SkunkyArt | CHIPMUNKEN

On July 1st, 1945 American, British, and Canadian forces near Dresden suddenly attacked their Soviet allies. In the following days, the armies of Western Europe joined the offensive. France, the Free Poles, and a reconstituted Germany entered the fray, marking the start of what became known as the Second Phase of World War Two.

This part of the war was fought on many fronts. The Soviets aligned themselves with Japan in late summer 1945 and cobbled together a motley collection of freedom fighters in Asia to open new theaters against the forces of the United Nations. In Europe, the front moved eastwards and westwards every year between 1945 and 1948. 1945 saw the UN advance deep into Poland but in 1946 massive Soviet advances pushed them back to the Oder. The following year, the Soviets drove deep into Germany before being halted at the cataclysmic Battle of Göttingen by a UN force bolstered by legions of Brazilian and Mexican draftees. After Göttingen, the Western armies marched east, but not without trouble. French, German, and Dutch troops mutinied and refused to advance. But this was not enough to save the Soviets. Harried by American-made planes and the liberal use of atomic bombs, the Soviets were forced to retreat deep into Belarus. Victory appeared within reach for the United Nations. On September 3rd, 1948, a coalition of European powers, led by France, Germany, and Italy declared they’d had enough. They ordered American forces to vacate their newly-founded European Federation and immediately sent envoys to Moscow to sign a peace with the Soviets. With their armies stranded in Belarus and their supply ships impounded by European dock workers, the United States was forced to accede to European demands and withdrew from the continent. Nearly every of the European combatants (with the exceptions of the Spanish fascists) joined the Federation and, under the terms signed with the Soviets, the border between the two states would closely follow the frontlines that had existed on September 3rd.

When the United Nations attacked the Soviet Union, the Soviets naturally aligned themselves with the Japanese. The Nippo-Soviet alliance was never particularly strong and was seen as something done only out of convenience for both powers. However, it was durable enough for the Soviets to divert forces from the far east and send them back to Europe to blunt the West’s initial thrust. Japan was fought a losing battle in China as the Nationalists, armed with American weaponry, continued to eat away at the zones of Japanese control along the coast. The alliance between Japan and the Soviets tarnished the reputation of Chinese communists, and much of the party faded away and folded into the Kuomintang. The necessity of American reinforcements in Europe slowed the Marine Corps’ march across the Pacific, and between 1945 and 1947, the Americans simply flung atomic bombs at the Japanese Home Islands. In 1947, the US and its allies finally invaded the Japanese mainland with landings on Kyushu. Weeks of hard fighting there finally broke Japan’s spirit and a military coup by a peace faction of junior officers supported by political moderates forced a peace. The Emperor was forced to abdicate and a Japanese Republic was founded in late 1947. Meanwhile, Chinese forces had crossed the Soviet border and laid siege to Vladivostok and the major cities of the east. Peace with the Soviets came in late 1948. The terms were actually quite favorable to the Soviet Union with only the region east of Manchuria being annexed to China. China’s rapid industrialization in the decade following the war coupled with an American retreat to isolation to create a region heavily dominated by Nanking.

Following the fall of Rangoon in May 1945, the Azad Hind movement seemed as good as dead. This was not to be. After July 1st, General Subhas Chandra Bose was transferred from Japanese to Soviet hands. He amassed a new force of Indian nationalist volunteers in Central Asia while provocateurs spread news of his imminent arrival in an increasingly war-weary India. The issue of revolt was discussed throughout 1945 and 1946. The mainstream of the INC gradually came to support it as Indian men fought and died fighting the Soviets across Eurasia. Bose struck in early 1947 and inaugurated the Indian Revolution. The Revolution quickly devolved from a simple INC-Raj fight to one with dozen of minor armies. Among the most prominent of these was a large communist movement led by the farmers of Orissa and Travancore. The Indian Revolution officially came to an end in 1949 as pro-European Britain recognized its independence under Bose’s Soviet-aligned state. There was, however, no peace as the Indian Civil War began. The Civil War was fought between Bose’s socialist faction of the INC and a right-wing, capitalist, and pro-American faction. The communists, too, continued their fight. The Civil War came to an end in 1953 with a divided India. The Republic was based out of Bombay and had absorbed a number of princely states. The Workers Federation was ruled from New Delhi and was supported by both the socialists of the INC and the communists, who were given special regions under their own form of government. The Muslims of both east and west had split off into independent states under Soviet dominance, though within a quarter of a century only the Workers Federation would be a Soviet ally.

