We Didn't Start the Fire...
We Didn't Start the Fire...
The World of Double Victory before the Departure (Part ONE)
This is Part ONE of an explainer series elaborating on the world of DOUBLE VICTORY before the Composite Testing Force is sent back in time to 1942; read Part TWO here.
The world of Double Victory does not start in 2042—when the Departure occurs, and the ships of the Composite Testing Force are sent back in time to 1942—it begins in 2020. Those twenty-two years are not great for the globe. In fact, they actually suck.
However, the pain and trials of the Rolling ‘20s and Burning ‘30s are at least matched with the global economic prosperity brought by the Fifth Industrial Revolution, which touches everything from production methods to material science to computing to bionics to medicine and more.
The net-net is straight up not a good time.
Double Victory is not trying to predict the future. It is merely an alternative history that leads to an alternative past. These years before the Departure serve to increase the size of the United States Armed Forces so that the Composite Testing Force described in a future post can exist with the weapons and technologies I want it to possess, especially the future forward-manufacturing capabilities which will become incredibly important for the progression of the post-Departure Second World War. This history also exists to build a cadre of experienced Sailors, Soldiers, Aeros, and Marines who can go through the Departure and have the confidence to stand up to the titans of the Second World War and hold their ground. The Fleet that disappears from Puget Sound is the best of the best.
They have nothing to prove. They’ve already won their generation’s World War.
Point of Divergence — November 6, 2020
When The Clock Strikes Thirteen
Shortly after Governor Gavin Newsom and his wife leave their Fair Oaks mansion for what would’ve been a fateful birthday dinner at The French Laundry, thirteen shots ring out. Nine rounds strike the Newsoms’ Chevy Tahoe, leaving the Governor and First Lady rattled but unharmed. A bystander leaving Siam Patio Thai Cuisine—Mrs. Janelle Page, 32—is not so fortunate and is hit by an errant bullet. She is pronounced dead on arrival at Mercy San Juan Medical Center. The shooter is never identified or apprehended; the only lead is grainy CCTV footage of a masked, hoody-wearing figure driving a recently stolen 2006 Honda Civic.
Without The French Laundry scandal and with a massive wave of sympathy, the Recall Petition fails to secure sufficient support by March 17, 2021, missing the threshold by 365,000 signatures. In most other aspects, history progresses without alteration. The Capitol is attacked on January 6th. The Freedom to Vote Act dies on a procedural vote to overturn the filibuster. The US Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturns Roe v. Wade.
The divergences grow even greater during the 2022 Midterm Elections.
Without the 2021 California Recall Election, Newsom campaigns for his re-election aggressively instead of spending most of his resources/time on ballot measures. The Governor’s shoe-leather and cash boosts Democrats in California and, by knock-on effects, helps the party nationally. California Democrats win CA-13, CA-22, and CA-41. Republicans gain control of the House of Representatives—but only by one seat. Democrats secure two more seats in the Senate— Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—with Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes defeating incumbent Senator Ron Johnson by just two-hundred-and-fourteen votes after a mandatory recount.
Lost in the buzz of Election Day in the States, stories of a “hiking accident” involving an on-leave Finnish NCO and a platoon of American Marines on exercises near the Finnish-Russian border are buried along with nineteen Spetsnaz.
United States Continuing Speakership Crisis of 2023
Mr. Speaker, Bring Me a Dream; Make Him the Damnedest That I've Ever Seen
The narrow Republican victory in the 2022 Midterms instantly became an albatross around the party's neck. The January 2023 Speaker Election goes on for twenty-six ballots over five sessions. The final day of voting, January 9, would see eleven back-to-back ballots following a weekend of fruitless, frustrating machinations. Fears of an “Alaska Coalition” between Democrats and moderate Republicans, and the vacancy caused the death of Virginia Democrat Donald McEachin, would provide just enough motivation and wiggle room to elect Kevin McCarthy the 55th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives with 217 votes (Matt Gaetz voting Present) against all 216 Democrats voting for Hakeem Jeffries.
The 118th Congress will be the single least productive and most chaotic session of Congress of the 21st Century thus far. The Debt Ceiling Crisis is resolved after threats to Mint The Coin materialize into an actionable, quiet plan in an even messier fight within the vanishingly thin majority. Infighting culminates with the defenestration of Kevin McCarthy despite him caving to the Freedom Caucus. The Speaker refuses to bring a ‘compromise’ government funding bill to the floor (without major spending cuts but without additional Ukraine funding), but eight rightist Republicans still turn on him over the failure to pass budget cuts; his speakership collapses on a 219-206 vote on October 3, 2023.
The successive Speakership fight lasts for over three weeks and twenty-nine ballots, tearing apart the Republican Conference in the process. The House GOP nominates a total of nine different people across twelve separate nominations (Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, Tom Emmer, Mike Johnson, Byron Donalds, Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, Kevin Hern, Elise Stefanik, Jim Jordan, and Patrick McHenry); neither Emmer’s nor Hern’s bids survive long enough to have a vote. McHenry’s nomination is termed “acting,” as he is nominated by default following a rule change after deadlock prevents any nominee from reaching a majority. The House Republican Conference is pushed well past the breaking point, and there is a brawl on the floor. Kevin McCarthy is punched in the face by Steve Scalise, who was attempting to hit Jim Jordan, before also being struck over the head with a bookstand by Matt Gaetz.
In an unprecedented move, the Democratic Caucus and twelve moderate Republicans elected a compromise speaker, former Republican Representative Fred Upton; only three of the rebel Republicans—Dan Newhouse, Don Bacon, and Ken Buck—vote in the affirmative instead of voting Present. Upton’s speakership lasts for a little over two months—from November 3 to January 9—with Congress only in session for about half of that time. This unlikely coalition secures the passage of a clean government funding bill in mid-November and the passage of the National Security Supplement in mid-December. However, the vote to expel George Santos falls short of the needed supermajority, but Kevin McCarthy still resigns from the House at the end of the year, bringing the House down a 217-217 tie.
The next Speaker fight would be over before it began.
Upton would select moderate Pennsylvania Republican Brian Fitzpatrick as Speaker Pro Tempore. Problem Solver Caucus Republicans were elated, thinking that this was a way to ensure a continuation of the coalition, as Fitzpatrick would become de facto permanent after the Republican Conference inevitably failed to elect one of their own. At the same time the House Freedom Caucus prepares to shiv McHenry—currently serving as Leader of the House Republican Conference, Speaker Pro Tempore Emeritus, and Acting Republican Nominee for Speaker of the House.
To the shock of everyone chamber, save for a few in Democratic leadership, the first ballot on January 10 elects Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. Gasps fill the House chamber as ur-Tea Party firebrand Ken Buck votes for the Brooklyn Democrat, joined later in the roll call by Speaker Pro Tempore Fitzpatrick voting present. The margin of Jeffries is buoyed by eight absences. Bacon and Newhouse are not in DC, conspicuously late getting back to town. The majority of absences—Luna, Gaetz, Mace, Rosendale, Good, Crane—however, were holding a press conference in the Ford Office Building—having misunderstood the time of the vote—and they would fail to reach the chamber in time after tripping each other down a flight of stairs. The two rebels would be stripped of their committee assignments by the Republican Conference and form an “Independent Republican Conference.” Buck also announces he will not run for re-election; he makes his bed.
United States Presidential Election of 2024
When The Fevers Breaks, So Does a Levee
Armed with a pseudo-majority in the House and an expanded majority in the Senate. Democrats tepidly move consensus legislation through Congress. Donald Trump and Joe Biden decisively win their respective presidential primaries. The nation appears on the brink of the first rematch election since 1956. This, of course, does not last as the June 27 Presidential Debate comes and goes—leaving the Biden campaign reeling as the President’s attempt to address his biggest liability backfires catastrophically.
From that point on, nothing goes right for Donald John Trump.
On July 13, 2024—Thomas Crooks fires on the former president at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The President is lightly wounded, and two rally-goers are killed. The RNC is an orgy of football-spiking triumphalism, with Trump selecting Ohio Senator JD Vance as his running mate. A little more than a week later, Joe Biden drops his re-election bid, derailing basically every element of Trump’s campaign strategy. Kamala Harris secures the Democratic nomination for President in 30 hours and eventually selects Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate.
Attempting to regain the momentum, the Trump Campaign spies an opportunity to create a strong line of attack on Harris and Biden—a fabricated memorial event at Arlington National Cemetery. It devolves into a historic farce. A staffer is videotaped shoving an ANC worker to the ground; JD Vance trips while carrying a wreath and falls down the step of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier; Trump is photographed smiling with a thumb up over a grave—the wrong grave—the grave of SCPO Ryan Owens. Steven Cheung will later claim the event was actually a trap laid by Biden to harm Vance. It is a mess of monumental proportions, but it is far from the last.
The next attempt to reset the narrative is Trump’s Fox News “debate” on September 4. It is a fizzle, a painfully dreary town hall. Trump rambles incoherently at a bored and confused audience as Bret Baier tries to get him to answer basic questions. He goes on a five-minute monologue about “his friend” Hannibal Lecter and an extended riff about hormones and RFK Jr.’s endorsement, where it is apparent he does not actually know what hormones are. He also promises to fill the Rio Grande with “military grade alligators [sic] for the cartels.” He also waxes nostalgically for Joe Biden and his regret that Biden left the race, ending with, “Sometimes it feels so alone up to be up here,” before jumping into a rant about how Harris wants to “kill all of our beautiful chickens.”
The September 10 debate does not go well for Trump. He is belligerent, confused, and mostly just comes off as an asshole. His attempts to provoke Harris fail. After she calls him weird, he spirals and shouts denials. This culminates in Trump potentially calling Harris a bitch under his breath, but it’s unclear what he actually said; his words were mumbled and slurred to the point of indecipherability. Trump loses his composure again when Harris pushes him on who exactly would pay for his proposed 10% tariff on foreign goods. Trump, in general, appears unwell, unfocused, and unprepared, spending about a third of his speaking time talking about Joe Biden and/or how it was unfair that Joe Biden was forced out of the race. He appears more interested in talking about Biden than trying to attack Harris for much of the debate, leaving the viewers deeply confused.
After the debate, some polls show Harris up by as much as nine. However, in general, polling stays steady, with a three-to-five point advantage for Harris, with Trump stuck between 44 and 47 percent. Stuck in neutral, infighting begins to bubble and boil in the Trump Campaign after the debate. A video of Vance tripping, yet again, this time on a curb in Philadelphia, becomes a watershed moment within the campaign as increasingly belligerent staff factions start to draw battle-lines. The incident itself is forgotten in short order—outside of the campaign, at least.
At this point, the primary objective of Trump Campaign staff becomes restoring their candidate’s morale; taking back the momentum becomes a reach goal. Accordingly, they embark on a rally blitz across the seven swing states. However, at a September 14 rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump cancels his appearance 20 minutes after he was scheduled to speak—despite being on site. No reason is given for the departure; some noise is made about a security concern while the other speakers give their stump speeches. Eric and Don Junior attempt to take the place of their father, only for a hot mic to pick up Eric calling Harris a slur (it was a hard r). The campaign will claim that Iran had hacked the rally, but Eric will not attend any other campaign events after saying the n-word five times during his apology interview.
Questions over why Trump departed the rally are overshadowed by Eric, but the bad news does not stop. Trump appears visibly unwell at his New York sentencing hearing on September 18, where he is sentenced to two years in home detention and four years on probation, with the legal accommodations to allow him to campaign, along with a $170,000 fine. Trump has a massive fundraising day, but not as good as the day he was convicted, something he begins to complain about at his rallies. Occasionally, Trump misses a rally that he could otherwise have attended for reasons that remain unclear, causing grumbling in his campaign about his behavior but muted attention by the press despite Democratic protestations.
