Alliance of Free States Faction Record

## Who Are They

* The Alliance of Free States is a collection of Capitalist states that have become a unified superstate, theoretically equals but in practice dominated by Great Britain. It was, until recently; essentially a single-party fascist state, and while moderated now, still has holdovers from that Fascist past.
	+ After two decades of being in aggressive conflict with the Communist International, the Alliance has decided to cool its heels and set about recovering from two globe spanning wars that were a mere decade apart from one another. It has settled for a policy of proxy war and economic and political competition with its rivals. It has now found itself needing to redefine itself and its policies after so much conflict, particularly with its new leadership.
* As a fundamentally autocratic society, the Alliance of free states is heavily defined in its tone and its feel by its current head of government, as a result the Edward/Fuller, Thornley and Manning governments all have their own feels.
* The Alliance is primarily centred around Western Europe and particularly Greater France and the British Commonwealth. However it also has some degree of presence in virtually every part of the setting that humans inhabit to any significant degree. The Alliance has a globe spanning network that provides it with tremendous reserves of manpower and resources and an incredibly diverse arsenal as well as fearsome economic power while its military science is finely tuned.
	+ The Alliance has a particularly powerful space presence, and has developed a powerful space warfare doctrine from the experiences of the third world war and the attempt to conquer the mostly Epsilon ruled moon from Geoffrey's armies.

## The Leaders

* The WW2 era leader of the Allied States was King-Emperor Edward the Eighth and his toady, Prime Minister JFC Fuller. Under his rule, the Alliance was a malicious and villainous power, and had a cultural impact on the world similar to Nazi Germany in our own. When writing about the Allied States from when he took power to his death in 1956, pull no punches; the Alliance was a miserable set of nations of fanatical political officers and hordes of conscripts, often using starved and beaten colonial troops as cannon fodder under an increasingly paranoid and insane fascist mysticist and British supremacist dictator possessed of a fanatic hatred of communism and dreams of a worldwide British Empire. Under his rule, the Alliance was very much the bad guy scarcely removed from a very stiff upper-lipped take on the very worst actions done by European militarism, they were a very callous army. Look to the worse examples of Europe's behavior towards its colonies for inspiration as well as the most deranged ramblings of British Imperialism apologists.
	+ Collective punishment for partisan action was commonplace, mass rapes were common, looting was endemic, and they couldn't care less if their tactics level an entire metropolis and were quite happy to use the Comintern's reluctance to harm civilians to their advantage. Overall, Edward had the military ambition of Napoleon the first, the absolute control over society of Hitler, the bloodthirstiness of the worst of European colonial governors, the frothing at the mouth anti-communism of the freikorps, and the overbearing glorification of himself of Mussolini.
* Their cold war and third world war leader was Rupert Thornley, who in the Red Alert timeline would be the president of future tech. Thornley is much like an unhinged version of Winston Churchill with the negative features accentuated (More the part of Churchill that thought operation unthinkable was a great plan and wanted to hold the empire together at any costs than the grotesque racist part) mixed in with outright comic book supervillainy. As he was basically acting out a power fantasy of being in charge and doing all the things evil overlords were supposed to do, like making sweeping battle plans, creating insane superweapons, and betraying underlings, he left the day to day running of the Alliance to officials who molded the nation into an industrial complex capable of backing his schemes.
	+ Under his rule, the Alliance was *dastardly* but their villainy was of the "well-intentioned extremist" sort. If you might, imagine the Alliance government as people playing very hard to look like the villains while at the same time not actually being terrible people; they'll use Devastators to slow the Comintern advance in Russia, but they'll make damn sure everyone is evacuated first.
* Their new leader is Alex Manning, who is more akin to a Winston Churchill blended together with a Clement Attlee after distilling many of Churchill's more appalling traits out, but still having that addition of political strongmanship in the mix. Manning is a reformist looking to move the Alliance of Free States away from the wartime policies, and is a leader who actually cares about the internal operation of the Alliance. Look to the Fabian society's ideas for reforming the British Empire during the early 20th century and the liberal reformists of the Victorian era and various other European leaders who hoped to make for more humane colonial empires while still keeping them with some dashes of an idealized Bonapartism.
	+ In his new Britain and Alliance, things might be more grey and less incessently cheerful the the Comintern view, but for all the blunders and errors, the system is working as intended. The Fascism has been toned down a great deal, and in a number of ways its like a more standard liberal (albeit very militant) democracy. And after all, isn't "Keep calm, carry on" the motto of European civilization?

