Final update.
Chapter XV: On to the 21st Century, 1995-2019.
In June 1993 Pat Nixon died. She was the wife of Chairman Richard M. Nixon and had also been People’s Secretary of Education until she resigned for health reasons in 1990. A heavy smoker most of her adult life who nevertheless never allowed herself to be seen with a cigarette in public, she eventually endured bouts of oral cancer, emphysema, and ultimately lung cancer, with which she was diagnosed in December 1992 while hospitalized with respiratory problems. She died in November 1993, aged 81, making Chairman Nixon a widower.
Nixon withdrew from public life and lived as a hermit in the White House, though still running the country from the Oval Office. Without his wife as a moderating factor, his latent paranoia came to the forefront. He wouldn’t have meetings with the Executive Commission of the National Central Committee and the Council of People’s Secretaries, viewing such collective organs as a threat to his position of power. He now instead had one on one tête-à-têtes with cabinet and Executive Commission members, or meetings with three officials at the most at any given time, in which he would informally instruct them with guidelines to ascertain which ones were able to interpret his will. He also produced infighting by letting them compete for his attention as a test of loyalty: those who persevered were obviously the most ambitious and able, but also the ones Nixon watched out for under the motto “keep your enemies close, but your friends closer.” Cliques formed on Capitol Hill, in the White House and in The Tet (the People’s Secretariat of Defence).
The Tet had become the commonly used nickname for the headquarters of the People’s Secretariat of Defence and the metonym for the defence secretariat, its leadership and even the entire military. The actual building was built in Arlington, Virginia, The name was derived from the tetrahedron (triangular pyramid) shape of the building: the three sides represented the values of “Country, Party and International Revolution” and were exactly 177.6 metres long (referring to the American Revolution), making for an exactly 145.01 metre tall building above ground (the USSA had adopted the “Enlightened” metric system over the “colonial heritage” of measurements derived from British Imperial measurements in 1957). The office of the People’s Secretary of Defence was located at the summit of the building. An unknown number subterranean levels were added to the complex throughout the Cold War to ensure the facility could continue to command the American armed forces after the surface structure was destroyed in a thermonuclear strike. The Tet also oversaw the space program, which had seen the launch of space probes to all planets, some of which have left the solar system by now. Manned missions to space, the moon and Mars have been undertaken as well, matching the achievements of Germany and China. Controlling the armed forces and space based forces (a system of spy satellites) in 1995 was People’s Secretary of Defence John J. “Jack” Nicholson. Nicholson had risen through the ranks in military propaganda after an injury as a “military advisor” in Congo made him unfit for frontline duties. As head of military propaganda he’d become the face of the military.
On June 17th 1995, Chairman Nixon hadn’t emerged from his bedroom by 10:00 AM, which was unusual as he usually sat down for breakfast at 07:00 AM sharp, during which time he read newspapers. Staff, however, was under strict instructions not to enter the President’s bedroom until he called them in. They figured he’d chosen to sleep in since it was a Sunday, but at 11:30 AM the White House’s head of security finally chose to disregard protocol and ignore official instructions. He found Nixon lying face down next to his bed, barely alive: after suffering from atrial fibrillation for years, a blood clot had formed and reached his brain, causing a debilitating stroke. Had he been treated by doctors immediately, he could have survived, but instead he had lain there for four and a half hours. He died the following day: Monday June 18th 1995.
The party and the nation had been led by one man for 34 years, a man who had with his remarkable energy and ambition had tirelessly tried to advance the cause of socialist revolutionism worldwide. Certainly, expansion of socialist accomplishments like free healthcare, education and public transportation, cheap public housing, the development of highway infrastructure, the electrification of all but the remotest parts of the USSA, subsidized prices of consumer goods for the poor, a state enforced end of all discrimination based on race, religion and gender and successes in the space race are all attributable to the regime Nixon headed. That, however, had come at a cost: America had become a totalitarian regime with a personality cult, a security state based on monitoring through informants, wiretaps and CCTV and a society, and a ruling party in which the principle of “internal party democracy” had been seriously hollowed out.