Africa did not see conventional warfare during the Continuation War but pro-independence agitators encouraged revolt and the murder of European colonial administrators and merchants was common during this time. Calls for African recruits emboldened nationalists and it is undeniable that the fighting between 1945 and 1948 hastened the end of direct European control over Africa. Between 1950 and 1960, Europe left Africa and created nominal republics across the continent. In theory, these were fully independent states, but in practice they were glorified resource extraction zones. The often poor reaction to these new states would shape African history in the third quarter of the 20th century.

The foundation of the European Federation in 1948 was done by a mixed group. Among those that advocated the Federation’s foundation were those that truly believed Europe would be better off united and those that saw it as a necessary evil. The form of Europe’s government and whether it should allow monarchies was also hotly debated and ultimately a compromise system with subnational monarchies was created with a parliamentary central government. Another important issue of the Federation, one that has never been solved, is it’s status on race. At present there is the Imperium Group, a faction within Europe that is led by former Nazi collaborator Jean-François Thiriart. The Group believes Europe is the last bastion of civilization and must remain united to protect its people against other races.

Europe’s leaders during the 1950s were savvy enough to realize the colonies could not be retained indefinitely. They sponsored the formation of independent, white republics in the far south while setting up majority-rule states across the rest of the continent. Deals made by Europe essentially forced these new republics to send most of their exports to Europe. This was successful in the short term as Europe was able to drag itself into recovery but in the long term, the humiliating economic domination of the 1950s led to angry communist freedom fighters, who ended up toppling many of the governments Europe had established. Because Europe itself does not have a guiding ideology, it is not an ideological superpower and has no clear form of government to export. Instead, Europe seeks to integrate states into its economic bloc with favorable treatment of European goods and cheap raw materials for European factories. Several smaller states including the Dominican Republic and republican India have accepted these deals. In this way, Europe has global reach and is primarily opposed by China, which similarly seeks economic superiority.

Europe is not just one big happy family. Enthusiasm for the Federation was highest in France, Germany, the Low Countries, Italy, Poland, and the Baltic States. Finland, Bulgaria, Romania, and Greece joined out of fear of being left alone and becoming prey to the Soviets. The former Yugoslavia was essentially forced into the union and had the state of Croatia split off from the rump Yugoslav kingdom. Several European states still retain their independence. Norway and Sweden opted to found a separate Scandinavian Union which retains defense pacts with Europe, but is fairly alone otherwise. Spain and Portugal fought alongside the United Nations but were unscathed by war and did not feel the need to subordinate themselves to the Federation. They do, however, retain close ties and currently are assisting each other in fighting left-wing insurgencies in their African colonies.

