the works by Studio Ghibli ever were - shows us that the medium is definitely starting to be more conscious and aware of contemporary political or social issues concerning Japan that the relative period of disconnect with reality it had in the late 90s and 2000s, and is able to present that in a way that lacks a counter-cultural element that once used to be so prevalent. Given that the medium's history was basically a period of strong left-wing or left-wing inspired dominance followed by a brief period of relative lack of explicit politics, it shouldn't be of any surprise that anime and manga of today that's finally starting to talk about politics will contain more right-wing views than it did before.
Overall, I'm vaguely hopeful about the fact that that more anime and manga will probably try to address the problems that faces Japan today in the future, particularly in regards to its place in the international stage, even if it's not in the serious, mature language that Gekiga used in the 60s, or even if it contains some right-wing politics. An obvious propaganda piece like GATE will certainly make me frown, and I certainly hope that the far-right don't come out on top. But Japan is undergoing a lot of political change right now and stopping the global tide of alt-right from consuming Japan and the industry also needs a new, healthy political discourse in anime and manga to stop. I can only hope for the best outcome, particularly since I am not Japanese.
It was talking about the Japanese left wing so you’re totally missing the context of the post
in OTL Japanese left Wing were fringe but they were influential because of their counterculture movement which subsequently influenced modern anime if you read the actual post and there is nothing to do with the countries geopolitical success or failure
does that actually matter much in regard to a domestic fringe movement that has an influence on culture and the Japanese left criticize that expansion and advocate small Japan
again how is the Japanese winning all conflicts going to affect an domestic counterculture movement that is specifically against the mainstream because it can easily become something like the Japanese antiwar movement and say a Vietnam scenario which is likely to occur in TL-191 also you have a really simplistic view of butterflies ,history is an extremely complicated and nonlinear thing so why are you assuming that japan's geopolitical success would invalidate a internal counterculture movement in OTL the American counterculture movement was at the height of American power . successful Imperial Japan would just have the similar internal contradictions that japen of OTL for similar economic reasons
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Definitely the bad guy because he's the mercenary who hired by the evil rebels against the empire
Probably super different and likely have a different plot than IOTL
Pilot Ron "Maverick" Jeremy is a religious conservative and natural pilot who doesn't seem to take his A-18 flying seriously. He is lucky in shooting down three Me-1455 "Drache" fighters while his wingman, a rising aviator and natural leader, has a near-death experience and resigns. LCDR Jeremy and his co-pilot and former pastor Larry 'Goose' Flynt are sent to the Naval Aviator Fighter Weapons Program, colloquially known as 'Top Gun', out of Miami, Florida. Conflict arises with the various members of the two dozen aviators selected, resolved in various ways.
In a final exercise a surprise overflight by a Fw 705 'Riesen' double-hull ECW and listening platform guarded by six of the new Dornier-Heinkel 555 'Zipbat' fighter advanced prototypes, featuring crude stealth design with emphasis on heat reduction and special light-bending surface coating. Goose is killed as Maverick figures out the clouds distort the aircraft well enough to target them, what he doesn't know is one of the prototypes is in fact a 560 variant with air-to-air 'Lancer' missiles able to be fored by thought alone and capable of mach 4. The opposing pilot burns through his fuel as his last remaining missile proves useless when Maverick pulls a sudden braking action in mid-air and finishes the 560 with 20mm cannons just off the coast of Turkey Shoot Nuclear Power facility. German representatives note the 'rogue pilots' did not represent the actions of Germany itself and apologize while seething that the Americans now have a practical example of the technology for review.
Some text to go with it
The Wasteland Series is probably the most mainstream counterfactual in the world. It basically imagines if that brief period of post-war tension mixed with triumph over the entente just never ended, leading to a world that has become very different. Of course, the games are set long after the superbomb apocalypse, with the world before being a distant memory, but the pre-war world is fascinating itself.
In the US, we don't get much lore on it, but it's divided into multiple commonwealths in an attempt to break down national ties in the conquered Utah, Confederacy, and Canada while also engaging in general reorganization to make North America as a whole into a united state. These commonwealths serve to increase the authoritarian nature of the US, allowing the federal government to supersede state authority. This system also leads to corruption as some commonwealths are definitely far better regarded than others, while the commonwealths in the ex Confederate, Canadian, and Mormon nations are almost always governed by outsiders whom impose harsher rules. As a result, the United States of the Wasteland world is far more draconian AND far more unstable than in our world.
