On 22/5/20 3:36 am, xxxxxx@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, May 21, 2020 at 6:10 AM Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com
> <mailto:xxxxxx@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
>     On 21May2020 1859, Alex Goodwin wrote:
>     > Terran geopolitics are as per GT:IW, pp20 - 26.  Note the AZS
>     nuclear
>     > attack on Terra, canonically in 2148 AD, will probably not
>     happen in its
>     > canonical form.
>     >
>     > Superpowers (collated from GT:IW, plus some of my own changes):
>     >
>     > - USA
>     >
>     > - EU (fast coalescing to a federation - only the Old Dart,
>     France and
>     > Germany retain any real capability of independent action
>
>
> I am to take it 'Old Dart' is England? Where'd that reference come from?
>
> I'd heard it called 'Blighty' or 'Merry Old' but 'Old Dart' is a new
> one on me.
>
> When you rescinded Brexit, did you also assume the EU wouldn't
> continue to fracture (seems so)?
Can't remember where I first heard "Old Dart".  Looks to be an AU/NZism
from mid 1800s on.

Per the GT:IW book, this is a world where national sovereignty has been
on the decline since at least the Treaty of New York in 2025 (a result,
it would seem, of the lid really coming off early in 21st century), and
UN troops have entered "peacekeeping" commitments that would have looked
a heck of a lot like 20th century invasions.

Per p56 of GT:IW, "Technically, the European Union is an alliance of
nation-states, but after almost 200 years of cooperation the alliance is
so close as to almost constitute unification." as at 2170, so a little
over 150 years of co-operation in-game.  The drivers that have been
fracturing the OTL EU are either absent or masked.

Per canon, Brexit didn't happen in ATL. I pulled that one in from OTL,
but you are convincing me I shouldn't have.

>  
>
>     > - China
>     >
>     > - India
>     >
>     > - Japan
>
> I've always appreciated aspects of Japan, but I've never been able to
> see them directly as a top tier world power. The dependence they have
> for so many things imported and their very limited land space kind of
> limits that. 2nd tier, yeah, I could buy that on strength of
> technology and science. To me first tier powers almost require
> significant force projection and I don't think Japan can ever manage that.
>
> And with any sort of ascendant China, assuming China and India don't
> eventually have one heck of a conflict which isn't without
> possibility, Japan is right in their expanded back yard which seems
> like it would hem them in (and sadly, that would cover NZ and
> Australia too, given expanding naval and economic power in China).

With much break-dancing along the edge, the supers avoided all-out
barneys (p20, GT:IW): "Several times these disputes threatened to break
into open war among the major powers, but such a conflict was averted
each time."

Damned if I know how  - I would have expected at least one demonstration
showing Terrans are as fond of a good banger (ie, nuclear explosive
devices initiating) as Vilani are.

>  
>
>     > Second-tier powers:
>     >
>     > - Russia
>
>
> Maybe. It's hard to see what comes when Putin goes. More of same? Or a
> further erosion of the state in favour of crony capitalism,
> corruption, and organized crime? Kleptocracy?

P56 of GT:IW. "Although Russia is not a first-tier nation, it had a
space program of its own before Vilani contact, and so its presence in
space is still larger than its rank on Terra would indicate."

Russia's writeup either pushes the canonical divergence from OTL (we'll
carefully ignore all the off-Terra bitz) past 1991 (Great Politics Mess
Up), or ATL had a set of drivers that acted on a similar timescale with
a similar result while everything else diverged around 1977 or so.

>     >
>     > - United Korea (although coming up fast on the supers)
>
>
> That ought to happen, but I can't quite wrap my head around how North
> Korean paranoia and just fears are laid aside enough for that. They
> really are in a corner. Maybe if the US declines or falls apart and
> the EU stops paying attention, they can ratchet down their fears. That
> plus some suasion from China might help, though they are dealing
> beyond the neighborhood now and have some newer allies.

Not sure either - stated to be mid-21st century.

Ibid.  "After the reunification of the Korean peninsula in the mid-21st
century, Korea spent almost half a century integrating the devastated
society of the north."

>
>  
>
>     > - Argentina
>     >
>
>
> Don't hear much about them these days. South America (other than
> Brazil) seems to not get much press in the US or Canada these days.
Explicitly mentioned as a second-tier nation state alongside Russia on
p138, GT:IW.
>
>     > Third-tier powers:
>     >
>
> Presumably a longer list overall... the higher the tier number, the
> larger the count of countries in it.
Yes, very true - I was trying to compile canonical mentions.
>  
>
>     > - Thailand
>     >
>     > - Australia (still reeling somewhat from New Zealand's accession
>     as the
>     > NZ Special Autonomous Region in the 2030s)
>
>     I can only assume that the Business Round Table managed to buy a
>     (National Party) government, because nobody else here would
>     contemplate
>     such a thing.
>
Rupert, I thus sit corrected.  I was working from the "better the devil
you know / hang together rather than hang separately" that seems to have
been driving unifications on the rest of the same rock.

>
> It's surprising how attitudes can change though. My cousin started out
> in Scotland as ambivalent about separation from England (I'd say the
> UK, but it's really England that he now sees as the issue). Enough
> cases of benefits of one sort or another either not making it to
> Scotland at the same time as England or not making it at all and cases
> of things like taxes applied in Scotland long before they were in
> England and so on took him into the separation camp. Then Brexit where
> the majority of Scots do NOT want to leave the EU and he's pretty
> strident about his wish to see Scotland out from under the English
> (lots of dirty pool in some of the political manouverings wrt Brexit
> and the Scots elections in the last bunch of years).
>
> <snip>
>
> Not trying to pick at anyone's political alignments, just trying to
> point out that there's some huge changes that, even 10-20 years before
> one would not have expected. They look hard to understand from the
> mindset a decade or more before, but a lot can change in that time.
>
> Tom B
>
>  
>
>
>     --
>     Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com
>     <mailto:xxxxxx@gmail.com>>
>
>
"There are stranger things, Horatio...." ?

GT:IW was written 14 years ago, and OTL has changed somewhat, as you've
outlined.

Alex

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