The actions of September 1948 shocked the United States to its very core. Though many Americans had become fed up with war by that time, deep down everyone believed Europe would treat the United States as its liberator, both from fascism and communism. Europe’s resounding rejection of the United States shocked America to the core. It was therefore unsurprising when incumbent President Harry Truman found himself unceremoniously thrown from office by Republican nominee Thomas Dewey. Dewey was a disappointment to pro-peace Americans as his administration backed the anti-European faction in Britain and the right wing of the INC in India. The door to the White House was a revolving door and in 1952, Dewey was thrown out of office and replaced by Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. In addition to the two major parties, 1952 saw two major progressive tickets (one staunchly isolationist and the other in favor of a world government) and a record number of minor party candidates (among them was Francis Parker Yockey, who advocated for a union with Europe and the genocide of non-white Americans) Despite hope that Jackson would lead to a national transformation, he was beholden to the Dixiecratic wing of his party and got nothing of note accomplished. By 1956, a new challenger had emerged on the national stage. This was the Citizens Party. Founded by an assortment of Americans from every different background (including members of the Vegetarian and Pacifist parties) the Citizens Party was committed to measures that would enhance democracy but most importantly favored the passage of the Ludlow Amendment, which would require a vote by all American citizens before the declaration of war. While generally considered to be on the left side of the political spectrum, the Party declared itself neutral on a number of issues and allowed candidates to vote their conscience. The party nominated peace activist Clark Eichelberger as its standard-bearer in 1956. Against the odds, Eichelberger won election as president and with a supportive Congress passed the Ludlow Amendment in 1957. The Citizens Party quickly shifted to the left and established itself as the preeminent liberal party in the United States. President Eichelberger was frustrated in attempts to make international agreements to ensure peace and declined to run in 1960. Now, two decades after the Amendment, America has retreated into itself. American soldiers have stayed at home and most of America’s foreign policy is done through trade agreements. The United States is friendly with its neighbors and has a defensive alliance with them and even supplies weapons to anti-communist states in the Caribbean, but has a limited military presence there. Recently, there have been allegations that the US government uses its National Intelligence Agency (NIA) to skirt the rules of the Ludlow Amendment and engage in foreign conflicts without using the military. Citizens Party President Krajewski has vowed to investigate the issue and root out what many Americans have taken to calling the Deep State. Not all of America is on board with the moderate liberalism of the Citizens Party and its rather toothless Republican opposition. A strong white supremacist movement has risen in America under Francis Parker Yockey and the firebrand Indiana Congressman Willis Carto. This movement is opposed to the United States, believing it to be an irredeemable liberalistic wasteland. They instead seek annexation to Europe. This is a weak faction within the US but its members are committed and it is growing.

Winston Churchill was one of the strongest proponents of Operation Unthinkable and his Conservative Party received a rally around the flag effect when Britons went to the polls just four days after the attack on the Soviet Union. As the war dragged on and enthusiasm flagged in the continental states, Churchill and his allies remained committed to the war. Britain sided with the Americans in late 1948 and Churchill even talked of a punitive invasion of France, but was forced to back down by moderate Conservatives and an increasingly-popular opposition. Churchill proved a poor peacetime leader and was kicked out of office in an election held just before Christmas. A new Labour government was swept into office and within weeks it had taken steps to join the European Federation. This was not greeted well by the hard right, which launched a coup under the control of General Harold Alexander. The British Civil War lasted for two years and saw the Europeans back the Prime Minister’s government and the Americans back Harold Alexander’s army. The war cut through party divisions and saw trade unionists side with country gentry over shared opposition to European federalism but were opposed by a bizarre alliance of moderate Labourites, middle-class conservatives, and forces loyal to Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement. Both sides proclaimed themselves loyal to the King, though the royal family was itself divided. The war came to an end in the summer of 1951 as European forces closed in on the city of Portsmouth. General Alexander and his forces fled to Bermuda alongside thousands of refugees. Several months later, after Britain proper had joined the European Federation, the regime in Bermuda crowned Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester as King. The rump United Kingdom could never hold together the Empire, so it retreated to a handful of Pacific and Caribbean islands which it flooded with white refugees from the metropole. It exists in this state to the present day and is heavily reliant on trade with the United States. Its white upper class holds an outsized share of the country’s wealth and is globally-influential. The newly-coronated King William V has announced plans to move towards full democracy.

The Soviets had the worst experience of any power in the Second World War (well, excepting the Axis) It never truly recovered from the territory lost during Operation Barbarossa and between 1941 and 1948 most Soviet industry was sent east of the Urals. The region west of the Urals was fought over many times and essentially a wasteland by the time World War Two was over. Because the Soviets had no allies, the region saw no large-scale reconstruction plans and has spent decades building back to prewar levels. Like every other nation, the Soviet Union was seriously psychologically damaged by the war. In addition, the Slavic population of the federation had been diminished by warfare and genocide. With Moscow a radioactive puddle, the center of gravity in the USSR moved east over the Urals. In the 1950s, following Stalin’s ouster by the Generals, the concept of Eurasianism grew among Soviet intellectuals. With philosophical antecedents including Nikolai Trubetzkoy, the Eurasianists viewed the Slavs as closer to Asia than Europe and advocated for a multiethnic workers dictatorship across Eurasia to protect the interests of the Eurasian peoples. This came at the expense of overlooking the expansion of communism on other continents. This was the backdrop before which the Indians were heavily funded by the Soviets. The Eurasianists came to dominate the USSR by 1960 and saw their first major test in 1961, when they intervened in the civil war in Iran and annexed it. In 1968, the USSR became the Union of Eurasian Socialist Republics, a federation of smaller ethnic republics. In this form, it continues to lead a bloc that includes India (understandable), Indonesia (less understandable), and Chile (Eurasianism was set aside for this one) The UESR has managed to come a long way since the war but is still fairly weak for a major power and has such reach only because of its manufacturing, which became highly developed between 1945 and 1948.

