Appendix C
Highlights from the General Information Site of the Independent Interstellar News Service
IINS—INDEPENDENT INTERSTELLAR NEWS SERVICE WIRE COPY
2115.09.18 Gateway / Ross 154
¶ » First reports from the European Union Pathbuilder mission to 70 Ophiuchi B I indicate that the first world of the primary star in this binary system supports life. However, the organisms found are of an unusual and primitive variety, surviving at temperatures that are usually well below 0 centigrade.
¶ » As lead researcher Nadine Dussault reported, “What we have found is a life form that does not have a constantly extant xenogenetic code. Instead, it has a two part xenogenetic system. The first part is a protein ‘hub’ which is inert except during reproduction. The protein ‘spokes’ that migrate to and insert themselves into this hub are the second part of the system. They contain reproductive data for the cell and direct its metabolic processes.”
¶ » According to Dussault, when the cell’s internal chemistry changes in anticipation of reproduction, the hub summons these protein spokes and the entire urchinlike matrix undergoes a process broadly analogous to meiosis. The new copy of this matrix is what then carries the genetic code for the new cell that is split off from the parent cell.
¶ » Once that new cell has grown to the point where its structures are all clearly expressed, the protein strands detach from the hub and begin regulating the new cell’s metabolic functions. Dussault explained: “It is like nothing we have ever seen before. We simply could not have known to model this.”
¶ » Dr. Dussault’s comment that xenobiologists “could not have known to model this” refers to assertions within the xenobiology community that, with enough data, expert systems and computer modelling programs should be able to predict all possible macroorganic combinations and simple life forms. The discoveries by Dussault’s team are yet another indictment of such automated “xenomodeling” as a means of creating a compendium of most, or all, possible unicellar biochemical bases even before encountering them.
¶ » On a similar note, the leading voices in what is now calling itself the “convergent evolution” movement were somewhat muted in their response to Dussault’s findings. Professor Herve Sarsilla, the Llul Chair of Xenobiology at the University of Madrid, commented that, “Dr. Dussault’s findings are very interesting but do not in any way undermine the growing theoretical indicators and physical evidence that genetic structures and proteins roughly analogous to Earth’s double-stranded helix model are nature’s preferred biological control paradigm.”
¶ » When asked if most convergent evolutionists also attribute that “preferred biological control paradigm” to the influence of “intelligent design,” Sarsilla responded that, “Some certainly do; some certainly do not. We are not an official organization and therefore have neither the power nor the inclination to make matters of faith a prerequisite in expressing support for the theory of convergent evolution.”
¶ » When asked how, within the theoretical limits of convergent evolution, he would explain the existence of such xenobiologically disparate life forms as those found on 70 Ophiuchi B I, Dr. Sarsilla observed that, “This is not the first such exception we have found, of course. The flora and fauna of Tau Ceti II, while carbon-oxygen-water based, have such radically different xenogenetics that we were, at first, utterly uncertain about the cellular location and transfer mechanisms of their reproductory components. One can hardly call the evolutionary pathway of such life forms to be, in any meaningful way, convergent with our own. However, on the true Green Worlds—particularly Delta Pavonis III, Zeta Tucanae II, and Rho Eridani V—the conformity of the indigenous genetic retention and transfer mechanisms is simply too close and consistent to be a matter of chance. Certainly, there are other means of transferring the information necessary for replication and reproduction, but—as we saw on Tau Ceti II, and now on 70 Ophiuchi B I—those simpler mechanisms cannot build structures as complex as vertebrates.”
¶ » The biots found on 70 Ophiuchi B I are vastly different metabolically, as well as xenogenetically. Using both heat and infrared light as the sources of metabolic energy input, they all evince a propensity to produce alcohol—usually propanol—as an integral part of their respiration and energy conversion activities. This lowers the temperature at which the cell’s cytoplasm continues to remain functional, serving as a kind of natural antifreeze in the often bitterly cold and barren biomes of 70 Ophiuchi B I.
¶ » From a political standpoint, the discovery of life on 70 Ophiuchi B I was welcome, but was not the news that the European Union’s Ophiuchi Pathbuilder mission had been hoping to deliver to its bloc’s development and colonization communities. Although having found one other life-bearing world during its exploration of the Ophiuchi group (specifically, in the 36 Ophiuchi cluster), the organisms there were, again, disappointingly divergent and primitive.
¶ » After the extraordinary discoveries of the numerous “shirt-sleeve” green worlds of the Big Green Main (Epsilon Indi and Delta Pavonis) and the Little Green Main (which boasts habitable worlds stretching from Tau Ceti to Rho Eridani), the Union was hoping to open up a profitable Main of its own. Unfortunately, by the end of the first day of trading, those companies which had invested heavily in the Ophiuchi Pathbuilder mission were showing valuation drops of 10–15%, and the trading-pit slang which affixed itself to this collection of unpromising systems—“the Brown Main”—already shows signs of becoming a permanent nickname.
¶ » Meanwhile, EU government sources remain optimistic about further worlds along the “Brown Main,” pointing to the excellent possibilities for a true green world in the 70 Ophiuchi A system, which the Pathbuilder mission should reach some time in 2116.
¶ » When asked if the EU should have chosen a different pathway for exploration, Senior Associate Administrator Helmut Kling of the ESA-I commented, “There was no other place for us to go. Although we have an 8.3 light-year shift range, as does the Commonwealth and the Federation, they had already extensively exploited their Mains by the time we launched this Pathbuilder mission. While there are many stars we can visit with our shift carriers, there weren’t any more pathways—or Mains—where several G and K stars lay in a convenient sequence for surveying. If we had a longer shift range, that would change. But for the time being, the Wasserman drive seems to have reached its reasonable range limit.”
¶ » As Administrator Kling’s optimistic hopes for discoveries in 70 Ophiuchi A reached the financial news tickers, early morning trading in Mumbai showed only a weak .5% increase in the aggregrate share prices of the Ophiuchi Pathbuilder mission’s supporting companies.
Ω
IINS INFORMATION AND TIPS FOR TRAVELERS
CURRENCY
Many off-world commercial venues, but particularly passenger transfer terminals, quickly teach first-time interstellar travelers the value (and often the necessity) of carrying universal credits. National currencies, no matter how well regarded on Earth, are collectively too diverse and too hard to exchange to be practicable for off-world merchants. Conversely, while transactions requiring universal credits are still rare on Earth, they become increasingly common as one travels further away from the electronically-linked economies and banking systems of the home planet. By the time a traveler has reached the Green Mains, Earth-based electronic credit or debit cards become functionally useless. Account and balance verification usually takes at least six weeks from Epsilon Indi, and considerably longer from points further down the Mains.
Consequently, persons traveling beyond their own nation or bloc should consider converting some of their home currency into universal credits. The official title for that currency unit—the Économique Crédit Universel—gives rise to its many shorthand nicknames: the “ecu” (used primarily in the European Union), the “uni” (the preferred form in global slang references), and the “credit” (the most common form of reference).
The credit originated as an informal currency translation script in 2085. At that time, most off-Earth bases and colonies were not single-nation or even single-bloc facilities. Since space exploration was extremely expensive, the establishment of permanent habitations usually involved an international effort. Later, even when the costs of space travel and colonization dropped, it was safer if all the blocs built their bases fairly close to (or as extensions of) each other.
Consequently, as these colonies grew and matured, there were numerous off-Earth communities of a few thousand people, but each populated by contingents from up to twenty or thirty different nations, each with their own currencies, all trying to engage in commercial transactions with each other.
The currency exchange problems quickly proved to be insurmountable, and so, starting on the moon, a collective of financial managers created an index that allowed a fast conversion between currencies by using a common unit of valuation, or a “translation” currency. This common unit—the Universal Economic Credit unit (this is its anglophone rendering; its French title is the official one)—was pegged roughly between the US dollar and the euro.
In recent years, there has been clear movement among some blocs to adopt the credit not merely as a translational monetary script, but as their standard currency. Although interest in this model remains guarded in most blocs (and decidedly unwelcome in the DWC), the TOCIO bloc has begun the process of making an eventual conversion to the credit as recognized currency not just in its off-world settlements, but among it many diverse Earth-side member states.
This is a particularly attractive solution for TOCIO, since the polyglot currency chaos among its many member-states can thus be swiftly resolved by supplanting the plethora of national currencies with one monetary standard. It would also, in the long run, work to disincline states from considering changing bloc affiliations once they have converted to the credit. Once a national currency is surrendered by the nation’s wholesale conversion into credit-based valuation, that polity’s isolated fiscal accounting becomes compromised, since the value of the credit (and thus, the economic fate of the nation) is linked to the total economy of the bloc of which it is a member.
If this is the subtle “stick” associated with adoption of the credit in the TOCIO bloc, the counterbalancing carrot is quite obvious. The credit, which could then be floated as an openly traded currency, would represent a step up in purchasing power and market access for most of the nations of the TOCIO bloc. Traditionally “weaker” nations would suddenly find their transactions and worth to be based on a “solid” or “market standard” currency, rather than their own untraded monetary units. Also, as the first bloc to adopt the credit, TOCIO would arguably be buying into this currency at a discount, since the implicit value of the credit will rise as more nations or blocs adopt it as an official currency.
Naturally, there are complex monetary policy matters surrounding how best to track the fluctuation of national currencies, or intra-bloc exchange notes, in relation to the credit/uni/ecu. Ultimately, many economists claim the credit could emerge as a global currency, since, with the more confidence it accrues, the more likely it is to encourage hoarding. By holding reserves of a truly universal currency, a nation can protect itself against a localized recession. This is because the value of the credit would be based on global indicators and trade balances, not nation-specific conditions. The logical result of this would be increased attractiveness of a more conservative monetary policy, in which the value of national holdings as hedges against market recessions or other downturns would remain a constant incentive, rather than fluctuating with the fate of the country (and its currency).
