Another turn of the millennium

[eurofed]

The main theme of this scenario, if it has one, is the Western world being a little more successful, but also experiencing bigger challenges, in the post-Cold War period. Original inspiration was to pick a TL where the course that led the UK to Brexit was reversed. From that it came natural to add other changes that made the EU and the West as a whole a bit more successful in the last 25 years, and then a few more butterflies that seemed appropriate or just interesting. The PoD is in the early 1990s; it is not so blatant or easily identifiable, apart from picking the first significant noteworthy divergence that comes to mind.

ITTL the Clinton Administration thanks to a better negotiation stance with the Congress was able to have a health reform scheme passed in 1993-94. Although imperfect and suboptimal, it laid down the groundwork for a set of improvements roughly similar to OTL Obamacare. Its benefits soon got popular enough with the American public to make the bulk of the system resistant to all subsequent Republican attempts to dismantle it, in a very similar way to Medicare-Medicaid and Social Security.

In Europe, a mediocre campaign of Euroskeptic parties led to Norway approving admission to the European Union in the 1994 referendum. The post-Yugoslav wars initially took place rather like OTL, but eventually escalated to a Serb invasion of Albania and Macedonia with the involvement of Hungary and Bulgaria. NATO intervened to suppress Serb expansionist rampage and human rights violations with a bombing campaign and eventually the invasion and occupation of Serbia. Russia was displeased with the outcome but at the time it was too weak to intervene. However the perceived setback in the Balkans stoked up Russian revanchist-nationalist urges down the line.

The peace deal gave Kosovo to Albania, Macedonia to Bulgaria, and northern Vojvodina to Hungary. It divided Bosnia between a Serb area that merged with Serbia and a Croat-Muslim zone that formed a confederation with Croatia. The Western powers quietly acquiesced to a population transfer that exchanged the vast majority of the Serb and Croat-Muslim minorities between Serbia and Croatia-Bosnia.

Since he was too busy and distracted by domestic and foreign policy issues, President Clinton never had an affair with a White House intern and his Administration remained relatively free from scandals and remarkably popular. As a result, VP Gore won the 2000 election without much effort. Islamist terrorism soon afterwards made itself known as a major global threat with an attack wave that claimed the lives of several thousand people in North America and Europe. An outraged USA led an equally pissed-off NATO in a concerted effort to eradicate Jihadist havens in Afghanistan and the border regions of Pakistan. However it avoided picking fights with Iraq, which it left stew in its post-Gulf War issues.

In the mid 2000s, America instead found itself involved in a different kind of conflict in East Asia. North Korea showed itself unwilling to make any real compromise about its nuclear program. The Americans eventually lost patience and bombed the known North Korean WMD sites. The NK leadership lost it and retaliated with a large-scale air and land attack against South Korea, Japan, and US bases in the region. The US, South Korean, and Japanese armed forces contained the NK offensive, invaded North Korea, and occupied it. Hasty negotiations with China led to a compromise deal: the USA renounced deploying forces above the 40th parallel north and the neck of the Korean Peninsula, the PRC agreed to reunification of Korea under South Korean leadership.

The Serb and North Korean leaders were prosecuted, tried, and sentenced to harsh prison terms by international tribunals for various acts of genocide or extensive human rights violations against their own population. No controversial equivalent of the Iraq War ever took place and Western public opinion largely came to regard the military interventions in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and East Asia as justifiable and popular ‘just wars’. Even ongoing global action against Jihadist terrorism kept solid political support. As a consequence the Labour government in the UK kept its political capital intact for longer.

It eventually decided to invest it in a massive political effort to bring Britain in the Eurozone during the early 2000. After a passionate national debate the British people narrowly approved the euro in a referendum. The British example created enough of a pro-European momentum that similar referendums also approved admission to the Eurozone of Denmark and Sweden. In a similar way, the political atmosphere created by these successes supported ratification of the European Constitution treaty which took place across the EU by referendum or parliamentary approval without excessive trouble. This created a lingering, widespread perception popular will supported European integration.

The Gore Administration was successful enough in its domestic and foreign policy agenda to get reelected in 2004, but incumbent fatigue and a declining economy allowed the Republicans to win in 2008. This however proved to be a poisoned fruit since recession exploded in full force in the following years, only getting worsened by the GOP economic policies. This in turn allowed the Democrats to win back the White House in 2012. They started implementing their liberal economic agenda with an economic relief package, further health care reform to transition to a single-payer system, and various measures to reduce economic inequality, student debt, and dependence on fossil fuels.

