History Strikes Back (TNO/TLM ISOT into OTL)

[StarMaker764]

"Socialism ought to come back"—francis fukuyama


The new millennium had heralded a new era in geopolitics.

The last decade had seen the demise of the USSR, the socialist juggernaut had been the victim of too many comprises too many delays, too many temporary solutions, too many deals with the devil, and too many old bitter men.

Its dying throes would shake the world as oligarchs and big men divided its still-writhing corpse, condemning millions even as others cheered for the death of the so-called last empire while all across the globe entire nations that had depended on Moscow now faced death and famine or kissing the ring of Washington while decades-long struggles were unmade by the loss of their patron.


The New Socialist Man was dead, and Homo economicus wasted no time in devouring his children as a whole system of debts, structural adjustments and international neocolonialism was now free to be unleashed on the entire world without mercy or restraint.

This was the age of the Pax Americana, as the Washington Consensus simply became the global norm, and the USA now stood as the world's first true undisputed hyperpower; its dominance unquestioned by anyone that mattered as the center of world culture, science, and of course capital.

The Titan of Liberty soon developed an ego that fit its new stature, so arrogant and self-assured that it felt no hubris in declaring that its way was the natural way for all mankind, that there was no alternative, and that resistance was futile.


And reality seemed to vindicate it: Yugoslavia would die horribly and painfully, The ANC was forced to bend its neck like a good dog and drop all the nonsense about economic equality and even China had accepted the power of the market and its transition into liberal capitalism was inevitable.


Sure there were a few stubborn holdouts but they were isolated bastions and none of them mattered in the grand scheme of things, they would eventually bend the knee or be left behind by the march of progress and doomed to rot.


The September 11 attacks did little to change that perspective, they merely served to transform the cool self-assured confidence of America into bombastic jingoistic assertiveness as the awesome military might of a continental nation was turned on the mountain nation of Afghanistan, merely the first target in a crusade against a so-called Axis of Evil that would set the stage for decades of war, insurgency, and genocide in the Middle East while the rest of the world slowly slept walked its way into one global disaster after another as the world turned to an oven while no one cared to do anything save suck whole nations dry to raise profits just a little more with no end to the madness in sight


At least that is the course the world was headed on the night of December 14th. But as the new day came, it would quickly become clear that something had gone wrong.


Turkey was among the first to realize something was up when their borders became overwhelmed with hundreds of thousands of people nonchalantly trying to cross the borders, some clearly foreigners but others spoke Turkish while all presented documents for nations that did not exist. Spain, Iran, Ethiopia, and many African nations would experience the same thing along with seeing entire networks of rails and well-paved roads stop just at their borders, often with derailed trains and caravans of buses or trucks demanding to know what was going on.


British ships docking at Malta found themselves surrounded by patrol ships bearing a strange flag that none had seen before but was unmistakably Arab, a flag that Italians going to Sicily were seeing flying proudly on what was yesterday just another part of their country but now looked utterly alien and unrecognisable while menacing naval ships now roamed what had been their territorial waters.


The Suez Canal would become the scene of a kafkaesque comedy as hundreds of ships were blocked at the entrance, their paperwork and identification unrecognised by the confused authorities.


American army staff would initially panic as entire bases across the African horn and the Arab world went silent all of a sudden, and the CIA was thrown into disarray as much of its networks throughout the Middle East had seemingly vanished into thin air.

Planes making their way to or from the Arab World or Israel would find themselves confused by messages and signals from airports that did not exist, and confusion turned into fear as military planes appeared to escort them when they weren't shot down outright

People across the world were suddenly unable to contact their loved ones through mobiles, entire companies suddenly were unable to reach any of their branches or assets.

In the Middle East itself, an entire nation was cut off from the world it knew, border towns now found themselves seeing unfamiliar sights and their neighbors seemingly gone, and millions of tourists, travelers, and nomads now found themselves cut off forever from the homes and countries they knew and loved and instead trapped in a world that was so radically different yet all too familiar at the same time while industries now faced the looming shock of being cut off from well-established exchange networks.


It would take hours before a clear picture emerged for the leaders of the world, and even longer for the global masses to know exactly what had transpired, the nations of the Arab World: Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen along with the state of Israel, Malta and the island of Sicily had seemingly vanished from the world overnight, only to be replaced by a single United Arab Republic that had come from another world where the victory of the Third Reich ended in a world so ridden with disaster that Socialism emerged from the shadows to claim dominion over most of mankind.



By the act of some omnipotent entity the Post-Cold War Order was no more as the coming weeks, months and years would see the return of socialism to the world stage, smiling and bolder than ever before even as the world was once again set to be engulfed in war and strife as it adjusted to the new reality.


Not so long ago, the capitalists had seen fit to declare that History had ended…


| And it appears History took that personally |

---

A/N: Greetings folks, after a lot of interesting discussions on the TLM discord and my muse's constant nagging I have decided to give in and do a TLM ISOT just for the fun of it.

Now there are a few things I should make clear:

1. This TL is merely a side gig and the main TLM quest TL will have absolute priority in terms of updates
2. This TL is further along than the main quest line but any information revealed in it about events pre-1988 should not be taken as canon for the main quest, any details about post-1988 events will be deliberately vague and subject to change.
3. Omakes are encouraged.

With that out of the way, hope you enjoy this new mad world I have created.

 

[StarMaker764]

"The revolutionary war is a war of the masses; only mobilizing the masses and relying on them can wage it."—Mao Ze Dong

It was impossible, it defied everything known about the material universe and its rules, it was something that defied even all but the most absurd and bizarre religious conventions.

But it happened.


Somehow, the 500 million souls and territory of the United Arab Republics had been plucked clean from their original Earth and transported to a wholly different timeline; similar to their own in many ways but so radically different as to be alien to everything they knew.


No one knew what caused this event, that which would later become known as the Wamda (Arabic for flash), was it some quirk of physics that humanity didn't know existed or the act of Allah or some other powerful cosmic entity? None could be certain.


What was certain is that the United Arab Republic was now stranded from the rest of the Comintern and trapped in what seemed to be a cruel mirror image of its own world, where communism had seemingly been vanquished a decade ago and now unfettered Schlafyite Capitalism was allowed to run wild across the world, devouring all in its path and leaving nations in ruin.


There was chaos and confusion in the earliest hours and days of the Wamda, as trains had to make sudden stops before derailing on tracks that no longer existed, planes nearly crashed, millions of non-UAR citizens, nomads and travellers were left without homes to return to while millions more were cut off from their communities forever. Meanwhile, vital International infrastructure and trade networks were now severed and left standing alone as well.

Indeed, in its original TL, the communist world economy has been a magnificent titanic construct of millions of rail lines, thousands of nuclear ships and uncountable power cables covering 90% of the globe all in service of a mostly harmonious globalized economy. And now the UAR was cut off from all that, to say nothing of the Comintern itself whose assets were now reduced to what it had in Alexandria and the UAR proper, the mammoth collective now separated from its body.


Now power outages, food shortages and other calamities seemed set to befall the UAR, indeed many outside observers (once they had fully understood what just happened) would reassure the world that the UAR would buckle and crash under the strain of all these problems and the challenge of handling over 35 million foreigners now trapped inside it, the USSR had after all collapsed in far less extreme circumstances, soon the course of history would correct itself they said.

But the United Arab Republic was not the moribound, insecure, elitist and stagnant Soviet Union they knew. It was a dynamic, adaptable and prosperous nation that had survived the rigors of a world where the Axis powers had stampeded across all things decent for decades, and so to the people of the Middle East this event was another obstacle on the long march, and they would face it accordingly.

Within a day of the event, communities organized to contain the fallout and President Tarek Afif appeared in a broadcasted that was transmitted in Cybernet, TV and Radio explaining the unnatural event that had happened and the UAR's current situation, announcing that the Supreme Majlis* had voted to authorize the activation of the Republic's emergency protocols for this unprecedented crisis.

