History of the Twenty-First Century

(This is Part 1 of my chronicle of the history from your time period to my time period, the 109th century.)

The Twenty-First Century

The World War II ½ Theory

Some historians speculate that a major war, lasting about six years, broke out around 2012. The location most often suggested for this war is the Middle East. Although the identities of the players in this conflict are a matter of contentious debate, China seems to have been the primary benefactor of this hypothetical war, as China is known to have become the most influential world power in the Middle East by 2030. In addition, the United States and, to a lesser degree, Russia, seem to have expended a great deal of resources for some reason during the 2010s, as the national debt of both countries increased dramatically.

World War III

The next major war that we are aware of began in 2031, and primarily involved the United States and China. It may have started over a Chinese attempt to reclaim Taiwan. In any case, the conflict escalated, the United States and China exchanged nuclear salvos, and by 2039 Chinese ground troops had landed on the west coast of the United States. Chinese forces pushed all the way to the Rocky Mountains before the United States government capitulated. China retained the western United States from the Pacific Ocean to the Rocky Mountains, while a Chinese puppet was appointed as the new President, with control over the remaining territory from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean. The war resulted in an estimated 130 million combat deaths, and China became the dominant world hyperpower from that point on.

World War IV

In 2068, India, overcrowded and in need of land and resources, invaded Pakistan. A nuclear exchange ensued, in which India gained a decisive advantage. India’s goal, however, was not Pakistan itself but rather the oil fields further east in Iran, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula. India rapidly advanced through Pakistan and into Iran.

China, wanting to maintain its control over the Middle East and its resources, declared war against India. China also allied itself with the Arab nations in the region, and the Chinese and Arabs fought side by side to halt India’s advance at Baghdad.

However, there was a segment of Arab society that resented China’s presence in Arab lands, comparing it to America’s conspicuous involvement in the Middle East decades earlier. Some groups, most of them originating in the region’s Palestinian population, began to attack Chinese positions using the terrorist tactics they developed for use against American and Israeli interests during the early part of the 21st century.

China responded with extreme force; they planned to make an example of the Palestinians in the Middle East. The Chinese army invaded first the Gaza Strip, followed by the West Bank, and exterminated nearly the entire population with a combination of conventional air strikes, chemical weapons, and firing squads. Chinese forces also wiped out the Palestinian refugee camps and other Palestinian communities throughout the Middle East, often paying other Arabs to take part in the massacres and to hunt down the survivors. The Chinese government offered asylum and a bounty to any foreign citizen who murdered a Palestinian outside the Middle East.

The international community, including the Arab governments in the region, made no attempt to protect the Palestinian people, except for the famous Operation Berakah, which was initiated by Israel in cooperation with Italy. After the Israeli government realized what the Chinese military was doing in the Gaza Strip, a plan was formulated to rescue as many Palestinians as possible from the West Bank before the Chinese invaded it as well. Operation Berakah began on December 27, 2071, with the demolition of several sections of the wall that separated the West Bank from Israel. Israeli military transports, along with commercial buses and taxis, and even private civilian cars, then entered the West Bank and began evacuating Palestinians. Unfortunately, many Palestinians were skeptical about the Israelis’ intentions and reacted with disbelief to their claim that the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip had already been exterminated by the Chinese. Most of the Palestinians refused to leave the West Bank, but Israel was nevertheless able to effect the rescue of approximately 200,000 cooperative Palestinians. The rescued Palestinians were rapidly conducted to the Israeli coast, where they boarded ships destined for Italy, which had agreed to take in the Palestinian refugees. Operation Berakah continued until the moment the Chinese army reached the Israeli border.

Even after the arrival of the Chinese army and the conclusion of Operation Berakah, a few Israeli civilians managed to sneak behind Chinese lines and rescue a few more Palestinians. The most famous of these was an Israeli college student named Daniela David. She made an amazing five round trips to the West Bank and back in her car, rescuing twenty-three Palestinians, before Chinese forces recognized and opened fire on her car on her sixth entry into the West Bank. Daniela burned to death in her car.

Meanwhile, Chinese and Indian forces battled to a stalemate along the Tigris River. In 2072, another nuclear exchange was averted when an armistice was signed which allowed India to retain control of Pakistan, as well as the portions of Iran and Iraq lying south of a straight line from the point where the Afghanistan-Pakistan border intersected the Iranian border to a bend in the Tigris River just over halfway from the Persian Gulf to Baghdad. Under the armistice, Chinese hegemony over the rest of the Middle East was recognized, but its influence in the region after the war was diminished by India’s presence; India had gained control over the rich oil fields in southwestern Iran and southeastern Iraq. The war resulted in an estimated 125 million combat deaths.

World War V

The final world war began in 2095 in the middle of a deep economic depression. It involved China, India, Russia, and the European Union, and Middle East oil was yet again the center of the conflict. Early in the war, China invaded India with nuclear support, overthrew the government, and occupied a large part of Indian territory; Russia soon suffered the same fate. This left China and the European Union to fight over the Middle East.

The final battle of this war took place in early October of 2101, and it had the distinguishing characteristic of being the only 21st century battle to utilize cavalry. “Terrorists,” assumed to have actually been European Union agents, used electromagnetic pulse weaponry to disable much of China’s military and civilian technology, including tanks, hovercraft, aircraft, missiles, and satellite uplinks. Though outgunned by European Union forces, the Chinese army—on horseback—responded by attacking European positions all across the Middle East. In spite of the electromagnetic pulse attack, the Chinese proved to hold the advantage due to their superior numbers.

The European Union managed to turn the tide of the battle in the Middle East through the use of direct nuclear strikes on the Chinese ground troops, igniting many oil fields in the process—only to find their territories in Europe overrun by the Chinese force that had been occupying Russia, which was unaffected by the electromagnetic pulse attack. In a desperate attempt to stop China’s rapid advance across Europe, the remaining organized European militaries launched nuclear strikes on Chinese-held targets within European territory, which resulted in the destruction of many European cities.

By October 9, 2101, these scorched earth tactics had culminated in the total collapse of the European Union power structure, the last of which was eliminated with the fall of Paris; on the same day civil unrest emerging in the aftermath of the electromagnetic pulse attack in China finally resulted in the fall of the Chinese government and its puppet regime in the United States. The war ended with no victor, and left practically a worldwide power vacuum in its wake, resulting in the Dark Age of the 22nd and 23rd centuries. The combat death toll of this last war is estimated to have been about 190 million.

Achievements of the 21st Century

In spite of the frequent wars, the 21st century did produce some important scientific and technological achievements. Computer and telecommunication engineers had perfected telepresence by the 2040s; by the 2080s, true virtual reality was commonplace. Great strides were also made in the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics, especially in the 2080s and 2090s. Theoretical physicists formulated the Topological Theory of Relativity, challenging the Einsteinian notion that there are no preferred reference frames, and applied the mathematics of chaos theory to the study of quantum physics with fantastic success. New developments in genetic engineering foreshadowed the great advancements that would appear in this field after the Dark Age.

The United States, Russia, China, India, Japan, and the European Union successfully carried out manned Lunar landings. The United States, Russia, China, and the European Union also succeeded in landing humans on Mars. The United States conducted a manned flyby of Venus. Both the United States and China established colonies on Luna and Mars, which are still populated to this day; Russia established a manned Lunar outpost that was later abandoned. In addition, China established manned outposts on several asteroids and conducted a human landing on Jupiter’s moon Callisto.

Last Edited by AlcyoneOfMars on 08/05/2009 01:00 PM