When recession hit Europe and stirred up latent economic and financial problems, European integration kept enough momentum and popular support from its previous successes that intensification of supranational cooperation became the main answer to the crisis and rising foreign threats. The Western European ‘core’ of the EU (France, Benelux, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Portugal) agreed to form a quasi-federal nucleus of the union with fiscal, military, and foreign-policy integration as well as extensive judicial, police, and intelligence cooperation.

The Central European nations (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary) and the Baltic states gradually oriented their policies to join the euro and the EU core despite some nationalist misgivings, out of a perceived overwhelming need for stability and protection from the resurgent Russian threat. UK, Ireland, and the Scandinavian nations opted out of this closer bond but remained tied to the ‘basic’ EU system, including in most cases the euro and the Schengen system. Sweden and Finland eventually changed their stance and chose to pursue full integration with the core out of their security concerns.

Britain instead picked to retain a looser bond with the continent, which included the Euro and OTL levels of integration but not the Schengen system. Despite some serious pressure of the Euro-skeptic right and tabloid press to disentangle the UK from the EU, the majority of the British public remained content with this status quo, since the alternative was perceived as too risky and troublesome. Iceland, Slovenia, Croatia-Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, Malta, and Cyprus also gradually joined the ‘outer ring’ of the EU; a few of them also showed interest for joining the core but in many cases their socio-economic and political standards made them unfit in the immediate future. Greece was kept in the same status because of its lingering financial problems. Slovenia, Malta, and Croatia-Bosnia were the lucky exceptions, being both willing and able.

[eurofed]

Unfortunately, the success and gradual enlargement of the EU and NATO in Eastern Europe increased the nationalist resentment and geopolitical paranoia of Russia that lingered since the collapse of the USSR. After the economic and political chaos of the 1990s, Russia gradually restored internal order under an authoritarian nationalist regime backed by the post-Soviet security apparatus and crony, oligarchic business elites. The new regime exploited revenues from fossil-fuel and other natural resources to rebuild a measure of economic stability and military power for Russia, even if it remained remarkably inferior to the West in both areas.

The Russian leaders invested these resources in an aggressive foreign-policy agenda to re-establish Moscow’s hegemony across the post-Soviet space and Russia’s global stance as a would-be superpower. The first serious manifestations of renewed Russian imperialist aggressiveness involved a series of military interventions, destabilization efforts, sponsored coups and regime changes, and diplomatic pressures that brought Belarus and most of the Caucasus and Central Asian states effectively back under the control of Moscow. An Eurasian system of Russian-dominated regional organizations for economic and military cooperation became the tool of this de facto neo-Soviet restoration.

Ukraine however stubbornly resisted all Russian attempts to pull it back in Moscow’s sphere of influence and clung to a non-aligned stance. This only increased when a liberal-democratic revolution brought down the local oligarchic regime and the new government showed intent to seek a closer bond with the EU. Russia first reacted by sponsoring a pro-Russian uprising in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. When the Ukrainian government’s reaction threatened to crush the rebels it escalated the conflict by invading and occupying Crimea, Eastern Ukraine, and the eastern half of Southern Ukraine.

The Russians easily defeated the Ukrainian army and annexed the conquered areas with a series of rigged referendums. An insurgency to oppose them quickly developed and was brutally repressed by Russian forces. The Western governments reacted by placing Russia under harsh economic sanctions that amounted to an effective embargo and severed most relations. They sent weapons and training support to the Ukrainians and warned Moscow that Russian occupation of Western and Central Ukraine, or a crossing of the Dnieper, might cause a NATO military intervention.

Overt Russian aggression of its neighbors revived Cold War-style polarization between Moscow and the West. It fuelled EU efforts to intensify their military and economic integration and make Europe independent from Russian energy sources. Finland and Sweden joined NATO, Moldova merged with Romania, Transnistria was partitioned between Romania and Ukraine. As a rule, the Russian threat made Scandinavia and Eastern Europe much less concerned about nationalist issues and much more supportive of extensive economic, political, and military integration with the Western European core.

