United Nations

The **United Nations** or **UN**, was an international organization on Earth, and generally considered the precursor to the Terrene Protectorate. It served to establish international law and communication and prevent conflict. It would also serve as Earth’s first interstellar representative. It fulfilled this role until its collapse in 2165, and the political concepts it created continue to be influential to this day.

## Function

The UN officially established an international community. It would serve to maintain world order as well as try to tackle global issues. The UN members would vote on various pieces of international legislation and also enforce them primarily through economic sanctions, but on some occasions with force. It also organized relief efforts for poor nations with food, medical care and housing.

## History

The UN was established following the Second World War. Before the war, a similar but ineffectual organization called the League of Nations had attempted its same goals, but would ultimately fail in maintaining world peace. With the incredible loss of life during the war, the countries of the world came together to cooperate, if not at least get along with each other. To its credit it was successful in preventing a war of WWII’s scale from breaking out until its dissolving. Earth’s history during its tenure is marked with low intensity conflicts involving minor nations as well as occasional episodes of financial and social turmoil, but Earth did see its longest period of history without conflict between major powers up to that point.

Although it was intended to equalize all of its members in terms of influence, in practice there were still nations that stood above the rest of the others. The biggest nations were the United States, China, Russia, Japan, Germany and Great Britain, and they held significant influence over world affairs.

### Space Colonization

Earthlings had succeeded in reaching space in 1961, when the Soviet Union succeeded in putting Yuri Gagarin into orbit. The United States would soon follow, and several competing space programs would begin to research space travel. It was in 1967 that the Outer Space Treaty was signed by most of the UN’s member nations. This treaty prohibited military competition over space. In 1969, the United States was able to land astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins on Luna (or as it was commonly known to Earthlings, the Moon). The following years would see many more landings on the Moon as well as the construction of space stations in Earth’s orbit. In the year 2000, the International Space Station was constructed above Earth, marking a new age of cooperative space research.

In 2034, the UN jointly funded a colonization of Luna. It required the use of pressurized environments, and was very costly, but it succeeded and the UN would periodically send more colonists over the years. While initially scientific in nature, over time citizens who could afford it were allowed to emigrate to Luna, where a thriving community still resides to this day.

After the success of the Moon Colony, the UN set its sights on the most ambitious target; the colonization of Mars. Mars had always been of interest to Earthlings at large due to its number of similarities it had with Earth. Indeed colonizing Mars had long been a fixture in Earth science-fiction. In 2042 the UN started constructing vessels capable of sending colonists to Mars. These ships were complete in 2052, and the journey to mars began. The journey took over 9 standard months, but the colonists made landfall and founded the Colony of Mars.

### Interstellar Ambitions

The ultimate goal from the beginning was to begin to expand not just to all reaches of the Sol System, but to the rest of the universe as well. This was, however, impossible with conventional means. Trips to inhabitable planets would take thousands if not tens of thousands of years to complete with the propulsion technology available at the time. The introduction of the FTL Drive in 2071 changed this. With successful tests of travel to both Luna and Mars, the UN finally could travel far beyond Earth, shrinking the tens of thousands of years to mere months at most. The FTL capable vessels were further trialed over the following decades, being used to bring new colonists and supplies to and from Luna and Mars. These became especially important after the Mars government began to mine minerals from the planet and started selling their gains back to Earth. It wasn't until 2103 that the UN sent a colony ship to the newly discovered Axmia System, where the first colony outside of the Sol System was founded. The UN would follow up with over a dozen more of these missions to various systems.

### Governance of the Colonies

Although all of its members were different nations, the UN governed the colonies as a single entity. Colonial entities were to abide by UN law, and if they were capable of generating income then also had to pay taxes. With the commercialization of FTL Drives in 2140, colonialism began to increase rapidly. Under space law the UN couldn't legally claim any part of space not colonized by them as being "their territory". Therefore the UN couldn't do much legally to govern the private colonies. The UN were bound to abide by the traditional "right of discovery", meaning that whoever first reached a planet was the first to be capable of claiming it as their own. Many colonies did however choose to remain in contact with the UN, as to break off contact would result in isolation. The UN collected taxes from the colonies that did comply in exchange for complete support from the UN in matters of logistics and support.

### Decline

By the 2150s, the UN was becoming increasingly more centralized in terms of its power. The UN was morphing into less of a simple organization and more so into a globalist government. The UN’s autonomy in governing the colonies had led to more confidence in pushing UN law on Earth. As the UN started to enact new international legislation, the major powers of the UN started to push their own agendas. The United States, Russia and China all began to start exerting political influence in the UN, using favors and threats to get their way. The increased tension between these nations led to trade embargoes carried out against one another, leading to the Great Recession. By 2159 the people of Earth, who now saw a 43% unemployment rate, had had enough. The governments had requested they persevere the difficult times by appealing to patriotism and prejudices, but now these arguments were rendered impotent by hundreds of millions of homeless and hungry people. Threats of revolution in the major nations forced them to negotiate. And so they did in 2161, with the trade embargoes ending. The economy began to rebuild, but distrust among consumers and investors made private citizens wary of putting any money into the rebuilding process. Still, the unemployment rate was down now to 31% by 2163. Trust in the UN was at an all time low, and many people in both government and society began to suggest that it should be done away with.

### Collapse

Although forced by their citizens, the major governments hadn’t given up on their ambitions. All of the nations began to assemble their allies together for the possibility of conflict. It was revealed in late 2164 that the major nations had been importing goods and raw materials from colonies via their citizens in said colonies and keeping all of it for themselves, a violation of UN law. The nations uninvolved in this affair gave the three major powers an ultimatum; distribute their space made wealth in accordance with the law, or withdraw from the UN. In December of that year, the United States, Russia and China all left the United Nations. Lacking the presence of the world superpowers, the UN was rendered mostly incapable of enforcing its will. The UN sat in limbo until March 9th, 2165 when it was formally dissolved and all former member nations began to connect with other powers to form new alliances or strengthen existing ones. One week later on March 16th, Russia invaded China and North Korea. The United States and her allies invaded Belarus the next day, sparking World War III.

## Legacy

Generally speaking, most historians agree that the UN’s failings lied in its inability to foster any sort of common ground between its members outside of a general desire to avoid conflict and the possibility of destruction. The member nations came from multiple cultures and forms of government, which was not on its surface necessarily a bad thing. But the UN never tried to address the rivalries, racism and intrigue that occurred between these nations. It was seen that the UN was more or less doomed the moment any of its members came to hold more power than the other. World War III is believed by many to have been an inevitability, and while the UN managed to keep the major powers at peace for over 200 years, the weaponization of patriotism by governmental elite made permanent maintaining of this peace impossible.

When weighing in on the causes of the Terrene War, many scholars point to the mistakes of the UN as being repeated by the Protectorate, namely in its stubborn refusal to make any sort of concessions to its member states, and the Terrene governments usage of nationalistic propaganda to further its goals.