AVALANCHE

2015-2025

A chilling

‘future

history’ of

the next

global

conflict

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE - 2015: YEAR OF THE BEAR............................................................................................. 2

CHAPTER TWO - 2016: SOUR SEEDS PLANTED ...................................................................................... 6

CHAPTER THREE - 2017: NEW WORLD DIS-ORDER ............................................................................. 12

CHAPTER FOUR – 2018: THE HAND OF FATE ....................................................................................... 23

CHAPTER FIVE – 2018-2025: THE THIRD WORLD WAR ....................................................................... 28

EPILOGUE: THE WINNERS WRITE HISTORY ......................................................................................... 41

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CHAPTER ONE - 2015: YEAR OF THE BEAR Every now and then, throughout the course of history, there is a certain alignment of

circumstances and the people who are destined to deal with them. Sometimes, such

alignments are for the best. Other times, such a concoction can be explosive.

In 2018, such a moment in history arrived.

While many military and political analysts were expecting the next great conflict to emerge

from the Korean Peninsula or South China Sea, few had anticipated it would begin in the

heart of Europe. This was unusual – not because the last two great global conflicts had begun

there – but because by all calculations, their anticipations were on point. Asia was in the

midst escalating territorial disputes during a full-scale arms race, whereas Europe – apart

from its economic and refugee crises and the occasional posturing between Russia and NATO

– showed little signs of a full-blown military conflict.

However, geopolitical events have a way of cascading in dangerous and unpredictable ways.

In March 2014, a political crisis erupted in Ukraine which climaxed with the ouster of the pro-

Russian president, Victor Yanukovych. After his signing of a landmark economic agreement

with Russia instead of the EU, the pro-western political blocs in Kiev became infuriated.

Capitalising on public sentiment, they immediately moved to unseat Yanukovych. A coalition

of far-right political forces in the Rada, headed by Arseniy Yatsenyuk, took power after staging

a legislative coup. This prompted Moscow to immediately accuse “Fascists” in Kiev of

“orchestrating a coup against the democratically elected government”. The statement had

barely finished when masked men, later found to be Russian Special Forces, swiftly seized

control of the strategic Black Sea port city of Crimea. With barely a single shot having been

fired, Russia had captured a strategic port at the mouth of the Black Sea.

Despite evidence to the contrary, Moscow denied that any of its troops were involved in the

operation, instead claiming that Crimeans had acted on initiative to break away from Kiev.

Almost on cue, pro-Russian militia began an offensive in eastern Ukraine. Several journalists

stationed there reported that many of the tanks fighting government forces had Russian army

markings on their façade, again implicating Moscow in what was obviously a stealth

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invasion. For the second time since 1945, a European country’s borders had been changed by force.

But this alarming demonstration of realpolitik wasn’t over yet.

The Ukrainian cities of Donetsk and Luhansk (both held by pro-Russian rebels) soon followed

Crimea’s example and voted to break away from Kiev’s rule. It soon became very clear to NATO

that Vladimir Putin’s method of revenge was both well-planned and dangerously effective. It

was perhaps this realisation that caused NATO to revert back to its Cold War military doctrine,

labelling Russia as a major threat and initiating a military build-up in the Baltic States.

Predictably, Russia responded in kind, adopting a similar attitude and military posture towards

its old rival.

Russia’s bastion of Kaliningrad became Putin’s military fortress on the borders of Lithuania

and Poland, both NATO protectorates. There were rumours that the fierce and angry

Russian bear would soon rampage through the forests of the Baltic States. After a snap

meeting in Berlin, NATO members agreed to up the ante by agreeing to deploy 750 M1

Abrams battle tanks to the Baltics. To Russia, this was the green light it needed to take the

war to its next phase, albeit on a psychological rather than military level. However, Russia’s

response was intended not in Europe but in the Middle East where – as Putin knew well –

the United States and her allies were preparing to topple the remaining regimes that were

friendly to Moscow and Tehran. In July, Iran and the P5+1 group of powers reached a deal to

lift the sanctions that had been crippling the Iranian economy. This allowed billions of dollars

to flow into the country, some of which would be used by the ruling regime to bolster the

nation’s power and influence in the region even further. The timing of Russia’s move was

perfect. With Iran’s image as a global pariah now mostly gone, it was time to

capitalise on this new reality to coordinate its moves in the region with Tehran. The mission:

Syria would be saved, Iran would be strengthened and Iraq would be wrested.

In September of the same year, Russia announced it had deployed 600 soldiers, 78 war planes

and more than two dozen tanks to Syria’s Latakia air base. A Kremlin spokesman later told

reporters in Moscow that Russia had received assurances from Iraq, Iran and Syria that their

collective efforts against anti-government militias in the region now be coordinated. This

deeply infuriated the US, Israel, Turkey and the Gulf states who, despite claiming to be

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at war with the militias, deliberately prolonged these civil wars to ensure that their regional

foes Syria and Iraq remained militarily and politically weakened. In turn, Israel, Turkey and

Saudi Arabia would remain the dominant military powers in the region while America’s

enemies were embroiled in internal conflict. Moscow’s moves had changed this dynamic

suddenly and significantly, and Washington and its Gulf allies scrambled for a response.

However, the physical presence of Russian boots on the ground, as well as Moscow and its

allies launching a coordinated war against the militias, had ensured that any response the

West might care to take would already be dead in the water by the time it was conceived.

By late October, America’s hegemony was also being actively challenged in the South China

Sea. Following a dramatic ramping up of China’s ‘island building’ projects, the US decided to

up the ante and conduct a sail-by of the disputed islands. Satellite imagery showed the scale

of construction to be unprecedented. As far as China’s neighbours were concerned, the

islands – which included airstrips, missile batteries and refuelling stations – were virtually

stationary aircraft carriers built on sand. The US warships, while formidable, did not sail inside

what Beijing considered to be its militarised exclusionary zone and returned to port without

incident. Back home, the move won the incumbent president no love. The GOP sharpened its

knives and waited with a smirk, confident that in 13 months victory would be theirs.

In late November, Turkey shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber inside Syrian territory, claiming

it had violated its airspace. In retaliation, Russia deployed its S-400 anti-aircraft system to Syria

and provided all of its bombers with fighter escorts. The incursion by the Russian plane

occurred during a bombing raid of Turkmen militia who Russia believed were helping secure

the transit of Islamic State-controlled oil between northern Syria and Turkey. The Russian

government went public with this information, exposing the entire operation. Turkey’s answer

was swift. It initiated a blockade of the Dardanelles, effectively cutting off Russia’s Black Sea

fleet from the Mediterranean. In Moscow, anti-Turkish sentiment reached fever pitch and the

president quickly capitalised on the situation, placing sanctions on Turkey. As a NATO member,

Turkey knew it had the backing of the broader alliance, but there was little it could do to

prevent Russia from taking further steps. In a symbolic gesture, NATO welcomed Montenegro

into the alliance in early December, but this was of little concern to Russia. The tide was

changing, and not in NATO’s favour.

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As Russia hijacked America’s war in Syria, the Pentagon – confident that its disastrous

quagmire Afghanistan was finally drawing to a close – suddenly found itself battling a

resurgent Taliban. It was now obvious that the much tired and slower American Empire

would be pinned down for years to come. The European Union wasn’t doing much better.

Greece had re-elected a far-left government which was now cosying up to Moscow and the

anti-Euro fringe. Spain’s general election in December had almost elected a similar leader,

giving the leftist Podemos party a huge chunk of the vote, coming in third place. However,

most eyes were on the UK, whose Prime Minister had vowed a 2016 referendum on whether

or not to stay in the Euro-Zone. With polls showing most Britons wanting out, it was

increasingly likely that Europe’s progressive bureaucratic establishment may be about to

succumb to a new and unpredictable one.

Meanwhile, back in the Middle East, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Hezbollah and Russia launched the 4+1

Coalition. Its aim was to coordinate its ground forces in anti-terrorism missions in the region

and present a united front against their strategic rivals in Riyadh and Ankara. Soon after, the

Saudis announced a 34-nation “Islamic Military Coalition” (IMC) for the same purpose,

anticipating the Russian-Iranian maneuver. To the 4+1 Coalition, this amounted to a counter

alliance. There were fears in Iran and Syria that the Saudis had amassed a Sunni invasion force

to conquer their enemies once and for all. In reality, Riyadh’s coalition was merely symbolic

and was nothing more than an attempt to steal back the limelight from Russia, who was now

the sole shot-caller in the war against terrorism. Even though the UN peace plan for Syria had

the backing of all the key players, Russia’s insistence that Assad not be immediately removed

from power made the deal virtually worthless. After all, the war was all about the removal of

Assad and the instalment of a regime that would be friendly to Israel and the West. Russia,

which had a multi-billion dollar arms trade with the Assad regime – and whose navy and air

force occupied key strategic bases on Syrian soil – saw no inherent political or economic value

in such an idea. However, Moscow knew there were forces within the Syrian opposition who

were more than happy to let Russian troops stay put and continue the lucrative arms trade.

This was a ‘fact on the ground’ that NATO grudgingly accepted but was actively working to

change in its favour. Its allies in the region were becoming increasingly anxious to restore the

status-quo.

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Worryingly for Israel, both the Iranian and Saudi coalitions had the potential to pose a

serious threat. Despite the undertaking of the Gulf nations not to attack Israel, Tel Aviv knew

that things had a curious way of changing. Since 2007, Israel had adopted a policy of

launching air strikes against targets within Syria which Tel Aviv said threatened its national

security. However, since the arrival of Russian warplanes and S-400 air defence systems,

this luxury had disappeared. So too had the likelihood of a successful Israeli air strike on

Iran’s nuclear facilities. The return of Russian forces to Syria and the delivery of S-400

missiles to Syria and Iran signalled not just the revival of Russia’s influence in the Middle

East but the decline of a unique influence Israel had enjoyed for the past 60 years. This was

something that Israel’s leaders took extremely seriously. To maintain its edge, Israel relied

on the projection of power beyond its borders, in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and,

more covertly, Iran. That edge was now disappearing. Predictably, Israel’s Prime Minister,

Benjamin Netanyahu had been on the phone to his friends in Washington, chasing an

assurance that whoever was elected in the upcoming presidential election would be a better

friend than Obama had been. While Netanyahu knew that US-Israel ties were virtually

unbreakable, he understood that Washington was being forced by Russia to take a step back

in the Middle East and consider the fate of its influence in the Baltics and the Far East.

The final days of 2015 saw the arrival of the new normal in world affairs: Russia calling the

shots in geopolitical affairs (at least the ones the media liked broadcasting) and a European

dream in turmoil, struggling to find itself amid an equal influx of refugees and Islamophobic

sentiment.