The old Labor Army conscription codes would be activated as city councils, town governments and rural communes coordinated with Cairo and Alexandria to recruit every engineer and technician they could find to build or repurpose power plants, solar panels, sewage pipes and irrigation systems while millions volunteered their manual labor as the Republic rushed to fill in the energy deficit and remodel their infrastructure for self-sufficiency.

Workers worked hand in hand with cyberneticists for hours on end in factories, farms and other production centers all across a 5 million square kilometer zone to recalibrate and update the cybernetic systems to account for the new conditions and resource paucity.


Fleets were dispatched to provide supplies and protection to the far flung islands of Comoros, as border towns and cities rapidly mobilized their militias to protect against any possible threats, while newly homeless and nationless people were directed to repurposed hotels, bunkers, youth centers, communal houses or rapidly constructed camps. Millions of pre-fabricated buildings would be constructed all across the vast breadth of the Middle East to provide dignified housing and living conditions to the UAR's new citizenry (the UAR supreme Majlis would vote unanimously to grant citizenship to all displaced persons within its borders).

The Comintern would of course lend its aid; even in its vastly reduced capacities it still commanded a small state's worth of resources and all would coordinate seamlessly with the UAR's opposite organs to help in any way they could, whether it be IRB support or helping out in infant crèches.


Millions of pamphlets and manuals would be printed or published online, seed vaults opened as thousands of agriculturists and horticulturist would be dispatched far and wide to expand communal urban gardens and greenhouses while the state worked with breakneck speed to expand pre-existing food production, swelling desalination capacity and opening up food stores and emergency provisions that had been reserved for the event of nuclear war while every reasonable avenue of increasing calorie production was pursued.


The Republic's people would find certain luxuries like chocolate, mammalian meat and spices harder to obtain and more rationed but they would not starve; their daily calorie and Macro/Micronutrient intake would not even drop even to the disbelieving eyes of many outside and even inside observers.


But what really stupefied and terrified western analysts was not so much the scale of the UAR's efforts so much so as the sheer level of willing popular and democratic involvement of the average person throughout it all.

Even as the UAR's state machine mobilized in what could only be described as a war-effort, debates and discussions continued to take place across the municipalities of the vast Union, workers would continue participate and provide input for every project and set their own hours as deemed necessary for the situation, not merely receiving directives from above but being consulted and deliberated with.


Even more shocking was the Wamda displaced new citizens wasting no time in organizing themselves into unions, committees and collectives to help whenever possible and seemingly without instruction or direction save themselves.


Even children as young as 9 would help out and self organize into networks to do relatively light work like distributing flyers, helping with gardening efforts or simply providing moral support and encouragement for their parents in a display of just how differently socialized the UAR's people were.

And this was all voluntary. No commissars, no NKVD and no gulags in sight (for now the anti communists always added), and despite expectations, there was no great flood of dissidents and refugees eager to escape the totalitarian regime (and what escapees that did arrive were rarely marketable).


And of course there was the sheer surrealism of all this occurring in the Middle East, a region characterized by corrupt police states, medieval backwaters and decadent archaic monarchies was now a model of efficiency that rivaled liberal western societies.


Even more befuddling was the lack of ethnic conflict; sure there were issues, disputes and tensions at times as there would be in any society, but where MENA was once associated with sectarianism and religious intolerance now there were Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Bahai, Yezidis, Arabs, Kurds, Amazigh, Maronites, Turks/Anatolians, Europeans, Jews and more all working together side by side in a display that was out place even in the "enlightened west" (what with the islamophobic and racist backlash promoted by 9/11).


Images of Muslim imams and rabbis officiating weddings side by side while Catholics and Hindus cheered on made it clear that this was no State Atheist hellhole and whatever hopes some held of a 1991 repeat were mercilessly dashed as the UAR only demonstrated its vitality as a society unprecedented in the history of its new adoptive dimension.

It seemed that the neocons and liberal crusaders who dreamed of a clash of civilizations had their dreams granted in a way they could never have imagined or wished for as a new Cold War would soon engulf a world barely recovering from the last one.


For while the UAR primary concerns were internal for the moment, this didn't mean neglect of foreign affairs…

|As Britain and Italy would learn the hard way |

*Arabic word for Soviet or Council

---

A/N: big thanks to @nachtingale for betareading.

 

[StarMaker764]

"The Cold War isn't thawing; it is burning with a deadly heat. Communism isn't sleeping; it is, as always, plotting, scheming, working, fighting."—Richard M. Nixon

The first to learn about the UAR's sudden insertion into the world were the nations that bordered the former Arab world, and to say that the Wamda had completely caught them off guard and threw their political structures into disarray was akin to saying water is wet.


This is most bluntly obvious in Mauritania, or rather whatever is left of it as the nation's capital, half its territory and more than a third of its population vanished into thin air and were replaced with the UAR's Far western provinces.

In one fell swoop the poor, sparsely populated nation was left bereft of its central government and the majority of its economy, while tens of thousands of Mauritanians would have to contend with the fact that their loved ones who happened to be in the wrong side of the Wamda were now gone forever, in some egregious cases entire communities were bisected in half and left as some Frankensteinian joke where shanty towns and ramshackle villages were now suddenly attached to thriving communes, caravan cities and dazzling displays of infrastructural might.


The new borders would be scenes of chaos and skirmishes for the next few weeks, as a few delusional army units attempted to assert control over the seeming interlopers and were easily repelled, while hastily assembled UAR border units attempted to handle the crowds of Muritanians who either demanded an explanation or entry into what had been their country's land not so long ago, their fear of the unknown overcome by awe at the sheer abundance and affluence displayed by the new state, the city of Nouakchott alone being a bustling Atlanto-Saharan mega-city whose diverse population outnumbered the entirety of Mauritania's pre-Wamda population.


A functional prosperous state would have been irrecoverably crippled by such a loss, and Mauritania was neither of those things when the Wamda happened, meaning it was hardly surprising when government and military remnants quickly fractured into petty fiefdoms and warlords even as neighboring states began circling the carcass like vultures, all seeking its rich iron ore deposits.


Kenya, Mali, Niger, and Chad were luckily spared any territorial dismembering but the event would have drastic consequences for them as well, the ruling elites of each nation realized the sheer threat posed by the sudden appearance of a socialist superpower on the doorstep, one that vastly exceeded them in every possible metric, the sheer contrast being visible from outer space. For now, however, the immediate problem would be dealing with the loss of trade with North Africa and the derailed trains and convoys at their doorsteps, and the Arabs at least were picking up most of the slack on that front.


Ethiopia had even more reasons to be both scared and enraged at the UAR's unwanted arrival, the ancient nation was now surrounded by a veritable superpower where once only failed states and petty ones existed, and its dreams of becoming a regional power in East Africa were dashed and now having the existential fear of the UAR backing elements of the former communist regime or ethnic separatists, all while global economic collapse was dooming its tentative plans for recovery.


There was a silver lining at least, in the form of the Somali province of Lower Juba being cut off from the rest of Somalia by the Wamda, leaving a possible avenue to regain sea access if the Federal Democratic Republic played its cards right, with the small chunk of former Sudan to its west being another possible annexation target if the UAR's internal focus and distraction lasts long enough.


The DRC barely noticed the arrival of the UAR, the sprawling bleeding heart of Africa mired in one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history as the Second Congo War raged with no end in sight and the conflict devoured all facets of human life even if the course of the war would be altered significantly in the future. For now, though, the southern Sudanese borders of the Arab republic would find itself processing hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the inferno of endless war and carnage.


The Ugandans like the Ethiopians, however, would find their plans for gaining power in the region derailed by the Wamda, though they would see opportunity as well.


Outside of Africa and onto the plateaus and mountains of Asia, the UAR's appearance was no less unsettling.

Turkey once had all the making of a regional force and powerbroker in the Middle East, with its NATO membership, connections to Europe, and an industrialized economy and despite political uncertainty, the nation seemed poised to make its mark on the cradle of civilizations and beyond.

