Third World War

The Third World War or World War III was a state of global war that lasted (officially) between 2037 and 2041 that was fought between the overwhelming majority of the world's countries. Primarily, the war was fought by two main factions, with the Eurasian Soviet instigating a conflict with the Free Market Block and the earth's other great powers rallying around one faction or the other. In some parts of the world becoming a state of total war, World War III was the most deadly natural disaster on earth up until the 21st Century. It was the first major military conflict to involve the use of Lorica fighting vehicles and the first wartime use of nuclear weapons since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the close of World War II. Ultimately, the war resulted in the collapse of the Eurasian Soviet into the Assembly of Independent Eurasian States, the end of the Outer Space Treaty, and, ultimately, the creation of the Western Sphere Hegemony.

Start and End Dates

It is generally accepted by most scholarship that the Third World War began in earnest on October 1, 2037, with the Sea of Tranquility Affair and the subsequent formal declaration of war between the Free Market Block and the Eurasian Soviet. If going by the metric of when the war truly became global in scale, others site April 3, 2038, with the invasion of Iran by the African Confederation, causing the last unaffiliated power to join the conflict.

Similarly, depending on scholarly focus, many cite the May 2041 Duel Over Moscow as the ending point of the war, as this incident marked the end of the war in europe and the formal dissolution of the Eurasian Soviet. Others site the signing of the Treaty of Beijing on July 5 of the same year as the end of the war, as this marked the formal end of hostilities between the two remaining belligerent powers, the Anti-Authoritarianism Treaty Organization and the People's Republic of China.

Background

Political Polarization

By the end of the 20th Century and certainly by the time of the Third World War, the world had largely been politically organized around two major power blocks at opposite political extremes. The Pripyat Incident and its aftermath had created the Eurasian Soviet late in the century as an amalgamation of european and asian communist republics, with a split political structure headquartered in Moscow and Beijing. This power faction was strongly opposed by the Free Market Block, a political and economic union of the North American countries, loosely allied with the equally-staunchly-anti-communist United States of Western Europe. While some other supranational unions formed by the time of the war, including the Oceanic Econo-Political Union, African Confederation, and South Asian Free States, all were more or less aligned to one side or the other by degrees, and both the latter 20th century and early 21st century was largely defined by occasional proxy conflicts between these powers.

The Robotics Race

Following the Pripyat Incident the economies of what became the United States of Western Europe and the Eurasian Soviet, and by extension the overall world economy, became fixated on the field of robotics, originally starting with the demand for high-quality remote unmanned vehicles to assist in NBC Search and Rescue operations in the affected area, becoming the Humanoid Robotics Renaissance of the 1980s and 1990s.

However, by the second decade of the 21st century, both major powers and the recently-formed Oceanic Econo-Political Union had, in secret, entered into a robotics race, with flashy consumer and industrial robotic products serving as proxy indicators of robotic advancement that hinted, under the hood, of military applications, in a manner similar to the first Space Race. This work culminated in the OEPU's Project Lorica, the proliferation of information about which became a key factor in the dominance of Lorica fighting vehicles as military assets on both sides of the conflict, but the competing Ursa Ruska and Defense Research Institute projects also added to this spirit of accellerationism.

In the early days of the war some younger people were even enthusiastic about the opportunity to see their nation's fighting robots in action. However, this robotic arms race was not without its downsides; Antiballistic Weapons Systems also advanced at breakneck speed and relegated the strategic-level nuclear exchange and the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction to the wastebin of history.

South America and the Caribbean

Even before the formation of both entities, South America had long served as a proxy battlefield for the ideological camps that eventually became the Eurasian Soviet and the Free Market Block, and by the 21st century the continent was a mixture of nominally-independent states each with the tacit backing of one side or the other in the free-market-captialism versus communism divide.