Party leaders elected charismatic speaker William J. Clinton, who had succeeded Pat Nixon as People’s Secretary of Education in 1990 and also held the office of Procurator General. In the latter role, as Procurator General, he was responsible for the accurate execution of the law. He had the reputation of being a moderate and held a PhD in criminal law as well as master’s degrees in economics, history and Marxist philosophy. Major reforms were expected from him. They followed after the Thirteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of the Union of Socialist States of America in 1996.
During that Congress he held a ground-breaking speech during which he said the following: “Considering the merits of the departed Chairman Nixon, an entirely sufficient volume of books, articles, pamphlets and documentaries have already been produced in his lifetime. I do not dispute the facts in those sources, but I will address the facts of the other side of the coin. Nixon acted not through persuasion, explanation and patient cooperation with people, but by imposing his concepts and demanding absolute submission to his opinion. Whoever opposed this concept or tried to defend position was doomed to removal from the leading collective and to subsequent moral and, occasionally, physical annihilation. Nixon originated the concept of ‘enemy of the people’. This term automatically rendered it unnecessary that the ideological errors of a man or men engaged in a controversy be proven. This term made possible the usage of the most cruel repression, violating all norms of revolutionary legality, against anyone who in any way disagreed with Nixon.[…] Notwithstanding the accomplishments of the Nixonian era, I intend to take steps against its excesses so no one person can direct policy. Proper procedure must be followed with the collective organs of party and state setting policies and enacting legislation while the Party Chairman, the cabinet and the Executive Commission execute them. I hereby announce a new course based on three elements: openness, transparency and restructuring.”
After three decades of autocracy, the party experienced a revival and Clinton passed an amendment to the socialist constitution that enshrined party democracy. The National People’s Assembly, the parliamentary body elected by all citizens aged 18, was to be leading. The National Central Committee, the body that theoretically governed the party, and which was elected indirectly through local, regional/city and state committees was to be the upper house of parliament: empowered only to accept or reject legislation and not to amend or initiate it. Clinton’s reforms turned the country into a “Socialist Democracy”, though critics placed ‘democracy’ between quotation marks for good reason: though the random whims, proclivities and notions of a single person could no longer form the basis of policy, the country remained a one-party state with a command economy in which private ownership had been de facto abolished.
What Clinton, however, failed to do was to make economic reforms. In the command economy that emerged from wartime controls – which were not abolished after the end of the war in 1945 – private ownership was not completely legally abolished, but in practice it was virtually impossible. Virtually everyone was in service of the state somehow and the state enterprises were expected to meet production quotas. The system of economic planning worked well for heavy industry, military production, resource extraction and so on. It, however, proved to be too inflexible to deal with sudden changes in demand in the area of consumer goods, producing surpluses but more often shortages, and also produced goods that often didn’t meet the needs or tastes of consumers. The result was a growing black market that became vital to the economy. Corruption and data fiddling to report achieved quotas was also a massive problem. A third structural problem was underperformance as factory managers didn’t want to exceed their quota even if they could because they knew the quotas they had to meet would then be raised. The regime tried computerization, but it didn’t provide a solution: matters as complex as human consumer behaviour, market mechanisms and unforeseen complications like failed harvests, natural disasters etc. went beyond the computational power of the systems available in the late twentieth century. Growth didn’t stop completely, but was derived mostly from heavy industry, military production, the export of natural resources. The inefficiencies grew to the point that ration cards were introduced in the early 90s, except for products like meat, sugar, salt, certain vegetables, potatoes and coffee: not only were these staples subsidized, but they were imported if necessary. Clinton’s campaign of “economic discipline” was mostly limited to slogans that had little effect.