## What they want

* The guiding principal of the Alliance is based on *Paternalistic Utilitarianism*, an ideology born out of more high-minded ideals from the Imperial days of Europe.
* The current overall goal of the Alliance is the improvement of the human standard of living. The Alliance's approach to this is surmised in the flag of its dominant People's Ultimatist Alliance party's three points. "Free Enterprise, Civilization, and Anti-Communism". The system of the Alliance of Free States attempts a corporatist balance between capital and labor to try and ease class tensions in society while offering a pan-Alliance identity that is compatible with existing nationalisms while providing a higher ideal for all citizens to aspire to. The idea is to make all people feel like they belong in the Alliance and to try and quash things that would engender divisions in society. Though they were often hugely hypocritical about this, Manning seems earnest in making the Alliance live up to its ideals.
	+ Foreign policy wise, the Alliance seeks to contain the International, which it sees as a dangerous bastion of unchecked radicalism that has frequently gone too far in the name of progress and has essentially given itself over to mob rule by increasingly embracing direct democracy rather than "sensible parliamentarianism" and through its collectivism downplays individual greatness. It hopes to spread its system and eradicate hostile governments such as those in the International and rebuild sensible ones that can manage a balance of the forces in society. It simultaneously also works to make sure that allies such as the Syndicate are productively guided towards fruitful ends.
	+ In the long term, the Alliance hopes to unite the world under a banner of a sensibly designed government that can ensure that people are free and cared for while man takes his destiny in the stars.
* The Alliance has put in a lot of focus into trying to keep its people happy. At first this was done as bread and circuses by Fuller to distract people from the reality of the world they were living in, but the intentions gradually became more altruistic. The Alliance believes that some unpleasantness is unavoidable in life, but if people can be given something to look forward to; they'll put up with it. If they can be assured of free and plentiful high quality entertainment, affordable cars, decent housing, and assurance of three square meals a day, then they'll put up with the constant presence of police, the jobs they have to do, and the draft.
* When the Alliance was formed, their immediate goal was to launch an aggressive invasion of Communist nations to roll back and eliminate the red march. A less pressing goal was also to re-establish European dominance over the world and undo the moves towards Russia and America's ascendancy on the world stage.
	+ It has since essentially become a superstate, a tightly knit union of countries under a single super-government that calls the shots from its high perch. Think of it as a level of government above the Federal government. At this level, defense/offense, aid, resource allocation, development, research goals, and more are discussed by the Alliance parliament under the auspices of the tremendously powerful chairman of the Alliance. It's part NATO, part stronger UN, part stronger EU, part stronger Commonwealth of Nations. Development in particular is considered important as it helps turn the colonies and less wealthy segments of the Alliance into loyal and valuable contributors and helps to deflect agrarian communist movements.

## Alliance Technology

* The Alliance is competitive with the Internationale when it comes to technology. They too have made their own strides into particle physics, robotics, energy manipulation, and production technology. Where the Comintern has Tesla weapons, the Alliance has SPECTRUM. Where they have devastating particle cannons, they have also devastating vacuum weapons. The chronosphere of the Internationale is met with the formidable Iron Curtain, while cryo-technology, isospin devices, microwave beams, fusion technology, and quark weapons compete with the Communists' eclectic array of super high end weaponry.
* The Alliance is especially skilled at aeronautics and boasts one of the world's most dangerous air forces; loaded to bear with all manner of devastating planes and the tremendously feared Alliance Airship fleet. Though the Zephyr Revolt is generally superior to the Alliance's aircraft, the Alliance outnumbers the Revolt by a large margin. The Comintern's air force edges out the Alliance's but the Alliance is still close; and the Alliance's air force definitely can overwhelm that of the Axis or Co-Prosperity Sphere powers.
* The material science of the Alliance and their focus on well armored designs has also produced well protected armored beasts that have made the ground forces of the Alliance feared. Though Chobham has replaced conventional steel alloys for armor, the armored fist of the Alliance remains stoic in its capacity for taking and dishing out punishment while still being quite frightfully fast if they need to be. The Alliance loves its tanks more than sex itself and tends to be a trend setter in tank design. People take notice of and react to new developments in Alliance AFVs.
* The Alliance has pushed to a strong position in the space race and has endeavoured to never repeat the debacle of the Lunar campaigns again.
* The Alliance is strong in optical energies (behold their spectrum and microwave systems!), material sciences, nuclear fusion, aeronautics, cryogenics, cruise missiles, and solar energy. They tend to fall behind in psionics and magnetism (due to Epsilon walking off with all their research in the field), stealth, and unconventional means of propulsion (witness the preponderance of vehicles with wheels or tracks).

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