Then, at a town hall hosted by CNN—after an otherwise adequate performance—JD Vance faces down the most profound threat to his political career in his life—an unaccompanied ten-year-old girl. Becky Rodgers is allegedly the child born out of an affair shortly before Vance married his wife. The bizarre scene shocks the studio into silence, especially the CNN producers, who were caught completely blindsided. Vance spurns his purported love child on National TV. He raises his voice—which cracks heavily—at the child, causing Ms. Rodgers to burst into tears. The saga erupts into a media firestorm over the veracity of the claims of the unattended pre-teen and CNN’s handling of the fiasco. Vance stalwartly rejects any notion that the child is his while refusing to take a paternity test, saying that it would be demeaning to his wife and family. There is also massive speculation over who had set events up to get Rodgers to the event with a printed speech. Steven Cheung alleges it was the work of the Harris campaign. JD Vance, however, will claim that the 10-year-old girl is “very potentially an agent of Iran.” For the first time in the campaign, Democrats are unsure about how to handle the moment, but in general, side towards ignoring it altogether, dubbing it a mere distraction. Some whispers that it was a move by anti-Vance staffers within the Trump campaign bubble to the surface, but are not covered widely.
Less than a week later, there is the Vice Presidential debate. A rattled Vance goes all out on the attack, but he comes across as desperate and cruel. Walz easily parries the attacks with his Midwest demeanor and affable nature while launching devasting attacks on Vance’s record. He only alludes to the Becky Rodgers incident as another example of the chaos brought by Trump that the American people are tired of and want to move past—and to reject its importance. “I really don’t care if he’s the father. I don’t! I care that he’s a grown man that made a little girl cry” becomes the defining quote of the debate.
In the aftermath of the debate, Democrats will maintain a roughly 5-point lead in the polls. In the Trump camp, there are rumblings that Trump is sounding out replacing Vance with Robert F. Kennedy. Campaign lawyers even begin to make moves to try to speed along the process and ensure that ballot changes can be made before E-Day.
The day after reports of these internal machinations surface in the mainstream press, a major leaks hit the Campaign. The Campaign is caught completely flat-footed as its dirty laundry is paraded before the public—and the world.
Unleashed, not only to the mainstream press but also released to the general public, is a series of internal campaign documents on one single topic: Becky Rodgers. She was not a plot by Iran or Kamala Harris—but orchestrated by Anti-Vance staffers on the campaign who wanted him replaced by RFK Jr. There is also a dossier assessing the validity of her claims, which admits that there can be no definitive answer without DNA testing but it appears as if he is not the father because the timeline does not add up.
Then, a second set of leaks hit the press and the internet, seemingly from the same source. It includes the rest of the campaign dossier on the Beck Rodgers incident, which goes through Vance’s many affairs in graphic, Ken Starr detail. It also includes a shaky backstage video of Trump’s canceled Michigan rally, which heavily implies that Trump suffered a heart or panic attack. The former President is heard saying, “I don’t need a stretcher. I don’t need a stretcher. Get me out of here. I need to get out,” to gathered Secret Service agents, medics, and staffers.
The next morning there are still yet more leaks, and the campaign infighting reaches a dramatic crescendo. The new material—in some cases just hours old—reveals that the second leak was made by Anti-Vance Staffers in retaliation for Trump canning plans to swap Vance; the Anti-Vancers hoped to frame the Anti-RFK and Anti-Anti-Vance factions for the leak by appearing to be from the same source as the first. The leaks also include the full written agreement between the Trump Campaign and RFK made in exchange for Kennedy’s endorsement. Trump promised to appoint RFK as Secretary of Health and Human Services—even if RFK is rejected by the Senate. Other promises include a “full scope, critical review of FDA standards for authorizing vaccinations of any kind” and a “retraction of FDA certification of all COVID-19 vaccines.”
The day apparently sees several altercations and allegedly a twenty-person brawl at the Trump Campaign Headquarters in Arlington. Anti-Vance staffers are removed from the building by police and private security, and at least two are arrested.
Just a few days later, Trump makes a sudden, unscheduled trip to New York, and the campaign begins a mad dash to put together a Madison Square Garden rally. NYC’s Department of Probation releases a statement that Trump had been recalled to the state after violating the terms of his probation and getting into a “verbal altercation” with his probation officer over the phone. Trump is brought before a judge and is sentenced to a week in jail and is fined $200,000.
American politics goes mad. There are demonstrations outside of Rikers and City Hall. There are plans for a Trump Convoy to cut off NYC (which fail to materialize). Trump raises more money than the day of his conviction. He promises to fight on, calling the crisis a coordinated attempt to derail his certain victory, “This is the only way they know how to stop me, folks. The only way. But we have our own ways, don’t we?”
While Trump is in Rikers, JD Vance, Robert Kennedy, and Tulsi Gabbard serve as his main surrogates. They launch an aggressive schedule of rallies and events. The event schedule is so intense that Vance actually faints of heatstroke while on a marathon bus tour of Wisconsin, falling into a bowl of fruit punch, requiring nine stitches and a night in the hospital. Tulsi Gabbard is attacked by a flock of geese in North Carolina. RFK gets lost trying to drive to Flagstaff on a Trump bus and runs out of gas.
After an extremely long week, Trump leaves jail with crowds lining the streets. He fills Madison Square Garden to capacity. There are 20,000 people calling his name and howling in glee. It appears as if the bad luck has swung back. Donald Trump steps out on stage to a ten-minute standing ovation. He delivers the most mid performance of his life. He is visibly tired, with massive bags under his eyes that not even concealer can hide. He slurs his speech and complains about the unfairness of having to go to jail for violating his probation. “They wouldn’t do this to anyone else; no one has ever been treated so unfairly in our history. Not even Abraham Lincoln—and they killed him!” He narrowly avoids insulting his probation officer, stopping himself mid-sentence and saying, “Can’t say that, folks! Can’t say that!”
However, Trump’s stump speech is overshadowed by one of his warm-up acts—RFK.
Kennedy makes an admission of his own volition and, out of nowhere—cannibalism. Kennedy admits that he had eaten the corpse of a gym buddy in 2004 because he was “curious” and because, allegedly, his friend wished for it. The blunder is so deranged and bizarre that it tunes out Trump saying that someone should “9/11 him” about New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg from being discussed in the media.
As the campaign returns to normal for the final sprint, polling settles into a roughly D+5 environment, with a mix of polls showing higher (D+6 to D+8) and lower (D+2 to D+4).
First Sino-American War of 2024
South China Sea War / West Philippine Sea War / First Sino
Then, on 21 October, a pair of Jiangdao-class corvettes of the Chinese Coast Guard open fire on the Philippine Navy’s offshore patrol vessel BRP Andrés Bonifacio as it escorts a resupply convoy to Scarborough Shoal and the BRP Sierra Madre.
Bonifacio is crippled, while the corvette Zhuzhou is sunk by naval gunfire.
Anderson Cooper’s interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., elaborating that he did not, in fact, have written consent for what he described as “consensual cannibalism,” is interrupted by news of the incident.
China claims Bonifacio opened fire first, but the video of the inciting incident is ambiguous. It is likely that both sides mistook noise from a collision as a gunshot. However, before the dust settles, PLAAF fighter-bombers strike Subic Bay, sinking the ex-USCG cutter and destroying adjacent port facilities, killing about 40 Filippino sailors and a dozen civilian contractors (including three Americans). The Philippine Air Force does not miss a step—seeing additional PLA air assets shifting south—and launches a pre-emptive alpha strike-cum-last ride against Fiery Cross Reef. The 7th Tactical Fighter Squadron is annihilated in the process, losing all but a single of their twelve FA-50PH Fighting Eagle fighters while crippling PLAAF facilities on the atoll.
Over the next hours, the Spratly Islands become a free-for-all multi-way war zone as hypersensitive PLA units launch pre-emptive spoiling attacks (sometimes believing they are actually counter-attacks) on the local Taiwanese and Vietnamese garrisons.
Any hope for de-escalation—let alone peace—dies in a day.
The 8th and 10th Bomber Divisions of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force cross the northern edge of the South China Sea to deliver an “overwhelming punitive strike against the hostility and impudence of the Philippines.” It is the largest bomber raid since LINEBACKER II. The 176 bombers, nearly 80% of the PLA bomber force, are hurled against Manilla. The government and military centers of the Philippines are struck by a deluge of cruise missiles, with heavy collateral damage. American assets are flowing into the country, and a small group of legacy F-18Cs from VMFA-232 are the first to engage the PLA, stumbling through clouds and walls of jamming into the 24th Bomber Regiment just as they release their weapons.
Hours later, on October 22, Biden addresses a Joint Sessions of Congress and calls for an Authorization of Military Force in the South China Sea. While Congress debates the motion, the INDOPACOM has already started combat operations under the name CARABAO DEFENDER, after the Philippines triggers its Mutual Defense Treaty in response to the attack on Manila. Strictly speaking, an AUMF is not necessary, but Biden demands it. The Senate approves the Authorization with an overwhelming 98-2 majority, while the House passes it on a slightly narrower 418-17 majority. Its narrow scope reflects generalized hopes of preventing the conflict from escalating into a general war along the length of the Pacific Rim. An unspoken rule is agreed that fighting will be contained to the South China Sea.
The 2024 AUMF once more breaks the House Republican Conference, and the House of Representatives devolves into yet another brawl, during which Matt Gaetz is beaten into unconsciousness after attempting to sucker punch Permanent Acting Leader of the Republican House Conference Patrick McHenry.
Trump, already left listless by his flailing campaign, attempts to grab the reigns and delivers a forceful but utterly meaningless and totally inconsequential speech, which attempts to cut the baby in half on the war—blaming the Biden Administration for starting a war but also claiming that he would be fighting it better, would’ve nuked China already, but also have gotten a deal that would’ve ended the war just after it had started. More importantly, Trump does not seize the narrative. He is ignored, much to his frustration. The press cover the blow-by-blow—a Kabul Crisis in reverse—but fail to find fault in the Administration or military’s handling of the conflict, despite their best efforts to “provide a balanced and neutral perspective.” Trump stumbles forward on his final sprint, a broken man watching his life end right before his own eyes, and helpless to do anything about it.
The Biden Administration, but mostly Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, do the impossible and manage to convince market leaders not to panic, or at least not to panic yet. The war is not a full-scale war, they argue, and it will be over soon. Merchant shipping is mostly not impacted by the fighting as both sides take careful pains to avoid sinking civilian ships. Supply chains are throttled, but still extant, via an under-the-table agreement to exchange goods between the US and China only via reprocessing at intermediary ports.
The press coverage for the last two weeks of the presidential campaign is hour after hour of live reporting on American advance after American advance—success after success. Peace demonstrations give way to celebration rallies as the first days of chaos clear, and the DOD begins making seminal announcements daily, like claiming the first sunk PLAN warship and then the first PLAN submarine sunk. Bars begin offering free shots equal to the number of PLAN ships sunk (these offers do not last long as that tally grows ever larger). Aerial footage of a submarine battle in shallow water goes viral as the public are enraptured with success. The seizure of the first PLA-controlled island is spoiled to the public, announced on Twitter by Dwyane “The Rock” Johnson ahead of President Biden’s address on the matter. A Jake Tapper segment attempting to hit the DOD over the wanton expenditures of missiles and the impact of that on the deficit is interrupted when an annoyed Tapper interrupts himself to read the announcement of the first American fighter ace in 52 years.
As voting begins on Election Day, Joe Biden has 64% approval, and Kamala Harris has a 58% favorability rating. Polls estimate a Democratic lead of six to eight points, while Harris Campaign internals show a D+5 environment. Trump’s internals have him up by one (the fake ones to show to Trump) and down by three (the real ones for LaCivita and Wiles). In the South China Sea, the USAF rules the skies over the Spratlys Islands as a joint force of Filipino and American troops close in on Fiery Cross Reef in a methodical, textbook campaign of Expeditionary Advance Base Operations. There is further good news on E-Day itself: reports that a US Navy attack sub has sunk the carrier Shandong and several of its escorts as they sprinted into the military exclusion zone; another of what the media calls a “subush” fails to catch a supporting surface action group, which escapes to the PLAN bases on Hainan Island.
