Shanghaied - 2ACW

[James G]

Jul 15, 2021 6:47:14 GMT mrthptt said:

"There was also no air cover, not even from drones which had been grounded just like the US Air Force’s most-potent aircraft."

Does the Glowworm virus affect only military drones or all of them, even the commercial ones? Surely somebody with the US ground forces desperate for any possible eye-in-the sky help tried to get their hands on anything available from private stocks in the professional sector. Or maybe they went to Walmart with their credit card ready...

Yep, you're right there.
My bad. I meant armed drones like Gray Eagles and Reapers. There are plenty of unarmed ones working. Cracking idea too on the commercial idea though. I'll see where I can work something like that in soon.

[James G]

165 – Alliances

Jennifer Webb hadn’t found many friends in DC but she did closer to home. The Acting Governor of Colorado formed an unofficial alliance with other state executives across the Mountain States and the Plains. During personal meetings, including a gathering of several in Cheyenne which she attended, she was at the centre of forging a united front against the idea that should the US Government decide to do a deal with the West, which had become increasingly clear would happen, there would be no compromise on the matter of giving over liberated portions of Eastern Colorado to the Democratic American Republic.

Webb had come to believe during April 2029 that the war was ultimately lost and she finally accepted that the western regions of Colorado were gone for good. It took some time for her to move past that issue but that only then strengthened her determination that the lower, highly-populated portion of Colorado wouldn’t be something that could be traded away for an end to the war. Governors from Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota & Wyoming stood by her. They considered their states to be soon be the new ‘border states’ and every square inch of Colorado which remained with the United States was considered valuable to the future of where they were elected to govern too. Even a Democrat like her was allowed into their little boys club of Republicans because they regarded a post-conflict DAR threat to them as far more serious than her politics. Webb had no taint of association with treason about her since, when lieutenant-governor, she had fought to keep Colorado from leaving the United States as it did with all that she could. She was acceptable to them even if in DC she had been involved in conflict.

Those who hadn’t gone to the Wyoming state capital themselves when Webb and others were there gave their remote agreement to what was called afterwards the Cheyenne Pact. The seven governors agreed to stand together against whatever might come and fight to keep the Eastern Colorado inside the United States while also not allowing any of Wyoming nor Montana to be lost either. If they could manage to get Western Colorado, even Idaho and Utah back to the country which they were part of too, then they would... yet expectations were realistic. Kansas’ governor, Aaron Alton, positioned himself ahead of the pack to lead the public face of that due to the difficulties that Webb had faced in DC when arguing on behalf of Colorado there. He flew to DC himself and met with both the new Senate Majority Leader and the US House Speaker. It didn’t take as much as Webb had thought that it would for Alton to bring Oakes and Fraser fully onside. They agreed, despite being a bit uneasy about the Cheyenne Pact as a political alliance between governors… the country had only recently been down that road. A second alliance was formed between that trio of politicians where there would be no giving up on Eastern Colorado – which included Denver, Colorado Springs and everywhere below the Front Range – no matter what President Mitchell decided about whether the war was to be conceded. Oakes and Fraser had the political muscle to stop that, so they assured Alton anyway.


Vic Groves had been deposed as Governor of Utah by mad secessionists and had fled from there along with almost all of that state’s federally elected representatives when that deep Red state was Shanghaied into the Democratic American Republic. Utah’s two senators and three of the congressmen (all Republicans) had escaped from what they feared was death: many of those in the state senate & assembly had left too when they could, leaving others to their fate. The fourth congressman, the newly-elected far left Democrat Teddy Clarke, had led the ‘revolution’ in Utah and made himself governor where he got himself a seat at the top table of the DAR leadership. Groves had wanted to join the Cheyenne Pact but been rebuffed. Allen, Webb and those other governors had feared that by tying themselves to the fate of Utah, they would not get what they wanted. It was a selfish attitude to take, but it was one that was believed to be necessary so as to not endanger the post-war futures of their home states. Groves got mad when he found out what they had done, so too those five Members of Congress who had spent their time in exile in DC.

The underway effort being made to have representatives in the House and Senate seated to represent Colorado was blocked via technical procedures. Groves had his own allies, influential members from elsewhere in the country who supported his crusade for Utah to not be abandoned. Webb had been battling to have elections held in Eastern Colorado and wanted to see the winners of those take their seats once those occurred. Colorado had the fundamental right to representation, she argued, and the situation of that not being the case when there were Members of Congress in DC from states which had left the union to form the DAR – Utah’s ones plus others even from California – there was plain wrong. Groves’ allies held up the process of congressional approval being given for elections to proceed. Webb had already taken the federal government to task over the aspects of martial law in Eastern Colorado and then made a legal move through the US Supreme Court on that too. It was unconstitutional! The counter-arguments made against Colorado not being allowed to hold elections was all about the ongoing war within the state’s boundaries but Webb understood it was all about politics. She was willing to see her state elect Republicans and Democrats alike, but allies of Groves’ cause had aligned themselves with that to stop Colorado once more electing Democrats. To bare witness to such depths of twisted partisanship disgusted her.

In having elections across Eastern Colorado, Webb was planning to further her defence of her state remaining within the United States and not being traded away too: how could that be done when Colorado had senators and congresspeople in DC?


Out in what had become Western Colorado, David Rowan had the state capital established at Grand Junction. He was trying to forge his own alliance, one of governors too. Colorado’s governor had been at the forefront of secession and had played an important role in the wartime leadership early on in the conflict with the United States. Like Governor Diaz down in New Mexico, his state had been right on the front-lines of war and military activities when it came to the defence of the independence won for the DAR had been decided due to political desires rather than military need. That had cost the DAR dear. It had been argued by Minister for Defence & Security Rawlings that such ‘political considerations’ had in fact almost cost the DAR the war, hence why she had thrown her lot in with Governor Pierce to seize sole power. She hadn’t agreed with everything her new president was for, but he was against such things as allowing Rowan and Diaz to dictate the fight on the battlefield as had been the case when the Council had run things. General Fuller had been onside too with that reasoning meaning that Pierce was able to do what he had without any meaningful opposition to his internal coup.

Rowan had seen the writing on the wall and not stood up to Pierce’s power grab. To do so would have meant death, so he had believed. He had at once believed that the assassination of Brad Winkelman – Idaho’s governor, the only Republican in the Council – had been the work of Pierce rather than counter-secessionist terrorists. Winkelman would have stood firm and refused to go along with Pierce so that problem was gotten rid of ahead of time. Rowan hadn’t wished to share that man’s fate but he had decided that he couldn’t do nothing. He had watched what had happened in New Mexico come April… and what didn’t happen in Colorado.

New Mexico was retaken by the DAR Army on the offensive. Moving from out of Arizona, smashing apart two full corps of the US Army in stunning victories, and then forcing another pair to run away with their tails between their legs, his country’s armed forces forced the United States to give up almost all of that state. Nothing like that happened in Colorado. Nothing like that was on the cards for Colorado too. There were a few tactical victories won deep within the Rockies, but DAR control didn’t even reach the Front Range. Rowan’s state was separated by a line running (roughly) down the middle but all of the cities and the vast majority of the infrastructure lay on the wrong side of that. US forces over to the east were weak and unable to properly fight due to all of the Glow-worm issues. Nonetheless, there was no attack made nor on the cards to take back what Rowan considered having belonged to the DAR and thus illegally occupied by an illegitimate regime.

