The IMF in short is like a loan shark with a smile, no matter how enticing the offer is, the smart thing is to never accept it. The only issue is ruling classes around the world have no problem accepting it. Even if it is never ever in the best option for the public (or maybe that's why they accept it).
The best part of this new International is the lack of exploitation in its very structure. Also it's ten times more competent in actually fixing countries (that's pretty half the quest in the other timeline).
How strong are the leftists movements are in the Caucuses mountains? Does anyone know? I feel like we can woo Armenia and Georgia into our rule if we're smart. Azerbaijan is run by a corrupt imperialist thug. Turkey is full on self-preservation mode with the UAR nearby, so it's not going to funnel weapons.
How strong are the leftists movements are in the Caucuses mountains? Does anyone know? I feel like we can woo Armenia and Georgia into our rule if we're smart. Azerbaijan is run by a corrupt imperialist thug. Turkey is full on self-preservation mode with the UAR nearby, so it's not going to funnel weapons.
I really want to see what kind of arguments will be made against and for the UAR here.As well as studies of why the UAR turned out better than the USSR.
I do think this might be better as a world merge though so that the alternate US Ann's Germany and Japan would be players as well.
I know its a little early with bush still in his second term, but with the uar existence i was thinking about who migth be the republican canidate be for 2008.
Mccain migth still be frontrunner, but there also gingrich, bachman, whitlam, hell maybe the ron paul migth have a shot.
@StarMaker764 - so where exactly is this modern Iskandaria located again and so we're looking at something like 75 million people in this super metropolis?
"We should allow the UAR to join the UN" is actually the opinion of many US foreign policy heads and advisors; while they acknowledge that a UAR with a permanent security council seat would immediately seek to subvert and hijack the organisation for its own end (and has a big chance of succeeding) this option is preferable to a completely out of control UAR running around making its own international order to directly challenge the western rules based order.
Only problem is that the UK isn't budging on the matter and the fact that even if the UAR joins the UN there is nothing stopping them from doing option B as well.
Its December 15 2002 actually and I picked because its more fun imo to go for dates that happen between major events, after things have already been set in motion. Though I admit I was tempted to make the ISOT happen immediately after 9/11.
@StarMaker764 - so where exactly is this modern Iskandaria located again and so we're looking at something like 75 million people in this super metropolis?
Same location as OTL and has a population of 44 million if you take the entire metropolitan district into account (Alexandria proper has a pop of about 15 million).
Same location as OTL and has a population of 44 million if you take the entire metropolitan district into account (Alexandria proper has a pop of about 15 million).
"Islam without Socialism is like a house without a occupants"—unknown, often attributed to sheikh Ahmed el Zarkway
On paper the UAR was a majority Muslim nation by a thin margin, a fact that never failed to be mentioned by many Americans for whom the UAR was a monstrosity that aroused both the long-present anti-communist sentiment of the US and its more recently inflamed Islamophobia like some perfect enemy for freedom synthesized in a lab.
On the ground however, to call the UAR a Muslim country would both be an oversimplification and a sign of ignorance of the sheer complexity of religiosity in the republic's society, one that defied simple explanation and standardization.
As a start there was the simple fact that being "Muslim" could mean anything from being a cosmist who believes that spreading to the stars is Allah's holy mission for mankind, a Bektashi who sees no problem in drinking alcohol or consuming pork, an animist who considers all things as bearing the essence of the divine and worthy of respect if not worship, a neo-Muzzelite, a revolutionary Shia who considers the concept of the state as heresy, or a simple bog standard vanilla Sunni Muslim who also believes firmly in the protection and equality of sexual minorities and everything in between and then some.
All of which is to say that Islam from the world of the long march was a wholly different beast than the one the inhabitants of the Disaster of Wahhabism timeline would have practiced and known.
Indeed Islamic religious authorities such as Al-Azhar and the Clerics of the holy cities would have doubtlessly suffered heart attacks and strokes at seeing just what the UAR considered Islam and no doubt would have denounced the entire population as kuffar, mushrikeen, and all manner of nasty things (and Tehran would certainly pick up the slack in that department) had they still been around and not replaced by far more open-minded counterparts. It was that last fact combined with the quasi-miraculous nature of the Wamda that would unleash a tsunami on the wider Islamic world.
For decades since the triumph of the arch-reactionary house of Saud and its conquest of Mecca and Medina, Wahhabism and its extremist fundamentalist interpretation of the word Allah would slowly but surely become normalized and spread across the Islamic world, growing in strength and legitimacy alongside the Saudi monarchy that breastfed them with its seemingly limitless supply of money; as centuries of divergent theologies, heterodox traditions, and enlightened beliefs were ground down and homogenized by armies of sheiks and Imams spreading from thousands of Saudi-sponsored Madrasas sprouting everywhere from Albania to Indonesia and even in Taiwan and the United States, and it was no coincidence that the rise of violent borderline fascist organizations often followed in their wake, whether they be the Boko Haram, the Taliban or Al-Qaeda.
In another world such a process might have gone on indefinitely, spawning ever more terrorist groups in every corner of the Islamic world that each tried to outdo the other in terms of who could be the most vicious murderous hypocrite, but the Wamda had caused the process to grind to a halt in an instant.