On November 5, 2024, as the first polls close on the East Coast, the Harris Campaign is caught completely off guard. Hush falls over the campaign headquarters.
South Carolina is too close to call.
They have overshot their final internal poll by a factor of 2. Kamala Harris becomes the first woman to be elected President of the United States with the largest popular vote margin since 1984—an unbelievable 10.9 point margin. The final popular vote is 54.4% Harris-Walz against 43.5% Trump-Vance—no other candidate breaches one percent.
House Democrats net 44 seats in the House for a 263-172 seat majority, the largest of any Party since 1990. A miracle happens in the Senate: Democrats net three seats—picking up Florida, Texas, Missouri, and Nebraska while losing West Virginia—for a majority of 55-45; that number increases to 56-44, the strongest majority since 2009, when Senator Lisa Murkowski crosses the floor and joins the Democratic Caucus as an Independent.
Trump’s attempts to overturn the election mostly fall on deaf ears. He is a shadow of himself—reeling from an overwhelming defeat. He leaves most of the post-election rallies to JD Vance. However, this second attempt to overturn a presidential election comes crashing down when the Junior Senator from Ohio falls from the cabin of a parked combined harvester and dies in Poweshiek County, Iowa on November 11.
The Save America Tour fades with a whimper and a broken neck. The war, however, does not merely go away.
Just a week after the election, the Spratlys are declared secured by the DOD, having been cleared of PLA presence. Shortly after, the US signs the Cam Ranh Charter with the Philippines and Vietnam, establishing a formal basis of military cooperation and converting the three belligerent powers into allies. In short order, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom add their signature to the Charter. Armistice talks begin in Casablanca and last for most of November, without much success. No one in the region is interested in seeing the conflict escalate into a general war, but both sides are extremely cautious about what kind of exit they get, fearing domestic backlash or bad precedent.
The Casablanca talks are then fully derailed when the Central Military Commission officially acknowledges the sinking of the carrier Shandong—having maintained that the flat-top had not been lost for weeks. They also announce that they will “formally” retaliate. This is an orthogonal move to strengthen their hand at the negotiating table by reminding the Biden Administration that China “is not the lamb.” A massed salvo of 43 DF-21 IRBMs is hurled at Guam and Saipan. Only six actually impact sovereign American soil. A visibly irate Joe Biden delivers a prime-time Oval Office Address announcing the US withdrawal from the Casablanca Talks and warning that the coming response will be swift and overwhelming. The Politburo and CMC are caught completely off-guard, having underestimated the escalation factor of the first attack on American soil since 9/11, believing that DC would not treat Guam like CONUS.
The Biden Administration greenlights Operation THUNDER DOME—an invasion of the Paracel Islands. This begins with Operation TOP ROPE, a bomber sortie against PLAAF airfields on Hainan—home to the better part of the PLA’s Southern Theater Commander’s air forces. The American prohibition on striking Mainland China is lifted (temporarily) as a force of forty-six B-52 Stratofortress, twenty-two B-1 Lancer, ten B-2 Spirit, and two B-21 Raider (pressed into service for the mission) launch a wall of cruise missiles to join a wave of sea-launched 119 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles.
At the same time, JSOC launches Operation TANGENT EDSON, a Marine-led joint battlespace preparation action. EDSON sees the first use of a SOLO (sub-orbital, low-opening) jump in combat to insert a small assault force onto the Paracels to destroy a key radar and communications center, before exfiltrating via SWCC boats to an attack submarine offshore.
Following up, the US begins its joint forcible entry into the Paracels. They’re initially met with success. It appears as if it will be a repeat of the operations in the Spratlys, as they peel away PLA defenses and often capture islands without a single shot fired (excluding air and missile bombardment). This changes on Phú Lâm Island (called Yongxing Island by the PRC), the capital of the Spratlys and Paracels—the largest island in the chain. The DOD had expected light resistance after a comprehensive air and missile campaign against the island. However, intelligence missed that an entire airborne combined arms brigade had been moved to the island into its warren of bunker complexes, with stores to last a siege. The PLA, having adapted to American tactics, lays a deadly ambush.
Anti-ship missile batteries hidden in semi-collapsed structures attack the American landing force shortly after A Company of the 3rd Littoral Combat Team comes ashore and proceeds inland. Two YJ-12, six YJ-83, and five TL-10 anti-ship missiles are ripple fired, acquiring the destroyer USS Shoup (DDG-86). Six weapons strike the warship, wrecking the upper works and setting her ablaze. She will be abandoned. The ship burns for 30 hours before USS Seawolf (SSN-21) finally scuttles her. Shoup is the first US warship lost to enemy action since USS Bullhead (SS-332) in August 1945.
The Marines of A Company are attacked at the same time and forced into a desperate last stand, outnumbered by an order of magnitude. At one point, a solitary platoon—led by Second Lieutenant Alice M. Hanlon, the USMC’s only woman rifle PL—repulse an entire PLA battalion. Company A takes 70% casualties on the first day of fighting but buys time for the rest of the 3rd LCT and a scratch battalion of support personnel from 3rd MLR’s other formations, mixed with Marine Raiders and Navy SEALs, to be thrown into the fray. The PLA is stopped cold at great cost. Hanlon is killed in the fighting, but not before an iconic photo is taken of her standing and engaging a PLA night attack with an M320 grenade launcher, despite taking multiple wounds, including losing most of her right arm to an RPG blast.
The Battle of Sansha City / Battle of Phú Lâm is an attritional, grueling fight as allied forces fight house to house against well-entrenched and motivated defenders. In all, it would require seven battalions to capture the island: 3rd Littoral Combat Team, 3/1 Marines (31st MEU), 1/4 Marines, 2 Royal Australian Regiment, 2nd Ranger Battalion, 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, and the Marine Composite Battalion (two companies of Marine Raiders and most of the 3rd Littoral Logistics Battalion pressed into combat duty).
As the battle rages throughout December, the US is hamstrung by the fact the island is so small and so exposed; bringing in additional combat units to the AO is difficult, and getting them onto the line is practically impossible. There was discussion of a combat drop by the 82nd Airborne Division onto the island’s airfield. The idea was rejected by the commanders on the ground as “the most retarded thing I’ve ever heard in my fucking miserable life. Just give us more ammo, for fuck’s sake. Christ. What the Hell is wrong with you guys?”
The Navy establishes a staggeringly efficient medical chain that allows them to treat and triage the staggering casualties of the ongoing slug-fest across thousands of miles of ocean. USNS Mercy is forward deployed to Quy Nhon in Vietnam as the main forward medical center for US forces in the Paracels Islands, while USS New York is converted into a forward hospital and triage center, saving the lives of hundreds of Marines and soldiers. However, the rest of the Navy grows complacent as op-temp slams head-long into sustainment.
The USN had been sustaining six carriers and strike groups in support of Operation GYPSY DANGER, the overall name for operations in the Western Pacific, but was getting ready to rotate those on the line. At this point (mid-December), one CVN was at sea in Japanese waters (Washington), one was in port at Yokosuka (Nimitz), two were operating in defense of Guam (Vinson and Roosevelt), one was operating in the Military Exclusion Zone (Truman), and one was in port at Manila (Reagan). Truman was due to sail for Pearl, to be replaced by Reagan, while Ford—sailing from the Med—was due to replace Reagan in Manila. However, Reagan’s sortie was delayed twice; an engineering casualty had crippled both her port screws. Reagan’s captain first bluffed and then outright lied about the state of his ship to buy time for his CHENG to fix the issue.
This breakdown of communication and ships creates a window of opportunity for the PLAN as the allied amphibious task force is left weakened and unaware of Reagan’s delay. The PLA grasps the crisis with both hands. The carrier Fujian sorties with a large surface force towards Guam, successfully baiting the attention of Vinson, Roosevelt, Washington, and Nimitz away from the MEZ. At the same time, a pair of PLAN surface action groups make staggered sorties from Hong Kong and Hainan—timed so that they would arrive within range of the Paracel Islands at the same time. The combined striking forces has 41 modern surface combatants (17 from Yulin and Longpo and 24 from Stonecutter’s Island) and most of the PLAN nuclear submarine force.
Operation DISCOTHEQUE III—landings of Phú Lâm Island—and the entirety of THUNDER DOME are immediately put in grave danger. The amphibious force, Task Force 76, is attacked by multiple multi-regiment bomber raids along with a constant stream of harassing potshots from fighter-bombers. The second major bomber attack sinks USS Preble (DDG-88), the second US warship to be sunk in the conflict. Several other Arleigh Burke DDGs and Ticonderoga CGs are damaged, and the attached British, Australian, and Canadian surface combatants deplete much of their missile stores. The forces assigned to the defense of TF 76—Operation ROYAL FLUSH—are pushed to the limit and must play their last, deeply unreassuring card.
They call upon Task Force 76.1—Frigate Squadron Three—eight Canberra-class light frigates. The former Independence-class littoral combat ships were redesignated “FF” after a series of hasty upgrades cooked up on the fly and installed in theater (mostly at Subic in what would forever be known as The Chop Shop). They have had the walls of their mission bays pierced to permit the mounting and firing of additional missile batteries. They are armed with a motley mix of modified Mark 141 (Harpoon), Mark 87 (Naval Strike Missile), and Mark 145 (Adaptable Deck Launcher). The Mark 145s are some of the first ADLs deployed and have to be run off of laptops jury-rigged into the ships’ combat systems of the three ships equipped with them. Six of the ships also have had their 30mm cannon anti-surface modules replaced by 8-cell VLS modules flown in by C-5 Galaxy. In a mad dash from Cam Ramh, the frigates are attacked by the PLAAF, leaving several of the frigates moderately damaged and most with much-depleted ammunition. As the night falls and the Hainian Force closes on the Paracel Islands, the largest surface action of the 21st Century unfolds.
The Stonecutter Force, conserving fuel, loses time and falls behind schedule. The Hainan Force, unaware, continues to charge ahead. Before any PLAN officers realize it, there is a three-hour gap between the forces. On the American side, the Truman Strike Group commander realizes the critical nature of the situation and orders his force to turn around, beginning a mad sprint back to the Paracels. This decision is mirrored aboard Gerald R. Ford, having barely entered the South China Sea. Reagan detaches most of her escorts and redeploys her fighters, finally getting into gear—but far too late. However, Truman is still roughly half a day away from the Paracels. Ford would close the gap with a hail mary to reinforce the Rhinos filling the skies of the Military Exclusion Zone.
A trio of shapes hidden underneath tarps were raised from her hangar deck, and six (mostly) aged pilots were trotted out of the ready room—two were flag officers. These old salts (and two younger hot shots) were the only pilots qualified for the aircraft in question. They had been the test pilots for the Special Access Program that tested the three pre-production prototypes of the YA-12 Avenger II stealth attack aircraft. The canceled attackers were armed with the products of another SAP, CASKET CHALICE—a hypersonic anti-ship missile canceled about the same time the Avenger went back to the Storeroom in Groom Lake for good (about 2014). They had been brought out of the Storeroom and readied for combat under Operation ADAMANT VENOM to leap from strike ranges for the CVW. The aircraft are launched at a range of 1176 miles.
Their weapons collide with the Yulin Force just as the six ships of FFRON 8 cross the horizon and begin to sling every missile and shell they have at the enemy in front of them. The Hainan Force is taken completely unaware. They had been running silent, hoping to pounce upon the Americans from the dark. Two Type 055 cruisers, three Type 052D destroyers, seven Type 054A frigates, and five Type 056 corvettes come up short against six Indies and six fancy missiles.