The 66 million-strong nation's status and position were altered irrecoverably when a colossal 550 million-strong juggernaut of a nation was plopped next door to it like some judgment from Allah, as Ankara now found itself in contest with a titan that stretched from the Atlantic to the Indian Oceans and an equal to the United States of America, rather than the bickering, corrupt and sickly Arab states that existed before.


Turkey may still be a shark among nations but the UAR is a killer whale and the shocks of the global economic recession that followed from the Wamda would only serve to rock the Anatolian nation further as Erdogan and his AKP see a chance to rise higher than ever in Turkish politics.


And they weren't the only ones, as the chaos of the initial transition began giving way to clarity and it quickly became apparent that the UAR hosted a substantial Turkish diaspora or rather "Anatolian" and "Aegean" diasporas, only serving to worsen the headaches of the MIT, as hated words were making their comeback in public. Words like Socialism, Communism, PKK, and Ocalan.


It would be merely the first of many issues that would crop up between Ankara and Cairo.

Tehran's issues were hardly enviable either. Iran was on high alert with Bush's "Axis of Evil" and the war on terror making the Islamic Republic paranoid and rattled, especially after the Americans invaded and occupied Afghanistan.

Now it had to deal with the nightmare scenario of another ideologically hostile continent-spanning superpower and the UAR was a far more dangerous threat on every possible level.


For one the UAR shared a long big fat border with Iran and memories of the Iran-Iraq war and its horrors still simmered within the minds of many Iranians, even after it became clear that the UAR was not seeking territorial expansion at the moment.

More insidious was the Republic's unabashed commitment to international communism, and unlike the atheist and alien USSR, the UAR's leftism was organic and in sync with local cultures, with its tradition of revolutionary Islamic theology being a direct competitor and threat to the Islamic Republic's own tradition of Shiite political Islamism.


The long-standing Iranian diaspora, both communist and progressive, in the UAR would be another thorn in the side of the Shiite Republic, and their continual criticism and rabble-rousing of the Iranian public would continue to be a hot point of contention between Cairo and Tehran for years, as would Iran's attempts at rebuilding its network of proxies in the region.


But if the two non-Arab Islamic nations had unfriendly cold reactions to the Wamda, the reaction of Europe was only one point below apocalyptic rage.


For Italy and Spain, they were hit with the dual shocks of territorial losses and the Oil Crash (caused by the sudden disappearance of the oil gulf) all coupled with the unthinkable scenario of having a socialist power at their doorstep, as if the old USSR was brought back bigger and meaner than ever before, only separated from the bastions of Western Europe by the Mediterranean.



Spain's loss was somewhat manageable, with a few African enclaves but Italy had lost Sicily which represented a pillar of its economy and 5 million Italians simply evaporated in one full stroke.


Days after the initial chaos and the confusion it became clear that not only was a part of Western Europe under communist rule but its inhabitants had been so brainwashed and brutalized that they recoiled at the mere mention of Italy.


Fear spread across the populace, quickly evolving into grief and then anger as protests erupted throughout Italy, and soon protests turned to riots as the country's far-right took full advantage of the pandemonium and Italy's Muslim and minority communities would bear the brunt.


Prime Minister Berlusconi was being pressured to do something and quick, and a man who had built his political credentials on Islamophobia and right-wing populism he could not negotiate with Cairo from his current position of weakness, let alone demand the return of Sicily as many of his people called for him to do, he needed a show of strength before anything could be done.


Luckily he found an unlikely ally….


| In the form of fellow Prime Minister Tony Blair |

 

[StarMaker764]

"Power without principle is barren, but principle without power is futile."—Tony Blair

The Mediterranean crisis was an event that could only happen due to a mixture of unprecedented events, European political insecurity, and a lack of trusted communication between all parties.

One must understand the political realities of the United Kingdom to understand why events played out as they did.

The United Kingdom has exited the Cold War on the winning side, though it hardly felt like it for some. The Sun had set on the British empire, which went from covering 25% of the world to being a measly collection of tiny islands and outposts scattered across the world's oceans outside the isles.

The Falklands War had proved to many that the British were still a force to be reckoned with but overall Britain was feeling insecure in its new position as merely another player in the American-dominated world order, no matter how much it wanted to pretend that a special relationship with its most powerful former colony gave it a privileged position.

The hurricane of neoliberal reforms implemented by the Iron Lady certainly did not help at all, leaving entire communities decimated and social services gutted as the gospel of the Free Market became the law of the land and a status quo of financialization and immiseration was beginning to set in.

When Labor was propelled into power under Blair's leadership, some had hoped that it would single a change or even a reversal from the previous years of neoliberalism only to have such hopes dashed by Blair's turn to "New Labor" solidifying the Thatcherite reforms as the baseline from which all British political thought must pivot towards and orbit, even as the Prime Minister envisioned a multiculturalist UK at the heart of global finance and innovation, a youthful vibrant nation arising from slumber and ready to claim its place in the brave new world of pax-Americana as a defender of liberty and democratic values across the globe.

And then the Wamda happened.

In the blink of an eye, the world that the Britons had attempted to adapt to was simply no more as the geopolitical board was smashed beyond recognition.

Markets across the globe crashed as the simple reality that hundreds of billions of dollars simply vanished from the world economy, and with them disappeared an unthinkable amount of investments, business assets, corporate branches, and more; it was a blow that was wholly unprecedented, and making matters worse was the simple fact that the majority of the world's top oil producers simply didn't exist anymore, replaced by an entity that stood as a mockery of all the new Britain stood for.

"There was no alternative" the Thatcherite dogma goes but here was one, gigantic and terrifying, squatting across an area of the globe that stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf and from the Savannas of Africa to Sicily.

And it was that last part that would be crucial.

NATO was already thrown into disarray by the loss of its regional headquarters but the Arab Republic was in an advantageous position to cause chaos to global trade long term thanks to its control of the Suez Canal, the African side of Gibraltar, Malta, and Sicily, the latter two allowing it to essentially cut the Mediterranean in half at any time, which for the British meant losing access to their territories in Cyprus which may lead to the already ephemeral remnants of the once glorious empire being reduced even more.

London was staring at the possibility of immense social unrest as the true scope of the economic crisis and implications of the Wamda set in, already many areas were becoming engulfed in protests turned riots and pogroms against Muslims and non-whites in general and the government knew it was only gonna get worse even if the market stabilized eventually.

Whitehall would thus begin considering drastic measures to outpace the unrest, wanting a victory to boost its image and legitimacy to be in a better position to handle the coming fallout.

And what better victory than a decisive military one?

It seemed insane at first but the more it was considered the more it seemed logical.

The United Arab Republic was vast, true, but it was an Arab regime nonetheless, and has history not shown that behind the bluster Arab armies were utterly corrupt and incompetent? Were these not the same armies that were humiliated over and over again by the now-late tiny Israel? Had Saddam's forces proven themselves utterly worthless even with the extensive support against the Iranian regime?

It was deemed unlikely that the UAR's military was any different, if it was then it was only because now it would combine the worst of the Arab and Soviet armies, and although the UAR was quick to announce its supposed nuclear capabilities to the world, many remained skeptical of the veracity of that claim as they did with much of the information coming about the world of the "Long March".

An Axis victory resulting in most of the world becoming communist? A segregationist nuke-happy US? The tsars returning to rule Russia only to be overthrown by communists again? A successful operation Sealion? All of this reeked of unimaginative communist propaganda meant to mask a more unpleasant reality and less potent capabilities. The UAR's nuclear capabilities were judged to be on Iran's current level.

Of course, it helped that the British top brass was eager to believe anything that justified a military intervention, sensing the chance for a sequel to the brilliant victory in the Falklands and cementing Britain's place on the world stage, ignoring more moderate voices that suggested a more cautious approach.

These hopes were bolstered by the knowledge that the Italians were planning their own operation to "liberate" Sicily from the Islamic-communist yoke, under similar reasonings but driven by even greater desperation and delusion, as Blair's Italian counterpart Berlusconi was facing an even more dire domestic situation with the enemy practically at his doorstep, and Il Cavaliere was determined to do something, anything to not look weak.