Logically, the tendency to retain large cash reserves would also tend to reduce deficit spending. Interest rate speculation would be heavily undercut, and nations would presumably find it far more attractive to accrue monetary reserves over long periods of time, rather than spend surpluses when the value of its own currency happens to rise above others to advantageous highs. According to a growing number of fiscal analysts, the widespread adoption of the credit could ultimately increase the stability of the world economy.
If that is the case, then when you travel and register a transaction in credits, you may well be spending what many people are calling “the dollar (or euro, ruble, yen) of the future.” Either way, space-bound travelers are wise to carry credits: the most recognized, and preferred, currency of all off-Earth communities.
IINS INFORMATION AND TIPS FOR TRAVELERS
DESTINATION: EPSILON INDI 2 D
Epsilon Indi 2 D or “Tigua” (tee-gah) as it is nicknamed, is the most hospitable of the three life-bearing satellites of the gas giant known as Leeward, and represents one of the settlement milestones since humanity commenced interstellar expansion in 2105.
DISCOVERY
Unlike the other planetary systems upon which a reasonable level of remote surveying had been performed, the gas-giant-laden Epsilon Indi system presented early researchers and interstellar mission planners with considerable difficulties. With three borderline large gas giants clustered in the inner, life and close outer zones of the system, standard exoplanet detection methods were frustrated, unable to make sense of the small, yet conflicting readings that resulted from the relatively low masses of the objects, and their overlapping gravitational effects. For much the same reason, clear data on their satellites was problematic and visual enhancement studies only confirmed that several bodies of the second gas giant were wreathed by some form of atmosphere. Specific atmospheric composition, hydrographics, and basic habitability data remained a mystery until the first surveying and pathbuilder mission arrived in 2107.
As it turned out, Epsilon Indi 2 D was the natural site for the first green world colony beyond that established on the often tempestuous surface of Terra Nova (Alpha Centauri III). With an average planetary temperature only 5 C degrees beneath that of Earth, the tropics and subtropics are very comfortable. Lacking any appreciable axial tilt, there are no seasonal variations. This impact upon the local biomes includes polar icecaps which show little change, and a water cycle that favors equatorial rains and middle latitude snowstorms.
Of greater importance to the colony’s founders was the discovery that Epsilon Indi 2 D was not only rotating independently of its parent planet (i.e., was not “tidally locked”) but also possesses a molten core, thereby producing magnetic fields which vastly reduce the amount of radiation that ultimately reaches its surface. However, as was to be expected, the influence of its parent gas giant Leeward retards its rotational rate, producing unusually long days and nights, with all the weather perturbations one might expect therefrom.
With only two tectonic plates, Epsilon Indi 2 D’s variation in elevation is modest by true planetary standards, resulting in shallow (and predominantly equatorial) seas with extensive archipelagos, few large rivers (but more widely dispersed, often marshy, watersheds), and few true mountains.
After the pathbuilder mission returned its findings, settlement proceeded apace, with the first spaceport being established on an average-sized island in a small archipelago just south of the equator. Although early corporate investors pushed for immediate settling and exploitation of the larger contiguous land masses, the Commonwealth commission charged with developmental oversight and safety deemed an island a better site. Having little knowledge of the wildlife, they reasoned that if there were any undetected dangers from the flora or fauna, it would be far simpler to “sanitize” a small, water-bound landmass. This spaceport ultimately became the satellite’s major city: St. John’s or, more commonly, SinJin’s.
ENVIRONMENT
With .8 gee and a steady, mostly gentle climate, Epsilon Indi 2 D is quite comfortable for humans. The only routine perturbations in its meteorology arise from the thermal and pressure equalization effects that occur during its long day/night cycle. Winds gust strongly during the long dusks and dawns, since the most marked air-temperature equalizations tend to occupy a longitudinal band that moves with the day/night terminator line. The worst weather occurs when latitudinal pressure fronts intersect with this moving line, spawning small hurricanes and tornadoes. Weather effects on Epsilon Indi 2 D, even when forbidding, lack the intensity of planetary weather simply because of its far more steady climate; profound pressure and temperature extremes are rare.
The only noteworthy exception is the temperature intensifications that result from the long days. Late afternoon highs and post-midnight lows can become severe, since this is the peak point in the thermal gain/loss cycle that results from slow planetary rotation.
Since air and oxygen pressure are somewhat less that terrestrial norms, humidity tends to be low, even in the littoral regions, where the mediating effects of the water produce the best climate on the satellite. Although extended physical exertion makes the use of a compressor mask advisable, the slightly low pressure is not otherwise bothersome.
The primary challenge to human habitation is more an annoyance than a threat: an airborne unicellular organism that attempts to infest unprotected human respiratory tracts in its quest to find a warm, moist host organism.
Carried on the wind, this simple creature resembles terrestrial bacteria in its lifecycle and survival strategies (although it is quite distinct in terms of its xenogenetics and chemical make-up). Although it cannot utilize human tissue for feeding purposes (too many biological differences), it finds human hosts to be excellent safe havens. Being wind-borne, the organism is constantly in danger of being carried back around to the night-side of the planet. If injected into higher-altitude cold by updrafts, it may perish or become inert. Consequently, its life cycle involves finding a warm, moist host from which it cannot easily be dislodged, there sustaining itself on moisture, heat, and a few simple compounds.
Although it cannot grow swiftly in the human respiratory tract (since it lacks sufficient nutrients), it also cannot be easily driven from it, since humans lack the natural defenses of the indigenous, air-filtering fauna of Epsilon Indi 2 D. Most native animals possess mucus-based respiratory linings that slough off on a weekly basis, thereby carrying any nascent infestation of this organism into the digestive tract, where it is denatured quickly and completely. In humans, however, successive layers of the organism begin to accrete, constricting breathing and leading to dehydration, the symptoms mimicking high-altitude asthma attacks in many regards. Mortality for humans is approximately 5 percent, with double those rates (or more) for populations whose respiratory status can readily become “at-risk” (children, elderly, health/immune-impaired).
Although healthy persons will ultimately throw off the infestation (since the lack of nutrients starves the first generation of cells, and the later, accreting levels are often deprived of moisture by the layers beneath and above them), common sequelae include a permanently compromised respiratory system, putting such individuals at greater risk when they contract terrestrial respiratory infections and/or subsequent infestations of this indigenous organism.
Fortunately, a combination of mitigation technologies and pharmaceuticals have been developed, reducing the dangers of infestation to beneath those associated with common bronchitis. The first mitigational therapy is a prophylactic inhaler that suffuses the respiratory tissues with several harmless chemicals which the indigenous organism finds mildly toxic, thereby preventing it from establishing a toe-hold in the mucosa. Although quite effective, this was deemed an insufficient methodology on its own, and colonists were still compelled to wear filter masks to ensure their long term safety. It was also deemed necessary to have another means of resisting the infestations, in the event the supply of inhalers dropped or was interdicted.
The second solution was ultimately far more effective and completely noninvasive, although it remains a strictly regional answer to the challenge. It was discovered in 2110 that the organism sought out its hosts through a very keen sensitivity to infrared emissions, but only along a very narrow set of wavelengths. It was also determined that they avoided slightly more energetic emissions as being “too hot”: their version of pulling back a hand from a hot stove top.
The answer: emitter towers that project pulses of higher wavelength infrared. The exposure is decisively subclinical for humans, but works as a repellent for the unicellular organisms, which demonstrate a capacity for limited airborne motility. In order to maximize the area covered by these emissions, and to minimize their effect upon the colonists and their equipment, the emitters are mounted in towers that were originally planned to serve other purposes: short range power beaming, wireless communication, ground control and guidance for shuttles and landers, and even tether/refuel sites for VTOL and tilt-rotor vehicles. Consequently, the settled regions of Epsilon Indi 2 D, but particularly the environs of SinJin, are marked by tall, multipurpose towers scattered throughout the community and at its peripheries.
TODAY
Despite a burgeoning population in excess of 100,000, the worlds of Epsilon Indi are still most notable for the marginal exploration and almost cursory mapping that has been carried out upon them. In large part, this is because of the plenitude of satellites in the system, and the strong advantages in human suitability offered by Epsilon Indi 2 D, Tigua. The other worlds which support life—the even more alien biosphere of Kitts, and the marginal “brown world” satellite of Loupe—have only been sparsely settled. No other satellites boast permanent habitation, despite the fact that there are 19 others with diameters of at least 1000 kilometers. Mining and other resource exploitation initiatives are in early stages, simply because so much of what was required for initial use and commerce was found right on the surface of Tigua.
Visitors to Epsilon Indi may find themselves perplexed by the seemingly unrelated, and even peculiar, names of its many planets and moons, but there is in fact a common origin—one that persons familiar with the Caribbean detect immediately. One of the cartographic experts with the original pathbuilder mission in 2107 remarked that, like the West Indies on Earth, Epsilon Indi had plenty of possible ports of call. The two parallels—“Indies” and Indi, and the many islands or moons—stuck, and proved itself all the more appropriate with the passage of time. Unlike most stellar systems, where the duration and distance of most interworld journeys involve many days and tens or hundreds of millions of kilometers, movement between the worlds of the Indis is often quite rapid. Almost no journey between the worlds of a single gas giant will ever involve a distance of more than 15 million kilometers, and it is usually much, much less, since transits are timed to coincide with the closest possible orbital approaches, and can often make use of gravity-assisted or “slingshot” trajectories.
