Chapter 112: Peace For Our Time? (1960-???)
The first question to solve - what should be built? It had been half a century since the Indian Revolution, and despite the totalitarianism of the Unitarian regime and its catastrophic end, even less people wanted a return of the regime prior to the revolution, this being the Mughal Empire.
This is where the opinions of the United States differed, largely because of the different experiences they had in nation-building in the past - both China, the undisputed leader of the Asian parts of the faction, and Germania, the most prominent of its Western members, had experience in reforming former Unitarian regimes, but that experience differed. Being the winner most wounded by the War, China and its leadership believed in the simple dichotomy of "divide and conquer" - "India" should become a solely geographical term and the region dissolved along national lines, into states such as Bengal, Punjab, Khalistan, Tamil Nadu, Maratha, Nepal, etc., none of which would ever be able to threaten peace and security in the region or even hope to stand up against China next door. Xiao Xuegang's plan paid a lot of attention to future economic domination of the region, using enforced free trade treaties, free economic zones and pro-Chinese business laws to tie the disjointed Indian states to China like an anchor preventing them from ever rising again. So, in a way, it was a repeat of the plan China enforced on a defeated Japan twenty years earlier, and in China's eyes, it was a success, so why not try the same thing with an another former Unitarian dictatorship? Germania and its leadership, on the other hand, were not only more idealistic in their plans for the future of India, but also were concerned with the possibility that a divided India would just make China into even more of a behemoth than it currently is. Western businesses feared that the Chinese scenario will completely close off the prospective and massive Indian market and turn it into the Shun's "backyard", and as such, Prime Minister Volker Braun proposed an alternative - keeping India as a country, just cut up, with the most vocal independence movements given their desired freedom, and the rest of the country reformed into a federation. Obviously, to get back all the damage caused by the UIS, heavy war reparations would have to be placed, and the nation itself carefully observed, with interventions if necessary to prevent a return to Unitarianism or any other extreme ideology. Braun's plan was very unpopular among the other members of the United States, but the Germans accurately predicted that at this point, it would be impossible to "eradicate" the concept of India - decades of Unitarianism had largely erased regional identities, cultures and languages, the Indian population was largely uniform and followed a uniform national identity. The various regions of India had turned into something similar to, say, Bavaria and Thuringia, or Brittany and Normandy - regions with funny accents, a regional identity and maybe some remaining local languages, but largely a member of the same thing. You can't expect to cut that up and expect positive results.
While heated debates took place in Rome over the future of India, the occupation forces in the subcontinent itself had to rely on something to make their rule more legitimate. In any normal situation, this would be where the occupiers would contact some friendly anti-Unitarian movements and begin cooperating with them to establish the foundation for a future return of control to a local civilian regime - however, this was where the US found itself facing a little bit of a... problem. A report from Hyderabad in January of 1961 informed the US leadership in Rome that the occupation forces have counted a total of 7857 separate anti-Unitarian movements operating in the entirety of the former UIS, each one anywhere to a few hundred activists to dozens of thousands of supporters with their own armed forces. This precarious situation was all thanks to the Unitarian government - the eye of the Aankhein and the totalitarian rule of the government meant that it was only when the stability of the nation began to break down that separatist and resistance movements could begin to form, at which point the nation was already in anarchy and any cohesion between anti-Unitarian forces was nonexistent. Though some quickly merged and others dispersed after Lucknow was toppled, thousands remained, each one campaigning for their own goals. The rainbow of anti-Unitarian movements was as diverse as India itself - separatists and irredentists of various kinds, from radical red-wingers and Revivalist-influenced organizations to democrats to Unitarians; groups campaigning for the restoration of the monarchy, but a more "Indian" one, either under a Baburid or a local Hindu noble; groups campaigning for the establishment of a democracy and a federation; Muslim, Sikh and Buddhist interest groups; anti-Nijasurist Unitarians, some endorsing Burmese Anarcho-Unitarianism, some believing in Democratic Unitarianism, others endorsing either Kubilayism, Nagaism, Samsaism or many other blue-wing ideologies; so on and so forth.
However, there were a few movements which were more prominent than others, and which would end up the backbone of the US occupation of India. The Vetrivel Organization in the south of the subcontinent was one of the few which predated the Great Asian War, and while this Tamil nationalist organization had largely turned into a symbolic, powerless entity as early as the 1930s, the Great Asian War and the Allied occupation of Ceylon saw it go through surge upon surge of new membership. In what was considered to be the "core" of India, i.e. not counting recently conquered regions such as Persia or Malaya, Tamil nationalism was the most prominent and widespread, and as such, the Tamils bled much more than the other nationalities of India. Dozens of thousands purged during the Unitarian regime, well over a million deported and spread across India to hasten assimilation - and as a result, the Vetrivel was among the most violent of the separatist organizations across India, endorsing the idea of paying for Tamil blood with Unitarian blood. Many members of the Vetrivel also endorsed the idea of a Dravida Nadu - an independent federation of the speakers of Dravidian languages in southern India, stretching from Ceylon to Hyderabad, in which the Tamils would obviously have the highest clout. The idea of a Dravidian nation was endorsed by the Chinese as a way to dissolve India into separate states, but the Germans were not as enthusiastic about such a multinational federation. Either way, the US began to cooperate with the Vetrivel, both to gain some local support in southern India and to make sure the Vetrivel doesn't turn against the Westerners either. Tamil representatives were invited to the US occupation governments in Ceylon and Tamil Nadu as early as 1960 - this did, unfortunately, draw the ire of the Sinhalese people, which made up the majority of the population of Ceylon, and yet was claimed by the Vetrivel as an integral part of a future Tamil nation. To silence these protests, Vetrivel representatives fabricated census data, claiming that the Sinhalese majority is overblown, and even sometimes began open attacks on the most vital Sinhalese to sway the opinion of the Allies to their favor. General Henrikas Radauskas described the situation in Ceylon as "two kids fighting for the same toy, just with guns and bombs instead of shouting".