CHAPTER TWO - 2016: SOUR SEEDS PLANTED With 2016 being election year in the US, both Democrat and GOP candidates talked tough on issues

such as Chinese expansion in East Asia, Russian aggression in Syria and the refugee crisis. What they

didn’t talk about was crippling debt, rising unemployment and a strengthening national militia which

had become dangerously upset with the government. It was a ticking time bomb the rest of the world

chose not to acknowledge. With the primaries over, it had come down to the dynastic political

powerhouses of Hillary Clinton and Jeb

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Bush. Few had expected Bush to emerge the victor given his sagging ratings and the meteoric

rise of Donald Trump, but the political resources of the Bush family proved too strong for his

competitors. As for Hillary Clinton, the weak performance of her competitors rendered her a

shoe-in. As for who would emerge the victor out of the two, America had yet to decide. It was

clear, however, that whoever stepped into the White House next would have a serious mess

to inherit, and one they might not be able to control given the fluid pace of events. The two major national security issues to dominate the world as 2016 began were the ongoing

conflicts in Syria and Iraq, despite both countries clawing back large portions of lost territory

from the Islamic State. While the tide of war was turning in the Middle East, the refugee crisis

these wars had spurred had altered the political landscape not just of the region itself but also

of Europe. A horrifying terrorist attack in Paris the previous year and a string of false alarms

kept Belgians, Germans and Italians anxious about whether they might be next victims of the

next mass shooting - or bombing. It was not the government fuelling this fear, but a collective

paranoia encouraged by hyped up media reports painting terror as the new normal in

European life. As a result, Europe’s far-right political forces made significant gains in regional

and parliamentary elections. In France, the far-right National Front continued to climb in the

polls despite a setback in regional elections. The worsening refugee crisis, coupled with rising

unemployment, was making the political triumph of the far-right more and more likely.

Germany, which for the second half of the 20th century had become a shining beacon of

multiculturalism and moderate politics, was succumbing to the nationalist rhetoric of the far-

right party, Alternative for Deutschland (AfD). With the threat of terrorism increasing, the

steady tide of Syrian refugees into the country had made many Germans anxious. The

nationalist governments already in power in Hungary, Sweden and Poland quietly waited for

the rest of the continent to follow suit, seeing it as a political inevitability.

In the first few months of the year, the global economy worsened dramatically. The ongoing

stock market rout in China created a bearish atmosphere in the world’s major financial

capitals, already hurting from the Saudi oil shock of 2015. Rather than enacting austerity

measures like those in 2011-2013, Europe, Asia and the US turned to more protectionist

measures to offset what seemed to be an impending global market crash – even bigger than

the one experienced in 2008. Fed up with what they saw as the inability of the Federal

Government to balance its budget and protect citizens’ rights, a patriot group called Citizens

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for Self-Governance (CSG) and several US Congressmen called for a Convention of States. Such

a convention, they argued, would show the White House that its vast executive overreach

would no longer be tolerated. Georgia, Alaska, Florida, Alabama and Texas threw their

support behind the convention, setting up a showdown with President Obama less than nine

months before the end of his last term. Just as this stand-off was developing, a group of right-

wing militia seized a Federal building in Oregon to protest the intervention of the Federal

Government in a local court case. The militia vowed to occupy the building indefinitely and

threatened that they would use force if the government tried to forcibly remove them. With

the primaries in full-swing, none of the presidential candidates gave the issue any attention,

choosing instead to keep America’s focus abroad, on the Islamic State, Russia and China. It

wasn’t until the FBI and DHS discovered a massive spike in militia membership and activity

that the White House began accepting that the biggest potential time bomb of all may be

ticking on their own soil. As such, Obama chose to tread very carefully. This was particularly

important considering he had only weeks earlier implemented sweeping gun controls by

executive order – a move that many hard-core militia groups had considered to be a red line.

Nonetheless, they did not have the level of national support and organization required for a

Second American Revolution – yet.

In Asia, events continued to follow a pattern of geopolitical escalation when North Korea

conducted a hydrogen bomb test. The following day, in a move designed to punish their rogue

neighbor, South Korea resumed the same propaganda broadcasts across the DMZ that nearly

took the two sides to war a year earlier. The North’s test registered 10 kilotons, suggesting it

was a nuclear – not hydrogen bomb – test. Nonetheless, this prompted Washington to seize

a long sought after opportunity to secretly renegotiate its lease of its base in Okinawa with

the Japanese government. The new agreement would include a commitment by the Japanese

government to allow nuclear-armed warplanes and submarines. The decision, if discovered,

would be met with fury by the majority of Japanese, but the Americans knew that in the

event of a leak the Abe government would still push ahead with necessary security reforms

irrespective of public opinion.

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The country was facing a dangerous and unique moment in its post-war history, and this

alone demanded action, however unpopular.

Escalation was also the buzzword in Europe as fierce anti-immigration rallies continued to

paralyse France, Germany, Hungary and Romania. However it was not until the Freedom

Party’s victories in Austria’s presidential election in April that the continent truly sat up and

took notice. The victory of the far-right party was a shot across the bow to the moderates

running France and Germany. It seemed that the entire status quo was unravelling before the

world’s eyes. In the space of a few short years, new and unpredictable political forces had

emerged to challenge the existing world order. Afghanistan was now rapidly falling back into

the hands of the Taliban, Vladimir Putin had put Russia’s traditional sphere of influence into a

vice-like grip and China’s navy was now acting with impunity in East Asia. Ukraine and Syria,

which the US had so boldly destabilised thinking it could fill the vacuum with its own brand of

democracy, had both found their way back into Moscow’s fold. It had become clear to the

United States and her allies that failing their stated objective in both these countries would be

a humiliating strategic defeat. Russia understood this perfectly well, and committed itself to

ensuring this end was met. With the US presidential elections approaching, Moscow wanted

America’s voters to see that their country’s distant military adventures were a waste of time.

So far, the plan was working. Polls now showed that the majority of American voters wanted

their next president to focus more on domestic issues than overseas crises, signalling tougher

times for the country’s economy. To Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton, this was untenable. They

knew they couldn’t prevent the nation from imploding, so diverting the nation’s attentions to

an overseas crisis rather than the festering internal one was paramount. Thankfully for both

of them, they had many to choose from. However, events in China began to reveal that the

Politburo in Beijing, recognising the slowdown of the Chinese economy, were beginning to

play the same game.

In May, China brushed off continuing turmoil plaguing its markets and launched its second

aircraft carrier, announcing there would be more to follow. Nowhere was this development

viewed with a deeper sense of foreboding than in the Philippines and Japan, both of which

had been faced with a worrying spike of incursions by Chinese submarines into their

territorial waters. The launching of China’s second carrier was also seen as an ominous

development in Taiwan, which had just sworn in its first female president, Tsai Ing-wen of

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the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The long-time ruling Kuomintang Party (KMT) had

suffered a major political blow, losing not only the presidency but also its majority in the

legislature. The pro-independence DPP, while taking a conciliatory tone with Beijing,

nonetheless promised voters “a stronger national identity”. Although the DPP ruled out

holding a formal referendum on Taiwanese independence from China, it vowed a more robust

military and closer ties with the US. This was sufficient for China to ramp up its capabilities in

the region. Seeing an opportunity to expand Pacific reach and influence even further, the US

answered Taipei’s call for closer ties with a military delegation in early April. At the meeting,

it was announced that Washington would station several patriot missile batteries and two

Aegis cruisers in Taiwan to “meet the challenges of a changing security dynamic” in the Taiwan

Strait. China responded by increasing the number of ballistic missiles stationed on its eastern

coast and increased the number of aerial patrols across the Taiwan Strait. However, despite

Beijing’s posturing, Taiwan knew as well as the Americans and Japanese that while Taiwan

remained a strategic problem for China, the communist superpower’s sights were set further

south - towards South China Sea and the Spratly Islands.

In July, the UK held its long-awaited EU membership referendum as David Cameron had

promised Britons. The question on the ballot paper was simple: “Should the United Kingdom

remain a member of the European Union? To some Britons, it was a simple question, but to a

very complex matter. When the UK joined the European Economic Community in 1973, few

could have predicted the incendiary political environment it would have existed in 43 years

later. Back then, Europe was split into two competing but ultimately stable camps: NATO and

the Soviet Bloc. In 2016, the continent was a chaotic hive of political and military fringe groups

that were openly talking about economic protectionism and bans on immigration. In the UK,

those in favour of remaining in the EU argued that leaving it would risk the UK's prosperity,

diminish its influence over world affairs and result in harmful trade barriers. The ‘Yes’

campaign, while making a valid point, was not enough to sway a nation which was seeing most

of its neighbours do the same thing. The ‘No’ camp’s argument that outside the EU, the UK

would be better able to control immigration, better positioned to conduct its own trade

negotiations and freed from what they believed to be unnecessary EU regulations and

bureaucracy, carried more psychological weight amongst the population. In

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July, the “Brexit” became a reality after the ‘No’ camp emerged victorious with 59% of the

votes. The following morning, most of the national newspapers cried “BREXIT” on their

covers, though the Guardian ran with a more thoughtful headline that summed up the

feelings of millions: “Where to from here?”

The Russian legislative elections in September delivered a resounding victory to Vladimir

Putin’s United Russia party. However, the far-right Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR)

had a strong showing at 24%, up from 16% in 2011. As in France, fear had played directly into

the hands of the more extreme political forces. It was true that ordinary Russians recognised

the increasing threat of radical Islam on their country’s southern borders, but United Russia

did not expect this political threat to emerge so soon. It had been convinced that its own

tough line (and action) against terrorism in Syria and the Caucuses was sufficient to get the

vote of the right. However, while the vast majority of Russians understood that Putin was the

logical choice of leader in tumultuous times, many others had observed that one day his reign

would be over and an even stronger leader would be required to guide them. With an

expansive NATO to the east, festering Islamic proxy wars to the south and a burgeoning China

to their west, Russians knew that at some point dramatic action would be needed to

guarantee Russia’s security.

In November, the US voters elected Jeb Bush as the 45th President of the United States by

one of the closest margins in the country’s history. Like his brother before him, Bush

promised to destroy the Islamic State terrorist group and restore America’s global

reputation. Privately, Bush and his advisors knew that regaining any semblance of

leadership in the Middle East had been scattered to the wind with the arrival of Russian

forces in Syria. The tough talk on Islamic State was merely PR soundbites for a nation whose

media had sent millions of them into an Islamophobic frenzy. The irony was that Bush’s

promise to his voters was essentially to clean up a mess that his own brother helped create.

However, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was now a distant memory, and Americans looked to

a strong leader to guide them through the storm once again. Bush, it seemed, was the

brand that most of them trusted.