After the formation of the Free Market Block, Washington began a campaign of assessionism, inducting the friendly latin states into the Free Market Block treaty system as member nations and client states. In response, the Eurasian Soviet did the same. This came to a head with the Brazil Affair in 2034 and the subsequent series of coups and staged revolutions that brought tensions between Washington, Beijing, and Moscow to their pre-war height and ultimately resulted in FMB hegemony in latin america.

Africa

Following World War II, the Pripyat Incident's spoiler effect on what became the Eurasian Soviet's influence, and the collapse and reorganization of the European powers, the free nations of Africa organized into the African Confederation, a continental union and supranational entity similar to the former European Union, by 1991. With a mandate to protect all of Africa from foreign interventionalism and colonial ambitions, promote the prosperity of the African people, and protect the the natural beauty of the world's second-largest continent, the African Confederation was, at the time, the largest of the supranational unions by both geography and population. African independence had come at the time of the explosion in technologies from the Humanoid Robotics Renaissance and the union rapidly cemented its economic influence as a result. By 2015, the African Confederation was effectively a nation in its own right, controlling its own intelligence agency, military, and even a space program.

The wealth and independence of Africa is both an influencing factor in the proxy-wars and tension building leading up to the Third World War as well as one of the principal reasons nuclear exchange during the war was as limited, following both the Adis Ababa Declaration and the Treaty of Cairo, and ultimately became the headquarters of the Western Sphere Hegemony Court of Military Law after the war.

Europe

The burgeoning European community was all but destroyed in the Pripyat Incident, but not all at once, as the destruction was largely political. As the Eurasian Soviet began to organize, two key factors put strain on the western European powers: the increasingly rapid decolonization of their former colonial holdings, and eastern europeans fleeing the situation in their homelands. This, combined with outsize influence from the union that became the Free Market Block, lead to the formation or strengthening of Western European republican ideology. By the time the Eurasian Soviet had been fully reorganized, the EC had similarly reorganized itself into the United States of Western Europe, a federal power with its own legislative, executive, judicial, and military authorities. This strengthened the iron curtain divide between east and west, fuelled reactionary sentiment in Europe, and ultimately prevented the cooling of the cold war in the 90s and early 2000s. The Western European state had a strong alliance with the Free Market Block and it was only the rhetoric around potential nuclear war that kept it independant of the FMB prior to 2037.

Asia and Oceania

With 1991 holding both the formation of the Eurasian Soviet and the Republic of England, Scotland, and Wales, the resultant uncertainty in Australia and Japan lead to a period of high anxiety and tension, ultimately leading the two to form the beginnings of the Oceanic Econo-Political Union, eventually joined in union by many other Pacific and Southeast Asian states including the Philipines, the Restored Kingdom of Hawaii, New Zealand, Thailand, and so on. Created to protect the neutrality of its member states from both of the "polar powers", the OEPU pursued policies of alliance and trade with the African Confederation as well as aggressively pursuing defense research initiatives. The most famous of these was Project Lorica, which thanks to later leaks of the resultant standards became the absolute standard definition for Lorica fighting vehicles and similar designs the world over. However, both the release of this information in the years leading up to the war and increasing brinksmanship between OEPU South Korea and the Eurasian Soviet in North Korea are cited as causes for the war in general, and certainly for the OEPU's entry into the war, which contributed to the great scale of the conflict.

Several other South Asian states, most prominently India, also responded to the collapse of the colonial powers by forming a mutual defense treaty akin to NATO known as the South Asian Free States, and it was the triggering of this treaty in 2036 that is sometimes cited as the "real" start of the war.

Pre-War Events

2021 Black Desert Conflict

The 2021 Black Desert Conflict was a proxy war fought between two PMCs - Serif Specialty Robotics and Zaftra Free Enterprise - over territory in the Ukraine. Mostly fought through UAVs and the use of armed NBC SAR robots, this conflict also marked the first combat use of Lorica-pattern vehicles through the Lorica Prima model design. Initially thought of as entirely uncritical in world affairs (owing to the intensely useless nature of the Black Desert), this conflict probably did more to spur on development of Lorica combat systems and is likely directly responsible for the inspiration of the Eurasian Soviet Ursa Ruska weapons platform.