In the north, the Ganges River valley was dominated by the loose, multi-regional organization known as the Janata Dal (People's League), a nonviolent organization composed of intellectuals, representatives of the middle class and former Unitarians which saved their skin by disassociating themselves from the Party at the last minute and hiding any connection they had. It largely echoed the German proposal for the future of India - a democratic, Western-influenced federation of nationalities, with a unitary capital either in a reconstructed Lucknow, Delhi, or Varanasi, the city where the Janata Dal was first conceived. It was just unfortunate that the region where the League operated was occupied by the Chinese, who, as already presented, had no plans of leaving a united India after them. Obviously, cracking down on a nonviolent democratic organization was not something the other members of the US would tolerate, so instead, the Chinese turned to weakening the roots of the organization - fostering separatist nationalism in Bengal, Bihar, Bhutan, Nepal, as well as cracking down on any major politicians suspected of former ties to the Unitarian regime, even if they had reformed and abandoned their past ideology, for example, by joining the Janata Dal. The west of the subcontinent, meanwhile, saw the domination of the Majlis-e-Ahrar-ul-Islam, usually shortened to the Ahrar. Though generally in favor of a united India much like the Janata Dal, the Ahrar was a Muslim interest party, and many of its leaders declared that the Unitarian regime was nothing more than a veil for Hindu nationalism and proselytism. And there certainly was some truth to that statement - though officially declaring state atheism as its policy, the UIS was much harsher towards Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists and other minorities than the dominant Hindi. The Ahrar campaigned for a return of former mosques to the Muslim community, freedom of religion in the future India and cultural autonomy to Indian Muslims. At the same time, the Ahrar were very worried about the growing popularity of the Janata Dal and the proposals for either the partition of India or a federation in its place. If their wishes were not met and they saw that the new Indian state was just as pro-Hindi as the UIS, as the organization states, then the Indian Muslims had a right to declare themselves a separate nation from the Indian Hindi and split the subcontinent between each other - perhaps even restore the Mughal Empire to give this "Muslim nation" legitimacy, while the Hindi can have their republic.
Of course, outside of the subcontinent, there were three nations which had liberated themselves from Indian rule without any influence from the US, and thus the Westerners and China had to recognize. These were Persia, Baluchistan and Afghanistan.
Baluchistan and Afghanistan largely followed similar paths after independence. Both of the countries had their freedom championed by local politicians, officers and intellectuals, who, while certainly open to the idea of joining the ranks of Western democratic nations, had no experience in that sort and no US support to back them up. What also ended up as a major pain were the post-war borders - due to the chaotic nature of their independence struggle, the borders of all three states ended up set by the zones of control of each movement at the moment of the capitulation of the US, thus all three states ended up with large, unwanted minorities within their borders. Afghanistan, for example, ended up with Peshawar and Quetta, two regions with little to no connections to Afghani identity. Lacking democratic traditions, inheriting impoverished regions with plenty of ethnic violence, both Afghanistan and Baluchistan devolved into dictatorships, failing to keep up with the countries around them in human development and mostly ending up famous as a source of cheap immigrants to work in Arabian and Persian oil rigs. Persia, on the other hand, was a different beast. Sporting a large population, a somewhat stable source of income in the form of Persian Gulf oil and, most importantly, a concrete ideology and vision for the future in the form of the tenets of the Jund-e Khoda and its leader Murshid Jamal, it fared... well, it ended up more stable and compact than its eastern neighbors, at least, but whether it was "better" is a question. The Jund was a follower of a radical alternative to mainstream Fatahism, and Persia under their control would become a testing ground for their ideology. The new Islamic state of Persia broke all ties with previous governments in the region and their successors in the form of the Persian government in exile in East Turkey, and the confrontational, radical conservative and extremist attitude of Persia would become a pain to the rest of the world and a threat to the stability of the Middle East for years to come.
Jund-e Khoda insurgents in eastern Persia praying during the last weeks of the war in India. Colorized
The remains of the city of Lahore in early 1961. Organizing reconstruction works across the entire subcontinent would become a severe headache for the occupying Allied forces.