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CHAPTER THREE - 2017: NEW WORLD DIS-ORDER With unemployment rising and European markets falling, French voters had lost so much

confidence in the governing Socialist Party that pundits considered a Le Pen presidency all

but inevitable. Columnists in every major news publication from Le Monde to France24

speculated about an early election. This excited the Eurosceptics across the continent who -

having seen the snowball effect building in size from Greece and Britain to Spain - saw France

as the final nail in Brussels’ coffin. By calling an early poll, they argued, the Socialists and their

allies would save themselves a lot of embarrassment in the 2017 presidential election.

Fearing a National Front win, the centre-left Socialists, led by Francois Hollande, and

Nicholas Sarkozy’s centre-right UMP hastily formed a coalition and hunkered down for a

long fight. The election campaign was predictably intense, with the Socialist-UMP alliance

and National Front, questioning one another’s ability to prevent further terrorist attacks and

accusing one another of intensifying the country’s economic woes. However, the nationalistic

outcry following the terrorist attacks on French soil that took place in January and November

of 2015 gave the National Front the boost it needed in the polls from voters craving security

and strong action from a forceful leader. Le Pen, by all accounts, was it.

Finally, in May 2017, France held its general election, electing the far-right National Front’s

Marine Le Pen by a slim majority in the first round without need for a second. The

celebrations across the country were wild and laced with a patriotic sentiment France had

not seen since the days of Charles de Gaulle. To Brussels, this event signalled the end of a

dream. The political earthquake that French voters had just caused would reverberate

throughout Europe and the rest of the world.

Across the border in Germany, the AfD congratulated their new allies, seeing the National

Front’s victory as a broader validation of their own message. Russia, while quietly brimming

with joy at the failure of the EU and NATO, also watched the events unfolding with cautious

optimism. While the disintegration of their rivals was welcomed, the geopolitical

complications that followed the USSR’s collapse were still very fresh in their national

conscience. Weeks following her inauguration Le Pen declared France would exit both the

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Euro-Zone and NATO, fulfilling a key election promise. The Socialists bit their tongue and

congratulated their new president. History, they knew, would speak much louder.

In December, Spain’s Catalonia region - disillusioned with the EU’s false promises and rigid

bureaucracy - voted in favour of breaking away from Madrid’s rule after a predictable but

intense referendum. The previous year, Catalonia’s pro-independence party had won 68 seats

in the region’s parliament, setting the stage for a formal referendum. It seemed that with

each passing month, a new breakaway republic was springing up in Europe. Facing the

inevitable, Spain had succumbed to the political avalanche of the far-left in December 2015,

electing Podemos, a populist upstart party headed by the far-left’s Pablo Iglesias. Adding to

the nightmare of the rapidly disintegrating Euro-Zone, another critical event took place, this

one perhaps the most unforeseen of all. Political shockwaves were sent through Germany

after the anti-immigration AfD (Alternative for Germany) party received a significant boost

in the polls. Germany’s progressive and open-minded society had been seen as a sure bet that no radical forces would rise to the top, but an influx of Syrian and Iraqi refugees had

created tense stand-offs between the country’s political left and right. The AfD claimed that

Germany’s leaders had “economically capitulated” to Greece and now the country was

surrendering jobs and housing to Syrian and Iraqi refugees, the products of distant civil wars

Germany wanted nothing to do with. The AfD declared that in the interest of protecting the

jobs, rights and security of German citizens, it was open to coalition talks with some of the

like-minded smaller parties. The far-right forces understood that seizing on the current

political climate was a now-or-never opportunity. Moreover, the concept of strength in

numbers was certainly not alien to the AfD. To the horror of the CDU/CSU and SPD - and

despite certain glaring political differences between Germany’s far-right parties– they began

talking.

China’s economic slowdown over the last four years had frustrated mining and energy

dominated markets which, having watched their biggest customer’s economy steadily

contract, sought to instead diversify and look at alternatives. China’s creation in 2014-2015

of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) addressed this issue swiftly. By April

2015, 45 countries had joined the China-led bank, posing the most serious threat to the US Dollar’s status as the global reserve currency in decades. With economic giants such as

Germany, the UK and India now on board, the only way for the AIIB was up. To the cameras

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of the world’s media, US and Chinese leaders appeared friendly with one another, but behind

the scenes, both powers were locked in a brutal struggle for economic and military

dominance. The most disturbing part of this struggle was perhaps the pace at which both

powers sought to out-do one another in these critical areas, ultimately leading to a

dangerous arms race and currency war. The US continued to warn other countries not to join

the AIIB, but Washington’s calls were ignored. The state of the global economy demanded a

type of diversification and safety that the US debt-laden market was unable to offer. It had

become increasingly clear to the US that, despite Beijing’s slowing economy, the Western

financial powers would be unable to match or contain the rise and spread of China’s

economic influence in the long term. Though the economic dimension of America’s plan to

counter China’s burgeoning political power had failed, the previous US president had

prepared the groundwork for a controversial military plan.

In the meantime, the US decided to escalate its ‘Asia pivot’, a plan to deploy 60% of the

military’s air and sea power to China’s doorstep. More ships and attack aircraft were sent to

Guam, South Korea and Japan. This was lamented by Beijing which, seeing itself as East Asia’s

reliable guardian, slammed the move as a “provocative interference” in its sphere of

influence. While the US was by far China’s greatest strategic competitor, Beijing was also

anxious to address its problematic disputes with the Philippines over islands contested by

both countries. On eight occasions between 1970 and 2000, the Philippine military had gone

ashore on nine islands claimed by China. Ignoring that no such action had been undertaken

by China, the Western media continued to tout their Communist rival as expansionist and

aggressive.

The 19th National Congress meeting of the Communist Party was held in Beijing on October

20, 2017 and was watched very closely around the world. The Congress elected the 19th

Central Committee which was made up mostly of Politburo hardliners, anxious to correct

the previous government’s perceived procrastination over issues they felt imminently

threatened China’s economic and national security interests in the region. The primary

issue was what to do about the US pivot. Some in the Central Military Commission saw the

US pivot as an opportunity to clip the wings of the American eagle and then drown it. After

all, China’s blue water navy was still in development, and with more than half of their

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western rival’s air and sea power in the one region, Washington – they mused - was

practically lining

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up all of its best ducks in a row for the PLA to open its guns on. Beijing understood that due

to the thinly-stretched US military around the world, Washington could maintain a win-hold

military doctrine at best.

However, India’s largely successful efforts to ramp up its naval power had proven a thorn in

the side for Beijing. The Indian navy was on the verge of launching its second aircraft carrier,

in line with its strategic mission of matching China’s airpower at sea. To counter this, China

had increased its submarine and warship patrols near India’s territorial waters. Indeed, the

Indian Ocean had become a potential flashpoint between the two powers. Both had observed

America’s new policy of outsourcing its global responsibilities to regional powers like Japan,

Turkey and Poland. India was no exception. With tensions soaring between Pakistan and

Afghanistan, India’s western flank was becoming increasingly destabilised. To India’s east,

China was massing troops and artillery. Though officially neutral, India had no intention of

sitting on the sidelines while all hell broke loose on its borders. More than

400,000 troops, backed by tanks and artillery, were mobilised to Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh to deter any possible incursion by Pakistani or Chinese forces. This defensive move by

India was a headache for Beijing, and it was this alone that kept a large portion of the PLA

concentrated near these regions. After all, there was no guarantee that when push came to

shove, India wouldn’t hesitate to show China it too had more than enough military manpower

to win a war.

Another issue pacing Beijing’s halls of power was the emergence of the political right in Japan.

Since the Abe government’s consolidation of power and the “reinterpretation” of the

Constitution’s Article 9 (which prohibited offensive warfare capabilities), China was certain

that its suspicions of Japan’s militaristic ambitions were validated. In reality, each side was

merely reacting to the other’s defensive posturing, and this created the false perception of

hostility. Nonetheless, the national mood in both countries was steadily moving this way.

State-sponsored news media on both sides opened old wounds by evoking exaggerated

claims about one another’s ‘imperialistic designs in Asia’. In the days following China’s 19th

National Congress election, Abe met with American officials and sent a direct warning to his

country’s old foe. Japan, he said, would now exercise a zero-tolerance policy in its territorial

disputes. To China, this equated to Abe throwing down the gauntlet to their new leaders.

Beijing reacted likewise, practically paraphrasing Abe’s statement through its government

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spokesman the next day. Regional sparing between the two was nothing new, but things had

now taken a dangerous new turn. China, ignoring warnings by the United States and its

neighbours, accelerated its ‘island-building’ project in the South China Sea and deployed

even more forces to the region, including its newest aircraft carrier. Two weeks later, the

United States announced the deployment of a dozen warships to the South China Sea. A

dangerous turn of events, both sides admitted. Nonetheless, US president-elect Jeb Bush told

Beijing that “America would not sit idly by while the Chinese navy and air force quietly

invaded a region that his nation sacrificed thousands of lives to liberate”. In turn, China

warned the US that it would not stand for violations of its territorial waters in the name of

freedom of navigation. A series of subsequent confrontations ensued involving warning shots

being exchanged between US and Chinese ships and, in perhaps the most serious incident

between the two superpowers, a US surveillance drone being shot down over the Senkaku

islands.

As the two superpowers seemed to be heading for a direct clash in this region, a naval clash

erupted between China and Vietnam in the South China Sea. Vietnam claimed that Chinese

warships had entered its waters and ignored warnings to leave. Initial reports indicated that

several shells had been exchanged between the ships, damaging three. Two Chinese ships

and one Vietnamese. While the incident did not spill over into all-out war, it raised tensions

significantly enough for Beijing to ramp up its patrols in the region and prepare for the worst.

The Chinese knew that it was dealing with challenges on multiple fronts, so a show of force at

this time was crucial if it wanted to maintain an effective poker face.

Despite high-level delegations rushing back and forth between Washington and Beijing, the

Japanese and South Koreans knew what was coming and began to upgrade the status of their

navies to combat alert. In a show of unity, they held joint military exercises. South Korea’s

navy chief, Admiral Jung Ho-sup, warned both China and North Korea to “think carefully

before overstepping the line”. That line, Beijing knew, was not drawn in the ocean but on

land, along the 38th parallel on the DMZ. To the rest of the world, it had been a cryptic

warning, but recent military maneuvers by the North Koreans and Chinese in the area had

been designed to send a message to South Korea’s most effective bodyguard: you cannot

win every war at once. In a private meeting, the US ambassador to Beijing sent a warning to

the new hardliners in the Politburo. The ambassador threatened

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“disproportionate force deployments in the form of carrier battle groups” to the area if China

and North Korea did not back down. It was pure brinksmanship, and risked a humiliating

situation for Beijing, which could not match the firepower of the US navy. At least now right

now. Nonetheless, seeing how tied down the Americans were in Europe, China took a

calculated gamble and went on war-footing. It knew this could only go two ways: war or

capitulation. Over the next three days, North Korea moved its main artillery units into combat

positions, mobilised its army and deployed its entire submarine fleet out to sea. At the same

time, China deployed “carrier-killer” ballistic missiles to its eastern coast and artificial island

chains in the South China Sea, putting any American naval force well within range. President

Bush spent the entire week at Camp David with his closest advisors, weighing his options but

also wondering how on earth the world had come to this point. A situational map of the

military build-up along the DMZ and in the South China Sea bewildered the new president.