The Brazil Affair (2034)

The independent nation of Brazil, at the time affiliated with neither the Free Market Block nor the Eurasian Soviet, experienced a period of organic political arrest beginning with their presidential elections in October of that year, when a populist candidate for the presidency was defeated in the voting, and their supporters began rioting in Rio. Both of the polar powers, misjudging the situation, began to funnel in support for their favoured candidates in the form of both material wealth and support from black-budget PMCs. The resultant discovery of hard evidence of this and its release by Project Clarity operatives resulted in absolute unrest and upheval, which lead to the Brazillian Civil War and, ultimately, the assession of the Republic of Brazil into the Free Market Block.

North African Wars (2035)

On February 18, 2035, the United States of Western Europe invaded the African Confederation territories of Algeria and Morroco, and pushed early advantage into Nigeria, intending to capture valuable oil fields and mineral resources. The African Confederation were assisted in their counter-offensive by OUDF assets including OUDF 1st Lorica Regiment, marking the first full-scale deployment of Lorica assets in wartime. The North African Wars also lead to the Adis Ababa Declaration against the use of nuclear weapons and by 2037 all world powers had signed the accompanying Treaty of Cairo, probiting the use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield. These declarations and the resultant loss of access to African oil and mineral resources very effectively crippled the economic productivity of the USWE until after the Third World War had begun in earnest.

German Unification Crisis (2036)

In the summer of 2036, facing a people's revolt, the Easter German government capitulated, attempting to rejoin with Western Germany, which by now was a USWE state. These tensions nearly resulted in war between the Eurasian Soviet and the USWE, and up until the Sea of Tranquility Affair, were considered the closest the world had come to World War III. Negotiations surrounding the reunification of Germany were held in Victoria, OEPU Australia, and the resultant Berlin Agreement stipulated that the two germanies could be reunited if, and only if, the reunited German Federation was independent of both the USWE and the Eurasian Soviet, and was held as a Demilitarized Zone.

Himalayan Border War (2036)

On October 30, 2036, the 15th Dalai Lama died unexpectedly in Mumbai, India, a South Asian Free State. This resulted in social unrest the Tibet Autonomous Region of the Eurasian Soviet and the formation of the Returning Government, supposedly a successor to the Tibetan government-in-exile, with the support of Nepal, another South Asian Free State, by November 2036. A brief two-month war was fought thereafter, the Himalayan Border War, which began with Eurasian Soviet Red Army forces attacked by the Nepalese, and the resultant "police action" against Nepal triggering the terms of the South Asian Free State's mutual defense treaty. The war was paused with the Christmas Armistice of 2036 negotiated by the African Confederation's representatives in Delhi and Beijing, and would not begin again in earnest until the Third World War was well underway.

Course of the War

The Sea of Tranquility Affair

Commonly cited as the start of the war due to it being the first event in open hostilities between the Free Market Block and the Eurasian Soviet, the Sea of Tranquility affair began on October 1, 2037, with the destruction of Station Spokoystviye, the soviet lunar base, by FMB Saboteurs. In retaliation, together with press activity denouncing the attack by Washington, Beijing timed their declaration of war against the Free Market Block with the launch of Operation Suihou Fengbaou, a nuclear strike against the joint Canadian-American moon base, in the early hours of October 2, 2037, which lead to a strategic nuclear exchange by both parties known as the First Battle of the Arctic that was ultimately unsuccessful in causing much destruction on either side thanks to the Photon Curtain and the Lucas Constellation, respectively.