Oceania was a different beast entirely. During the Great Asian War, the only conflicts it participated in were a low-intensity colonial front in New Guinea, which ended up won by Lusang and the EASA by mid 1960, and some naval warfare all around the massive continent. India's capitulation had little impact on the economy or military of Oceania, either - as one the most recent members of the Commonwealth, and a nation self-sufficient both in food and in resources, it merely needed to eliminate its General-Overseers and small Indian presence by placing them under house arrest. As such, the Oceanians had enough strength to be able to fight for years on end, and the US could tell that continuing the war against Oceania would be a costly endeavor. It was not the same as India - this was an entire sparsely inhabited continent, with a fairly hostile and dry environment and all the major towns separated either by sea or by hundreds of kilometers of sparsely inhabited land. Meanwhile, the Allies still had an entire subcontinent to rebuild, and the voters back home were already growing frustrated with the lines of coffins wrapped in flags being sent home every week. Calculating all the advantages and disadvantages of a continuation of the war in Oceania, the leadership of the US decided to extend an olive branch to Oceania, which the government of Harold Stassen agreed to. An armistice was signed on July 11th, 1960, which almost all modern textbooks put down as the end of the Great Asian War. However, the old borders were not restored - Lusang kept its control over all of New Guinea, while the "navy with a state" in the form of the British Royal Navy slowly began evacuating east in the face of continuous Oceanian attacks.
With East Africa continuing its path of Monarcho-Unitarianism, just with a lot more territory (France reluctantly agreed to follow their promise of organizing referendums in their colonies and protectorates in East Africa, paving the way for much of Northern Somalia and other border territories to join the Union) and Turkestan abandoning the Unitarian tenets imposed upon it, Oceania remained as the last orthodox Unitarian country on the planet, and this siege mentality reflected upon its changing ideology. Though initially seen by the Westerners as one of the more progressive members of the Commonwealth - its leader Harold Stassen even accepted the title of "Democrat" to make his rule look more appealing to Democratic Unitarians - this brief period of warmth soon faded. Stassenism would rise past Nijasurism or even Nagaism in the absolute loyalty and totalitarian grip over the country it advocated for, all with a good dose of encouraged extreme Oceanian nationalism, so much so that it was hard to tell whether it was even Unitarianism anymore, and rather something else entirely. Decades after the end of the Great Asian War, the civilized countries of the world would start to wonder whether letting Oceania go that easily was a good idea...
The negotiations over India's future took place in Rome for almost a year, which was more than enough time for the occupation authorities in the subcontinent itself to give out heaps of shallow, shortsighted promises to as many groups as they could just to make their rule there a little bit simpler. Back in Rome, the initial consensus seemed bent on dismantling India completely, according to the whims of the Chinese, but as more and more news came from India, describing the situation out there to the politicians in detail, then that consensus began to change. This was not only thanks to additional information, however, but also thanks to master maneuvering by the German diplomatic corps - they weren't beyond backroom negotiations with each of the parties to gauge their opinion and tip them towards their preferred solution, as well as, for example, open fearmongering in US meetings, denouncing the Chinese proposal as an attempt to "colonize" India, which, while threatening to the integrity of the alliance, also helped to sway the opinions of the members towards the Germans. On September of 1960, the unofficial leader of the US, Italian prime minister Amerigo Togliatti, spoke out in favor of maintaining the political existence of India, even if weakened to make sure it never becomes a threat to world peace again, leading the Chinese to drop their stubborn stance and seek a compromise. The US plan for the future government of India was ironed out during the following months. Burma shall be reformed into a monarchy under one of the surviving descendents of the Konbaung dynasty, and immediately ordered to join EASA as its newest member; Malacca, having been controlled by the French and then the Indians for centuries and thus lacking a recent local government to restore, was founded as a republic, again, as a member of EASA (a French motion to regain the peninsula due to it having been a French colony was vetoed by China); Assam shall be expanded into the west, incorporating some territories formerly held by the UIS; Cambodia would end up formed from the former territories of the Mekong Union, ignoring protests from Vietnam and Ayutthaya over their respective minorities there; Ceylon and Tamil Nadu, the former having been a content French colony before the Great European War and the latter threatening war if it ends up in the same country as the rest of India, would both become autonomous regions of France with their future status to be determined by referendum or by mutual agreement by the Sinhalese and Tamils. The rest would end up reformed into a federal, decentralized Confederation of India, composed of semi-independent republics like Bengalistan, Punjab, Bihar, Maratha, Orissa, Nepal, etc., each one with a separate democratically elected government and their own armies, with a weak central government in Delhi.
Historians and common people both agree that the Great Asian War was on the same footing as the Great European War in the impact it had on the geopolitical landscape of the world - in fact, it could be argued that the GAW was even more important. Just the losses suffered during the conflict had to account for something - 18 million military personnel casualties, nearly 60 million civilians, much of South, Southeast and East Asia left in ruins and taking decades to rebuild. From a geopolitical perspective, the War turned the previously tripolar world, dominated by China, India and the Western nucleus, into a bipolar one. On one side, you had the European Defense Commission, which, joined by France, Spain, Britannia and Sweden in the immediate aftermath of the War, remained as a real military and economic force in world politics. On the other side, you had EASA, dominated solely by China. The technological impact the War had on the world cannot be dismissed, either - jet engines, nuclear power and many, many other military and civilian technologies were birthed by it and later went on to push the world towards a new era. The first application of nuclear power in civilian energy production took place in France in 1967, in the form of a practical nuclear reactor built near Grenoble, and two years earlier, in 1965, the first civilian jet airliner, the "Huolong", made its first flight from Beijing to Seoul.
