A brief timeline:

2005AD - 2105AD

 

 

 

Asia and the Pacific, 2005: a brave new century –the Pacific War

 

The Pacific War, which began in June 2, 2005, with a missile attack against Malayan naval forces near Singapore by Indonesian Navy units, was the natural outcome of the growing tension between a Japan eager to keep its pre-eminent position in South East Asia and a United States jealous of that position, although its most immediate cause was the Thai-Indonesian alliance to press their territorial claims against Malaysia. The war rapidly escalated, with United States Navy, Royal Navy and Imperial Japanese Navy units first engaged in combat in Southeast Asia, and latter in the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean. Fortunately the war was brief -just seven weeks- but it changed the geopolitical landscape of Asia and the Pacific forever.

 

Even when there were ground combats, mainly in Borneo and New Guinea, the seven-week war was mainly a naval war: the IJN main surface units were destroyed, and the only thing that prevented the U.S. to conquer the entire central Pacific was the tremendous resistance of the IJNI and the IJAD, and the successful use for the first time of EMP weapons by the IJAA, which resulted in tremendous losses in life and material suffered by the U.S. forces, especially when the USN Ticonderoga and USN Guam nuclear carriers were sunk during the bloody conquest of the Marshall islands. At the end of the seven weeks conflict, the great navies of both powers were crippled, and an exhaustion peace followed.

 

According with the terms of the Paris Peace Treaty, Japan acceded to cede the Marshall Islands to the United States in exchange of Guam; Britain ceded control of Singapore and the Nicobar and Andaman islands to Japan, and ceded the Crown Colony of Brunei to Indonesia. Malaysia ceded its territories in Borneo to Indonesia, and the northern districts of the Malayan peninsula to Thailand. The Philippines were forced to renounce to its military alliance with the U.S. and to include an article of “perpetual neutrality” in its Constitution. Due to Indonesian pressures, Australia accepted to dismantle all U.S. military facilities in its territory and also was forced to renounce to any military alliance outside Oceania. This condition imposed onto the Australians would have tremendous repercussions in the near future.

 

 

 

East Asia, 2008: A false “Asian Dawn” –the Concert of Asia.

 

The Pacific War was the catalyst for the formation of the ‘Concert of Asia’, a coercive diplomatic-security institution in which Japan and China, and later other countries managed the East Asian order in a manner consistent with their perceived interests in upholding the internal stability and territorial integrity of the regional state system.

 

The disappearance of the disruptive influence of the U.S. in the region, after the victory over its regional allies (Malaysia and the Philippines) created a propitious atmosphere for the organization of such institution. The first councils of Asian diplomats were celebrated in Osaka and Shanghai between 2006 and 2008, but in that year was decided that the city-state of Singapore (still occupied by Japanese troops) was the ideal place to maintain a permanent Assembly, the East Asian Cooperation Organization (EACO), akin to that of the League of Nations. After the inaugural assembly, the main concern of the Concert was the liquidation of the territorial disputes in the South China Sea and the future of rump Malaysia.

 

One of the causes of discord between the regional powers was the claims over the South China Sea, due to the superposition of competing territorial reivindication borders and maritime reinvindication borders in the area, especially around the Spratley islands. After lengthy deliberations, the EACO decided to grant the Paracel Islands to China, while Vietnam kept for itself the Dai Hung and Thanh Long islands with the rest of the South China Sea; while the Spratley Islands were divided between Indonesia (who gained the lion’s share) and the Philippines.

 

The deliberation regarding the fate of Malaysia was more complicated: Indonesia claimed the country (reduced to the southern tip of the Malayan peninsula) while China and Vietnam wanted to neutralize the country, fearing an Indonesian-Japanese alliance controlling the strategic Malacca Strait. At the end it was decided to hold a referendum in 2018, allowing the Malayan population to decide their future. Until then, the EACO will keep a multinational force in Malaysia, to secure order.

 

The Concert of Asia, embodied in the EACO, proved to be an effective system, able to contain rivalry, maintain order, and preserve the peace, which lasted for the next 30 years, at least among the member nations. However, nobody in 2008 was able to foresee the fading of China’s power and the Indonesian ascension to a position where it felt strong enough to try to dictate the Asiatic agenda for the rest of twenty-first century.

 

 

 

Europe and Asia, 2010: Warfare and famine –the end of the Soviet Union.

 

The long decomposition of the Soviet Union finally came to an end in January 2010, when food riots in Moscow and other cities in European Russia signalled the end of the Soviet state, and the beginning of the chaotic years of the Second Civil War. After two years of combats, the Soviet leadership and the remaining Red Army forces found refuge in loyal Siberia, where many years before they had concealed most of the Soviet nuclear arsenal.

 

However, the chaos which engulfed the rest of the USSR in the following years made heinously common the news about atrocities committed by the innumerable factions fighting for supremacy in the dying carcase of the USSR: one of the best known examples is the mass extermination of the entire Tatar people by ethnic Russian forces using bio-chemical weaponry (this would prove to be only the first of several near-genocides of ethnic minorities within the former Soviet Union); but the most dramatic example of the genocidal nature of the Second Civil War was the use of a 35 kt nuclear weapon against the city of Belomorsk (in the White Sea coast) by the Arkhangelsk warlord.

 

The destruction of Belomorsk finally impelled the European Security Accord (ESA) to take some action: the timid deployment of Polish, Lithuanian, Romanian and Bulgarian forces along the former Soviet border was followed -after Belomorks- by the full occupation of vast swathes of land in Ukraine, Belarus and Leningrad by ESA forces. However, the ESA wasn’t the only power intervening in the former USSR: Chinese forces entered the Uighur SSR and were preparing an offensive into the Kazakh SSR when a Siberian Army stopped them near the Ulungur River. Turkish forces entered the Caucasus, where they erected a puppet confederation (the Trans-Caucasian Federated Republics), while Imperial Iranian forces occupied the Uzbek SSR. Even Finnish and Norwegian troops, acting under the authority of the Nordic Council, created their own petty Soviet successor states in the Kola Peninsula and Karelia and around Leningrad as buffers against the chaos in the rest of European Russia.

 

The Second Civil War, enormously complicated and exacerbated by the intervention of foreign powers, created havoc in a Soviet Union already suffering greatly from the instability of the fifteen years between the First and Second Civil Wars. Transportation and communication, except for the necessities of the competing factions, altogether ceased. The military actions, the uprooting of people, the destruction of livestock, the destruction of the industrial base, the necessary consumption of seed reserves, and then the great devastation brought by the use of NBC weapons; all practically destroyed the Soviet society. In the famine of 2013 alone, estimates are that some seven million people perished. Most authorities place the total loss of Soviet life for the years 2010 to 2014, the period of civil war, foreign intervention, disease and famine at 34 million.

 

 

 

Northeast Asia, 2012: A new morning calm –the Korean Revolution.