One of the Soviet Union’s few neighbors is Turkey. Turkey stayed largely neutral in the fight against fascism until the last months of the war. In mid-1945 the United States attempted to persuade the Turks to join the fight against the Soviet Union, but Turkey wisely stayed out, fearing the West was doomed. The United States gradually promised increasingly large protectorates in the event of victory and in January 1947, the Turkish army invaded the Armenian and Georgian SSRs. The Caucasian Front was a tough slog but Turks (and a fair few Mexicans) gradually advanced against the Soviets. In September 1948, the Turks were not among the powers to repudiate the US and it was forced to make peace with the Soviets and gained only Armenia and Azerbaijan as client states. Turkish-dominated Armenia is odd in light of the genocide of 1915-17, but relations are surprisingly smooth. Post-war, Turkey expanded its influence into newly-independent Syria, Transjordan, and Iraq and during the Soviet conquest of Iran, it nibbled of pieces of the west to give to Azerbaijan and a new Kurdish puppet state. The moderate conservative state of Turkey is a regional player and has carved out an economic bloc that is dominated by Turkish capital. In recent years, Turkey has aligned itself with the Chinese bloc in the wider world and maintains a rivalry with the Soviets and Arabs.

The philosophy of Pan-Arabism began in Lebanon and was the brainchild of a Christian Arab. Though popular in conjunction with monarchy around 1920, it was not until three decades later that it truly took off. Baʽathist parties proliferated around the Arab world in the late 40s and the first state to come under their control was Tunisia in 1953. There, the pan-Arab Destour Party smashed the nationalistic Neo-Destour Party in the country’s first elections. From that point on, Tunisia was the center of the Arab world. Several years later, Egypt and its Sudanese provinces (Sudan was transferred to Egyptian administration in 1948) joined with Tunisia in an Arab federation. Since then, the United Arab Republic has gobbled up Cyrenaica and deposed the House of Saud in a massive invasion. Recently, with the rising strength of Berbers and various Sudanese peoples, the Republic has had a sort of identity crisis with some people supporting expansion to other Muslim peoples while others preferring to keep it an Arab nation. The UAR is a sworn enemy of both Europe, against which it is fighting in proxy wars in the Western Sahara, the Algerian Departments of France, and the settler-flooded colony of Libya. In addition, the European client states of Israel and Lebanon have very poor relations with the Arabs and have a borderland that is brimming with men and weapons. The Arabs also have cool relations with the Turks, something that stems from the period of Turkish expansion into the Arab states of Iraq and Syria. At present, the Turks are backing a revolt by Saudi loyalists, a fight in which the Shia Arabs of the Gulf Coast have sided with the UAR. The Arabs have allied revolutionary cells in both the Arab states dominated by the Turks. Internationally, the Arabs have few allies, but on occasion cooperate with both communist blocs.

One of the first African states to break free of European control was the French puppet state of Mali. Just days after the colony was turned into a client state, Modibo Keïta and his communist followers overran the capital and Keïta installed himself as President. Keïta backed left-wing revolutionaries across West Africa and would go on to annex Niger several years later. The Peoples Federation of the Sudan, as Keïta’s state is known, is the major power of the region. Keïta is revered as a hero by much of West Africa and consequently, guerillas proclaiming loyalty to the Sudan can be found around the region. The Sudan itself is not especially strong in spite of Keïta’s attempts at mass industrialization and its main strength lies in the fact that it is so admired by people across Africa. The Peoples Federation is internationally aligned with Bolivaria and the Fourth International, though in recent years some rifts have emerged as Modibo Keïta’s cult of personality grows and the country moves towards seeking foreign investment.