Rowan met with Clarke and also sought out Idaho’s acting governor as well. His aim in doing so was to see if there was an agreement to act together to try and force Pierce into action. The war was being fought away to the south but Rowan wanted to see an offensive in the north. He found himself unable to win allies though. Clarke was too focused on what he had in Utah and the fight against ‘reactionaries’ and ‘class traitors’ there: activities which Pierce continued to give him a free hand in undertaking. From Boise, Rowan found only fear in the woman Pierce had given power – not much of that either – to there in Idaho’s state capital. Any alliance, any pact to argue for what he wanted to see done, was dead on arrival. Rowan would have liked to have seen himself at the top, naturally, but what he tried to do was get some influence back instead. No one wanted to stand with him though. Diaz was happy down in New Mexico as well so he didn’t even have that old ally to help him out. When it came to Western Colorado, Rowan wasn’t happy with what he had either. He ruled over rural areas where there was no support fro him. No one could openly challenge him but he was hated by the vast majority of the people. Only the power in the hands of the DAR military and security forces kept Rowan in office. Western Colorado was infested with guerrillas as well as US special forces aided by those locals. He wanted to be back in Denver, he would even take Colorado Springs as an option, but Rowan had no influence and no way of getting what he wanted. Standing up to Pierce as the last voice of the once all-important Council was impossible, and what he had been left with was regarded by him as almost worthless.

Only silently could he rage at what he regarded in his heart as the greatest of all injustices.

[Brky2020]

What is going on in Utah with the 'reactionaries' and 'class traitors'? And what about the Mormon Church, perhaps the most powerful faction in the entire state?

Rowan's a figurehead, for sure, with almost no real power. Seems he might be easily replaced if the DAR ever were able to take the eastern half of the state.

[James G]

Jul 16, 2021 14:29:32 GMT Brky2020 said:

What is going on in Utah with the 'reactionaries' and 'class traitors'? And what about the Mormon Church, perhaps the most powerful faction in the entire state?

Rowan's a figurehead, for sure, with almost no real power. Seems he might be easily replaced if the DAR ever were able to take the eastern half of the state.

A bunch of zealot took power and are ruthlessly enforcing it. Utah is in the worst place for unrest across the West with a high body count. The Church was negated by people power first and then outsiders with guns and a 'mission'.
Rowan had it all then lost it. His territory governed is now inconsequential.

[James G]

166 – Akin to murder

The US Defence Department had no intelligence at all ahead of time that the 11th (Angels) Airborne Division was active in DAR Army service. They didn’t know that it had been re-raised in California, spent time training in Nevada and then was moved into action across New Mexico before, all of a sudden, US Army soldiers met it in battle. Starting late on April 9th, the Angels showed up on the eastern side of New Mexico where they entered combat against those serving with the US 101st (Screaming Eagles) Airborne Division along sections of the Mescalero Escarpment. Where the Screaming Eagles had several nights before cleared initial penetrations made along the ridge line to stop the DAR from getting up onto the plateau which was the Staked Plains behind, they couldn’t halt the fresh attack made by light infantry on the offensive backed up by strong fire support. Those retirees, reservists & young volunteers who formed the ranks of the Angels went into battle on foot, not jumping from above, but fought as paratroopers were expected to with dogged determination in a hostile environment. Multiple breaches of the lines manned by the Screaming Eagles were made when the Angels had close air support on-hand. A fallback was authorised, right down the entire line when it was clear that all was lost and holding on would mean the complete destruction of the Screaming Eagles. The 101st Airborne Division withdrew back up on the Staked Plains, the Llano Estacado which went all the way back east into Texas. Tanks from Arizona Corps armoured units climbed up onto the plateau before dawn broke.

In withdrawing, to save itself from complete destruction, the Screaming Eagles took with them prisoners taken in multiple engagements. The identity of the 11th Airborne Division was confirmed. News went back East on that note, leading to a further addition to the DOD’s list of known combat units raised out West. Questions were naturally asked as to what else had been missed: what other units did the DAR Army have raised and yet to commit to action? EPWs taken from the Angels consisted of quite a few women. They had been serving in combat roles on the front-lines, right in the thick of the action. Since the late Teens, combat roles in the US Army had been open to women and they had been filled. In fighting the Second American Civil War, female soldiers (aviations, sailors, marines & commandos too) had been captured by the two opposing sides of the divided America. However, the Angels had a lot of them among its ranks, far higher than any friendly or hostile unit of comparable side. The DAR sent young women into the fighting to restore sovereignty over New Mexico just as it did its young men too. It was a full commitment of everything that could be thrown at the fight and that included all those volunteering to don a uniform to fight against the United States.

The same night as that battle took place along the Mescalero Escarpment, there were air attacks out in the Gulf of Mexico again. DAR Air Force jets crossed through Mexican airspace and launched long-range missiles from there before turning back for home without the Mexicans being able to doing anything about that violation of its sovereignty. The targets for those cruise missiles were oil platforms, the ones in deep water far from shore. The taps at several of those had been turned back on following a lull period with no pumping in the aftermath of missile strikes made in March. The oil was needed for military purposes and, with the US Government forcing the hands of the oil companies, there was a partial restart of operations. The detachment of NATO AWACS aircraft that had at first been in Arkansas had moved to Louisiana with mainly American aircrews for them rather than Europeans. One of them was out over the Gulf of Mexico when the DAR attack came against multiple oil platforms but all that could be done by those aboard was to send a warning. There wasn’t much anyone in the way of the impacts could do. Emergency stop procedures were initiated to try and mitigate the worse outcome. There would be few further oil spills as a result, better than the previous time, but those missiles still flew towards their targets and then made impact. Eleven large platforms were hit with serious damage incurred as well as large-scale loss of life. When the attack was over, the taps wouldn’t be turned back on with the worry that that would attract a third strike. While not an immediate effect upon them that could be felt in an instant, that oil needed by the US Armed Forces coming from the Gulf oil fields, via refineries onshore where there were a lot of fears that they were next in the firing line, wouldn’t be delivered.


President Mitchell had his national security team plus important others outside his administration gather at Camp David the next day. Helicopters and convoys of protected vehicles delivered to the presidential retreat in Maryland dozens of individuals. For some time, since the murder of his wife & and one daughter, their funerals and the hospitalisation of his surviving daughter, Mitchell had been in many ways incommunicado. Open talk had been underway in DC that new Vice President Cruz was running the US Government. That wasn’t true as Mitchell had remained in charge, but he had full confidence in her and had her speak for him while still making almost all of the big decisions but just using her to be the public face of matters while he was grieving. He was back though, willing to fully fulfil his duties in every way.

A National Security Council briefing was held first off. The matter of the previously-unidentified 11th Airborne Division in DAR service came up and so too did the missile strikes made against oil platforms out in the Gulf of Mexico. There had been many other things going on with the war against the secessionists in the West but those were the two most important pieces of news. SecState Renzi was in what Mitchell’s chief-of-staff would afterwards deem a take-no-prisoners mood. She rounded on the Chair of the Joint Chiefs, General Dowd, the first woman in that role in history, for what Renzi saw as complete incompetent leading to a situation that was ‘akin to murder’ for the soldiers out in New Mexico. First of all the DAR was able to create, field and then employ unexpectedly whole new combat units of large size, before the 101st Airborne Division was positioned right on the front-lines where it had no air cover and a serious lack of fire support. Dowd pointed to Glow-worm and all that it was doing but the SecState refused to accept that as any form of excuse for all the deaths that had occurred the night beforehand on that ‘bloody ridge’. Moving to turn on SecDef Darby when Renzi was told that it was he who authorised the restarting of oil production out in the Gulf, the SecState accused him of the same thing: sending people off direct to their deaths when it was clear that would happen. Darby defended the restart and also the stated that the need for oil was paramount but Renzi told him that he had killed all of those people who had lost their lives out on those oil platforms again through incompetent.

