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If the Collapse killed or exiled a substantial portion of the Alaskan population, which is entirely possible, most of the people currently living in Alaska could actually be Russian settlers with no emotional ties to the United States.
There's nothing sacred about the current boundaries of the United States. They are the product of historical circumstance. If there are enough Russian colonists in Alaska, Alaska may end up remaining Russian.
Hawaii could end up remaining Japanese, but they started with a larger population and a more survivable climate. Also, Japan is much further away from Hawaii than Russia is from Alaska.
In the long term, we could end up with an independent Hawaii that chooses not to rejoin the United States. Once we move away from the idea of sacred soil, we can recognize that our future boundaries are not set in stone. We could end up picking up pieces of what used to be Canada, as Victoria's influence collapses; we could discover that some parts of America don't want to join the Commonwealth. It is possible that there will be another Revivalist state that calls themselves the "United States of America" and doesn't join with us, and we should just accept that.
Out of character I agree with you completely, mostly because I dont want the commonwealth to be a state that is powerful enough to actually have any semblance of influence on global politics.
In-character, I think we should at least make sure Alaska separates from Russia and goes its own way, same for Hawaii. Having them comfortably holding on to that territory with no sign of letting go by the end of the quest just feels like we failed, especially Alaska.
My solution to this conundrum is that while I dont want US to actively try and retake Alaska or Hawaii unless its clearly doable to do so, if California launches an invasion to take them, we funnel them as many guns and supplies as possible, and do the same thing for Alaskan and Hawaiian separatists if no invasion is coming.
Out of character I agree with you completely, mostly because I dont want the commonwealth to be a state that is powerful enough to actually have any semblance of influence on global politics.
In-character, I think we should at least make sure Alaska separates from Russia and goes its own way, same for Hawaii. Having them comfortably holding on to that territory with no sign of letting go by the end of the quest just feels like we failed, especially Alaska.
I'm sorry about the way you feel, but those are super stretch goals to set for ourselves.
My solution to this conundrum is that while I dont want US to actively try and retake Alaska or Hawaii unless its clearly doable to do so, if California launches an invasion to take them, we funnel them as many guns and supplies as possible, and do the same thing for Alaskan and Hawaiian separatists if no invasion is coming.
That may very well culminate in Poptart declaring the quest to be at an end for one reason or another, before either of these things happens. Becasue for the reasons already discussed, it would be militarily impractical to conquer Hawaii or Alaska, as long as either area was defended by the forces of a large nuclear-armed power that did not want it to be conquered.
Barring a collapse of either Russia or Japan that is as total as what happened in-setting to the United States (or nations like France and Britain), that's going to be a show-stopper.
And aside from any arguments about whether such a thing would be good for the world, we lack the means to bring about such a collapse. Not just because right now we are small and poor, but because even if we re-unite the continental United States in its entirety and spend decades rebuilding our economy, we will not be powerful enough to at-will cause a major power to just collapse out of nowhere. Even Czar Alexander couldn't do that- he had to wait for an existing disaster-storm to blow out of nowhere, then give other countries a well-timed push to knock them over the cliff.
At this moment, discussions about Hawaii and Alaska seem as fruitful as discussions about the Commonwealth colonizing Mars. Give us about 50 turns, and see where we are then, once we have a bigger chunk of the Midwest and aren't dealing with a thousand fiefdoms all around us.
Oh, you misunderstand. I fully expect a powerful commonwealth to approach foreign policy with an attitude of unshakeable moral fortitude and idealism, and that is precisely why I would prefer we remain largely confined to our own business. Maybe have California be the defacto face of North America.
That may very well culminate in Poptart declaring the quest to be at an end for one reason or another, before either of these things happens. Becasue for the reasons already discussed, it would be militarily impractical to conquer Hawaii or Alaska, as long as either area was defended by the forces of a large nuclear-armed power that did not want it to be conquered.
Barring a collapse of either Russia or Japan that is as total as what happened in-setting to the United States (or nations like France and Britain), that's going to be a show-stopper.
