2020: The Grand Game
And so it begins.
The year is 2020, and the world has never seen more wealth, never such a great bounty of food, never such rapid progress in science. Still there is much conflict and unrest sweeping the globe in the wake of social, political, and technological changes in the last few decades. In the Americas, Columbia was once again rudely disabused of the notion that the great oceans surrounding it rendered it invulnerable to the petty conflicts in Europe and Asia. After the September 11'th Attacks the Columbians found themselves in Afghanistan, fighting a rising tide of radicalism alongside an unlikely ally sharing a common enemy, the USSR. Indeed, the Soviet Union stands astride both Europe and Asia, looking in each direction as China attempts to assert control over Asia and rip it's Asian allies out from the Comintern while in Eastern Europe, the threat of the unrest that plagued Romania and Poland in the 1990's threatens to flare up again. In western Europe, the old European empires solider on, but the Entente is divided, between it's three great founding members all pulling the alliance in a different direction, the Anglois toward the world's oceans and the Italians to the Mediterranean while the Germans look ever eastward with a wary eye as a state of unease has descended on the continent in the wake of the Yugoslav War of the 1990's. In Asia, China seems poised to rise to a grand station it believes to be it's by right. However, not all look kindly upon China as it expands it's influence, Japan struggles to hold on to what little is left of it's former Empire while India is growing increasingly panicked over it's encirclement by China, at the same time Soviet ally Vietnam and Columbian ally the Philippines are locked in disputes with China over the nine-dash line. In Africa, hope for peace after the brutal South African War was dashed by the wars in Darfur and South Sudan while a Jihadist insurgency grips the Sahel where militants hide in the vast wilderness and among the civilian population, awaiting their chance to strike again while the Anglois colony of East Africa sees it's own anti-colonial insurgency.
Will the Entente stay united and find common ground even as conflicts of interest fray the bonds of the alliance? Will the Soviets manage to stand tall and strong as the unquestioned hegemons of the Comintern and prevent China and the Entente from nibbling away at edges of it's sphere? Will Columbia, awakened from it's torpor and pulled into the world stage retreat back across the oceans, or assert it's will upon those it encounters on distant shores? Will the Chinese extend the rightful rule of the Middle-Kingdom across the Asian continent and remake it in the image of National Socialism, or have the Chinese bitten off more than they could chew? Will Japan be able to hold on to what is left of it's old glories, and perhaps find a way to bring new glories to the Empire of the Rising Sun? In this shifting world only one thing is certain. The winds of change are blowing and when they do, some people build walls while others build windmills.
The tipping point begins in the year 2020...
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In order to keep things moving, OP can, after approved vote, move the time forward more.