Others at that meeting turned out to be bystanders during the SecState’s rage. They took their cue from Mitchell who didn’t interrupt Renzi where she tore apart Dowd and Darby. When she was finished with them, and no one else had anything to say, eyes turned towards their president. He then asked of Renzi what else was to be done. The war was ongoing and in war people lost their lives. Her response echoed what her predecessor, SecState Leach, had recently been saying openly in the media: the war needed to be ended. The United States was fighting a lost cause with lives now being lost for nothing. The running total of direct war-related deaths had gone past thirty-five thousand. All that killing had to end. Those spectators waited for what they thought was the inevitable explosion of anger towards the SecState coming from Mitchell. A showdown was anticipated in light of such remarks. However, he said nothing in reply. The meeting broke up after that.

Out of that briefing, Mitchell went to see the top-tier of the congressional leadership who had also come to Camp David or were being video-conferenced in. The Senate Majority Leader and the US House Speaker (both Republicans) were present in-person along with the Democrat serving as the House Minority Leader. Joining them remotely from afar were the two Democrats who served as president pro tempore of the US Senate and the Senate Minority Leader. Only Speaker Fraser was a friend to Mitchell: Oakes, who had replaced Green, was not someone the 50th President had been getting on with while the trio of Democrats had their own agendas. The conversation between Mitchell and those politicians concerned political support for the war in Congress but also the public feeling outside of DC. Mitchell heard contradictory responses… pretty much what he expected to hear. He then met with intelligence chiefs who had, like the politicians, either travelled to Camp David themselves or joined the meeting remotely. There was a lot to discuss and that included the recent escape of Green plus the attacks made by the AIA. Those terrorists had struck at Mount Weather with that suicide bomb before then following the assassination there of Homeland Security Secretary Miller by delivering car bombs into the centres of three cities seeking to kill civilians. The attack on Chicago hadn’t worked yet the bombs in the middle of DC and New York alike had detonated to murder almost two dozen people while injuring many more. The FBI chief informed Mitchell that the working theory was that Green was behind all of that, the killing of Miller plus the car bombs, so that he could draw attention from the US Intelligence Community inwards while he continued with his overseas escape. As to the hunt for Green, the president was informed by the CIA Director that they were ‘hot on his tail’. There wasn’t anywhere he could run to in the world where he could go – Green wouldn’t be welcomed into Russia, China etc. – that the CIA wouldn’t be able to catch up with him.

At her request, Mitchell had a private meeting with Oakes after talking with the intelligence chiefs. She made out as if it was a solely partisan political issue so it was just the two of them plus his chief-of-staff, but it turned out it wasn’t: she just wanted to get him (almost) alone. The senator from Ohio wanted to know if Mitchell was considering ending the war to liberate the West and crush the Democratic American Republic. She told him that should he try and do that, he could expect ‘quite a reaction’. There would be no support in the Senate from the majority for allowing that. In fact, Oakes said that she would see to it that Mitchell would be stopped if he tried to. Only victory, complete victory over the DAR, was the outcome that was expected her her and the majority of senators. Any ‘surrender to traitors’ was something that she promised would be stopped from happening. Mitchell called Fraser back from inside his US Army helicopter getting ready to return him back to DC so he could talk with the House Speaker in light of what the Senate Majority Leader had to say. Fraser was told by the president’s chief-of-staff as to what Oakes had declared and asked for his position on that. Would the House stop any hypothetical ending of the war on the terms presented the month before by President Pierce out there in the West? Unlike Oakes, Fraser wasn’t confrontational nor full of threats. Nonetheless, he said that should Mitchell try to do so, to give in despite the terrible state of things where the war effort stood, the House would move to stop that too. In the House, giving in just wouldn’t be allowed to happen if they had anything to do with it.

Most of those who went to Camp David left that evening. Renzi stayed with Mitchell though. They had a private conversation (the chief-of-staff not there) where Mitchell questioned the SecState’s firm conviction that the war was lost. The two of them debated whether it was. Renzi explained her reasoning. It wasn’t just military affairs on the battlefield such as that night-time infantry fight where the US Army had been so thoroughly bested nor the missile attacks over the Gulf of Mexico. It was everything. The Democratic American Republic wasn’t going to be brought down from without nor within. It was there to stay. The independence illegally won was impossible, so she said, to now be removed from those who had taken it to form their own country. Glow-worm was the primary reason why: without it, the war would have been won within weeks and democracy restored across the entire fifty states of the union. With it still raging, it not only was causing the fight against the DAR to be lost, taking so many innocent lives with it, but gravely threatening the entire national security of the United States against external threats. Renzi pointed to what had happened recently in Poland where Russia had almost certainly killed that country’s president and done a deal with the new one. The United States mattered for nought in that outcome. China, Iran and so many more hostile regimes were making moves or preparing to. Everything was at risk with America’s place in the world, everything was under threat because of that computer virus and not just how destructive it was but because everyone now knew about it. The SecState pointed out that there were still traitors serving the interests of the DAR within the United States to further cripple the war effort. Pierce was no longer using that Panda messaging app. Someone had told him that, at great expense, it had been cracked and so his communications were no longer open to view. She suspected that the Intelligence Community was riddled with active traitors, sympathisers or just those who wanted the killing to stop for moral reasons. The war couldn’t continue to be fought with all that going on too.

Renzi told Mitchell to end the war. It would cost him his presidency, she admitted, but his presidency had already seen his family made targets for murder. Keeping the war going was seeing the losses to families across the nation of their loved ones too, something that would only continue for no purpose but filling graves. It was a lost cause. Mitchell had to do the decent thing and give in: the consequences would be traumatic and gut-wrenching but had to be faced.


Renzi left Camp David to go back to DC. Not long after returning there, she called Mitchell with an urgent matter. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Hutchinson was trying to gather together Cabinet members for a secret meeting. Though he hadn’t said for what purpose, the SecState understood what was going on. Mitchell’s Transportation Secretary was not long afterwards on the line calling to inform his president of the same thing. Hutchinson was trying to do what Leach and Ferdinand had done in January where they had made the effort to try and get rid of Walsh right at the end of his presidency using the 25th Amendment. The symmetry of what was being done in April as to the effort months beforehand under a different president – the president being at Camp David, a secret meeting, political upheaval due to events out West... – was quite telling. The outcome was pretty much the same too: it didn’t work. Cruz put a stop to it all while there in DC. Any undertaking to try and remove Mitchell using such means was doomed to failure even without her there because Hutchinson didn’t have the numbers to even give it a partial chance of success. The vice president physically stopped the whole matter then, through her, Mitchell fired Hutchinson as well as the secretaries of agriculture and energy who had been willing to stand with him. A native of Oregon, held by the DAR, Hutchinson and Mitchell had long been allies but the 50th President threw him out of his government due to his effort to try and remove him with the claims that his grief was effecting his ability to do his job. The attempt was made with the fear that Mitchell was about to end the war, a thinking delivered to those plotters by others who had been out to Camp David that day to witness events and had reported back. The two other secretaries weren’t the only ones who had shared Hutchinson’s thinking but they were the only ones to raise their heads above the parapet.