Compared to what was coming, the previous conflicts since World War Two were like two

welterweights harmlessly sparring. This time, the gloves sensibly worn by East Asia’s regional

powers for more than 70 years, were truly coming off.

The decision by the Pentagon to move a significant portion of US military hardware into the

Baltics had been considered provocative by Moscow, but the next American president’s

decision in early 2017 to reactivate the controversial missile defence shield in Eastern Europe

was the final straw for Russia. In a televised speech, dually aimed at boosting his already

soaring popularity even further and sending a stern warning to the west, Putin pulled no

punches. Russia, he announced, had moved a significant number of troops and air-defence

systems to its 102nd military base in Armenia. Turkey took immediate notice of this

development, being fully aware of what it meant. Since Russian-Turkish relations took a turn

for the worst in late 2015, Putin had planned a classic act of asymmetric warfare against its

long-time adversary. At the right time, Armenia would launch a coordinated assault on

Nagorno-Karabakh, provoking Azerbaijan but ensuring Turkish intervention was made

impossible. A Kurdish revolt in the north-eastern Turkish cities of Diyarbakir and Hakkari

would be orchestrated and backed by Moscow. Independence would be declared in

Diyarbakir as soon as possible, prompting a flow of arms to fighters there. Just like Ukraine

before it, Turkey would be split in two, divided down ethnic lines.

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As his speech seemed to draw to a close, Putin suddenly dropped another bombshell. He

declared that Moscow had recently reached an agreement with the EEU on the legal

framework for Russia to deploy military units onto the soil of the CIS countries. This bold

chess move by Putin stunned the West. The US, having invested heavily in the pivot to Asia,

now saw an even greater threat emerging in a region immensely more strategic than the far-

east. Putin argued that the decision was made in consultation with the CIS governments in

Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan seemed to be the only

two Eurasian nations alarmed by Russia’s encroachment into the region, and held talks with

the E.U and Washington. It was clear what was happening. The question was what could be

done to stop it? Turkey was the only nation that took the measure of dramatically increasing

the number of tanks and troops on its borders with Syria, Iran and Armenia.

Mainstream media in the US and Europe ran rampant with headlines such as The Empire

Strikes Back and Putin resurrects USSR, but it was the best that Washington and its allies

could do while it considered its options. The reaction came as no surprise to Putin who,

unmoved by the escalation of the propaganda war, promptly pushed ahead with the

deployments. However, as calculating as Putin was, he had underestimated the level of

outrage the CIS deployment caused among ordinary Russians, many of whom viewed the

move as a renaissance of the same geopolitical policies that bankrupted their country 25

years ago.

In Iran, a new and markedly more hardline Ayatollah was appointed the country’s Supreme

Leader in March of 2017 following the death of its previous Supreme Leader, Ayatollah

Khamenei. Iran had toughed its stance towards the West over Syria, Palestine and its

relations with Hezbollah, alarming Iran’s rivals in the region. The Gulf coalition saw this

development as a major escalation in an already tense geopolitical atmosphere. However,

with any evidence of a nuclear weapons program continuing to be absent, the West had no

grounds to reinstate the sanctions it had lifted as part of a binding UN resolution two years

earlier. What the new Ayatollah failed to see, however, was that a predominantly young

population was quickly losing patience with the see-sawing of moderate and hardline

regimes who, despite having different faces, used the same batons whenever they expressed

their right to protest. Sporadic demonstrations (mostly by university students) plagued the

new government and gradually grew in popularity. Internet proxy servers

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allowed the groups to organise through social media outlets and arrange meetings. In Parvaz park in Tehran, a large group of demonstrators were filmed calling for the downfall

of the Islamic regime. In this group, hundreds of women had thrown off their veils and were

holding signs reading My Body, My Decision. The images were tweeted and shared around the

world. Many of the police who had been sent there to arrest the protesters had refused, and

some, feeling solidarity with the people, even donned plain clothes to join them. The

Ayatollah, sensing which way the wind was now blowing, was coming to realise that his regime

faced a no-win situation.

As 2017 progressed, the global economy struggled to contain a financial meltdown spurred

by a slowing US and Chinese economy, as well as fears of a potential world war. The

European Union as a cohesive political and economic force was all but dead and the United

States, which had been strategically weakened by military cuts and rising debt, was still

anxious by the possible exit of France, Spain and Greece from NATO. Even Britain was openly

distancing itself from US policies, shocking Washington in May by recognising the state of

Palestine in a binding parliamentary motion. Knowing it could do little more, Israel promptly

responded by recalling its ambassador from London.

In Washington, some Congressmen began asking whether the United States should continue

funding an increasingly NATO alliance. President Bush replied that Congress needn’t look any

further than Russian mechanised divisions poised in Europe and the Middle East for the

answer to that question. However, Russia was now facing serious problems of its own. The

continuing slide in oil prices hit Russia’s economy hard, causing friction with her neighbours.

Ukraine, buoyed by stronger military ties with the new right-wing government in Poland and

the end of its civil war with pro-Russian rebels in mid-2016, formally joined the very anxious

and marginalised NATO. The West’s media machine went into full swing, painting Russia’s

economic woes and Ukraine’s entrance into NATO as a major turn of events. In New York, a

sold-out musical called Strongman depicted the final years of Putin’s reign as comedy of

disasters, predicting a dramatic collapse of Russia’s global influence following Putin’s political

exit. The musical was lauded as a “clever”, “controversial” and “witty”, but failed to reflect the

cold hard reality sweeping from the vast plains of Kyrgyzstan to the Mediterranean Sea.

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Meanwhile in Europe, Germany went to the polls on August 27, 2017, holding its most

important general election since the end of World War Two. With continued debate in

Greece, Britain, Portugal, Spain and France as to the viability of “the European project”, the

election itself was seen as a referendum as to whether the Euro-Zone should be given a

second chance or disbanded altogether.

The CDU/CSU and the SPD, while both in favour of saving the Euro-Zone, had been politically

weakened by the continent’s backlash against the union. Both parties were also now faced

with a resurgent AfD, and piggybacked on the wave of right-wing populism and

Euroscepticism sweeping through Europe. The far-right coalition found itself a serious

contender for second or third place. Such a development, the political mainstream knew,

would spell the end of Germany’s influence in the already fractured and deteriorating Euro-

Zone. Still, despite this seemingly inexplicable prospect, the SPD rejected the CDU’s calls to

form a national unity bloc (despite the threat of their CSU allies to leave the coalition) and

stood its ground.

As ballot boxes opened on the morning of the election, heavy rainfall soaked much of the

country. It was a miserable day, mirroring the broader continental mood. Despite the

weather, turnout was high. The AfD had held mass rallies in the lead-up to the election,

waving German flags and banners that read slogans like Strength in numbers! and Germany:

This is your moment! The final vote count after polls closed put the AfD in second place ahead

of the SPD.

The CDU, led by its new leader, Brussels-born Ursula von der Leyen, limped across the finish

line with a narrow majority, but refused to enter into coalition talks with the far-right, which

she said was nothing more than a cabal of opportunistic thugs. Von der Leyen’s remarks

deeply offended the party and its supporters who rejected the CDU/CSU, calling it part of

the ‘national problem’. The incumbent, they declared, had lost her mandate. Furious and

determined to stamp out this surreal nightmare, von der Leyen called another election to be

held on October 8 (which was, incidentally, her birthday). This time, the SPD wasted no time

in jumping on the CDU’s bandwagon. The CSU, following through on its threat to leave the

coalition, did so as soon as the CDU-SPD merger was announced. Nevertheless, the two forces

proceeded with an expensive and emotionally-driven political campaign, urging Germans to

member how history turned out last time they succumbed to sensationalistic

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fear-mongering. Their calls were seen by many swing voters as ironic. The pot had called the

kettle black. When the ballot boxes had closed, exit polls suggested that despite a clumsy

campaign, the CDU-SPD would be the winners. However, the final vote count showed their

far-right rivals had emerged even stronger, winning a resounding 157 seats. The prospect of

being forced to join a coalition with the AfD may have disappeared, but the beleaguered

CDU-SPD alliance now had to face the possibility that Germany, sooner or later, would give

the reins to the right.

Protectionism had now set in on both sides the Atlantic while Asia hobbled along using

Australian iron ore and Russian gas as temporary crutches. Even the newly formed Eurasian

Economic Union began to question itself, noticing a few short years into its existence that it

was doing nothing more than feeding a hungry bear at the expense of CIS sovereignty. The

more dire that the economic situation in Russia grew, the more unreasonable its requests to

EEU members became. The price of gas had now been hiked to such exorbitant levels that

Kyrgyzstan and Belarus threatened to leave the union altogether. The reserve banks

continued to cut interest rates and circulate rumours of a bounce, but could only sit and watch

as the world entered a cycle all too similar to the 1930s. The eyes of political analysts from

Europe to Washington were now scanning the eerie political landscape, looking for the new

Hitler.

At the same time, Asia was in a state of deep anxiety over a looming confrontation between

China and the United States in the South China Sea. This anxiety came to a climax when Japan

and China engaged in a brief dogfight over the Senkaku islands. China lost four Su-27 jets.

Japan only had one its planes downed. The coming hours would be the most intense since

the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. US intelligence warned that a fleet of Chinese warships led

by the Liaoning carrier was heading directly towards the disputed islands. However, before

the ships arrived, another deadly exchange took place – this time in the

Sea of Japan. A Japanese destroyer opened fire on two Chinese frigates, badly damaging one of them. The ships returned fire, destroying the Japanese ship and killing 40 sailors. The

crisis had jolted the old foes, giving them a dark kind of adrenaline.

An urgent meeting of the UN Security Council was convened. At the meeting, India and China

surprised the council by announcing that a non-aggression pact had been negotiated

between their two governments. The logic, the Indian foreign minister said, was that the

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emerging security situation on their borders now outweighed the threat they posed to one

another. Everyone present understood that they were referring to the crises in the South

China Sea and the Middle East. It was a strange forum to announce such a pact, but was

welcomed with a giant sigh of relief by the UN. This pact, while ensuring that millions more

casualties weren’t added to the impending bloodbath, also signalled a possible

counterweight against further destabilisation in the region.

Thankfully, the shots being fired between Japan and China were now in the form of threats

rather than shells, however an eerie quiet had fallen over the region. The calm before the

storm, most of the newspapers were calling it.

