The World Today -- Continued
The Common Market Crisis of 2012
A number of factors led to what is been called "The Economics Systems Error of 2009". Rampant overspeculation of agricultural and mineral markets. The sharp production downturn initiated by OPEC. The housing bubble in the IRNA and Western Europe. The technologies bubble in California, Japan, and the China Free Republic. Political unrest in emerging markets like the Malayan Union, Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa.
Every piece of the world economy felt the pinch, but a number of poorer states felt an ugly squeeze. The Confederate States fell into economic chaos, so did a lot of small Asian and South American states. The situations in the Congo, Sudan and Senegal reach the height of civil war amid past hopes for peace.
In Europe, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain each broke under the stress and each have openly fought the Common Market's calls for austerity by forming what was termed, "The Debtor's Cartel." Each ones continued economic and now social unrest has European capitals alarmed.
Greece recently installed a nationalist right-wing government who said they will institute their own austerity program without greater ECM assistance. But the Market nations are considering armed involvement because of the Hellas National Front's xenophobic policies. Greek military forces have effected what the termed the "policy of ejection" towards racial minorities in the country. Turkey has invaded areas along its border in an effort to protect their country.
Similar situations are happening elsewhere. Daily protest have rocked Italy to the point where new elections have been called for October. Analysts say its a dead heat between extremes. The extreme left, led by Italian People's Front, and party leader Ciccolina Stoller. The extreme right led by the Forza Italia Coalition and their charismatic leader Luca di Montezemolo, who is leading the country as part of an emergency governing council after the conviction of Silvio Berlusconi.
Spain is dealing with a vote that could break up the country. A referendum is on the ballot in Catalonia. The Catalan dream of independence could be at hand.
Scandinavian Union: Europe's North Star
"Our light is bright in Oslo. Shines in the Stockholm sky.
Brightens Helsinki's darkness, and held in Tallinn high
In Riga and Vilnius, let our people proclaim.
We are Scandinvia...A world shall know our name."
Aurora Borealis (The Song of the SU) by Abba (1982)
The nations of Scandinavia have either been united or in conflict for centuries...That began to change in 1949 when Sweden, Norway and Finland signed the Helsinki Compact which organized the three countries into a common economic and political union.
Estonia, adrift since the 1941 breakup of the Soviet Union, and citing their close relationship with the Finnish people pettitoned to join the Helsinki Compact. Their wish was granted in 1951, and in 1952 both Latvia and Lithuania pettitoned to join. Each was concerned about the situation in Russia and the Ukraine.
By 1954, the six states joined into one political union and called themselves the Scandinavian Union
The Union was tested quickly. In 1957 the Union of Soviet Socialist Russia attempted to reacquire what they deemed "Their Baltic territories". Stunningly, the Scandinavian forces defeated Soviet Russia in what has been dubbed "The Estonian Conflict"
Since 1957, there has been an uneasy peace between Scandinavia and Russia, and a lot of respect between Scandinavia and Continental Europe.
Scandinavia has a considerable influence, especially in Eastern Europe. They have a trade and defense pact with Poland. Forged trade deals with the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Serbia and Croatia. Since joining the European Common Market, after the end of the Trade War (1963-1966..The closest thing our timeline has gotten to a Second World War), the Scandinavian Union has been an economic and moral counterweight to the Franco-British footprint on the Market.
The Russian Subcontinent
The Soviet Union was born in revolution in 1917. It died in revolution in 1942 as the competing socialist blocs never could come to accommodation. The purges of Stalin clashed with the renewed calls for a people's democracy by Trotsky and Molotov, and in the middle was the technocracy, largely composed of Russian Jews long persecuted, but unbowed. A series of civil wars broke out between 1936-1942, all while much of Europe was embroiled in the tense struggle with Nazi Germany. At the same time, the economic convulsions that shocked the world since 1929 were still shocking the world.
The Soviet Union's dissolution led to two Russian States. European Russia changed its name to the Union of Soviet Socialist Russia, with Vlacheslav Molotov and General Secretary and a return to the idea of socialism in one country.
