================================================================== Unnumbered episode #204: A History of the Formation Wars, Volume 1 ================================================================== Eileen looked at the file size suspiciously. "You want me to read *all* of this? "If you don't mind," said Jen casually. It was Tuesday evening, and the two had just finished dinner. Eileen had been all set to watch a movie, but Jen had other plans. "You know, some people around here actually have *jobs*," said Eileen pointedly. "Humor me. I promise I'll get your name on the cover." "Imagine my delight," said Eileen derisively, but her eyes were smiling. "What the heck, I'll give it a go." She opened the file. *** A Short History of the Formation Wars by Jennifer A. Sakachi, Ph.D. *** "Ph.D.? Jumping the gun, aren't you Jen?" "It's a done deal, more or less. I'll pass the review board with no problems. Just read." *** Chapter 1: Prelude to War: World War III? The dubiously-named Third World War was, as predicted by almost all observers at the time (Namano 2001), a rather short conflict. But was it truly a world war? Superficially, the answer is yes. It involved almost every nation in the world. Only a handful of nations stayed out of it, namely Sweden, Switzerland, the Vatican, and in what turned out to be a crucial decision, New Zealand [1]. True, no nation was truly untouched by it; as has been well documented (Meiou 2197, Hammond 2340, Hays 2479, Burke 2893), even Japan was involved, using its now-infamous Self-Defense Force (JSDF) to play a surprisingly major role in the conflict. But the question must again be asked, was it a world war? Was its scope broad enough to set it apart as a world war, and not a handful of local wars? The answer, I feel, is yes. Why? Let us examine the causes of that war and find out. First, we must begin with the deepening tensions between the United States and Russia. In 1998, roughly a decade after the failure of Communism in the Soviet Union, the hard-liners returned to power, eager to seek what they termed 'compensation' from the United States, something better classified as 'revenge' (Brast 2490). At the time, no-one seemed to notice. But as time went on, and Russia gained power behind the facade of a collapsing economy, powder was inevitably added to the keg that had existed since the end of the Second World War (Vickroy 2258). On 30 June 1999 [2], Russia made its first move. Under the guise of a military exercise, Russian air and sea forces launched a moderate attack on the Sakhalin Islands [3]. It is worth noting that the JSDF did *not* launch a counterattack. Under US pressure, Japan stayed put and allowed US forces to retaliate. Of course, another reason was the fundamental impotence of the JSDF (Tsurutani 1981). Why, an observant student would ask, was there no attempt at diplomacy? The technical answer is that there was. Several accounts exist of President William Jefferson Clinton's frantic talks with President Boris Yeltsin about the situation (Meiou 2197, Zimmerman 2105), but it is generally agreed that Clinton was acting in pure self-interest. At the time, the end of his term loomed a scant year away, and he had frankly done nothing for which to be remembered. After all, the economy that had improved so dramatically had collapsed back into ruin, and lingering fallout from the Lewinsky affair still loomed over him. The theory has also been proposed that he was trying to drum up support for his vice-president's upcoming bid for election in 2000, but this remains speculation [4]. Thus, can we say simply that the war began because an American got power-hungry? *** "Yes, we certainly can," said Eileen wryly, looking up from the text. "Lord knows I saw it enough times." "Come now, no being pessimistic." "Sorry, ma'am." "Apology accepted. Now read." *** The answer to that, as can be seen (Rekishika 2468, Hosho 2712), is a mixed one. Yes, it is true that had Clinton been less inclined to think about his rather dubious heir apparent, perhaps a more peaceful resolution to the conflict might have been reached. On the other hand, it is worth mentioning that before then, the United States had not been involved in a major conflict since the Vietnam debacle (Smith 1994, Takamono 2780), and had participated in nothing more than police actions since the Persian Gulf oil war of 1991 (Shaw 1996, Meiou 2197). Why bring this up? Obviously, because from a cyclical point of view [5], the United States was, it might be said, "due." *** "Interesting," muttered Eileen. "What was that?" "Oh, nothing." *** Thus, the stage has been set for a conflict between Russia and the United States, and it appeared that the doomsayers of the Cold War era would turn out to be correct after all. Or were they? Much has been made of the fact that in the subsequent conflict, in which treaty obligations and the very close-knit nature of world affairs pulled virtually