 

Even when Korean enjoyed the benefits from a growing industrial base and its integration into the Soviet economic sphere, since the 1990s the net economic growth of Korean stagnated due to the long agony of the USSR, the terrible industrial and agricultural policies followed by Seoul, whose conservatism and territorial revanchism isolated the country from their wealthy neighbours, and finally, the “defection” of Manzhouguo to the ‘capitalist camp’ with the consequent extinction of the erstwhile economic solidarity with Korea, were forced that strained to the limit the shaky legitimacy of the Communist government, and in May 1, 2012, Kim Jong Il was deposed, and in his place a military Junta took control of the country.

 

As the world's only remaining centrally planned Communist economy without an injection of market economy principles, the future of the troubled Korean People’s Republic looked bleak. After vigorous debate within the Junta, they agreed to look after more economic integration into the world’s economy. Even when during its first decade in power the Junta wasn’t trusted by the regional powers, the ongoing economic integration seemed to solve problems for both Korea and its neighbours, especially Japan.

 

Korea needed an economic lifeline to replace the one the USSR no longer provided and Manchuria was no longer willing to provide. Without such a lifeline, starvation among the populace and industrial stagnation could threaten the existence of the new Korean elite, no matter how much support could muster from the military. Japan committed the sin of allowing unions to raise wages above what they should be given Japanese competitiveness and productivity, with a resulting sudden decline in growth rates.

 

Hammered by cheap Chinese and Southeast Asian wages, Japan exporters like Hitachi and Fujitsu had built factories in Korea by 2015, where they found cheap, docile Korean labour. The economic, political and social problems of Korea were huge, given the disparities in population, technology, income and productivity with its neighbours, but its economic integration triggered an immense amount of foreign investment. Slowly but surely, Korea was being carried from the 1960s into the XXI century and linked to the world.

 

 

 

Europe, 2016: The end of an era –the dissolution of the ESA.

 

Since the long gone days of the Soviet-German War, Europe was divided in two competing military blocs: the Europäische Sicherheit Abkommen (ESA), lead by Germany; and the Franco-Soviet alliance. Other European powers kept themselves outside the alliance system (like Britain) while some other leaned towards the two great blocs.

 

But the end of the Soviet Union had enormous consequences in the constitution of these military alliances: first France saw itself without its most powerful ally, and started a frantic search for allies, mainly in the Mediterranean. But its fears were unfounded: first Poland, then Lithuania, considering that their alliance with Germany was no longer one of their priorities (after all, the treat to Polish and Lithuanian independence posed by the Soviet Union had disappeared), announced their intention to abandon the ESA. The clumsy and futile German manoeuvres to keep these countries within the alliance only generated more resentment in Warsaw and Vilnius, who mustered the support of the other Eastern European ESA members, and by August 2016, the ESA was disbanded in a modest ceremony in Berlin. Suddenly, the old, powerful, monolithic ESA was no more.

 

The disbandment of the ESA didn’t mean the end of German power: Germany was still the more powerful European country, with the biggest and more modern Army and Air Force, but the lost of its direct influence over much of Europe generated a confidence crisis: the German government fell and the new government lead the country into an isolationist stance.

 

The death of the USSR and the dissolution of the ESA generated a Europe-wide ‘domino effect’: in effect, the still junior partners of Germany and France look for a more independent policy, generating an atmosphere of uncertainty that culminated, fifteen years later, in the rise of the UEO.

 

 

 

Southern Asia, 2018: Dead of the giants –the Sino-Indian War.

 

The conflict between China and India can be traced to a series of mutual provocations beginning in 1970 after the Sino-Tibetan war: China occupied and annexed the Tibetan province of Kham, and since then, China and India (who negotiated with Lhasa an Indian protectorate over Tibet) had saw a increasing tension in bilateral relations.

An India increasingly aggressive and nationalistic as a reaction to domestic pressures; a period of remarkable sustained economic growth in China that understandably, if unhappily, had India more than a little insecure in its security policy in the Sino-Tibetan border; the anxieties raised by the power-vacuum generated after the implosion of the USSR; the cultural-ideological clashes fuelled by chauvinistic ideologues; the promotion in public perception of their military power, far ahead of military reality in both nations; and finally the Chinese visions of national greatness; turned a simple diplomatic dispute regarding the construction of a bridge crossing the Salween river into a international crisis of first order.

From patrol clashes in Muztag Mountain in northern Tibet, to brigade-sized battles in the Lancang/Mekong River border in north-eastern Myanmar, to coercive missile diplomacy over and into the Tibetan international borders, tensions raised, reaching a maximus in August 4, 2018, when India declared war after China violated Myanmar’s “neutrality”. Offers of mediation by the League of Nations and the EACO were rejected by both sides, who had already mobilized more than a million troops along the Sino-Tibetan and Sino-Myanmarese borders. India, the official aggressor, talked about a limited "bloody nose" air campaign, with “surgical strikes” intended to shut Chinese bases in Sichuan and Yunnan, but the hostilities escalated rapidly: opposing forces exchange heavy fire along the border from southern Uighuristan to Thailand. Both sides mobilized reserves, and launched air and missile attacks on one another's forward air bases and supply depots.

At 0540hrs of October 14, Chinese air defence radars reported a wave of Indian missiles heading for China's main nuclear complex near Yichang (Hubei province), and main air and missile bases in Yunnan and western Guangxi. The Chinese president ordered an immediate nuclear riposte. From there, nuclear escalation of the conflict continued until most major cities in northern India and central China were incinerated. By November 1, when both governments declared an armistice, the death toll had reached the 340 million mark and was steadily growing; and both nations saw themselves under a vast cloud of deadly radioactive dust.

India didn’t survive the war: two months after the strategic nuclear exchange the government disappeared and the subcontinent was engulfed by chaos; and its satellites (Myanmar and Baluchistan) knew the same calamities. China, with its huge and prosperous coastal cities intact (thanks to the short range of the Indian missiles) continued as a united nation nine more years.

 

 

Europe, 2023: The Future of Warfare –the North Sea War.

 

Germany’s period of self-imposed isolation ended quickly: a new nationalistic government, elected by a people used to global influence and scared by the Fatherland’s “siege” by non-friendly neighbours (France, Poland) and restive and unreliable allies (Slovakia, Hungary), sought relief in an aggressive and exceedingly dynamic foreign policy, which included the pressing of territorial claims in the Baltic and North Seas, specially against Denmark, Norway, and Britain, accused by Germany of “seeking the elimination of Germany’s security space”; after these three countries seek to diminish, mainly through diplomatic means, the German military presence in the aforementioned waters.

 

Berlin interpreted such measures as a menace to its economic security, because much of Germany’s prosperity rested upon the military security of the sea lanes to and from the rest of the world. Notwithstanding the scale of its domestic market, Germany’s substantially geostrategically continental character made it extremely vulnerable to pressure on its maritime trade routes and more at risk to hostile maritime action.

 

At the same time that the crisis in Europe growth, Germany sought to find “breathing space” in other continents: the Boer Republic and Argentina became close German allies: the Boers due to its own preoccupations regarding its isolation in the southern tip of Africa, and Buenos Aires sought a powerful ally against the British, who still occupied the Malvinas islands.