What the Great Asian War also led to was the formation of the world's first planetwide political organization. After India's capitulation, the question arose on what should be the fate of the United States. At its core, it was an organization founded to resolve the issue of Indian belligerence and to organize the war effort of the worldwide anti-Commonwealth coalition - so, logically, it should be disbanded once its purpose had been achieved, right? However, during the war, the US had developed a fairly sophisticated structure and system of government from the supreme council of heads of state to the frontline officers, which couldn't just be discarded given that it worked fairly well. In addition, the meeting of the United States in Rome after the war concluded that one of the reasons for the breakout of the "Great Wars", as the Great European War and the Great Asian War could be collectively called, was a lack of cooperation between the world's nations and especially the great powers. Everyone fought for themselves, leading to the constant formation of military blocs, coalitions, treaties and other such discourse pushing the world towards war. With the planet growing increasingly interconnected and even the most minor conflicts having severe consequences on their regions or the entire planet, the need for a forum where countries can solve their bickering without bloodshed rose, and the United States filled that void.
1962 saw the seven victorious powers - Germania, China, France, Italy, Vespucia, Britannia and Lithuania - as well as all of the other participants of the conflict signing the Rome Accords, establishing the United States as a supranational entity with the goals of "fostering cooperation, peace and international diplomatic coordination between the world's nations". The US of the Rome Accords was quite different from its original version, however - for one, it even had an official head, who would preside over all of the meetings of the organization. And what better term for a person who presides meetings and makes sure they follow the charter of the US than the Latin title for an officer who would preside over meetings and make sure they follow law and order? The first President of the United States was, to nobody's surprise, the (already former) Prime Minister of the Italian Confederation Amerigo Togliatti, further cementing the "America" nickname many opponents to the organization repeated. Though initially, the members of the US were only composed of the winning coalition, with the seven leaders having the highest clout and making most of the decisions, a slew of members, including much of the Vespucias, the Three Bogatyrs and many Islamic countries, arrived in the late 1960s, uniting much of the world under its wing as a result.
Negotiations between representatives of Orissa and German occupation authorities, May 1961
The unofficial flag of the United States
Amerigo Togliatti, Prime Minister of the Italian Federation (1952-1960), first President of the United States (1962-1970)
The Reconstruction in India is estimated to have cost well over a trillion German thalers to the world, and even then, much still had to be done after the period finished. What did the US receive in exchange? Some things, actually. Any surviving military factories or facilities were completely dismantled and shipped to the victorious powers to be rebuilt there. Any surplus production in the subcontinent, be it food or fossil fuels or industrial production, was the property of the United States, too. In some of the less destroyed parts of the region, more specifically in the Deccan, Western companies opened their businesses, giving the Indians a first taste of the worldwide free market capitalist economy. The work force in the continent was extremely cheap, up to ten times cheaper than the average German worker, and local competition was nonexistent. Finally, Allied forces raided any remaining Unitarian research facilities for any vital information, seizing any prototypes, blueprints, research papers or anything worthwhile, to be sent back home. Indian technological achievements would end up being an important boost to research and development worldwide. Many educated Indians would end up leaving their nation for the West and China, too, inflicting their homeland with a severe brain drain while bringing their knowledge and expertise to the victorious nations. Though this "brain flight" was frowned at by the Westerners and Chinese at first, especially due to fears of Unitarians hiding among the immigrants, this worry soon subsided, and the cultural exchange even resulted in many positive effects, such as Indian cuisine reaching the tables of Germans, Vespucians and Frenchmen, and vice versa.
The final handover of legislative and executive power to local governments took place in 1977, when the US occupation authorities and representatives of the Indians signed the New Delhi Declaration, officially establishing the Confederation of India and approving a timetable of the departure of US forces from the country. The last crowded ship carrying Allied soldiers left in 1981. By then, the landscape of the country's society had become radically different - many of the more extreme movements had either faded into obscurity or been squashed after clashing with the occupation forces too much, and a break between totalitarian Unitarianism and the establishment of the confederation helped instill at least a very basic sense of democracy in the people. On the other hand, the feeling of having been a superpower a mere 20 years ago, only to be occupied and humiliated for all this time, didn't do wonders to Indian resentment of the West and China. This would end up echoing over and over during the history of the Confederation.
Decades of peace followed the Great Asian War, and this peace was followed by a feeling of international unity, optimism and continuous economic growth, fostered by a postwar population boom, restored stability on the planet and investor trust in the US maintaining that peace. The United States certainly did its darndest to follow up on that promise - intervening in the Crimean-Ruthenian conflict before its reignition in 1965 and helping negotiate a more permanent solution (though not a full peace yet), sending intervention forces to Africa, the trouble child of the world, numerous times to stop local conflicts and tribal struggles, so on and so forth. This was the period when the belief of the "end of history" rose in popularity. The world, or at least the majority of it, were now Western-style democracies, united to the United States, and outside of peaceful economic, diplomatic and political competition between the EASA and the EDC, conflict, especially military conflict, appeared to have become a thing of the past. So if conflict is over, history is also over, right?
