North African Wars

The North African Wars refer to a conflict fought between February 18, 2035, and September 29, 2035 over the territories of Algeria, Morocco, and Niger in Africa between the invading United States of Western Europe and the African Confederation. Contemporary reporting framed the invasion as a counter-terrorist police action, alleging that recent terror attacks in Madrid had been caused by a terror cell in the African Confederation, but later historical analysis suggested that the primary causes of the war were economic.

Causes

There is a disparity between the alleged and likely causes for the war, easily divided into the rhetorical posture assumed by the USWE government to justify their invasion to their populace, and the economic motivations that likely drove the government to take such radical action.

Rhetorical Posture

Weeks prior to the invasion, a metro station in Madrid, Spain, was struck by a suicide bomber. While later ties were circumstantial at best, the government of the Republic of Spain and the USWE as a whole began using the conversations surrounding this individual to establish a pretext of West African support, alleging specifically that the bomber was affiliated with a largely-defunct terror cell operating in Morocco and Algeria.

Drumming up public support for the war was largely successful, in part due to stoking existing sentiments of xenophobia, and in later stages of the war a blank appeal to perceived crises.

Economic Motivations

The main motivations for the war were likely entirely economic. Western Africa was rich in resources that western europe largely lacked, such as Rare Earth Metals and what was left of the global Petroleum Oil supply. In addition, several prominent USWE political factions frequently stoked their base using far-right talking points such as those relating to overcrowding and appeals to the glorious colonial past of Western Europe.

While the initial actions of the war likely were founded in a sort of unilateral, international police action, the economic and xenophobic sentiment was strong enough to support a full-scale invasion of Morocco and Algeria with the ultimate intention of also taking Nigeria and all lands west to the Atlantic.

Course of the War

The war can ultimately be divided into a few distinct phases: the initial USWE invasions of Morocco and Algeria, the counter-invasion by the African Confederation and resulting stalemate, and the entry of Oceanic Econo-Political Union forces into the war on the side of the African Confederation.

Invasion of Morocco

From the initial incursions in the war right on through to its conclusions, much of the fighting focused around the USWE establishing and holding a foothold in Morocco, which was established by the prompt militarization of the Mediterranean Sea, supplemented with air power and a crossing of the Strait of Gibraltar to retake Ceuta and capture Tangier, then pushing south as quickly as possible to set up a defensive perimeter.

The USWE's primary goal in the early days of the war was to essentially take the entire country of Morocco northward of the city of Fes, and use the area as a beachhead to further supply their main war effort in Algeria. They did continue strikes as far south as the border with Mauritania, mostly via air power, for much of the war.

Invasion of Algeria

The invasion of Algeria coincided with the invasion of Morocco, though the goals were different. While Morroco was little mmore than a target of opportunity to take advantage of the narrower crossings involved, Algeria was to provide the primary avenue for an invasion that would also include Niger. Here the goal was to proceed southward as quickly as possible and to establish a depth of field. This relied heavily on armoured warfare - unlike the Eurasian Soviet, Free Market Block, and Oceanic Econo-Political Union, the United States of Western Europe did not have a piloted military robotics program with a working model by 2035, though they had hoped the information they gained from Project Lorica's public disclosure would get them there soon.

Ultimately, this invasion would proceed no further south than Tamanrasset, as reinforcements from allied Libya and Niger arrived, and nearby Tunisia also began rear-guard harassment of USEW positions.

Counter Invasion

Within two days of the stall at Tamanrasset, the military of the African Confederation had fully mobilized, and units were being brought north from as far south as Namibia were being deployed to assist. This culminated in a breakthrough that trapped a large USEW contingent at Tamanrasset, leading the USEW government to threaten the use of nuclear arms in the conflict if the AC did not concede to return the captured soldiers and materiel. In response, the AC government issued the Adis Ababa Declaration on the use of Nuclear Weapons.

Arrival of Reinforcements

At the moment of invasion, an alliance with the Oceanic Econo-Political Union entered into force immediately; it is believed that the USEW did not expect the OEPU to meet their requirements in this regard.

Within two months of the start of the conflict, there were OEPU boots on the ground including the OUDF 1st Lorica Regiment. The resultant battles marked the first uses of humanoid robotics as crew-served weapons in warfare, and are regarded as having been largely deterministic of the course of the rest of the wars.

Aftermath

Adis Ababa Declaration

The Adis Ababa Declaration was a statement issued on March 7, 2035 by the government of the African Confederation, responding to the encirclement of USWEAF forces near Adis Ababa. When threatened with Nuclear Retaliation if the forces were not immediately released, the AC government declared that any nation whose force deployed nuclear weapons in any theater would be subject to total trade sanctions with the African Confederation.

The Adis Ababa Declaration was the spiritual precursor to the 2037 Treaty of Cairo which formalized a nuclear weapons ban on earth for the first time since the Second World War. Unfortunately, come the Third World War, the ban did not fully hold.

Treaty of Cairo

The Treaty of Cairo is the common name for the Treaty on the Responsibilities of States in the De-Escalation of Nuclear Brinksmanship, a 2037 agreement signed between the supranational organizations of Earth in the months immediately before the Third World War. It is arguably the most ignored treaty in history, as the third world war began in October of the same year with unilateral nuclear weapon strikes - Operation Suihou Fengbaou and the First Battle of the Arctic.

The treaty was reinforced in the aftermath of the war and ultimately forms the underpinning of the Western Sphere Hegemony prohibition on nuclear weapons, which is among the prohibitions enforced by the Arbitration Joint Fleet.

Impacts on the Third World War

The North African Wars had quite a few impacts on the Third World War, which started only a few short years later. Firstly, the wars had left the USWE military badly depleted, and wrong-footed with regard to morale. Worse, they were in a terribly disadvantageous position in terms of trade with the resource-rich African Confederation, relying on finished goods from the Free Market Block instead, including for military purposes. This back-foot position probably caused the conditions that allowed the Eurasian Soviet to feel comfortable in invading the USWE during the early stages of the war.

On the other hand, the North African Wars probably served to strengthen the relationship between the African Confederation and the Oceanic Econo-Political Union, who together with the South Asian Free States formed the alliance that ultimately won the Third World War, in part because of the close cooperation between the two wealthiest powers in the alliance. The war was also likely responsible for the cooperation agreements that rapidly accelerated the African Confederation's adoption of Lorica technology, which had become the core of the ground combat doctrine of the African Confederation Armed Forces by the time of their counter-invasion of Iran.