 

British misinterpretations of the essential ambiguity of German behaviour and defence efforts, generated by the struggle among competing factions in the German government; and a widespread and understandable Scandinavian reluctance to believe, if not the worst, at least bad things about Germany as an aggressive neighbouring power lead to “Entfernt Donner”: the German invasion of Denmark and Southern Norway, while simultaneously the Hochseeflotte executed a naval offensive against British civilian and military facilities in the North Sea.

 

The Northern Sea War signalled the beginning of a new style of warfare: unlike the wars of the previous century or even the Sino-Indian War, the combatants used high-tech high-cost hardware that reduced the war to an intense but short conflict: four weeks after the beginnings of hostilities, the Germans ceased entirely their offensive operations.

 

Among the most remarkable features of the war was the apparition of the first troops wearing Kraftrüstung (power armour), used by the German Special Forces in operations against Norwegian and British naval bases. Even when the power armour proved itself more a nuisance that an advantage at the time, future avatars of the Kraftrüstung designed for small elite elements among the armed forces of the wealthy nations became virtual mechanical exoskeletons which increased the speed, strength, and endurance of soldiers in combat environments.

 

The second revolution in military affairs was the apparition of crude but effective AI-guided anti-air laser artillery (AIGAALA), best known as Feuerfuchs. The Feuerfuchs was able to clean the battlefield skies of British Warspite fighter-bombers and Norwegian Viggen attack aircraft. This technology was also copied by other powers, and by 2035 the military aviation was rendered useless by this intelligent lighspeed weapons: the air forces of the world were reduced to reconnaissance and trasnport drones, and the future battlefields were again an exclusive affairs of the armies and navies.

 

The last innovation was the apparition of the Orca supercavitating torpedoes. These extremely fast devices, resembling more a missile than a torpedo, were the perdition of the Hochseeflotte. Unfortunately, its numbers and its reliability were not the adequate, and the Hochseeflotte was able to occupy the Oslofjorden, while the Argentine Navy, with some German submarine help, was able to invade the Malvinas. But the political fallout after the German failure to force Norway and Britain to recognize their “security space”, the crushing trade embargos enacted by most European countries, and internal opposition to an increasingly authoritarian government were too much for Germany: a year after their defeat, the German started to fight among themselves in the German Civil War.

 

 

 

South America, 2023: Guerrillas, paras and warlords –The fall of Colombia.

 

When in the 1940s a Marxist guerrilla movement started a rebellion against Bogotá, Colombia started its long road to decomposition and warlordism. Adding to the horrors of civil war, the drug trafficking bands, at first mere common criminals, grow in strength to become real threats to Colombia’s national security: the “drug lords” were able to recruit vast armies of street thugs, former Marxist guerrillas, ‘sicarios’ (hitmen) and terrorists, trained by Chinese and Indian mercenaries; and they didn’t hesitate to use them: judges, policemen, soldiers, politicians and rival gang leaders were their main victims.

 

The chaos –until then contained to rural guerrilla and urban terrorism- was aggravated by the counterproductive policies followed by the U.S., which declared “war on drugs” as early as the 1970s, and conducted their own negotiations and even armed actions against the “drug lords”, frequently without the consent or even the knowledge of the Colombian government. The bitter fruit of these intervention were the ‘paramilitares’: private armies raised and financed by U.S.-backed Colombian landlords and U.S. and British companies, usually trained by ex-members of the USMC or the Royal Marines turned mercenaries. Originally the ‘paras’ fought against the Marxist-Leninist and Mariateguist guerrillas, but later fought against the Colombian government when it tried to slow down the proliferation of the ‘paras’ armed bands.

 

The “straw that broke the camel’s back” was the U.S. sanctioned intervention of Ecuadorian troops in southeast Colombia in 2022, in order to stop guerrilla activity in the border zones. This “police action” was rightfully interpreted by Bogotá as an illegal invasion of Colombian territory, and declared war on Ecuador. But the beleaguered Colombian Army was unable to evict the Ecuadorian forces -numerically inferior, but armed with up to date U.S. weapons and counting with U.S. intelligence and air support.

 

The defeat of the Colombian I Army Group in the outskirts of the city of Pasto at the hands of one Ecuadorian division represented the lost of the remaining legitimacy of the Colombian central government: Brazilian and Venezuelan troops moved to avoid the spilling of armed conflict into their respective territories, and the guerrillas, paras and the shattered remnants of the Colombian Army moved to occupy cities and towns, and imposed “law and order” accordingly to their own ideologies and interests.

 

Since then, quarrelling warlords dominates the corpse of Colombia. Oddly enough, the balkanization of Colombia didn’t mean the paralization of economical activities: on the contrary, Colombia is today one of the focus of foreign investment, specially by pharmaceutical companies which erect laboratories in the coastal cities, specially in the coastal cities of Barranquilla, Cartagena and Buenaventura, where they can conduct experiments that would be illegal anywhere else. Colombia is also the field where the main South American powers fight through their proxies: Barranquilla and Cartagena are supported by Brazil, while Buenaventura is under Argentinean protection.

 

 

 

Oceania, 2025: The Franco-Australian War.

 

After the Australian “defeat” in the Pacific War (2005), Canberra sought to former closer ties with its neighbours: New Zealand and Papua New Guinea acceded to federation with Australia in 2017. Though independent in spirit, they realized that they were too weak to go by themselves, and the South Pacific Coalition was created.

 

To even out the power base between the economically stronger and more populous Australia and the weaker New Zealand and Papuan sides, Auckland became the new nation's capital. The SPC maintained the democratic system of its component nations, but reorganized itself as a Republic superimposed over the national and local authorities, with an elected President and a 150 members legislature. The exploitation of its vast oceanic resources brought immense prosperity for the SPC nations, which per capita incomes rapidly became the biggest in the world.

 

After its formation the SPC sought to entice its independent neighbours to join the Coalition: early successes with the former European colonies in Oceania (Nauru, Kiribati, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Niue, Samoa and Fidji) helped to cement and gain credibility for the Coalition, and the only remaining powers in the area were the U.S. and France, through their colonies in Samoa, and Polynesia and New Caledonia respectively.

 

The SPC’s government system was the perfect instrument to pool resources and start the development of the oceanic resources in the vast oceanic territories of the Coalition, but in order to defend such resources, it was necessary to strengthen the military forces available to Auckland, and a military built-up followed, mainly through purchased of British and Italian war materiel.

 

But when commercial disputed with the French in the oceanic border were followed by the French President announcement of France's intentions to renew “special weapon platforms” (HAARP) testing at the Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia, after the fears generated by German actions in the North Sea War. The immediate uproar to the decision was monumental. Protests organized by pressure groups sprung up at the French embassy in Auckland. The SPC government issued firm warnings to the French, threatening economic sanctions. A France determined to hold its ground refused to back away from its decision to continue with the testing, and launch its first set of HAARP experiments.

