Military Events
Deserets General Smith organized much of his nations army into fortified positions along the Venezuelan border, doubtless ordered by Salt Lake to prevent any future invasion by Chavez.
The conflict between Venezuela and Deseret had seen both sides play on Mexican patriotism as part of their plans to demonize the opposition, but despite the return to status quo antebellum, the fervor needed a venting point. A shadowy group styling itself the Mexico International Liberation Front began carrying out bombings against government targets in the Mexican areas of both Venezuela and the Theocratic State of Deseret. Some days after a devastating attack on a post office in Mexico City, a man named Danny Trejo became associated with the movement, and barricades were set up in his name along the northern edge of Baja California. However, Trejos anarchic Mexican nation appeared before Deserets forces had the time to truly reoccupy the region in the wake of Venezuelan withdrawal. Now that Salt Lake was clear to bring the full force of its magnificently led armies to bear, Danny Trejos days as a leader seemed to be numbered.
The ex-exile rebels on Cuba, poorly provisioned and fully abandoned by the Confederate States, defended as best they could as Venezuelan forces began to sweep the island, but after being crushed in battle, they surrendered quickly. President Chavez rewarded this behavior by dumping the lot of them in chains along the Florida coast. It wasnt the most noble end to an aborted salvation of their homeland, but at least they were alive.
(-1 Venezuelan division)
And so we reach the rest of the world. In 2005, almost all South American and Eastern Hemisphere conflicts could be directly tied to World War III fought between the Eastern Coalition and the DFI-NADTA.
Some called the South American struggle the War of the Development Fund before its place as part of the world battlefield became clear. Then the area was simply the South American Theatre, a zone where Brazil and the Lima Republic, allied with expeditionary forces from Deseret, Iberia and Scandinavia, clashed with the Argentineans in the south and the Venezuelans in the north. The year started as the Argentines renewed their offensive through an attempted encirclement of Rio de Janeiro, but the Brazilians managed to repulse the feared Cyborgs from their best-known city with the help of Major General Andrew Thomas newly arrived Deseret Marines. Further inland, the Argentineans had more success in smashing forward before DFI soldiers from abroad could reinforce the positions, but then Lima had entered the war, and the mechanical cult from Buenos Aires had to shift gears to protect Chile. For a brief time, it seemed as if Argentina had reached the apex of its conquests and was on its way down, but relief came when Venezuela invaded Brazil from the north. Suddenly assaulted on two different fronts, DFI-NADTA scrambled to find defensive lines, but by the time such a deed was accomplished, Venezuela had occupied vast portions of Brazil and the Argentines were on the offensive again.
(-4 Argentine divisions, -7 Argentine Cyborg divisions, -2 Argentine squadrons, -3 Argentine groups, -5 Lima divisions, -1 Lima group, -1 Brazilian ASP, -11 Brazilian divisions, -1 Brazilian group, -1 Scandinavian group, -1 Iberian division, -3 Deseret Marines divisions, -4 Venezuelan divisions, -2 Venezuelan groups)
As Morocco and its allies pulled back across the Atlantic after pillaging Quebec, their Grand Atlantic Fleet was accosted by the combined navies of Quebec, Great Britain, and South Africa in a variety of rough a tumble engagements. The lack of coordination between the DFI-NADTA countries was probably the only thing that kept the much smaller Dar al-Islam force from being wiped out. For the first time ever, the forces of the liberal countries were on the offensive against the Eastern Coalition, and their ships were more modern and twice as numerous as their enemies. The thousands of Dar al-Islam soldiers packed onto transports proved easy pickings for various submarines, including some that seemed to come from otherwise uninvolved Deseret, and the various capital ship battles were decided more often than not in favor of DFI-NADTA. Aided in no small part by air cover and the capable Moroccan Marines, Dar al-Islam forced a good fraction of its convoy to the safety of North African ports, but half of the Grand Fleet and half of the Quebec Expeditions Muslim soldiers found their resting place somewhere below the waves.