Technology continued to advance at a brisk pace. The 1960s and 1970s saw rapid advancement in the field of computer technology, thanks to newly acquired information on Indian computing technology as well as a new generation of young inventors, engineers and software developers from Germania, Italy, Francia, Vespucia and especially Lithuania, which, thanks to its pro-business and pro-startup policies, a highly educated workforce and a history of fostering innovation ever since the foundation of the Second Republic, became a worldwide center of information technology. Many information companies began gathering in Vilnius's Šventaragis Valley, famous for having once been the legendary place of burial for Lithuanian rulers, and the name soon became a shorthand for technology and innovation park across the world, with similar congregations forming in China, Germania, Vespucia and France in the following years. Innovations in computing technology, the introduction of transistors, followed by microchips, made personal computers affordable for the average home as well as many, many times more powerful than in the past. The Šventaragis Valley was also the birth place of the Internetwork, connecting the world's computers into one planetwide network and enabling them to share digital information - and this was huge. Though initially limited to an array of universities in Europe and East Asia, the Internetwork broke through the barriers of obscurity in the 1990s and entered a period of commercialization. Traditional communications media, such as newspapers, magazines, paper mail, television and Sengupta, were reshaped, redefined or outright bypassed by the massive stream of information accessible through the Internet, and new forms of social interaction, such as forums or instant messaging, arose in the network's limelight. Despite being its place of birth, the Lithuanian language was overshadowed in the network, and the two most popular languages in the internet community became Chinese and German. As any person who knows one language most certainly has no clue how to speak the other... this practically split the Internetwork in half, into two sections rarely interacting with one another. Obviously, the actual situation was a little bit more nuanced than that - French, Vespucian Dutch and English competed with German in language use, while distinct Quechua, Hindi, Russian and Nahua communities thrived in their own small sections of the network.
Continued peacetime development in rocketry, jet technologies and modern electronics slowly, but surely opened up new frontiers for the adventure-hungry human mind. The first experiments in spaceflight took place in the late 1980s, in the form of basic, prototype multi-stage rockets reaching the lower edges of outer space, and gradually expanding on to engulf more and more fields of space exploration and exploitation. The first satellites, used either for commercial ventures such as Internetwork expansion or as a supplement to mobile phone stations, took to the Aether in the 1990s. Despite the field advancing every day and rapidly becoming one of the most prospective in the near future, the massive costs of space exploration and exploitation meant that only a few countries, or more often, supranational organizations such as the EDC and the EASA could afford continuous maintenance and usage of spaceports. Fearing the possibility of a space arms race, the United States established the US Department of Space Exploration and Common Development in 1997, hoping to use it to resolve any future tensions between participants in space exploration, but even without it, it will take many years before anything similar to a "space war" takes place - the world is still decades away from even having a person step a foot on the moon, much less achieve something similar to the Martian colonies, mass asteroid mining and "Solar energy sucking" envisioned in the science fiction works of Žygimantas Gediminaitis.
Janata Dal voters celebrate their victory in the first general elections in the constituent republic of Hindustan, 1978
Launch of the German low orbit satellite "Faust", 1994
Vilnius in 1998
New, emerging powers were starting to raise their head in challenge to the European and Chinese partition of the world. Despite the wholesale destruction, nuclear bombardment and two decades of reconstruction, India could not be held down and kept quiet for long. The nation rebuilt itself and grew even further like a phoenix, its population and its gross domestic product reaching growth rates among the highest on the planet for decades on end. This could be explained in a number of factors. Though the Great Asian War heavily damaged it, it did not destroy the clockwork-like web of infrastructure connections, resource and production dependency, and population uniformity of the Unitarian era, making all attempts at decentralizing the Confederation superficial at best. The government in New Delhi swiftly managed to put its constituent states back in line. India had many other things going for it, too - a highly educated workforce, again thanks to the Unitarian period; plenty of resources and a history of seeking autarky; a strategic position next to the Suez Canal and in between Europe and China; the Indian postwar exodus returning and bringing their experience, knowledge and worldwide connections. Though the nation remained really poor when compared per capita and it lacked any power projection outside of its borders, ignoring India and its "peaceful rise" was no longer an option. The Indian people were not satisfied with this, however. To them, the Confederation period associated not with a bright future or with drastic economic growth, but with poverty, geopolitical humiliation, oligarchy, a lack of direction or sense of purpose. "We need a new Nijasure", you can constantly hear in Indian towns and villages. Few knew what that name actually meant, but they believed that it meant a strong, powerful India, which doesn't bow down to the Westerners and the Chinese, one where everyone knows their place, one where there are no powerful capitalist oligarchs or annoying children espousing Western ideas of peace, solidarity, Republicanism, so on and so forth. But the bones of the millions of victims of Unitarianism don't have a voice, unfortunately. And also unfortunately, this meant that populist leaders, saying exactly what the bitter Indians wanted to hear, but could not formulate on their own, skyrocketed in popularity. A minor recession in 2000 and 2001 brought the red-wing populist Aditya Choraghad from the republic of Bihar into power as the Democrat of the Confederation of India in the 2002 general election. Choraghad was a man who promised many things - to finally stop the surge after surge of poor immigrants from Central Asia, "stealing Indian jobs"; to turn the Indian Army from, as he himself formulated, "five men with sharpened sticks" to a real fighting force; to spit in the face of climate change regulations and reopen the coal mine networks in Bengal and Jharkhand; and, most importantly, to make India great again. While he hypnotized millions into near-delusion with his charm, charisma and fiery speaking skills, others, especially global spectators, denounced him as a dangerous populist and an authoritarian, not above corruption to gain and retain power, and, most importantly, a threat to the comfortable, predictable stability of the post-GAW order.