In Central Africa, the Europeans departed the Congo in the early 60s as managing the large state became unmanageable. In their place they left behind the Congolese Republic. The Republic has seen better days and is currently fighting off insurgents aligned with Bolivaria. Congo’s growth has been stunted by the fact that the region of Katanga was cut off from the rest of the country by an Anglo-Belgian filibuster. That metal-rich region is now dominated by European corporations.

While Europe created majority rule states in northern Africa, the south became several white, minority-rule states: South Africa, Botswana, and Rhodesia. These three states have survived to the present day, but just barely. Nearly from the start of their independence, they were filled with armies of angry African revolutionaries seeking input in their government. Rather than give in to their demands, the southern African Europeans fell in line with the Imperium Group in Europe, and have cracked down on their non-white citizens. At present, these states are more or less constantly in turmoil and are filled with repression, violence by rebels, and general poverty stemming from this constant war. Rhodesia is an interesting case, having sided with the anti-European faction in the British Civil War, but after being overrun by Boers from the south, it became a European puppet state. Rhodesian expat Ian Smith is currently a member of the British Parliament and a leading voice for reclaiming as much of the Empire as possible. Portugal and Spain still have colonies in the region but are in as bad a shape as the independent, European-aligned states.

After the foundation of the European Federation, Europe came up with a novel solution for the administration of Somalia and Eritrea. Rather than found independent states there, Europe simply handed the regions to Ethiopia. Ethiopia would be forced to sign deals favorable to Europe and in this way it became a win-win. Ethiopia lasted two decades as a constitutional monarchy but was wracked by fractionalism. Things came to a head in 1971, when student protests forced out King Haile Selassie. The new United East African State came into existence. The UEAS would break the old regional system and devolve significant power to local governments. This move has not appeased separatists, but it has gone a long way towards it. Over time, Ethiopia drifted away from Europe and the foundation of the UEAS has led to the abandonment of nearly every economic agreement with Europe. At the moment, China is courting Ethiopia and hoping to make it a client state, like neighboring Kenya. The UEAS is currently engaged in a proxy war with the Arabs. The Arabs are backing Muslim Somali sepratists while the UAES is backing Christians in the southern part of the UAR province of Sudan.

After the foundation of the Indian Workers Federation in 1953, Subhas Chandra Bose was at the height of his power. If he had chosen to do so, he could have made himself President for Life. Instead, he retired to his birth city of Cuttack and left politics for good. This created a serious power vacuum in the Workers Federation as social democrats, communists, and agrarianists all jockeyed for power. In the end, a coalition run by socialists but backed by all of the left was created. Since that time, socialist India has been governed by this coalition, though the balance of power shifts. Red India actually has a fairly vibrant democracy (unlike its capitalist neighbor) provided one wishes to vote for one of the many legal left-wing parties. At present, India is run by Mohan Singh, a former leader of the Indian National Army. Singh’s tenure has been marked by industrial growth (something that has led to protests from the autonomous peasant republics) Red India is a pioneer of the green movement and has banned automobiles from many cities and established an ambitious (though not always functional) system of railroads across the country.

In the west, Red India is bordered by Pakistan. The All-India Muslim League aligned with the Soviet Union during the Continuation War and established two zones of control in the Indus Valley and Bengal. Rather than become a single state as some suggested, the two regions became separate states. After independence, Pakistan quickly dropped any associations with communism and shifted towards defining itself as a market state. Since the 1950s, Pakistan has defined itself by comparison with India. While India is Hindu and socialist, Pakistan is Muslim and capitalistic. After fighting off a number of coups backed by the Soviets and Indians, the Pakistanis eventually aligned themselves with China. The Bengalis tended towards stability while Pakistan went a different direction. As of 1975, Bengal is a prosperous republic with a multiparty system. Its primary focus is fending off creeping Chinese influence from all directions.