And aside from any arguments about whether such a thing would be good for the world, we lack the means to bring about such a collapse. Not just because right now we are small and poor, but because even if we re-unite the continental United States in its entirety and spend decades rebuilding our economy, we will not be powerful enough to at-will cause a major power to just collapse out of nowhere. Even Czar Alexander couldn't do that- he had to wait for an existing disaster-storm to blow out of nowhere, then give other countries a well-timed push to knock them over the cliff.
I do not disagree, even if we manage to accomplish those goals it is very likely that they will be something merely implied in an epilogue rather then something we see happen directly. It is very possible that it will not happen within the lifetimes of anyone alive in 2076. Perhaps the next time Alaska is part of a country whose capital is in North America will be in 2784 or something, long after concepts like Russia and America have become either echoes in history or completely unrecognizable. But at the very least, we should publicly maintain our claim on that land. Admitting that it's fully Russia's now feels like far more of a failure then simply failing to retake it.
Oh, you misunderstand. I fully expect a powerful commonwealth to approach foreign policy with an attitude of unshakeable moral fortitude and idealism, and that is precisely why I would prefer we remain largely confined to our own business. Maybe have California be our de-facto boss.
Uh... you do realize that your desire that the Commonwealth remain weak enough to not have its views on foreign policy be relevant on the world stage is... totally inconsistent with the Commonwealth, or any political entity it joins, ever having enough muscle to do things like "reclaim outlying colony-territory from the major world power that took control of it last century," right?
"Have California be our de facto boss" doesn't even make sense as a counter to that, either. All nation-states have their own imperfections, their own demons. California will have its own set of grudges and its own ideals to pursue. We've already seen some of this foreshadowed, even! California has been doing Russia's work on the West Coast as Victoria has on the East Coast, as part of the price of Alexander permitting them to retain significant military-industrial capability.
California is not in a good moral or practical place to claim leadership of America starting from that position. And in the process of achieving such a place, they would likely set in motion events that would make them just as problematic as the... activating spirit... of a reunited United States as the Commonwealth would be. Maybe more so. Likely more so, I suspect.
I do not disagree, even if we manage to accomplish those goals it is very likely that they will be something merely implied in an epilogue rather then something we see happen directly. It is very possible that it will not happen within the lifetimes of anyone alive in 2076. Perhaps the next time Alaska is part of a country whose capital is in North America will be in 2784 or something, long after concepts like Russia and America have become either echoes in history or completely unrecognizable. But at the very least, we should publicly maintain our claim on that land. Admitting that it's fully Russia's now feels like far more of a failure then simply failing to retake it.
That's a pretty big goalpost shift, mind you. Going from "reclaim Alaska in this quest" to "maybe it can't be taken or 'retaken' but we shouldn't give up the official nominal claim to that particular bit of snowy, snowy clay."
Because I don't think @PoptartProdigy has any intention of running this quest for 1400 turns, even if some very fortunate turn of events lets them resume it at a high rate of activity.
Uh... you do realize that your desire that the Commonwealth remain weak enough to not have its views on foreign policy be relevant on the world stage is... totally inconsistent with the Commonwealth, or any political entity it joins, ever having enough muscle to do things like "reclaim outlying colony-territory from the major world power that took control of it last century," right?
Yes, my desire for several mutually exclusive goals as a result of general thread direction is causing me no small amount of consternation at what direction to support. I originally came into this quest with the desire for the commonwealth to eventually get relatively powerful, or at least capable of standing up for itself, but events both here and elsewhere have since made me realize that even if I get what I want it will not be done in a manner that is all that satisfying, likely quite the opposite. So I'm kind of torn between what I want to see happen.
California is not in a good moral or practical place to claim leadership of America starting from that position. And in the process of achieving such a place, they would likely set in motion events that would make them just as problematic as the... activating spirit... of a reunited United States as the Commonwealth would be. Maybe more so. Likely more so, I suspect.
For the second time this month, COVID has come to my job. This time, a coworker tested positive, as opposed to a client's mother testing positive and not having it in her to make her son get tested. So, the company is shut down for quarantine, and I am in quarantine when in my home, so I do not endanger my wife and housemate.
Again.
You'd think this would leave me with ample free time to write, but it turns out that being able to see but not touch the people I love is massively distressing to me and it kind of tanks my ability to function, so frankly expect nothing for a while longer.
