A propensity to hope and joy is real riches: One to fear and sorrow, real poverty
(State of Nations Part XXIII)
Democratic Republic of Taiwan
The Taiwan autonomy agreement achieved by the Tangwai opposite the KMT and the PRC comes with significant strings attached. The island is functionally the rear area of the war effort. The entire economy is reoriented to sustaining both the KMT forces in the Pearl River Delta and allied PRC forces along the central and northern coasts. A huge percentage of Taiwan's young people fight in the war, and millions more citizens move to the mainland temporarily or permanently as volunteers in various fields.
Once the war ends, Taiwan contends with a significant loss of human and economic capital, both from losses during the war and more significantly due to voluntary mainland relocations. Economically, the island bounces back relatively quickly, with Taiwan being seen as something of a test balloon for investment in the mainland by many more cautious Westerners. It also has the benefit of significant contacts with the relatively small but relatively prosperous Chinese American citizenry.
Politically, Taiwan conducts major democratic reforms throughout the 1990s as most of the KMT political class depart permanently for the mainland. The disintegrating Tangwai movement and several new independent movements give rise to a robust and responsive multiparty democracy, maintaining the traditional five branches of government. Significant efforts are made to improve government responsiveness and anti-corruption measures.
Taiwan continues its trajectory as one of the most prosperous states in East Asia. As part of the Chinese Union, it adopts significant worker protections and increases the scope of its welfare state. Outside of the Union, a special relationship with Korea deepens, extending to its partners in Okhotsk and Japan. Though still somewhat controversial, the actions of World War III have gone a long way to normalizing Japan as a member of the East Asian community in the eyes of the Taiwanese.
Republic of Tajikistan
The chaos of World War III sees illegal activity flourish in Tajikistan. Mafia figure Yaqub Salimov is able to capitalize on the situation, building a black market network that reaches deep into the state security forces. When the Soviet order collapses, he backs the play of the local MVD to depose the Tajik leadership and declare independence. By 1986, he is the elected Premier of the Republic of Tajikistan.
With significant international oversight, the structure of the state is relatively responsive and democratic (certainly when compared to the system it replaces). But Salimov takes advantage of every opportunity he can to line his pockets and create what he hopes is an unassailable power structure from within the government.
He promotes deep connections with Tajikistan's neighbors, supporting the expansion of the West Asian Common Market. The nation sees a significant shift in the agricultural market as high-yield, high-altitude genetically-modified grains and specialty crops take over much of the land formerly employed by cotton collectives. Well-watered Tajikistan is perhaps the best-positioned country in the bloc to produce basic grain staples, bringing much needed stability to the national economy. In addition, several significant hydropower projects are financed through the WACM, bringing moderate industrial and high-tech, specialty agricultural sectors to the country.
Though Tajikistan still sees moderate labor emigration to the more prosperous states of the WACM, the practice is slowing by the year 2000. Endemic corruption acts as a drag, but a nascent middle class has begun to expand and demand change. Organized political opposition faces an uphill battle, but independents make up roughly 25% of elected local council seats, as well as 10% of the national legislature.
Tamil Unitary Cooperative
The Indian landings in the north of Sri Lanka, conducted during the confusion of World War III, cause an intensification of the uprising among most Tamil nationalists along the coast. The Indian forces do not participate in much fighting along the front line, though their police actions in Jaffna and other cities are frequently violent.
With the Sri Lankan military retreating after the initial landing, the fighting mostly occurs between Tamil and Sinhalese militia. Despite a ceasefire agreement supported by the governments of Sri Lanka and India, as well as the Tamil United Liberation Front and the stated support of various guerilla leaders, hundreds of armed gangs are vying to move the frontier back and forth along its entire length. The Stockholm Peace Conference includes provisions for a UN Peacekeeping force on the island, but they do not arrive until December 1984. In the meantime, the violence is devastating.
Both sides commit a litany of damning atrocities in that year of civil war. The Sri Lankans press the Tamils against the eastern coast, expelling or murdering any Tamil Hindus living more than a few miles inland in the Ampara and, particularly, Trincomalee Districts. With the weight of the Indian military in Jaffna, the Tamil militia expel Tamil-speaking Muslims from the north of the country and push the Sinhalese south towards Vavuniya District, evacuating Hindu Tamils (sometimes forcefully) from Vavuniya in the process.