Darby, another Westerner like Hutchinson, had gone back to Raven Rock after that Camp David gathering. Mitchell recalled him to the presidential retreat and asked the SecDef when he arrived if he had been willing to give support to what the president called ‘Hutchinson’s coup’. Instead of answering either in the affirmative or negative, Darby questioned whether Mitchell was going to end the war with the DAR. It became clear with that that the SecDef’s position on Hutchinson’s pitiful effort to try and remove him depended upon such an answer. That was a game which Mitchell didn’t play. It had taken an awful lot of political capital for Mitchell to use up to get Darby confirmed through the Senate as SecDef right after he had removed Ferdinand. Darby was his man, someone he had put his full support on in public as the one to oversee the defeat of the DAR. Despite all of that, as was the case with Hutchinson, Mitchell fired him. Darby had been for a few hours the last one standing with regard to Westerners in the Mitchell Administration, after their numbers had been thinned by other resignations in opposition to how the war was fought, but he went out of the door on the night when the 50th President got rid of four Cabinet members…

...Walsh had fired five that night in January yet Mitchell wasn’t far behind such a total.

The next day, Mitchell spoke to the nation in a presidential address which everyone watched. He told the country, and the world at large, that he was willing to see an end to the war to stop Western secession. America had been broken apart and it couldn’t be put it back together. Once he made that address, Mitchell fully expected all hell to break loose and to have a real fight on his hands, one that would cost him the White House in the end, but he was determined to see it though for the greater good. The ‘greater good’ was what so many didn’t agree with him on when it came to fighting to keep America together, and so he got that fight.


End of Part Seven

[gillan1220]

Another side-effect of the war is that the Gulf of Mexico would suffer oil spills worse than the BP in 2010. Not only would the southern U.S. be affected but also other countries sharing the Gulf Coast.

Looks like the next chapter would be the part where Mitchell orders a "zerg rush" of U.S. Armed Forces into the DAR. After all, the U.S. still has a larger population pool than the DAR.

[James G]

Jul 18, 2021 4:39:38 GMT gillan1220 said:

Another side-effect of the war is that the Gulf of Mexico would suffer oil spills worse than the BP in 2010. Not only would the southern U.S. be affected but also other countries sharing the Gulf Coast.

Looks like the next chapter would be the part where Mitchell orders a "zerg rush" of U.S. Armed Forces into the DAR. After all, the U.S. still has a larger population pool than the DAR.

There was a big spill after the first set of attacks. Maybe Cuba, maybe Mexico.
Ah, no. The US is about to give in.
Population advantage, bigger manufacturing base, larger military forces (at the start anyway) etc. have eventually not been enough.
Part Eight will cover the United States losing a second conflict in just over two years and how that goes. 

[James G]

Interlude


167 – Operation Red Wolf

Theresa Green had laid on the escape plan for herself and her husband Bill. The two of them would flee to Latin America following arrangements she’d made. It had been something long in the works though with preparations increased dramatically and the time-frame so suddenly moved up ahead of public revelations made. Bill, the former Senate Majority Leader, for so long known as ‘America’s real president’, had messed up and left himself exposed for all that he had done. Theresa hadn’t chastised him nor walked away. She could have but opted not to. There was a lot she knew about what he had done and in her heart she knew that she could have made some sort of arrangement for impunity with the federal government for all of that. Yet… in the same heart there was love there. She wanted to be with him and not see him suffer all that would come not just from punishment but also by her turning on him. So she convinced him to run and laid on all of the plans for that.

When they had reached that airfield in Mexico’s Yucatan, Theresa was the one who dismissed all of the first set of paid mercenaries who had gotten them out of Oklahoma. She made certain that the second set saw away the first lot and that they understood their task properly. There was the respectful use of the term ‘ma’am’ to her and then they were underway again in a second aircraft. From Mexico, the Greens were flown to Peru on a long flight that saw them land near to the northern city of Trujillo. The aircraft flew on without them, into the Brazilian Amazon after a refuelling stop where it left the Greens, though with two more Caucasian passengers taking their place: paid doubles who knew little of what was happening apart from they were getting well-compensated. The mercenary team were all Central Americans and knew Peru well. Theresa took Bill’s hand as they were put into a vehicle that at once set off for the deep interior of Peru far away from Trujillo and, hopefully, anywhere else were there might possibly be any more than the very odd American who might show up. Sleeping during that journey over what soon became rough terrain, Theresa dreamt disturbing images of Bill being put to death before he eyes. US Government agents with Admiral Miller directing them hacked her husband to pieces before her eyes before turning their attention towards her. She awoke with a shout of alarm, concerning Bill greatly. She told him about the DHS Secretary but he reminded her that he was dead. As to anyone catching up with them in Peru, Bill told her that she had chosen well: who would seek them there?

There was a house with the vast majority of usual creature comforts that the Greens were taken to. The bills had all been paid by Theresa ahead of time, including that for the mercenaries who continued to protect them. Bill slept a lot. Theresa worried a great deal. Everything back in Oklahoma before they ran had seemed like a perfect exercise with the escape made. However, once they were where they had gotten to, even when hidden and with all of those men with guns about, she feared that the end would come for them. There was no evidence to suggest that it would and she went back through the escape in detail to try and find where anything might have gone wrong. No problems cropped up. Her fear was irrational, Theresa knew, but it was unmovable. After a good few days, her mind turned to moving onwards. She was considering taking her and Bill somewhere else.


When the Greens had fled, the matter of locating them and bringing them – Theresa as well as Bill – to justice had moved beyond the purview of the DHS and the FBI. Admiral Miller would have tried to keep tracking them down under his control but he was dead and his acting replacement didn’t make a fight for that. The Greens had gone overseas and so finding them turned to Anna & Anya.

Anna Ellis and Anya Winterbottom were the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA Director respectively. They coordinated the effort to track down to where the Greens had run to, working with foreign intelligence services too. False trails like that flight onwards into Brazil were run down with a lot of effort expended but it soon become clear that the Greens were in the interior of the north of Peru. For all the clever cunning of Theresa Green, she had nothing on the US Intelligence Community. Locating people was what they did for a living: she was just an inexperienced amateur. Peruvian assistance was asked for and given. When Winterbottom sent field officers into Peru, along with ‘operators’ from the military whose participation Ellis was behind, there was a link-up made with locals on the ground there. Suspicious sites located by satellite observation were checked by the joint American-Peruvian team. At the third potential hideaway looked at, the Greens were spotted. They kept themselves hidden but weren’t clever enough to avoid detection. The strength of the mercenary force was judged to not be of any real substance to a move against the Greens. Anna & Anya – two women in their late forties / early fifties, career professionals in the intelligence world – took what they had to see Vice President Cruz due to that information coming in when President Mitchell was still dealing with the attack on the First Family. Cruz gave them to the go ahead to proceed once she had cleared everything with Mitchell and there had too be a tie-in with the Peruvian government.

In one of his last official acts before he was fired by the president, SecDef Darby signed off on the use of Navy SEALs with DEVGRU to take part in the CIA-led Operation Red Wolf. Those SEALs had had an ‘interesting’ war fighting against secessionists with the DAR, victories and defeats both, but Red Wolf was an easy assignment for them. A small detachment took part in the assault against the hideaway where the Greens were. Back in DC, there was a wait to find out how that went.