Recently, because of this and because so many of the moons of the system boast at least some volatiles (usually in the form of frozen water or carbon dioxide), the media has seen fit to characterize a few isolated cases of brigandry and barratry as the first indicators of a trend toward yet a third historical similarity between the “Indies” and the “Indis”: piracy. While it is true that the satellite systems of the three sequential gas giants are ideal for the operation—and concealment—of small craft, there seems to be little opportunity for ship-to-ship intercept and seizure. As most military authorities point out, effecting rendezvous between spacecraft—particularly in order to conduct boarding actions and cargo capture—is almost impossible to compel by force. As one European Union official put it, “It is difficult enough to dock with another craft that is trying—very hard—to join itself to yours. To effect rendezvous with an actively uncooperative, or even hostile, hull is so unfeasible as to be ludicrous.” Nonetheless, traveler’s warnings are in effect system-wide regarding the charter of small craft for private excursions. Individuals without compelling commercial or research needs must expect that they will be denied permits for such excursions.
With the majority of the moons of the three gas giants named after the islands of the Caribbean, the gas giants themselves are named for the grouping of those islands. The innermost—Antilles—is named for the Greater Antilles; Leeward, the second gas giant and home to the habitable worlds in the system, is short for Leeward Islands; and the outmost, Windward, borrows its name from the Windward Islands. The asteroid belt one orbit further out from Windward was to be named Roque, after the de la Roque Shoals, but the itinerant prospectors of that region reduced the name to Roka, then Rock, and ultimately Rock-Show, instead of Roque Shoals. They like to claim that their name is not only far less pompous, but far more descriptive.
Travelers to Epsilon Indi are advised to send accommodation requests at least three months in advance of their travel. It is unlikely that a reply will be received before you depart, but the ratio of room inventory to demand ensures that this advance warning will secure dirtside housing. Food prices tend to be high, as is the case on all worlds that are not cleared for local comestibles agriculture. Travelers should be aware that national or even bloc currency will frequently be rejected by both small and large businesses in the system. The economic currency unit (or “ecu,” “uni,” or “credit”) is the medium of exchange for all transactions.
The high volume of persons bound for Epsilon Indi should not discourage individuals who wish to travel to the system for a visit. Most persons who choose Epsilon Indi as a port of call are not stopping there, but usually taking a break before heading further down to the other habitable worlds of the Big Green Main, particularly the two high-compatibility planets, Delta Pavonis III, and Zeta Tucanae II. As the “Doorway to the Big Green Main,” Epsilon Indi is a collection and departure spot for various long-contract colonial personnel, Earth-bound cargos, and outbound equipment and supplies for the further colonies. Consequently, although it is second only to Junction (Lacaille 8760) as a multi-destination hub, it has far fewer permanent inhabitants than one might suspect, and facilities are not overtaxed, but expanding to keep abreast of increases in demand.
IINS SPECIAL FEATURE
THE BLOCS: A HISTORICAL PRIMER
from an address given by Prof. Christiana De Parto,
Ogilvie Chair of World History, University of Ottawa,
at Johns Hopkins’ 238th Commencement Exercises (2114)
ONE: AN INTRODUCTION TO BLOC POLITICS
College students who have grown up in our modern, bloc-dominated political environment spend a great deal of time studying history that relates to nation-states as dominant. Then, when their academic focus shifts to a consideration of current events, it often seems to them as if that older political order simply vanished, that it instantaneously and effortlessly transformed itself into the world we know today. Much of what underlies this impression is the short-shrift given to the political forces which prompted the amalgamation of separate states into blocs in the first place. Because that evolution was slow, irregular, and often frustratingly subtle, it is as difficult to teach as it is to understand. But understanding our present world depends upon our understanding how it arose from that relatively recent pre-bloc past.
By the end of the twentieth century, it had become quite obvious that any nation striving to achieve a monopolar hegemony was embarking upon a course certain to arouse the ire of its global peers. In short, the long-standing, and internationally ubiquitous, desire to achieve imperial dominance was beginning to work its way out of the collective political psyche. This was not due to an upsurge in altruism or enlightened reconsideration of the dead-ends of the realpolitik that had driven statesmen as diverse as Metternich and Bismarck. Rather, it was a practical and overdue acknowledgement of the limits of national power and influence in a world that was increasingly transnational in its commerce, communications, and consciousness. In short, the change to bloc politics did not arise out of a finer moral sense, but from sobering assessments of the sheer unsustainability of empire in the modern world. It comes as no surprise, then, that the last two nations to move away from such aspirations were the last two which could still reasonably entertain hopes of achieving them: the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China.
For the most part, the United States’ movement toward true imperial ambitions was so short-lived and occasioned by such singular causal variables that, in hindsight, many have labeled it an aberration. Articulating its brief dalliance with a one-superpower or “unipolar” world in documents such as PNAC, the US actively demonstrated these ambitions by engaging in wars ostensibly validated by the need to effect “regime change” in hostile states. However, the underlying imperial impulse did not reflect the true, abiding will of the people, but was rather enabled by the harnessing of their distressed reactions to a variety of terrorist attacks and other aversive events.
Although nominally still an isolationist culture as it entered the twenty-first century, it must also be remembered that the United States had shown fitful and irregular impulses toward imperial ambitions in the past: the Monroe Doctrine, the Spanish-American War, the Baruch Proposal. Consequently, although its last dalliance with the notion of global hegemony is not a wholly unique aberration, it was ultimately atypical of the nation’s traditions and self-image, and as such, might best be considered a spasm of uncertainty as it confronted an extraordinary historical crossroads.
In the case of China, however, a more fixed hegemonic reflex persisted well into the twenty-first century, and has not entirely been extinguished even now in the twenty-second. The variables that explain this enduring imperial impulse are diverse, but two emerge as predominant.
Firstly, it must be acknowledged that, while China is the world’s oldest polity, it was the youngest superpower of the twentieth century. Eclipsed by Russian and American might, further overshadowed by the even greater accumulation of power and influence those centers of political gravity gathered around themselves in the contending organizations known as NATO and the Warsaw Pact, China remained an unwieldy, imbalanced giant until the last decade of the twentieth century. Wracked by internal difficulties that ran the gamut from famine to family sizes to ferocious cultural upheavals, the People’s Republic of China did not come into its own until the Cold War polarization disintegrated. With the bidirectional global power monopoly finally broken after half a century, newly industrialized China began to accrue some of that power for itself.
The primary reason for this late entry into the first ranks of the global powers is also the second factor which has arguably continued to fuel its visions of hegemony: its status as a victim of sustained Western imperialism. Spending centuries unable to present—let alone maintain—a unified political identity in its relations with the rest of the world, China was a prime exploitation zone for the West. Shamed in its political and military impotence, China’s embarrassment and bitterness must be understood in the context of its culture, which was still intact and had been preserved across four (or some would argue five) millennia. From the perspective of Chinese nationalists, her own leaders and merchants had repeatedly prostituted the world’s most august civilization for the coin and favor of recently civilized barbarians.
It must certainly be acknowledged that if many Western imperialists were racially dismissive of the Chinese, many Chinese secretly (and sometimes overtly) returned the dubious favor of pronounced bigotry. And it cannot be denied that China’s self-portrayal as a much-wronged country handily overlooked its own analogous sins. A quick survey of the nations that are China’s neighbors will reveal that they do not associate the Emperors of the Middle Kingdom with anything less than hegemonic acquisitiveness and colonial rapine.
However, the axiom has it that perception is reality. Accordingly, the architects of the People’s Republic of China stoked this two-stroke reciprocating engine of cultural resentment and national fear to generate enough power for rapid industrialization and expansion. As the gulf of time widened between the present day and the last epoch in which it had known true national shame, the ardor with which the Chinese embraced the rhetoric and values of hegemony diminished. However, the dividing line between China’s protectionist Traditionalists and transglobal Transformists can still be traced to this fundamental quandary: whether China can safely embrace the rest of the world or whether it needs to defend its cultural identity behind high, separatist walls.
Alliance or Bloc?
As suggested in the preceding section, the national instinct for amassing power did not diminish, let alone disappear. It simply reconfigured itself into the concept of joint expression, projection, and cost-sharing.
How this differs from simple alliance is a point of enduring contention among scholars, but this much may be asserted: there is no crisp boundary separating the two. The difference between highly cooperative alliances and loosely integrated blocs is one of degree, not absolute distinction.
Similarly, there is no one moment in history where one can definitively assert that the need for collectives larger than the nation-state first arose, but several global trends prompted a corresponding increase toward bloc politics:
1. a strong decline in the profitability and desirability of overt imperialism;
2. the need to share the increased expense of “paradigm-shifting” strategic technology initiatives;
3. transglobal interconnection as an increasing component of the dominant youth culture.
The decrease in the profitability of direct imperialistic control was fundamentally recognized and embraced at the end of the First World War. It is a matter of some interest that the European powers—winners and losers both—all took steps to disentangle themselves from direct colonial involvement at that time. Much control passed to nationally-select corporations. Much more went to semi-autonomous indigenous governments. The nineteenth-century formula known as the New Imperialism (colonies as sources of raw materials, cheap labor, and also, exclusive markets) was clearly nonfunctional, now representing a net loss to the once-proud colonizers.