(-2 Moroccan divisions, -5 Moroccan Marines divisions, -8 Moroccan squadrons, -1 Arabian division, -2 Arabian squadrons, -3 Sudanese divisions, -1 Sudanese squadron, -3 Islamic Courts divisions, -1 Islamic Courts squadron, -2 Pakistani divisions, -1 Pakistani squadron, -1 Indonesian division, -2 Quebecois squadrons, -1 South African squadron, -2 British squadrons)
Throughout the year, vans packed with explosives regularly slammed into South African military bases, and amidst the carnage rumors started spreading that a faction of native communists refused to abide with the governments corruption and ineptitude any longer. Partially because the terrorist attacks made a point of never targeting civilians, public opinion began to fall against the government in Cape Town.
(South African approval decrease)
Perhaps ironically, South Africa picked this same year to finally flex diplomatic and military muscle. Allying with Nigeria-in-Angola, the Cape regime pushed by land into the area Morocco called Congo State, their primary resistance being hastily raised conscripts. The massive fortifications the Moroccans had constructed along the beaches served no purpose; there was no attack from the sea. Since Congo State was primarily Christian, it was easily overrun with the help of mass defections, but by the time the armies of the South African Union and the Congo reached the Moroccan Nigeria State, they were up against Muslim heartland. Jihad had been declared earlier in the year by the Moroccan Emperor Muhammad VI, and it seemed not to matter that he had declared it against Iberia and not the African Christians. The infidels were invading, and they would be resisted at all costs. Hundreds of thousands in West Africa eagerly took up the duty to fight for their nation, and while they sustained heavy casualties at the hands of the professional South African military, they managed to bog down the invaders somewhere around the vicinity of the Niger delta. The Christians had begun their war with ease, but they came to December drenched in their own blood.
(-1 Moroccan ASP, +25 Moroccan conscript divisions, -29 Moroccan conscript divisions, +5 South African conscript divisions, -2 South African divisions, -2 Nigerian divisions)
Iberia was well prepared for invasion. Indeed, even though it became eminently clear over the course of the year that three of Iberias neighbors had drawn up plans for its partition, it was Iberia who fired the first shot, launching air raids against military objectives in northern Morocco as soon as Madrid received word that DFI-NADTA had won a great victory in the Atlantic. The Eastern Coalition allies of Morocco, France and Tunisia immediately retaliated with heavy bombings of Iberia air bases, but by then it was too late. Despite being outnumbered, Iberian air groups successfully rebased to protected locations and began to drag out the fight for aerial dominance. With a considerable edge in technology and numbers, it seemed clear that the Eastern Coalition would win the skies eventually, but Iberia was still capable of flying sorties at the end of 2005. In any case, the first battles on land were waged in the heavily fortified Pyrenees, with Socialist French forces cutting their teeth and achieving no headway. In the west, a pair of planned Moroccan costal landings near Lisbon were called off because of New Rabats strained naval situation. Still, the Eastern Coalition was far from at a loss. The French successfully landed around the Basque regions, deploying their near-identical Genome Soldiers for the first time, though they had to fight to keep the naval supply lines open. Coming from the Mediterranean, things were far more satisfactory for the EC. The Tunisian Arab Jamahiriya easily seized the Balearic Islands, and Moroccan Marines stormed Valencia, paving the way for thousands more of New Rabats soldiers to flood into what was once southern Spain. More French Genome Soldiers landed somewhat south of Barcelona and succeeded in taking the city in their march north, also capturing portions of the Pyrenees fortifications and allowing the French reserves a land route into the peninsula. The French then tried to close their pincer around Madrid, but the soldiers in the Basque Region simply did not have the momentum to fight their way far from the beaches, and the soldiers heading west from newly occupied Catalonia stalled out somewhere in the middle of the country. By the end of the year, half the country was in Eastern Coalition hands, but even VX, the French use of firebombing, and the fury of the Moroccan soldiers jihad could not subdue Lisbon or Madrid, and the French were stymied by a fount of Iberia resistance that continued around Aquitaine and the Pyrenees. The Iberian nation had suffered a great deal from the destructive onslaught of the Eastern Coalition, but it was unbroken.