Due to the triple policy of “openness, transparency and restructuring”, information about the economy’s failures, of much higher living standards in Europe, and neo-Confucian Imperial China bypassing both Europe and socialist paragon America as the largest economy became much more readily available. They learned that, though the USSA was still the second economy after China due to America’s enormous size, in terms of GDP per capita Germany did much better: $50.000 vs $15.000 (in 2019 dollars). This was because the reform program greatly relaxed censorship, allowing for much freer press, which in turn led to lively public debate and a public opinion not controlled and monitored so heavily by the state. This produced centrifugal forces that would, at the very least have led to a much more decentralized union since parts of it had been incorporated against their will through force of arms. A secret 1995 report from the Committee of Public Security, which landed on Nixon’s desk month’s before his death, stated: “Based on a random sample of roughly 40.000 interviews conducted by 1.000 informants, we’ve concluded that 90% of the inhabitants of the northern states, formerly known as Canada, still consider themselves Canadian. A general trend is a preference for a much looser union in which they can govern themselves, even allowing non-socialist parties!”
Armed with that information, People’s Secretary of Defence General Jack Nicholson decided that Clinton’s liberalizations were a threat to socialism. On May 1st 2000, Labour Day, Nicholson attempted a coup d’état. He hoped to benefit from the fact that much of the army was on leave for the Labour Day celebrations. He took Washington DC and announced martial law, but most forces remained loyal to Clinton and defeated the coup attempt. Nicholson was put on trial and held a well-remembered impromptu speech on the stand when young, flamboyant and ambitious prosecutor Timothy Cruise bluntly stated he felt entitled to the truth: “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth! You cry about the death of a handful and curse me and my fellow patriots, but as the leader of our army I had a far greater responsibility than you can fathom, sonny: to protect the Union of Socialist States of America from all enemies, both foreign and domestic. I have no inclination to explain myself to a man who is a puppet to the greatest domestic enemy of them all: William Jefferson Clinton. You, Mr. Cruise, as the son of an electrical engineer and a special education teacher, shouldn’t ask for an explanation for my actions as you benefited from the socialist system, rising from the working class to your current prestigious position with a cushy office. I’ve defended Socialism all my life and don’t intend to explain myself to someone who has benefited from its’ possibilities to the hilt and then questions the way in which I provide those benefits. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you’re entitled to!” When asked whether or not he was the leader of the coup, Nicholson screamed: “You’re goddamn right I was!” He was sentenced to death for treason, but under the later reconciliatory policies this was sentenced to time served in 2006 and he was released. Ironically, he became quite wealthy under the new capitalist system by publishing his memoirs, later made into a movie. A subset of communists hardliners consider his coup attempt to be the last moment the union could be saved. They nostalgically remember the “good old days” and lament the crumbling of the American Empire in Latin America, where communist regimes all gave way to democratically elected governments like dominoes for lack of Washington DC’s intervention, as ordered by Clinton.
Following the failed coup, there were massive protests and within weeks the “northern states” declared their independence and formed the Republic of Canada and the Republic of Quebec. Dissident leader Fidel Castro from the state of Cuba had spent thirty year in jail when he was released in 2000. Upon his release he quickly resumed his position as opposition leader through his charisma and fiery speech, despite being 74 years old at the time. After six years of negotiations – during which protests, disturbances and violence continued and further separatism loomed – Clinton and Castro reached an agreement. The original pre-revolutionary US constitution would be restored with several amendments to safeguard democracy, such as a two-term limit for Presidents, forbidding political parties from accepting private donations and creating an impartial system of subsidies for political parties so they could all campaign in the planned multiparty elections of 2006 (the new leaders didn’t want a two or three party system, but one in which no single party could gain an absolute majority).
The country’s name reverted to United States of America. The governing CPUSSA changed its name to CPUSA, a new Democratic Party sprang up embracing social democracy, a new Republican Party supported conservative liberalism, nationalism and Christian Democracy, and finally there was a Green Party emphasizing social liberalism and environmentalism. Beyond that there were a few smaller single issue and ultraconservative parties. A broad Democratic-Republican-Green coalition made the Communists an opposition party for the first time in seventy years. Meanwhile, California and Texas rejected the new constitution as it didn’t include the right to secede in the event the USA did revert back to one-party rule: California and Texas left the union as independent republics. All other states remained, accepting the “no secession” condition by doing so. In 2006, Fidel Castro became the President of the United States as the leader of the largest party in the US House of Representatives, the Democrats, even though he was 80 years old already. He decided not to pursue a second term in 2010 because of his health.