Oceanic Econo-Political Union Entry Into The War

By October 5th, the OEPU had entered the war on the side of the South Asian Free States, after the collapse of the Christmas Armistice of 2036 caused by a re-ignition of hostilies in the Tibetan Plateau. OEPU strategy initially involved the invasion of the formerly-independent DPRK from OEPU South Korea, Sakhalin by OEPU Japan, and a joint OEPU-member-state effort to protect oceanic shipping routes into South Asian Free States members from OEPU and Free Market Block ports. This activity all occurred as part of the Operation Sunrise contingency created by the Special Research Force after the Project Lorica leaks and the revelation of the Eurasian Soviet's Ursa Ruska weapon system.

Project Great Way

Faced with a two-front war between the Free Market Block on one side and the combined efforts of the Oceanic Econo-Political Union and South Asian Free States on the other, Eurasian Soviet leadership needed a way to quickly remove one or the other from fighting. Combined with the expected entry of the United States of Western Europe into the war on the side of their close economic partners, the Free Market Block, contingency planning called for the elimination of one or both "pacific" powers by the end of the year.

This resulted in Project Great Way, a sort of mechanized blitzkreig using traditional armour and Ursa Ruska units advancing under the cover of theater- and tactical-scale nuclear weapons through southwest asia and the creation of a Project-Plowshares style corridor through the himilayas using nuclear weapons. While ultimately unsuccessful in part due to what one OEPU engineer later called "the absurd notion of driving a canyon through the himalayas", the assault on Pakistan, India, and Iran from their northwest was much more successful and resulted in a force shift that allowed the Red Army to retake Tibet and even conquer Nepal, destabilizing the South Asian Free State alliance over the perceived abandonment of Nepal by its member-states.

African Entry Into the War

The Invasion of Iran by the Eurasian Soviet was nominally targeted at a South Asian Free States-aligned power, but was ultimately miscalculated, based on the believe that Iran's other ally, the African Confederation, would not join the war. This belief, based on the continued tensions between the Free Market Block, the United States of Western Europe, and the African Confederation, was further founded on the idea that the Treaty of Cairo indicated a general lack of appetite for war in Africa.

However, already incensed over the blatant violation of the Treaty of Cairo that the First Battle of the Arctic and Operation Suihou Fengbaou represented, for the African Confederation, Iran was the perfect pretext, and the AC launched a counter-invasion of southwest asia as a result, liberating their ally Iran and reinforcing their allies in the Arabian Peninsula, before ultimately pushing up around either side of the Caspian sea into Russia and as far north as Khazakstan, even relatively early into the war.

The War In Europe

Prompted by the Free Market Block and using the sudden activation of the African Confederacy military as a pretext, the United States of Western Europe threw out the Berlin Agreement and provided membership to the German Federation. On the same day, USWE forces pushed through the now-armed Germany into the Eurasian Soviet territories in historical Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus, opening a third front to the war in Eurasia.

However, in part because of the sanctions imposed upon them earlier in the century by the African Confederacy, the USEW did not have the early materiel count or quality to effectively neutralize the combined arms operations of the Red Army, and were quickly pushed back. At its greatest extent, the Eurasian Soviet had conquered europe as far west as southern France and as far south as the Alps.

The War in the Americas

Having expended much of their strategic missile arsenals in the First Battle of the Arctic, and not having expected the extreme success of the Lucas Constellation and Photon Curtain, neither the Free Market Block nor the Eurasian Soviet had the immediate capacity to directly attack the other beyond harassment by air power. While the Soviets eventually concieved of Operation Tsar Ursa - the trans-arctic invasion of Canada - and the Free Market Block had an unactivated contingency Operation Everlasting Freedom that would have provided for a two-front invasion of Eurasia, both required significant time and planning to prepare.

South America, however, was a different story. Incompletely unified, pockets and cells of various states of readiness existed in the South American states that remained loyal to the Eurasian Soviet, and there was still Cuba. The resultant guerilla warfare and "pocket wars" slowed and ultimately prevent Operation Everlasting Freedom from being carried out until the Eurasian Soviet could activate Operation Tsar Ursa and begin the Second Battle of the Arctic.