For the second time this month, COVID has come to my job. This time, a coworker tested positive, as opposed to a client's mother testing positive and not having it in her to make her son get tested. So, the company is shut down for quarantine, and I am in quarantine when in my home, so I do not endanger my wife and housemate.
Again.
You'd think this would leave me with ample free time to write, but it turns out that being able to see but not touch the people I love is massively distressing to me and it kind of tanks my ability to function, so frankly expect nothing for a while longer.
For the second time this month, COVID has come to my job. This time, a coworker tested positive, as opposed to a client's mother testing positive and not having it in her to make her son get tested. So, the company is shut down for quarantine, and I am in quarantine when in my home, so I do not endanger my wife and housemate.
Again.
You'd think this would leave me with ample free time to write, but it turns out that being able to see but not touch the people I love is massively distressing to me and it kind of tanks my ability to function, so frankly expect nothing for a while longer.
This is not what a direct throughway looks like. There are two, count 'em, two major roads that go where you want to which ultimately link up into one at the end. The terrain is complete ass. One has to move over a thousand kilometers through what used to be Canada to even approach Alaska. As for your certainty regarding the continued existence of Canada, I would like to remind you that we have already consumed Windsor whole. Part of why one of Canada's national nightmares is being consumed culturally by the United States is because as a whole Anglophone Canada and the United States are very similar. We have had no indication that people from Windsor retain a significantly different identity from anybody else in the Commonwealth. 90% of the Canadian population lives within 100 miles of the border. It is legitimately questionable if after 40 years of devastation Canadian remnant polities wouldn't desire to simply unify with a US successor which offers better prospects than toughing it out by themselves even more subject to the demographic weight of Toronto than before.
As for population issues, at the end of the Soviet Union there were more Russians who lived in the Kazakh SSR than Kazakhs. Many Russians in the aftermath of the Union's collapse left to return to Russia, but even now Daugavpils in Latvia is a city where Russians are dominant and in the city of Narva in Estonia, Russians approach a supermajority of the population. Even in the capital of Latvia, Riga Russians make up about 2/5 of the population and Latvians about 2/5. In the timescale of several decades, it is in fact fairly easy to assimilate or displace linguistically or culturally inconvenient populations and given that Alaska as a state has a population that is within spitting distance of Wyoming I fail to see how it is so unreasonable to think that Alexander has made Russians into a core part of the Alaskan population which may as a result be entirely opposed to reclamation by a US successor.
As for legitimacy claims, a claim is just that. A claim. You still have to take it if the occupier doesn't feel like negotiating, and effectively securing control over Alaska is a hellish task. There's not even the comparably more easy victories to be had against the Panhandle since that's owned by Japan which is being handwaved as already kicked into the sea. One would have to push into Alaska Proper and establish effective control over a landmass half the size of India in the Arctic Circle through mountainous terrain.
Regarding Hawaii, a crucial difference between China vis a vis Hong Kong, and a US successor vis a vis Hawaii, is that Hawaii is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean literally thousands of miles away from anywhere one could seriously stage an invasion from, and that Hong Kong is again, right next to China's second most important metropolitan area in one of the most well developed portions of the country in terms of infrastructure.
You say a China that has defeated Japan won't let them keep Hawaii, understandable, but what exactly is China going to do about it? Japan isn't giving it up in any peace that wasn't achieved by leveling Tokyo, and that point we're talking about MAD at which point everything is moot. Who is going to launch an invasion of Hawaii and wrest it from Japanese control?
Certainly not China, just to get to Hawaii they would have to cross the aforementioned First and Second Island chains which are already effectively uncrossable by merchant traffic in times of war and if not China, what other opponent both has the naval strength to challenge Japan, a leading naval power, on the seas and the interest to not only take Hawaii in a truly brutal land slog but then to return it to the United States? China does not care about Hawaii in this context because that is the stretch goal predicated on the stretch goal predicated on the stretch goal. China would very much like to break the First Island Chain if it can which it has partially done as a result of Taiwan being a part of Chinese reunification. If that is complete, they would very much like to break the Second Island Chain, but that's predicated on breaking the first. Hawaii is part of what Chinese thinkers would consider the Third Island Chain. This is approximately equivalent to America having lost the entire Oregon territory to Britain and the Mexican-American war in the 1840s, and still being concerned about Hawaii. It is beyond the pale of Chinese interests.