CHAPTER FOUR – 2018: THE HAND OF FATE The 2018 general election could not have come at a more climactic time for Russia. Faced

with an economic crisis unlike anything they had ever seen, Russian voters made it clear in

the 2016 legislative elections that they wanted change, giving Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s LDPR

the second largest share of seats in the Duma behind United Russia. This development

alarmed both Russia’s neighbours and the west, which had for years considered a

Zhirinovsky win unfathomable. The year that followed delivered nothing but misery for

Putin’s United Russia. Hungry and jobless voters took to the streets demanding

accountability from their leader - and more dangerously for the ruling regime – change.

In January, a financial scandal involving the Prime Minister, Dmitri Medvedev, found its way

to state-controlled media which inflicted enough damage on the government that Russians

began demanding his resignation. A powerful and influential figure, Medvedev had the

backing of his close friend Putin, who reacted to the protests by sending out riot police with

batons and capsicum spray.

After a wave of national protests which lasted five weeks, and in which 72 people died,

Vladimir Putin surprised political analysts in late February 2018 by accepting Medvedev’s

resignation and appointing Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu as Prime Minister. Knowing that

there was still a month before the general election, Putin figured that this would be

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sufficient time to promote the new cabinet before Russians went to the ballot box. Putin

was confident that with the support of Russia’s largest political party and the military behind

him, the people would see Shoigu as a formidable PM. However, Russians seemed

uncomfortable with this choice - and it showed. Most infuriated was the Deputy Prime

Minister, Dmitri Rogozin, who had expected Putin to elevate him to the number two spot.

Nonetheless, he threw his full support behind Putin as he had always done, and called for

the nation to rally behind the new cabinet. However, polls showed that support for United

Russia had dropped sharply following Shoigu’s appointment as Prime Minister. Russians, it

seemed, preferred the fiery and antagonistic Rogozin over the calm and measured Shoigu.

The Putin-Shoigu PR machine immediately went into overdrive, launching a sophisticated

scare campaign against the opposition. The campaign failed, reflecting an embarrassing and

worrying truth: the people were more scared of Shoigu and Putin than they were of the

Communists and Ultranationalists.

On 2 March 2018, just days before the election, the plane carrying Putin, Shoigu and 21 others

exploded in mid-flight to St Petersburg. As the news broke, stunned world leaders exchanged

frantic phone calls, incredulous of the fact that the world’s most effective leader was

suddenly dead. Wide-eyed reporters told viewers that at approximately 2:19pm, the four-

engine Ilyushin Il-96-300PU exploded, killing all 23 passengers, including the president of the

Russian Federation, Vladimir V. Putin. The biggest thorn in the side of the Western world was

now gone, obliterated along with some of his closest political allies. Suspicion turned to the

CIA, who had a long track record of political assassinations and coups, but without proof of

foreign involvement, the rumours were left to circulate fiercely on blogs and forums.

In the following days, an accidental blast was ruled out by investigators, deeply disturbing an

already shaken nation. The United Russia party scrambled to appoint a replacement, naming

the fiery First Deputy Prime Minister, Dmitri Rogozin, as interim-president. Rogozin

immediately blamed the disaster on ‘terrorists’ and promised tough retribution once the

culprits were identified. The West worried that Rogozin’s warning was a precursor to broader

military action in the Caucuses, or even Syria, but there were much more important

developments that would come of this Russian tragedy, Washington was sure.

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Quietly, there were fears in Rogozin’s circle that the power-thirsty Vladimir Zhirinovsky may

have had a hand in the assassination, though no evidence existed for them to take any action.

In reality, it was a delusion carried on the back of an intense nation-wide paranoia.

Zhirinovsky, capitalising on a weak economy and disillusioned voters, was quickly becoming

the most likely candidate to win the impending election. His campaign slogans promised

systemic political change, an end to corruption and an ambitious plan to help lift the economy

out of the abyss. While similar promises appeared on the campaign posters of his political

rivals across the country, Russians now believed that Zhirinovsky was the only leader ruthless

enough to deliver all of them, and serve as a fearsome deterrent to Russia’s enemies.

Under a clear blue sky on a warm March morning, Russians, still stunned from the cataclysmic

events of the previous week, went to the polls and did something that was unthinkable only

months earlier. They elected Vladimir Zhirinovsky as president of the Russian Federation. They

had accepted their strongman was gone, and understood that only another strongman could

save Russia. With 56% of the vote won, Zhirinovsky did not need

to contest a second round. An LPDR spokesman declared that Fate itself had guaranteed

Zhirinovsky’s rise to power. The new president wasted no time consolidating it. The LDPR

youth organisation, made up of uniformed supporters called ‘Zhirinovsky’s Falcons’, took to

the streets in a show of strength and support for their country’s new leader as he addressed

the nation. Without any prior referendum or vote, the black, yellow and white flag of the LDRP

was hoisted above the Kremlin in place of the white, blue and red tricolour. This prompted

several furious clashes, but the majority of ordinary Russians recognised that this climactic

moment in their history, like all others, was best dealt with by being publicly obedient to the

new regime – even if they weren’t privately.

In his televised address to the Russian people, he invoked Admiral Nakhimov’s 19th century

victory over Turkey, the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and the prospect of an “historic

alliance” with the United States, who he said shared the common goal of stamping out

terrorism worldwide. However, he warned that in the pursuit of this goal, Russia would

“inevitably upset some of her southern neighbours”. Turkey, Afghanistan and Iran, he warned,

would either need to accept Russia’s dominance of everything south of Grozny to the Indian

Ocean or face the wrath of the Russian military. His focus then turned to Eastern

26

Europe, where he threatened to reabsorb the Baltic States and “punish” Ukraine. Kiev’s

water, he explained, would soon be diverted from the Dnieper River via the Krasny dam to

the Don River inside Russia. To the rest of the world, it had become obvious that they were

dealing with an extremely dangerous man. All they could do was wait, but that in itself

carried great risk. Russian commanders in division and army headquarters were already

mapping out the routes for their military formations. Aircraft were already gathering at air

bases around Russia’s southern regions. Submarines were already surfacing near the

coastline of the Indian Ocean. And armoured vehicles were on the move alongside great

masses of tanks rolling towards the Latvian and Lithuanian borders.

In the last week of April, Kazakh journalists went public with reports of regular and systematic

mistreatment of civilians by Russian regular troops outside their base at Lake Balkhash. Videos

uploaded on social media sites showed Russian troops beating Kazakh civilians and even

abusing a fellow soldier. It was no secret that Zhirinovsky – who was born in Kazakhstan –

deeply resented Kazakhs who he believed had shown utter disrespect towards ethnic Russians

inside their country while he was growing up. Those who knew of Zhirinovsky’s upbringing

and views on Kazakhs knew that this was a matter of calculated revenge, not some isolated

event. This bad PR, however, was not enough to tempt the CIS powerhouse into NATO’s orbit.

The strategic value Kazakhstan had to Russia was incalculable, and this alone meant that it

would not be making any overtures to the Western military alliance anytime in the

foreseeable future.

Back inside Russia, Zhirinovsky’s Falcons denounced their political rivals as unpatriotic and

raided several independent publications that had openly slandered their new leader. Adding

to the disturbing chain of events, a number of prominent journalists who had been fiercely

critical of Zhirinovsky in the lead up to the election had gone missing.

The western media reported almost every incident as a trail of information breadcrumbs leading to

Zhirinovsky’s unmasking as a monster. Directly following his inauguration in May 2018 - while NATO’s

eyes were darting between the far-east, the Baltics and the CIS - Zhirinovsky ordered a surprise

mobilisation to Russia’s southern borders. Up to 200,000 troops, 3,000 tanks and 800 fighter/attack

aircraft were sent to reinforce an existing military presence that Putin had created in the Caucuses and

Central Asia two years earlier. Not a shot was fired. The mobilisation, Zhirinovsky explained, was a

precautionary step to “secure

27

the soft underbelly of Mother Russia”. However, political analysts who were well aware of

Zhirinovsky’s own book “Final thrust to the south”, knew exactly what was about to happen.

Though still technically independent of Moscow, Russia’s satellite states could do nothing but

watch their giant neighbour pour military hardware across their borders.

Turkey, Azerbaijan and Afghanistan, suddenly eager for a return of the US troops they had

sent packing, called up their reservists and went on full alert. The New York Times warned that

the world had just experienced a time-warp back to 1933 when Adolf Hitler was elected

Chancellor of Germany before moving his troops into Alsace-Lorraine and Czechoslovakia. The

editor provided a chilling prediction that this was the final domino before the next

world war. Zhirinovsky provided no rebuttal.

A series of proxy wars in the Balkans broke out during this time, dousing fuel on the flames

being fanned by both sides. Pro-Russian militias – clearly engineered by Zhirinovsky – had

sprung into action to weaken the Baltic armies before the real show began.

With most of the United States’ best military units over 7,000km away from what by all

accounts looked to be the frontline in the next world war, an emergency meeting of the US

Joint Chief of Staff was held. The Pentagon had been warning about unusual movements by

Russia’s Northern Fleet – the backbone of its newly-formed and formidable Arctic Command

– in Murmansk. President Bush had become furious that the United States was now faced

with two imminent threats, both equal in scale but neither of which the US could defeat

without the full backing of a strong and unified NATO. The president and the Joint-Chiefs of

Staff unanimously agreed that the Pentagon must readopt the “win-hold-win” military

doctrine, mobilising enough forces to win one war convincingly while holding off the enemy

in the other conflict. If the first war was won, then the US would then focus entirely on

defeating the remaining enemy. That enemy, as shown by the front page Germany’s Spiegel

newspaper, was now massing troops on the Polish border.

With the neo-con propaganda machine in full-swing and with his Joint-Chiefs behind him,

President Jeb Bush made a primetime address, reassuring an uncertain public that America

still had all the resources and support necessary to face her enemies, even if it was a nuclear-

armed maniac in Russia and a 2.2 million strong Chinese army. As a level of

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precaution, Bush ordered that the Pentagon upgrade US military readiness worldwide to

DEFCON-3. The time of waiting was now over and the United States had to make a move if it

was to survive the 21st century as a superpower. “The United States of America will not step

aside and abandon its historic responsibilities to the free world,” Bush said, tears visible in his

eyes. “Tyranny has overplayed its hand and stepped on our feet. Just as we did in the last two

great wars, we will meet the challenge head-on, not cower in the face of a fight. If we do

nothing, we join all of the failed empires in the history books. My fellow Americans, it’s now

all or nothing.” No sooner than the address ended, flag-waving patriots took to the streets

across the country, celebrating the president’s decision to send 170,000 troops to the Baltics

and 120,000 to the Middle East. In the coming hours, the US, Canada, Germany, Poland,

Czechoslovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Romania declared NATO alive and well. Just like

his brother 17 years earlier, President Bush warned that NATO’s outgoing members had better

decide whose side they were on. And fast.

