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15 March 1950, Chequers, Buckinghamshire, England
"So, how were old Jawaharlal and Louis?" Clement Attlee asked.
Having just won his second general election in late February, Clement Attlee, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, first among equal of the various leaders of the Anglosphere, still looked rather exhausted, even though he was now taking a brief break at Chequers, the country estate that comes with the keys to Downing Street. Still, the other man having a late night scotch with him, Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations Patrick Walker, appeared considerably more haggard. Which was natural, considering he just flew halfway around the world, arriving back in London from Dehli that very afternoon.
"They're well. Considerably better than I am, I'd say." Walker said before taking another sip of the excellent single malt, neat, not 'on the rocks', as the Americans were atrociously prone to do. "They're both excellent at handling that bloody troublemaker, which is something."
The troublemaker in question was Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Deputy Prime Minister of the Federal Dominion of India, a position which, by virtue of considerable political wrangling over the constitution, was guaranteed to a Muslim. It was, of course, a far preferable solution to the potentially bloody civil chaos that would ensue after a hostile split between them and the Hindu population. Jinnah fights fiercely for additional concessions for the Muslim federal states, as his position was supposed to enable him to do. By and large, however, both Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister, and Louis Mountbatten, the ceremonial Governor General, were by that stage well-practised in dealing with him.
"They didn't object to the new Dhaka Fleet Base, did they?"
"No, thankfully. Nehru was quite enthusiastic, in fact. The Royal Indian Army and Air Force are well-placed to deter any Japanese incursion across the Burma border - they were especially pleased to see the new De Havilland Vampires and Centurion tanks. Their navy remains weak, however, so they desperately need the Far East Fleet to guard their right flank. Don't want another Malaya, now, do we?" Memories of the Malayan disaster in 42, when Japanese troops outflanked blocking positions through amphibious landings, remained deeply ingrained.
"And Jinnah?"
"Well, he said that since the base is being built in a predominantly Muslim state, a Muslim officer should be the base commander." It was a far cry from the days when exclusively native other ranks were commanded by an exclusively European officer corps, but some distinctions proved harder to eliminate than others.
"Who were they planning on commanding the base?"
"A Commodore Davinder Singh, Sikh."
"Ah, so how did they answer him?"
"They told him to sod off, politely, of course. The moment when they start taking ethnicities and religions into account when making these decisions is the moment when the Indian military falls apart."
"Let's look closer to home, Patrick. There've been some new developments," Attlee said. "We've decided to send the 7th Armoured to South France." Propping up de Gaulle's half of the country was getting seriously resource-prohibitive.
"South France?" Walker looked troubled. "That means..."
"Two armoured and one mech divisions for the XXX Corps garrisoning the Loire Valley DMZ. By the way, we've decided to establish a higher headquarter, the British Army on the Loire, or the BAOL, for short. Public pressure, you know. We need to make up for Dunkirk and Overlord, after all."
"How much troops does that leave for the rest of the Empire?"
Neither men blanched at the term 'Empire', which was surprising. By political inclination, the current left wing government was rather embarassed by the state of affairs. Talk of 'Empire' was out of fashion. These were no longer the days of Rudyard Kipling and Martini Henrys. The terms in vogue were that Britain headed a 'Commonwealth of Nations', a 'Union of Liberty'.
An Empire, however, was what it largely remained, and by necessity, too. The loss of most of the Far East to Japan has hardly diminished the overall power of Britain. The joint invasion of Iran with the Soviet Union and the Iraqi expedition of 1941, together with the continued subservience of most Arab monarchies to London, has allowed Britain to dominate the Middle East. Furthermore, by controlling the pipelines that lead out of the Central Asian oilfields of friendly USSR, as well as the Suez Canal and the straits of Homuz, Britain controls much more than half the world's oil and gas supplies. Even the fascist states of the world are not completely independent from the Anglosphere's oil. Such colossal economic clout proved to be instrumental in rebuilding the economy and the war machine after the bloody stalemate of 1944 and 45, allowing Britain to muster more ships, tanks and planes for a potential rematch with Germany and Japan. India became an autonomous dominion and the Commonwealth was stronger for it, but never in a million years would Britain loosen its stranglehold on the Middle East. It simply could not afford to - not without putting, by extension, London itself at risk.
"Not enough, Patrick. Don't you worry, though. You know what our long-standing policy to the Canal is."
"Of course. If someone threatens the Suez, take no prisoners. No exceptions."
Walker was still troubled despite this assurance. A statement of intent was one thing, whether Britain could still execute it is quite another thing.
