Directorate Wars

Alignment of the world's nations at the height of the conflict: Earth Directorate (blue) and the League of National Interests (red)

### Result:

**Earth Directorate victory:*** Nationalist governments in Africa, South America and Asia assimilated into the Directorate
* League of National Interests disbanded
* Global economic collapse
* Rise of the earliest megacorporations

## Casualties

The **Directorate Wars**, informally called **World War III** or the **Third World War**, were a series of separate but related ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and insurgencies that took place on Earth from 2042 to 2053. The conflicts were fought between two global alliances: the Earth Directorate, a globalist political entity that sought to become the first supranational world government, and the League of National Interests, an alliance of nationalist governments that sought to preserve the *status quo* of distinct and independent countries. It ultimately became a war between developed and developing countries, with the Directorate battling insurgencies in central and southeast Asia, southern Europe, north and central Africa and South America.

With Luna and Mars colonized and exploration of the outer planets accelerating, the United Nations began debating Resolution 4689, a proposal by the United States, European Economic Zone and Oceania Administrative Zone that would dissolve all states in favour of a single, world-governing entity, the Earth Directorate. According to the project's supporters, the Earth Directorate was the only way economic stability, environmental health and world peace could truly be accomplished; its opponents, led by China and the Soviet Union, believed that such a new world order was designed to only benefit the West and its off-world colonies.

By July 2042 entire countries were dividing into regions that supported the Directorate and those that opposed it; civil and border conflicts erupted into full-scale wars that came to encompass the entire globe. Eventually, an alliance formed between the Directorate's opponents called the League of National Interests, also called the Nationalists.

The subsequent "third world war" last over nine years and saw the deployment of nuclear weapons for the first time since World War II. Although they had a common cause, the Nationalists still suffered from internal divisions and opposing ideologies, meaning they never truly formed a united front against the Directorate. A series of reforms in the Soviet Union and Africa eventually led to them pledging neutrality, leaving China and South America to fight on. By 2051 the remaing Nationalists were bankrupt, and the Taipei Charter formally united all nations into the Earth Directorate.

## Belligerents

### Earth Directorate (globalists)

The Earth Directorate, also called the Global Alliance or globalists, were a western-based alliance of some of the most powerful nations in the world, including the majority of the nuclear powers at that time. It was mainly composed by the members of NATO, the Saudi-led Arab coalition, Israel, the Asian powerhouses of India, Japan and United Korea, the Oceania Administrative Zone and later on many nations in Africa and Central America. This alliance included most of the world's liberal democracies, which was why they shared a common set of fundamental values; however, the alliance also included illiberal democracies, and even authoritarian regimes like Saudi Arabia. Nonetheless, all were united under the goal of forming a united world government with a shared set of values and laws.

Even the allied countries were not without their divisions; some experienced the secession of provinces that went on to join the Nationalists. The best example were the Free States, former U.S. states that seceeded in opposition to the "globalist elite" that apparently governed the country.

### League of National Interests (nationalists)

More popular known as the "Nationalists", the League of National Interests was a defensive pact, similar in vein to NATO, formed to oppose the "globalist agenda" of the West and their allies.