The CSA won the Second American Civil War and began a consolidation of power in the new world, starting with an invasion of Canada and the end of the Entente as any credible power. [1]

The Second Weltkrieg broke out in 1940 and the Reichspakt was overrun by the Third Internationale within a few short years. They, in turn, were overwhelmed by the Russian’s in a blitzkrieg-style offensive while the French and others were busy hemming in the Austro-Hungarians. The Russian offensive managed to occupy Europe by 1944 but could not deal with the British navy, nor did they have the means to delay the American shipment of troops which were coming across the Atlantic in droves to prepare for an alt-D-Day.

The Americans, British and other allies launch a counteroffensive through Spain codenamed Operation Ulysses, and manage to get as far as the Rhine river before the Russians can contain the offensive. Unfortunately, the liberation of Europe was quickly undone as the Russians used nuclear weapons to assist their counter offensive, which the Third Internationale had no response to.

While the 3rd Internationale could stop the Russians at Sicily and in Spain, it was clear the fighting was going nowhere and a ceasefire was declared[2], effectively dividing most of the world into two blocs: the Worker’s Internationale, and the Russian sphere. A cold war, called the “Great Stalemate” has persisted every since, and in some historical irony the socialist Americans are trying to one-up the nationalist Russians and vice-versa in a global game of political chess.

America is very leftist in most areas namely socio-economic, but still remains adamant about maintaining the nation’s founding democratic principles. Party politics are beginning to branch off into various shades of far-left, left, and center, but are all going to be more-or-less pretty consistent on union power and avoid steering into Totalist[3] nonsense. There are some internal squabbles, namely on the matters of church and state, and protests by religious communities feeling hemmed in by the state’s atheistic approach to many things, but this is still much better compared to OTL civil rights turbulence. Speaking of, the Americans also moved to desegregate much earlier than OTL and avoid things like housing inequality, while also being far less “pull and repulse” about hispanic immigrants.

Britain was under the totalitarian regime of one Oswald Mosley for most of WW2, and then briefly afterwards as well. Despite American pressure, he did not relinquish his power, and was killed by a coalition of military and radical socialists in 1948. This led to an on-and-off cycle of violence in Britain well into the early 1950s before the state calmed down. Since then, the UoB has taken itself back to its pre-Mosleyite roots, with power being re-bestowed to the Congress of Trade Unions, a socialist federation of sorts. The British have been forced to concede some freedoms in favor of centralization however, as WW2 and the ever-present Russian threat to the south has required a strong state and military to safeguard the Revolution at home.

The Third Internationale has been transformed into the World Socialist Alliance, though some call it just a ‘Fourth Internationale.’ The majority of these states emulate the American model, and the Americans tend to frown on those that slip up on democratic purity. A lot of post-colonial states have seen American interventions to oust dictators and set a “correct” system in place. Though clearly noble and even beneficial to many people, other states point at this and cite clear reasons why not to trust the WSA, with said states falling into the Russian’s loving embrace. Trade between WSA members is also a very important part of the whole deal, and those members that find themselves lagging behind are soon gifted international aid to patch them back up.

Some WSA states are still technically occupied, or claim parts of the European mainland, such as the Socialist Republic of Italy, which is composed of solely the island of Sicily, which the Russians never could dislodge them from. The other is South Spain, which was set up by the Americans out of their liberation zone after the Ceasefire as a counter to the Russian-backed Spanish and Portuguese States.

A highly Nat-pop[4] Russia emerged out of the Second World War practically unscathed, and now with nearly all of Europe under its iron grip. Though Savinkov would pass away in the 1960s, his successors only made sure to further his policies to their own extremes. Where as Savinkov was very pragmatic on the question of minorities and relations with Russia’s new client states, the new Vozhd has been negotiating these relationships. Racist nationalist policies have become the norm, as is zoned Russification and mass deportations of non-Slavs across the state. Most of Russia’s more peripheral conquests are proving hard to digest -particularly in the middle east- but more draconian measures to be taken seems to be Moscow’s line of thought on that issue. The Russian military is also overbearingly large, having to not only be stationed in troublesome territories, but also in Europe against the Reds, and across Asia against more Reds and the loose cannon that is Qing China.