Theresa got up in the middle of the night to use the toilet. She left her husband sleeping in the bed which they shared and crossed the landing to enter the bathroom. Just as she sat down, when local time was exactly three in the morning, when everyone was supposed to be sound asleep, everything went to hell. There was a bright flash and a loud crash. She was thrown off the toilet, holding a hand over her eyes. Theresa crawled out of the bathroom to head back towards Bill. She didn’t know what was going on but sought to get there and save him. There were shouts and then several crashes which sounded like furniture being chucked over before Bill then called out.

“Stop!”

Trying to stand up, Theresa felt someone grab the back of her nightgown and then she was thrown across the landing. She struck the wall and landed on her back. There was a light in her face and a voice growled at her: “Don’t f*cking move!”

A shot rang out in the bedroom. Theresa knew a gunshot when she heard it. She also knew what it meant. It was clear that Bill was dead. The only thing that made sense to her was that someone had come here to kill him and they had.

She started to cry.

Theresa was scooped up and a hood thrown over her head. Darkness was all that there was. It felt like headphones were put over that hood too before all sound went out. Several hands grabbed her and pulled her down the stairs. She thought that she was going to be taken somewhere outside to be shot. That didn’t happen though. She was brought to a stop on the grass outside the back of the house. Her bare feet told her she was there in the absence of any other clue. There was a wait. She carried on crying for Bill, knowing full well that he had to be dead. There was a gun beside the bed, an old pistol his father had given him which he had then taken to Peru with them. She could picture him pulling it on whoever had attacked them but that gunfire hadn’t been that of a pistol.

Picked up again, Theresa was thrown into a seat. Two hulking figures were beside her. She didn’t think it was a vehicle and that was confirmed when her stomach lifted up. That always happened in helicopters. Theresa was being flown away from where she and Bill had fled to and not shot dead there like him. But what her fate might be after that, she had no idea.


Anna and Anya told Mitchell of the mission success with Red Wolf the morning after he had made that speech where the 50th President had declared that he was going to end the war against the Democratic American Republic with the result being failure. The expected sh*tstorm had already begun. The success which he was told of was that Theresa Green had been captured but Bill Green had been killed: he had taken a shot against the Navy SEALs who went in and they had subsequently returned fire.

One of the Greens was dead and the other was being flown home.

Mitchell shared no tears for Bill Green. That man had killed his wife, one of his daughters and hundreds of Americans as well… for some sort of twisted political gain. Green’s terrorism had helped put the country in the situation where it was in where Mitchell, as president, was going to see it permanently broken apart into two nations after a disastrous civil war. Federal agents would take the man’s wife into custody and Mitchell let Attorney General Gunnarsson know he wanted to be kept up to speed on that down the line. However, once told that Green was dead, finally having being punished for what he had done, and not needed to be tried where there would be all sorts of difficulties, Mitchell moved to put the whole matter out of his mind.

It was over with.

[gillan1220]

Jul 18, 2021 18:11:05 GMT James G said:

Ah, no. The US is about to give in.
Population advantage, bigger manufacturing base, larger military forces (at the start anyway) etc. have eventually not been enough.
Part Eight will cover the United States losing a second conflict in just over two years and how that goes. 

This TL's 2020s definitely marks the end of America as a superpower. It's gonna look like the Fall of Rome all over again. The real victor here would be China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, Belarus, Iran, and North Korea.

Jul 18, 2021 18:11:39 GMT James G said:

Theresa Green had laid on the escape plan for herself and her husband Bill. The two of them would flee to Latin America following arrangements she’d made. It had been something long in the works though with preparations increased dramatically and the time-frame so suddenly moved up ahead of public revelations made. Bill, the former Senate Majority Leader, for so long known as ‘America’s real president’, had messed up and left himself exposed for all that he had done. Theresa hadn’t chastised him nor walked away. She could have but opted not to. There was a lot she knew about what he had done and in her heart she knew that she could have made some sort of arrangement for impunity with the federal government for all of that. Yet… in the same heart there was love there. She wanted to be with him and not see him suffer all that would come not just from punishment but also by her turning on him. So she convinced him to run and laid on all of the plans for that.

When they had reached that airfield in Mexico’s Yucatan, Theresa was the one who dismissed all of the first set of paid mercenaries who had gotten them out of Oklahoma. She made certain that the second set saw away the first lot and that they understood their task properly. There was the respectful use of the term ‘ma’am’ to her and then they were underway again in a second aircraft. From Mexico, the Greens were flown to Peru on a long flight that saw them land near to the northern city of Trujillo. The aircraft flew on without them, into the Brazilian Amazon after a refuelling stop where it left the Greens, though with two more Caucasian passengers taking their place: paid doubles who knew little of what was happening apart from they were getting well-compensated. The mercenary team were all Central Americans and knew Peru well. Theresa took Bill’s hand as they were put into a vehicle that at once set off for the deep interior of Peru far away from Trujillo and, hopefully, anywhere else were there might possibly be any more than the very odd American who might show up. Sleeping during that journey over what soon became rough terrain, Theresa dreamt disturbing images of Bill being put to death before he eyes. US Government agents with Admiral Miller directing them hacked her husband to pieces before her eyes before turning their attention towards her. She awoke with a shout of alarm, concerning Bill greatly. She told him about the DHS Secretary but he reminded her that he was dead. As to anyone catching up with them in Peru, Bill told her that she had chosen well: who would seek them there?

Paraguay would have been a more suitable place for them to hide. It's deep in South America and is known as "criminal triangle" as the worst of the worst elements hide there.

Now that the Greens are dealt with, I'm curious how the U.S. would give in to the DAR's independence.

[James G]

Jul 19, 2021 13:20:46 GMT gillan1220 said:

Jul 18, 2021 18:11:05 GMT James G said:

Ah, no. The US is about to give in.
Population advantage, bigger manufacturing base, larger military forces (at the start anyway) etc. have eventually not been enough.
Part Eight will cover the United States losing a second conflict in just over two years and how that goes. 

This TL's 2020s definitely marks the end of America as a superpower. It's gonna look like the Fall of Rome all over again. The real victor here would be China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, Belarus, Iran, and North Korea.

Jul 18, 2021 18:11:39 GMT James G said:

Theresa Green had laid on the escape plan for herself and her husband Bill. The two of them would flee to Latin America following arrangements she’d made. It had been something long in the works though with preparations increased dramatically and the time-frame so suddenly moved up ahead of public revelations made. Bill, the former Senate Majority Leader, for so long known as ‘America’s real president’, had messed up and left himself exposed for all that he had done. Theresa hadn’t chastised him nor walked away. She could have but opted not to. There was a lot she knew about what he had done and in her heart she knew that she could have made some sort of arrangement for impunity with the federal government for all of that. Yet… in the same heart there was love there. She wanted to be with him and not see him suffer all that would come not just from punishment but also by her turning on him. So she convinced him to run and laid on all of the plans for that.