Anti-Authoritarianism Treaty Organization

Emboldened by their mutual successes, the leaders of the African Confederacy, South Asian Free State, and Oceanic Econo-Political Union met in secret in Antananarivo, Madagascar to formalize the negotiations around and formation of the Anti-Authoritarianism Treaty Organization, a mutual aid agreement that provided for military and logistics standardization and support among the member states. Three months later, membership in the organization was extetended to the United States of Western Europe, who had agreed to significant concessions in return for military and economics support during and after the remainder of the war.

Membership was further extended, some say reluctantly, to the Free Market Block, formalizing alliances out of concern that the Free Market Block's expected counter-invasion of the Eurasian Soviet may not stop at the appropriate borders.

Counter-Invasion of Europe

Once the USWE was accepted into the AATO, reinforcement units (chiefly from the OEPU and AC) began pouring into Spain, Italy, and (with Free Market Block naval support) the Republic of England, Scotland, and Wales, and a counter-invasion into the territories claimed by the Eurasian Soviet was announced. The Second Battle of Europe marked both the first use of the Ursa Ruska Shagohod in an attack on the city of Paris, France, as well as the first successful example of Anti-Ballistic Weapon Systems being deployed by a Lorica - a specialist operator piloting a Pharaoh Combat Robotics Thoth model. This incident, the Duel over Paris, was the last use of any ballistically-delivered nuclear explosive payload in the war.

Initially sluggish, the counter-invasion of Europe was dramatically accelerated once Free Market Block military units began landing on Europe in earnest.

The Duel Over Moscow

Beginning on May 15, 2041 AATO forces had beseiged and were invading the city of Moscow, one of the two capitals of the Eurasian Soviet. The ensuing week long battle, known popularly as the Duel Over Moscow for its final moments and a highly-acclaimed dramatized painting of the event, culminated in a literal duel between French Lorica pilot Teophania Mors (piloting an Arsenal Magnifique Frisson "Teophania Mors Type") and Red Army brigadier-general Revmir Baladin piloting an unknown Ursa Ruska special model. The duel destroyed much of the Kremlin campus of the city and took place during a rout of the remaining Red Army forces. The following day, May 23, 2041, the Moscow Soviet-in-Exile declared their capitulation, though many government officers managed to escape by air to Beijing and other safe cities in the remaining Eurasian Soviet.

The Sack of Beijing Incident

Concurrently with the counter-invasion of europe, especially once the Free Market Block had joined the war effort on the side of the Anti-Authoritarianism Treaty Organization, the South Asian Free State and African Confederation continued to prosecute the war on their own front, pushing into western asia. At the same time, early gains by the Oceanic Econo-Political Union were cemented and became the starting point for a joint AATO invasion of the eastern heartland of the Eurasian Soviet. This culminated in the late-June 2041 seige of Beijing and the July 5, 2041 Treaty of Beijing.

While this brought a formal end to the war, hostilities, particularly in Beijing, continued for weeks afterward, resulting in an incident known as the Sack of Beijing. Free Market Block army officer Lieutenant-Colonel Johnathan Biggs lead a Lorica unit on a rampage through the city, later stating upon his arrest by military police that his actions were "revenge for the rioters and saboteurs" that had been harassing the occupying force, as well as "getting even for the 20", a reference to the so-called Big 20 Eurasian Soviet officials who had escaped arrest and prosecution.

Impact

World War III's extreme casualty and violence had an immediate impact on the demographics and fortunes of every country on earth, but also had lasting impacts that shaped events in the entire solar system for centuries to come.