Russia had been on the periphery of the European continent for centuries, and for all of that time, it was also treated as such. Before the Lithuanian conquests, it was a distant fuzzy border between "civilized" Europe and "tribal" Central Asian steppe, and after those conquests, it was merely a rebellious region of the Empire of Lithuania. Volga Russia wasn't even considered a European state - the continent ended with Don and Volga, and even though the Volgaks originated from Slavs, they were the same as Kazakhs, Georgians or Persians to Western Europeans, with their ownly saving grace being that they were a stable democracy. When the possibility of Russian and Ruthenian independence rose as more than just a pretext for doomed rebellions, during the Great European War, Visegradian officials weren't even sure how to approach it - you're telling us that some of those Lithuanians are different from others? The establishment of the independent states of Krajina and Russia, however, changed this dynamic - the three East Slavic states were eager to establish themselves as equal partners to the rest of Europe, and for a time, it appeared as if Europe was welcoming. This development, however, was cut short by the Russo-Lithuanian War and the parallel War of the Danube - with the center of Europe switching from France to Germania, Lithuania joining the German side and the East Slavic states declining the prospect of becoming EDC members, they turned towards each other, forming the Three Bogatyrs as a counterweight. Unlike the Commission, however, the Bogatyrs were a much more tightly knit alliance, with its ultimate goal being the unification of the three East Slavic nations - a goal which was, after a long and hard road of negotiations, worries and disagreements, achieved in 1981 with the foundation of the East Slavic Federation. Immediately after its birth, the ESF became the largest and most populated country in Europe, and this newly gained power instantly put it on a path of confrontation with the Germans, now the traditional head of the continent. The East Slavs had plenty of grievances with the current world order - the treatment of the Federation as a buffer between China and Europe and not as a power in its own right, continued German encroachments on their "sphere of influence" in Crimea and the Caucasus, and continued German support for Lithuania, a nation with plenty of East Slavic minorities within their borders. One hundred years ago, in 1905, nobody would have imagined that a country with a capital in Kiev could claim to be equal to Germania, France or China. Not that they would also believe Germania could be a single country or China a world power, but that's 100 years of change for you.
A rising power few people mentioned until recently is Tawantinsuyu, more commonly known as the Inca Empire. In the Vespucias, it was by far the most populous nation, counting over 200 million citizens at the beginning of the third millennium, and this population resulted in fast and noticeable economic growth. A combination of a growing local industry fueled by vast local resource reserves as well as the rapidly growing cash cow of tourism served as its primary fuels, and this economic growth was followed not only by political reform, transforming the Inca into a somewhat modern, thought still fairly autocratic semi-constitutional monarchy, but also by geopolitical ambitions. The Inca are a nation who, as a few geopolitics experts suggested, are driven towards expansion by a constant and everpresent lack of space. The nation is pretty cramped for a country located almost solely in the Andes, after all. As such, the late 20th century saw it expand its influence towards Virginia, New France and the two Manuelas under the guise of the foundation of the South American Cooperation Network (SACN), as a tool to expand economic and diplomatic influence in the continent, and especially allowing Inca businessmen to purchase tracts of land in the wide plains of Virginia and the Manuelas. Obviously, this also meant clashing with the VFS, who saw themselves as the natural head of the New World, in the process. The long-standing Inca friendship with Mejico, an another native Vespucian nation, has to be mentioned as well, and in the United States, Southern and Central Vespucia thus form a fairly tight common voting bloc, strengthening their influence worldwide. One thing that needs to be noted, however, which holds Tawantinsuyu down, is the everpresent fear of nature striking back - this fear returned in the form of the 2001 Southeast Pacific earthquake, one of the deadliest natural disasters in the region's history, causing the deaths of 28 thousand people and leaving over a million without a home. The flow of tourism decreased exponentially, though has somewhat recovered in the recent years, and reconstruction works drained the empire's budget, even if international help relieved some of the worst destruction.