However, the endeavor for empire became not only undesirable but completely insupportable in the aftermath of World War II. The new trend toward transnationalism was not merely an artifact of expedited information exchange between continents. It reflected a growing appreciation of the growing costs of what might be called “transformative technological endeavors.” As all the superpowers experienced in the latter half of the twentieth century, particularly in their races to build nuclear weapons and to get to the moon, epic achievements entailed epic costs. And as the Russians learned in trying to keep pace with America’s high-tech Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), those epics could contribute to economic self-destruction.
Significantly, joint projects—in defense, in space, in high-energy physics—began to point toward the only reasonable way forward: shared costs, shared tasks, shared gains. In many ways, these partnerships paved the way for the economic coordination that made possible the fiscal integration that is the touchstone of today’s blocs.
Undergirding these highly quantifiable phenomena is a more nebulous, but arguably supremely powerful variable for which there can be no finite metric: the changed outlook of each successive generation. From worldwide cinemas to today’s global chic of virtual dating across continental lines from the comfort of one’s own simstation, the last century and a half has seen the qualitative significance of distance shrink, even though its physical quantities have remained unaltered. A thousand miles is still a thousand miles, but how much does that matter when you can go on a virtual date with someone from the other side of the world?
In short, one of the most powerful drivers behind the maintenance of national boundaries was the coherence of national identity. But the coherence of such an identity was largely reinforced by immutable physical barriers that impeded or prevented contact with persons from other nations and cultures. As electronic interconnection eroded those barriers, the coherence, or at least the implicit militance, of national identity began weakening.
There were, of course, many who proclaimed that this was the end of the nation-state in toto, and that we were soon to live in a post-historical, post-political, post-racial, even post-cultural age. But this prediction, like so many others uttered when its devotees are caught up in the ebullient throes of a rising phenomenon, overreached considerably. As almost three decades have shown us, language shapes not only thought, but also expectations and concept of self—all of which play powerful roles in determining long-term compatibility. So although there is increasing marriage across cultural lines, the majority of lasting unions are still forged within the boundaries of extant cultural affinities.
A similar “affinity function” is evident in bloc politics, as well. Four of today’s five blocs shared similar cultural roots, and more than one critic has observed that the degree of understanding—or lack thereof—observed between individuals of any two blocs often microcosmically reprises the degree of (mis)understanding between the blocs’ own leaders.
TWO: PRECURSORS OF BLOC POLITICS
As mentioned before, the blocs did not emerge, wholly formed and independent, from the earlier expanses of nation-state politics. However, it could be reasonably maintained that they rose as quickly and surely as they did (comparatively speaking) because of precursor dragon’s-teeth sown by the superpowers themselves.
The United States provides one of the most interesting examples of this evolution since it both was one of the first nations to explore a forward-looking reliance upon bloc politics and was one of the last to entertain old-fashioned ambitions of being the dominative force in a unipolar world.
From World War I onward, the United States, although consistently demonstrating strong isolationist tendencies, also showed keen interest in establishing a global forum for the resolution of differences and for the regulation of interests between nations. Although many of the proponents of such an organization were unity-minded idealists, at least as many of its (often less vocal) supporters were isolation-focused realists. They understood that such an organization was the best means of defusing any conflicts that might threaten to embroil the United States, and thus, had a vested interest in promoting the evolution of this species of global council as a buffer against “foreign entanglements.”
Ultimately, although the League of Nations was a stillborn failure, and the United Nations an impossibly crippled and hamstrung attempt to improve upon and expand it, the United States almost single-handedly enacted what many consider to be the first, true “proto-bloc” formulation: the Marshall Plan. The strange, underlying mix of American pragmatism and compassion was certainly a noteworthy feature of the superpower’s resolve to “rebuild Europe.” While accelerating the restoration of safe and comfortable living conditions for untold millions of Europeans (but particularly Germans), the United States was also creating a ready market for its own products and media, a foundation of Americentric infrastructural and educational reconstruction, and a rapidly strengthening bulwark against the encroachment of Soviet Russia and its allies.
However, it is the evolution of the relationships forged through the Marshall Plan that truly distinguish it as the first of the bloc-building initiatives of the post-Imperial era. The most productive contrast is evident in the international political and social dynamics of its outgrowth alliance—NATO—and those of its eastern rival, the Warsaw Pact.
Clearly, in both cases, the superpower sponsor of each collective had a vastly disproportional balance of power within its own organization. But the methodology of maintaining and strengthening the relevant international ties could not have been more different.
Russia followed the well-known imperial model: a high degree of centralized control, nonconsensual arrangement of economies and militaries, and sharp exclusivity concerning such strategic elements as space programs, nuclear arsenals, and technological diffusion. In contrast, NATO was noteworthy for its decentralized and consensual political and economic bases, cooperative programs in developing both military and domestic technologies, and freedom to evolve other organizations that often complicated the relationships among the members, and drew nonmembers into the mix (e.g., the European Common Market). Member-states entered or left NATO at will—often to the great consternation and discomfiture of the others (e.g., France’s infamous departure) while the Soviet Union’s Eastern European satellite states were kept in line by guns and tanks where necessary (e.g., Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland).
The purpose of this comparison is not to praise NATO. It had many irremediable flaws and proved a difficult organization to validate once its historical counterpoise—the Warsaw Pact—fell apart. However, its evolution out of the groundwork laid by the Marshall Plan, and the various transatlantic ententes and organizations that rose up to perform similar coordinating functions, were the harbingers of today’s bloc politics.
The European Union—as the first of the true blocs—was the next, obvious step in the evolution toward bloc-politics. However, with the nation-state impulse still predominant in most of the older gatekeepers of political power, the maturation of this first bloc was a difficult and often painful process that foreshadowed the ongoing challenges of all bloc formations: common military, monetary, educational, medical, and linguistic forms. The constant tension between maintaining sovereign control over one’s own directions in these urgent matters vied mightily with the impetus toward combining them so as to move quickly to higher levels of uniformity of service across the bloc.
The Dominant Paradigm of Bloc Evolution:
The EC-EU Progression
By 2040, with the Megadeath looming as an inevitable resource-blight on the horizon and protectionism rampant in most markets, an increasing number of analysts and advisors were asserting that humanity’s next great endeavors were too expensive to be borne by the ever-more fiscally strapped nations on an individual basis. Citing various joint aerospace and defense technology programs, they made increasingly compelling arguments for a more systematized integration of economies if various strategic goals were to be achieved. High among these were efforts at revising the energy ecology of the world, which despite overcoming most of the technological impediments to a thorough reworking of energy production and delivery, remained incomplete due to entrenched corporate and national interests.
The arrival of the Megadeath era and the sharp, decade-long market retraction, prompted the first wave of trade pacts that ultimately evolved into modest agreements to integrate certain elements of each country’s economy to serve a greater, combined objective.
Not surprisingly, the first, small shifts toward greater integration were achieved by amplifying agreements that dated from the establishment of the Common Market (arguably the precursor of the EU). Spain and Portugal formed the Iberian Union in 2034 to consolidate debt and increase their political influence in both EC and EU affairs. The Scandinavian nations formed the Nordic League in 2041, thereby indirectly bringing its non-EU member-states into greater alignment with that bloc’s interests and influence through their strong relations with their neighbors and cultural cousins. Benelux began the process toward unification in 2043. Similar preunification movements became increasingly common from 2050-2075, as the EU membership moved toward more centralized control, albeit slowly.
However, this process had one notable casualty. England grew increasingly distant from the opinions and motivations of the Continent as the pressure toward a common currency intensified, along with pressure to establish uniform banking, health, and military practices and administration. A particularly sharp blow to integrating the UK into the EU occurred when Germany assumed air-defense responsibilities for Austria in 2072. English responses were decidedly negative when the two German-speaking nations touted this as the “wave of the future” and the “signifier of a new age of trust and mutuality.” England was not alone in its reservations regarding this onerous reprise of pre-Anschluss maneuvering. France and Italy began more joint incorporations as a counterbalance to Germany’s expanding military leadership within the EU. But of course, in the long run, the increasing ties between France and Italy only accelerated the process toward broad amalgamation.
Eastern Europe and the Balkans were a different story. Poland and the Czech Republic ultimately became fully normalized members within the EU’s economic and service frameworks as did the Baltic Republics. The remaining Balkan and Eastern European states slowly evolved through a series of pacts similar to those binding together the Baltic nations, but with far more fits, starts, disruptions, and angry defections. Hungary maintained dual membership, its sympathies and affinities divided between the EU and the ever-fluctuating Eastern European Collective. These rather tempestuous revisions were particularly common in the territories of the former nation of Yugoslavia, where regional disputes persisted. The steady, core states of the Eastern European Collective (regardless of its changes in conformation and nomenclature) included Slovakia, Moldava, Bulgaria, and Rumania.
Ultimately, much of the churn in the East European Collective was the result of strong pan-Slavic impulses from (and for) Russia. Which, despite differences and wars, ultimately found enough common ground to maintain relations with the Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan in a loose federation. The combination of population, resources, and industries assisted this combine’s reemergence back into the world market, first as a major energy and raw materials exporter, and later, as a manufacturer of median- and high-tech goods. This impacted China’s attempt to continue expanding its share in those markets, reigniting old rivalries. At the same time, equally old European fears of Russian expansionism loomed larger as the giant’s recovery accelerated in the 2060-2070 period. Oddly, given intermittent trepidation (and historical resentment) for the US in certain EU circles, and the US support of Russia in its later conflicts with Beijing, these events eventually returned the US and Russia to closer relations. It was also an illustration of bloc stability based on functional congruencies between the two polities. It has long been (accurately) observed that, structurally, the US- and Russian-led blocs are the most similar, insofar as they have smaller populations with markedly higher cultural uniformity, spread across large, productive landmasses that provide them with a baseline sufficiency in all natural resources.