Kimberly Scott, the newly minted, field-promoted skipper of squadron flagship USS Canberra is on her second day on the job, not having even been frocked for her new rank of Commander. She is pressed into even greater responsibility after the squadron commander, Captain James Ellington (Canberra’s prior skipper), is killed by shrapnel. The young SWO leads the rag-tag force to a shocking, but costly, victory. Five of the Canberra-class frigates are sunk, but they claim twelve PLAN warships. Four of the PLAN losses are sunk by naval gunfire. The Hainan Force cedes the field and retreats. Shortly after the surface action ends, the Stonecutter Force is attacked by a pair of American SSNs and likewise turns tail, chased back to Hong Kong by Rhinos in the air and the subs under the waves.
The PLAN’s greatest opportunity unravels into a stinging defeat.
Scott becomes the Hero of the Second Battle of Paracel, a national hero, alongside the martyred Ellington. Ellington is awarded the Medal of Honor, and Scott is awarded her first Navy Cross; Scott would honor the memory of her mentor, having a new class of light combatants named after him, even though she thought he was an asshole.
In the wake of Second Paracel, the fighting for Sansha enters its final stage, but not before Sergeant Valencia Dominguez, the second woman to become a Recon Marine, is wounded. She loses her left arm and leg; she flatlines twice on the operating table aboard New York before being stabilized. She is pulled to safety under withering fire by a platoon leader in the 3rd Littoral Combat Team, a fresh-faced Second Lieutenant Lafayette DuSaint, who will go on to be Dominguez’s long-time superior.
Dominguez is flown to the United States for further treatment on January 2, the day the battle formally ends after 34 days of ceaseless, brutal fighting. It leaves 469 Allied soldiers and marines dead (293 are Marines, more than half of that just from 3rd LCT) and 2,000 wounded; the 12th Joint Division’s Composite Army-Marine Brigade would suffer just shy of 50% casualties in the battle.
With the war now frozen in the Americans' favor, the Central Military Commission gambles again on escalating to de-escalate, believing they need a bargaining chip to secure the return of Paracel Islands. They plan for a kinetic action to give them that leverage. The Biden Administration, and especially the President himself, is eager to end the conflict before Harris is inaugurated. New talks begin in Seoul and meet with more movement than Casablanca. However, the fall of the Paracels hangs heavy over the head of the Politburo, and they worry they do not have the leverage necessary to reclaim them. They reach the conclusion that the only way to recover the Paracels is by exchanging them with foreign territory seized by the PLA. They set their sights on the Sakishima and Senkaku Islands of the Okinawa Prefecture.
Their excuse for such a move presents itself soon after when a PLAAF J-10 rams into a JMSDF P-1 over Socotra Rock in the East China Sea. The PLA claim that the MPA shot down its fighter. Before the Japanese can really even protest the insanity of that claim, the PLA launch Operation Ivory Sword on January 11.
PLA heliborne assault troops and paratroops assault the islands just as the diplomatic delegations in Seoul reach an agreement on the timing of a pre-armistice ceasefire. The fighting on the islands is desperate and fierce. The JGSDF had not been able to surge forces to the islands before the PLA lead elements arrived, leaving only a small (but reinforced) tripwire garrison to defend the position. They had not really believed that the PLA would launch such a massive escalation right before peace talks reached an agreement. Irabu, Shimoji, Yonaguni, and Iriomote islands fall as the war escalates exponentially and violently over the next hours.
As soon as PLA transports and helicopters take off from their bases, the US launches Operations SUPER BOLO and readies POISON RAIN. The Joint Chiefs of Staff also present Operation MIDNIGHT CALLER to the President, a plan for a total air war against the Chinese Mainland to force an armistice.
Operation SUPER BOLO had been ready on the ground for weeks and springs into motion just minutes after the go order order. Spoofing PLAAeF spy satellites—along with commercial imaging satellites—with false returns of a pair of lightly defended carrier groups within range of the PLAAF bomber force, with false communications indicating yet another engineering casualty aboard one of them. The PLAAF takes the bait, and bomber regiments fill the sky, ready to hunt carriers. They are jumped by six F-35 squadrons and three F-22 squadrons after they enter the Philippine Sea. The PLAAF responds as expected and panics; they scramble almost their entire fighter force to save their bombers. It is not a display that impresses the Americans or even the Chinese. Up to this point, air battles have included perhaps a dozen or two aircraft at any one point—now the PLAAF throws hundreds into the air. They have responded exactly like INDOPACOM expected. For the entire war, save TOP ROPE, the USAF and USN have been barred from striking airbases on mainland China. If they could not come to the PLAAF, they would make the PLAAF come to them. The score of J-20, J-16, and J-10 brigades streaming from the mainland are surprised to find four entire CVWs massed into counter-air Alpha Strikes waiting for them, their carriers having sprinted into range as the bombers were attacked. 394 Allied land-based fighters are hot on the feels of the Navy flyboys. The over-committed PLAAF loses 429 fighters in a single afternoon (almost six fighter brigades), along with 86 bombers (slightly more than a single regiment). The PLAAF might be a large and well-trained air force, but it had not been ready to manage an air battle of this scale; they are made aware of this fact the hardest way possible.
As the largest jet-age air battle rages across 500 miles of burning skies, the PLARF rains more DF-21s on Guam and Saipan. This is enough to make the White House give final authorization to Operation POISON RAIN. A submarine force waiting on the bottom of the shallow seas off Hainan leaps upon the PLAN assets in Yulin Bay with fangs bared. Four SSNs—three SSN-774 and one SSN-21—disgorge a cruise missile attack on the fleet bases. But the boats do not flee at first, using themselves as bait to kill whatever might try to kill them first. They are horrified when what looks like the entire PLAN submarine force comes charging at them with at least a dozen surface ships. USS Hyman G. Rickover was a little too successful, having sent four TLAMs with masterful precision straight down the throat of the PLAN’s strategically vital subterranean submarine base at Longpo. Rickover, the nearest-in boat, signals the other submarines to flee with the message, “I will hold them. Run.” Against all odds, Rickover not only survives but wins a seven-on-one fight in the near knee-deep water around the harbor before slinking into the murk.
The ship’s skipper—already a legend for being the first woman to command an attack boat—becomes a living goddess. Commander Aabria Okoye is awarded the Medal of Honor along with the ship’s XO, COB, weapons officer, helmswoman, and sonarman. The rest of the crew is awarded the Naval Cross, the only mass award in Navy history. The ship is given a pair of Presidential Unit Citations (one for the strike and one for the fight) and is awarded the first two battle stars after their reintroduction by the Navy. Okoye will become the patron saint of the Silent Service and the world’s first and highest-scoring submarine ace, sinking a total of twenty-one enemy boats (seven nuke and fourteen conventional).
Panic reigns in Beijing as news of the Yulin Disaster arrives. An emergency session of the Central Military Commission is convened and gives authorization for a tactical nuclear weapon to be employed as a move of last resort. The target? Sansha City. The hope is that showing the Americans that they are willing to nuke their own territory will force an end to the conflict. The diplomatic mission in Seoul is not informed. The mission, working tirelessly without reliable guidance from Beijing, secures a ceasefire agreement just thirty minutes after the 20-kiloton nuclear gravity bomb goes airborne aboard a JH-7. Attempts to recall the strike package are dashed by a mix of fratricidal and hostile jamming. After an agonizing, helpless interlude of well over an hour, the best bad news possible reaches the Politburo—the fighter bomber had been downed, but the bomb had not detonated.
The JH-7 is shot down by a mixed Australian-American fighter force; in fact, it is likely that the aircraft was downed by the very Marine fighter pilot who had fired the first shot of the Sino-American War, Major Faith McPherson, who would become the 41st Commandant of the Marine Corps in 2031 and then 43rd Commandant in 2037.
American intelligence would not realize that a nuclear weapon was airborne until mid-July. However, they had become immediately aware that the nuclear trigger had been reached—or was being reached for. The US change in position over the terms of the ceasefire was, in fact, motivated by knowledge of a potential PRC nuclear response. The US believed that a post-ceasefire swap of the Paracels for the Sakishimas was very much on the table, despite righteous outrage from Tokyo over their people left on the occupied islands. The ceasefire would come into effect at midnight on January 13.
The Second Cold War of 2024 - 2037
Fool Me Once? Shame on you. Fool me twice? — Well… can’t get fooled again.
On January 18, in a ceremony at the Blue House, President Biden and President Xi would sign the armistice ending the First Sino-American War. They would also sign a pair of instruments to help restart trade between the nations and to stave off global economic collapse. Regardless, the First Sino had already fundamentally reshaped the dynamics of global commerce. The impossible was now possible. Markets and their human masters would not forget it. The United States Congress would also take a step just as titanic as ending a peer war—they killed the filibuster over a procedural vote holding up the passage of the passage of the National Economic Security and Reform Act. The first bill to pass on a true simple majority vote would be the Second Recovery Act (so named for the economic stimulus passed to shore up markets and attempt to pre-empt good shortages by preparing for the glut of shipments in the near future).
The 119th Congress will be the most productive Congress in the 21st Century, far outstripping even the legendary 111th Congress of 2009-2011. They pass a flurry of landmark legislation in its first 45-days: the National Defense Act of 2025, the Naval Infrastructure Act of 2025, the Defense Industrial Mobilization Act, the National Defense Immigration and Citizenship Act, Supply and Economic Security Act. The Harris Administration also negotiates a landmark economic treaty in record time: the Bretton Woods Agreement on the Protection of Critical Supply Chains, between the US, the EU, the UK, and certain Major Non-NATO Allies, including Japan, India, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and others.
The DC Statehood Act passes at the end of January along a party-line vote. The Puerto Rico Status & Statehood Act (named to appease Democrats in the House) passes a few weeks later after some wrangling, organizing a final status referendum. A similar act, The Marianas Unification and Admission Act passes soon after, a dual referendum on combining Guam and the Northern Marianas into a single entity and granting them statehood. DC joins the union following a plebiscite just six weeks after the passage of its enabling act. Puerto Rico follows suit in June, voting for statehood with 59% of the vote at 87% turnout. The State of the Marianas becomes the 51st State on July 4, 2025, after an overwhelming vote for statehood (following a much closer plebiscite on unification).
Bill LePlante becomes the first Chairman of the Defense Production Board, an entity created by executive order in mid-November and made permanent by the terms of the Defense Industrial Mobilization Act. He will serve in that role from November 2024 to January 2035. He will become the All-Father of Cold War Defense Procurement.
The new Congress also passes a massive economic recovery and stabilization act: the PEACE Act (Protecting the Economic Activity of America and Creating Economic Opportunity for the World). The global economy makes a remarkable recovery after holding its breath for 85 painful days. The 119th Congress would also eventually pass the National Security Act of 2025, the Defense Reform Act, the Pacific Shipbuilding Corporation Act, and the National Sciences and Research Act.
The restored productivity of the United States Congress has an unintended benefit—it kills Clarence Thomas. The senior-most Justice dies of a massive heart attack during oral arguments on the constitutionality of the Defense Production Act in late 2025. No one in the room realizes he has died until arguments are over, and Alito taps him on the shoulder, and a limp head slams into the bench. Cedric Richmond, Director of the Office of Personnel Management, is confirmed to replace Thomas on a 56-44 party-line vote.
The United States enters into a new era of budgetary baselines and economic growth, with defense budgets jumping up to a steady 6% of GDP on top of more than doubling research and development spending. The Era of the MBA Executive is broken upon the altar of a new cold war. As the panic and dislocation settles, the US enters an economic renaissance, boosted by technological innovation and the union-backed “national defense” immigration reform bill (First Sino revealed that, above all else, the US was lacking workers).
Several key technological breakthroughs happen in the first half of Harris’s first term. The invention of the Graphene-Silicon wafer chip in 2026 is arguably the most important among these advances. Using a novel production method, graphene is used to increase the strength of silicon wafers, allowing for the production of larger wafers (600mm becomes the new industry standard) and smaller dies. This is paired with monumental breakthroughs in material sciences—especially covetics. Nanocomposite steel, high entropy alloys, and advanced non-polymer composites enter the market as viable industrial products.