Africa remained as the problem child of the planet in the beginning of the third millennium. It is the least developed and the poorest continent by a long mile, with some of its regions having not even reached the second phase of population growth yet. Only the north and the south was somewhat stable - the north held stable nation states such as Egypt, Tripolitania and the Union of East Africa, as well as integrated colonies like Argelia and Portuguese Morocco, while the south of the continent became independent as the Federation of Southern Africa in 1982 - while the west and especially the center remained undeveloped, held back by continued colonization and exploitation reminiscent of the 19th century. Despite officially claiming to be beacons of democracy and republicanism worldwide, France, Spain, the Netherlands and Portugal brushed their activities in Africa to the side, or at best, explained them as "constant provision of help to the Africans". All while Central and Western Africa remain as one of the poorest regions on the world, with prolific diseases, nonexistent or barely existent healthcare and education systems, constant tribal and national conflicts only stopped by the US if they get too large or end up in one side massacring the other, colonial-style exploitation, domination and puppetization of native kingdoms, so on and so forth... The last decades of the 20th century saw the rise of backlash against the colonial practices in Africa, many denouncing them as inhumane and demanding a solution, or at least a change of policy. Obviously, this was easy pickings for enemies of the West - India, the Inca, the Russians, even China loved the "and you're still colonizing Africans" card as a rebuttal to any Westerner complaints. The problem is, though... how do you solve Africa? You can't just wave a magic wand and make all of the continent's problems go away. The reconstruction of India was peanuts compared to the work the planet would have to do to solve the situation in Africa, and as a result, politicians across the world tried to ignore the issue as much as possible, leaving it for further generations - but that might not even be possible anymore, because...
In 2005, climate researchers in Spain released the results of their 11 year study and concluded that nine of the eleven latest years were the hottest in the last 150 years. The concept of climate change was not something unique to the post-GAW period, but it was only at this era that it became a real headache to the planet and its inhabitants. Massive CO2 emissions from rapidly industrializing countries, especially India, which used coal as its primary source of fuel due to its proximity, were rapidly ramping up a greenhouse effect - perhaps you can tell why everyone was biting their fingernails upon hearing Choraghad's vow to return India to coal mining... Various aerosols (before they were banned in mass) started eroding the planet's ozone layer and exposing it to increased levels of ultraviolet radiation, while air, ground and water pollution was bringing numerous species to extinction every year. Climate change was still warming up, and yet the world could already feel its adverse effects. Again, Africa was the weak link. Overpopulation in the Sahel, combined with rising temperatures and ineffective agricultural technology, was drawing the entire continent close to a massive refugee crisis, and their closest target would be, of course, Europe. Inca logging companies in Tawantinsuyu, New France and the Manuelas are putting a severe dent in the Amazon rainforest - but try telling the Inca to stop that when you're a Western prime minister. Tibet has been ringing the alarm for decades - the glaciers in the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau, which generate rivers feeding four billion people, have shrunk to historically unprecedented levels, and if global temperatures continue to rise, rivers such as Yangtze, Ganges, Indus and Mekong are in danger of losing water or even drying up. But try to get India and China to successfully negotiate on a common strategy on saving the glaciers when we know who's in charge of the former.
And we didn't even get to mention Oceania and their ongoing nuclear weapons program...
History never ends. It continues on, giving harder and harder challenges for man to face.
And if man lowers his guard for even a second, history will consume him.
Aditya Choraghad, Democrat of the Confederation of India (2002-)
Aftermath of the 2001 earthquake in Tawantinsuyu
The world in 2005
The last 700 years had brought much, so much so that it had been left unrecognizable, multiple times. An early feudal pagan state, raiding and conquering across Eastern Europe, turned into an unstable Orthodox eastern hegemon, turned into a prison of nations, one of the largest powers in Europe and an equal to France in deciding the order of the continent, turned into a defeated, broken, weakened republic, turned into a revanchist, extremist dictatorship, a dark page in the nation's history, turned into what it is today.
The Second Republic of Lithuania is a nation carrying much baggage of the past while at the same time trying to discard it and carve a path of its own. It is a unique blend of an imperial past and a modern present. Only in Lithuania can you find Baroque church architecture, ordered by King Albertas Jogaila five centuries ago, next to a modern Information Technology Faculty of the University of Vilnius. Only in Lithuania you can have a neopagan Romuva movement organize and coordinate its meetings in Kaunas and Karaliaučius through Lithuanian-made internetwork technology. This blend reflects in its people, too. The Lithuanians are stereotypically seen as prideful, even when there is nothing to be proud of, and vain, yet also following an efficient, cold-blooded work ethic and schooling their more lax German, French of Italian colleagues.
The decades of rule of the White Shroud Party came and went. A new generation, rising in the shadow of the Great Asian War, took on a much more progressive attitude, and 1978 was the first year when the party of Garšva had to work in opposition. The overarching situation in the country saw little changes, however. The most major of them being the rise of separatist movements in White Russia, Estonia and Latgalia, both demanding autonomy or outright independence, and all three ending up suppressed by any government in Vilnius. Nobody wanted to hear a word about giving up even an inch of Lithuanian territory. We have already lost our empire, do you really thing we want to cut ourselves down further?
Oddly enough, Lithuanians are often seen as much more optimistic as many of their peers. Maybe it's because they are far from any geopolitical hotpoints or regions affected by climate change, and have been developing and growing well for the past fifty years. Maybe it's the constant presence of basketball and the constant medals in World Basketball Championships diverting them from thinking about the troubles. Maybe it's a history of military ethic and Revivalist totalitarianism preventing anyone from truly speaking out.