The other was the Trans-Siberian Russian Republic, who pursued a markedly different market socialism and a staunch anti-Stalinism. They were also very distrusting of Molotov, who Siberians saw as a stooge for Stalin.
This center dissolved further as Southern Russia broke away in protest of USSR trade policies in 1964. The South Russia Republic was economically threatened and at odds for 22 years. The leadership of South Russia president Mikhail Gorbachev led to the 1986, One Russia Agreement which reunited to two Russias into a common USSR. Gorbachev assumed the General Secretary position in 1988 and ushered in an era of stability. His policies of glasnost ended decades of tension of with Scandinavia and Western Europe. Perestroika rebuilt a Russian economy plagued with official conflict and corruption.
Unfortunately, those who wished to turn back the clock found Gorbachev's medicine as too stern, too against their belief in what the USSR should be. Gorbachev was forced from office in a stunning election defeat (that many scholars later say was a fixed vote) led by national Attorney General Vladimir Putin. Young aggressive, Putin sought a reemergence of the USSR security state of the 1970s, but the Russian people weren't buying it and neither were neighboring countries such as Georgia, Armenia, the Central Asian Republic or the growing central Asian tiger Kazakhstan.
Putin was thrown out in a no-confidence vote in 2001, but what has ensued since is a period of political instability that has affects the region as a whole. The instability led an improbable election in 2010 and the return of Vladimir Putin, but he has to contend with a Congress of People's Deputy where the opposition Glasnost Social Concern is the majority, and many Russians are dismayed at a trade alliance with the miltarist neo-Stalinist Confederate States.
Since we mentioned Asia..What about Asia.
Asia is a continent of Blocs.
There's the Japan-Korea bloc. The two nations, highly industrialized and bastions of technology are friendly rivals in the manner of Britain and France.
There's the Chinese bloc. With the Chinese civil war ending in stale mate. We have a strange map.
People's Republic of China -- Inland China to Mongolia, bordered by India and Tibet to the West and Korea to the East.
Chinese Free Republic -- Coastal China, the South China Sea Island, Hong Kong.
Tibet -- Tibet is free, and aligned with the CFR. The PRC used low yield nuclear weapons in Tibet during the Trade War in protest of Tibetan forces massing on the border. The short nuclear exchange cost China a city (Wu-han) after they were bombed by allied forces led by California and Australia. The tragic exchange was the only time in history nuclear weapons have been used, and it led to the 1968 Cairns Convention. The first treaty designed to limit nuclear weapons production and testing.
Then there is the Australia-Malayan Bloc.
Australia-New Zealand Federation
ANZF acts in Asia much like Scandinavia does in Europe. The strong silent partner that curries a lot of influence.
Australia greatest influence is in what has been dubbed the "Field Hockey Treaty Organization". Australia, the Malayan Union, India, Pakistan, Singapore City-State East Timor, and Vietnam (although Vietnam has a close relationship with France as well)
Malayan Union: The Asian Tiger
The Malaysia-Indonesia conflicts of the 1960s made the people of both countries weary, amid the bluster a secret group of business leaders, politicians clerics and technocrats on both side had been meeting for year under the cover of the rhetoric of trade war and shooting war.
The result was a simultaneous, popular front-style coup in both countries in 1971 that led to the creation of a common Malayan Union by 1973.
(TV3 Kuala Lumpur political commentator Dale Mahadzir Lokman wrote an excellent book on these meetings and the popular front in a book called Kopassus Group U. It was an Economist Best Seller in 2004)
The Malayan Union today is among the nations of the world seen as "the next sensations". Growing countries and economies readying to take their places in the world. Along with resurging Hungary, Brazil, Argentina, Kenya and Ethiopia...
And how about those last two? They, along with South Africa are leading an Africa with a lot of promise..and strength
Africa. A wide gap, but a promising future.
Africa has seen turmoil since the colonial powers began to pull out in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s...But the strongest nations were ready.
The Kingdom of Ethiopia and Haile Selassie built a working partnership with the Southern German Union, Hungary and successors have expanded those partnerships to include a trade agreement with the Scandinavian Union.
Ethiopia today known as "Africa's Stockholm District" a place of commerce.