An uneasy armistice put a stop to the armed conflict between Ukraine and Russia, although a pro-Ukrainian insurgency continued in the occupied eastern regions. Rump Ukraine got on a fast track to NATO and EU membership; the Western governments clarified collective-security guarantees of these organizations only covered the postwar territory of Ukraine, not the areas conquered by Russia. Further acts of Russian aggression or destabilization in Eastern Europe, especially against a NATO or EU member state, however would be answered by decisive retaliation. The Western powers engaged in a serious concerted effort to reinforce armed defense on the eastern border of their bloc, and Russia answered in kind with a military build-up of its own.

A further major source of global destabilization arose with the Arab Turmoil, a revolutionary wave that swept the Middle East. Initially it seemed to take the shape of a pro-democracy movement; in most cases however it soon degenerated into a confusing, bloody mess of ethnic-religious conflicts and factional struggles between Islamist radicals, militarist authoritarians, monarchist conservatives, and pro-Western moderates and liberals. Such instability greatly revived the threat of Jihadist terrorism. A notable exception to this disheartening pattern occurred in Iran. The coincidence of a succession struggle for the supreme guide that split the Islamist elites and a presidential election contested as rigged by a vast popular movement created a prerevolutionary situation.

It exploded into a civil war between reformist moderates and pro-democracy liberals backed by the majority of the regular army and Islamist hardliners backed by the revolutionary guards. The reformist moderates and revolutionary liberals were able to win thanks to Western support and widespread alienation of younger Iranians for the Islamist regime. The Western powers avoided a land intervention but provided arms, training, intelligence, and air support to the revolutionaries. Their victory transformed Iran into a pro-Western democratic republic. Liberal reformists were too weak to get the upper hand in Algeria and Egypt, so the Western powers turned to support military strongmen in their efforts to crush the Islamists. The West helped their regimes stabilize with economic and military support.

Libya seriously threatened to collapse in failed-state chaos after the collapse of the Qaddafi regime, but NATO intervention helped a pro-Western coalition of tribal and militia groups seize power and restore order. Tunisia was able to stabilize under a democratic regime. In the Persian Gulf states, Morocco, and Jordan the traditional monarchies remained popular or influential enough to retain their grip on power, although in many cases a notable pressure for democratization emerged. Turkey devolved into an Islamic-nationalist authoritarian regime that established a dictatorship and largely disentangled the country from its ties with the West. It pursued a neo-Ottoman foreign policy agenda in the Middle East and picked an ambiguous, opportunist stance between the Western world and Russia.

In Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia the situation got much worse and these states effectively broke down when the Baathist regimes and the Saudi monarchy collapsed to civil war. Ethnic-religious conflicts, a confusing multi-faction struggle, the ambiguous role of Turkey, and the meddling of Russia fuelled the failed-state collapse in the Mashriq and Arabia and prevented the Western powers from a decisive action to stabilize the situation. Only after much chaos and bloodshed a few areas of relative stability emerged, such as a pro-Russian Alawite entity on the Syrian coast, a pro-Iranian Shiite polity that encompassed southern Iraq and eastern Arabia, and a pro-Western multi-ethnic federation dominated by Kurds that included the northern regions of Syria and Iraq.

Other areas such as central-eastern Syria, western-central Iraq, and western-central Arabia unfortunately became the playground of Jihadist extremists that engaged in a serious effort to establish an Islamist proto-state (in their pretensions, a revival of the Caliphate). It soon became a major staging ground for atrocities and haven for global terrorism. The Jihadist entity brutally abused its subjects and sponsored random terrorist attacks against civilians. It made itself an enemy of anyone that did not fit its fundamentalist, sectarian vision of Islam and did not submit to its totalitarian agenda, so it quickly made itself a most hated and feared pariah.

The rise of the Jihadist proto-state greatly increased instability and bloodshed in the Middle East, and the global terrorism wave it sponsored claimed many victims. So the great powers and the other regional actors in the Muslim world more or less agreed on an action to weaken and destroy the rogue entity. Their means included a bombing offensive, support to friendly militias, and a military intervention by Muslim states to seize control of the Islamic holy sites. This action gradually showed promise, even if disunity and conflicting interests of the Western powers and Russia, Muslim regional powers, and local militia groups made it unfold more slowly and painfully than it could have been.

Because of polarization with Russia and instability in the Middle East, not to mention increasing awareness of the climate-change threat, the Western world joined in a concerted effort to lessen its dependence from fossil-fuel energy sources, especially from potentially hostile or politically instable states. As a rule, the Western powers were able to adapt and cope with some serious effort; the situation in the Middle East and the looming tension with Russia made the necessity of a different energy policy self-evident to many, albeit with some significant hardship and complaints.