When they had reached that airfield in Mexico’s Yucatan, Theresa was the one who dismissed all of the first set of paid mercenaries who had gotten them out of Oklahoma. She made certain that the second set saw away the first lot and that they understood their task properly. There was the respectful use of the term ‘ma’am’ to her and then they were underway again in a second aircraft. From Mexico, the Greens were flown to Peru on a long flight that saw them land near to the northern city of Trujillo. The aircraft flew on without them, into the Brazilian Amazon after a refuelling stop where it left the Greens, though with two more Caucasian passengers taking their place: paid doubles who knew little of what was happening apart from they were getting well-compensated. The mercenary team were all Central Americans and knew Peru well. Theresa took Bill’s hand as they were put into a vehicle that at once set off for the deep interior of Peru far away from Trujillo and, hopefully, anywhere else were there might possibly be any more than the very odd American who might show up. Sleeping during that journey over what soon became rough terrain, Theresa dreamt disturbing images of Bill being put to death before he eyes. US Government agents with Admiral Miller directing them hacked her husband to pieces before her eyes before turning their attention towards her. She awoke with a shout of alarm, concerning Bill greatly. She told him about the DHS Secretary but he reminded her that he was dead. As to anyone catching up with them in Peru, Bill told her that she had chosen well: who would seek them there?

Paraguay would have been a more suitable place for them to hide. It's deep in South America and is known as "criminal triangle" as the worst of the worst elements hide there.

Now that the Greens are dealt with, I'm curious how the U.S. would give in to the DAR's independence.

Things will not 'go back to normal' for the US internationally after the end of this at all.
The Greens should have gone much further. Peru was a bad choice... but even then outer space wouldn't have been far enough. The SEALs which went in there had similar OBL orders: capture if possible BUT shoot first.

Why give in?
The US is defeated. They cannot fight anymore. Fire control on their tanks is the latest computer bug. That is enough to make Mitchell give in because, along with everything else, the war is won if you cannot fight properly.

[James G]

Part Eight – Price of defeat


168 – Forty-two states issue

President Mitchell’s speech to the nation where he declared that he was intending to seek an end to the war came on April 9th. The fight against the secessionists in the West had lasted less than three months. It was a conflict which the United States had decisively lost with there being no hope of recovery: either in terms of the war effort nor the territory taken. He told the country the truth on that matter. Mitchell explained that due to the asymmetrical nature of how the Democratic American Republic had fought, in particular the use of cyber-warfare to cripple major combat systems, the entire wider national security of the United States was threatened as well. The war needed to come to a close because of the human cost of it and the inability to continue when the defeat which had been inflicted was so severe. Fighting was no longer justifiable in neither military nor moral terms. It hadn’t been his intention upon assuming office, Mitchell assured the country, to be a president who allowed part of the United States to make a successful breakaway but what had occurred was irreversible. The war had to end. There would be pain and humiliation in defeat, Mitchell had continued with his honesty, but there was no other choice in the matter. All that he could ask the country to do, he concluded his remarks with, was for the American people to come together in unity and get through it all.

There had been another Mother’s March through the streets of DC the day before Mitchell’s war concession speech. Peacefully on that Sunday, meaning without their gathering attracting the attentions of those out for trouble latching on, the mothers of sons & daughters lost in fighting the war had slowly and silently gone through the nation’s capital to show their grief. In other cities that day and throughout the whole weekend ahead of the 50th President opting to withdraw from the war, there had been other gatherings across the United States where protesters hadn’t behaved. In most of the big cities, from the Northeast to the South to the Mid-West, anti-war demonstrations had taken place. Attendees varied from those genuinely opposed to the war against the DAR – any war at that – to those who sought to fight with the police and cause massive disruption. New York had once more been struck by some of the worst violence yet Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Miami & St. Louis had suffered too. With the deep Red states of Georgia, Ohio and Louisiana, the authorities there stopped planned marches in Atlanta, Columbus & New Orleans: in Florida and Texas, despite the authoritarian tenancies of the sitting governors, efforts to do the same followed. In Pennsylvania, no march happened in Philadelphia where it was planned to due to the Acting Governor there arresting organisers the night before and (using state law allowing it) flooding the internet with the lie that it had been cancelled. Pennsylvania was a mess where the line between the rule of law and democracy was becoming more and more blurred in a Purple state that had suffered so much during the Years of Lead.

Most Americans didn’t go out and protest. The majority of the citizens of the United States had no inkling to do anything like what a minority did and express their opinion in the streets. Their views had varied through on whether they had wanted the war to continue until victory came or whether they were prepared to see the fighting end with the DAR achieving what it had set out to do. In the weeks before Mitchell decided to give in, when it became clear nationwide that the war was being lost, there had been a marked change in public opinion. A vast pro-war majority had turned into a sliver of overall support. Pollsters were left trying to keep up and so too politicians. The simple explanation of why that occurred hadn’t come to those who wanted to react to the public mood. There were a lot of factors at play. At the core of the shift though, as was explained to Mitchell ahead of his announcement, was that the American people had never been in full support of the war. They were willing to accept it because it was felt necessary. When it became clear to them that it was pointless to continue, they started to oppose it in growing numbers. Only the extremists on each end of the pro- & anti-war side had stayed firm in their beliefs. The much talked about silently majority had spoken with that shift certain to topple over to opposition hard the longer it went on. Mitchell had made his announcement ahead of the tipping point arriving but it had been judged certain to happen. He wasn’t the only one aware of that too.


The concession speech by Mitchell didn’t mean that the Second American Civil War ended the moment that he finished speaking in his nationwide announcement. He said in that that he was seeking a political and diplomatic end to the conflict: ‘seeking’ being the important word. Within hours, first directed by the DAR military authorities yet one followed soon enough by the orders of US NORTHCOM, there was an unofficial ceasefire up and down the front-lines out West. For almost half a day the week beforehand, when Mitchell was burying his wife and one of his daughters, there had already been one of those. When told not to fire on those on the other side, fellow Americans, service-personnel did so. There were exceptions to the rule and some fighting did happen though. That was expected yet it didn’t break the general unofficial ceasefire which fell upon the entire stretch of front-lines where those in uniform were. As to those not in uniform, their actions went against what everyone else was doing: there was no ceasefire for the guerillas/partisans/terrorists… whatever names they were given by those on their side and those against them.

Upon releasing Gibson and Padley to United States control in Arizona during March, Lt.–General Harvey, the DAR Armed Force’s second-in-command, had handed over that document package to Colonel McSherry from the 3rd Cavalry Regiment. Within it, amongst all of the other stuff, there had been contact details given which covered how communications could be made between the two sides at the highest level. There were military and diplomatic channels both provided. Mitchell had addressed that matter with his top advisers ahead of making his speech. There were benefits that were seen as to go through either channel when it came to talking with the DAR but in the end, it was decided that talking with the secessionist government was a diplomatic matter. SecState Renzi was given the task of making contact. She had been the one to finally talk Mitchell round to admitting that defeat had come, something that was already bringing a strong political backlash directed against her after that had been publicly revealed, and she was the one to place a call to Sacramento. President Pierce had moved his government to the California state capital where they were operating despite the DAR’s official capital being Las Vegas. He was at home in Sacramento more than he ever could have been in Nevada.

Contact was easily made. Renzi spoke with her opposite number out in the DAR-controlled California. She explained that as per her president’s speech, the United States was willing to seek a diplomatic and political solution to end the civil war. She addressed the proposal made via what Harvey had delivered the previous month, not what had first been on the table between Carrillo and Berman during their Mexico meet. The United States had many differences of opinion with that Arizona peace proposal though at the same time believed that the general framework of that was one to work from. The major divergence was what Mitchell and his administration were calling the ‘forty-two states issue’. The two countries had opposing views on what territory it and the Democratic American Republic would control once peace came. There were other matters as well yet that was the most significant.