 

The experiments created a series of strange weather patterns in the South Pacific, producing storms that caused tremendous damages to several members of the SPC. Rescue raids conducted by the SPC military clashed with French forces in the waters around the Cook Islands. Subsequent French reinforcement of its military forces in the region is followed by a SCP deployment of its naval forces in the area. The member nations of the SPC became terrified: they tried to use the League of Nations to try to defuse tensions with their French neighbours for almost two years, but its political isolation made this increasingly irrelevant. Support from the U.S. was meagre, due to its preoccupation with the political evolution of Latinoamérica, and Britain was too busy dealing with the political fallout of the Northern Sea War to be of any help. The SPC was forced to fend for itself.

 

Forced to do something drastic, the SPC political leadership decided to act before the French became too strong, and thus, on December 27, 2025, the Franco-Australia war begun, with a massive invasion of the French Pacific colonies: Nouméa and Papeete fell rapidly, and the newly born SPC Navy submarine fleet easily intercepted the extremely long French logistical lines. To the chagrin of Paris, the French Navy was unable to accomplish the admittedly impossible task to regain its Pacific colonies, and the war ended.

 

After the war, a coalition of Australian and Papuan nationalist parties gained the Coalition election, with a platform based in the idea of replacing the loose Coalition government for a stronger, more assertive and more centralized federal system, and in 2029 a narrowly won plebiscite confirmed the dissolution of the South Pacific Coalition and its replacement with the United Island Confederation of Macronesia, commonly known as the Macronesian Alliance.

 

 

 

Europe, 2031: “...une identité de défense européenne...” –the UEO

 

The period of tense calm in central and Western Europe between 1943 and 2023 was followed by renewing tension in Europe. A restless and paranoiac Germany was barely defeated in the Northern Sea War, with its naval forces shattered but with its grounds forces as strong as ever, and this ground forces virtually destroyed the country in the German Civil War (2024-2028). Britain had retreated into a not much splendid isolation after the war, Italy remained a neutral and magnifically armed medium power, and France saw itself humiliated and defeated by the upstart Macronesian Alliance.

 

The unstable nature of the post-civil war German government, the uniformly bad relations between Spain and Morocco in one side, and between Italy and the People’s Arab Republic in the other; and the multilateral disputes over the Mediterranean waters lead to a series of informal conferences that took place in Lisbon between ten countries in or near the western European and Mediterranean area. The Foreign Ministers of Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Luxembourg, Belgium, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia reunited with the idea to relaunch the dialogue which was begun with the Declaration of Barcelona, 2025, in which vague agreements were made about future common policies.

 

A second series of conferences was celebrated in Paris, but this time only France, Spain, Italy, Luxembourg, Belgium and Portugal participated. A month after the end of the conferences, the Treaty of Sant Yves confirmed the creation of the West European Union, as an organization of intergovernmental cooperation in common defence of their European and overseas territories in the northern Atlantic, South America, Africa and the Indian Ocean.

 

 

 

The Pacific, 2035: Dragons and Eagles at Sea –the Second Pacific War

 

The Second Pacific War was fought between an assertive Macronesia and a reluctant Japan in one side, and an increasingly paranoiac U.S. in the other, allied to the Argentineans and the Peruvians. This was another example of the modern wars: a brief and intense conflict with relatively low civilian casualties. The opposition of the U.S. to Chile’s voluntary admission into the Macronesian Alliance is the alleged cassus belli, although the causes can be traced to the First Pacific War (2005), and the formation of the Macronesian Alliance and its meteoric ascendance to Great Power status.

 

In Japan this conflict is known as Kaitei Daisenso (the Great Undersea War), and it regarded elsewhere as a purely naval war, fought primarily around the Marshall Islands, Hawai’i and the Chilean coast; while the land theatres, as the conquest of the Marshall Islands by the Imperial Japanese Naval Infantry, or the border wars fought between the Chileans and the Argentineans and Peruvians are frequently overlooked.

 

The already ubiquitous Kraftrüstung exoskeletons and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) with autonomous AIs in attack and air superiority roles were of special importance in the battles for the Marshall Islands and Pearl Harbour, but the decisive factor was the composition of the fleets: while the Japanese and Macronesian navies were composed mainly by submarines, the U.S. Navy -the biggest in the world- was still composed mostly by surface vessels: enormous stealth carriers able to launch a large number of UAVs to swarm their targets were the core of its battle groups: the fatal mistake made by the U.S. Navy was to underestimate the importance of the submarine fighters.

 

Even when the Abigor-class sub-fighter carriers were the largest vessels in the world (before the arrival of the IJN Ryuho-class), their enormous costs and the fortune already invested in the surface carriers made impossible to convert the U.S. Navy into an all-submarine force nor built Abigor-class carriers in enough numbers. When the Abigor were destroyed by the MAN Athena-class heavy cruisers and Wellesley-class carriers, the U.S. Navy was doomed. The surface carriers weren’t unable to resist the combined attack of the MAN and the IJN, and the fall of Oahu represented the defeat of the U.S. 

 

The war was also conducted in space: in spite of international treaties, the U.S. maintained space-mounted artillery (kinetic-kill) satellites that proved themselves unable to influence naval actions: the satellites quickly ran out of ammunition and become useless, and the most important assets -the sub-carriers- were impossible to find unless they emerged, something that rarely happened. These kinetic-kill satellites were instead used to attack the scarce surface assets used during the war.

 

More important were the anti-satellites weapons deployed by both sides: powerful charged-particle beams and laser cannons were used to destroy spy satellites as soon as these were put into orbit. In order to escape from the U.S. anti-satellite cannons, the IJN used High Altitude Vigilance Drones (HAVD), extremely light and small unmanned aerial vehicles designed to fly to high altitude and support, and in most cases replace, the satellites downed by the enemy.

 

Operations to clear the skies of all enemy satellites continued until the end of the war: civilian orbital operations became hazardous due to the large amount of orbital debris left by the war, and several nations and corporations demanded Japan, the U.S. and Macronesia to clean the LEO of junk to allow further orbital operations.

 

The victorious Japanese recovered the Marshall Islands, conquered by the U.S. in the First Pacific War, and Chile was admitted into the Macronesian Alliance. But this victory cost them dearly: most of the civilians killed in the conflict were Japanese, while the Macronesian Alliance lost an excessive number of vessels, and most important, its crews; and its economy suffered under the heavy cost of the war. The defeat only increased the paranoia in Washington, which began a military build-up while at the same time look for reassuring its alliance with Britain, in detriment of its relations with the rest of Europe, an action that directly led to the Atlantic Wars.

 

 

 

Asia, 2055: All under the Sky –The War of Chinese Unification

 

The years between 2035 and 2055 are known as “The Peaceful Years”. This doesn’t mean that there were no conflicts: the volatile Muslim states in Central Asia and the weak states of Sub-Saharian Africa knew their share of tensions, conflicts and obscure, undeclared war, but none of these conflicts hit the frontpage of the Great Powers’ Minitels.