CHAPTER FIVE – 2018-2025: THE THIRD WORLD WAR Zhirinovsky did not intend to wait for NATO’s armies to arrive on his country’s doorstep, and

so on November 28, the world’s worst fears were realised when the Russian army -

spearheaded by columns of new T-90S tanks - poured into the Baltics, soon followed by

Turkey, Azerbaijan and Afghanistan. Supporting the main thrusts of the invasion were fifth-

generation Sukhoi T-50 fighters, Su-34s and MiG-31 supersonic interceptors. In the

Mediterranean, Black Sea and Arctic, the Russian navy deployed its new “black hole” stealth

submarines to escort its destroyers. Lithuania and Turkey immediately invoked Article V of

the NATO charter, obliging the alliance to act on what was already an imminent threat to its

own survival.

One day following the Russian invasion, a North Korean frigate was struck by a torpedo and

sunk off the Peninsula’s west coast. A mere 20 servicemen survived. The remaining 130 on

board were burned alive or had drowned. Less than an hour later, a brief skirmish erupted

across the DMZ. The sinking of the frigate was blamed on the South, but Seoul denied it had

anything to do with the incident. The next morning, the residents of Seoul quickly awoke in

29

cold sweat to the North’s long-range Koksan 170mm howitzers being unleashed. No

infrastructure was spared, with commercial and residential buildings as well as military

installations blasted by unrelenting rounds of artillery. The loud blowing of whistles on the

38th Parallel signalled the Korean Peoples Army’s forward attack across the border. Taking no chances, the Pentagon went to DEFCON-2. Only once in history had the world faced such

a real possibility of global nuclear war, but the decision was not made lightly.

The Third World War began in earnest.

In Europe, a powerful contingent from the Polish, Czech and German armies swung into

action in the Balkans to repel the surprise Russian advance southward. Zhirinovsky’s most

elite units, however, were headed directly south - into Turkey. Days later, another sizeable

formation of tanks and troops struck east, into the Balkans. Turkey, anticipating a pincer-

formation forming to its north-eastern and north-western borders, turned up the heat and

began surgical strikes on Russian forward bases in Armenia and Syria. In solidarity with their

NATO ally, the US deployed its best airpower to the region, sending F-22s and F-35s screaming

from their European airfields into battle. Indeed, the US invested heavily in protecting Turkey,

sending two carrier battle groups to the Mediterranean to join up with one already under

siege by the Russian air force.

In the Middle East, the major alliance systems which had been set up at the end of 2015 swung

into action against each other. The first shots were fired by the IMC when a barrage of

medium-range missiles launched from Saudi Arabia rained down on a military radar

installation in Tehran. The 4+1 Coalition hit back hard. Iran launched dozens of Shahab

missiles against targets in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain, inflicting massive casualties. At the

same time as the Saudi attack commenced, a column of Iranian tanks heading towards the

Turkish border from inside Syria were bombed by NATO warplanes, marking the first formal

attack on Iranian forces by the European alliance. Although Iran had committed itself to the

war effort against what it called “Saudi-Turkish aggression” in the region, it had not

anticipated such an attack so soon from the European powers. Also commencing with the

Saudi attack was a surprise raid by Turkish and US on Russia’s bases in Latakia and Tartus.

Up to 600 Russian servicemen were killed. That night in Damascus, Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, was killed when a car bomb exploded in close proximity to his motorcade. Russia

sent several amphibious landing craft to its Mediterranean ally, determined to keep its

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regional coalition together. Iranian troops, backed by Hezbollah and Iraqi Shia militia, ramped

up their operations, ensuring that Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen didn’t crumble under the

weight of the onslaught. This did not deter NATO. The formidable fleet heading towards the

Mediterranean was bound to make short work of the Russians once it arrived – providing

tragedy didn’t strike during its voyage there.

In Germany, furious debate erupted in the Bundestag, with many MP’s changing heart and

arguing against their country’s involvement in the war. One MP from the Left made a

passionate plea in favour of neutrality, telling the Bundestag: “Are your memories so short?

We threw peace to the wolves in 1914, then again in 1939. Tens of millions of our people and

others paid the price for that mistake. Why must we condemn millions more to that fate now

in 2018?” The larger political forces, as always, had the final say. Ironically, joining the fight

was the only thing that the CDU-SPD and the AfD shared in common. In an emotional vote,

the decision to enter the war passed with a clear majority.

The Battle of the Baltics was a fierce and bloody one, involving the most sophisticated and

destructive conventional weaponry known to man. The Russian push into Lithuania was

particularly ruthless, crushing the tiny 20,000 strong national army and forcing the stunned

NATO forces into retreat. The war in Latvia and Estonia saw heavy losses inflicted on the

advancing Russians, but did not slow the invasion. Within a week, the Baltics had been

reabsorbed into the Russian Federation just as Zhirinovsky had promised. In part, the Baltics

were a strategic sacrifice by the panicked alliance which chose to throw most of its air and

ground power into defending Turkey, the second strongest member of NATO behind the

United States itself.

In southern Europe, the war intensified as NATO pushed eastward into Belarus, Ukraine and

Moldova. In a truly remarkable military feat, Polish and Romanian troops, backed by their

US allies, crushed the defensive lines of all three countries in less than a week, prompting

the Russians to make a tactical retreat. Humiliated by this unexpected defeat, Zhirinovsky

played the nuclear card, warning that any attempt to invade Russia would be met with the

annihilation of NATO capitals. Although the West did not doubt the ruthlessness of

Zhirinovsky, they were confident he understood the principle of Mutually Assured

Destruction (MAD). Nonetheless, no full-scale invasion of Russia was being planned by

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NATO, and the alliance knew the Russians understood this. They would, however, fight to

the last man to push his armies back to their barracks.

An emergency meeting of NATO leaders in the second week of December conceded that

Turkey was becoming more vulnerable by the day and that an even more substantial force

was needed there. Just days later, a fierce naval battle erupted in the Black Sea when NATO

ships opened fire on Russian vessels which had been amassing for an assault on Istanbul. After

a week-long battle involving the best naval firepower from both sides, Russia eventually

managed to seize the upper hand in the Black Sea through the use of new supersonic anti-ship

missiles and attack submarines. A combination of Su-24s and the newer MiG-29SMTs

provided air cover for the surface ships, but it was the Russian air force’s deployment of a

terrifying electronic warfare weapon called Khibiny that wreaked havoc on NATO’s navy,

disabling ships’ radar and weapons systems prior to the bombing runs that sunk them. In the

first week this weapon was deployed, more than twelve NATO ships were sent to the bottom

of the ocean. US and British ships were packing just as hard a punch, however, deploying ship-

based anti-air laser weapons that downed more than 30 Russian warplanes before they had

to be withdrawn due to technical issues. The Russian ships in the area were soon accompanied

by several large amphibious landing craft from Crimea. NATO knew the next target, and swiftly

sent reinforcements to Turkey via recently resupplied bases in Italy – but no sooner than the

ships had left their docks had Russian submarines ambushed the precious cargo, sending it to

the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

On the morning of December 28, Russian troops stunned NATO when they captured a large

swathe of Turkish territory in the country’s north. Zhirinovsky immediately declared the

region a Kurdish republic and began sending arms to bolster it. Large columns of tanks, troops

and artillery rolling down from the Caucuses pushed aside Azeri forces to link up with their

amphibious landing fleet. Three Turkish tank divisions in Sivas, together with US and British

air support, held off the Russians for eight weeks before finally succumbing to reinforcements

sent from the damaged but operational 102nd military base in Armenia. In the following days,

an unexpected second front opened after a surprise Russian amphibious landing at Istanbul.

The units that made up the landing force were as brutal as they were effective, decimating

both civilian and military infrastructure with indifference. The casualties grew on both sides

as the Russian army pushed further south. On Turkey’s

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northern frontier, Armenia drew the ire of the United Nations when in January 2019, its

artillery opened fire indiscriminately on Turkish villages, seizing an opportunity for revenge

for the genocide of its people by the Turks. At the onset of the Russian onslaught, Azeri troops

were briefly able to occupy Nagorno-Karabakh but were soon overrun as Russian and

Armenian troops rent in reinforcements. The bloodbath claimed more than 15,000 lives in a

single week. In early May, Russian and Armenian officials signed an agreement to split

Azerbaijan’s gas reserves 50/50 between them. This war, western media would soon admit,

was about Russia’s ambition to grab all of Eurasia’s vast energy reserves for itself. Moscow

countered the accusations by attributing the outbreak of the war to NATO’s eastward

expansion and similar moves to provoke Russia by the west’s “proxies” in the CIS.

In the Middle East, the ongoing conflict was further exacerbated in February when - with the

rest of the region distracted by the war - Israel’s far-right coalition finally decided to meet in a

closed-door security session to debate the viability of an air strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Despite having its hands full in Syria and Iraq, Iran remained a strong and well organised force

in the region. The ultra-orthodox Shas party argued that since Israel’s enemies were distracted

more than ever, now was the time to act against their biggest threat. Realising that their

American allies were too bogged down in Europe and Korea to help, the Knesset voted to go

it alone and seize on a strategic opportunity. The IAF’s improved version of the GBU-28

“bunker-buster” had been operational for more than a year now and Israel’s military was

itching for an excuse to see them in action – especially against Iran. Even with the threat of

Iran’s S-400 missiles, the Israel was confident that they could finish the job. With the IAF having

acquired crucial mid-air refuelling capability in the weeks leading up to the operation, it was

now all systems go.

On the morning of February 3, 2019, Israeli warplanes took off from an airbase in Cyprus and

set course for Iranian airspace. As they approached, flying low to avoid radar detection, they

noticed something inexplicable on their radar screens: missile traces. The pilots quickly

received visual confirmation of their fate. The missiles were from S-400 systems. Despite their

low velocity, somehow the planes had been detected. And destroyed.

In the aftermath of the incident, Zhirinovsky warned against further “foolish attempts” by

Israel and its allies to challenge the new order in the Middle East, a strategic oil and gas

bonanza which Russia was now clearly intending to hold on to in order to fuel its Second

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Great Patriotic War. Though wounded, Israel could only go back to the drawing board and

re-plan. One way or another, it would neutralise the threats that surrounded it.

Frustratingly, the biggest one was evidently sitting in the Kremlin.

On the Turkish front, Ankara’s allies retreated further south and dug in as Zhirinovsky’s

decades-old plan to storm Russia’s southern neighbours continued to play out with

terrifying speed and ferocity. Two Russian armoured divisions launched a dawn assault at

Eskisehir and Amasya, forming a pincer on the embattled capital, Ankara. With the war

having reached a decisive point, the Turkish president broadcasted a national call to arms by television and radio, urging citizens across the country to take up arms ‘from house to house’

against the Russians. Unmoved, Zhirinovsky ordered Russia’s Varyag aircraft carrier, along

with the nuclear powered battleship Peter the Great, to join existing ships at Russia’s old

naval base off the coast of Syria. Turkey had been almost completely encircled. The two US

carrier groups en route from the Indian Ocean were ambushed in the Gulf of Aden by Russian

and Iranian warships, determined to stop them from reaching Turkey. A barrage of

hypersonic anti-ship missiles from the Russian ships had destroyed one of the carriers and

badly damaged the other, forcing it to abort its mission.