An agreement was made that the unofficial ceasefire in-place would become official. Doing that allowed for the two sides to meet face-to-face. Renzi suggested that and it was one which her counterpart on the other end agreed to. There were many matters that would need to be negotiated beyond the forty-two states issue. The Arizona proposal didn’t cover everything. Setting a time was easy enough: Renzi proposed a meeting in forty-eight hours time and that was accepted. It was regarded there in Sacramento as being enough time to see that the ceasefire was holding and establish trust. It also allowed for political discussions within each camp ahead of time. The location of where talks could be held was something else. Renzi refused the DAR suggestion that they should meet outside of eithers territory, on neutral ground somewhere. The US Government didn’t want to involve other parties such as Canada, Mexico, the EU etc. Albuquerque and El Paso were each considered. The first location was occupied by the DAR (claimed as their own) while the second was still US territory but surrounded by DAR military units with only one avenue of entry/exit. Renzi would have a meeting done at El Paso if the DAR would withdraw out of the small portions of Texas it controlled; she was told that for that to be done, there would have to be a similar withdraw out of the not very consequential areas of Idaho under US control as a sign of good faith. Discussions got heated there and a different location was chosen. The DAR Government was willing to come to US territory in Colorado where the front-lines were less ‘complicated’ as was the case near El Paso, and Renzi could agree to that because, unlike Albuquerque, her suggestion of the location of Cañon City wasn’t undergoing public disturbances like there were down in that New Mexico city.

Cañon City in forty-eight hours was agreed upon. There were military details as to security and travel arrangements to be made, along with who would attend, but agreement was made of where and when talks would be held.


The political flak that came for Mitchell was immense.

Those attendees who had gone to Camp David the day before his announcement on seeking to end the war had got wind of what was coming and made sure that everyone else knew. Mitchell had fired four members of his Cabinet that same night, the Secretary of Defence chief among them, and that provided them with ammunition – most didn’t need any more but were glad of what they got – to declare that the president was wrong. His Cabinet had disagreed with him and there was even an attempt to try and remove him due to how wrong they believed he was… that attack line left out the fact that it was only four members, nowhere near a majority. All of that aside, whether he had had full support from within his administration, Mitchell was the target of an immense political backlash for what he moved to do. The United States was an indivisible union of fifty states. United they were and there was no compromise on that. The war wasn’t lost, couldn’t be lost in fact, so said so many from all sides of the partisan divide. The matter of Red states and Blue states, all important throughout the Twenties, had been blurred when it came to the civil war and that continued when the opposition to Mitchell’s decision arrived. He took flak from Republicans – as he was – and Democrats alike. The worst of it came from his own side though.

Governors Cook (FL), Garner (TX) and Groves (UT) wouldn’t accept it. They were absolutely furious at what he was doing. Cook stopped just short of publicly declaring the 50th President a traitor but only just. Garner was enraged that Mitchell had presided over the permanent loss of a good portion of the country and called him the worst president the nation had ever had… there was quite a lot of competition for that achievement but she believed that he was. Groves’ native state was being surrendered to secessionists and his people left to suffer under an illegal, oppressive dictatorship: it was an outrage and he swore repeatedly during in a live CNN broadcast with those curse words being directed against Mitchell. Senate Majority Leader Oakes sought to position herself as the central figure of opposition to an end to the war, one which she declared would mean a ‘surrender’. New in post, after the Green debacle, she assured the country that the US Senate would impeach Mitchell before he was allowed to end the war with the secessionists and see the DAR gaining any legitimacy. House Speaker Fraser was also firmly against giving in. However, what he didn’t speak of, even when pressed by a journalist, was the matter of impeachment. Despite what Oakes had said, any impeachment would have to come out of the US House before it moved to the Senate. Media commentators talked about the required numbers in each and judged that there wouldn’t be enough votes in the House for a majority let alone a two-thirds total in the Senate. That was all speculation on their part yet Fraser hadn’t, and wouldn’t, use the word impeachment when talking about seeing Mitchell stopped from what he was going. What Fraser might seek to do to stop Mitchell wasn’t known.

California’s one-time governor, the Independent politician Marti-Rivera who’d been in the governor’s mansion in Sacramento during the early Twenties, had been one of those loud voices ‘speaking for the people of the West’ during the civil war. His cross-partisan coalition hadn’t gotten enough influence as he had wanted it to when there had been a fight against the demonization of Westerners – who didn’t vote for secession, dictatorship, war or anything else – but there had always been media attention. Marti-Rivera was back on the airwaves after Mitchell had made his announcement where he, in a different manner to Groves, decried the actions of the president where he was willing to see all of those people out there in the West abandoned. He promised to fight against that, to see them all freed and not given up on as they were being by the 50th President walking away from all his previous pledges never to do so. There were Members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, who had fled from the West when the DAR was established. Congresswoman Sheldon out of California (a Democrat) had been one of those who said she was speaking on behalf of the people out there and once the announcement came that the war was to be ended, she echoed much of what Marti-Rivera said. Her and the others also had expressed concerns about what situation that would leave them in both as exiles from a new country and their political status as well. They were losing their country in addition to representing portions no longer to be within the United States. What did that mean for the future? Nothing good, so Sheldon said.

Where there was all of that outrage, there was at the same time resignation of the circumstances from other political figures: much of that surprising on the surface.

Senate Minority Leader Yorke criticised Mitchell’s handling of the war. He had led the nation to defeat, so said the country’s leading Democrat. She also expressed only contempt for the DAR and its perversion of the democratic will of voters out in the West: Yorke made it clear once again that she didn’t consider those such as Pierce members of the same party as she and that he was a dictator. As to the ending of the war that Mitchell was seeking to achieve though, Yorke came out in support of a conclusion. Since she had taken over in the Senate, Yorke had run the tightest of ships there and, working with the House Minority Leader, had sought to restore her party’s reputation. That had meant constructive criticism of the war and walking the finest of tightropes. When she affirmed that she supported the end of the war, Yorke didn’t stand firmly alongside Mitchell. It was his fault, such was her message, that the situation had come about where it was necessary for the war to have to end allowing for the continuation of the illegal existence of the DAR. Governor Alton from Kansas broke with other Republicans where he spoke on behalf of the Cheyenne Pact states: those ones which were soon to become the new ‘border states’. He made a public statement talking of the forty-two states of the union (not terminology aligned with the White House and what Renzi had said to the DAR but the same thing) and how Eastern Colorado would have to remain within the United States. Alton didn’t criticise the war effort nor what Mitchell had done but assured all those watching & listening that he would make sure that whatever the outcome of peace with the DAR, it would mean a secure border for the United States. There were a lot of questions directed to Alton from the Fox News journalist who he spoke to about where he stood on the whole matter of a peace deal but he would only talk about ‘secure borders’. Naturally, comments by Yorke and Alton threw into doubt at once everything that Oakes had said about impeachment and then remarks by others about stopping Mitchell from ending the war. There was significant political movement that the media had to catch up with when it came to how the mood had changed.

From where it had looked like there would be complete and steadfast opposition, the near-complete earlier cross-partisan coalition in support of continuing the war, as only days beforehand seemed so firm, had broken. Politicians were starting to follow public opinion as the notion of defeat sunk slowly in.

[gillan1220]

Ouch. Looks like the American century is finally done for good.
Time to the U.S. rose to a global competitor: 1898
Time the U.S. became a superpower: 1945
Time the U.S. became the sole superpower: 1991
Defeat in the U.S.-China War over Taiwan: 2027
End of the American Century: 2029

So to summarize, the U.S. superpower status only lasted from 1945 to 2029

[James G]

Jul 21, 2021 3:06:04 GMT gillan1220 said:

Ouch. Looks like the American century is finally done for good.
Time to the U.S. rose to a global competitor: 1898
Time the U.S. became a superpower: 1945
Time the U.S. became the sole superpower: 1991
Defeat in the U.S.-China War over Taiwan: 2027
End of the American Century: 2029

So to summarize, the U.S. superpower status only lasted from 1945 to 2029

Not so sure if it is lost, but it is wounded significantly. Public perception might be that way though.