Soon Rome and London would hatch a plan together, resolving to attack the Arab giant now while the situation was still chaotic in the Middle East and before anyone could react to their actions. The plan was for the Italians to attack and liberate as much of Sicily as possible while a British naval task force would secure Malta, with the intent of at least having boots on the ground during future talks to present a stronger negotiating position if the islands weren't seized outright.

The French and Spanish were also approached in hopes of getting them to participate but both Romance nations declined to make any military contributions, favoring a more cautious approach. Spain would give its permission for British naval forces to pass through its territorial waters though.

The Americans of course were aware that London and Italy were mobilizing for something but the White House had assumed that this was merely an effort at intimidation rather than an actual full-out assault. President Bush would communicate with both prime ministers on the eve of the operation and gave hints of his approval not knowing the full scope of the plan.

Of course, the UAR didn't know any of this, it was a stumbling colossus left marooned in an unfamiliar ocean, hastily trying to stay afloat above the waves and wary of a world that was a mockery of everything it stood for.

And thus when the first reports came of unidentified military vessels brazenly entering its territorial waters one week into its existence in this brave new world….

| It reacted in the only way it knew |

 

[StarMaker764]

"Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't."― Margaret Thatcher


It should have been a surefire thing.


For the British, Operation Hospitaller was meant to strike a blow that would demonstrate Britain's true might to the whole world and cement its position in the Pax-Americana while stripping the veil from the UAR and letting the world see it for what it truly was.

For the Italians, it was meant to bring order to the utter chaos of the Wamda and establish a new Mediterranean status quo before the situation deteriorated further.

For Silvio Berlusconi, it was an opportunity to demonstrate to everyone the veracity of his claims of being an equal to Jesus Christ, possessing an absurdly large brain, and to being cursed to win all the time.

For Tony Blair, it was his chance to secure his place in British history as one of its most memorable and important figures, whose actions would be taught and studied for generations afterward as an example for all future British politicians and leaders.

And indeed Operation Hospitaller achieved all of these things, just not in a way any of these parties wanted.

Disregarding Arab warnings, a British naval task force would brazenly enter the Arabian waters in their dash towards Malta, composed of the best ships the Royal Navy could field and most of the UK's remaining seafaring might, its commanders believing this would be their chance at quick and easy glory in the name of Queen and Country.

One moment the British fleet was sailing gloriously to war and one moment and a flash later it was simply no more as the Arab republic let the nuclear genie out of the bottle for the first time in its new home world since WW2.

Where there once was a flotilla there was now a scene that would not be out of place in a description of Johnam, as men were vaporized in an instant while hot shrapnel and boiling water saturated the aid, while others were cooked alive as their ship hulls became atomic furnaces in an instant.

Those unfortunate enough to still be alive on partially intact ships would be exposed to amounts of radiation that the human body was never meant to withstand and died slow painful agonizing deaths.


Their Italian counterparts would suffer a fate no kinder the second they entered UAR waters as their best and brightest of the Marina Militare were pulverized in atomic fire and their ships reduced to irradiated scraps descending to the depths of Mare Nostrum, becoming just a collection of shipwrecks in a sea already full of them.

Their illustrious liberation of Sicily had ended without them ever setting foot on the island, the Italian naval forces having opted to not strike directly across Messina in fear of the UAR inflicting damage on the Italian mainland during the fighting, instead taking a longer route to attack Palmero directly.

Though the radioactive fallout from the tactical nukes would disperse relatively quickly, their political fallout would reshape the world and influence global politics for years to come.

Operation Hospitaller was an unmitigated disaster for the Anglo-Italians, in one fell swoop they had lost some of their best naval assets while inflicting no losses on the enemy, a failure of such magnitude that it could not be hidden or covered up.

The governments in Rome and London had revealed their full plans to the world shortly before the nuclear strikes, posing them as liberating European lands from communist dictatorship and restoring unrestricted access to the Mediterranean Sea.

The revelation was already controversial at the time, even to the normally intervention-happy George Bush but when news started trickling in of what transpired since then a political maelstrom would be unleashed across the entirety of NATO.

The armed forces of Italy and Britain were thrown into utter chaos by the sudden disappearance of so many vital assets, and when news reached the civilian population the previous tensions and protests turned positively apocalyptic.

In Rome, Berlusconi had made the worst mistake any right-wing leader could make, he had shown himself weak and incompetent. Italy's largest cities soon became hotbeds of chaos as protestors and people from across the entire political spectrum came out in droves to express their anger, hate, and fear in the most loud and destructive ways possible while the police struggled to maintain some semblance of order.

The Italian parliament itself looked as if it would erupt into open conflict at any moment as the sheer scope of the situation overwhelmed it, blame scorn, and insults being thrown at and by all sides even as the government scrambled to respond, the only thing everyone agreeing on was that Berlusconi was the main culprit behind this catastrophe, and the man who thought himself equal to Napoleon was only kept in power for as long as it took for an agreeable replacement to be found.

His British counterpart fared little better.

Tony Blair had hoped to become the next Thatcher, with Malta as his Falklands War, but now he found himself in the middle of a Suez Crisis and he was Eden reborn, only there were no tactical victories to show for it or American-Soviet interference to blame.

Blair was already controversial for his abandoning of Labor principles in favor of adopting Tory agendas and programs as well as his Warhawk tendencies in the name of spreading democracy across the world only to become a political pariah overnight, facing outrage, rage, and hatred from all sides of the spectrum.


His critics from the left were only vindicated and emboldened by his failure, his former supporters in the party now found his person as radioactive as the bombs themselves and distanced themselves from his failures even as they agreed with the spirit of what he sought to achieve. The Tories of course were happy to leap at the chance to crush their rival, and a vote of no confidence was all but certain now.

Blair would also receive a wrathful frenzied call from his White House counterpart, President Bush unleashing one of the most ear-blistering rants in human history as his mind attempted to make sense of the geopolitical shitstorm Whitehall had just unleashed and what had possessed the Europeans to launch an attack on a possibly nuclear state on their own.

When the British people learned about what transpired, terror and panic spread across the isles like wildfire, and it wasn't long before they turned to hate and rage, especially when news came of Arab/Comintern naval groups skirting dangerously close to European waters.

The StWC movement was galvanized as the peace advocates were vindicated beyond their wildest nightmares but their surge was minute compared to the rampages of recently radicalized right-wing hooligans across the nation, who assaulted minority communities with no mercy or hesitation, leaving dozens dead and hundreds injured. The economic crisis that Blair hoped to get ahead of was now made infinitely worse as war panic only served to worsen its effects and all but ensure the United Kingdom was looking down the possibility of utter economic ruin.

All the while the US moved quickly in an attempt to salvage the situation and halt escalation, the neoconservative Bush administration finding itself in the damned awkward position of having to be the peacemaker and mediator for once (even the neocons had little desire for a world of ashes), and with an Islamic communist government no less, Washington would even reach out to Beijing to join talks in an attempt to mollify the Arabs, even as the CPC struggled to make sense of what was going on in the other side of Asia.

Luckily for a world that spent 36 hours facing the renewed prospect of a Global Nuclear Holocaust, Cairo was more than willing to negotiate; it had little desire to escalate itself with its economy in chaos from the displacement and already having to put out many fires on the domestic front, and of course, the communists too were keen on not turning the world into a glowing lifeless rock.

The UAR has other reasons to be in a bargaining mood, it had displayed its power on the world stage with no losses and maintained its hold over the Mediterranean, and the attempted invasions have had the effect of shaking the UAR's population from its state of stupor, shock and depression from its severing from its global comrades as they were given purpose and reminded of the dangers that lay in this world, allowing survival instincts to kick in.

Of course, the United Arab Republic would be surprised when the capitalist bloc invited it to negotiate an end to the fighting and discuss peace terms, such gestures of diplomacy between various blocs being an almost extinct species back home.