Suddenly the entire ecosystem of Islamist fundamentalism, from its schools to its terror cells, had lost the billions of dollars and dinars in aid that had been its lynchpin, along with thousands of scholars, material and patronage networks that had formed the backbone of its strength and organization. For the likes of the Taliban and Boko Haram it was a disaster that would cripple them for years to come, for Osama Bin Laden and his organization it was a death blow that effectively ended the organization as a single coherent whole rather than a decapitated creature with its remaining limbs slowly decaying.
While this was going on, the wider Islamic world was going through what could only be called an existential crisis as many within and without the Republic struggled to make sense of the theological implications of the event. For the latter, the fact that a seeming act of Allah had seemingly placed the holiest sites of Islam under the rule of secular socialists was something many struggled to interpret; was this a test of their faith? A sign of the almighty being displeased with the Arab world? A punishment for the godless reds being cast out of their world? Or perhaps the Muslims of the world of a Free Pacific were meant to emulate the new Arabs instead? Was Hajj permissible or necessary in these circumstances?
On the Arab side, the debates and theological arguments were more subdued, as the initial shock and immediate emergency of readjusting to the new economic status quo took precedence, but as things settled into a new equilibrium, many were forced to confront the enormity of what had just happened and its implications, even as many reasoned that the Wamda was simply Allah tasking the Muslim masses of the Republic to liberate this world from the grip of Iblisian capitalism allowed to run wild without restraint.
Cairo/Alexandria and the new Washington consensus would begin to show interest in these debates as it became clear that the theological chaos of the Islamic world now presented a unique opportunity in the neo-Cold War for the former and a new headache to deal with for the latter, as the collapse of Wahhabism's support structure left an ideological vacuum that would grant a great deal of soft power to anyone who managed to fill it.
And the Republic was certainly keen on filling it once its internal affairs were in order, with nations with Muslim populations allied or at least friendly to the Middle Eastern giant soon seeing new madrasas springing up within their borders, only these ones spoke the words of Marx, Lenin and Nasser just as fluently as they spoke the words of Muhammed (PBUH), and soon informal "red madrasas" were popping up even in regions wholly hostile to the growing socialist bloc.
The US was not unaware or languid when it came to this new theatre of ideological warfare, but it was hardly in an ideal position to do much; the Americans were used to the rabidly atheistic Soviets as their main rivals and a socialist power eagerly sponsoring Hajj missions and printing out radical interpretations of the Quran, Bible and more was something it hardly expected or was prepared for, finding themselves having to rely on sponsoring counter-efforts headed by allied Islamic nations like Indonesia and Turkey for the time being, with varying levels of success.
But this would be hardly the biggest theological concern of America and its allies for the coming years..
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1. A lot of UAR marine conservation efforts and protected areas are currently under threat because of spillover from OTL's polluted waters
2. 40% of the average's red madrasas' activity is just debates over theory and theology
3. At least one CIA guy was fired and personally blacklisted by Bush for suggesting that the US try to free CAR POW from UAR prisons.
4. The 2004 Athens Olympics were delayed thanks to Greece being in no shape to hold them till 2006.
5. Related to the above the UAR is blacklisted and barred from participating in any olympic games due to several big name teams threatening to boycott if arab teams were allowed in due to their "flagrant cheating" and "encouragement of sexual harassment" by having "biological males" on female teams (you can see where this is going).
6. There are Italian fascists who are absolute Arabophiles and see the UAR as the true heir to the Roman Empire.
7. Luddye are seen by European fascists and neo-nazis as disgusting communist sterile perversions of European culture. American white nationalists conversely see them as the ultimate übermensch race
8. One bit of tension between the UAR and PRC is that the former refuses to hand over its captive Yangztee River Dolphin populations and so the latter has refused to loan any pandas to the UAR.
9. Ghaddafi is a big star wars fan
10. Kim Jong Il really wants to make a "juchified" version of TLM's Avatar but the DPRK's increasingly chaotic politics will not give him the chance to finish it.
I don't know if he'd have also backed the plot to free CAR prisoners from the UAR, but I think you could make a reasonable case that Joe Biden would be even more hawkish than Bush on the UAR if he ever becomes president and would be one of the most aggressively anti-UAR politicians in the USA.
I don't know if he'd have also backed the plot to free CAR prisoners from the UAR, but I think you could make a reasonable case that Joe Biden would be even more hawkish than Bush on the UAR if he ever becomes president and would be one of the most aggressively anti-UAR politicians in the USA.
Even Biden wouldn't have sanctioned the Aryan prisoners thing, but he would fully support the zionist bay of pigs style plan that Neo-Israel keeps badgering the US about.
10. Kim Jong Il really wants to make a "juchified" version of TLM's Avatar but the DPRK's increasingly chaotic politics will not give him the chance to finish it.
Can you imagine how annoyed George Lucas will be at the CIA after they put him under surveillance after receiving a very heartfelt fan letter from Ghaddafi?
6. There are Italian fascists who are absolute Arabophiles and see the UAR as the true heir to the Roman Empire.
7. Luddye are seen by European fascists and neo-nazis as disgusting communist sterile perversions of European culture. American white nationalists conversely see them as the ultimate übermensch race
Can you imagine how annoyed George Lucas will be at the CIA after they put him under surveillance after receiving a very heartfelt fan letter from Ghaddafi?
Can you imagine how annoyed George Lucas will be at the CIA after they put him under surveillance after receiving a very heartfelt fan letter from Ghaddafi?
