Considering Oswald was mad enough to nuke american cities in 1.0 for rebelling against him and thought that was sensible strategy, who knows what Oswald will conjure up with Carolina, maybe he uses the treatment of blacks in Carolina as sufficient casus belli to go in and it's a very unpopular war since many Americans still like Carolina also Oswald coming in to save the blacks would be a nice twist in irony given what his 1.0 version did.
Also, will the Confederation of the Carolinas ever be annexed by the Republican Union? I feel like it would only make sense for Joe Steele to go ahead and do it before he dies
As for the latter I'm against annexation of the Cokies. Increasing hostility and wacky cultural misunderstandings sure but Carolina is the closest the RU has to a friend
I don’t think Joe Steele will finish the Carolinas, Chuckie Oswald though..........
So, here is my argument against the annexation of my Cokie Homeland ITTL. Aside from the fact that I love the Carolinian stories, the possible culture clashes, etc, there's also a very reasonable explanation for keeping Ol' Caroline independent.
While we rightly get caught up by the crazy backstory, rages, and ultimate demise of Chuckie Oswald in 1.0, and translate that on to his 2.0 counterpart, we forget a crucial thing: he might be a bloodsoaked narcissistic megalomaniac, but he's a fairly
smart bloodsoaked narcissistic megalomaniac. Yes, at the end he gave into his delusions of grandeur and nearly ended the world to "cleanse it in holy fire." Beforehand, however, he was a feared general, who captured major war goals for the Union. Then, he managed to maneuver his way into the First Consulship. Then, he managed to end over 100 years of Consular rule and establish a monarchy without everyone going apeshit. He finished the Pacification of South America fairly well, though the nuking was gratuitous. Then, he managed to organize a genocide of African Americans, which wouldn't have been easy to do. He also managed to invade and conquer the British Isles without causing WWII. He came unglued at the end because his health deteriorated at the same time the empire he had murdered millions to build came undone.
Fundamentally, Oswald is a brilliant strategic mind married to an unstable personality. Which means he understands from a strategic standpoint that war is not desirable. Aside from the African American issue (which I doubt he cares about) and a few cultural things, Carolina is for all intents and purposes the perfect Yankee puppet. They fight and die where Philly tells them too, and pay for it themselves. Ruining that is just flat out dumb. Furthermore, thanks to the mountainous terrain of Appalachia, and the woods across the country, any war against Cokie-land will become an embarrassingly difficult guerilla war. That would signal weakness, which is a death sentence. Finally, it's doubtful that he could adequately conquer Cokie Africa. They, however, can cause hell in Mittleafrika, an ally which is key to the Yankee economy. No dictator will willingly do something that could fuck with his economy unless he's too incompetent to realize that would happen. Chuckie likely is not.
In short, while Oswald most definitely is crazy, he sure as hell ain't stupid. For a variety of reasons, war with Carolina is stupid and unnecessary. Thus, I don't anticipate it happening. I could see a bunch of bizarre demands designed to humiliate Charlotte and amuse him though.
Also, although I wrote all of this with Chuckie in mind, it's a similar case with Steele