Nonetheless, the socialist republic wasted no time in assembling a team of diplomats and negotiators for the task as the world looked with both fear and curiosity at the first moves in what was certain to be the next Cold War.

But things were hardly cool for Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi, whose ambitions and manias had driven them to try and reach the sun like Icarus only for their wings to burn….

| And fall straight to hell |

 

[StarMaker764]

"What is new about the emerging world order is that, for the first time, the United States can neither withdraw from the world nor dominate it."― Henry Kissinger

The Berlin summit was an event that would determine the course of the next twenty years.

It would be the first time the newly arrived United Arab Republic dealt with the dominant powers of this world on equal footing, and marked its true entry into international politics. For the new communist superpower, it would be a chance to gauge the stances and attitudes of their new geopolitical rivals (and witness a version of Berlin that wasn't a rotting corpse of a city).


For the other side, namely the humiliated Britain and Italy, along with their NATO allies led by the US acting as mediators, it was a chance to get a handle on their new geopolitical opponent and their diplomatic strategies; though the nuclear strikes were more than enough to give them an idea of what they were dealing with and just how warped international relations were in the world the newcomers came from.

For millions around the world, and many statesmen, they would watch the event with equal amounts curiosity and fear with a few even daring to have hope that the conference might somehow preempt a second Cold War when the world was still moving past the last one.

It was a foolish naive hope.


Though both sides agreed in principle on a ceasefire, problems started when the UAR raised the questions of war reparations and their ascension to the UN as a permanent security council member.

The UAR had demanded a relatively modest monetary amount, after all, their need for foreign currency was limited for outside trade, but the real problem was the demand for technological and industrial goods alongside the money, the Arabs seeking any advantage in bridging the gaps that existed between their technology and those possessed by the developed economies of this world. Additionally, Italy had to officially recognize Sicily as UAR territory.

The Italian side was furious at the idea of paying anything when they had already lost so much before and after the Mediterranean crisis, one diplomat even suggested that the UAR should be the one to pay reparations instead much to the anger of the republican diplomat and the frustration of his own side.

The British delegation was more diplomatic about the reparations but had made it clear that they would only agree to monetary compensation, and one at a much lower price than the UAR demanded, arguing that anything more would be ruinous to their already battered economy. They had also made it clear that they would veto any attempt by the UAR to enter the UNSC as a permanent member.

The first day ended without much being achieved other than both sides becoming more indignant at each other, and the US would be forced to intervene behind the scenes to make its allies play ball even if publicly it maintained a position of being shocked and disappointed by its allies action but committed to supporting them and finding a peaceful resolution (any other position risked being seen as too sympathetic to the communists to the American and European publics).


The Americans wanted the talks to go smoothly and be done quickly, as they wished to broach the issue of the Suez Canal and the Bab il Mandab strait with the Arabs, both critical passages have been on lockdown since the Wamda and exacerbating the global economic crisis, their continued closure would be a disaster for international trade. Even worse was if the commies decided to use selective passage through their waters as a diplomatic tool to win allies over to its camp in the future.

Thus they made it clear to their allies that they would need to play ball come the next round of talks, and were warned of the consequences should they refuse to do so.

Unfortunately for the Americans, it was the turn of the UAR/Comintern diplomats to play hardball as they not only reiterated their demands of a permanent security council position and recognition but raised the amount of reparations required significantly which drew outrage from the opposing sides.

They would further dash American hopes when they made it clear that the UAR naval passages would remain closed in the near term to all except trusted allies of the Republic or fellow Communist International members (both categories that were empty at the time) and anyone else that wished passage would have to negotiate directly with Cairo. Threats of international sanctions and diplomatic isolation proved ineffective in getting the socialists to change their minds.

This impasse and slap to the face nearly doomed the talks, and even Germany was growing weary of being the host for long when it became clear UAR/Comintern diplomatic attaches were happy to use times between negotiations to give out pamphlets and booklets on socialism and organizing (and happening to mention the actions of many current prominent political figures in another time).

Eventually, cooler heads prevailed, even if nobody would get what they truly wanted.

The Italians and British sides were pressured enough by growing chaos in their homelands driven by fears of a continued conflict to give into the UAR's demands for reparations, at an amount that was lesser than their maximal demands but higher than their initial offer and it would be paid in purely monetary terms.

The UAR/Comintern diplomats for their part accepted that they wouldn't be getting anything more from their counterparts, not when their insistence on the closure of the Suez and Mandab drove the Americans to be more supportive of their allies in response. Cairo didn't have high expectations from the negotiations to begin with and was already eyeing more opportune diplomatic ventures elsewhere in the world.

Thus a ceasefire would be agreed to, even if Italy would continue to maintain that Sicily was part of its sovereign territory, and both sides would depart already planning on how to get the upper hand for the next round whenever it came.

The Berlin summit was a learning experience for both sides in the end. The UAR gained a glimpse of how international diplomacy worked in this "victory at the Urals" TL works and had demonstrated itself as capable of negotiating on equal footing with its great powers even if they were currently weakened by their permanent isolation from the rest of the Comintern.

Meanwhile, the Western powers would learn that the UAR may fly the red flag and praise Lenin but it was not the USSR reborn, not just another Great Power that cared about its interests foremost above any cause and perpetually behind in economic power, but a different, loud, proud and belligerent beast that had no illusion or desire for long-term co-existence.

A new Cold War was beginning and all the players were rushing to prepare themselves for the battles to come as the wheel of fate twisted and turned, disrupting the destiny of US hegemony and sentencing the world to a new age of freedom, terror, reaction and revolution as the American Eagle found itself challenged by its red Arab counterpart…

| And the sky was not big enough for them both |

 

[StarMaker764]

"When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done"― John Maynard Keynes


The global economy in the 2000s of the Screaming Eagle timeline was akin to a massive spider web of national networks, corporate interests, relations of extractions, debt wizardry, tax havens and many words that many people used but few truly understood.


This big international machine was born from blood and its gears greased by blood as Washington built this edifice of the free markets upon mountains of corpses, their only crime was daring to forget their place and dreaming of something better, such things were for white civilized Christians and no one else.


The riches and labor of tropical bloody Congo, abused Bolivia, sinking Bangladesh and many more would be subordinated to the will of corporations that strode across the globe uncaring of any laws of nations or men while those nations lucky enough to be on the winning side of history reaped the rewards of decades of neocolonialism as cheap goods flowed seemingly without end, millions slaving away and their futures denied in the name of endless mindless consumerism for people just as chained as they were, even if their bonds were made of gold rather than lead.

But no system is perfect and one that had capital at its foundation was always doomed to meet chaos, mayhem and creative destruction that was capitalism's bread and butter.

The truth is that the likes of Kissinger, Nixon and the IMF founders were greedy heartless men but they were no fools and understood perfectly the limits of the economic order they were building and the need to keep capitalists on a leash at home even as they preached and forced the gospel of the free market down the throats of everyone else.

But the leaders that came after them had been raised as true believers, growing prosperous on the successes of the their predecessors, who had no qualms of introducing the beasts of immiseration and alienation on their own people with the ignorable death of communism only emboldening each successor to outdo those who came before when it came to slashing benefits and enclosing commons, for with the free market penetrating into every corner of the earth it had nowhere to go but inwards like a snake devouring its tail.

Left to its own the global finance system would have hit a crisis, maybe in a year or two or six but it would have happened naturally eventually.

The Wamda didn't give it the luxury of a natural crash.


In the blink of an eye, nearly 750 billion worth of GDP simply vanished from the world economy, along with billions more in international corporate assets and investments.


This would have been a disaster all on its own but the Wamda had also erased many of the world's oil producers and besides many nations that were either key links in global production chains or lucrative markets to sell goods to. And the cherry on top was the crisis of global commerce as two key shipping nodes were now blocked to all ships for the foreseeable future.


Any one of these on its own would have been been the economic equivalent of a tsunami, all three together and you might as well have dropped a nuclear bomb on Wall Street.