Russia’s continuing challenges along its southern peripheries changed character in this period, becoming both less sporadic and more fixed. Many of its former fringe republics known collectively as “The Stans” drifted into increasing exchange and trade agreements with the Pan-Arab League, which then underwent a welter of conflicting and often brief name changes: the Pan-Asian League, the Pan-Islamic League, and more. However, as the re-aligned nations of the post-Arab Spring decades stabilized, their influence came to stretch like a belt across the north of Africa and midriff of Asia. Strong tensions between traditional and secular visions, and intermittent coups, prevented steady progress toward political integration. However, this League’s desire for joint action was clear and unequivocal, rising above the chaos generated by its repeated attempts to create durable transnational bonds.
Indeed, the solitary stabilizing influence in the evolution of what ultimately came to be known as the Pan-Islamic League was its relationship with (some would say mentorship by) China. China, larger than most blocs all by itself, had limited needs for coordination with foreign states. Many Traditionalist extremists had no desire for bilateral relations at all. Sinosupremacy and cultural protection evolved as linked tenets among Beijing’s political elite up through, and beyond, the Megadeath. After the economic shocks and restructuring occasioned by that sustained disaster, a great deal of political emphasis shifted south to Shanghai and the Transformists, largely due to their superior handling of international relations and fiscal negotiations in those trying years. Beijing, although cautious when relinquishing any control, did so carefully—but did so. A notable exception is to be found in its direct recruitment of the Pan-Islamic League (and many of the mutually aligned states of South America) to aid it in the High Ground and Belt Wars with the Russian-led Slavic nations (and then, nominally and briefly, against the pro-Russian US “intervention force”).
However, after the Belt War, the PRC leadership underwent its first truly democratic change, resulting in a more decentralized government and new overtures to both historical and new trading partners in an attempt to find an exit from its monetary woes (attempts to fully valuate the yuan as an unprotected traded currency had foundered no less than six times in the prior six decades). Strong Traditionalist power brokers in Beijing maintained close relations with the equally (if differently) traditionally-minded leaders of the faltering Pan-Islamic League (whose petrodollars had evaporated as new energy ecologies in the developed world sharply reduced its reliance upon foreign oil).
Beyond China, Japan’s attempts to compete with the evolving bloc structures on an equal footing met with frustration from a number of directions. Firstly, it lacked the cultural collectivism that was clearly functioning as political glue in Europe, the Slavic nations, and the former British Colonies, just as it lacked the unilateral scope and potentialities of China. Thrown back upon the need to build agreements and consolidate without assistance from either of those natural amalgamating forces, the Japanese discovered that their prior unwillingness to fully apologize for the violent excesses of their troops in World War II had not been overlooked or forgotten. As they attempted to evolve a Pacific Rim organization, they found themselves not only undermined at every step by Chinese interests, but frequently deemed insufficiently trustworthy by many of the nations which they had occupied during that century-past global conflict.
Compelled to focus upon purely economic linkages, Japan shifted its search for an initial partner to Brazil, in which a large Japanese émigré community had gained increasing social and political influence. This was welcomed by the Brazilians, whose experience in the Belt War made them eager to leave the PRC’s domain of control, largely due to the veiled but very real autocratic prerogatives which Beijing exerted in its relations with the members of its incongruously named Developing World Coalition (DWC).
With the commitment of this first partner, the Japanese proved highly adept at leveraging themselves into sequentially greater relationships. Although the organization was at first weak and diffuse, Japan’s efforts to secure new members for inclusion in its loose commercial consortium highlighted the nation’s strong ability at advantageous deal-making. Slowly bringing the majority of Brazil’s aligned South American states into their transglobal trade organization, the Japanese then made common cause with other states that were, in one regard or another, problematic fits with any of the other emerging blocs. South Africa, possessing a strong technological sector but a persistent image as a troubled nation, responded readily enough to Tokyo’s overtures. Other, select African nations responded similarly. With this membership in place, and the constant (if ultimately elusive) expressions of interest from Mexico a matter of global record, Japan approached India and Indonesia—with whom final negotiations persist today, as each nation strives to glean maximum benefit from the relationship.
Critics have called this loose amalgam of states a “non-bloc” but that dismissive label pales beside the fact that, left without a ready pathway to political and international parity, the Japanese built a bloc from common interests and the promise of mutual benefit, and have thereby created the largest of all the blocs, when measured by population and general resources.
South America’s move toward bloc politics was one of disappointment, change, and uncertainty. After the Megadeath madness gutted so many of its cities, and after its unfortunate (and in many ways, hapless) peripheral involvement in the Belt War, Brazil and the rest of South and Central America parted company from China’s Developing World Coalition and resolved to chart their own course. Increasingly successful modernization initiatives and responsible resource allocation from 2070-2085 onward began to prove that this continent was not destined to become another Africa, and attracted the aforementioned interest, and wooing, of Tokyo’s global commerce initiative. While South America’s collective pride quickly rose to an all-time high, Central America and Mexico found themselves vexed by conflicting desires. On the one hand, they had strong impulses to join their larger and culturally akin southern cousins; on the other, strong countervailing forces of extant agreements and traditional partnerships pulled them more in the direction of the United States.
The United States had, in many regards, both the easiest and hardest time moving into the era of bloc politics. Already well versed in many of the mechanisms and methodologies that might be employed to establish a bloc, and furnished with relationships that had the potential of readily moving in that direction, it also contended with its own reluctance to share the smallest iota of sovereignty with another state, and found the same attitude in its potential partners. Indeed, the wary circumspection that was evinced by any state entertaining the notion of moving into closer alignment with the United States was most pronounced in the nations that were its strongest and oldest allies. The cultural phenomena underlying this, being unique, want special explication.
Firstly, the fierce independence of Americans is at least as present (albeit often expressed differently) in its other New World cousins, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. America’s “special relationship” and intimate military and intelligence coordination with the United Kingdom similarly did not translate into ready acceptance of shared sovereignty there, either.
This situation was exacerbated by America’s peculiar combination of striving for dominance in world affairs, yet having the most vocal criticisms of those tendencies often coming from its own population. In short, criticism of America—from both inside and outside its borders—led to an understandable (and arguably prudent) awareness of the large, powerful country’s appetite for control. By the same token, the very openness of that criticism, and the critics’ practical freedom from any worry of retaliation, were both constant testimonies to these nation’s fundamental (if imperfect) commitments to liberty, free expression, and plurality. More than one analyst of America’s world image in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has touched upon its “tendency toward an almost schizophrenic expression of both genuine goodwill and overbearing presumption.”
Nowhere is this conundrum better illustrated than the episode which occasioned its closer integration with Canada. Prompted by the need to redraw NAFTA along lines that made success far less dependent upon Mexico’s ability to meet projected goals and fiscal benchmarks, Washington and Ottawa began the delicate process of crafting additional economic coordination between the two states without raising (mostly Canadian, and particularly French-Canadian) hackles over the long-feared usurpation of the maple leaf by the bald eagle.
As news of these talks began to leak out, the name of the agreement, the Unified Commerce Agreement, was being floated and rigidly scrutinized for any potential to occasion fear on the part of Canadians, or triumphalism on the part of a sizable minority of ultra-nationalist Americans. Unfortunately, one of the first reporters entrusted with the title of the agreement disclosed it to a blogger friend, who promptly turned around and “scooped” the imminence of the new UCA agreement. Unfortunately, the blogger did not clearly indicate what each letter in the acronym UCA stood for.
Possibly, it would not have made any difference. Suffice it to say that when the negotiators from Canada and America convened the next day, they were horrified to arrive at their sessions only to be surrounded by reporters from newspapers that had already announced the formation of the UCA: the Union of Canada and America. By the end of the day, a web-pundit had dubbed this wholly phantasmagorical polity “Americanada.”
The damage done by that innocent set of events and the groundless fabulations of hypervigilant watchdogs was a lesson to both the US and all its allies: fear of American erasure of the sovereignty of its cultural cousins was immense and almost impossible to ameliorate. In consequence, the coordination and integration of England’s three largest Anglophone colonies—the US, Canada, and Australia—proceeded more slowly than any other. And while many in the UK have long urged consideration of the benefits of joining their New World offspring, the same fears and reservations are present there—only magnified a hundredfold.
The Impulse Toward Greater Bloc Cohesion
Three factors accelerated the closer integration of these five emergent blocs in the last years of the twenty-first century, all of which underscored the need for pooled resources and cooperative action.
The first was the Belt War, which drew the international differences in space technology and presence into sharp relief. The inability of China’s aligned states to provide meaningful assistance when its fortunes faltered, and the decisive intervention effected by a comparatively small high-tech American-Australian-Canadian contingent, engendered two powerful realizations. Firstly, power parity on Earth required power parity in space. And secondly, the expense of purchasing and maintaining that parity was best achieved (arguably, could only be achieved) by integrated and cooperative efforts. This accelerated the movement toward genuine blocs.
The second incident was fundamentally both a coda and an exclamation point adorning the first: the detection of the Earth-approaching asteroid labeled the “Doomsday Rock” in 2080 and its destruction by an ambitious American-Canadian mission in 2083. Optimistic estimates indicated that the Rock might kill no more than four billion and push Earth back to the technological level of the American Civil War. Pessimistic (many say “realistic”) estimates prognosticated between 95-97 % destruction of the human race, and a return to the Bronze Age. The global need for developing a spacefaring civilization was suddenly drawn in high-relief, and it was clear that the only way to do so effectively was to cost-share the expenses.