You are the one who brought Macau and Hong Kong into the situation in the first place, I felt obligated to provide counterexamples to the best of my abilities while also noting that direct comparison are impractical and absurd. None of these examples fit perfectly with one another as can be seen by your own individual refutations of each provided example. You are the one who insists on colonial reclamation parallels instead of analyzing the situation by its own merits which by all means imply extreme difficult in any possible reclamation of either territory.
In order: That map looks very similar to a terrain map of Korea. And we know how that went IRL.
We wouldnt be fighting in BC anyway, we'd be staging out of it. Up near Port Rupert.
And from the Russian logistical PoV, there is one deepwater port in RL Alaska I can think of with the bulkhandling facilities for military supplies: Anchorage. And thats after running bulk transport by rail across Asia to Vladivostok, and then transhipment by sea another five thousand km.
At least British Columbia has roads.
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Alaska is not the Baltics. Is not even Central Asia.
People dont move there to live even with the lack of a personal income tax and a yearly subsidy paid out to the state residents.
Post-Collapse, Alexander throttled its oil and gas industry as a matter of environmental policy, and much of the remaining economic activity is tourism, fishing and forestry. Gold, silver, zinc, lead mines exist, but they're smalltime and in Alaska conditions. The economic pull isnt there.
Imperial Russia cant build an empire on a policy of forced relocation of Russians, and keep them there in anything short of Soviet Siberia conditions.
God knows they have enough trouble populating the Russian Far East.
40% of Alaska's population is in Anchorage.
Anchorage + Fairbanks + Juneau account for >50% of the state population.
Any invasion would be an urban campaign, not some sweeping attempt to occupy empty countryside.
Not that it matters, because this is one of those things that I dont expect the reUnited States to budge on.
Ethnic cleansing as an instrument of geopolitics, state policy and diplomatic leverage gets to die in a fire if we have to push it in ourselves.
And I do expect spite to be a powerful motivator in the rUnited States.
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A legitimate claim is the difference between the reactions to the annexation of Goa and that of the Falklands.
Or the Americans basically threatening the British, French and Israelis after they seized the Suez Canal.
They matter, and have material effects in any sort of geopolitical setting.
Its not just about military force.
Most of Africa wasnt liberated by force of arms or military victories in the field.
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Yes, we currently hold Windsor with the enthusiastic support of most of its people in the face of the Victorian threat.
Most of the people living in lower Ontario are similarly supportive, given the reaction to our invasion of Buffalo.
None of that implies that Canada is dead, or Canadian Revivalism isnt a thing. Any more than the enthusiastic reception of the Allies in France suggested a sudden hankering to salute the Stars and Stripes.
And if the argument is that Canadian communities would forsake the demographic domination of Toronto in order to sign on to the even more extreme demographic domination of the reUnited States, I have to query the logic.
Id rather have a Canada back than anschluusing Ontario and Quebec .
It would be nice to hand a thoroughly deVictorianized Quebec back to Canada as a repudiation of everything Alexander and his kind have wrought.
But if the Canadians would rather hook up with us, Im fine with that too.
But to repeat myself, there is currently no evidence that the Canadian identity is dead.
Its only been forty years since the Collapse, and there was no internal crisis to kill Canada the way it killed the US.
It was entirely externally inflicted and maintained.
The American Dream as an idea has survived a nuclear bombing and forty years of terror. Ethnic cleansings and worse.
I see no reason to assume Canada did not because people dont talk about in the open when they live within deployment range of Vic troops.
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The Triple Axis in this AU has committed to containing China for decades now. With India sitting squarely across the western sea trade routes across the Indian Ocean to Africa and Europe, Russia recolonizing Central Asia, and Pakistan in chaos, leaving a demonstrably hostile Japan in a position to interdict the transPacific shipping lines to the Panama Canal, South America and around the Cape is no bueno.
China can contend with the Russian presence in Panama through diplomacy, economics and covert action, by supporting local groups in Panama who want the Russians out, and governments in North and South America hostile to a Russian presence in the Caribbean.
