History

Generally, the 21st Century has been characterized by two trends. The first trend, prevalent from the late 20th Century onwards, has been an increase in the power of corporations, particularly multinationals. Underpinned by neoliberal politics and globalization of industry, nation states found their traditional powers increasingly limited, as multinationals offshored more and more profits, reducing the tax base countries used for state expenditure. This went hand-in-hand with increased funding of political parties, lobbying and corruption, as well as ever might right-wing control of global media and information flows. Over the course of decades, nation states, particularly democratic ones, found the idea of social safety nets and mixed economies ever more impossible to sustain.

The second trend, prevalent from the middle of the 21st Century, was climate change and its effects. The poorest countries in the world were those hardest hit by environmental catastrophes, which made other crises – including disease, war, inequality and terrorism – harder to deal with. States began to collapse into anarchy, which triggered the Illegal Economic Invasion (as the wealthier countries termed it); billions of refugees fled into other nearby nations, themselves already on the brink of disorder, overwhelming them. This set in motion a domino effect of state collapses.

Certain trans-regional or major events are worth highlighting. Before the midpoint of the 21st Century, the focus of fear in the West shifted away from Islamic extremism before being refocused on refugees in the middle of the century. However, having effectively created a bogeyman in Islamic terror, the West found this terror did not vanish overnight. From the middle of the century, and as Red Zone states started to fall into anarchy, the Salafist Mumlaka – very similar to Islamic State – cropped up in Africa, the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent and the South East Asian Archipelago. It has been launching terror attacks against Yellow and Green Zone countries ever since.

Fallout from the limited-scale India-Pakistan Nuclear War of 2055 has plagued countries across the world and prompts regular prophylactic doses of iodine isotope for those with money. During the panic of civil war, some Pakistani factions attempted to attack India and seize the rest of the Punjab and Kashmir, which remained food and water rich. The Indian military responded with airstrikes on Pakistani command sites. One of the factions responded by launching six nuclear warheads at India, destroying large parts of Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai as well as several military command stations. It was a humanitarian disaster from which India never recovered, even as it mobilised into Pakistan and destroyed its remaining command structure. India itself collapsed during the following decade.

Global pandemics have become regular. Some of these – Ebola, Pitts Virus and Smallpox – have been devastating but successfully limited. Influenza has been the greatest killer, most notably the Korean Influenza Pandemic starting in 2064 and lasting for four years, during which three hundred million people died.

Struggles over the newly-traversable Arctic began in the middle of the century, involving several hot and cold confrontations between Scandinavian countries, Russia, the United States and Canada, though these have now receded as trade routes and territorial claims have been formalised as belonging primarily to global corporations. On the other side of the world, coastal Antarctica has now become not only habitable but fairly pleasant, capable of supporting aquaculture and limited agriculture. It has become a preserve of the very wealthy seeking cooler climes.

Increasing global corporate power saw a decline in the power of other supranational organisations. The defunding of the United Nations by the US in 2028 weakened the already impotent and paralysed Security Council. A series of scandals followed, as China and Russia attempted to exert more influence. The US and Israel began boycotting the organisation wholesale, followed by other Western nations. UNHCR functions collapsed in the mid-2030s as the climate refugee crisis started to manifest. Other agencies like WHO and UNESCO followed, with all political functions suspended in 2052 after a death by a thousand cuts.

Within Europe, the European Confederacy was the natural inheritor of the European Union, founded as a result of the existential crisis that beset the EU in the 2030s. An increasing friction between monetary unions and fiscal independence, along with the need for a defence force to protect against increasing pressure from Russia and climate migrants, lead to an ever closer union. Populism was satiated as the bloc swung to the right and became, as it were, transnationalists, introducing the idea of European, rather than national, superiority. The European Confederacy was created in March 2037. While elements of the legislature and executive offices remained in Brussels and Strasbourg respectively, the unified European government is based in Luxembourg City. Like the national governments of which it is a confederacy, it is a theoretically democratic state, where both parties support and are funded by the corpocracy, where information flows are tightly controlled and where voter turnout is negligible and deeply discouraged by the elites.

Lastly, the world has grappled with rapid technological change. A virtual world offers respite from the horrors of the real one. Fusion power offers clean and virtually limitless power. Designer babies, prosthetic limb replacements and replacement organs are all well-established technologies, albeit only available to the rich. Synthetic organisms, engineered from the ground up, have the potential to revolutionalise or devastate daily life. Offworld automated mining facilities have been constructed on the Moon and Mars.

There is, of course, much variation by world region. North America has avoided the worst ravages of the 21st Century, primarily via a well-funded military defence of its coast and the use of Mexico and Cuba as buffer zones. South and Central America have largely collapsed into anarchy, though the southern parts of Brazil, Chile and Argentina survive, with their former northern and central territories sacrificed to a buffer zone maintained by automated forces.

Africa has almost completely collapsed into anarchy, as has the Middle East, excepting the highly-militarised state of Israel and the Yellow Zone state of Turkey, which has ceded its Asian territory. In Asia, richer island states like Japan and Singapore have survived, as has South Korea, buffered as it is by China. China itself survives in a rump of its former territory, highly militarized to keep out swathes of climate refugees that have fled from the now-collapsed states of the Indian Subcontinent and the rest of South East Asia. Oceania has fallen into anarchy, except vestiges in Malaysia and a small part of Indonesia, along with Australasia and New Zealand, which are Green Zone countries. Northern Europe and Scandinavia are still wealthy, protected as they are by the Mediterranean States and by the declining rump of Russia that is protected from its erstwhile eastern territories by fortified rivers and vast automated armies.