Not to be outdone is neighboring Kenya, which has developed their own economic rivalry with Ethiopia that has benefitted both nations. Kenya has also developed a fast, tough efficient military structure which has made the nation a key component of peacekeeping efforts in Congo, Liberia, Angola, Chad and the Sudan.
To the the northwest is oil rich Nigeria. The nation on paper should be the best economy on continent, but ethnic strife and official corruption have stymied the nation.
The industrial power is to the South. The Republic of South Africa was in chaos and turmoil in the 1960s amid apartheid and the backlash of armed struggle by the African National Congress.
However an international effort led by Cuba, Brazil, the Scandinavian Union, California, the Great Plains Republic and Australia led both sides to the negotiating table in 1976. Apartheid began to unravel.
In 1985 P.W. Botha, Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu signed the final agreements that effectively dismantled the apartheid state during a series summitt agreements in Grinnell, Iowa GPUR. The Grinnell College Agreements led to free elections in 1987, which were won by a ANC-led National Unity Concertation. Nelson Mandela was elected President with F.W. de Clerc as Vice President.
The Middle East
The Middle East, the world cradle of the Islamic faith is also known for its energy.
Oil. Black Gold. The Middle East's oil producers are largely stable, even with the protests of hard-line Islamic clerics seeking Sharia Law states.
What keep them in line is a mix of respect and prosperity. During the period of European decolonialization, peace and understanding were brokered by the departing powers. The results were partition where necessary (Iraq and Democratic Kurdistan), and non-interference in other instances (Iran -- which has an efficient power-sharing structure between socialist reformers, business-minded wonks and the Ayatollahs).
The results have been an economically stable region in the 1950s through the 1970s..But a different foreign power have some Arab states the tense. The growing relationships between the oil states of the Middle East and investor and government of the North American Republic of Texas.
The first alliance between Texas and the Middle East was forged in a business partnership between members of the Saudi Arabian royal family in the energy development industry in the 1950s and a young group of Texas energy engineers who were studying the Saudi finds led by an ambitious engineer/businessman named George Herbert Walker Bush. Bush much like the Saudis was soon to be royalty. This young former Texas Air Ranger, was fated to be a patriarch of an iconic family of Texas wealth, and political power, in addition to being a future President of the Lone Star Republic of Texas.
The influence of Texas has reached deep into the Middle East, beginning with the admission of Texas into the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in 1982 (much to the disapproval of some of the more hard-line islamic/Arab nationalist states such as Syria and Iraq and to the objection of the Malayan Union and the African oil states).
The Middle East is prosperous, but nervous about the shift of some of its frontline nations to the influence of the western world, an influence that looks to some as neocolonial.
Latin America/Carribean
Latin America in many way is quad-polar in scope.
The smaller nations of Central America are in the throes of disagreement between those factions who seek an alliance with the Chavista-Cuban-Carribean axis, which is seen as more democratic, and the Tex-Mex neoliberal axis which as seen as a guardian of prosperity.
Mexico, led by President Felipe Calderon, is seen by some as owned by Austin. And in some Calderon would agree. Calderon is unabashly pro-Texas and as a strong partnership with the gringos of the Lone Star Republic. Its a partnership that has aided Mexican business, but its hacked off Mexico's poor and working classes.
Then there is Cuba. The socialist state of Fidel Castro gave way in part to greater political freedoms early in the 1960s. With the defection of Confederate dissidents like Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy, Castro and Cuba were forced to look at their own racial and human right policies. Which led to a radical easing of political restrictions in the 1970s and free elections beginning in 1981.
Today, young energetic Cuban President Marco Rubio seeks to combine a non-compromise committment to the poor and human rights with continuing Cuba's economic rise. Rubio is also committed to protecting Cuba and its Carribean and Latin American allies states against the hostile Confederate States of America.
In South America, both schools contend as well. Hugo Chavez leads an oil-rich Venezuela that is openly anti-Texas and anti-CSA. Brazil and Lula da Silva play the Scandinavian power broker/peacemaker role. Michele Bachelet has democratic Chile on a similar path. Charismatic and egoistic Diego Armando Maradona leads a growing Argentina, which has one of the world most dynamic economies.
