Unless TLK has any objections, presented here is a summary by continent of the global and regional geopolitical situation at the beginning of the Year of Our Lord 1922.
Where We Are Now
Europe
In Europe it is a fashion now to talk of a “new world order”, a glorious international paradigm that is being assembled by the victors of the Great War. Needless to say, not only the defeated but many of the victors are disappointed with this promised new world order. In place of the absolutism of monarchs, the tyranny of the landlord and the taxman, is the absolutism of ideas. Looking forward to the future, the citizens of the defeated great nations of Europe saw little to be hopeful for. The old institutions of Europe and the world have been in many cases thoroughly discredited, or so it would seem, by their failure in the war and so the people of Europe and the world look to new ideas and new leaders for purpose and guidance. In Spain, the rise of Estardo and his “new socialism” has been instructive to much of the continent and the world, an ideology whose tenets and adherents seem to be at the crest of a great wave of history. Estardoist political cults, adherents to the man and his ideals, have sprung up across Europe. In France, the ideology seems particularly popular in the wake of the defeat of the Bonapartes, and the election of Louis Stele (himself one of the new “French socialists”
seems to speak to the greater political attitudes of the French people. The new socialism has not gone unnoticed in Italy or Britain as well, where the Italian tradition of military leadership and power as established by the September Revolution seems to go hand-in-hand with the harsh autocratic stance of the Estardoist ideologues, and in Britain where the labor movement disappointed with and disgusted by the failures of communism in Russia looks for new leadership and resolve. Ironically, the “militarist dictatorship” of Germany's Kaiser and Reichstag is perhaps one of the few remaining unadulterated institutions of democracy in Europe, where moderate political thought prevails (for the most part). Nations like Belgium, betrayed by nearly all the war's powers, have turned inwards and embraced their own peculiar form of power politics. To the extent that Belgians do anything their hated enemies in France do anymore, they have embraced (so far) the political trend of new, Estardoist socialism. While everywhere there is seemingly revolution and change, there is one place in the new Europe where there is distressingly very little of either. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, for all its talk of victory and expansion, seems to be on the brink of a convulsion. In the recently even-more-vast empire, the historically marginal German-speaking, Austrian governing class is increasingly outnumbered by its Hungarian and Slavic subjects who are not likely to react well to any talk of Germanization or other reform. And yet without reform, the empire shall surely splinter. The Austro-Hungarian imperial army, which is composed by far more of the latter half of the empire than the former, is not likely either to follow any orders from Vienna to put down revolting Hungarian and Slavic “minorities”. Similarly, only across a mile or so of water, the Ottoman Empire grapples with its own malcontents. Ottoman power having, despite joining the "losing side" of the Great War, expanded since the war, the empire is now contracting. With the establishment of Arab leadership, and talk of separation and independence from the empire, the Sultan of Rome is forced to grapple with the fact that the "Eternal Sultanate" shall ultimately crumble beneath the weight of foreign powers and their opportunism if it does not modernize and potentially secularize, but that such modernization and secularization will ultimately be opposed vociferously by Arab Islamists whose only ties to Turkish authority in Constantinople are religious ones. Of course, in the continual vicious cycle of unfortunate ironies, the places in Europe that most need change are unable to spare much at all. All this change and revolution occurs in the context of crippling fear of “too much” revolution, or any way, a specific kind of revolution. Communist Russia looms over Europe as a whole, casting a pall of fear and paranoia that has gripped much of those nations and done much to further the cause of new socialism as an alternative to decaying social democracies and the corrosive influence of international communism.