After 1948, China was dominated by the KMT to a point they would not have believed just three years earlier. The Communist Party was out of the picture, having faded away when the Soviets joined with Japan, and finally destroyed when Mao was killed in a traincar by a Japanese strafing run. In addition, China had acquired Vladivostok and the surrounding provinces while all of China’s potentially strong neighbors, Japan, India, and the Soviet Union, had been too devastated by war to prove a serious threat. In the next decade, Chiang Kai-Shek would take charge of the country, install limited democracy, and oversee a massive project of industrialization. By the early 1960s, China had become strong enough to look outside its borders. Instead of engaging in wars of expansion, it expanded its economic sphere. This process is now in its second decade and China has carved out a large sphere in East Asia. Chiang Kai-Shek died of natural causes in 1973 and was succeeded by the Christian Hau Pei-tsun (there are many that say Hau’s selection by party elites was to corner the growing Christian electorate). The KMT is still the largest party, but there are a number of sizable opposition parties that win seats every election. Internationally, China maintains a friendship with the United States and its North American neighbors, leading to an informal Sino-American bloc in the Pacific.

In the aftermath of Operation Unthinkable, Japan changed its policy in Indochina. Realizing they were likely to lose, they gave their puppet Empire of Vietnam considerable autonomy and funneled weapons to the Vietnamese army, which performed better without Japan breathing down its neck. Despite this, Franco-American forces ground down the Sino-Vietnamese forces and in 1947, on the cusp of victory, France took the bizarre step of recognizing the Vietnamese Empire and expanding it to encompass all of French Indochina. In addition, at the request (read command) of the Americans, the Empire was given a constitutional system and collaborator Prime Minister Trần Trọng Kim was put on trial. In the years following 1947, Indochina drifted away from its former colonial masters and sought new allies. Both China and America tried to woo Indochina, while the Soviets sponsored communists that worked inside and outside of the Indochinese Parliament. Since the start of the 1960s, Indochina has moved towards diplomatic self-reliance and rejected the overtures of all the major blocs, something that has angered the Chinese. This has gone well as successive governments have created a state with a strong export economy. Ethnic tensions have been kept down in the past but as of late, there are rumblings of support for ethnic separatism. Some say that these rumblings are the doing of the Chinese government seeking to break Indochina into smaller, more easily influenceable states.

From 1945 onwards, fighting in the Dutch East Indies was a bizarre three-sided conflict between the Japanese, Allies, and various nationalist rebels. The Dutch monarchy clung to the belief that the colony could be reintegrated, but when the European Federation was founded, one of the criteria for membership was that applicant states would jettison colonies deemed to be impossible to retake. The East Indies was one of these places. Several years of war followed Dutch withdrawal and when the smoke cleared, five new states existed there: Indonesia, a quasi-democratic state with subnational monarchies based out of Sumatra, a pro-Soviet state in Java, a military dictatorship in Sulawesi, and two Australian puppet states in Papua and Timor. For the past twenty years, the Indonesia region has been the playground of powers, with every one of the world’s powers involved there. At present, Chinese influence is growing. A similar story can be told about the former British colonies of Malaya and Borneo, which were united into the Malay Socialist Republic in July 1954 as the British abandoned the colonies. Both Malaya and Java are Soviet client states, something that might seem odd in light of Eurasianism’s usual focus on Central Asia. This is not true of late 20th century Eurasianism, which seems to consider the Malays a Eurasian people and, through Malay expansion, much of Indonesia is considered Eurasian. Many people have said this is absolute nonsense but in the UESR weird racial theories to justify foreign entanglements trump reason.

Australia suffered during the Second World War, with its troops serving across the world, including the during bloody Invasion of Japan and in the freezing wastes of Siberia against the Soviets. Modern Australian identity is formed around the hardships of the period. Australia initially sided with the anti-Europeans during the British Civil War. Prince Henry was at the time Governor-General and Australian men sailed with him to fight in 1950. Australia remained loyal postwar but was offended when the court moved to Bermuda rather than to Australia. In the early 1960s, it declared itself an independent republic, citing the monarchy’s focus on the Caribbean to the detriment of its domains elsewhere. Several years later, Australia joined the Chinese alliance. The Sino-Australian Alliance was unlikely, given Australia’s rather Sinophobic past, but it has proven durable. Australia itself is a strong republic but tends towards anti-communism and is fairly racist. The Australian military is strong and all male youths are forced to serve several years of national service.