(-1 Iberian ASP, -12 Iberian divisions, -7 Iberian squadrons, -10 Iberian groups, -2 Moroccan divisions, -3 Moroccan Marine divisions, -2 Moroccan groups, -1 French division, -2 French Genome Soldiers divisions, -4 French squadrons, -1 French group, -1 Tunisian group)
The fighting in Italy was somewhat less intense. The PRE branch of the Freedom Fighters of Italinia rose their heads in a very public fashion to do battle and revenge the Central European Union, but they suffered from the general rebel problem of being poorly equipped, and they were considerably outnumbered by forces of the Peoples Republic of Europe sent to take them down. Nevertheless, the FFI began their war on favorable terms by seizing Rome in a popular revolt, then dispatching their small army down the boot of Italy in an attempt to take Naples. It was at this point that the soldiers of the PRE arrived in mass to retake the land, and after a number of traditional pitched battles, the FFI was decimated and their leaders were arrested. By the end of the year, no areas in the Peoples Republic held open sympathy for the organization, and in France, the rebellion had never gotten off the ground. Some regional leaders had held meetings with French officials and then abruptly started advocating for full subservience to Paris. However, the FFIs brief moment of glory had the side effect of damaging the formation of the Earth Liberation Special Projects Group, which had to relocate for several months from Rome to Paris, and many communists in Berlin felt that the semiautonomous Liberation Party had been somewhat discredited by failing to restrain an uprising in their heartland. The ELSPG countered with limited proof that their party cadres in the cities of northern Italy had successfully restrained the industrial region from joining the cause of the FFI.
(-2 PRE divisions)
As it was dealing with the Freedom Fighters of Italinia, the PRE opened up a new World War III front and launched an attack on the Scandinavian Republic. The superior PRE air force raided Scandinavian cities as far north as Stockholm while their army easily conquered Saxony and Jutland. However, the sizable Scandinavian navy made the Baltic impenetrable by sea, and any PRE invasion of Scandinavias core would have to wait until Oslos fleet was cleared away. Efforts to hunt Scandinavias ships from the air were only partially successful, for Scandinavias outmatched air force still conducted a vigorous defense.
(-4 PRE groups, -2 Scandinavian divisions, -2 Scandinavian squadrons, -6 Scandinavian groups)
Poland assembled a huge army to crush the Italian Rebels, but in order to do this, the soldiers first needed to get past customs and into the Peoples Republic of Europe. Thus, a farcical scene developed on the Polish-PRE border. Having received quick instructions to not under any circumstances allow the hundred thousand Polish soldiers access into the country, the communist border guards eventually succeeded in convincing the entire force to turn around and go back home. Emergency defensive preparations in the PRE were put on hold.
The Constantinople Federation began work on a line of fortifications along its border with the Peoples Republic of Europe.
In the first year of World War III, the greatest theatre was Southeast Asia. FEAR, Pakistan, Arabia, and Indonesia clashed with ASEAN, its protectorates, and a large Alaskan Foreign Legion.
(See Spotlight)
(-2 Indonesian ASP, -11 Indonesian divisions, -4 Indonesian Peoples Crushers divisions, -7 Indonesian squadrons, -2 Indonesian groups, -1 Pakistani division, -4 Pakistani squadrons, -1 Arabian division, -5 Arabian squadrons, -5 FEAR divisions, -1 FEAR Clone Trooper division, -8 FEAR squadrons, -2 FEAR groups, -3 ASEAN ASP, -2 ASEAN Marine divisions, -11 ASEAN divisions, +10 ASEAN conscript divisions, -28 ASEAN conscript divisions, -10 ASEAN squadrons, -6 ASEAN groups, -3 Australian divisions, +5 Australian conscript divisions, -1 Australian conscript division, -1 Australian group, -2 New Zealander divisions, -2 New Zealander squadrons, -5 Alaskan divisions, -1 Alaskan squadron, -6 Alaskan groups)