After three nights of relentless Russian artillery bombardment and air strikes on Ankara, the

perimeter defences around the city were weak enough for Russian armoured divisions to

roll into the city, facing little resistance. Or so they thought. Erdogan’s “house-to-house” plea had mobilised much of the patriotic civilian population in a

way Zhirinovsky could never have imagined. The capital had become a fortress of entrenched

heavily-armed citizens, waiting for their enemy. Emerging from their bunkers with heavy

arms, Turkish civilians ambushed the Russian troops entering the city. Gunfire erupted from

the ruins, dashing Moscow’s hopes of a quick end to the campaign. The war would drag on

for over another year, causing anger among the Russian population, now wondering how the

motherland was benefiting from the war in Turkey. Similarly, US voters were beginning to

wonder whether their president’s leadership was sufficient to deliver their country victory.

Despite Russia having steamrolled over some of the United States’ most dependable forces

in Europe and the Middle East, US voters returned Jeb Bush to the White House for a second

term.

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Frustrated by a mounting death toll, Zhirinovsky ordered a brief withdrawal of his forces from

Ankara while jets gassed the city from the skies. Thousands died. The ones who were left had

either fled in terror or stayed behind to courageously face the re-arrival of Russia’s most elite

Special Forces. On June 19, 2020, during a late night televised address lasting less than four

minutes, Zhirinovsky unceremoniously declared the Turkey campaign “over and done with”.

However, another war to the immediate north was just starting. Serbia, having struck an

agreement with Russia, mobilised into Albania while Russian troops in occupied Moldova and

Ukraine launched a coordinated invasion into northern Romania. The two armies would

then link up for an assault on the flanks of the lower-lying Balkan states. The prize of Turkey, Zhirinovsky knew, was too great to risk losing to a Normandy-style invasion by NATO.

Greece, though armed to the teeth, cautiously sat the war out. Athens had signed a non-

aggression pact with Moscow in the months leading up to the war and, having seen what

the Russians had done to Ankara, was not about to break it.

In east-Asia, a turning point occurred when, for the first time, China began launching land-

based ballistic missiles against airbases across Japan’s western coast. While the war in East

Asia had largely been confined to air and sea, the decision by China to attack land targets in

Japan was a dramatic escalation which threatened to tip the balance in Beijing’s favour. The

two militaries, while closely matched in sophistication, were heavily disproportionate in size

and firepower. Knowing it held these valuable cards, Beijing chose to use them with maximum

effect. Japan’s missiles did not have the kind of range China’s arsenal did, and with so many

of its planes having been shot down, it turned to Washington. However, on the same day that

the GOP House minority leader on Capitol Hill reignited the nuclear debate by demanding the

president utilise the country’s atomic arsenal, American attack submarines stunned Beijing

by successfully sinking its Liaoning aircraft carrier in the Sea of Japan. USAF fighters and long-

range bombers, which had taken off from a carrier group off Australia’s northern coast, also

made short work of an entire squadron of Chinese jets over the Spratly islands. There, US-

Philippine forces had staged a surprise raid on islands that had been claimed and occupied by

China before the war. Cheers erupted throughout the United States, seeing the victories as a

crucial turning point in the Pacific. 58 Chinese airmen and more than 600 sailors died in the

attacks. With only one remaining carrier and a heavily

35

reduced air force, China upped the ante, deploying DF-21D ballistic missiles against the three

US carriers in the region. This decision had not been taken lightly. Beijing warned the United

States that this was the only way to level the playing field, short of using nuclear weapons.

The warning had been received loud and clear in Washington, which continued to debate the

deployment of its own nuclear weapons in this war. Exceeding the expectations from its

earlier war-games, all three carriers were struck by the DF-21D missiles, suffering heavy

damage. It would be days before the US Navy would be able to determine exactly how many

of its servicemen had died in the attack, but it was enough for the president to begin

considering the minority leader’s “nuclear option”. The House Democrats who, in

2018 had trounced their Republican rivals in the mid-term elections, warned against the use of nuclear weapons, threatening the president with impeachment, a move they said would

“safeguard the future of the human race.” Without the numbers in the Congress or the

Senate, the president quietly explored ‘extra-constitutional’ options with his advisors, but

was nonetheless faced with the sobering spectre of M.A.D at every turn.

Using its only remaining carrier to assist its troops going ashore in the Senkaku Islands,

China set up an air defence corridor around the islands, reminiscent of Russia’s ‘MiG

corridor’ during the Korean War of 1950-1953. China’s carrier-based fighter aircraft made

short work of two squadrons that Japan had sent to meet the invasion, but encountered

nothing short of obliteration when a fleet of combined US and Japanese Aegis Destroyers

finally reached the area. After a bloody week-long battle, involving more than 40 surface

ships and 60 submarines, Japanese troops with the help of US naval power, reclaimed the

Senkaku Islands, proclaiming the first major triumph in what Japan said would be a “final

decisive victory” against China.

In the year that followed, much of the fighting became less intense, giving way to frantic

attempts by the U.N to negotiate a ceasefire. However, though the war continued bleeding

the resources of all countries involved, new and terrifying weapons were unleashed. The US,

China and Russia began deploying hypersonic missiles against one another. Within ten

minutes from being launched, the missiles would travel thousands of kilometres to hit and

destroy their targets. The use of these weapons soon raised fears that it would only be a

matter of time before a nuclear warhead was mounted on one of them, forcing the war to

enter a new and catastrophic phase. Zhirinovsky delivered a Christmas day gift to China in

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2021 by invading the disputed Kuril Islands. After intense shelling from warships which had

quietly slipped into the Sea of Okhotsk from their Vladivostok bases, Russian paratroopers

landed and took up positions on Itarup, Kunashir, Shikotan and Habomai, effectively cutting

off the islands from Japan. Russia had just established a beachhead a few kilometers north of

America’s most important Pacific ally.

Having been deeply angered by its humiliating defeat at the hands of its much smaller rivals,

China turned its attention back to Japan and Taiwan, now reeling from Russia’s dangerous

new entrance into their theatre of war. The Russian amphibious assault on the Kuril Islands

bought Beijing some much needed time to regroup its forces for a second offensive. The

United States did not intend to wait for this, and sent a substantial fleet to intercept an

armada of surface ships and submarines heading from Shangchaun. The battle lasted for

hours, with US and Chinese vessels deploying drones, cruise missiles and laser weapons

against one another. It was a bloody exchange, but ended in a stalemate. Both sides’

propaganda machines went into overdrive, claiming that the other had pulled back when in

actual fact it was a mutual tactical retreat.

That night, the Politburo in Beijing and the War Room in the Pentagon both erupted in fierce

debate as to whether nuclear weapons should enter the conflict. Several of the US Joint- Chiefs

of Staff shifted their earlier positions, arguing that a ‘limited use’ of US tactical nukes would

be a ‘game changer’ that could turn the tide of the war in the Pacific in America’s favour. The

president, haunted by the thought of nuclear retaliatory strikes on his country’s cities, refused.

Fortunately, China’s president used the same argument in the meetings with his advisors and

Generals. This caused intense political tension in both capitals. Rumours circulated of a

military coup in Washington by disgruntled US military generals, while in China some powerful

members of the National Assembly openly questioned the ruling committee’s political

wisdom. Protests unlike any the country had seen since the 1989 student riots, broke out in

Beijing. The president understood that something had to be done, and soon. In the United

States, the public mood was equally volatile. The number of anti-war protesters marching

across the country was now estimated to be in the millions. President Bush, surprising even

his closest advisors, suggested a ceasefire be made with Beijing. Detecting a growing defeatist

attitude by the president, the Democrat camp finally launched impeachment proceedings

against President Bush. Surprisingly, the move was

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narrowly defeated, owing mostly to congressmen who did not want to see a sudden change in

power during a time of war. Back in Beijing, with no possibility of impeachment but fearing

further unrest, the president declared Martial Law and announced that a historic decision was

about to be made.

That decision came no less than three hours later. China’s president, urgently seeking to

consolidate his power at home, succumbed to the hardliners and announced that the PLA

would enter the war on North Korea’s side. This shocked the West who, just a few years

earlier, considered such a move by China as unthinkable. Even more so, for China however,

was the prospect of US troops on its border. The PLA quickly reinforced the North’s dug-in

positions with support by helicopter gunships, as well as several tank divisions, throwing the

USFSK’s operational planning into chaos. US Marines rushed in from Okinawa to relieve the

beleaguered USFSK who had gallantly held ground alongside their South Korean allies on the

outskirts of Seoul.

The war would continue to rage for another year, with both sides throwing as much air, land

and sea power as they had available. With Russia cementing its grip of the CIS, the US and her

European allies resorted to a sustained proxy war, using professionally trained rebels to

disrupt Russia’s military and commercial supply lines in the region. However, America had its

own group of well-armed and well-trained rebels to deal with. In the last week of November,

a network of “Tea Party Patriots” took over town halls and major transportation lines in

several cities, creating strategic chokepoints. The US government, sensing an insurrection

developing, immediately dispatched the National Guard to deal with the rebels. Several gun

battles erupted, including a particularly bloody shootout in South Carolina and another in

Michigan. The militia movement became emboldened after several states, including those

involved in the violent clashes, sided with the broader Pro-Constitution movement and

blamed the White House for provoking the bloodshed. Texas, Nevada and Alabama began

discussing the real possibility of seceding from the Union, labelling the Federal Government

an “incompetent and dangerous cabal”. The White House could do little to prevent the split,

grudgingly accepting the result while viciously lobbying to reverse it. The war had created even

more debt for the government to manage, and the fact that a vocal majority inside America

believed their president had lost that war, resolving financial issues was the least of the White

House’s worries.

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Meanwhile, in the Middle East, things were taking an interesting turn. On the morning of 30

December 2022, something inexplicable happened in Tehran. A convoy of soldiers returning

from the Syrian front joined one of the major student protests. The men were disillusioned

with the role Iran had come to play in the war, and in the region in general. It was time to make

a stand, even if it meant prison (or worse). As soon as word got out that members of the armed

forces were involved in the protest, the news – and images – spread like wildfire on social

media. Reports of other military servicemen joining the protests made the headlines of some

foreign media outlets and ignited a spark of hope that the Ayatollah’s regime may be on the

verge of collapse. And it was. Tens of thousands more impassioned youth took to the streets

to join the existing demonstrations. The scenes were reminiscent of the 2009 riots, but unlike

the Egyptian uprising, there was no army strongman waiting to hijack the people’s revolution.

