When we last left our alternate Earth, on November 18th of 2031, China had just surrendered to the Three Powers [Britain, Sweden, and India] and the Communists had fallen out of power, replaced by the Nationalist government from Taiwan. It left behind a number of states, including a war-torn Finland and Iran, a unified Korea, and the rest of the countries it had annexed. Further, the provinces of Tibet and Manchuria were given independence from Chinese rule.
Much of the world was in ruins, with the entire US still rebuilding from the devastating Chinese kinetic strike in 2027 and the Three Powers facing similar problems. China itself had been nearly annihilated by Swedish air strikes, and most of India had been flattened. Nearly half a billion people had been killed in the fighting.
One country presented a particularly large problem. Lee's genocidal rampage had completely annihilated the Russian people, leaving a massive expanse of land with no government, no people, nothing. Nationalist China would very much have liked to retain possession of Russia, but the Three Powers wouldn't hear of it. Their cities had been devastated by Chinese kinetic bombardment, and the resources of former Russia would very much help with recovery.
Unfortunately for them, the countries of Azerbaijan, Belarus, Ukraine, and Finland, along with the new nation of Prussia [formed from German colonists who had settled in what is now Latvia, Estonia, and parts of Lithuania after China annihilated them], were faced with no such internal problems, and their military forces had been built up considerably out of fear of Chinese troops. These nations quickly established claims to large swathes of Russian land, ending any question of British, Indian, or Swedish colonies there.
However, these nations were not the problem. To the south of all this, Pakistan had wrested independence from India again and were calling for an Islamic revival throughout the Middle East under Pakistani Governor General Aban Qadir. Aban, a devout Muslim, wanted to bring the whole world under Islamic rule and to do this, he was first going to unite the Middle East. Pakistan had somehow ended up with [read: stolen] a large quantity of military technology from the Three Powers and China, and it stationed these along the border to bluff India into staying out of its affairs. India, in no shape to fight back, agreed to a nonaggression pact between the two nations. With that, Pakistan's attention turned back to the Middle East.
Iran was its next target. Under Chinese rule, Muslims had suffered much persecution for their beliefs and many of them hungered for revenge. Pakistan's Islamic revival had helped to agitate this, and Iran's military was bolstered by Chinese units as well. Soon, the nation became Pakistan's closest ally and urged that the Arab states unite.
Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia soon allied with these two, creating what they called the Arabian League. Naturally, all this activity aroused the suspicion of nearby Israel, which began to mobilize its forces in the event that it was attacked. But the AL had no interest in Israel for the moment. What they wanted to do was build up a significant military force for the world takeover.
The US and Three Powers were ready contributors to the AL's cause. With the AL having control of the Suez Canal and much of the world's oil, they eagerly agreed to ship such military goods as destroyers, UAVs, tanks, and the like. China also helped, selling off military surpluses that were no longer needed. Qadir was immensely pleased. He immediately began a training program to teach AL troops how to use these new toys. Perhaps Qadir's happiest moment came when the US sold the Iowa, Missouri, New Jersey, and Wisconsin to AL forces. The battleships were a welcome addition to the AL's navy, as the US no longer had any use for them.
Qadir's military training program alarmed Israel greatly. Deciding that war with the AL was inevitable, Israeli UAVs attacked important AL bases in Jordan and the Sinai peninsula, followed closely by its ground forces. However, the AL was not the disorganized band of states that the Israelis had faced in the past. AL forces quickly crushed the Israeli invasion and smashed their armies, taking Israel back into Arab possession and renaming it Palestine. They then launched a surprise attack on India, sweeping across the border and destroying Indian forces almost before they had news of the invasion. New Delhi fell on January 21st, 2046, to the forces of the AL. The AL then swept northward into Turkey and Europe.
Here, though, Qadir realized he had overstepped his boundaries. Azeri, Prussian, and Belarussian forces organized a strong defense in Greece and northern Turkey, later assisted by Swedish airpower. This resulted in a series of crushing defeats, turning the AL's armies back onto their own territory. Angered, Qadir ordered that all oil shipments to the rest of the world stop immediately. This was quite possibly the stupidest move he could have made. Almost immediately, Swedish, Belarussian, Azeri, Prussian, and Chinese forces smashed the remainder of the AL's armies. An extremist, deciding that Qadir was a lunatic, shot him, and infighting within the League resulted in its rapid disintegration, with the Israelis retaking their homeland and the Sinai peninsula as well.
With this, it seemed the world was going fairly normal, and it did for a while, until about 2068. To find out exactly what happened, please join us next time in Episode Three of Tomorrow!
pretty cool story!
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