Violence between Muslims and Hindus is acute outside of Trincomalee, where Muslim-majority communities divide Hindu areas on the south side of Trincomalee Bay. An estimated 9,000 Muslims are killed and most of the population is driven away from the coast. Meanwhile, Muslim and Sinhalese forces in Mannar District hold back predominantly Hindu Tamil forces. Tamil Hindus secure good relations with the Catholic Tamils in that district, and a peace deal between Hindu and Muslim Tamils is brokered in Ampara District by secularist freedom fighter Annamalai Varadaraja Perumal.
When the UN arrives, the militias mostly return home. But the violence doesn't end for those behind the lines. Over the course of the next five years, 70% of Sinhalese speakers in Tamil-controlled territory cross the UN Buffer Zone. 90% of Tamils (including a substantial population of Indian Tamils living in Central Province) cross in the other direction.
The eventual peace is a cold one, with both sides bitter over the result. Any territorial loss is difficult for Sri Lanka, and the final borders of Tamil Eelam are far from what most nationalists desired. The countries maintain only limited road connections, though at the executive level both sides work to decrease customs requirements, fight cross-border crime, and facilitate familial visa access. The Tamil political establishment renounces violence, with most of the militias reorganizing into political parties. The few prominent guerillas who refuse are arrested and in many cases expelled to India.
The Tamil government is strikingly leftist in nature, at first proposing the name People's Republic of Tamil Eelam. The compromise "Unitary Cooperative" title is merely for show, and the nation is structured very similar to a Marxist state, albeit with a legitimate commitment to electoralism.
India thoroughly integrates the Tamil state into its economic and diplomatic sphere, propping up the government through its rebuilding years and promoting a relationship only a few steps removed from supranational union. Though beneficial to both partners, this is done mostly to defang any broader Tamil nationalist movement from gaining popularity on the mainland.
In 1995, construction begins on a road bridge across the Palk Strait, which, when completed, will physically connect Tamil Eelam with India. A rail tunnel is also being studied as of 2000.
United Cooperatives of Tanzania
Tanzania's change in leadership during the war propels it into the new era of international investment in the tropics. The communal model formerly mandated under the old regime experiences an evolution rather than an abolition, with a model for lifetime personal leases backed by communal property ownership not dissimilar to the community land trust movements booming in the US and UK.
President Ali Hassan Mwinyi conducts reform talks with opposition leaders and invites representatives from the UN to help implement electoral reforms. The end result is a hybrid system taking many elements from the US presidential system held in check by an independent parliament, judicial system, and an independent council of ombudsmen. The latter is made up of members appointed by every party to receive at least 2.5% in the national parliamentary total vote count. The judiciary will appoint members equaling one half of the party members; the president appoints one member, and the chairman is appointed by the IMF.
1986 elections see six parties win seats in parliament, with the splintering Chama Cha Mapinduzi accounting for roughly three of them. The Labour and Land Movement forms a minority government in support of the evolving status of Ujamaa (cooperative economics), with more influence and power for local communes in the context of national politics. They receive confidence and supply from Zanzibar's Civic United Front, as well as the market socialist Progressive Party and the broad ecological People's Reform Movement. President Mwinyi wins a full term, running as an independent. He wins a second term in 1992, with the same coalition retaining control in parliament. The PRM and CUF form a government on their own in 1998, with Mwenyi stepping down in favor of moderate independent John Cheyo.
By the early 1990s, Dar es Salaam and much of Zanzibar have undergone a massive increase in quality of life thanks to major international investment. Mwinyi and the LLM work to create new investment hubs in the interior with mixed success. Still, the nation increases significantly in development thanks to the East African Federation framework it helps develop. IMF Credits help fund a hybrid welfare state that creates a baseline of universal services for the entire population, including 4-18 education and a basic supply of food. The cooperative model sees villages begin to market their labor collectively to provide goods and services on the open market and create additional wealth at the local level. Cities and towns tend to operate in a much more individualistic manner, and the island of Zanzibar retains its own Rhenish model market welfare state.
Tanzania is the heart of the East African Federation, promoting transportation, health, and cultural projects to transform the region into an eventual superstate. One side note to this is the ongoing, internal negotiations between Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar City to grant the island something like independence within the supranational framework of the EAF. Support for the plan is growing, and few vested interests are strongly opposed to the idea.