In a world of upheaval, North America has been fairly stable. The American giant dominates the continent and fortunately for its neighbors, it has been defanged by the Ludlow Amendment. Also fortunate for those neighbors is the fact that both of the US’ terrestrial neighbors are friendly with it. Canada is Britain’s last loyal ex-colony and run by the monarchists of the Progressive Conservatives. The Canadians have had trouble recently with Quebecois nationalists that hope to detach the province from Canada and join Europe. The military crackdown on these separatists has backfired and made Quebec into a hotbed of unrest. Further east, Newfoundland and Labrador barely voted in 1954 to remain independent. Ironically, it is now dominated by Ottawa as the local economy tanked after several years of poor fishing. Both these states are aligned with the Americans and alongside Mexico make up a North American free trade zone. The Caribbean has not had as good a time as the continental states. American military interventions have come to an end, but the NIA does everything in its power to covertly back governments friendly to the US. This includes arming and training soldiers to do what the US army is prohibited from doing.

The Latin American states provided large numbers of men to the UN during the Continuation War. In several states, returning servicemen demanded rights. These men toppled the PNR in Mexico and PTB in Brazil. In the late 40s and early 50s, both states held free elections and enacted reforms to give veterans college educations and comfortable jobs. The two states subsequently diverged in direction as Brazil faltered in its commitments to veterans, prompting a series of unstable juntas backed by mobs of veterans. In Mexico, the cycle of weak governments was finally broken as veterans settled down and built a truly democratic system with a generous welfare net. Unfortunately, the Brazilian experience was more typical of Latin America, which was composed primarily of autocracies as the 1950s came to a close.

Stalin’s ouster and the discrediting of Soviet-style communism on the world stage simply meant the world needed a new revolutionary ideology to replace it. This ideology came from Bolivia. There, Tristán Marof and his Trotskyite Workers Socialist Party aligned with organized labor to overthrow the government in 1953. The success of the WSP in Bolivia made Marofism a credible force overnight. Marofism is essentially Trotskyism, with a recognition of the value of agricultural workers in the revolution and a respect for indigenous cultures. As South America’s economy floundered in the 50s and 60s, Bolivia’s neighbors began to turn to communism. After 1960, there was almost constantly an insurgency in the backcountry of most South American state. After Peru fell to Marofism in 1967, it united with Bolivia to found the Union of Bolivarian Socialist Republics (UBSR) The UBSR has since expanded to encompass Paraguay and Ecuador. Other Marofist states in Latin America and Africa have been less true to internationalism and have remained independent of the UBSR. As of 1975, the UBSR is the leader of a large Marofist bloc across the world. Much of Latin America is engulfed in revolution. While many of the rebels of the region profess loyalty to Chairman Marof, the UBSR’s control over these fighters is tenuous and for many of them it serves only as an ideological inspiration. The UBSR itself remains highly agricultural, though it has inaugurated a crash industrialization program that has focused on churning out weapons and food to support the revolution.. Some fear that, if the revolutions across South America are all successful and the newly-minted peoples republics all join the UBSR, the nation will have grown too large too fast and will end up collapsing.

The mass use of atomics by the United States in 1945-1948 means that in this world less of a nuclear taboo. Nuclear weapons are not the first weapon to be used in a conflict but compared to OTL they are not nearly as frightening. While IOTL the superpowers built larger and larger weapons, this world’s scientists are focused on building smaller and more maneuverable nuclear weapons for use in combat. Most of the great and regional powers of the world have nuclear capabilities or have access to an ally’s stockpile and they have been used in war three times since 1945.

The Space Race also occurred in this world and had many more participants. The Americans were the first to reach space but lost out on getting to the Moon as the Europeans landed there first in 1972. The US visited in summer 1974. Currently, both China and the Soviet Union have lunar missions planned. The US and Europe intend to establish lunar bases and the multipolar nature of this world indicates that humans are in space to stay.