Chapter 15
The world of 2005 had polarized itself into virtually a lineup of the white versus the nonwhite races, a situation that had been developing for the best part of a century.
The buildup toward a final reckoning had gathered momentum in the early 1980s when, after a spasmodic series of clashes and coups among the emerging African nation-states, the white regimes in the South were finally overwhelmed and the continent began welding itself together into a closely knit alliance of anti-West, antiwhite African powers. In 1985, the Treaty of Khartoum cemented relationships between this bloc and the Federation of Arab Nations, popularly known as the Afrab Alliance, and marked the intensification of a joint economic campaign against the Western world. In the second half of that decade, Israel was overrun by Afrab armies, during the course of which tactical nuclear weapons were employed in the Sinai by both sides and the U.S. Mediterranean Fleet went into action. As a direct consequence of the war, forces from the American mainland invaded and occupied Cuba.
China had allied herself with the Afrab powers; a major East-West confrontation at that time was averted only by an unexpected attitude of moderation from Moscow. By 1990, the Persian Gulf states had sided with the China-Afrab consortium and from that time onward a never-ending series of border skirmishes and local wars continued along India’s eastern and western frontiers, ostensibly over disputed territories that were claimed by her neighbors on both sides. In the Far East, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia concluded mutual defense pacts to counter the spread of Chinese influence southward and eastward.
During all this time, the split in the Russian ranks that had first showed itself during the final Middle East War had widened progressively. European Russia, following the lead set by the Moscow government, embarked on a policy of a growing understanding with the West, while the Eastern Siberian Provinces retained a hard-line Marxist posture, aligned with that of China. By 1996, the Eastern Revolt had spread to Central Siberia, and regular Chinese forces were fighting alongside the rebels against the Moscow Army. The war reached its peak in 1999 and after that died down to a succession of skirmishes roughly along the line of the Urals. Siberia declared Vladivostok its new capital and moved rapidly from there toward full integration with the Afrab-China consortium, the conclusion of which process was proclaimed as The Grand Alliance of Progressive Peoples Republics in Canton in 2002.
European Russia, encouraged by the fruitful results of operating manned orbiting laboratories and lunar bases, developing nuclear-powered spacecraft, and staging a manned mission to Mars, all as joint ventures with the West, finally merged into the Federation of Europe that had been established in 1996. In 2004, an integrated command structure was established for the armed forces of America, the Australian Federation and the new, Greater Europe. Thus the Alliance of Western Democracies formally came into being.
The stage was thus set. Both sides possessed nuclear spacecraft, had achieved permanent lunar bases, and were deploying the latest in a long list of strategic deterrents—the Orbital Bombardment System, ORBS, consisting of swarms of orbiting fractional nuclear bombs that could be brought down at any point on Earth’s surface in minutes.
And then the news flashed round a tense world that Act One was beginning.
The unrest that had been smouldering in South Korea burst into flame all over the country, like the reappearance of a forest fire that had been festering in the roots. Within a few weeks an epidemic of riots, strikes, ambushes, and guerilla operations consolidated into a nationwide orchestration that left the Army with no coherent strategy to implement, no secure place for regrouping, and no way to turn. The Seoul government was deposed and replaced by the so-called People’s Democratic Assembly, whose first task in office was to appeal for aid to defend the populace against the continued oppressions of the regular forces that were still fighting. The Chinese divisions massed along the thirty-eighth parallel were quick to respond, and inside a matter of a few more days the takeover was complete.
Powerless to act in the face of such a widespread popular movement and left at a complete standstill by the speed at which these events had unfolded, the Australian and Japanese forces stationed in the country had played no active role. Ignominiously, under the stony stares of lines of heavily armed Communist combat troops, they lined up in front of the waiting air transports that would fly them to Japan.