The physical effects were immediate as long car/truck convoys formed outside gas stations in a repeat of the 70s while people would wait in long lines for their stores and supermarkets to open only for them to be empty and fallow as shipments were massively delayed if they didn't outright vanish in the Wamda.


The financial effect took a bit longer but soon enough across the globe savings and pensions were wiped, bubbles popped, companies were bankrupted and economies free-falled in a cascading effect as one country's economic crash exacerbated and worsened the other.


And the US as the world's largest economy only naturally suffered the most dramatic downturn as millions of Americans suddenly went from precariously middle class to just precarious; the suicide rate in the states being one of the few things on the upswing in the initial stages of the new recession.

The only silver lining was that fewer people were inclined to blame capitalism or their own governments for the immediate crisis than they normally would be, for the Wamda was something that no one could have realistically predicted or prepared for (something that was emphasized by government officials and free market economists repeatedly).


But this didn't mean the people weren't filled with anger, fear, confusion and despair as many saw their livelihoods shattered and their lives ruined by events beyond their control producing unbearable helplessness. They needed an outlet and Islamophobia was already the prevailing mood across Europe and North America and only compounded by the Mediterranean crisis, it was easy to see who would be the scapegoat.


Starting from Britain and Italy, mob attacks on Muslim communities and mosques would become a near daily occurrence across the US, Canada, Australia and Europe with beatings, knife attacks and outright shootings reaping a bloody toll, often even against communities that just happened to look Islamic such as Sikhs, with the British situation not helped by the sudden death of Queen Elizabeth from a heart attack shortly after a meeting with Blair.


There were of course just as many instances of people refusing to give into blind xenophobia, with neighbors and communities rallying to the defense of their Muslim peers, family and friends while the street fighting anti fascist left sprang into action after an initial period of confusion and uncertainty as old battles between the far left and far right replayed themselves in the 21st century, though the burgeoning ANTIFA fighters found themselves facing both fascist hooligans and police forces that targeted them exclusively and the movement across Europe was a shadow of its former self in the wake of the left's global malaise (and in Eastern Europe such groups were almost nonexistent).

One particular exception was Germany, were the antifa movement was largely sympathetic to Zionism and often actively participated in anti-Muslim protests and attacks.

All in all the Recession era was an inferno layered over an explosion and it would see the global status quo irrecoverably altered, for even as the fortunes of many countries fell, others saw opportunity amid all the wreckage and ruin if they played their cards right even as they struggled to keep their own houses in order.


| Loss and opportunity equally reign in Chaos |

 

[StarMaker764]

"Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent."― mao tse-tung

No nation is an island and even one as vast as the Republic couldn't hope to face the entire world on its own (even if it would fare better than most).

Cut off from the allies whose bonds were forged from blood and revolution, the Pan-Arab state would need to seek new allies in this world, even if the most realistic candidates were rather below the usual standards of the inhabitants of the long march world.

On paper there were five nations remaining that identified as communist by the time of the Wamda: the People's Republic of China, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cuba, and if one counts Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian state as a socialist then that brought the total number to six.

Arab-Cuban relations would be the least complicated of the bunch. Cuba had been the first country to officially recognize the United Arab Republic once the reality of the situation was confirmed and the UAR was quick to return the favor by recognizing the sole socialist bastion in the western hemisphere, allowing the process of establishing official diplomatic ties to begin.

Fidel Castro of the Dewey Denied timeline would welcome Arab and Comintern envoys while the Berlin conference was well underway, and greeting him at their head was none other than the Fidel Castro of the Long March Timeline, the picture of the inter-dimensional twins shaking hands becoming embalmic of the absurdities and oddities brought on by the Wamda (and directly linked to the suicide of at least one high ranking CIA operative), with a battle-scarred and eyepatch-wearing Ernesto Che Guvara almost looking normal in comparison as he lingered in the background.

Cuba had been a pleasant surprise for the UAR: though its economic capabilities and structure had been significantly degraded by the US regime of embargos and sanctions, the government structure was still recognizable as similar to the one from the other Cuba, simplifying a lot of things going forward.

It didn't take long for economic exchange and aid agreements to be made, and even with the UAR's current economic flux it still had enough to spare tonnes of resources and technical expertise to lend its long-isolated comrade, bolstered by the migration of thousands of displaced Cubans who were thankful that they still had a home country in this world (even if it wasn't the one they knew) and were eager to help it reach the heights they knew it was capable of, helping speed up Cuba's economic recovery.

With such generous aid, it was only natural that Havana would take certain moves to be more accommodating towards its new ally, such as removing old anti-LGBTQ laws from the books and legalizing civil unions, a move that made Cuba's ascension as an official Comintern member uncontroversial.

Of course, the United States was not at all pleased that its spiteful siege of the island that dared defy its will was broken with such little care and that its new mortal enemy had an outpost a stone's throw away from its borders, and made it clear that by breaking embargo restrictions the UAR was en route to become subject of sanctions itself; to which Cairo responded that the UAR and Cuba are sovereign states with the right to trade amongst themselves as they please and that the US would do well to not meddle in Comintern affairs.

Washington of course was outraged and insulted but for the time being could do little more than make vague threats and scaremonger about the Islamo-Bolshevik menace, with its economy falling faster than the swastika that crushed Albert Speer and its European allies within range of UAR nukes, it was best to accept this would be a losing battle.

Vietnam and Laos also proved open to pursuing close ties with the new colossus, the southeastern Asian states having retained their socialist governing structures for the most part even if sacrifices for the god of the free market had to be made, Vietnam found itself holding its nose and shaking hands with America to hold off the Chinese giant to the north.

The decision to pivot to Cairo was not just made out of mere inter-red camaraderie or friendship but was brought upon by several material factors namely the fact that global economic collapse hit the burgeoning economies of the SEA region hard and quite simply there was no one willing to provide as much generous aid as the UAR/Comintern if anyone was offering anything at all.

The predatory loan deals of the IMF and the accompanying SAPing were not enticing when a far more generous alternative existed, one that also guaranteed protection from China and was also willing to provide help in other ways as well, such as the removal of remaining munitions and mines left from the Vietnam War. The sheer difference between the UAR's disciplined and rigorous reaction to the threat of economic collapse compared to the languid confused reaction of the Western bloc.

Sealing the deal was America's abrupt return to its Cold War red scare mindset, turning the likes of Vietnam from a convenient ally to a potential dagger in the back, Washington's increasing hostility and suspicion towards the two nations (which in turn heightened suspicion from their non-red neighbors) ensured that what would have been the founding members of Indochina ran headlong into the welcoming arms of the Comintern, though they would be observers for the time being.

Of course, this new marriage was not a completely happy one, the veteran relatively conservative, and economic-minded cadres of the LPRP and CPV would butt heads with their much more idealistic, populist, and internationalist long March counterparts, who themselves were rather disappointed with the lack of will for a new Indochinese union and the relatively slow steps towards de-marketization.

Even so, both sides understood the need for cooperation as oil and other resources flowed into the Laotian and Vietnamese economies and the five-year plans of both countries had to be drastically rethinked and redesigned to account for the influx of aid and expertise.


Though Vietnam and Laos had been an underwhelming but welcome addition, one look at so called North Korea was enough for Cairo to know who would be its biggest headache in the coming years.

Whilst Cuba and the SEA nations were at least recognizable as socialist at some point in their past, the DPRK seemed to be an Economistesque caricature of communism brought to terrible life, being closer to a necrocratic cult dictatorship with a socialist aesthetic rather than anything Marx or Lenin would have conceived off (though it had many disturbing similarities to the post-Sejima Japan the UAR had left behind).

The Long Marchers were sympathetic to the conditions that led to the sorry state of the DRPK, the hellish bombing campaign by the US, and more recently the fall of the USSR and the economic isolation that followed (its opposition to the so-called state of Israel was another point in its favor), but that didn't and shouldn't justify all the things the Korean state had done.

For its part the DPRK was openly friendly to the Arab state, being the third nation to recognize it (South Africa being the second), and had been the one to seek out relations with Cairo rather than the other way around.