all nations into the war, not a single nuclear weapon was used. True, they were in readiness; documents that survived the destruction of Washington DC clearly show that tactical nuclear warheads *were* in major theater areas, and commanders were authorized to use them if attacked with nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons (NBC). But (and this cannot be overemphasized), they were *not* used, despite all the prewar predictions that a third world war would necessarily entail the use of nuclear weapons. Why not? The general consensus is that humanity got a healthy dollop of sense in the intervening years since the first and only uses of nuclear weapons in warfare, needless to say the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in June 1945. Mankind realized that there was no possible consequence of not "dropping the bomb" that was worse than the known consequence of doing so. Thus, we stuck to conventional weapons, and while the death toll was still horrendous, with 110 million dead in the space of two years, and the financial toll was even greater [6], things were still infinitely better than the nuclear holocaust that might have been. I have a differing opinion, however. Based on historical texts (Meiou 2197), and more importantly the absence of the Sailor Senshi from historical records, I find it possible, and indeed likely, that the Senshi had an integral role to play in preventing the use of nuclear weapons. It is, admittedly, a rather unsubstantiated theory that, by its very nature, is extremely difficult to prove, but it is highly intriguing and very tempting, and is therefore left as an exercise for the reader. *** "Y'know," said Eileen, "the easiest way to solve that would be to go up to Serenity and ask her about it." "Yeah, I'm sure that would go over great," came the sarcastic reply. "'Um, Your Majesty, I was just wondering, um, did you intervene and change the course of the war back in the twentieth? Just as an academic matter of curiosity, of course.' That would be just swell." "What's wrong with that?" Jen sighed. "I'll explain later. Just keep reading." *** Thus, for whatever reason, nuclear weapons weren't used. Very well, now the question the astute reader will now ask is what this has to do with the Formation Wars. Everything, of course! The Silence followed as a direct result of the war, and it is drilled into children from grade school that the Formation Wars followed hard on the heels of the Third World War. So, we are now ready to begin a discussion of the causes, manner, and effects of the Silence, a topic that will be explored in the next chapter. *** "Well," said Jen, "at this point I was hoping you could do some discussion questions." "Questions? Jen, this is barely a pamphlet, to say nothing of a chapter!" "True. This is sort of an outline." She smiled. "Filling it in and making it longer is a graduate student's job." "You're a graduate student," Eileen said pointedly. "Not for long. Now read chapter two." "Pushy, aren't we?" "Just do it!" "Ha! Nike! And you say I don't pay attention." "Eileen . . . ." "Fine, fine, I'm reading. *** Chapter 2: The Silence: the Fuse is Lit It is common knowledge that the Third World War ended in a global draw. In no theater did one side win a clear advantage, although many (Lesher 2788, McCarrier 2789, D. Takahashi 2903) have speculated on what would have happened if Serenity (then Tsukino Usagi) had not sent her infamous "Whisper Heard Round the World [7]." But it went out, and roughly three quarters of the population of Earth went into hiding, including, unfortunately, a great many politicians and military leaders. Why did Serenity (or more properly, Tsukino) issue the warning? Some have proposed that it was a mere hint of incipient goddesshood, but this is rather difficult to prove, especially as there were several hints beforehand in the form of the various incidents involving Galaxia and Beryl. A more logical theory is that it was Tsukino's attempt to calm down the world. It seems obvious to the author that Usagi Tsukino hoped for the ninety years of Silence to serve as a Darwinian scythe. In theory, those who remained outside the hold of the Silence would kill themselves off, leaving the world to those more inclined to peace. One could make the case that this worked, to a degree. Rough casualty estimates (Meiou 2997) give the number dead at around three to four billion, a number that makes one cringe at first, especially considering the vast numbers of people who were only marginally involved in the fighting, but pales in comparison to the carnage that would follow. A number of questions must be asked by the student of history, and several of them will be answered in subsequent paragraphs. First, there is the matter of how a full quarter of the population of Earth could die. In sheer practical terms, taking a conservative estimate of three billion dead, one comes up against a seemingly insurmountable problem, namely that of decomposition. Simulations run by the University of Crystal Tokyo (Hanazawa 2902) show that the time needed to break down three billion corpses is simply too long. What happened to them? The answer to that question also answers another question that may be raised: what distinguishes World War III from the Silence. On the surface, they would appear to be the same, but upon closer inspection, one comes across the crucial difference. 