The Fifth Industrial Revolution begins by Christmas 2026.
Fourth Persian Gulf War of 2026
The First Iranian-Gulf Coast War / Dead Ayatollah’s War / Gulf War IV
In February 2026, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, dies from a fall in his home in Tehran. However, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran maintains that he is, in fact, alive. This barely believed ruse goes on for six months as storms of political machinations leap off the page and into the shadows. The country is racked by protests and relations between the President and the Guardian Council reach their nadir. It is during this extremely tense moment—in August—that King Salman of Saudi Arabia dies of a stroke in his sleep. The Saudis attempt to play the same trick as Iran but do so poorly. They noisily reject any rumors that Salman is dead before they’ve spread widely and end up wearing a “King Salman is Alive and Well” shirt. Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, worried about the transition of power, makes his first move as an uncrowned King, a prophylactic purge of the Saudi Royal Guard Regiment.
It backfires. Horribly.
The Royal Guards resist what they think is a coup against MBS and/or the still-living King Salman. Gunfire rings through the halls of the Al-Yamamah Palace. Dissident guards burst into MBS’s office as he is on the phone plotting, killing his security detail after they resist. MBS is kidnapped by unwitting “dissidents.” They shout that they are here to save the Crown Prince from the Iranian traitors in the palace who are trying to kill the King, unaware that there are no traitors and that the King is already dead. Soon, loyalist guards arrive to free the Crown Prince but spend fifteen minutes arguing with his captors about who is actually loyal; both groups are killed by arriving National Guardsmen who announce plans to replace MBS as Crown Prince, under purported orders from the supposedly still-living Salman. At last, another group of Guardsmen with other loyalist Royal Guards arrive and finally free the King they believe is still the Crown Prince.
At least 1,200 Saudi soldiers are killed in about six hours of fighting—most of the casualties from friendly fire. In the aftermath, MBS announces the passing of his father without even mentioning the chaos at the palace. Most of the remaining Royal Guards are executed. Ahead of a speech announcing Iran’s posture after the chaos in the KSA, a member of the Guardian Council is caught on a hot mic complaining about having to hide that the Ayatollah is dead. These comments, spoken as cameras roll waiting for the President of Iran to arrive (running late because of traffic), are carried live and are not censored. The riots begin almost immediately.
MBS then announces that Iran tried to kill him with plants inside the Royal Guard Regiment, only describing a small but dangerous incident, not the riot that actually happened. He orders a punitive missile strike against Tehran for the attempt. The missiles hit Iranian military bases, but the IRGC claims that the attack killed the Ayatollah. The passing of Khamenei is formally acknowledged soon afterward—though no cause of death is ever given.
The war begins as a stumbling slap-fight launched over the deaths of elderly men.
It is a complete clusterfuck.
Almost all of the fighting is done via aircraft or rocket salvo. However, there are major raids by both Iran and the Gulf Cooperation Council into Iraq, as its Prime Minister tries to remain neutral to avoid plunging his country into civil war.
As the War of Fires erupts across the Persian Gulf, there is only a lone US Navy vessel holding the Strait of Hormuz open—USS Constellation (FFG-63). The ship is on its first tour after commissioning in late 2025, earlier than expected (having been rushed along by the response to First Sino). In her skipper’s chair is Commander Kimberly Scott. Constellation stands alone for twenty-three and a half hours of combat against overwhelming Iranian attacks. Eventually, Connie is joined by a pair of Arleigh Burkes (The Sullivans and Delbert D. Black). The ships could have joined Constellation earlier but were delayed by the direct order of the one-star Rear Admiral (Lower Half) serving as Acting Commander, Naval Forces Central Commander / United States Fifth Fleet. He orders that the DDGs be repainted before they are permitted to sortie. The RDML is in charge due to an ongoing freeze in the confirmation flag officer postings due to Mike Lee’s infamous “Pantless Talking Filibuster.”
Constellation earns two Presidential Unit Citations and seven battle stars. Scott earns her second Navy Cross for the First Battle of Hormuz and then a Silver Star for the Seventeenth. She also very nearly earns a court martial for refusing to follow orders from COMNAVCENT. Scott barters with friendly warships and auxiliaries for fuel, food, and ammunition, intent on making sure that there is always a ship on station in the strait. Constellation remains only the line for more than 95% of the war’s duration.
Scott also earns her sobriquet “Kill Something” during the War after she loses her calm speaking to COMNAVCENT on the radio. She shouts over an unencrypted channel, “Why don’t you, for the love of God, make yourself useful for once in your damned miserable life and go out and kill something!” CENTCOM is finally forced to dismiss the RDML after it is revealed he had been stealing painkillers “to keep his nerves steady,” in addition to his erratic behavior. Attempts to rehabilitate the officer will lead to the “Revolt of the Commanders,” sometimes called the “Tailhook Putsch,” in early 2027. After the mess in NAVCENT is cleared up, Scott is promoted to full captain and given command of the newly formed Escort Squadron Eight, with orders to protect civilian traffic.
The war also sees another future flag officer of the CTF gain their place amongst the legends of American history. Lieutenant Selina “Cat” Mitscher becomes the first US triple ace since Robin Olds during the “Miracle over the Zagros.” After losing her wingman in an ambush, the F/A-18E pilot single-handedly (literally, as she will lose her left arm and eye) defeats twelve Iranian flagged but Russian piloted Su-35Ms, including two gun kills and three maneuver kills (two she will admit were accidents not caused by her own hand; a Russian pilot crashed into his wingmen while trying to pounce on Mitscher).
The war ends after 62 days (August 13 to October 12). It is an American stomp, and the oil glut that follows the armistices crashes global oil prices so severely that it almost bankrupts the Russian government and buoys Democrats into a surprise victory in the 2026 Midterms. The war itself ends with a return to status quo antebellum. However, the embarrassing defeat of the Revolutionary Guard Corps leads to major, but not overwhelming, reforms in Iran. The Office of Supreme Leader is disestablished and the Guardian Councils cedes much—but not all—of its authority to the Parliament. The IRGC however diminished, remains a powerful political actor. The war convinces Iranian reformists that they must have the bomb. Iran will test its first nuclear weapon in 2028 under a program under the express control of the parliament and presidency.
Perhaps the most lasting implications of the war are not actually any events of the war itself but Saudi behavior after the war ends. King Mohammad bin Salman made a series of decisions that would all but sever the Kingdom’s ties with the United States, more through incompetence than through malice. First, he would codify the long-held understanding that if Iran procured the bomb, Pakistan would provide the KSA with nuclear weapons, material, and technology. However, the new Pakistani Government would refuse to transfer materials ahead of Iranian acquisition of actionable nuclear devices. So, the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency would attempt to procure US nuclear technology (primarily weapons designs, especially the B83) through a mix of bribery and blackmail, targeting vulnerable Department of Energy employees. The program would actually meet with some success until the would-be traitors got cold feet.
The GIP officer in charge of the operations would move onto a reasonable Plan B, Kidnapping two DOE nuclear physicists on American Soil.
The idea was to seize the individuals and then force them to steal the desired nuclear designs. Fortunately, the plot had been on the radar of the FBI and NSA, and the GIP team would be arrested red-handed—in a panel van filled with incriminating material, including a rocket launcher—on their way to kidnap the first scientist. Regardless, a second team of Saudi intelligence officers would bribe the President of the Council on Foreign Relations, Brett McGurk, via Jared Kushner to use McGurk’s connection to a retired Senior DOE employee (married to his cousin) for their atomic ends. Kushner would inadvertently scupper the operation at the last minute by reneging on his deal, demanding more money before he provided the rest of the files.
This would lead to the next stage of the rupture of Saudi-American relations: violence.
Jared Kushner was shot nine times as he left his New York penthouse on Christmas Day 2027, and die on the way to Mount Sinai. The nuclear files on Kushner’s laptop would be ultimately deleted by his personal assistant, under the mistaken assumption that they were a stash of fetish porn.
Things then really kick off as six masked gunmen launch a full-scale assault on former President George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. The operation was not picked up by US security services at all and took American politics completely by surprise. It would later be ascertained that the General Intelligence Presidency—under pressure from MBS to find a culprit behind the Royal Guard Insurrection—fingered Bandar al Saud as the ring-master of a vast anti-MBS clique. This tight but also massive clique was supposedly planning a coup against the new King. MBS would order Bandar killed as a warning without actually asking about the details. The former Ambassador to the United States just happened to be spending Christmas with the Bushes, a part of an extended vacation in the States with the intent of avoiding purges. The GIP office handed the mission would decide it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission, seeing what had happened to the Royal Guards who had questioned the King.
Having been singing Christmas carols just moments prior, the Bush Family and their Secret Service detail are thrown headlong into a frenetic hours-long gunfight against extremely heavily armed GIP assassins (having armed themselves by spending $2.75 million buying a vast personal collection from a gun collector). Eventually, some four hundred local law enforcement officers and C Company, 5th Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group (TX National Guard)—via Blackhawk from Fort Cavazos under orders from Governor Lina Hildago—arrive to break the siege. Though, by the time the SF soldiers fast rope down onto the property, the assassins have already been dispatched by a Stryker troop from the 3rd Cavalry Regiment—held over Christmas to hold a live-fire field training exercise—who had rushed to the scene after hearing distress calls from Bush’s Secret Service detail. And despite expending well over 12,000 rounds of ammunition, no Americans had been killed—besides Kushner.
The Saudi Government maintained that the GIP officers had moved without their knowledge or blessing. This is in spite of a fancam edit (using a Hilary Duff song) of the officers involved meeting the King just hours before they departed for the United States. The GIP leaders were kept in the dark about the sheer number of concurrent, delicate, and volatile missions that were notionally being conducted on their authority and under their responsibility on American soil. Accordingly, MBS would have most of those leaders executed to appease the Harris Administration—but the damage had been done.
2026 United States Midterms & The Osaka Treaty of 2027
Let The Good Times Roll
In 2026, the Democrats lose 26 House seats but still maintain a commanding majority (242D-199R), winning the national popular vote by about 1.5 points. In the Senate, the Democrats pick up five seats (TX, NC, ME, AK, and OH), bringing their caucus up to 67—the largest majority since 1966 and the largest caucus since 1964.
Vivek Ramsaway, having defeated appointee Matt Dolan in the primary, loses the special election to finish JD Vance’s term to LeBron James. Ramsaway's otherwise adequate bid implodes after the candidate backs over incumbent Matt Dolan and a 96-year-old Republican volunteer after a campaign event in Dayton. Bethel Schlamng, the volunteer who had just moments before the accident proudly declared she had voted for every Republican in Ohio since Eisenhower in 1952, would die on the way to the hospital; Ramsaway would be charged with manslaughter a week before the election.
Republicans in Texas face a stunning and overwhelming wipeout in the wake of new Governor Dan Patrick’s disastrous “Operation Freedom,” an attempt at a state-level mass deportation operation. Patrick had become Governor in January after the death of Greg Abbott in a tragic kazoo-induced waterslide accident. “OpFree” sees Texas Rangers black-bag a third-grade class field trip to Big Bend National Park, along with their teacher and six docents, and then attempt to deport the group to Guatemala on an unregistered flight in the middle of the night, despite the fact that they were all American citizens. At the same time, John Cornyn narrowly loses the Republican nomination for Senate to Attorney General Ken Paxton. Paxton is once more under indictment, this time for the kidnapping and false imprisonment of his mistress. Both go down in flames as Texas Democrats win a trifecta in the state for the first time since 1990. Paxton falls to former San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, while Patrick loses to Lina Hidalgo.
Elsewhere, former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper and Maine Representative Jared Golden win open seats in their respective states after Senators Tillis and Collins decline to run for re-election. State Representative Alyse Galvin wins Alaska senate race, defeating Dan Sullivan in an upset; polling had her down by seven, but she would eventually win by nine (a few percent less than Rep. Mary Peltola).
Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor retires two days after the election following a car accident in October. She is replaced by Deputy Attorney General Elizabeth Prelogar following a 59-42 vote in the Senate (Curtiss, Collins, and Tillis voting to confirm).
The Harris Administration, presiding over a massive economic boom and racking up domestic policy success after domestic policy success, would achieve what was long thought impossible—a unified, formalized security framework for the Pacific. The signing of the Osaka Treaty and Accord on Enhanced Cooperation, Mutual Defense, and Common Security in 2027 would be the crown jewel of Harris’s first term.
The Osaka Treaty Organization would have its beginnings in the political agreement behind the Pacific Shipbuilding Corporation, a pseudo-conglomeration of the Pacific Rim’s shipyards and shipbuilding concerns formed after First Sino. It would also be known as the Pacific Charter, but that tagline name would never catch on. Instead, it would be known almost universally as OSATO or the OSATO Treaty—after the Osaka Treaty Organization.
OSATO would be a sister to the North Atlantic Treaty and its Treaty Organization, contextualized for the challenges of the Western Pacific. It would not be nearly as centralized as NATO, and have multiple tiers of membership. There would be full membership—equivalent to a NATO member state. There would also be associated membership—states who agree to military standardization, political cooperation, and consultation in times of crisis; associated memberships would be obligated to provide assistance if a member was attacked but not necessarily military force, and would have to opt into the joint command structure. Generally, most associated members would also have bilateral security or cooperation agreements with the United States.
The original signatories of the Osaka Treaty were the United States of America, the Republic of the Philippines, the Republic of Australia (a Republic declared following the 2026 constitutional referendum), the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Canada, and Japan. Associated Members would include the Republic of Korea, the Republic of India, the Republic of Indonesia, the Republic of Singapore (following the start of the Malaysia Civil War), the French Republic, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, the Republic of Panama, and the Republic of Chile. Most Micronesian, Polynesian, and Melanesian states would join the alliance within a few years, though not all would seek full membership.
The Republic of China, Taiwan, is formally designated an “observer non-member” by the treaty and operates through the guise of a Taiwan Liaison Office.
The Many Turns of the Rolling ‘20s
The Tide Comes In But It Always Goes Out
The Myanmar Civil War ends in the defeat of the Tatmadaw in the spring of 2026. Hopes for the newly formed People’s Federation of Burma to turn a new page are dashed when an ex-warlord aligned to the People’s Defense Force launches a putsch against the new government over unpaid wages, leading to what becomes known as the “twin walk federalism.” Those areas controlled by the central government become an Eritrean-like centralized police state existing between and within areas controlled by ethnic armed organizations, effectively out of control of the central government.
In September 2026, after winning a modest victory against Likud in January 2025, Prime Minister Benny Gantz tries to capitalize on a momentary rally-around-the-flag moment in the wake of Iran's defeat by calling a snap election. Likud, under Yoav Gallant, narrowly returns to government, but the right coalition runs into a fight over reinstating “Torato Umanuto” exemptions for Haredi men. Gallant allows the bill to fail after pardoning imprisoned former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The response from Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich catches the world and Israeli politics off guard—they attempt a putsch backed by rightist police officers and soldiers. 48 Members of the Knesset are killed during the attempt to seize Kiryat HaMemshala. Loyalist elements of the security services and IDF crackdown on the putschist without mercy. The fighting is without quarter, but brief.
The Israeli Civil War ends when Kiryat Arba, converted into the final redoubt of the putschist, is firebombed by the Israeli Air Force—killing almost all of the settlement’s population, including “Prime Minster” Ben-Gvir. The aftermath of the ninety-three hours of fighting sees the death of Israeli democracy, with Prime Minister Gallant forming a de facto autocratic security state regime canceling future elections 'until such time that the state is secure.’ The tenor of the new state is set when an attempt by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to establish a rightist opposition movement ends with him being unceremoniously shot by Shin Bet officers in his driveway.
Also, in September 2026, the Russo-Ukrainian War ends following the annihilation of the three Russian Combined Arms Armies trapped in the Makiivka Cauldron and the liberation of Mauripol after the surrender of the Commander-in-Chief of the Joint Group of Forces, the recently promoted Marshal of the Russian Federation Andrey Mordviche—along with his staff and the remaining units of the Stalingrad Military District—in fitting, curt ceremony in front of the Russians’ final positions in the ruins of the Azovstal Steel Works. The Russian Federation and the Republic of Ukraine sign the “Instrument for the Permanent Termination of Hostilities Between Belligerents” at Chaltyr, just 10 miles from Rostov, under the gun barrels of the leading tanks of the 1st Ukrainian Armored Corps. Dmitry Medvedev signs for the Russian Federation; Rustem Umerov signs for Ukraine. Ukraine finalizes its ascension to NATO mere hours after signing the Instrument, after all of its forces crossed back over the internationally recognized border between the two countries.
Ahead of the end of his term in January 2027, Governor Gavin Newsom is nominated to be US Ambassador to China in a controversial move by the Harris Administration. It was understood as a move to “dump him in a job that will kill odds of being an idiot and trying something in 2028—Joe Kennedy style.” While his nomination is held up in the Senate over his suitability, the selection process of the next UN Secretary-General meltdowns. The Russian Federation vetoed every single nominee except for their own nominee, Elvira Nabiullina (the Governor of the Central Bank of Russia), at straw poll after straw poll in dual unprecedented moves; Nabiullina, in turn, had been vetoed by three P5 members (France, UK, and US), receiving only two votes in the affirmative (Russia and Bolivia) with seven nays and three abstentions (including the PRC) at each vote. In a bizarre move, Newsom would ask and get the US nomination for Secretary-General in a counter to the Russians’ attempt to force its nominee down everyone’s throat, but it was assumed that it to lead nowhere. This was thought to be a move to extricate himself from his souring ambassadorship nomination.
In the middle of the 13th Straw Poll in late November, the Russian Ambassador to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, was recalled to Moscow with zero warning or any explanation. He would leave before completing his voting, subtly manhandled out of the Consultation Room by his security detail. Five minutes later, there was the first announcement that Secretary of the Russian Security Council Sergei Shoigu—along with Igor Girkin’s Union of Patriotic Forces (a rightist super-group), a furious Dimitri Medvedev, and thousands of demoralized soldiers waiting for a long-promised “final victory bonus” still mustered along the Ukrainian border—had begun a Second March on Moscow. It was another open mutiny, this time over the termination of the war, unpaid wages, and an imminent government reshuffle. The botched coup comes to a stop after the Bonus Soldiers frag Girkin and his clique; Medvedev’s attempt to seize a nuclear weapon storage facility sees him electrocuted on a security fence before being arrested by the confused guards; and Shoigu’s 500-vehicle armored convoy is halted by nine border guards and a Lada Riva.
The deadlock in the UNSC would come to a sudden end as the votes of the straw poll were counted. Governor Gavin Newsom would be the only nominee who the Russians had not vetoed (leaving the room with the ballot unfilled). There are gasps in the room when the final red (P5) slip—that of PRC—is revealed, and it is an abstention. Newsom becomes the Security Council’s nominee with only seven ayes—with four nays and four abstentions. He is the first Secretary-General nominee from a P5 member. Russia would attempt to recant its non-vote, but fearing more deadlock, the UNSC would send Newsom’s nomination to the floor UN General Assembly, where he would be confirmed 115-78—the first contested UNGA confirmation.
In exchange for their ‘help’ in ending the deadlock, China had a single demand—a non-European citizen as the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund and a non-American as the President of the World Bank. Accordingly, the US supports Spanish Finance Minister, María Jesús Montero, as the next President of the World Bank and a Deputy Governor of the Bank of Japan, Uchida Shinichi, as the next Managing Director of the IMF. The move gave the Chinese precisely what they asked for—but not what they wanted.
In 2027, a renewed Malaysian Islamist Party—under the banner of a new young, charismatic leader styling himself as a mirror version of Donald Trump, Gert Wilders, and Marine Le Pen—comes just one seat shy of an absolute majority. Attempts to forestall the formation of their government lead to a putsch, and the nation descends into civil war. The conflict will eventually see three military interventions: one by Singapore to secure a buffer zone, one by the UN, and one by the PLA to protect ethnic Chinese. The war ends with a stable authoritarian military regime backed by a coalition of the remnants of anti-Islamist conservative factions and ethnic Chinese parties—all other sides of the war having exhausted themselves after years of fighting.
The United States and the People’s Republic of China come perilously close to war in 2027, in what would be termed the Anzio Incident. Thankfully, the liberal use of high-power jammers and good timing allows the Central Military Commission to declare the errant forces mutineers. The first Sino-American combat since 2025 would be covered up—with one the largest within-visual-range surface naval actions chalked up to collisions and mines left over from First Sino announced over a series of months.
In the wake of this very close call, it appears as if the promising careers of two officers who would eventually be flag officers in the Composite Testing Force had been cut short. Captain Kimberly Scott was dual-hatted as skipper of the Constellation and the Commander of Advance Naval Support Activity Subic Bay; as the officer in charge, she held overall responsibility for the events that had unfolded and for the loss of Constellation in particular. Captain Jeduthun MacGregor was in command of the recommissioned Anzio and was liable for the particular theatrics of the crisis. The end of the careers of these “rank traitors” was met with jubilation in some corners of the Fleet. Scott, in particular, had been the face of the reformist officer corps, and her testimony during the Revolt of Commanders would help end the careers of no less than half a dozen flag officers and lead to the implementation of the legendary Sailor’s Charter. Scott and MacGregor were not drummed out of the service despite calls for just that. Jed MacGregor was court-martialled but cleared of all charges after the unanimous intervention of his surviving crew and then assigned to command SBX off Adak for the next four straight years. Scott was assigned as the defense attaché to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, a posting that was sure to be a death sentence for an officer famed for her fighting spirit.
Other events in this period include the first PLA punitive expeditions, the so-called “friendship support operations.” These primarily occur in East Africa, though there are also operations in Central Asia. One particularly egregious action is the use of Chinese paratroopers and special operations forces against the Uganada Parliament during the Uganda Sovereign Debt Crisis in 2028.
United States Presidential Election of 2028
Started as a Menance and Ended as a Farce
President Kamala Harris is re-nominated without major opposition, having become a paragon of the party. Cementing this fact, in 2027, Harris signs the American Health Care Act—dubbed KamalaCare—into law, giving the United States a public option modeled after the AmeriCare proposal and a system of federally owned and operated hospitals, the American Health Service. She also celebrates the return of US Astronauts to the Moon in August 2027.
In sharp contrast to the nothingburger 2028 Democratic Primary, the 2028 Republican Primary is downright Shakespearean. Despite assurance from his staff that he would not run again, former President Trump announces he will seek his Party’s nomination for an unprecedented fourth time. His bid is, ironically, buoyed by his listless period in the wildness in 2025-2026. A series of images of a despondent, broken Trump looking at various objects (Taj Mahal, Eiffel Tower, Lenin’s Tomb, a hot food rack at a 7/11 in Vegas) go viral and remain an enduring meme. The speech is pre-recorded in his office inside the purpose-built “Executive Administrative Annex” of Federal Correctional Institution Otisville, where Trump is serving his state and federal jail time after his conviction in the Mar-a-Lago Documents and January 6 cases—and in the election subversion cases in Arizona, Michigan, and eventually Georgia.
Trump successfully fights for a furlough to allow him to campaign. Having lost nearly 90 pounds, he appears to have his spark back and, despite the odds, claws his way to the front of a crowded primary field. This early primary is a fascinating case as the other candidates attempt to campaign around the fact that Donald Trump is 1) still alive and 2) running against them. The most egregious example of this phenomenon is Marco Rubio repeating the line “If President Trump were still here,” six times while being literally one podium away from Trump during the first debate of the primary.