In the rest of the world, we don't get much beyond vague hints. Brazil is mentioned to be under integralists and the Tsar's Russia undergoes rises and falls. In Europe, the old American ally of Germany federates into Mitteleuropa, but also finds the United States distancing itself from it due to it's foreign policy being based around extreme anti-colonialism, as well as the Germans re-adopting Bismarckian policy on a global stage. At the same time, the US finds itself growing closer to Russia, leading to it becoming stronger, mainly as the US continues to fear Japanese expansion. While it's never made clear if Japan moderated or even saw the progressive faction take power as in our timeline, what is clear is that the Japanese are the main boogeyman to US plans in the pacific.
Eventually, the resource wars would begin. It should be mentioned that as culture stopped in this world, so did tech. Well, tech did advance, it's just that it advanced in a completely different way. This tech looks like the best stuff from 1950s magazines, but it also consumes a lot of Oil. This turns out bad when the world starts to run out. One of the major background wars that is mentioned is the Russo-Turkish war. From what can be inferred, the Russians got hit hard by the crisis (in spite of being a fuel exporter IRL, good on that one developers) and ended up opting to invade their old Ottoman enemies to secure their oil fields. What is known about the war is that the Ottomans apparently opted to detonate their own oil fields to prevent the Russians from getting their hands on it (it's never elaborated on what was meant by "detonated" but this map assumes the worst). Another thing mentioned is Operation Watersnake, in which the Russians apparently poisoned the entire nile river and killed most of Egypt in the process.
From this war, we also know that Germany got involved over their Ottoman allies being invaded. We don't know how the war actually turned out, but it's also mentioned that Britain and France took the time to attack Germany again when they were distracted, while it was also implied that the Russians had a lot of nukes compared to Germany, so this map goes with the idea that the Germans lost (although Petrograd and Moscow are explicitly mentioned in the cities that got superbombed). Either way, these wars are what inspire "Project Haven," leading to the creation of the infamous "Safehouses" in the US.
We also know that the US got into wars of it's own, invading Gran Colombia and Mexico. The US becomes a paranoid authoritarian state. Many starve, and things are worse in the commonwealths that aren't deemed "fully American." Funds are diverted to the army, and the security forces often go full mask off in the South or Canada, just straight up massacring rioters and protesters. Suspected rebel activity is clamped down upon heavily, and the Commission for the Preservation of the Union (abolished in 1975) becomes an effective secret police and propaganda force.
In the far East, Japan goes on it's own wars of expansion, having been hit hardest by the resource crunch due to being an island nation. The Japanese launch several invasions of their neighbors, leading to strong paranoia on the American end. The Japanese, seeing large amounts of dissidents across their empire and even on the homefront, end up invading Russian Alaska and the Far East, as well as invading Australia, bringing it into a two front war. To make matters worse, the Japanese launch a major strike against the American pacific fleet in the Sandwich Isles to ensure they wouldn't be a threat (the fleet had been stationed there just in case Japan did anything). We don't know much about the Japanese tech in the games, although we do see some Japanese guns, and the Assaultron robots we encounter in the fourth game are explicitly stated to have been copied from Japanese designs that saw combat in Australia. The Japanese are also mentioned to have a more advanced Navy, but a primitive army at one point. We also know that the Japanese used a lot of deadly chemicals in their wars, but that in the end, American Power Armor would seal the doom of the Empire.
There's also the inferences. India probably fell apart into Civil War rather than dissolve peacefully like IOTL, and the Germans retreating to their colonies is all inferred from me. What we do know is that the Japanese home islands eventually get invaded and this ends up leading to the Great War that leads to the titular Wasteland being formed. At the end, everything was erased to start anew. Gone is the United States of America, and in it's place are Iron Legion, the New California Empire, and it's rival in the Grand Armee.