They can even revive and fund plans for putting a canal in Nicaragua as an alternative.
But none of that does a thing about Hawaii sitting there in the Pacific.
If the Chinese are forced to invade Hawaii, they are going to keep it.
One way or the other.
But its more likely that if/when they come to blows, instead of faffing about they simply go for the throat, break the Japanese navy at sea or in port, implement a sea blockade around the Home Islands until they cry uncle, and make divestment of their colonies a condition of any peace deals than that they'd put together an amphibious group for invasion.
Not for love of us, but their own self interest.
If not it waits a couple decades till the NCR/rUS can project military power that far and have a pointed conversation with the Japanese Navy.
And no, Japan's status as one of the world's leading navies doesnt matter if it has to keep them close to home because the Chinese Navy is resurgent, hostile and next door. Or if it has to engage in an arms race with a bigger, better resourced opponent with only allies of convenience and resurgent insurgencies in the occupied territories.
The WW2 Royal Navy proved incapable of holding strategic holdings like Singapore because of the requirements to keep the bulk of their strength closer home in the face of a materially inferior naval threat from Nazi Germany.
Japan is going to face that problem imminently. Only it isnt facing a weaker navy, or a smaller economy.
That is not a situation where your priority is a peripheral, though strategic, piece of Pacific real estate.
Though who knows? The Japanese govt might still have the same sort of Manifest Destiny stupid that got them into this situation in the first place.
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I mentioned Macau and Hong Kong because the circumstances of the then Chinese state are quite similar to those of the current United States.
A large internally conflicted power with sections of its territory balkanised and colonised by smaller hostile foreign powers?
The colonial reclamation parallels are not subtle because they werent meant to be.
For the second time this month, COVID has come to my job. This time, a coworker tested positive, as opposed to a client's mother testing positive and not having it in her to make her son get tested. So, the company is shut down for quarantine, and I am in quarantine when in my home, so I do not endanger my wife and housemate.
Again.
You'd think this would leave me with ample free time to write, but it turns out that being able to see but not touch the people I love is massively distressing to me and it kind of tanks my ability to function, so frankly expect nothing for a while longer.
Yes, my desire for several mutually exclusive goals as a result of general thread direction is causing me no small amount of consternation at what direction to support. I originally came into this quest with the desire for the commonwealth to eventually get relatively powerful, or at least capable of standing up for itself, but events both here and elsewhere have since made me realize that even if I get what I want it will not be done in a manner that is all that satisfying, likely quite the opposite. So I'm kind of torn between what I want to see happen.
And that is precisely why I want them them to be the ones to do it.
Could you maybe try to articulate clearly why you want the things you want, or what those things are? This has gotten very confusing. You seem to be very concerned about prospects that I don't see as problematic, while at the same time caring deeply about things I think of as inconsequential.
For the second time this month, COVID has come to my job. This time, a coworker tested positive, as opposed to a client's mother testing positive and not having it in her to make her son get tested. So, the company is shut down for quarantine, and I am in quarantine when in my home, so I do not endanger my wife and housemate.
Again.
You'd think this would leave me with ample free time to write, but it turns out that being able to see but not touch the people I love is massively distressing to me and it kind of tanks my ability to function, so frankly expect nothing for a while longer.
I respect (and somewhat envy) the collective good sense and discipline that you (and your wife, et al.) are applying to be able to maintain internal quarantine. And I'm sorry that this is happening. I hope that when the smoke clears you're okay and that the hugging can resume as normal.
Could you maybe try to articulate clearly why you want the things you want, or what those things are? This has gotten very confusing. You seem to be very concerned about prospects that I don't see as problematic, while at the same time caring deeply about things I think of as inconsequential.
At this point I'm not sure myself. My main goal above all else is an interesting and satisfying story, but I am not sure what the best path for that is anymore. All of my goals going into this quest are either unachievable or no longer interest me due to changing tastes and thread behavior, such as the regaining our foreign influence one.
If you are asking about the California/foreign influence thing though, that's pretty simple. I want California to be more powerful then us because it is not bound by SV's decision making patterns.