[James G]

169 – Mockery

In Moscow, President Makarov was left stunned by the sudden, shocking turn of events across in America. Russia’s leader had been entirely convinced, right up until the moment that it happened, that the US Government wouldn’t give in to domestic secessionists. His intelligence services had provided him with a significant amount of intelligence in the days leading up to President Mitchell’s public statement on ending the war which said that Mitchell might have to do such a thing. The military situation was just terrible and US forces couldn’t fight effectively. Makarov’s foreign minister briefed him the night before it happened that there were rumours coming from out of DC that Mitchell was looking to give in. Nonetheless, Makarov had refused to believe it. The idea of that had been inconceivable to him. Yet it happened, leaving him dumbstruck when all that he had been told, all that he had dismissed, was confirmed.

No matter what might be said in public by Kremlin spokespeople, generals speaking on the record, political figures from the Duma following the Kremlin’s line and also Makarov’s not-so-subtle threats at times, he had long been frightened of the military power of the United States. The Americans were the only ones who truly posed a danger to his country. That was why, like his predecessor, Makarov always stood firm against them. The American war machine was only restrained by its political masters but Makarov concerned himself a lot over its capability. Fearing its strength, such was why he had been absolutely convinced that, setbacks aside, it would win on the battlefields of home soil. When it didn’t, when his biggest bogeyman failed, Makarov had a key tenet of his understanding of the world outside of Russia upended. It took some time to get over that shock. When he did though, Makarov issued instructions as to what the response of Russia would be to the new reality of two Americas. There was the internal governmental response, not for public consumption where opportunities would be sought, and then the outward reply.

One of Mitchell’s remarks in his war concession address had been that the United States would face humiliation that it would have to endure as a consequence of defeat. Makarov’s people had noted that and brought it to their president’s attention. Why that had been said was understood. There had been much global mockery from opponents of America as it fought its civil war and Mitchell was trying to prepare his people for more of that. Even if Mitchell had said no such thing, the Russian response to American internal defeat would have come with mockery of the situation that country found itself in. Kremlin mouthpieces at home and abroad began the process of rubbing salt in the wounds for the American people. The statements which were put out through official and non-official sources highlighted American weakness. There was criticism of American democracy and how that was supposedly enviable across the globe – the Green Scandal was a gift to Russia – when the end result was the defeat incurred on the battlefields of Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. America’s military might, with its worldwide reach, was laughed at for all it apparently offered on paper but was incapable of doing what its champions had long boasted of. Those lines of attack, mocking America, came alongside what Makarov also had done where Russian statements welcomed the cessation of fighting within America. The killing was coming to an end, no more innocent lives would be lost: Russia played up that quite a bit. Global peace had been threatened by America fighting its civil war too, so said the Kremlin, where Mexico had been torn apart by violence as a consequence and there also had been an ignorance of the United States’ global commitments while it fought at home. Makarov let his people say all of that without making direct comments himself. He sat back and watched the growing political crisis brewing within America with the knowledge that any fuel thrown on the fire by his people was only adding to a massive conflagration domestically. He got over all of his shock and enjoyed the spectacle.

The British and the Canadians were the first among the United States’ allies to know what was coming. They had access to all sorts of information and intelligence that others didn’t. Prime ministers in London and Ottawa were briefed ahead of time by military chiefs as to how the war was lost and it was only a matter of time before Mitchell finally accepted that reality. Their foreign ministers were in contact with Renzi ahead of time to try to confirm what was coming yet didn’t get that far with the SecState. The British PM had had a good relationship with Mitchell since the election outcome the previous year (he’d done a lot of hard work to built that up) and got him on the phone for a trans-Atlantic call ahead of time where it was confirmed what was coming with some time to prepare a reaction. Vice President Cruz spoke to the Canadian PM and gave her a heads-up though in Ottawa more time would have been desired. Canada had been badly affected by open warfare within its neighbours borders, not as bad as Mexico had naturally, but that didn’t mean that Canada had gotten off lightly… only direct involvement would have been worse than what happened. The security of Britain and Canada was directed effected by the Second American Civil War and the two governments believed that the outcome, despite the end of fighting, was a complete nightmare for shared security in the Western World. How to deal with the Democratic American Republic in the post-war future was a challenge that Canada was going to have to face but Britain too still wouldn’t get off lightly from that mess despite being an ocean away.

Allies across the world of America, from Europe to Latin America to the Middle East to South-East Asia to Australasia, were all thrown into a panic at the victory with the DAR secessionists had achieved. Their security, the international world order, was upended by that outcome. The massive global trade disruption following the Taiwan Conflict had been followed by civil war in America and then there was a new country on the Pacific coast of America that wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Dealing with the fallout was an ongoing, multi-dimensional challenge that no one wanted. Israel beat Britain and Canada to the punch by offering post-conflict assistance to the United States, promising to provide anything asked for: the DAR, under Maria Arreola Rodriguez and then Samuel Pierce too, had made no secret of their open opposition to Israel. What Israel could give would be far less than those two other close allies of the United States but the offer was put out there, in the open as well.

American adversaries across the world, be they governments leading hostile regimes or individuals within the territories of friends of the United States, celebrated. There were statements made about the end to all of the killing and how that was a good thing. However, there was barely hidden glee at what had gone on with defeat having come. Those countries which America had through the Twenties and earlier sought to see a regime change take place didn’t hold back in their remarks. The chickens had come home to roost, Venezuela’s embattled president declared, for a dying, illegitimate regime in DC; similar things were said by spokespeople for the governments in Belarus, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Syria & Turkey. They laughed at America’s woes, as they had done throughout the entire civil war that had waged. As to individuals living in countries friendly to America, near and far, those who had long stood in opposition to the United States, especially its foreign policy, were delighted at the what happened where – for the second time in two years! – they witnessed what they believed the United States deserved occur. It was the culmination of so many outrageous dreams to see America beaten like that. Arguments from those who tried to counter their celebrations that their freedom was dependent upon American global power were met with mockery and cheers at the sight of a humbled United States. There was only interest in being happy at such a sight rather than arguing over geo-politics.

Far more restrained than outsiders might have expected it to be, yet actually in line with long-term Chinese policy, official governmental reactions which came out of Beijing were to welcome the end of the fighting taking place within America. Mitchell was even congratulated on his courage for ending a war, one which the Chinese Government’s international spokesperson blamed upon his two predecessors. Naturally, taking the opportunity to do what had been done throughout the two previous years, that same mouthpiece of the Chinese Government reminded the world what had been done back in 2027 when the United States had ‘launched an illegal, unsuccessful war of aggression’ against China. Only the ‘heroic sacrifice of the Chinese people’ had halted American interference in Chinese domestic affairs (Taiwan) then. Where the United States had been left permanently divided once the fighting had stopped, China hoped that there would be a peaceful settlement as the eventual outcome. There was no need for mockery, to laugh at the humiliation. China was looking at the future and that future was bright indeed.

[gillan1220]

Well, thus begins the true horrors of a China-dominated world. I don't even know if I want to live in this timeline.