Establishment of the Western Sphere Hegemony

In the years following the war, riding the joint highs of their combined victory over the Eurasian Soviet and their own political popularity at home, the leaders of the founding nations of the Anti-Authoritarianism Treaty Organization - the African Confederacy, South Asian Free States, and Oceanic Econo-Political Union - began to rally support around expanding the powers of the AATO and further enhancing its legislative ability. By 2050, the AATO had become a supranational government akin to those that had spawned it, and had changed its name to the Western Sphere Hegemony, placing its headquarters in Baghdad. Initially, this hegemonic union did not include the Free Market Block, though the block later acceded for trade concessions. However, without a Eurasian Soviet for it to counter-balance, its extremes were harder to support, and it enjoyed an unfortunate "second rate" status without much influence in the Hegemony until after the eventual establishment of the Terran Hegemony considerably later.

Declassification and Prosecution of War Crimes

In the years that followed the war, AATO officials (and later Western Sphere Hegemony) officials began a process of cataloging and declassifying records related to the prosecution of the war, in response to widespread public demand.

Eurasian Soviet War Crimes

Eurasian Soviet officials, including the Big 20 in absentia, were held responsible for war crimes perpetrated during the war, including the Himalayan Mass Casualty Events, mistreatment of prisoners, illegal use of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, and their violation of the 1963 Outer Space Treaty in their nuclear attack on the moon. Critically, it was stressed during these trials (which became known as the Madagascar Trials) that the Eurasian Soviet was not being prosecuted for having started (or further prosecuted) the war in and of itself, but for the illegal ways in which they attempted to carry it out, and their atrocities against civilians in Tibet, Nepal, Europe, and within their own borders.

Convicted offenders from the Madagascar Trials were sent to a permanent prison constructed for the purpose of housing them, known as the London Facility.

Free Market Block War Crimes

Free Market Block officials were not immune from prosecution simply by having won, and FMB accession to AATO had included a stipulation that they, to, be subject to questioning and trial - a provision that was popular among the general population of even the Free Market Block after the war, when the true scope of devastation was revealed. Several officers were credibly accused of war crimes for their wartime conduct, and much like in the Eurasian Soviet, abuse of prisoners and civilian casualties were rife. In particular, the Free Market Block was held responsible for the Sea of Tranquility Incident as a 1963 Outer Space treaty violation. Convicts under these trials (known as the Cairo Trials) were imprisoned at the Sydney Facility.

Beginning in 2044, AATO officials had learned of, and begun to declassify, the Defense Research Initiative's Project Opus. Project Opus sought to produce the next-generation Lorica technology by unifying human neural tissue and vehicle control systems. While some of the experiments were relatively mild, many were absolute atrocities, such as the most famous example, which created a group of victims known popularly as the Ghost Company. Many who participated in the project were imprisoned at the Sydney Facility, but the project leader and DRI director Jessop Vale committed suicide during his sentencing hearing through the use of a concealed hydrogen cyanide device in his mouth.

Western Hegemony Court of Military Law

Following the establishment of the Western Sphere Hegemony and having seen the failures of previous attempts at international law enforcement in the leadup and prosecution of the law, the Western Sphere Hegemony created a permanent court of military justice in Madagascar, as well as the Adjudication Joint Fleet, a military peacekeeping organization funded and leveed by the member-states of the Hegemony to act in place of any one national military and enforce regulations on the use of force and classes of weapon permitted in combat.

Collapse of the Eurasian Soviet

The states of the Eurasian Soviet suddenly found themselves leaderless and rudderless, and many were controlled after the war by equally-disliked puppet governments. Most would eventually gain independence through revolution or public appeal, forming the Assembly of Independent Eurasian States, though the shared culture persisted to a degree well into the formation of the full Terran Hegemony as the former soviet states slowly joined the Western Sphere Hegemony.

However, with the escape of the Big 20 to the former Eurasian Soviet lunar colonies and eventual establishment of the Martian Soviet, the influence of the Eurasian Soviet lasted well into the 22nd Century and only really ended with its fall during the Martian Conflict.