 

Everything started to change in 2049 when the territory of certain Chinese warlord, Jiang Xiaxia, centred around the ruined city of Chongqing in Sichuan province, was conquered and annexed by the Republic of China. This marked the first time the territories of the Chaodai Confederation and the Republic of China shared a land border and the subsequent military clashes only worsened the already bad relations between China, which claimed sovereignty over all China’s historic territory, and the Indonesia-backed Chaodai. From this moment the only thing between Beijing and control over all China was the independent city-states and petty agrarian republics in the former Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hubei and Anhui provinces (which were mere Taiwanese protectorates) and Chaodai.

 

These “splittists” -as Beijing named them- were too weak to resist an invasion from the north and asked their traditional allies (Taiwan, Japan and Indonesia) for help. But even when Taiwan and Japan could arrange a common policy against China, the Indonesians refused to cooperate with the Japanese until their demands (cession of Mindanao to Indonesian control and the neutralization of the rump Philippines) were satisfied. This was of course unacceptable, and Indonesia limited to reaffirm its alliance with the Chaodai Confederation.

 

After years of increasing tensions among the Chinese states, assassinations of key politicians and military leaders, economic warfare, and the apparition in the Taiwan’s mainland protectorates and in Chaodai of the terrorist organization Kaili Dehua (“Triumphant Strength of Virtuous China”), one of the more extreme groups founded by Beijing: terrorist attacks against pro-independence parties and organizations became common, sowing confusion and conflict in the targeted territories; while at the same time the Kaili Dehua recruited people there who have never given up the dream of a pan-Chinese nation.

 

In October 6, 2055, Beijing announced the beginning of a massive three-day exercise involving nearly all operational military bases in the country, from Sichuan to the Yellow Sea coast. While simulated Chinese Navy submarine mass attacks against Japan and Taiwan (including nuclear strikes) took place, distracting the defence forces of these countries, the Chinese Army started a large scale offensive due south the next day. Beijing sent its special forces into many areas of the southern territories: many of these units, composed by genetically enhanced soldiers, infiltrated far from the front lines, arriving via boats, submarines and light planes; or introduced to the Taiwanese protectorates weeks or even months before the offensive: these special forces attacked the defenders’ command posts, communications centres, and supply depots, destroying and damaging military equipment and creating general chaos.

 

While the Special Forces were launching their attacks, the Chinese Army’s vast armoured armies of AI tanks opened up their own offensive. The armoured multi-pronged offensives were targeted against the cities of Shanghai, Hangzhou, Wuhan, and Guiyang as primary targets. Masses of Chinese tanks (and hovertrucks transporting the armoured infantry) poured across the borders, overwhelming the very intricate defences built in the years before the war. Anti-tank ditches, composite carbon walls and other barriers caused heavy Chinese losses, but in the end the defenders were defeated through sheer weight of numbers.

 

Taiwan, Chaodai and Indonesia declared war on China three days after the invasion, but while Taiwanese and Chaodai forces rapidly reached the front, the Indonesians were forced to recall theirs due to a sudden Macronesian invasion of Irian Jaya. Japan found itself in a very awkward situation: it was bonded by a mutual defence treaty with Taiwan (which had just declared war against China, situation no contemplated in the treaty) and at the same time it maintained a non-aggression treaty with Macronesia, who was attacking the loathed Indonesians, turning the Macronesians in de facto Chinese allies. Tokyo decided to send “security forces” to Taiwan, the Philippines and Siberia, and declare their neutrality in this affair, but also announced its determination to “maintain a strong defensive force in the Chinese waters to protect itself and its allies from foreign aggression.”

 

After three months of hellish combat, the Chinese Army, seeing its main offensive in Hubei stopped at the Chiang Jiang river valley (in spite of their formidable river crossing units), launched two simultaneous offensives in order to divide the opposite forces and regain the initiative: the first offensive included an armoured thrust from Sichuan towards Changsha in Hunan, and the second was a daring amphibious attack against Fujian, seeking to stop the flow of Taiwanese troops and materiel reaching the front. The latter resulted in disaster: the Taiwanese Navy savaged their Chinese counterparts while the latter tried to defend the troops transport vessels. The few troops that reached the Fujianese coast were wiped out by the determined Fujianese and Taiwanese coastal forces. But the Chinese defeat in Fujian was compensate by their success in the offensive against Changsha, reached and occupied in December, after an attack with old-fashioned chemical weapons.

 

The conquest of central Hunan was a devastating moral blow for the Chaodai people and their Taiwanese allies. A Chinese offer to Chaodai for “peaceful reunification” was immediately rejected, but the rejection was followed by a series of pro-peace demonstrations, strikes and even a few poison gas attacks, provoked and directed by the Kaili Dehua agents. Meanwhile, the Macronesians effectively had blockaded Indonesia, and a ground war of attrition in Irian Jaya kept both sides with their hands full.

 

In spite of Chaodai and Taiwanese temporal naval superiority over China, the almost autarkic Chinese industrial base didn’t suffer any shortage, and Beijing launched a definitive offensive against Fujian in January 2056. Technologically equal to the defenders and enjoying superior firepower, the Chinese Army decimated Taiwanese and Chaodai ground units. In the end a combined naval and ground offensive, which consumed the entire Chinese stock of unmanned naval vehicles (UNV) and most of its navy, accomplished the destruction of a large part of the Taiwanese Navy near Xiaomen, and the Chinese troops transports reached the Fujianese coast, from where the Chinese marines advanced towards Changping in central Fujian, where they linked with the Chinese Army troops invading from the East. The war was over.

 

The Colombo Treaties finished the political part of the war: China accepted the Chaodai surrender and accepted its solicitude of inclusion into the Chinese state, but China was forced to recognize Taiwan’s independence, something they had refused to do since 1960. Indonesia was forced to cede Irian Jaya to Macronesia and to reduce significatively its armed forces. However, Chaodai and Indonesians guerrillas appeared immediately, forcing the victors (China and Macronesia) to launch anti-partisan campaigns for years to come. Also, the heavy cost of the war and the collapse of the Hong Kong, Taipei and Jakarta stock markets provoked a regional economic crisis, which rapidly spread around the world, eventually leading to the Atlantic War.

 

 

* * *

 

Not this August, nor this September; you have this year to do what you like.

Not next August, nor next September; that is still too soon...

But the year after that or the year after that they fight.

 

  — Ernest Hemingway, Notes on the Next War

 

The World, 2105: Dead and Resurrection –The Atlantic War and its Aftermath.

 

The final account of the Atlantic War was dreadful. In total, 600 millions of African, Europeans and Americans perished during the war, vast swathes of territory were devastated by nuclear, biological, and –by the end of the war- anti-matter weapons.

 

The social order of the combatants and the world economic network collapse. In the zones devastated by the war, millions of survivors died of starvation due to insufficient agricultural production and an inability to distribute what little was harvested. Plagues of all kinds, virus and nanomachines, swept the world, killing many others. Millions were forced to flee to unscathed zones, where the already outstretched services were unable to cope with the disaster, and were confined in abject shantytowns, where still more were killed as starvation led to despair and violence. All together, an estimated two billion people die between 2098 and 2104.