In the meantime, the Zhonghua Dynasty remained in power, but had evolved from an autocracy to a constitutional monarchy, albeit one in which some political influence and great moral authority still remained in the hands of the Emperor. After Emperor Hongxian consolidated his dynasty’s rule, he was succeeded by Emperor Juexing in 1916 and he expanded his father’s initiatives to modernize the country and lived to witness the crown to his work in 1945: China displaced Japan as the leading Asian power and became the continent’s first nuclear power at the end of his reign. His oldest son succeeded him as Emperor Huiguo in 1958 and saw China’s stellar development from a developing agrarian economy to an industrial urbanized economy and ultimately the world’s largest economy towards the end of his reign. Emperor Huiguo died at the age of 92 in 1996 after 38 years on the throne. Huiguo’s son adopted the era name Guoxing, which means “star of the nation.” China’s economic power translated into military power during his reign with the adoption of third generation main battle tanks, fourth generation jetfighters, super aircraft carriers and nuclear ballistic missile submarines in significant quantities. Besides its soft power, China by the early 90s had plenty of hard power available should the need for it ever arise. In 2006, Emperor Guoxing celebrated his ten year anniversary and the centennial of his dynasty.
While no major conflicts took place, China could not, however, step into the vacuum provided by the collapse of communism as easily as expected. India, with its population of 1.5 billion people and rapid economic growth, competed with China for leadership of the Third World and in Latin America Brazil stepped into the space left unoccupied by the communists. After the fall of communism, the new moderately Muslim leaders of Indonesia, for example, found the nationalist, neo-Confucian principle that posited China as the centre of the universe objectionable and refused to become a de facto tributary state like Korea. Multicultural India, still second to near monocultural China, sought partnership rather than submission and signed a treaty of friendship in Jakarta. The irony is that China then started supporting Christian, Hindu and Buddhist parties and militant separatists in Aceh.
In Africa, Mozambique also signed a treaty of friendship after its communist party had permitted free elections. Malawi and Zambia made the same choice as China’s neo-imperialism became ever more obvious. China did score a victory in Zimbabwe, where communist leader Mugabe clung on to power, by tolerating Mugabe’s totalitarianism and eccentricities. In exchange China got access to Zimbabwe’s supplies of gold, nickel, platinum and iron ore and developed the country’s infrastructure as a bonus, generating economic growth percentages that sometimes went into the double digits. China was also successful in Congo by launching a military intervention to prevent the Rwandan Civil War from spilling over to that country, leading to a joint Chinese-Congolese intervention that prevented genocide against the Tutsis by the Hutus in Rwanda. Through influence in Congo, the electricity supplier to much of sub-Saharan Africa, China had a major trump card, albeit one to use as a last resort: threatening to cut off countries from Congolese electricity, which would be detrimental to most sub-Saharan countries as their production was insufficient. India began developing a longer term solution by starting to build light water nuclear reactors in several African countries.
And then there was Europe, still dominated by Germany. The German Empire counted one hundred million inhabitants, much less than China, India and the US. Its economy, however, was highly developed with an extensive services sector and lots of high tech industry. Wilhelm IV died in 2001 at the age of 95, after reigning as a purely constitutional monarch for half a century, never even exercising his theoretical right to refuse royal assent like his father and grandfather had. The country had evolved into a functional parliamentary democracy.
During the same time the Breslau Organization had evolved from an instrument of German hegemony into the European Community: a voluntary association of states that cooperated on foreign policy, formed a defensive military alliance and formed a common European market of three quarters of a billion people that reached into Siberia and the Persian Gulf by including the democratized Tsarist Russians and the Ottomans. Besides that, the carrier and submarine fleets of Germany still extended their influence globally through bases in German Southwest Africa, some islands in the Indian Ocean, Micronesia and a base in Vietnam. Wilhelm IV had no sons, and was succeeded by his nephew who broke with tradition and became Friedrich Wilhelm V, who reigns until today. It’s his task to oversee how the country manoeuvred to keep Europe relevant as one of the power blocs, now numbering five: China, Europe, India, the United States and Brazilian dominated Latin America. The interaction between will determine what the 21st century will look like.