The third, but clearly greatest, impulse toward true bloc power structures was generated by the electrifying announcement that, in 2105, the recently formalized New World Commonwealth (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United States), acting in concert with the UK, had succeeded in their attempt to create a supraluminal (or so-called “faster-than-light”) craft and had visited the Alpha Centauri system as the crowning achievement of their ambitious Prometheus Project. Global outcries to share the technology were no doubt made more shrill by the fact that analogous programs in other blocs had lagged behind Prometheus. The New World Commonwealth’s subsequent delay in sharing the technology of the Wasserman Drive—a reluctance seen as needless by most, and ill-understood to this day—was not essential for the European Union and Russlavic Federation, which either cleared the final hurdles on their own or after receiving one or two useful hints from colleagues within the Prometheus Project.
However, by withholding the information for almost half a year, the New World nations’ strategic silence arguably achieved what loud and impassioned rhetoric never had: a rapid integration of the nascent blocs into powerful, dominant organizations. The intense resentment and competitive spirit sparked by that silence swept aside all remaining national impediments so that maximum energy could be brought to bear upon the quest to match the NWC’s feat of interstellar travel.
THREE: THE BLOCS TODAY
This brings us to an overview of the blocs as they are today, and then, the ongoing challenges that they face, either individually, or collectively.
The New World Commonwealth is overwhelmingly comprised of the Anglophone states—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States—that took a powerful and enduring imprint from their initial and decisive English roots. Although there was considerable outcry in the UK over the formation of Prime Minister Hadley-Singh’s blue-ribbon commission to critically assess and critique the costs of once again renouncing the Great Britain’s titular membership in the EU and joining the Commonwealth, it seems likely that, despite much reluctance and caution, England is in fact poised to make this shift. However, all indications are that it will also strive to retain equal ties to Europe for as long as possible, retaining its status as the most pivotal nation in the ongoing efforts to maximize common purposes and goals between the New World Commonwealth and the European Union.
Of all the blocs, the Commonwealth remains the most self-sufficient, both in terms of resources and development. While its political integration is in many ways more loose than any other bloc except TOCIO, its near absolute linguistic uniformity and shared legal, political, and cultural traditions enable surprisingly close cooperation (comparatively) across a wide range of complicated activities. Although its preeminence in military and space technology is frequently cited as being its most noteworthy advantage, it should be remembered that it is, by a small margin, the largest gross producer of foodstuffs among the five blocs, and is, by an immense margin, the largest net exporter of the same. Being the breadbasket of planet Earth, the New World Commonwealth has profound potential leverage over the global market.
The European Union has recently expanded modestly, due to new extra-Continental memberships awarded to nations which retained very strong affinities to one or another of the European cultures and have no better alternative for membership in any other bloc. The most noteworthy of these new members is Argentina.
The Union enjoys very high levels of education, employment, and social care, as well as excellently run and supported high-tech industry and service sectors. Although very diverse in national customs and language, it has very strong commonalities regarding political culture and foundational values, allowing disputes within the bloc to be settled without undue rancor. This amplifies the Union’s already high levels of internal efficiency.
However, the Union remains power-dependent and food-dependent, largely due to its population density and its unfavorable location for any of the cheap and quickly employed solar-based power augmentation strategies available to equatorial regions. Imbalance of political power also still persists, with German fiscal dominance prompting intermittent episodes of French resentment, resulting in the only significant political logjams within the Union’s political apparatus. Continuing problems with economically weaker states—such as Portugal, Greece, and a number of newer members—perturb the otherwise smoothly running economy. Ongoing challenges include the refusal of various states to contribute to space or other large programs, claiming that even token participation in such activities is incompatible with their attempts to stabilize their internal economies. Also, due to sour memories of—and often, harsh experience with—the processes of foreign settlement and colonization, the EU tends toward extremely gradual, careful expansion, which has made it a less dynamic factor in interstellar colonization than it might otherwise have been. This is reflected in its comparatively modest investment in shift carriers and establishing communities on green worlds.
The Russlavic Federation is comprised of states that share the linguistic, as well as the uniquely synthesized Eurasian cultural, roots that predominate where Europe abuts Asia. This so-called “Russian” bloc has achieved good results in terms of promoting a relatively high standard of education, healthcare, and industry. With the shift away from a petrochemical energy economy, it has become somewhat deficient in terms of clean power production, but its southern extents—including the broad, unused expanses of Kazakhstan—furnish it with some more auspicious regions for increasing its use of solar-power options. A dramatic movement toward fusion plants, while phasing out fission generators, is ongoing.
Although the Federation lacks a booming high-technology consumer production sector, it makes up for that weakness with excellent heavy industry, aerospace manufacturing and design, and vast reserves of high-value natural resources, including rare earths, metals, and petroleum-based products of all kinds.
A highly unstable equilibrium between nationalist drives and free market tendencies became comparatively less erratic during the second half of the twenty-first century. This was undoubtedly due, in no small measure, to the bloc’s emergence from its own integrational political crises and variations. As the bloc settled into a reasonable and durable modus vivendi, it also engaged in less of the posturing and “spoiler politics” with which it drew attention to itself in the decades following its loss of the attention and importance once conferred by the white-hot Cold War spotlight.
While this helped create steady, and generally improving, relations with the Union and Commonwealth blocs, it did nothing to ameliorate the stressors in its relationship with China’s DWC bloc. With most of the southern-fringe “Stans” possessing membership in the Developing World Coalition, the traditional border tensions between Russia and China did not abate. Indeed, Kazakhstan became a tense area as the more traditional (and less economically modern) indigenous population desired membership in the DWC, while the more modern, and Soviet-era Byelorussian population was firm in its commitment to the Russlavic Federation. For reasons too complicated to recount here, the spacefaring ambitions of the two superpower nations (and their nascent blocs) came into conflict on two occasions in the second half of the twenty-first century. The first was a brief, mostly automated conflict dubbed the High Ground War. The second was a slightly longer and far-ranging contest known as the Belt War. Although conditions between the powers have since improved, theirs is still the most fraught relationship between any two blocs.
China’s Developing World Coalition (although it resists that possessive labeling) is, more than any other, dominated by its core national power. China’s attempts to legitimate itself as leading a bloc rather than as a superpower with a collection of largely steerable satrapies is founded on its genuine and ongoing attempts to reach out on an economic basis to disparate nations and groups that are not within its (or, usually, any other predominant) cultural sphere. However, while Beijing is, in theory, just another member of this bloc, the population and economic weighting of political representation within it gives China what amounts to a monopoly on political power. This translates into an administration and bureaucracy overwhelmingly staffed by Chinese nationals. The establishment of Chinese as the only official language of the bloc intensifies this effect. Although there was originally slightly greater parity between China itself and the Pan-Islamic League that joined the bloc en masse upon its founding, this faded along with the passing of the oil-based global economy and the concurrent shifts in the dominant energy-generation paradigm.
Having also accepted many of the most troubled African states as members, the DWC continues to grapple with all the social challenges problems one would expect (except in the Chinese littoral and urban regions, where infrastructure conditions approach those of the developed world). Particularly outside of China, the DWC population has significantly lower life expectancy, significantly higher infant mortality rates, significantly more rudimentary education and health care delivery systems. While Chinese technicians are working throughout the Coalition to upgrade (or maintain) infrastructure (from power and plumbing to IT and telecom systems), most member states have not become self-sufficient in any of these areas. This, in turn, prompts persistent debates in Beijing regarding the wisdom of maintaining so many other member states largely at China’s own expense. Moderates and internationally-minded Transformists argue that the formal and legal structures of a genuine bloc must be maintained in order to ensure global legitimacy and equal consideration from the other blocs. Traditionalist skeptics argue that such values are both intangible and dubious, and that the interests of China would be better served by a bloc balance sheet that had fewer noncontributing member states listed on it.
Although Traditionalist Beijing tries to suppress or downplay these debates, they are well enough known, and have had significant repercussions. Of all the blocs, the DWC is the one evincing the highest tendency toward membership churn. In short, various DWC member-states are making subtle overtures to other blocs, or even megacorporate entities, for a better deal. Between the lack of autonomy within the bloc, the second-class citizen status of most non-Chinese, and the leadership’s known ruminations upon the wisdom of jettisoning some of the current bloc members, this tendency toward comparison shopping is unavoidable.
The acronym of the Trans Oceanic Commercial and Industrial Organization (TOCIO) indicates its Japanese center of commercial gravity. This bloc has been called the “default bloc,” since it is largely comprised of nations that are not culturally, politically, or commercially satisfied with the four other alternatives. Nations such as India, Brazil, and Indonesia deemed themselves undervalued as so-called “outlier nations” and decided that they would fare better in union with each other, rather than subordinating themselves to one of the other four blocs, each of which is characterized by strong, core cultural affinities that they do not share.
Consequently, TOCIO is by far the most diverse bloc, and is variably represented as the “junkyard bloc” and the “bloc of the future.” The pejorative term “junkyard bloc” is easily understood; it is indeed a haven for those nations that could not cut a good deal elsewhere, or whose cultural particulars fell too far outside the limits of the other four. It is labeled the bloc of the future because, among those who foresee bloc politics as an evolutionary step toward a true one-world government, it has pioneered a number of innovations in establishing compromises between the three primary axes of representational power sharing: voting based on population, on economic output, and on equal representation (i.e. one polity, one vote). Exclusive adoption of any one of these pluralistic paradigms would create a bloc without any hope of durability, given the subsequent disproportionate allotment of power and influence. So a blending of these models was required.
