Belkan War

* Demilitarization of Belka
* Annexation of South Belka by the Osean Federation as North Osea
* Status quo ante bellum on the southern and eastern fronts

The **Belkan War**, also known as the **Third Osean War**, was a large-scale though brief armed conflict that lasted from late March to late June of 1995. The war was fought between the Belkan Federation and an alliance led by the Osean Federation and Yuktobania, both historic rivals during the Cold War. Belka invaded its neighbors in order to regain territories it had lost during its long economic crisis, as well as historic territories that had been lost several decades prior. The war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Lumen on 20 June 1995, though some sporadic fighting continued until the end of the year.

At the conclusion of the Second Osean War in 1947, the then Principality of Belka lost the vast majority of its territory west of the Osean Great Lakes, which it had only recently acquired in the preceding First Osean War. Under the supervision and pressure of Osean occupation authorities, Belka abolished its monarchy, established the democratic Belkan Federation, and became a member of the Osean-led Democratic League, a military alliance, and the Osean Community, a political and economic union. In 1977, however, Belka, citing a loss of effective sovereignty, left both organizations, declared neutrality, and began conducting business with communist Yuktobania, the primary rival of the Osean Federation in the Cold War. In response, Belka became the victim of a protracted campaign of economic and psychological warfare by the Democratic League aimed at encouraging secessionist movements and conducting economic blackmail to reverse Belka's position. As a result, the Belkan economy collapsed and internal political strife followed, including regular incidents of political violence and a separatist conflict spreading across the eastern territories. Seeking an end to the crisis, the government of Belka authorized the Federal Law Review in 1987, which permitted the release of the territories of Gebet, Recta, and Ustio as independent states and the sale of Belka's Great Lakes territories to the Osean Federation. The political and economic crisis directly led to the rise of the fascist Fatherland Workers' Party, led by Waldemar Rald, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Under the party's leadership, Belka began an aggressive campaign of rearmament and actively pushed for war to regain its lost territories.

After several months of skirmishes along Belka's southern borders with Ustio and Recta, as well as a period of widespread civil unrest in the Osean Federation among ethnic Belkans, Belka launched a surprise invasion of all of its neighbors, reutilizing an offensive combined arms strategy from the Second Osean War known as "blitzkrieg," or lightning warfare, to great success; within less than a week of the war's beginning, Belka had retaken most of the Great Lakes region from Osea and occupied almost all of Ustio, as well as most of northern Sapin, western Recta, and western Gebet. Their success was short-lived, however, as the “Allied Forces” quickly regrouped and counter-attacked by late April and early May, liberating almost all occupied territory outside of Osea and significantly reducing the strength and numbers of Belka’s combat forces, most importantly with the breaching of the defensive Hydrian Line, the sinking of the aircraft carrier *Reinhard the Great*, and the destruction of the laser air defense weapon Excalibur, all taking place in mid-May. The breaching of the Hydrian Line in particular allowed the Allies to launch a ground invasion of Belka proper, permanently putting Belka on the defensive. Allied victories in the east and the destruction of Excalibur also allowed the Osean Air Defense Force and supporting Allied air forces to circumvent Belka’s line of air defenses, striking deep into Belkan territory. The Allied air and ground offensives led to the utter collapse of the Belkan war effort by the beginning of June, with Belkan forces pushed to the edge of the Waldreich Mountains and air superiority essentially lost, even in Belka’s core territories. Sensing imminent defeat, Belka detonated seven nuclear weapons on its own soil, killing at least 12,000 civilians and heavily irradiating the mountain region, preventing any invasion of northern Belka.

The detonations, which were the first and only combat use of nuclear weapons in history, led to Waldemar Rald’s forcible removal by his lieutenant, Valentin Engel. Conceding defeat, Engel immediately agreed to a ceasefire and, ultimately, an unconditional surrender, allowing the Allied Forces to enter and occupy the country. Peace negotiations began at Lumen, but were initially unproductive due to disagreements over territorial allocation; ultimately, all parties agreed to *status quo ante bellum* everywhere except for the west, with Osea annexing Belka’s southern region. Despite the formal cessation of hostilities, the conflict briefly restarted in late December with the emergence of A World With No Boundaries (AWWNB), a terrorist group made up of rogue military personnel from almost all countries involved in the war. First stealing an unfinished aerial cruiser, the XB-0 Hresvelgr, the organization then took control of the ballistic missile launch complex at Avalon Dam, intending to use the nuclear weapons stationed there against countries around the world to bring about an apocalypse and erase national borders. AWWNB was defeated in a final operation by the Allied Forces on 31 December, ending all major hostilities in the Belkan War, though an insurgency, led by other groups and splinters of AWWNB, continues to this day.

The Belkan War was innovative in multiple respects, particularly and notoriously in regards to the mass employment of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and nuclear weapons. The conflict prominently featured the employment of several new combat technologies, including stealth aircraft and precision-guided munitions, including laser, satellite, and television guidance. Despite its short length, the Belkan War's battles were massive in scale, with the conflict featuring the largest land, naval, and air battles in history at the Battle of the Futuro Canal, the Battle off Crescents Island, and the Battle of the Round Table respectively. The effects of the Belkan War continue to be felt with the continued radioactivity of the Waldreich Mountains, economic stagnation as a result of the crippling of industry and infrastructure during the war, and intense *revanchism* among Belka's ultranationalist elite who, organizing themselves as the Grey Men, largely orchestrated the 2010 Pacific War between Osea and Yuktobania.