Either way, they are optimistic. And that's not a bad thing. With a new millennium, optimism is good to set the mood. You cannot be distraught about orphans dying in Benin or populist rulers in India all the time. Someone has to think about all the uplifting news, too.
Or, more simply, every team needs an optimist.
"Europe according to Lithuanians", internetwork meme from 2005
Hey there.
You don't really need to know my name, we're chatting anonymously on the Internetwork, but I am from the Republic of Lithuania. Not a Lithuanian, though! I can proudly call myself a White Russian. My family has lived here, in the Minsk region, for centuries, and we have never abandoned our traditions.
I may not tell you my name, but I can tell you something you can identify me with regardless. Ever since my history teacher in secondary school sparked an interest in this subject in me, I've been a fan of the concept of alternate history. I've read all kinds of books and stories set in alternate worlds! Žygimantas Gediminaitis's "Hole in the Wall" series, the entire bibliography of Francois Darlan, considered to be the father of modern alternate history, so on and so forth... That's what drew me to this site, called "althistoria", which presents itself as the ultimate congregation of alternate history writers from across the world. Of course, it's all in German language, and thus dominated by Germans, who fill up the majority of the server time with German election wikiboxes and German AH scenarios, but it's a very interesting site regardless! If you want to find me and talk to me, I took the name of my favorite ruler in my country's history as my nickname! Albertas I Jogaila may have been quite a tyrant, but he was so pretty, and competent...
I've been a part of althistoria for over a year now, and after reading through some of the site's hall of fame (and hall of infamy, too, you can learn from the worst as well!), I have finally gathered enough courage to make a timeline of my own. What is it about?
Well, I've decided to start with a field very close to my heart - medieval Eastern Europe. It's odd that Westerners seem to accept this as fact, but Lithuania's rise to become an empire and conquer all of Eastern Europe was not something predetermined! There were plenty of times when the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as they called themselves back then, could have faltered in the face of the Teutonic Knights, or the Mongols, or even the Slavs themselves! Unfortunately, very few people are interested in hearing about alternate medieval Eastern Europe. It's like to them, Russia and Krajina only popped into existence after the Great European War...
I decided to call my timeline "the Wounded Knight", as a symbolic hint at what's going to happen to Lithuania in my work, and I picked the Battle of Blue Waters in 1363 as my point of divergence. What if Algirdas and his armies were routed and defeated, and he himself killed, sending Lithuania to a civil war and starting its disintegration? Well, there's a lot to explain... and I'm learning new things as I write. For example, did you know that in this period, the most likely unifier of the Russian people was not Tver', but Moscow? Yes, that small town to the south of the Russian capital! In the 14th century, it was a rising power and even held the Metropolitan of Rus', but a Lithuanian invasion in 1368 stopped those ambitions. Well, all of that is completely different in my TL! Russia is unified by the 15th century, while Lithuania is smaller, weakened, it even accepted Catholicism instead of Orthodoxy, further worsening their stability! Doesn't that all sound super interesting to you? A world where Lithuania is not the supreme force in Eastern Europe!
But... then why am I talking to you?
Well, you see... not everyone is as excited for this prospect as I am.
I've been getting a lot of negative messages in my TL for the last month, usually from the Lithuanian members of the board. They are telling me that my story is unrealistic and that I still need a lot to learn before tackling this implausible and ambitious. I'm trying to refute these claims - after all, a lot more unlikely things have happened in OTL! - but they just won't budge, and I'm starting to believe that some of their criticism might be right. After all, this is my first timeline and I took quite a few leaps of logic to get the outcome I wanted.
So, what I am asking you is - could you help me out! My TL is usually on the first page of althistoria's AH subforum, could you dedicate some time to read my TL, give me some constructive criticism and help me become a better TL writer! Alternatively, could you give me some ideas on the direction the rest of the world should take? I've got an idea on how Russia will develop, and I've got some ideas on other countries, like having England lose the Ninety Years' War or to have the Ottomans succeed in conquering Hungary, but... maybe you have something else to propose?
Oh!
My TL is on the front page, look!
---
Thank you all.
Thank you all for reading.
Thank you all for being a part of my Lithuania.
Thank you all for building this reality with me, together.
Could you imagine that this was the first thread I ever posted on AH.com?
Not only my first ever timeline, but also my first ever AH thread, mere months after I even signed up?
And now, two years later, that same thread concludes. With 120 pages and over 2000 replies, with thousands of viewers, and with such a complex and detailed world.
And now, it's over.
Until we meet again.
Thank you all for reading.
Thank you all for being a part of my Lithuania.
Thank you all for building this reality with me, together.
Could you imagine that this was the first thread I ever posted on AH.com?
Not only my first ever timeline, but also my first ever AH thread, mere months after I even signed up?
And now, two years later, that same thread concludes. With 120 pages and over 2000 replies, with thousands of viewers, and with such a complex and detailed world.
And now, it's over.
Until we meet again.