This blended approach was necessitated by two factors: the vast differences among the member states, and the lack of a strong central power. Although the EU is the most similar to TOCIO in its lack of a central power around which the bloc coheres (although Germany comes much closer to this than Japan), the Union enjoys a very high degree of cultural commonality, and the longest history of bloc-wide consensual political process. In contrast, Japan had to build its bloc out of nations as diverse as Brazil, India, Indonesia, and South Africa.
However, Tokyo shrewdly maximized the freedom of action for each member state, and did not attempt to (i.e., realistically could not) impose its culture upon those states. In consequence, there is more general buy-in, and while there is some churn among the member states, this is generally a matter of exploring superior options, rather than escaping an oppressive or constrained political environment, as pertains in China’s DWC. Because of this, the Japanese were able to be selective and “cherry-pick” the most attractive member nations for their bloc, attracting the most stable and resource-rich African, Asian, and South American countries. This has left it with fewer problems to manage than the Developing World Coalition, and consequently, further reduces its needs for the creation of centralized relief and/or interventional agencies.
The only uncomfortable, but unchanging, reality of the TOCIO bloc is that it grows at the expense of the DWC bloc, since they both specialize in producing mass consumer goods. China has the advantage of being a command economy, able to refocus a huge workforce at will. Japan, however, enjoys the advantages of a considerable number of large workforces around the world, each with different areas of specialization, and a robust currency. In the past two decades, the emerging TOCIO bloc has generally beaten the DWC in almost every measure of trade and production except high-volume heavy industry production, such as ships, trains, construction equipment, etc.
FOUR: CHALLENGES WITHIN AND AMONG THE BLOCS
The United Nations and a Conflict of Interest
One of the ongoing difficulties posed by the emergence of bloc politics is the reduced primacy, efficacy, and practical legitimacy of the United Nations.
The cause of the UN’s loss of primacy is obvious: as the blocs have matured and normalized, they have been far more successful at achieving the mandates of the UN than the UN ever was. They have certainly created a more stable and balanced world order, in large part because the UN was arguably flawed in the unwarranted idealisms which undergirded its conceptual origins. The UN was an admirable attempt to leap ahead to a global concordiat comprised of nations equalized in and by their common interests. This was certainly a consummation devoutly to be wished—but far, far away from becoming a reality in the power ecology of nation-state politics, particularly in the wake of World War II and at the very dawning of the Cold War. The logical intermediate step was, and remains, a more gradual and natural amalgamation of nation-states along enduring cultural lines into stable structures of shared transnational interests that are constant enough to promote a habit of political consensus and conjoint action. From exchanges among these fewer, yet larger and more stable political entities (which we call blocs) a more manageable world oversight council might realistically arise.
Ironically, what made the UN so wonderful as an ideal—a concordiat in which all nations had direct representation—also made it too unwieldy to be effective. But until the emergence of those collectivizing political, social, and fiscal forces which also prompted the emergence of the blocs, there was also no interest among the major powers to revamp the UN—or to scrap it, either. Belonging to the UN symbolized a commitment to global discourse, regardless of whether this symbol actually bespoke such a commitment or was simply an obeisant bow in its general direction.
Consequently, while the UN began with a great deal of moral cachet, it lacked practical power. Ultimately, that cachet began to erode as too many powers (perhaps most of them) showed more interest in gaming the systems of the UN, rather than embracing its stated objectives. The big powers used their Security Council vetoes to obstruct anything to which they were strongly opposed. The smaller powers passed hundreds of resolutions (many wildly self-serving) in the General Assembly. However, lacking any actual control over the world’s primary economic, political, or military resources, theirs was essentially empty legislation. As one Australian commentator put it, “the UN has more bark, and less bite, than any other dog in the ongoing fight for global control.”
The UN was, in the final analysis, largely unable to effect any significant change, other than a few markedly successful inoculation and disease-eradication campaigns overseen by the World Health Organization. Consequently, although the UN still reports on the ills abroad in the world, it rarely seems to recognize that the persistence of those unremitting woes is also de facto evidence of its own one-hundred-and-fifty year failure to ameliorate or eliminate them. Consequently, statements such as the one in the wire copy below have become a body of evidence that constitutes a sad, but largely inarguable, indictment regarding the UN’s own institutional inability to meet the mandates that were its vitiating and validating objectives:
“UNESCO announced today that despite steady rates of growth in productivity and capital accumulation, the disparity of average per capita income in the developed world and those of the developing and undeveloped worlds is at an all-time high. Developing World Coalition Vice-Commissioner Mei-Dong Bin congratulated UNESCO on the accuracy and impartiality of its six-year study, asserting that the profound inequities in income and quality of living are direct products of power-bloc politics over the last two decades, which he claims serve to consolidate and maintain the privileged position of the First World nations.”
At the very worst, the UN’s peace-keeping mandate has occasionally been exploited to legitimate intrusions and frictions that might not have otherwise arisen, or at least might not have escalated to the point of brutal, sustained conflict. A particularly disturbing example of this can be found in post-Megadeath Africa, where the restoration of order was often resisted by indigenous groups that stood to lose the most from foreign intervention, whether UN-moderated or not. Operating under numerous layers of plausible deniability, Beijing provided aid and advice to these traditionalist insurgents, which in turn led to increased aid to the more modern governments they opposed, most of the assistance coming former colonial parent-countries. When frictions between these two camps erupted into low-level guerilla conflicts that straddled half a dozen borders, a largely Moldavian and Romanian UN peace-keeping contingent was called in. The rapid upswing in serious, focused attacks concentrated on that force led to inquiries that ostensibly pointed (albeit via very questionable evidence) to Chinese involvement. As the UN forces ineffectually attempted to establish and mediate a cease-fire, an independent Russian force was sent into the region under the aegis of providing security for Russian locals and Romanian military support contractors who, although attached to the peace-keeping unit, were not military personnel per se. In consequence, a “secret” war brewed up in the region, exacerbating Sino-Russian frictions that spilled over into mercantile rivalries within the Pacific Rim and ultimately created the conflictual environment that led to the High Ground War. In conclusion, analysts suggest that, in part, the UN’s methods of intervention and mediation not only aggravated and perhaps caused a war in Africa, but set the stage for a broader conflict between the superpowers.
Common Language
Another issue that continues to dog bloc politics and has intermittently become an object of considerable contention, is the matter of establishing a common or official language in a bloc.
There are strong arguments both for and against the establishment of a common language. The advantages are obvious: when all the member states can communicate in the same language, coordination of everything from arts to industries is greatly facilitated. This is particularly true in the case of transnational organizations, such as militaries, space programs, intelligence agencies, etc. In addition to being far more efficient and inexpensive, a common language has the intangible but immense value of reinforcing and strengthening a sense of shared community, origins, and purpose.
The disadvantage is equally obvious: establishing a common language where none naturally exists is regarded by some as the single largest imposition of dominance in a political organization, even more than overt political or economic primacy. As one philosopher put it, “If you kill my language, you kill my culture—and right behind it, my country.” This issue was one of several that the EU could never resolve with England, since London always insisted that English at least be given equal consideration as the common language of the European Union (even if it was one of two). However, the continental powers excluded it from consideration. The reasons for this were numerous and subtle, but at the risk of gross oversimplification, the Union was concerned that if the official language of America and all its closest and culturally related allies also became the official language of Europe, the process of Americanization—also dubbed Coca-Colonization—would overwrite the cultures of Europe.
One can hardly blame the non-Anglophone nations of the Continent for their concern. They had seen plentiful evidence of this phenomenon at work, first through the post-World War influences and marketing that rode in on the tail of the Marshall Plan, and later through the electronic internationalization of English as the lingua franca of the information age. Their decision to draw a strong, prohibitive line against the adoption of English as the, or even one of the, primary language(s) of the Union is impossible to fault from this perspective.
However, from the perspective of the English, it constituted an a priori compromise regarding the primacy of their language—which to London was just one more irreconcilable difference with its Continental neighbors. This linguistic exclusion dated from the very earliest days of the formation of the Union. As French political philosopher Etienne Balibar declared during an address in 2000 (and which was later published in 2004 as part of his We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship), “English, in fact, is not and will not be the ‘language of Europe.’”
Although Balibar went on to propose “translation’ as the language of Europe, this answer demonstrated its profound weaknesses almost immediately when the political leaders of the Union put it into operation (in a much more simplistic fashion than Balibar was suggesting). It became, as one analyst observed, like working with old-time telephone exchanges: “your lines within an exchange always worked, but it was hit-and-miss when you tried to make connections between the exchanges.” And in a variety of urgent situations—military, emergency, political crises, fast-moving markets, real-time intelligence operations—this ever-present threat of a communication break-down became an impediment against functional integration of these services. Consequently, they remained almost exclusively national in organization, financing, and training. The unspoken acceptance of this problem ultimately gave way to an assumed, and in some cases required, competence in either German or French, and preferably both. Although there was some resistance to this model, it was ultimately employed simply because it had little day-to-day impact upon the national populations of the EU; mastery in one or both of those languages was only required for certain, national-level functions of high urgency.
However, the simple truth that few officials were wont to admit was that the Union’s unofficial third language was, of course, English. Given the ubiquity of English in media, on the internet, and in pop culture, it was and is still freely used when there are lapses in communication during crises where either party speaks only German or only French. As time goes on, the extended and rather unplanned preeminence of English continues to grow—in large part, perhaps, because it is not premeditated. Like blue jeans and Coca-Cola and other symbols of Americanization, use of the English language is not part of a political agenda and so attracts new users by passive seduction, rather than active coercion. This fact rankles the various Continental agencies and organizations charged with cultural protection and preservation, but the reality of the matter is that the phenomenon is taking place in venues and for reasons that lie well beyond the power of juridical pronouncements and guidelines on approved language use.