 

The demographic, political and economical vacuum left after the destruction of the Guinean Confederation, the European Alliance, the North Atlantic Confederation, Brazil, the South African Confederation and the Alianza del Río de La Plata is being diminished by the reconstruction efforts conducted by the United Russian Republic, Japan, Korea, China, the Macronesian Alliance and some minor powers, due to the robustness of their post-industrial economies and their alimentary self-sufficiency.

 

Sadly, this autarchy has retarded the reconstruction efforts, and it was the sheer necessity to reactivate their economies what forced the remaining powers to take some action. Japan had put under its protection the Hawaiian Islands, while Korea and the Philippines have established a joint colony in Vancouver Island and Chinese prospectors had disembarked in the coasts of the former Mexican state of Guerrero. To the south, Macronesia is launching expeditions into Patagonia and had already occupied the Malvinas islands.

 

But the great Asiatic powers are not the only ones who are expanding. Paraguay, with its core in the ancient city of Asunción, and counting with a relatively intact industrial base and military, has imposed its rule over the devastated Argentine littoral provinces and western Uruguay. The Scandinavian Union, neutral but hit hard by the climatic changes provoked by the vast amounts of smoke and ash into the air, has started to expand towards the northern half of old Germany, devastated by NAC anti-matter devices, and the old Canadian Maritime provinces and northern New England, razed by German asteroids launched from orbit. Azania has occupied the southern tip of Africa, after the destruction of its old Boer enemies; Egypt has conquered Libya from the surviving Italians; the Maghrebi Confederation has annexed Andalucía, Murcia, Sicily and Sardinia; Ireland has fullfilled its old dream of unifying the island and has established several enclaves in Wales and Scotland, and Russia has claimed and occupied Alaska.

 

The rest of the world, principally the former U.S. and Canada, large track of Africa, Western and Mediterranean Europe, Brazil and central Argentina, is now in chaos. Freak weather patterns, the cesation of all commerce, the exhaustion of their food reserves, the destruction of their energy sources, and the utter destruction of the urban centres has forced the once proud citizens of the old Atlantic confederations to fall back into primitive farming societies or pure savagery, and even those areas which have retained some semblance of civilization are divided into numerous statelets fighting for food, territory and scattered scraps of technology. Several generations will pass until civilization once again reaches these unfortunate peoples.

 

 

 

 

 

Chronology

2005-2055

 

2005: First Pacific War. Extensive use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to spot enemy positions, coordinate aerial attacks, and some experimental UAV were armed with antiship missiles. Deployment and use of Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) weapons against Guam and the Philippines.

 

2005: Perú accuses Ecuador of supporting the Partido Comunista del Perú-Sendero Luminoso (Peruvian Communist Party-Shining Path) guerrillas with weapons and training camps in the Ecuadorian selvatic province of Napo-Pastaza. A new series of border clashes begins.

 

2006: Major stock market drop in the Paris bourse. Worldwide financial panic.

 

2006: Manifestations in support for democratic reforms in Albania are crushed by the Army. International condemnation and economic sanctions are imposed after negotiation in the League of Nations.

 

2007: A team of Canadian, British and Italian anthropologists determine that Neanderthal and modern man descended from separate lineages.

 

2007: After years of bloody border clashes with Egyptian troops, and the destruction of an important oil refinery in Cirenaica by Libyan terrorists backed by Egypt; Italy declares war on Egypt. The Italian forces quickly destroys the Libyan training camps in western Egypt and the Egyptian navy, but the Egyptian SAMs and relatively modern aircraft constitute a real problem for the Italians. The combination of an Italian blockade, the severe damage on the Egyptian oil reserves, and the costly ground invasion of Egypt convince both side to negotiate: Italy would retire its troops from Egyptian soil in exchange of the expulsion of Libyan terrorist from Egypt.

 

2008: Formation of the “Concert of Asia”.

 

2008: The Mariateguist guerrillas of the Shining Path violate and occupy the Japanese Embassy in Lima. Two days later, Japanese Special Forces, with support from the Peruvian army and police, storm the place, and in twenty minutes the Embassy is in Japanese hands and secure.

 

2008: Counting with Ecuadorian support, the Shining Path guerrillas launch a devastating campaign of urban guerrilla attacks while elite Ecuadorian troops infiltrate in the disputed border zones: the Shining Path attacks incapacitate the Peruvian Army command and control capacity while the sabotage of the military border bases allows an Ecuadorian invasion in force. The Japanese troops still in Lima help to garrison the capitol while the beleaguered Peruvian Army faces the guerrillas and the Ecuadorians.

 

2009: Discovery of a very large trans-Neptunian object arise speculations about a “tenth planet”. Subsequent investigations determine it is a very large asteroid.

 

2009: After stopping the Ecuadorian offensive, Perú secures Argentinean and Japanese support. And the end of the year, the Ecuadorians are repelled, not without tremendous Peruvian losses in men and material.

 

2010: The U.S. Secret Service’s International Affairs Directorate initiates the recruitment and training of “paramilitares” fighters in the Colombian countryside.

 

2010: Ebola virus outbreak in Congo.

 

2010: Final collapse of the Soviet Union: after four years of war, six major and a myriad of minor successor states appear.

 

2010: China initiates a “One Child Policy” in an intent to control its population growth. Tax cuts to couples and families already with one child and a vast pro-abortion campaign are part of the policy.

 

2011: Pieter Vorster, last Prime Minister of South Africa, dies in his home in Niew Pietermaritzburg, Boer Republic. The homage dedicated to his memory by the Boer republic government causes a crisis with Azania and international condemnation. 

 

2011: Germany’s military intelligence (the Abwehr) discovers an already inactive Soviet spy ring. This organization, dubbed by the German press “The Red Orchestra” happened to be an incredibly extended and disciplined spy ring, which managed to infiltrate key positions within the government and the Abwehr after the Soviet-German War, and smuggled out of the country huge amounts of intelligence, military and scientific information from several German ministries and laboratories. According with the Abwehr, these stolen secrets helped the Soviet Union to catch up to Germany until the final collapse of the USSR: many of the Soviet technological achievements (fission bombs, missile and space technology, etc.) were stolen from the Germans. The uncovering of the Red Orchestra was achieved after the Abwehr captured in Poland a ranking agent in the NKVD trying to space to Canada. The subsequent scandal provoked a purge where many ranking government officials and Abwehr officers were condemned to the death and imprisonment, and the fall of the government.

 

2012: An earthquake devastates the Chilean heartland, including the port of Valparaíso: it’s the worst natural disaster in the history of America.

 

2012: Military coup in Korea: Kim Jong Il is deposed by the Korean People’s Army. Economic reform and opening to the outer world. Kim is exiled to Myanmar, where he dedicates the rest of his life to compose operas.

 

2013: A new set of Dead Sea Scrolls is located.

 

2013: A deadly flu-like virus appears in Central Asia, and rapidly becomes a pandemic. The “Turkmen Influenza” kills nearly twenty six million people worldwide. Brief outbreaks of the Turkmen Influenza occur in later years in Guangzhou and Ethiopia.