1 January 2001 marked a watershed between chaotic period and chaotic period because it marked the large-scale reappearance of magic. Magic had been present in rather small quantities beforehand, in the form of the Sailor Senshi, but this had been restricted to Japan and a couple of isolated incidents elsewhere. Now, the world began to cope with the "Age of Thaumaturgy." [8]. One of the more obvious aspects (and one curiously limited to the Silence, for reasons that will be explained in a later chapter) was that dead bodies instantly decomposed into a pile of self-combusting ash [9]. *** Eileen looked up from the footnote and smiled. "We're playing the Captain Sakachi card, aren't we?" "Shut up," came the playful answer. *** This is but one example. There are many others which are left to the reader to discover alone (Guroi 2992). The point is that there is ample reason to believe that a distinction should be made between the Third World War and the Silence. However, another question must be asked about the Silence: why did Serenity make the announcement the way she did? Clearly, the panic that set in afterwards was bad enough; several major cities, including Winnipeg, Cairo, and Pretoria, were burned to the ground during the subsequent looting. It is possible that it was meant to send a jolt through the population, but it would seem that this was a mistake. The only answer that can be given is that even this was somehow to Serenity's advantage for some reason known only to her. It would not be the first time; historians often falter when faced with people who make their decisions with foreknowledge of the future. Therefore, having explored the reasons for the Silence, we are prepared to consider the causes, incidents, and results of the period from 2101 to 2190 CE: the bloodiest, most violent, and most thoroughly frightening period in the history of humanity, a period that can, without hyperbole, be said to be the darkest crisis ever to hit Homo sapiens. The Formation Wars. *** "Jen, have you considered writing horror novels?" *** The causes of the Formation Wars were very simple. When the senshi awakened, they saw a world that had been devastated by war. They firmly resolved that such a war could never happen again, and one of their first steps was to begin reviving those who would be the least warlike. Unfortunately, they chose the politicians. When the politicians (who, it must be remembered, were really the ones who started the Third World War) came out from their holes, they saw a world that had been irrevocably changed. All the old seats of power: Washington, Moscow, Beijing, all had been leveled. Clearly, the prewar superpower system was untenable, and doomed to failure if they tried to reassert it. By the same token, no system of government yet invented could handle this unique situation. The world, or what was left of it, had to be put back together, and neither democracy nor socialism could do it, for reasons discussed later on. The beginnings were rather subtle. Survivors were organized into nationwide recovery groups, which gradually became more and more regimented. As the leaders began to consolidate power, they met other leaders, who had long since renounced their old allegiances. A typical example is the case of the governor of the state of Washington and his band of some twenty thousand from Seattle, who joined with some forty thousand from Victoria and Vancouver to form the Northwest Pacific Confederation. The two no longer recognized the United States or Canada, and simply decided to become one. Then the NPC expanded, picking up survivors until it met the Northern California Alliance, which consisted of Oregon and all of what was California north of San Francisco. And so they grew. However, there came a point where two confederations met that had grown sufficiently large, to the point that neither *wanted* to be absorbed. When that occurred, there was one thing left to do. Fight. Thus, the Formation Wars began in over three dozen spots all over the world. In the Rocky Mountains near Denver, at Hong Kong, at the Ganghes Delta, at Patagonia, at the Aleutian Islands, at Alsace-Lorraine, and at many other places, the war was on. At the beginning, destruction was fairly limited, as work crews scrambled to get back into working order the tanks and jets left over from World War III. As time went on, however, the growing confederations grew large enough to start building