The same situation is present in the TOCIO bloc, where English is more openly embraced as an important language because it is the only one that is in everyday use in all its various member-states. As one Indian official put it, “If it wasn’t for the constant exposure to, and rehearsal of, English in the global youth culture, I do not think TOCIO could function. This utterly foreign tongue has also, paradoxically, become our common tongue.”
There is much to support this casual observation: Brazil, Indonesia, India, and Japan have virtually no common cultural roots, and certainly no linguistic similarities. There were some initial attempts to resist Anglophone dominance, but they were abandoned much sooner, and more overtly, than in the European Union. The most infamous example concerns the bloc’s efforts in space.
When the TOCIO bloc was first established, Japan had the only strong, manned space program amongst the member-states. Japan, therefore, provided most of the crews initially. As the other nations began to provide crewmembers, the rule was promulgated that all TOCIO space personnel had to be fluent in Japanese.
To no one’s surprise (outside of the handful of Japanese cultural hegemonists who had formulated and passed that requirement), the best potential crewpersons from other nations discovered that they had better things to do than learn Japanese. However, it was equally obvious that they all knew English. And so the language restriction was rescinded within mere months of its having been enacted. Since then, the dirty little not-so-secret of the TOCIO bloc is that although it has no official language, its unofficial language is a kind of stripped-down English peppered with loan words and syntactical variation.
Inside the bloc where one would most likely expect English to be the definitive official language—the Commonwealth—it actually shares that billing with Spanish. This is partly an inheritance from similar legislation enacted long before by its central power, the United States. However, it was also a practical step, since Mexico, much of Central America, and the Philippines have all either entered the Commonwealth bloc or are considering such a move. The immigrant communities liberally scattered throughout the New World Commonwealths have also provided points of political integration for other, even more linguistically distinct states such as Taiwan and South Korea.
In the Russlavic Federation, there is no one official language, but anyone who wishes to hold a job or earn a degree in education, healthcare, emergency service, the military, aviation, etc., must speak one of three separate languages—all of which have enough common Slavic roots that a speaker in one will quickly be able to understand the speaker of another. This unusually gentle multicultural initiative by the Russian-dominated bloc has reaped considerable rewards. Unharried by the lack of cultural resistance to making Russian competency an official requirement, that language is quickly evolving as the one everyone studies in school and thus, is the imminent common tongue of the bloc.
China’s approach is, as one would expect, the exact opposite: there is no discussion on the issue of recognizing other linguistic traditions, because the official language is Chinese. Admittedly, there is no strong political push from Beijing to encourage its acquisition in other areas. But that is because non-Chinese populations are expected to see to their own affairs and to have limited influence upon (or even sustained contact with) Beijing and the bloc itself.
The only overarching problem with language among all the blocs is a new, expanded reprise of the linguistic concerns that the Union had regarding English in its early days. In short, as the blocs mature and move toward greater integration, and possibly unification, would English become the de facto and undisputed lingua franca of the human race? Wouldn’t that translate into political dominance for the Commonwealth bloc? How do the many peoples of the Earth protect themselves from eventual evolution into Anglophone societies, thereby losing their cultural identity?
Xenophobia, Xenophilia, and the Practical Absence of a Middle Ground
A source of ongoing tension among (and sometimes, within) the blocs is the question of where each one falls on the wide spectrum of reactions toward change, toward the new. Consequently, the aforementioned problems such as cultural protectionism and common language are not so much independent disputed as they are diagnostic symptoms of larger, linked disparities in attitudes towards social evolution.
One early twentieth-first-century analyst proposed the following (dangerously generalized and simplified) paradigm as a means of framing discussions on such topics: in short, he proposed that all states/cultures can be regarded as fundamentally xenophobic, xenophilic, or neutral. However, a culture which is neutral toward “the different” naturally leans in the direction of xenophilism, simply because it does not exert energy to erect barriers in a world that is steadily evolving toward a unitary infosphere. Consequently, he proposed that the foreseeable global trend is overwhelmingly xenophilic: only states/cultures that consciously and determinedly dedicate resources to wall themselves off can hope to resist this powerful tide.
Considering the contemporary state of bloc politics, this model provides an illuminating, but also potentially alarming, paradigm for understanding why, or how, a considerable majority of the world’s most xenophobic states and societies have become members of Beijing’s Developing World Coalition. From this perspective, the cohering glue of the DWC is that most of its member states reject, and have taken protective steps against, the electronic infestation of youth-culture influence. One fundamentalist imam labeled it “colonization by the insidious Eurogenic infosphere.” This perspective posits global culture trends as an invasive force with both malign intents and effects upon the often parochial and insular attitudes of the societies in question.
From the exterior perspective, it is often asserted that these are repressive societies which have elected to reject (or which express active hostility towards) the progressive evolution toward cultural exchange and intermingling, which is very strong among the three so-called “Eurogenic blocs” (the Union, Commonwealth, and Federation) and which is prevalent in the TOCIO bloc. Concerned analysts have pointed to the links, therefore, between cultures evincing insularity, the propensity to dehumanize or demonize foreigners/others, parochial social attitudes and protectionism, and how they have cohered around the skirts of Beijing. This is hardly surprising, since Traditionalist-dominated Beijing has long been China’s bastion of cultural protectionism and Sino-supremacism. The same analysts have highlighted how, historically, most of these societies are also arranged as rigid hierarchies, and do not have a place in their ontological/cosmological view for peoples of other societies/origins/faiths. They also observe that this perpetuates the need for command economies and often highly draconian methods of ensuring social order, since, despite the leadership’s best efforts, a significant portion of school-aged persons identify more with the global youth culture, and a majority find themselves torn between the xenophobic dicta of their own culture and the xenophilic siren-song of the Eurogenic infosphere. The long-term possibility for unrest and revolt is thus deemed highest within and among the member-states of the DWC.
Factionalism versus Functionalism
One of the most legitimate criticisms levied against the rise of bloc politics is that there is no guarantee that every nation will be allowed to join a bloc. Apologists rightly point out that a nation can elect to be a bloc unto itself; no one can or would stop them from doing so. But critics rebut (also rightly) that this would be akin to a pygmy styling himself to be a king in a land populated by giants.
Neither side in the debate has much to say about how to ensure truly equitable and fair representation for smaller nations. Critics of the blocs point to the many nations (particularly those of Africa) which have been left out in the cold. Since they represent a net deficit to the linked national budgets of any given bloc, they remain outside the bloc structure, and are utterly without powerful advocates or allies. Realists soberly rebut that if the UN was functional, it would still be able to protect their interests, especially since all bloc-affiliated states have retained their membership in the UN. However, even the UN itself did not offer truly equal representation. The larger countries could always make their influence felt, and the permanent members of the Security Council wielded disproportionate power.
Beyond the problem of “orphan states,” there is also the linked issue of “flexible states”: those which are engaged in comparison shopping for a better deal in a new bloc. On the one hand, there is no way to practically constrain a state from entertaining rival offers of membership. On other hand, actual or even rumored flag-changing can profoundly disrupt markets and makes long-term budgetary planning—one of the raisons d’être for bloc politics in the first place—quite difficult.
Add to this the phenomenon of how the declaration of bloc membership can, in many cases, actually destabilize a nation. For instance, the Philippines remain deeply divided between a rural/Muslim/traditional faction militating for Coalition membership and PacRim solidarity, versus the urban/Christian/progressive segment of the population that brokered and maintains the nation’s membership in the Commonwealth.
The Quebec situation has grown even more serious. As Canada moved more steadily toward entering the Commonwealth, Quebec province moved further away from Ottawan authority. Commentators are uncertain how the situation will resolve, with many hypothesizing Quebec’s split from Canada, and entry into the European Union. Naturally, this would vastly diminish Canada’s contributions to the Commonwealth and therefore its stature and power within that bloc.
Similar situations exist in at least a dozen nations, and do not promise to be either easily or swiftly resolved.
The Sixth bloc—Megacorporations
The so-called Sixth Bloc, that comprised by a loose consortium of the world’s megacorporations, has presented increasingly troublesome challenges to the evolution and coherence of bloc politics over the past fifteen years. These frictions grew sharply when the nations made it clear that interstellar development policy and control was to be strictly and solely determined by the blocs. With megacorporations already flouting their disregard of UN laws and regulations by acquiring territories in perpetuity from small nonaligned governments (and thereby founding “non-national corporate cantonments”), they swiftly set about creating their own small fleet of interstellar shift-carriers to exploit opportunities bypassed by the colonization efforts of the blocs. This meant foreswearing settlement on green worlds, and instead, focusing on resource extraction from “grey worlds,” planets that are barren rock or inhospitable, yet offer strong advantages in terms of location, mineral deposits, or both.
Predictably, in their incessant quest for political validation, the megacorporations—usually operating under the aegis of their loose affiliation, the Colonial Development Combine (or CoDevCo, for short)—have begun mounting a campaign to scoop up non-aligned orphan states and offer profitable affiliation deals to flexible states. The objective: to fuse the national/political legitimizing properties of those states to CoDevCo’s own fiscal and material assets and thereby create a functional Sixth Bloc.
Whether these attempts will ultimately succeed—and whether the representation of the members of such a bloc would be as citizens with uniform rights, or as an extremely class-distinct collection of shareholders and corporate thralls—is impossible to foresee.