 

2013: A Mariateguist rebel group named Amanecer Rojo (Red Dawn) appears in the Mexican state of Guerrero.

 

2013: Discovery of first room temperature superconductor. In spite of its ceramic nature it begins a revolution, especially in computer sciences.

 

2014: Deregulation of the banking system in the U.S. causes a tremendous economic upheaval. At the end of the crisis four major banks monopolize the U.S. market.

 

2014: Formation of the New Russian Unity as the main Soviet successor state in European Russia.

 

2014: Korea and China sign a series of economic treaties. China help Korean with heavy investments (which opaque the Japanese ones) and ship large quantities of grain and other foodstuff on credit. Sino-Japanese relations sour.

 

2015: After years of naval clashes with the IJN, Korea uses Chinese credits to start a naval build-up: acquires a good number of old Soviet vessels (submarines, destroyers and a cruiser) from Ukraine. Relations with Japan sour, but investment in the booming Korean industries don’t decrease.

 

2015: The Aegean War: a petty border dispute in the Cypriot border degenerated in open warfare. A Turkish invasion of Greece executed simultaneously with a sneak attack on Greek naval bases in Greece and in Cyprus succeeds in pushing the Greeks back but stalls due to heavy Greek resistance in Thrace, ins spite of being outnumbered by the Turks 3 to 1. However, the naval surprise attack fails and the attackers are mostly destroyed enroute. In the Aegean sea, the superior Greek navy captured Turkish islands and launched air and missile attacks on Istanbul, and occupied the Turkish half of Cyprus; but the Turks redoubled their ground offensive and pushed further into Greece and threatened Salonika.

 

The Serbs chose this moment to mobilize and declare their support to the Greeks: Serbian troops pour into Greece creating a second front, and at the same time Bulgaria started to mobilize in support of Turkey. Seeing the potential for a new Balkan war (which could potentially escalate to engulf the rest of the Balkans and force an Italian intervention), Germany and France pressured both sides to negotiate for a truce which comes to effect. In the peace treaty Turkey is forced to cede its half of Cyprus to Greece and the Turkish Cypriots are deported to Turkey, while Greece is forced to reduce its military strength.

 

2016: The Turkic peoples of the former Soviet Central Asian republics are united under the banner of the Turanian Republic. The government is controlled by an Uzbek general of the former Red Army.

 

2016: Brief naval war between Japan and Korea around Saichu (Cheju) island: a good number of the new Korean units are sunk or heavily damaged, but two IJN destroyers are damaged by Korean Kripton anti-ship missiles. Rumours of Korean saboteurs in Japan and Japanese “black-ops” in Korea are frequent.

 

2016: The European Security accord (ESA) is dissolved after the definitive collapse of the Soviet Union.

 

2016: Thailand abolishes anti-drug laws: first open market for psychotropic substances.

 

2016: U.S. Navy special forces (the “Sea Bees”) and the Mexican Army launches a “seek and destroy” campaign against the Amanecer Rojo guerrillas.

 

2017: Azanian-Boer War. The Boer Republic became an isolationist garrison state after the South African War, with heavily defended borders, ruled by a military Junta, and with a universal conscription system. This Spartan nation had found in Germany a suitable ally and commercial partner, and with its help the Boer Army rapidly became the strongest native force in Africa. After years of constant border clashes with Azania, the Boers conquered the Azanian province of Key, after a bloody six months long war. Their German patrons forced the League to mediate a ceasefire and later to recognise the Boer annexation of most of Key, including the city of East London.

 

2017: The "big one" hits California: an earthquake with an intensity of 9.5 in the Richter scale with its epicentre about 30 miles south of San Francisco. This quake and subsequent aftershocks cause widespread damages to the Californian cities and precipitate a humane, political and economical crisis in the U.S.

 

2017: Japan recognizes the Siberian Republic. Tokyo and Novosibirsk immediately sign a mutual defence treaty.

 

2018: Assisted suicide becomes a lawful choice in Sweden.

 

2018: Sino-Indian War.

 

2018: In the U.S. teenagers are forced to wear tracking devices subcutaneously for purposes of law enforcement.

 

2018: The African nations of the Gulf of Guinea sign the Abidjan Treaty: genesis of the Guinean Confederation.

 

2019: Air degradation causes allergic epidemics in China and Korea.

 

2019: Formation of the People’s Arab Republic.

 

2019: A toxic spill kills off most of the salmon population in the U.S. Pacific northwest region.

 

2020-2050: Huge expansion in the legal definition of marriage between people and an increasing trend towards androgyny in clothing and hairstyles.

 

2020: Third permanent space station. It is a Franco-Italian project with a crew of twenty living and working in space, testing zero-G industrial and medical procedures.

 

2020: In order to normalize bilateral relations and defuse tensions, Korea and Japan sing an “Economic Pact”: Tokyo acceded to sell on credit old machinery and even whole industrial plants to Korea, allowing the upstart Korean industries to produce consumer and industrial goods. Such industries were already outdated for the sophisticated Japanese markets, but were enough for Korea to manufacture consumer good for Third World markets, with the Japanese companies helping with marketing and distribution. Under these conditions the Koreans enjoy a steady economic growth and rising life standards.

 

2020: Japan finalizes the transformation of its railroad system to maglev trains.

 

2021: First orbital (LEO) private laboratory for manufacturing exotic drugs and metal alloys for electronics.

 

2021: Hindu fundamentalists detonate a nuclear device in the city of Kabul, razing most of the city and effectively destroying the Muslim state of Pashtunistan.

 

2022: Canadian scientists discover the ruins of a fairly large Norse community in Newfoundland established around 1110.

 

2022: Capital punishment is abolished in the U.S. The only countries were such punishment is still legal are the New Russian Unity, the Arabic countries and Iran.

 

2022: The Confederated Nations of Azania reaches its maximum extension with the inclusion of Madagascar.

 

2023: Northern Sea War.

 

2023: Brazil launches its first nuclear fusion-powered carriers and submarines.

 

2023: Collapse of the Colombian government and balkanization of Colombia.

 

2023: Formation of the Río de la Plata Confederation.

 

2023: “Indonesian Betrayal”: Indonesian forces failed in an attempt to conquer Japanese-occupied Singapore: total break between both powers.

 

2024: A virulent form of porcine fever virus appears in China, killing almost 500.000 people and collapsing the country’s health care system.

 

2025: New technologies in electrochemical batteries allow the local government of Tokyo, Amsterdam, Shanghai, México D.F. and many more cities to impose bicycle-only transportation restrictions.

 

2025: Christianity's number of overall adherents reaches an all-time low.

 

2025: Franco-Australian War.

 

2025-2027: German civil war.

 

2026: A biological warfare accident in the Central Asian Republic of Turan kills almost 100,000 people and causes the evacuation of Samarkand.

 

2026: Formation of the Scandinavian confederation.

 

2026: The Mecklenburg Virus causes panic in Germany and the rest of Europe.

 

2027: Saudi Arabia annexes the small Gulf emirates after their societies collapsed with the end of the oil era.

