History

Generally,
the 21st Century has been characterized by two trends. The first
trend, prevalent from the late 20th Century onwards, has been an
increase in the power of corporations, particularly multinationals. Underpinned
by neoliberal politics and globalization of industry, nation states found their
traditional powers increasingly limited, as multinationals offshored more and
more profits, reducing the tax base countries used for state expenditure. This
went hand-in-hand with increased funding of political parties, lobbying and
corruption, as well as ever might right-wing control of global media and
information flows. Over the course of decades, nation states, particularly
democratic ones, found the idea of social safety nets and mixed economies ever
more impossible to sustain.

The second
trend, prevalent from the middle of the 21st Century, was climate
change and its effects. The poorest countries in the world were those hardest
hit by environmental catastrophes, which made other crises – including disease,
war, inequality and terrorism – harder to deal with. States began to collapse
into anarchy, which triggered the Illegal Economic Invasion (as the wealthier
countries termed it); billions of refugees fled into other nearby nations,
themselves already on the brink of disorder, overwhelming them. This set in
motion a domino effect of state collapses.

Certain
trans-regional or major events are worth highlighting. Before the midpoint of
the 21st Century, the focus of fear in the West shifted away from Islamic
extremism before being refocused on refugees in the middle of the century.
However, having effectively created a bogeyman in Islamic terror, the West
found this terror did not vanish overnight. From the middle of the century, and
as Red Zone states started to fall into anarchy, the Salafist Mumlaka – very
similar to Islamic State – cropped up in Africa, the Middle East, the Indian
Subcontinent and the South East Asian Archipelago. It has been launching terror
attacks against Yellow and Green Zone countries ever since.

Fallout from the limited-scale India-Pakistan Nuclear War of 2055
has plagued countries across the world and prompts regular prophylactic doses
of iodine isotope for those with money. During the panic of civil war, some Pakistani factions attempted to
attack India and seize the rest of the Punjab and Kashmir, which remained food
and water rich. The Indian military responded with airstrikes on Pakistani
command sites. One of the factions responded by launching six nuclear warheads
at India, destroying large parts of Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai as well as
several military command stations. It was a humanitarian disaster from which
India never recovered, even as it mobilised into Pakistan and destroyed its
remaining command structure. India itself collapsed during the following
decade.

Global
pandemics have become regular. Some of these – Ebola, Pitts Virus and Smallpox
– have been devastating but successfully limited. Influenza has been the
greatest killer, most notably the Korean Influenza Pandemic starting in 2064
and lasting for four years, during which three hundred million people died.

Struggles over the newly-traversable Arctic began in
the middle of the century, involving several hot and cold confrontations
between Scandinavian countries, Russia, the United States and Canada, though
these have now receded as trade routes and territorial claims have been
formalised as belonging primarily to global corporations. On the other side of
the world, coastal Antarctica has now become not only habitable but fairly
pleasant, capable of supporting aquaculture and limited agriculture. It has
become a preserve of the very wealthy seeking cooler climes.

Increasing global
corporate power saw a decline in the power of other supranational
organisations. The defunding of the United Nations by the US in 2028 weakened
the already impotent and paralysed Security Council. A series of scandals followed,
as China and Russia attempted to exert more influence. The US and Israel began
boycotting the organisation wholesale, followed by other Western nations. UNHCR
functions collapsed in the mid-2030s as the climate refugee crisis started to
manifest. Other agencies like WHO and UNESCO followed, with all political
functions suspended in 2052 after a death by a thousand cuts.

Within Europe, the
European Confederacy was the natural inheritor of the European Union, founded
as a result of the existential crisis that beset the EU in the 2030s. An
increasing friction between monetary unions and fiscal independence, along with
the need for a defence force to protect against increasing pressure from Russia
and climate migrants, lead to an ever closer union. Populism was satiated as
the bloc swung to the right and became, as it were, transnationalists,
introducing the idea of European, rather than national, superiority. The
European Confederacy was created in March 2037. While elements of the
legislature and executive offices remained in Brussels and Strasbourg
respectively, the unified European government is based in Luxembourg City. Like
the national governments of which it is a confederacy, it is a theoretically
democratic state, where both parties support and are funded by the corpocracy,
where information flows are tightly controlled and where voter turnout is
negligible and deeply discouraged by the elites.

Lastly, the world has
grappled with rapid technological change. A virtual world offers respite from
the horrors of the real one. Fusion power offers clean and virtually limitless
power. Designer babies, prosthetic limb replacements and replacement organs are
all well-established technologies, albeit only available to the rich. Synthetic
organisms, engineered from the ground up, have the potential to revolutionalise
or devastate daily life. Offworld automated mining facilities have been
constructed on the Moon and Mars.

There is,
of course, much variation by world region. North America has avoided the worst
ravages of the 21st Century, primarily via a well-funded military
defence of its coast and the use of Mexico and Cuba as buffer zones. South and
Central America have largely collapsed into anarchy, though the southern parts
of Brazil, Chile and Argentina survive, with their former northern and central
territories sacrificed to a buffer zone maintained by automated forces.

Africa has
almost completely collapsed into anarchy, as has the Middle East, excepting the
highly-militarised state of Israel and the Yellow Zone state of Turkey, which
has ceded its Asian territory. In Asia, richer island states like Japan and
Singapore have survived, as has South Korea, buffered as it is by China. China
itself survives in a rump of its former territory, highly militarized to keep
out swathes of climate refugees that have fled from the now-collapsed states of
the Indian Subcontinent and the rest of South East Asia. Oceania has fallen
into anarchy, except vestiges in Malaysia and a small part of Indonesia, along
with Australasia and New Zealand, which are Green Zone countries. Northern
Europe and Scandinavia are still wealthy, protected as they are by the
Mediterranean States and by the declining rump of Russia
that is protected from its erstwhile eastern territories by fortified rivers
and vast automated armies.