Thousands shouted “Marg bar Khamenei!” (Down with Khamenei) as they matched through

the capital, pumping their fists in the air. The police, army and political establishment

recognised that this moment was long overdue. The caretaker government in Syria released a

statement saying it was

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“cautiously optimistic” about the developments in Tehran, however Zhirinovsky’s response

was more forthright. In an address to the nation, the Russian strongman warned that it would

accept nothing less than a pro-Moscow government, adding the country’s war effort

depended on it.

As mechanised PLA formations pushed south on the Korean Peninsula, China prepared one

last offensive in the Taiwan Strait. A military build-up ensued along China’s eastern coast,

including what the Pentagon called a ‘substantial force deployment’ in the occupied chain of

islands in the South China Sea. The intelligence was checked and re-checked, but

unfortunately satellite imagery did not lie. Taiwan and their US allies knew this was an event

they’d spent decades preparing for, and sent an official communique to their Pacific allies

warning them of what was coming. On 1 January 2023, China began a major amphibious

assault against Taiwan. In dire need of a military victory, and confident that the war on the

Korean Peninsula was going their way, Beijing threw some of its most impressive military

hardware into this offensive. The war was brief but bloody. Taiwan’s small but sophisticated

military, bolstered by a $1.8 billion arms sale in 2016, had shot down over 27 PLAF warplanes

and sunk 12 ships, four of them destroyers. China’s media outlets framed this setback as an

“unfortunate development”, though the more informed and perceptive military and political

analysts knew that this war was doomed to fail. China had simply committed too many of its

resources to the Korean Peninsula and Philippines to continue encountering such losses. The

combination of Taiwanese, US and Japanese air and naval power proved too much for Beijing,

which was forced to call in reinforcements. There were calls in the Politburo to abandon the

invasion in case it turned out to be a terrible mistake, but the president would have none of

that. In a major gamble, he ordered the redeployment of 40% of China’s forces on the Korean

Peninsula. Chinese-North Korean forces were only a few kilometres from Seoul, having

decimated the American-South Korean defence perimeter with superior numbers and

airpower (albeit mostly Chinese). The Taiwanese knew this meant that once Korea had been

forcefully reunited under the tyrannical leadership of Kim Jong-un, those PLAF planes would

soon be coming their way. The Taiwanese leader made a solemn address to the nation, vowing

to fight on but adding a ‘divine miracle’ would be needed if it was to defeat what was coming.

The second invasion force was made up of hardened troops still high on the adrenaline of

battle from Korea. The

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amphibious assault was one of the most swift and brutal in modern warfare, going ashore

on the underbelly of the island to deliver a decisive victory to Beijing.

As this truly profound news broke across multiple outlets, another story reached the

headlines. The secret US-Japanese deal to put nuclear weapons in Okinawa was now world

news, thanks to a series of diplomatic cables released by hacktivist group Anonymous. The

Japanese public responded with angry public demonstrations, the biggest taking place on

the island of Okinawa itself. The opposition DPJ party demanded the Prime Minister’s

resignation, telling a large rally of supporters that the PM had deceived the nation. Seeing

no other alternative, the Japanese PM stepped down, paving the way for new elections. The

political right in Japan had been shamed, and was not likely to recover soon. More significant,

however, was a motion in the Diet to evict US forces from Okinawa altogether.

In Europe and the Middle East, Zhirinovsky’s combination of brute force with superior

technology had crushed NATO’s armies, only a few of which managed to retreat. The others

had been encircled and butchered, breaking almost every principle in the United Nations’

human rights charter. To the Russian leader, nothing would stand in the way of final victory.

He knew the alliance with China had been one of convenience only. Russia had achieved its

objectives. China’s war, although going a lot better than he had personally anticipated, had

been a disaster from the Politburo’s perspective. Russia, he was convinced, would be

remembered as the true victor in this necessary war to readjust the world order.

NATO’s final act of strength was a coordinated air and missile attack on Russia’s bases in the

CIS, including the 201st Russian Military Base present in Tajikistan, the Dnepr radar station in

Kazakhstan and the 7th military base in Abkhazia. The aim of this attack was simple: to

overwhelm the defences of these bases and then storm them with special forces who would

almost certainly be followed by a full-scale invasion. The casualties were heavy, but it was not

enough to sway the tide of battle. At sea, NATO’s air and sea power had been perceived as

superior, but it had fallen behind in the areas of electronic warfare capability and missile

technology in the years leading up to the war. The Pentagon had warned two administrations

about this, but to no avail. Russia, however, had surged ahead in these areas and proliferated

these technological leaps with their allies. When used together in the right places at the right

times, this combination had proven a genuine game-changer. Carrier battle groups had

succumbed to ‘blackouts’ which were followed by ballistic and hypersonic

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missile attacks. On the ground, it had come down to brute force. While America’s finest gave

as good as they got, they were no match for Russia’s battle-hardened Siberian troops who

had greater air support, better weaponry and – as one of Zhirinovsky’s top generals later

said – colder blood in their veins.

Despite some ongoing minor skirmishes in Turkey, Kazakhstan and Lithuania, the Third World

War was declared officially over on 9 January, 2025. On this day, the United Nations General

Assembly sat in stunned silence as the Russian ambassador announced a new era of peace

and stability, saying there was now a “more stable world order.” Moscow, Beijing and the

United Korean Republic, the ambassador said sternly, would be the guarantors of that peace.

The truth, however, was that while the major battles had been won by Russia and – to a lesser

extent – China, the West would never accept this situation the Russian ambassador spoke of.

Instead, the West had been busy organising rebellions in the territories occupied by Russia,

China and their allies. Moreover, they had used every financial and political tool at their

disposal to put as much pressure as possible on these nations. Regardless of how the war’s

outbreak had been portrayed by non-Western media, what the Russians and Chinese had

done was unforgivable. From roadside bombs to guerrilla attacks from well-hidden tunnels,

the occupied territories would fight back. As the NATO Secretary-General sat alone in his office

reading a report on Russian troop movements in Azerbaijan, he looked out of the window and

uttered the following sentence with a heavy heart.

“How ironic that we have resorted to the tactics of our old enemies…in order to defeat a foe

that now looks every bit as much as we must have to them.”

EPILOGUE: THE WINNERS WRITE HISTORY With the end of the war came 8 million graves and one of the worst humanitarian disasters

in living memory. Over 20 million refugees were created in the CIS, the Middle East and

southern Europe.

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The United States and its allies had limped from the battle wounded but a lot better off than

they had expected to be. For decades, the military planners in the Pentagon had factored

nuclear war into the next global conflict. The agreement between the world’s nuclear

powers not to resort to using the destructive weapons had unarguably saved hundreds of millions of lives.

Nevertheless, the catastrophic impact the war had on the global economy would reverberate

for the next seven years, until new frameworks were put in place by the major powers. Major

financial institutions, such as the WTO, World Bank and the IMF, had been weakened by the

string of protectionist measures put in place by Europe’s economic powerhouses, and would

finally take a back seat to new institutions that emerged once the smoke cleared from the

war.

A new global security order gradually manifested with Russia and China playing a more

formidable role. China now controlled Taiwan and had retained most of the islands it had

captured in the South China Sea, despite the refusal of the US and its allies to recognise the

legitimacy of its occupations. The oil-rich Spratly islands remained under the control of the

Philippines, which now had a much heavier presence of US military hardware and troops.

Russia, under the aggressive leadership of its unpredictable tyrant Vladimir Zhirinovsky,

retained virtually all of the CIS and Eastern Europe, despite a fierce insurgency attacking

Russia’s occupying forces and the supply lines that helped maintain them. Afghanistan, as it

had done with every one of its invaders throughout history, eventually drove its occupiers out.

In 2023, the EEU would emerge as the world’s largest trading bloc, despite Belarus having left

the union in 2018. The countries that had vowed to exit the Euro-Zone, still in the grip of

fervent nationalism, promised never to cede their economic sovereignty to Brussels – or any

other capital for that matter – again.

By 2024, Germany had become the dominant political and military power in Europe. While

this drew resentment from Britain, the two countries worked closely together to provide a

strategic counterbalance to Russia’s new footholds further east.

As the US-Turkish-backed insurgency caused more problems for Russia, Zhirinovsky

gradually withdrew most of his forces from the CIS and cautiously wooed his Slavic allies in

an attempt to convince them to join the volatile EEU. After much frustration, Zhirinovsky

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eventually turned to the United Korean Republic, which signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the bloc in 2025.

Syria, although no longer under the reign of Bashar al-Assad, continued to have close ties

with Iran, Hezbollah and Russia. Its strategic value to these countries made this inevitable,

much to the consternation of Western capitals. The country’s civil conflict had come to an

end with the death of Bashar al-Assad, though groups which had vied for a larger political

role in the country continued to push for greater powers.

Iran’s democratic revolution had sent the Ayatollahs into exile and the nation soon elected a

progressive government. Iran once again knew life as it did before the Islamic Revolution of

1979. The country’s youth, which made up more than 80% of the population, celebrated in

the streets in scenes comparable to Europe’s V-Day Parade after World War Two. Up to a

million Iranians flooded back into the country once the dust had settled, some kissing the

soil that they no longer considered tainted. Hezbollah and Basiji forces who had acted with

impunity in the country for so long made a discreet departure for the eastern border.

Although Zhirinovsky got his wish of a Moscow-friendly government in Tehran, it was

nonetheless a government which had returned the destiny of its people to its rightful

owners.

Succumbing to Arab pressure, Jordan incorporated the West Bank and Gaza Strip into an

extended “security buffer” for Palestine. Israel, a dramatically weakened nation after a war

that had bled it of almost every resource it had held dear, could do little to stop the

declaration of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital one week later. The

historic move was backed by most of Europe but angrily condemned by the United States

and France. Several attempts were made by Jewish extremists to sow violence and division

between Palestine’s previously warring factions, but the war had changed the region

significantly. The Jewish State remained, but as a nervous spectator to what one CNN

reporter described as “perhaps world’s most complex healing process”.

The United Nations still remained as a relevant (but significantly weakened) institution for

peace. Its incoming Secretary-General declared that the Third World War had effectively

been a stalemate, and that the world remained on the brink of further hostilities. This

perspective was shared by the British Prime Minister who, upon learning of the US retreat

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from Korea, told the French ambassador that the ‘reign of the west’ had faced its most serious

challenge, and that this alone guaranteed more war in Europe and Asia. The avalanche that crushed the economic and geopolitical status-quo, historians would later

write, could not be stopped – only postponed. Indeed, it could have been stopped, but the

more ruthless forces of the world, which had the power to stop it, simply refused to. They,

like their equally ruthless predecessors through history, understood the direction in which the

tide of history was flowing and - obsessed with having their ‘moment in the sun’ - brought the

world another unthinkable catastrophe.

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