And finally...North America
North America...The former United States and the former Canada. The sleepy Atlantic Maritime States. Fiercely independent Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire.
The British-Style New England Commonwealth, ably led by Prime Minister Lincoln Chafee. A high-tech, bank and financial center, heavily allied with the Britain, which is needed to offset their neighbor.
The Industrial Republic of North America is a regional superpower. Stretching from New York City to the Mississippi River, The IRNA encompasses the financial and industrial muscle of the former USA. But the state is a divided one, between the slick, money-manging Eastern Corridor, and the conservative industrial frontier. IRNA politics are divided between the Industrial Republican party, the Constitutional Democratic party, the Worker's Union, and the Galtist League. The current President, Rudolph Giuliani seeks to expand the IRNA sphere of influence in the world economically and militarily and that is making neighbors tense.
The Republics of Quebec, and Prime Minister Jean Charest has sought accommodation with the IRNA, and that hope may get him booted out of office in elections to come later in September.
Across the Hull bridge in Ottawa, Republic of Ontario PM Jack Layton has told Washington "BEHAVE". But a lot of muscle to back that up well have to come from other nations that look at him in a suspicious light because you are never sure which Jack Layton you are talking to. The pragmatic Jack Layton or the more leftist radical Jack Layton?.
The republics of Saskatchewan and Manitoba both have a critical referendum coming up on September 29. Will they stay is independent nations, join in a common union or apply to admission into the Great Plains United Republic as member states? Their decision will affect the election campaign in the GPUR to the south.
And just south of the GPUR is the Lone Star Republic of Texas. Once a place of cattle. It is now a center of finance, energy, technology and it has the armed muscle to defend itself. It is a nation of 32 million people proud to the point of arrogance by some people's estimation. Texas seeks to meet the challenge of the IRNA head on, and its building the allies to do it worldwide. Texas, under the aggressive, shrewd leadership of its first female President, Condoleeza Rice-Hill, has made a few enemies. Dissidents in the Middle East and Central America, and the apartheid leadership of the CSA. But President Rice-Hill is unfazed. A protege of George H.W. Bush, the President who took Texas from minor state to world power in a generation, the woman called "The Steel Magnolia" has a gleam of destiny in her brown eyes.
The Rocky Mountain Republic is mineral rich and panoramic views, and it also will pick a new leader in a few weeks. Its elections are slated for early October. The incumbent Prime Minister Ken Salazar faces a tough three way challenge with former PM Richard Lamm, now leading a new Galtist-type party and Alberta conservative premier Stephen Harper.
Then there is Utah. One of the few theocratic states in the world. But don't let the Mormonism throw you. Utah isn't insular when it comes to trade or world assistance. The blue and white planes of Utah are known worldwide for disaster response. Led by respected President John Huntsman, the Mormon Republic of Utah is a world citizen.
Next to Utah, two very different states. The Southwest Confederation is mainly Native American, Hispanic, white and is a nice tourist destination. The nation elected its first non-white prime minister earlier this year.
Nevada -- A wild, tourist state dominated by entertainment and Las Vegas gambling. And that hacks off Utah. But Nevada President Steve Wynn doesn't listen. What happens in Nevada, stays in Nevada.
Greater California -- The BIG Kahuna in North America, but don't tell Texas or the IRNA that. California is an open, social libertarian, high-tech economics country of 70 million and the gateway to Asia. California's sphere of influence stretched across the Pacific to independent Hawaii, to a successful, but sometime sticky trade agreements with Japan, Korea and both Chinas. California is a power player in Asia, and wants to use that influence to offset Texas in the middle East and be a bigger part of Europe. In terms of military power California is building a capability to project global power, much like the IRNA does and Texas is seeking to do.
At the same time California likes to see itself similar to Scandinavia, strong enough to protect its interests, but at the same time broker respect in many capitals, even among adversaries. In North America, California is stridently pro-self determination among smaller nations. A stark contrast to the border agitation of the IRNA towards its neighbors. And there's current President...Jerry Brown, who has been elected President-thrown out of office, and then brought back, at least once in three of the last four decades, and himself the son of a former President of Greater California.
to be continued
Next: The Confederate States of America. Sweet Home, North Korea.