The year’s Super Tuesday—pushed back to the second week of May—proves to be one of the most monument days in American politics. At midday, there is an assassination attempt against former Vice President Mike Pence at a rally in North Carolina. While Pence himself is unscathed, Karen Pence is killed. The image of Pence holding his wife’s shoes as Secret Service agents pull him back becomes instantly historic. As the polls close, it appears that Trump has secured the Party’s nomination following a set of narrow victories across the board (the RNC having switched back to proportional delegate awards). However, that night it becomes clear that Trump is 72 delegates shy of an outright majority. As Trump is giving his victory speech to a 10,000 person rally in Waco, Texas—he abruptly stops speaking. Another famous photo of that day shows the lines on the teleprompter announcing that Trump had secured the support of the three candidates (Rubio, Youngkin, and Cox) and their combined 74 delegates, just enough to clinch the nomination. He grips his chest, releasing the podium, stumbling back a few steps before keeling over backward. He has suffered a massive heart attack. He is rushed to Baylor Scott & White Medical Center. Reports of his death run wild as the world waits with bated breath. His campaign refuses to make any public update on his condition for 43 hours until a stilted statement announces the former President is alive but in a coma. Trump’s 1193 delegates are left up in the air as Youngkin, Rubio, and Cox do not actually release their delegates.
The next ten weeks are a blur of madness and political bloodshed. The next three weeks are flush with primary elections as the back-loaded calendar (an attempt to capture the advantages of Kamala’s Harris “late start” 2024 bid) unleashes even more chaos. Trump ends the primary season with 1428 of 2431 delegates. The RNC begins to host new debates, as it’s unclear if Trump will ever wake up.
The debates instantly become memorable because of one thing: Mike Pence.
Mike Pence's manic performance—with nickel-sized pupils—in the first of these debates captures global attention and rejuvenates his otherwise lackluster bid (having only won Indiana with 28% of the vote). At one point, he appears to be holding an entire conversation by himself as Glen Youngkin looks in utter horror. There is an attempt to stop the debate to check if he is all right, but he waves them off, saying, “They are telling you more lies, we know. We know.” Of the various insane lines said by Pence that night, “Do you speak for the eagles? NO! I speak for the eagles!” is the most remembered. Pence gains more small donors in the next 24 hours than in his entire prior career—combined.
A year later, a tell-all book by Pence’s campaign manager will elaborate on what was wrong with the ex-Veep—he was tripping balls. Pence was suffering from exposure to hallucinogenic fungi—ergotism—from a loaf of improperly stored bread, the last loaf that Karen had baked. He would continue to nibble on the loaf throughout the rest of the campaign despite warnings and pleas from friends, family, and six doctors.
Pence’s novelty fades after he begins to convulse violently during the second of the restarted debates. Then, it is former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s time to shine. Her moment at the top of the pack is mostly just an extended mutual murder-suicide between her and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, both seeing each other as their only real competitor. Kemp and Haley are then also ganged up on by all the other candidates—including the six candidates who join after Trump’s heart attack. At each debate, the center podium is empty, with Trump’s name and photo emblazoned on it.
The debates—a so-called shotgun primary—fail to reach a consensus or to achieve anything but nuking the prospects of their two best prospects before the Republican National Convention opens in Dallas. It is the first brokered convention since 1952. And it is an unsurprising catastrophe. The backroom dealings will lead to at least nine indictments in the succeeding two years. The details are hazy even to the ticket that is eventually nominated. Don Junior—the early favorite—sees his bid implode after he is videotaped doing coke off a baby changing station in a convention center ladies’ room. Marco Rubio is booed off the stage. Haley remains stuck at a ceiling of roughly 450 delegates, and most of her effort is directed at ensuring that Kemp stays stuck at a ceiling of roughly 500 delegates. The first dozen ballots push the convention in an odd direction, winnowing down to two Arkansasans: Senator Tom Cotton and Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The party elites prefer Huckabee Sanders’ focus on families and pocket-book issues. Conservative activists prefer Cotton’s monomaniacal focus on fighting a war against the cartels. The Trump Family is split, with Ivanka and Melania supporting Huckabee Sanders (from a distance) while Eric, Don, and Barron support Cotton from the floor. It is Cotton’s stilted-but-fiery keynote promising to use drone strikes against fentanyl traffickers that breaks the dam. Only 19th ballot, Tom Cotton wins the Republican Party’s nomination for President despite not winning a single state in the primaries (he came in third in Arkansas). He picks Montana Governor Greg Gianforte as his running mate.
Harris once more runs as the happy warrior—the woman who won wars, saved the global economy, and brought a new economic renaissance to America. Cotton runs a fire and brimstone campaign arguing for Trumpism without Trump—arguing that domestic drone strikes would not necessarily violate the Posse Comitatus Act and implying that “someone” had given Trump the heart attack. Shortly after the latter comment, Trump wakes from his coma. He delivers a single speech from his office in the Executive Administrative Annex congratulating Cotton and endorsing the GOP ticket. He appears exhausted and barely aware of his surroundings. That night, before he goes to bed, he suffers a massive stroke that leaves him paralyzed from the neck down and unable to speak. Two weeks later, Gianforte is charged with six separate felonies after he suffers a breakdown and attacks several reporters, including hitting a fleeing camera in the head with a thrown brick. He snaps after being followed around by a large press pool asking pointed questions about alleged financial impropriety during his tenure in the House. He asks to be removed from the ticket after he is charged, mainly to avoid being dropped from the ticket by Cotton. Representative Elise Steffanik of New York is chosen to replace the governor.
There is one last catastrophe before E-Day that stabs into the back of the Republican ticket like a dagger in Caesar’s back: the Moonies. In mid-September, with Gianforte fresh off the ticket, the Department of Justice announces charges for 147 current and former Republican staffers and electeds, all related to an unregistered foreign agent and illegal influence-buying operation run by the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification. The Moonies, driven out of Japanese politics after the assassination of Shinto Abe and the Great Realignment in the 2025 General Election, had come to America—and the GOP in particular—to continue their grift cult. The DOJ also levels charges against 80 members of the Unification Church for running various scams targeting elderly conservatives. In short order, it is revealed that operatives for the Church had also embezzled some $350 million dollars from the RNC and associated campaigns, creating a massive financing crisis in the GOP in the home stretch of the election.
The Cotton/Steffanik ticket goes down in flames. “We really McGovern’d it, didn’t we?” The Senator is purportedly to have said to his campaign team as results begin to drop and it is apparent that they have lost by at least double-digit. The final result is 57.2% Harris/Walz to 41.7% Cotton/Steffanik. Democrats win a 275-seat supermajority in the House and pick up five more seats in the Senate. Jason Kander defeats Eric Schmitt in Missouri; Mary Peltola succeeds Murkowski in Alaska; Jeff Jackson defeats Ted Budd in North Carolina; Sharice Davids defeats Mike Pompeo to succeed Jerry Moran in Kansas; and independent Josh Romney defeats Mike Lee in Utah (Romney enters the race after a bizarre rant by Lee wherein the Senator graphically accuses Ann Romney of “ethno-cuckolding”). However, the true upset of the cycle is Harris’ victory in Mississippi—after three recounts. She is the first Democrat to do so since 1976 (though this was signaled by Brandon Presley's narrow gubernatorial victory in 2027). This sudden shift in America’s most polarized state is only possible thanks to First Sino and the (First) Naval Infrastructure Act bringing a massive influx of workers and their families to the Gulfport-Biloxi metro.
There is one last insult to Republicans in 2028—a Supreme Court vacancy occurs on election day. Justice Alito, conscious of his age, started to seclude himself. He would avoid anything that might lead to premature death ahead of Cotton’s assumed victory. The main thrust of this strategy, of course, was regular, all-expenses-paid vacations to the homes of various conservative mega-donors. While fishing on the Ohio River on a $40 million dollar river barge, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Samuel Anthony Alito Junior is struck in the head by an abnormally large 103.7-pound Silver Carp and killed instantly. He would be replaced by Meredith Vacca, a judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, by a 68-32 vote on December 8. Justice Vacca’s confirmation would create the first majority on the Supreme Court to be nominated by Democratic Presidents since 1969 and, for the first time in its history, would have more women than men (Kagan, Coney Barrett, Brown Jackson, Nessel, and Vacca).
The Office of Critical Procurement & USN Factionalism
Cold Warrior Require Cold Steel, Cold Wars Demand Bickering About Paint
Jennifer Granholm continues to serve as Secretary of Energy. Not only does she lead America’s clean energy transition, but as the cabinet officer in charge of much of the federal government’s research budget, she indelibly shapes the United States’ defense mobilization. In this latter role, she is aided by her plucky defense attaché, Kimberly Scott. The two quickly strike up an indelible friendship and frightening partnership. Instead of a career death sentence, Scott starts to amass significant influence due to her abilities as a talented project manager and deft political operator. She will out-maneuver her opponents and elegantly position herself into a career jumpstart.
Her proposal for consolidating the DOD’s various specialist procurement offices into a single “super office” under the Defense Production Board would be met with much resistance. Scott would win the fight. This legislative battle was particularly notable as it was then when Scott purportedly killed former Senator Ted Cruz. Cruz, serving as a lobbyist attempting to sink Scott’s proposal, would fall down a flight of stairs to his death—Scott allegedly pushed him. Congress would pass Scott’s measure, and the Office of Critical Procurement would be created under the DPB—she was the natural choice for its first director. However, her age and many enemies would see that she would not receive the commodore’s star that was supposed to go with the new job. Regardless, she would happily accept her post as a Latter-Day Rickover. She did not care about the rank; she had just become the chief procurement officer of the United States defense mobilization agency, and she intended to leverage every ounce of power that posting gave her.
From this posting, under the protection of “Papa Bear” LaPlante, she would wage war against her enemies in the name of reform and sharpening the edge of the spear. Her focus on personnel reforms—particularly housing—was known to drive her enemies mad, as they were notionally supposed to be out of her remit. However, Scott’s OCP would build housing if it wanted and where it was needed—come hell or highwater.
The fleet factionalism would finally crystallize into formal groups in 2030, with the battle lines drawn around the proposals that would become known as FAX2040, “Fleet Architecture 2040,” and the subsequent Naval Act of 2030. FAX 2040’s focus on SAGs and creating a low-end 5,000-ton light surface combatant class to increase hulls and access to early commands were particularly polarizing. It was also the fact that those pushing FAX2040 were mostly those who had forced the Sailor’s Charter reforms into action over the objections of what Kill Something Scott would dub the “Everything is Fine Admiralty.” But one point above all else threw down the gauntlet: proposals for the adoption of a new standard ship paint. Slate Haze Gray—a darker, long-duration high anti-corrosion and mild radar absorbing pain—would drive men mad. It is said that at least one senior field grade officer threatened to kill himself over its adoption.
The paint would become the sobriquet for those who supported FAX2040—the Slate Navy. Those who opposed FAX2040 would organize a new forum to discuss their schemes—the Professional Naval Officers’ Society and would be dubbed “Corporate,” usually shortened to Corpo Navy. Eventually, the reformists would form their own “book club,” merely calling it the Fleet Institute.
The two factions are roughly divided by generation. Corpo Navy is primarily more senior officers and their proteges, whose careers were not defined by First Sino; they are also, broadly, the Scions of the Fat Leonard Generation. Driven by resentment by “losing out” on the war-time fast-track promotions and generally losing influence to “upstarts.” They are Old Money, a Good Ole Boys’ Club who bristle at those who want to rock the boat—especially regarding symbolic or unspoken privileges they maintain. Slate Navy officers were usually junior and lower mid-grade officers during First Sino; those were doing most of the doing alongside enlisted sailors—fostering a profound sense of camaraderie with those sailors entrusted to them. This would lead to the Sailor’s Charter movement—for improving the living and working conditions of sailors. Many Slate Navy partisans are also Mustangs, having previously served as enlisted sailors. They have lived with the failures of the status quo, seen the damage that it wrought, and wish to fix the service they love.