The decision to open ties was controversial within both the UAR and the Comintern, with both votes passing by narrow margins since many were not comfortable with enabling the Kim regime in any form, especially since its promises for reform were vague.

But ultimately pragmatic geopolitics won the day; the DPRK was a willing ally that offered a strategic position in East Asia that was too valuable to pass, and its industries possessed great potential if properly modernized. It would also be pointed out that the UAR would be in a better position to influence and shape North Korean politics towards a direction that was less…well whatever it was now and into a proper proletariatian democracy.

It would be the beginning of a fruitful yet tumultuous relation between Cairo and Pyongyang.

Notably many foreign observers and North Koreans themselves would be disturbed at how UAR/Comintern economic experts and advisors were utterly nonchalant about the economic ruin the DPRK was in and the state of its populace, many of them commenting that the DPRK was in very good shape compared to other disaster zones they had to work with.

And then came the elephant in the room, or rather Dragon.

The People's Republic of China had all the makings of an up-and-coming superpower with its growing industrial might and sprawling population, reform and opening up had brought much wealth and technological innovation to the country but also internal chaos, corruption and weakening of party organs as the CPC now grappled with the consequences of giving their socialism a dose of capitalism.

The UAR had arrived on the scene just as Jiang Zemin's premiership was nearing its end and the party was heavily debating what to do next with the new global status quo setting in.

The economic crisis was already causing problems for the PRC, its connections to Western markets making them dependent on their vitality just as the latter had become dependent on Chinese manufacturing, and a global downturn in turn meant less trade revenue for Beijing.

For the CPC leadership, the UAR was a mixed bag. On one hand, it was a socialist superpower that may be amenable to a mutually beneficial relationship and capable of providing a counterbalance to the US.

On the other hand, its very existence was bound to cause headaches; if the economic crisis was not trouble enough then the mere fact that the UAR not only possessed a fully industrialized economy that even in its weakened state was a match for the US but did so while being fully socialist and without the market compromises made by the PRC made a legitimacy crisis a matter of when not if, with the hard left factions that once seemed doomed to wither and die now seemed poised to rise again in prominence, and that's without taking the Chinese people themselves into account.

Cairo was also already proving meddlesome with its interference in North Korea, even if some within Beijing were satisfied to let someone else handle that mess, and its actions in the Mediterranean Crisis and subsequent talks proved that it wasn't easy to push around or negotiate with if it decided to be obstinate.

Ultimately the PRC would decide to pursue tentative ties with Cairo on its own terms, simply because the Politburo deemed it could not afford not to have any ties and the opportunities a partnership represented were simply too tempting to pass up.

For starters, if China could gain access to the Suez then its shipping companies would have an advantage in terms of speed and pricing. The potential of being able to tap into the UAR's vast oil and phosphate reserves might recuperate the losses of the Wamda. Then some. Beijing also saw itself as being able to play the role of middleman between the UAR and NATO, profiting from both and acting to mediate disputes between the two to cement its own position.

For the UAR's part it returned the PRC diplomatic gestures but had its own reservations about the Chinese dragon; though this CPC's survival was commendable it was a far cry from the organization that the Arabs were familiar with in their own world, and even displaced Chinese comrades would have to concede that the PRC was a different beast from the PUC.

A beast that would not be as easy to sway or wow as the others but also one that the UAR knew was too valuable not to at least establish a working relationship with.

And so the Dragon and the Eagle would tentatively reach out to each other, with talks promising to reach a reasonable trade agreement between the two. But even as they shook hands and spoke about international camaraderie it was clear that both sides were already sizing up the other and pondering how to exploit each other for gain.

However the Chinese politburo would later discover that they had grossly miscalculated their ability to act as a middleman.


| A new red order is in the works |

 

[StarMaker764]

"Our spectre haunts the world"—Ghaddafi

In the middle of the chaos caused by the UAR's arrival and the subsequent dismantlement of the post-Soviet consensus and world order it is easy to forget some of the less flashy effects of the Wamda on the psyche of the world of Two Bushes.


It is hard to quantify the sheer psychological impact caused by the Wamda, an event that has confirmed to billions that yes there is an all powerful entity out there somewhere (even if they disagreed on who and what that entity would be) and apparently enjoys randomly inserting different nations across time and space for whatever reason (and respects exact national/space borders too no less). Beliefs were unmade or reformed while new ones sprang like flowers in a spring meadow.



One of the more subtle and lesser known global effects of the Wamda would come from the Two Bushes Nations learning about their counterparts' experiences in the Long March world, the ramifications and developments caused by this often overlooked in favor of the more obvious and dramatic religious and economic hysteria that followed the Wamda, but these slower going reactions would prove no less world changing in time.



For the nations of Africa, knowledge of the ASU was a complete game changer for the TB world's withered pan-African movement, whose greatest accomplishment was the creation of the largely toothless African Union in 2001 as a pale imitation of the EU (made even paler by the loss of some of its most important members).



The UAR held within its borders a considerable number of displaced ASU citizens and a treasure trove of historical, economical, political and cultural texts that described in detail a functioning, prosperous and democratic pan-African state that encompassed almost all of non-Arab Africa; the extent of such was enough to make even ardent deniers of the Long March world's existence acknowledge that even if the UAR was faking the existence of the ASU, it was very meticulous if nothing else.



For most, however, the very knowledge that a pan-African state was possible to begin with was a galvanizing factor, especially as economic conditions worsened and paved the way for revitalizing radicalism among the working classes of the dark continent, and would be theorized later to play a key role in South Africa's decision to seek closer ties with the UAR along with Mozambique and Angola, the leadership's of these countries if nothing else believing that the UAR's presence was a useful counterbalance to predatory American policy in the region, the ANC especially hoping to leverage its newfound advantage in global trade to "renegotiate" certain loan agreements and IMF mandated reforms.



Zimbabwe would go a step further than all three nations and secretly request Comintern membership, Mugabe hoping to use his nominal socialist credentials to gain a great power patron and economic support in the wake of the country's increasing and devastating economic isolation in the wake of its withdrawal from the commonwealth and the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act enacted by the US that very same year. Alexandria would consider the proposal rather than accept immediately, since Mugabe's past policies left much to be desired.




The most long reaching effect of the UAR however would be the revival of Pan-Africanism as a potent political force across the continent, among both left wing radicals and their liberal counterparts, each hoping to subordinate the movement's vision to their ideological view of it, and the Long March diaspora would play a vital role in this nascent struggle.




In Non-Western Europe, official government reactions to information from the Long March world was hostile from the outset for the most part; the majority of governments in the regions having built their reputations and policies around nationalism and anti communist credentials meant that the very existence of the likes of Eurasia, Zapadoslavia, Yugoslavia and the Union of Pan-Europa were an anathema to the vision they sought so hard to realize and a threat to the legitimacy they built.





From Romania to Slovenia and from Serbia to Lithuania, many nationalists would lament that their counterparts were trapped in "nation prisons" concocted by communist madmen whitewashing what was undoubtedly several Yugoslavia scale disasters in the making, any claims by displaced Zapadoslavs, Yugoslavs or otherwise were dismissed as propaganda made by coercion or through extensive brainwashing. Even the existence of the Luddye was decried in right wing circles as a demented social experiment by communists hoping to weaken and pervert national cultures through forced intermingling and mixing to create easily controlled "rootless" Europeans (though conversely the Luddye were praised as the ultimate white race by American white nationalists) while Long March Romania became the rallying cry of every xenophobe in Europe, seen as the endgame of the nebulous globalist agenda made real in another doomed world.



The economic crisis, weakness/non-existence of local left currents and a general rise in xenophobia ensured that most of these notions often went unchallenged and allowed into the mainstream, ensuring that popular opinion throughout Eastern and Southern Europe would be hostile to the UAR and the growing red bloc with only a few exceptions, though curiously there would be a small but noticeable rise in popularity of so called "national Bolshevist" movements which admired the likes of Zapadoslavia and Yugoslavia for their military and economic strength but despised their social attitudes and internationalism and wishing to recreate these nations in a purer form.