Cooperative Kingdom of Thailand
Thailand attempts to chart a similar course to Malaysia during and after the war- using its climate and relatively developed infrastructure and workforce to grow in wealth and prosperity. The nation is somewhat successful in this enterprise, but not nearly to the extent of its southern neighbor.
For one thing, Thailand suffers significantly more from Chinese fallout, being directly in the path of the post-bombing winds before they dissipate. For another, the military culture of the nation sees it attempt to gain prestige through regional and global peacekeeping deployments that bring only limited benefits to the homefront- though certainly peace in Kampuchea, Laos, and China do aid the macroeconomic picture. But a crisis in the royal family causes the most contention.
In a scandal that only breaks later in 1984, the king's only son and heir-apparent leaves the country with his mistress during the war, fearing (with impressive foresight, it turns out) fallout from a nuclear war involving China. In doing so he is condemned by his father and later removed from the line of succession for abandoning his wife and daughter, as well as taking up with a commoner.
When King Bhumibol dies from cancer in 1990, the throne falls to his daughter, Sirindhorn. Extremely popular with the people, initial thoughts from some in the military of deposing her in favor of her brother are quickly put to rest. But the question of the succession after Sirindhorn remains a contentious debate.
The assassination of Prime Minister Prem in 1985 leads to a series of short-lived semi-military governments that attempt to shore up support for the status quo in the face of rising unrest among the rural poor. Coups in 1986 and 1987 bring different cliques of military figures to power, both promising to end rural protests. They continue to support Thailand's robust participation in international military operations, and promote Bangkok and other southern cities as locations for foreign investment- gaining the loyalty of urban workers and urban elites.
But rural discontent is not curtailed. Taking inspiration from cooperative movements in Yunnan, Burma, Laos, and Kampuchea, Thai cooperatives begin a process of non-participation with the central government. By 1990, roughly 3/4ths of rural villages see at least some formation of parallel institutions meant to sidestep reliance on Bangkok. When the ruling clique declares this movement a rebellion, they are quickly deposed by forces loyal to Thailand's new investor class, who realize what a disaster a civil war would be for their fortunes.
Instead the new government opens talks with the co-op movement, inviting their mass-participation in the coronation of Queen Sirindhorn. The Queen symbolically adopts the co-ops as a favored mode of living under her protection, and the name of the country is amended to the Cooperative Kingdom of Thailand. A power-sharing agreement sees a significant share of resources dedicated to the cooperatives through regional elected councils (basically acknowledging reality), but sees the rest of the country remain under direct rule by the central government. This remains less democratic and develops a political culture similar to that found in Singapore throughout the 1990s. The government is able to retain control due to dramatically rising prosperity throughout this decade thanks to foreign (and in particular ASEAN) investment following the promise of stability.
Attempts to reign in the military are handled gingerly by the government throughout the 1990s. With the support of the Queen, many senior positions are sunsetted as various generals and admirals retire (with generous financial incentives), reducing the cadre of active senior officers from close to 1,700 to less than 400 by 2000. Negotiations for the expansion of ASEAN further curtails the military with budget caps on defense spending. While unpopular, the political support of the royal family, technocratic government, and rural cooperatives forces the military to swallow this pill. The country experiences no coups or debilitating protests during the 1990s.
Queen Sirindhorn refuses to marry. When a reporter in 1999 asks her, on a state visit to Washington, if she's homosexual, her simple answer is, "Yes." The shockwave resulting from this has instant effects in Thailand and throughout the ASEAN. The question is now on everyone's lips, the gay community- invisible-in-plain-sight before- now instantly recognized. This is expected to have dramatic consequences on regional human rights policy as the new century unfolds.
A majority of Thais continue their adoration for the highly-popular monarch, and simply adopt stances ranging from pro-gay to mildly tolerant. But the possibility of deposing the queen in favor of her brother is also dusted off in some circles.
Moreover, now that it's clear the queen will never bear any children, the question of the succession gains new urgency. Her younger sister, Chulabhorn is the heir-apparent, and has given birth to three daughters. But what of the queen's brother and his children? He has a daughter from his legitimate marriage who some see as having the preferred claim. He also has several illegitimate sons that many (ironically calling themselves "traditionalists") would prefer to see take the throne. Others in the traditional camp hope Chulabhorn can produce a male heir, though sources inside the palace say a fourth pregnancy is not desired by the princess.
Whether Thailand's hard-won stability can persist in the new century is now an open question.