At this point I'm not sure myself. My main goal above all else is an interesting and satisfying story, but I am not sure what the best path for that is anymore. All of my goals going into this quest are either unachievable or no longer interest me due to changing tastes and thread behavior, such as the regaining our foreign influence one.
If you are asking about the California/foreign influence thing though, that's pretty simple. I want California to be more powerful then us because it is not bound by SV's decision making patterns.
I feel like it would go a long way toward clearing up the confusion here if you articulated why specifically you feel SV's decision-making patterns to be (implicitly) at odds with an interesting and/or satisfying story.
I feel like it would go a long way toward clearing up the confusion here if you articulated why specifically you feel SV's decision-making patterns to be (implicitly) at odds with an interesting and/or satisfying story.
Because SV's decision making process, especially in these sorts of political games, leans heavily towards the sort of highly idealistic explicit wish fulfillment that I have come to strongly dislike in the time since this quest started (and the general prevalence of metagaming/OOC decision making that is endemic to literally every SV quest I have seen ever). The only exception to this being games where the players are carrying out someone else's orders and merely have a choice of how to do this, such as Blackstar's economic planning quest and the ones inspired by it, which is why I was so supportive of the idea of an NPC congress that can and would order the players around.
So do we have an official age for Alexander? I imagine him being born in 1980, that would mean he would live through the fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of Putin, and I think it might have been mentioned he was a general before the collapse, so he would also have plenty of time to rise through the military ranks. He would now be 96 years old, so even with the best possible diet, exercise and medical treatment available, he would still be only delaying the inevitable at this point. His eventual death will mark the end of an era as I imagine there will be an inevitable conflict between the old guard and new blood as there will be plenty of people who might want to continue his imperialism versus Katarina who clearly has her own environmentalist agenda and might see an end to war and conquest as both eco-friendly and a good way to help get other nations to work with her on her own plans.
Staff Notice: Rule 2 "Don't be Hateful" - Revenge fantasies are unacceptable.
So one thing I want to do that's both petty and cathartic is in the event we do invade Victoria is desecrate the corpses, Kraft, Rumford, and anyone who served in a political or military position should have their corpse exhumed, incinerated and tossed into the sea; traitors to America don't deserve to be buried on American soil.
So one thing I want to do that's both petty and cathartic is in the event we do invade Victoria is desecrate the corpses, Kraft, Rumford, and anyone who served in a political or military position should have their corpse exhumed, incinerated and tossed into the sea; traitors to America don't deserve to be buried on American soil.
For one thing, desecrating a corpse is a warcrime according to the Geneva Conventions, the International Criminal Court, the USMCJ and literally every military code out there. The US military has literally prosecuted people for this,
So one thing I want to do that's both petty and cathartic is in the event we do invade Victoria is desecrate the corpses, Kraft, Rumford, and anyone who served in a political or military position should have their corpse exhumed, incinerated and tossed into the sea; traitors to America don't deserve to be buried on American soil.
Man dude, it's one thing to deface monuments and statues to their greatness. It's another to go and dig up their graves and desecrate them. The fuck is wrong with you.
That sounds all well and good, but what do you plan to do with wherever Rumford and Kraft are buried? Because do you really want to lay in state the men who betrayed America and committed far worse atrocities? At the very least how about we just pave over them so that no potential ex-Victorians can make shrines to them.
So one thing I want to do that's both petty and cathartic is in the event we do invade Victoria is desecrate the corpses, Kraft, Rumford, and anyone who served in a political or military position should have their corpse exhumed, incinerated and tossed into the sea; traitors to America don't deserve to be buried on American soil.
Even beyond the fact that your suggestion is cruel and unusual, it's also way out of proportion for the vast majority of the people it would apply to, considering just how mush of the Victorian population would have served in, say, the militia. Or, in fact, any other form of low-level governance like town headman/elder/spokesman - or worse yet, people like the assorted non-Victorian female populace that would have been forcefully impressed as nurses, and so on.
Even beyond the fact that your suggestion is cruel and unusual, it's also way out of proportion for the vast majority of the people it would apply to, considering just how mush of the Victorian population would have served in, say, the militia. Or, in fact, any other form of low-level governance like town headman/elder/spokesman - or worse yet, people like the assorted non-Victorian female populace that would have been forcefully impressed as nurses, and so on.