The Iron Pact is Russia’s alliance system equivalent to the WSA, though in practice it is a de jure network of client states and Russian lackeys, and is lately becoming more and more of a de facto economic extortion zone, as cracks in the Russian economy need to be filled. Most of the states within the Iron Pact are military or nat-pop dictatorships of sorts, though with heavy restrictions on how much military power they can wield, as the Russians are distrustful of them. Germany and France have both been *Italianized[5], out of revenge, and out of desire to see Europe never again return to such prominence that they could ever threaten Russia again. Germany is a bit of a special case, as they have been allowed to form a loose union of the various puppet states to facilitate better economic productivity and cooperation - selling this idea successfully to the Russians by basically being more profitable puppets[6]. There’s still a lot of resentment amongst the Germans towards their Russian overlords, and unlike OTL Russia hasn’t really bothered much with selling the message to the Germans that their last empire was Literally Satan. For the most part, Russia is quite willing to pull out of Europe, at least to the Rhine -maybe the Elbe or Oder too- and establish a more compact zone of influence, but there is still the question of how the Americans would fill that power vacuum. And Moscow wouldn’t have any of those scenarios.

The Arabs have their own bloc, alongside nominal Japanese cooperation, chiefly against Russian expansionism. The Arab states run on “moralistic” democratic systems, that is to say, they are highly conservative and traditionalist, and have a dislike for the politics of the WSA and USNA, keeping themselves apart. They have their own internal issues: the Russian occupation of Iran and Turkey, and the fact that the Arabs sat around and did nothing for their fellow Muslims, has lost their governments some legitimacy in their peoples’ eyes, especially with the awful stories being shared by the streams of refugees making their ways southwards. The Arabs have also been slow to embrace the new situation of displaced peoples arriving, with some suggesting embracing them into the system, some wanting them gone, and some radicals offering a nuclear jihad against the Russian crusaders as the only solution. North Africa is another zone of contention: although most French have been pushed into the sea (sometimes literally), there’s still plenty left causing trouble for the new state of Algiers.

Japan had spats with the Russians over Manchuria and their puppet Transmur, and were soundly defeated on the Asian mainland. They did sue for peace, owing largely to their far stronger naval presence in the Pacific to save them a Russian invasion. As Russia was busy fighting the Internationale in the west, the Japanese expanded into former German possessiona in the Pacific and Asia, forming a democratic, if sometimes authoritarian, bloc. They are in a loose alliance with the Cairo Axis, namely on the sharing of nuclear weapons development to better contain the Russian threat.

Africa imploded during WW2, and had largely moved into either the Axis or WSA sphere, with vain attempts by the Russians to feign interest in the continent. The collapse of German Mittelafrika has set large portions of the continent off into periods of warlordism, sometimes perpetuated by outside powers. PMCs are less commonplace with Europe and South Africa having collapsed, however.

India is united under the Bharat People’s Commune, the last major totalist state in the world. They have distanced themselves from the more democratic-orientated WSA, instead preferring to have their own small power bloc in south Asia and east Africa. They are pretty amicable to the Russians, often working in cooperation against Islamist rebels along their common border, while also engaging in the occasional border dispute with the Chinese.

China is still divided, between the Republicans in the south, Qing in the north, and Russians in the far north and west. Republican China is a patchwork government of varying interests: a lot more socialist-types every decade, but the core of it is still fairly centrist and trying to sell an openness to big business to anyone who wants a piece of the action. Their placement with the WSA is one of pragmatism: while they dislike the Qing, they couldn’t trust the Russians enough to spit in their direction. While Japan may be leagues better than OTL, the Chinese still view them with distrust: a lot of the mainland would be under the Japanese thumb if Savinkov never kicked them out. The Americans have also been open to giving the Chinese a helping hand, if not for anything but another theatre to keep the Russians busy on. To the north, the Qing Emperor Puyi has become increasingly tyrannical, to the point that the outside world is ready to dive in once the system collapses after him. Quite alarmingly, the Qing have also joined the world with access to nuclear weaponry, and the international community has no clue as to who they’d aim them at first. Moscow, just in case, is sure to be first to blow them off the face of the Earth if they decide to launch any their way.