 

2027: The southernmost Chinese provinces form the Chaodai Confederation.

 

2027: The neo-Luddite terrorist organization “The Children of Gaia” claim responsibility over a series of bombings: airports, petrochemical plants, mine companies, and aquaculture facilities are among the main targets.

 

2027: First aerospace plane flight between Berlin and Sydney. The speed and safety of air travel increase dramatically.

 

2028: Riots in Mindanao degenerate in a Muslim uprising. Indonesian support to the rebels is evident, when the Filipino defence forces capture an Indonesian minisubmarine with special forces operatives near the Filipino coasts.

 

2028: First cloned tissues used successfully in transplants.

 

2029: Manzhouguo absorbers Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi, Henan and Jiangsu: New Republic of China.

 

2029: Formation of the Macronesian Alliance.

 

2029: Merger of the Accord Européen de Libre-Échange and the Europäische Zollamt Vereinigung: the European Economic Union encompasses a common European market and custom union. Some members of the old organizations walk out of the new EEU, including Macronesia, Turkey and the New Russian Unity.

 

2030: Political unrest in Eastern Europe due to the rising unemployment: delayed economic reforms are the main cause. Both Brazil and Macronesia become the destiny of a new wave of European migrants.

 

2031: World population stabilizes at about 7 billions.

 

2031: Formation of the UEO.

 

2031: Japan gains nearly alimentary self-sufficiency through a combination of traditional aquaculture and genetically modified kelp farms.

 

2031: “Second Great Reform” in Japan: the governmental system is reformed to transfer several of the former prerogatives of the Diet to the Kampaku, transforming the national government along semi-democratic lines.

 

2032: Overpopulation, famine and disease provokes the gradual disintegration of the social and economic systems of most Indian successor states.

 

2033: Formation of the Indian Ocean Coalition.

 

2033: Two of the bigger Minitel networks (U.S. and Germany) collapse due to the inability of the current phone lines to handle the growing traffic.

 

2034: End of the “Drug War”: the drugs won. The U.S. legalizes marijuana and hemp, although the distribution of cocaine and synthetic drugs is heavily regulated.

 

2035: Second Pacific War. The “Twenty Years of Peace”.

 

2036: Large reforesting efforts launched in South America.

 

2036: The Korean People’s Republic changes its name to “Korean Republic”.

 

2037: Formation of the Confederation of the Antilles.

 

2037: Greenhouse effects begin to level off due to the decreasing use of fossil fuels and increasing reforestation projects.

 

2038: After several failed experiments, non-addictive booster drugs become common in the militaries around the world. These drugs are used to suppress sleep, boost agility, strength and endurance. Heavily regulated and illegal outside military use, the Colombian states and several African nations, among them Ethiopia, become the main producers of cheap and dangerous variants of these drugs.

 

2038: Japan enacts the strongest environmental laws in the world. Economic growth slows down, but the measures are very accepted among the population. 

 

2039: Japan finalizes the transformation of the entirety of its mass transit systems to maglev trains and derivate technologies. Automobile private ownership is severely restricted.

 

2040: The U.S., Canada and Britain adopt a common currency.

 

2040: The Indonesian industrial conglomerate Meekhatarra Electric perfects a cheap method of desalinization of sea water.

 

2041: A mutant Mecklenburg virus strain, much more virulent than the original virus, sweeps through Northern Africa, Italy, Greece and Turkey, killing nearly 2 million people.

 

2042: Genetic engineering advances allow a revolution in cosmetic surgery: some people start to change their own DNA code using viral tools to change their appearance. Major genetic modifications are forbidden, though.

 

2043: A huge revival in traditional religions. It is specially felt in Japan, Eastern Europe, Iran and the U.S.

 

2043: First “designer pets” are commercially available. Several nations introduce legal measures against this and other commercial genetic practices that could lead to the cloning and “tailoring” of human beings.

 

2045: The Philippine government abolishes the “perpetual neutrality” article from its constitution, and signs a mutual defence alliance with Taiwan and Japan.

 

2045: The largest cities of the world are coastal-submarine complexes. The increasingly sophistication of the aquaculture techniques allow many of these cities to met a good share of their alimentary needs without necessity land bound agriculture or commerce.

 

2046: Algeria, Morocco and Tunis united after a pan-Maghrebi Islamist party wins the elections in all three nations: formation of the Maghrebi Confederation.

 

2049: The Toyo No Riso (Ideal of the East) Buddhist sect, led by Matsuda Satoshi, launches a devastating terrorist attack near Tokyo. Matsuda and his followers, convinced that he was the reincarnation of Buddha and eager to pursuit a campaign ‘for ultimate and universal love’, stole a set of experimental micromachines from an Army arsenal and released them in the nuclear fusion plant in Kisarazu, in the side of Tokyo bay opposite to the Japanese capitol. The micromachines provoke a severe malfunction in the fusion core, releasing to the atmosphere the plasma contained in the magnetic bottle of the reactor. A few dozen people -mostly plant employees and Kisarazu locals- were killed, but the terrorists gang was captured, including Masuda, when they was trying to release another micromachine plague in the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. After a highly publicised trial, Masuda and his followers are sentenced to 50 years in an orbital penal facility. 

 

2050: First “Lunar war”: a Franco-Brazilian dispute around a He3 deposit in Oceanus Procellarum degenerates in violence and “security forces” from both nations are hastily sent. After some clashes, both parties accept Azanian arbitration.

 

2050: 72% of the world’s population lives in urban centres.

 

2050: A major earthquake strikes Taiwan, and the resulting tidal wave wreaks havoc in Luzon, the Ryukyu and Fujian.

 

2051: Radio signals from a solar system located 75 light-years from Earth become the first evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. However, the message is never deciphered.

 

2051: Great Britain, increasingly isolated due to its de facto union with the U.S., eschews close ties with continental Europe.

 

2052: The New Russian Unity and Siberia unite: formation of the United Republic of Russia. The URR maintains Siberia’s security commitments with Japan.

 

2052: “Fast-growing” trees are used to reforest vast territories in southern México, Siberia, Karafuto, Italy, Spain and Scotland.

 

2053: Formation of the Islamic Sphere (better known as the “Second Caliphate”): economic union between Turkey, the Trans-Caucasian Federated Republics, the People’s Arab Republic, the Empire of Iran, Turan and the myriad of Muslim states in former India and Soviet Central Asia. Indonesia refuses to join.

 

2053: The Indian Ocean Coalition becomes the world’s largest exporters of aquaculture foodstuff.

 

2053: The Trans-Siberian railroad is transformed into a maglev line in record time.

 

2054: Another “Big One” quake (magnitude 7.7) strikes southern California. Modern structures resist without damage, but some old building collapse.

 

2054: The first genetically modified "super soldiers" appears in the Chinese Army: special forces with strength, reflexes, and endurance increased through a combination of genetic manipulation and specially designed drugs.

 

2055: Germany joins the UEO. The new confederation is named the “European Alliance”.

 

2055: Chinese Unification War.