Other key advances pushed forward under Fleet Architecture 2040 include the adoption of high-velocity electrothermal chemical guns, standardized mixes of peripheral and centerline vertical launch cells, and a wholesale embrace of ships designed with contemporary industrial practices—such as the large-scale direct laser deposition, the printer-fabricator, and new material science breakthroughs. It would also push forward a new generation of advanced nuclear propulsion into practice, converting CVN-82 into a new class based on the Enhanced Carrier Baseline studies.
OCP would not only force reform in the Navy, it would also assist the other service’s flagship modernization programs: the Marine Corps’ Force Design 2045, the Army’s Structure 2050, and the Aerospace Force’s Sky Warden. It would draft the Naval Act of 2030 and assist in drafting the Aerospace Act of 2031, remerging the Air Force and Space Force. OCP would also aid the passage of the Guard-Reserve Act of 2030, the back-door federalization of the National Guard Bureau, following an attempt by Texas Lieutenant Governor Charles Schwertner to coup Governor Lina Hildago.
Another seminal breakthrough shepherded into the field by OCP—aided by DARPA and ARPA-Industrial—is the piezoelectrothermal chemical primer (PTC). It is the greatest development in firearms technology since Poudre B in 1884, allowing for the use of electrothermal chemical principles (using a plasma spark to ignite stable, high-energy propellants) without an independent power source by generating the power for a small (an inefficient) plasma spark piezoelectrically. While not as capable as true ETC systems, PTC allows for velocities equivalent to 100 kpsi chamber pressures to be generated at roughly 90 kpsi, because of the even and efficient expansion of the plasma-ignited propellant gases. The US military would leap at the opportunity, the PLA would be slow to adopt PTC—because of cost concerns and attempts to leverage their investments in electromagnetic projectile weapons into a functional small arm.
The Coronado Crisis, 2030 United States Midterms,
& The Sakishima Missile Crisis of 2031
Sour Grapes Trampled Violently in The Twilight of the Gods
Kamala Harris’s second term would not begin or end easily.
In June 2029, they would face a tragic mutiny that would end with the termination of Naval Special Warfare Command. In an attempt to serve a litany of warrants against active-duty members of the West Coast SEAL Teams for trafficking drugs and guns for the hypermilitarized successor of Jalisco New Generation Cartel—El Otro. “The Other” was using SEALs to move illicit goods via SDVs during exercises and also had nearly a dozen former SEALs among their leadership. The arrest of the “True Pirates” at a Naval Special Warfare Group One cook-out ends catastrophically, with scores of hostages and dozens of dead, including two NSW flag officers.
The day after the gunsmoke from the forced entry of the Turner Field Rec Center by a combined Delta Force/FBI Hostage Rescue Team/MARSOC response force clears, NAVSPECWAR will be unmade by order of the President. Not even the SEAL lobby can undo the move with their allies in Congress.
The immediate aftermath of the Coronado Crisis see a massive expansion of Marine Special Operations Command. The Marine Raider is effectively divided in twain, with most officers and men being used as a cadre for a new 1st Marine Raider Regiment, an amphibious, airborne light infantry to complement the 75th Ranger Regiment, and the rest used to seed the creation of nine “Detachments” of two newly created Marine Special Operations Groups. The Navy does maintain two special operations forces, a handful of Underwater Demolition Teams (pure sapper/frogman/combat diver units), and an expanded number of Special Boat Teams (both classic SWCC units and new replacements for delivery teams) under a Naval Special Operations Command. The two are fused together under the watchful eye of a Fleet Special Warfare Command, one of the first of a new series of joint Navy-Marine commands. Much of this work will be headed by Captain Scott’s husband—a SWCC—Jember “Jem” Dissmie.
With a political defeat on the wind, Associate Justice Elena Kagan announces her retirement. She is replaced by Under Secretary of State for Populations, Displaced Persons, Refugees, and Migration, Ana Reyes, a former judge on the DC Circuit and DC Circuit Court of Appeals, following a contentious nomination hearing over Reyes’ foreign birth and current positions and a 64-42 vote, with several red-state and purple Democrats voting against her.
Democrats finally face electoral defeat after an unbroken trifecta for almost six years—an occurrence not seen since the 1960s. Democrats lose the House, with Republicans winning 82 seats and the national popular vote by 5 points for a 248R-193D majority. Democrats retain the Senate despite losing 16 seats (losing 7 of 10 open races) while gaining one seat. That sole bright spot is one Taylor Alison Swift defeating incumbent Martha Blackburn in Tenessee against all odds and the political environment—her 41-point Wins Above Replacement remains unbroken.
In spite of the defeat suffered at the polls, the 121st Congress has one last trick up its sleeve. Just a day before the new Republican Congress is sworn in, it passes the New Reapportionment Act. The House of Representatives is set to be increased from 441 seats (with six added after the admission of DC, Puerto Rico, and the Marianas) to 540. Republicans attempt to repeal the move but fail despite their majority. In the wake of the election, Speaker Jeffries steps down as Leader of the Democratic Caucus and is replaced by Joe Neguse; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is elected Democratic Whip (Pete Aguilar having been elected Lieutenant Governor of California and Katherine Clark having been elected Governor of Massachusetts in the midterms).
In 2031, the world faces a Second Coming of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Beijing’s coven on American research extrapolates—using machine learning and questionable judgment—that recent budgetary moves signal an unwillingness to defend Taiwan and Japan. The main evidence? A slowing of defense spending increases—merely matching inflation—after a compromise budget is eventually passed by Congress to pay for a funding boost to the American Health Service (the federal government’s network of publically owned and operated hospitals). The Director-General of the Institute for the Study of the Western Threat will be disappeared shortly after the crisis passes.
The Central Military Commission tests the waters by deploying two batteries of its latest CJ-200 Satyr missiles to the occupied Sakishima Islands. Satyr is a particularly nasty weapon: a scramjet-powered, low RCS sea-skimming cruise missile with a high-hypersonic terminal sprint. The weapon’s range is limited because its final sprint is at such a high speed that its structure will melt and collapse if timed incorrectly—even with the PLARF’s comparative advantage in ablative-stealth material science.
That alone makes Satyr dangerous—but what creates an international crisis is that it is a nuclear-capable weapons system being deployed to a series of interconnected, hardened sites on internationally recognized Japanese territory, territory that puts the blink-and-miss missiles in range of Okinawa and Taipei. Their deployment is treated as a five-alarm fire in Osaka, Tokyo, Taipei, and Washington.
The US moves decisively toward a quarantine (blockade) of the islands and readies military options to neutralize the launchers and recapture the islands after NSA intercepts confirm that the PLA is going to deploy warheads to Iriomote-Jima. The move to deploy warheads only comes after the US deploys its quarantine force from Japan. The world inches towards nuclear war and comes within minutes of a strategic exchange as NRO surveillance satellites detect abnormal movement of PLARF mobile ICBMs. Harris, at a NATO conference in Amsterdam, returns to DC aboard an E-4C Nightwatch as US forces are placed at DEFCON Two.
The crisis ends with a quiet agreement in Prague reached between Premier Li Qiang and Secretary of State Bill Burns. The quarantine ends. The CMC announces that they will not deploy nuclear weapons outside of “sovereign Chinese territory,” a set that excludes the Satyr sites on the Sakishima; however, most of the missiles stay in place. An agreement reached is where the Chinese agree to not deploy any nuclear weapons to the islands as long as Japan does not procure nuclear weapons—wording that was specified by the Americans. However, PLARF will retain the warheads in a complex located on the mainland coast with a dedicated airlift unit to deploy them rapidly, if necessary.
In reaction to the crisis, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea all independently signal they feel obligated to respond to the nuclear escalation on their own terms (read: develop their own weapons). The Harris Administration makes a series of secretive “Devil’s Deals” with three states to prevent the proliferation of further independent nuclear arsenals.
The US deploys a small number of nuclear weapons to Misawa AB under a de facto nuclear sharing agreement with Japan (this will not be revealed until 2065 and will bring down the incumbent Japanese ministry). The US agrees to a deal with South Korea to provide nuclear weapons under a formal nuclear sharing agreement; it will be the first nuclear sharing program based around the AGM-190A SRAM-III nuclear-tipped missiles (derived from the AGM-188 SiAW).
The US provides Taiwan with two batteries of MGM-200D Pershing III medium-range ballistic missiles, the ballistic missile derivative of the MGM-200 Long Range Hypersonic Weapon. One battery is road-mobile and constantly shuffling between a shell game of concealed launch vehicles, and the other battery is installed in a shell game of hardened silos in the Central Mountain Range. These missiles are armed with the M452 Heavy Advanced Re-entry Vehicle (Bunker Defeat Penetrator) warheads. They allow Taipei to credibly threaten the PRC with strikes against hardened C2 complexes—especially the Politburo’s own warren; notionally, they could also be employed against dams along the Yangtze. However, Taipei would reject any such suggestion of targeting dams publicly, and its target list would only include political or military targets.
Intelligence failures throughout the Missile Crisis leads Congress to pass the National Intelligence Community Reform Act of 2032, a comprehensive overhaul of the United States’ intelligence apparatuses. The bill would begin in committee as the much more mundane Classified and Controlled Government Information Management Reform Act, which was intended as a “housekeeping bill,” but it would end up a fundamental restructuring of the USIC. NICRA reshapes the USIC into an ‘orbital’ model with five type-organized ‘orbits’ around a central core with a major expansion of blue badging. At the core of this new system is the Office of National Intelligence (ex-ODNI) and its four horsemen: the National Advisory Executive (PDB office), the National Operations Executive (direct action office), the National Integration Executive (dedicated cross-USIC integration), and the National Education Executive (dedicated red team office). The five orbits are defense intelligence (DIA), diplomatic intelligence (CIA), domestic intelligence (FIA, ex-National Security Branch of the FBI), space intelligence (NRO, having absorbed NGA), and signals/cryptographic intelligence (NSA). The crisis will also see the 12th Special Forces Group stood up to provide a dedicated global force for NOX Jedburgh teams and Critical Threat Advisory Companies; JSOC’s UDT-13 (prior only an EOD enabler unit) will gain its famed Boomer Buster mission.
There is one last event in 2031, two days before the New Year—the death of Donald J. Trump. Trump has spent the prior three years trapped in his own body, barely able to communicate and unable to move. An agreement between the Trump Family and the DOJ in 2029, stopping a Supreme Court case, would see the former President moved to Mar-a-Lago in exchange for the family shouldering Trump’s medical expenses and paying for a retrofit of the property (along with closing Mar-a-Lago Club), effectively turning the President’s former residence into a pseudo-federal prison.
At around 1 a.m. on December 29, a fire breaks out in the residence’s kitchen and rapidly spreads. As it began to consume the main structure, the Trump Organization staff flees. Bureau of Prison staff make three attempts to reach the former President, but are blocked by walls of flames. CCTV footage of the room will reveal that Donald John Trump’s first words in three years are also his last, “Is anyone there? Please, God, help me. Help me. Somebody.” He will burn alive, kept from dying of smoke inhalation from his room’s high ceilings and oxygen mask.
While conspiracy theories abound about his death, a comprehensive report will find fault in the Trump Organization. The report will ascertain that the Organization had defrauded no less than 26 different contractors over a period of six years, leading to abysmal work quality—particularly wiring—during the two major remodels of the property. Particularly damning records from COO Matthew Calamari revealed the extraordinary measures used to hide the condition of MAL from the BOP during the final inspections before the transfer of the former President from FCI Otisville.
The Trump Era ends as it started—with horror and farce in equal measures.
This series will continue next week and cover the Fifth Persian Gulf War of 2034 and the Second Sino-American War of 2037-2040.
"the rebirth of a small number of Underwater Demolition Teams"
LOL.
we go BACK TO THE BEGINNING Vizzini!
this timeline is beautiful, love the little details in it bravo