North America
Like Europe, North America is experiencing not so much a profound change as a turning of the tables. Previously, Anglo-French interference on the continent had ensured that the Confederate States were able to wield significant power and influence not only in north and central America but South America as well. This trend has been sharply reversed. With the defeat of the Confederacy at the hands of the northern Union, that state's pseudo-colonial empire has been quickly and effectively dismantled. Whether that dismantling resulted in truly free, sovereign states or Union and Brazilian puppets is a debatable quality. What is an incontrovertible fact is that the era of the Confederate empire is over. What new era has dawned is a far more uncertain question. In the north, confidence that the Great War had been a glorious and unparalleled victory for the Union is finally beginning to waver. Despite the defeat and occupation of the Confederacy, that gang of traitorous states and slaveholders still exists as a sovereign entity despite the best efforts of President Roosevelt and the Union army. Canada, which was supposed to follow the United States into a new era of fellowship and unity has gone largely in the opposite direction, shunning both Great Britain and the Union in favor of economic and political independence. Quebec, despite its preference of the United States over Canada and its British overlords, is still fiercely independent itself and entirely unwilling to be an arm of American power on the continent. Aleyska, too, is turning depressingly in the opposite direction of the Union's outstretched arms. With the Confederacy recovering from its defeat at an alarming pace, and uncertainty at home, it seems that if the Union is to maintain its position as the new power on the continent it will need to approach internal and domestic change with the same determination it approached the Great War. The Yankees came, they saw, but they have yet to conquer, and it is conquest either military or of hearts and minds, that will determine whether the era of Union power will last.
South America
If the Union won the Great War in North America, Brazil won it in South America. Their fellow Quadruple Alliance powers of Columbia and Venezuela may have arguably gained more territory, but the assertion of Brazilian power on the continent established Brazil as the (nearly) unchallenged South American great power. Since its defeat of La Plata and routing of the European powers from the South American continent, Brazil has wielded not only geopolitical authority and clout but cultural and political power. To a large extent, the republican regimes of South America now seek to emulate Brazil and not the United States, having an example of “the way forward” that is not only closer to home but that speaks a Romance language and knows the importance of the Catholic church. The nation best in the position to challenge Brazil's influence and power is of course the Andean Republic. To the Union, there is the Confederacy, to Germany there is Russia, and to Brazil is the Andean Republic. Ability to wield not only military power, but cultural and political power as well (and certainly outside assistance and sponsorship) will likely determine who is the victor in the contest between the two nations, assuming of course that there is to be one at all. Perhaps if not elsewhere, then South America has a chance at establishing a stable and long-lasting peace now that ambitions for territorial expansion and military glory have been (mostly) quenched by the Great War.
Asia
There can be no room for ambiguity, the nation that won the Great War in Asia and in much of the Pacific was the Empire of Japan. Japanese power on the high seas, and on the continent, coupled with the crippling treaty between and Japan and Britain which bans “in perpetuity” British warships in the Pacific, has made one of the world's most unchallenged great powers. While the Qing Dynasty may have made many attempts to modernize and reform the faltering Chinese nation, and even gained territory in the face of the Russian Civil War, its ability to weather what appears to be the coming storm of factionalism, regionalism and republicanism is uncertain. China will require strong leadership in order to avoid being swallowed whole by the twin devils of communism and Japan. Or perhaps not. There is still hope to be had that the Japanese may seek to usher in not an era of expansion and power but an era of Asian prosperity and cooperation. That is yet to be seen. But short of direct intervention by the United States, or a resurgence of European power in the Far East, the future of Asia shall be determined by Asians. Asians, of course, who are Japanese.
Africa
The Dark Continent is no longer dark, at least in the sense that it is unexplored and uncharted. Every square inch of Africa has now been successfully mapped and cataloged by European colonists and explorers. What is left unexplored in Africa is the implementation of new ideological doctrines popular in Europe on the continent. How ought the new socialism to manage the colonial empires? How do states like Germany, which preach the virtues of peace, moderation, tolerance and democracy propose to have coexistence of these ideals with the oppression and subjugation of Africa's native peoples? If the Great War meant the flowering of democracy in a world of absolute monarchs, plutocracy and slavery, why did it mean the opposite in Africa? Whereas in Europe, so many of the continent's people have risen up in the yearning to be free (Estonia, Belarus, the Ukraine, etc), so much of what remained of independent nations in Africa has been brought under the European boot. Abyssinia's attempt to capitalize off the Great War at the expense of the colonial powers in the Horn of Africa gave way at the end of the war to a joint invasion by France and Spain, and the subsequent joint annexation dealt the deathblow to an independent Ethiopia. Spanish interference and potential intervention in Liberia, increasingly disconnected from the American sphere and weakened by the constant attention of foreign powers like Spain, may soon spell that nation's death as well. If there is any place in the world that is experiencing a “deathknell” of democracy and self-representation, it is Africa, though the natives' European masters are surely not far behind.