Russia in particular saw a rise in the popularity of Eurasianism and a massive interest in Long March Eurasia in the immediate aftermath of the Wamda among right wing circles but that quickly faded just as fast once most realized the eurasianism of TLM had little resemblance to their own and made the likes of Dugin scream bloody murder.


The Russian government for its part adopted an anti-Comintern stance from the outset despite initial fears of a Soviet revival, the Yelsinist/Putinist regime had built itself up on strangling the USSR and devouring its corpse, and Moscow was just as threatened by the UAR as the United States. The mutual threat would lead relations between the two nations to deepen as the US came to see the new Russia as an anti-communist bulwark to keep Central Asia and the Caucasus in check, much to the fear and ire of Eastern Europe, who saw Russo-American rapprochement as a threat to their long term interests.


Not all reactions in the region to the UAR were hostile however as the Arab nation would receive an influx of so called "Ostugees" from throughout the former communist bloc: Eastern Europeans and Central Asians who yearned for the days of the Warsaw pact and state socialism in the wake of their nations unstable or outright catastrophic transition to capitalism and moved to the UAR in droves in hopes of recapturing some of what they lost.



Latin American and Asian reactions were more mixed to the implications of the Long March world….

| but no less impactful |

 

[StarMaker764]

"No Comment"—Ryūzō Sejima

Asia is the world's largest continent and it is only natural that it would have an appropriately wide-ranged variety of opinions on the new occupant of its southwest regions.

Aside from the communist and nominally communist states of the Far East and Southeast, the Asian states were all some variety of antisocialist from archaic monarchies to military dictatorships or liberal or illiberal capitalist democracies.

However, this didn't mean that they all shunned the UAR, quite the contrary many saw immense benefit in at least cordial relationships with the new superpower on the bloc feeling that the Arabs could serve as a useful counterbalance to the Americans or at least the threat of a pivot to Cairo could be used by many countries to bargain for concessions and benefits from Washington.

The most prominent nation to pursue such a strategy was India, which saw partnership with the UAR and the vast resources and support it could gain from it as its ticket to finally escaping from its eternal "developing" state and finally taking its place as a world superpower, though the current Indian government found its missives to the UAR receive curt replies for now.

Attempts by Bhutan, Cambodia, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and East Timor would receive warmer welcomes though Bhutan's ventures would be received with bafflement by the Comintern, who couldn't conceive of a monarchical nation that wasn't immediately hostile to them.

In Bangladesh's case, its attempts at forging closer ties were helped by their choice of diplomats, namely the inclusion of the Setting Sun timeline's version of chairman Selim, who found himself very confused at suddenly becoming a global celebrity due to his counterpart's prominence in the Long March World (and he would have a chance at meeting his alter ego eventually).

But not all reactions were friendly; Pakistan would adopt an extremely hostile attitude towards the UAR, the Islamic nation seeing the United Republic as a perversion and mockery of everything it stood for, not helped by India's attempts at forging ties with the UAR. Islamabad would seek closer ties with the US as a result even as Bin Laden found refuge there as he suffered from a mental breakdown.

Taiwan, Myanmar, Thailand, Nepal, and the Philippines all expressed similar negative attitudes towards Cairo not helped by the fact that the latter two were facing an upsurge in Maoist rebel activity, with the insurgencies becoming far better organized and well-armed almost overnight (with a similar situation in India's Naxalite red corridor) and it wasn't hard to see who was behind this.

Indonesia would attempt to find a middle position of remaining friendly to both Cairo and Washington even as it sought help from the latter as communist activity experienced a minor surge in the wake of the end of the New Order period, and the barely emerging Indonesian civil society found itself under fire once more and the wider society of the world's former largest Muslim nation was shaken by the Wamda's theological implications.

Indeed, unnoticed by most of the world, the Wahhabist/Conservative Madrasa network carefully cultivated by the Saudis for decades would suffer an implosion in the aftermath of the UAR's appearance as their endlessly wealthy ideological patrons simply vanished without a trace, the first salvo in the coming war for the heart and soul of the Muslim world as Arab revolutionary theologians smelled blood in the water.

The Republic of Korea's response was not as hostile as one might expect, largely because Seoul was utterly baffled by the UAR's almost brotherly attitude towards it, the Arabs' distaste for capitalism being overcome by seeing a thriving Korea in any shape after the tragedies suffered by the peninsula back home.

Indeed Asia's response to the Wamda was unique in how it was only partially focused on the UAR itself, with knowledge about Japan's actions in a timeline where it had triumphed in the Second World War causing the island nation no shortage of headaches.

Chinese, Indonesians, Burmese, Koreans, and many more peoples were united in sheer horror and outrage as more and more information was revealed about the Co-Prosperity Sphere and its actions, few finding it in themselves to dismiss events like the Rapes of Beijing and Sri-Lanka, the Butchering of Burma, the Papuan genocide, the desolation of Borneo, Bangkok's years of tears, the Korean Leap Backwards, and a dozen more crimes against humanity with equally sickening names.

Tokyo naturally was quick to point out that these actions were committed by a wholly different Japan but its detractors were quick to point out that the other Japan was surprisingly similar to the one that existed now, down to many of Japan's current politicians and business elites having equally prominent positions in the other world, with Ryuzo Sejima being the most infamous; the unassuming businessman suddenly discovering that in another world he was known as the Manchurian Ogre, the Butcher of Burma and many more unflattering titles.

This would throw a wrench in the US's plans for a grand anti-communist Asian coalition as many nations were reminded of the many reasons why they didn't like or trust Japan; though the Japanese themselves would find themselves greatly interested in information about their country's doppelgänger, especially nationalists eager for a glimpse of what might have been and what could yet be.


The Pacific nations of Oceania were largely indifferent to the UAR, for now, climate change and their degrading ecologies were their biggest concerns though certain events would force them to seek help from Cairo and Alexandria in the near future, and many islands would find themselves hosting very peculiar visitors who claimed to come a very different Oceania.


In Latin America, the reaction to the UAR was similarly varied. Brazil was the third nation in the western hemisphere to recognize the UAR (and fifth overall), its current progressive government seeing a kindred if extreme spirit in the new Arab colossus. Cairo was receptive even if it was annoyed by the docility and reformism of these so-called leftists.

Venezuela's overtures were much more eager and better received, the nation ruled by Hugo Chavez being inducted into the Comintern as an observer member with due haste after plans for a US invasion of Venezuela were leaked. The former region of Gran-Colombia would be showered with industrial and technical aid as the Comintern sought to build another red bastion to support Cuba.

Nicruaga's ruling leftist coalition would likewise seek the Arab superpower's protection though internal matters would force it to temper its overtures. Bolivia became divided over the matter as the MAS now faced accusations of being mere puppets of Cairo.


The rest of Latin America reacted with varying degrees of hostility, benign intent and indifference towards the UAR, mostly hostility as many of these nations remained bastions of anticommunism built on the skulls of millions of people whose only crime was daring to threaten the god of profit.

Argentina and Chile proved to be the most hostile of all Latin governments to the existence of the UAR, in the former's case driven in large part by the fact that the Wamda both put an end to the Chilean miracle and was exposing millions to the existence of what a Chile without Pinochet and shock therapy looked like. It was by all accounts better than its sad Rosevelt's Triumph counterpart.

Or at least enough Chileans believed it was to go out and protest in large numbers across Santiago and other cities, with their Argentine counterparts going even further as the country's depression became worse in every conceivable way, as workers began outright taking over factories and large areas of the country were outside the government's control for extended periods, the specter of communism returned to haunt the Southern Cone, currently kept at bay only by brutal crackdowns and reprisals bolstered by a barrage of propaganda that wouldn't look out of place in the height of the Red Scare.

But no matter how hostile the Chilean and Argentine governments reacted to the return of history it was downright civil compared to the attitudes of the citizens of now gone Israel…

| Which was a class in of itself |