In the US, we don't get much lore on it, but it's divided into multiple commonwealths in an attempt to break down national ties in the conquered Utah, Confederacy, and Canada while also engaging in general reorganization to make North America as a whole into a united state. These commonwealths serve to increase the authoritarian nature of the US, allowing the federal government to supersede state authority. This system also leads to corruption as some commonwealths are definitely far better regarded than others, while the commonwealths in the ex Confederate, Canadian, and Mormon nations are almost always governed by outsiders whom impose harsher rules. As a result, the United States of the Wasteland world is far more draconian AND far more unstable than in our world.
In the rest of the world, we don't get much beyond vague hints. Brazil is mentioned to be under integralists and the Tsar's Russia undergoes rises and falls. In Europe, the old American ally of Germany federates into Mitteleuropa, but also finds the United States distancing itself from it due to it's foreign policy being based around extreme anti-colonialism, as well as the Germans re-adopting Bismarckian policy on a global stage. At the same time, the US finds itself growing closer to Russia, leading to it becoming stronger, mainly as the US continues to fear Japanese expansion. While it's never made clear if Japan moderated or even saw the progressive faction take power as in our timeline, what is clear is that the Japanese are the main boogeyman to US plans in the pacific.
Eventually, the resource wars would begin. It should be mentioned that as culture stopped in this world, so did tech. Well, tech did advance, it's just that it advanced in a completely different way. This tech looks like the best stuff from 1950s magazines, but it also consumes a lot of Oil. This turns out bad when the world starts to run out. One of the major background wars that is mentioned is the Russo-Turkish war. From what can be inferred, the Russians got hit hard by the crisis (in spite of being a fuel exporter IRL, good on that one developers) and ended up opting to invade their old Ottoman enemies to secure their oil fields. What is known about the war is that the Ottomans apparently opted to detonate their own oil fields to prevent the Russians from getting their hands on it (it's never elaborated on what was meant by "detonated" but this map assumes the worst). Another thing mentioned is Operation Watersnake, in which the Russians apparently poisoned the entire nile river and killed most of Egypt in the process.
From this war, we also know that Germany got involved over their Ottoman allies being invaded. We don't know how the war actually turned out, but it's also mentioned that Britain and France took the time to attack Germany again when they were distracted, while it was also implied that the Russians had a lot of nukes compared to Germany, so this map goes with the idea that the Germans lost (although Petrograd and Moscow are explicitly mentioned in the cities that got superbombed). Either way, these wars are what inspire "Project Haven," leading to the creation of the infamous "Safehouses" in the US.
We also know that the US got into wars of it's own, invading Gran Colombia and Mexico. The US becomes a paranoid authoritarian state. Many starve, and things are worse in the commonwealths that aren't deemed "fully American." Funds are diverted to the army, and the security forces often go full mask off in the South or Canada, just straight up massacring rioters and protesters. Suspected rebel activity is clamped down upon heavily, and the Commission for the Preservation of the Union (abolished in 1975) becomes an effective secret police and propaganda force.
In the far East, Japan goes on it's own wars of expansion, having been hit hardest by the resource crunch due to being an island nation. The Japanese launch several invasions of their neighbors, leading to strong paranoia on the American end. The Japanese, seeing large amounts of dissidents across their empire and even on the homefront, end up invading Russian Alaska and the Far East, as well as invading Australia, bringing it into a two front war. To make matters worse, the Japanese launch a major strike against the American pacific fleet in the Sandwich Isles to ensure they wouldn't be a threat (the fleet had been stationed there just in case Japan did anything). We don't know much about the Japanese tech in the games, although we do see some Japanese guns, and the Assaultron robots we encounter in the fourth game are explicitly stated to have been copied from Japanese designs that saw combat in Australia. The Japanese are also mentioned to have a more advanced Navy, but a primitive army at one point. We also know that the Japanese used a lot of deadly chemicals in their wars, but that in the end, American Power Armor would seal the doom of the Empire.
There's also the inferences. India probably fell apart into Civil War rather than dissolve peacefully like IOTL, and the Germans retreating to their colonies is all inferred from me. What we do know is that the Japanese home islands eventually get invaded and this ends up leading to the Great War that leads to the titular Wasteland being formed. At the end, everything was erased to start anew. Gone is the United States of America, and in it's place are Iron Legion, the New California Empire, and it's rival in the Grand Armee.