factories which began turning out tanks, guns, ammunition (which, it should be noted, depleted Earth's already dwindling supplies of raw materials to the point of exaustion). Some of the fiercest fighting came in the Middle East, where the vaunted and rapidly dwindling oil reserves of the Saudi peninsula changed hands again and again. It was the Middle East that set the stage for the new world order. In 2106 the Saudi peninsula, along with the Tigris and Euphrates valleys and much of the Persian highlands, was controlled by a confederation operating out of Damascus. This was an obvious mistake; those very few Israeli survivors who were left continued to wage guerrilla warfare against the Arabs. They predictably had little success, but sufficiently weakened the Damascus confederation enough to be taken from the north by a consortium of Ukrainians and Balkans, who between them had effectively scoured Asia Minor. The Ukrainian/Balkan forces, however, found that they simply could not hold their ground. Not only did they have to contend with resistance from within, from the Israelis and the Arabs, but they also had to fend off outside forces. From 2108 to 2112, no less than seven different confederations launched attacks on the U/B forces. Under this strain, even a united nation would have difficulty staying together. The Ukraine and the Balkan nations hadn't liked each other much to start with, and so the confederation fell apart. What followed was a mere microcosm of the rest of the Formation Wars. Nine confederations fell to themselves, in an all-out free-for-all. The prize: Saudi Arabia, and the precious crude oil they needed to continue their military operations. [10] *** Eileen smiled. "It always comes down to oil, doesn't it?" Jen shook her head. "Nope. It's economics, and you know it. Oil was just the currency du jour." "You still think economics drives history, don't you?" It was a long-standing debate, and not just between the two. "Just keep reading." *** No confederation could hold an advantage for long. The deserts of Saudi Arabia are notoriously hard to defend in the best of times. These, however, were hardly the best of times. Oil field fires burned rampantly [11]. As if the pall of smoke covering the subcontinent wasn't enough, chemical weapons were extensively used for the first time since 1918 [12]. Add to this the extremely high temperatures Arabia is justly known for, and it is little wonder the situation remained as muddled as it did for so long. This campaign was different from the others, however, in that it was the first demonstration of the new system. The war for Arabia ended in one sense when the Hudson Bay Consortium and the Amazon River Basin Cooperative reached an alliance in which both retained their sovereignty, but united to fight all the other confederations. This early on, the others did not yet see the advantages of this sort of cooperative planning, and so the disunited forces were swept off the map by the HBC/ARB alliance. It was thus the the age of the alliance system was born, the system we still live in today. The peace in Arabia held for three years, about enough time for engineers to cap all the blown wells and right a good portion of the extensive environmental damage [13]. Sadly, this episode demonstrated another characteristic of the confederacy system. In 2125, the Hudson Bay Consortium was taken over by the short-lived Utah Compact, and in the resultant chaos, the Amazon River Basin lost its grip on Arabia. But the Southeast Asian Alliance (Fourth) and the Mediterranean Sea Union formed another coalition to hold on the subcontinent, and so it went on until the end of the war. This sort of thing was repeated all over the world, as confederations allied with each other for short-term goals, and then fell to fighting among each other once the goal was accomplished. Oftentimes, the bitterness that resulted from a broken union was far fiercer than any hatred for former enemies, and acts of savage vengeance were commonplace. During the peak of this Revenge Campaign (2130-2178) was seen the most brutal destruction of all. Genocide was far too common, as entire ethnic groups were pushed to the brink of extinction. For example, we need only look at the Amerindians and their treatment at the hands of the Californian Union in 2143, or the black concentration camps that dotted Midwestern North America during the 2150's, or the slaughter of millions of Koreans by the Beijing regime throughout the Formation Wars. Another part of this sad tale involves the destruction of cities. It can be argued that some of humanity's greatest architectural triumphs: the Eiffel Tower, the World Trade Centers, the Sears Tower, the Acropolis, and so on, were the most keenly felt losses. Cities tumbled all over the world. At first, it was only the big cities: New York (2111), London (2115), Bombay (2118). As the wars escalated, however, more and more cities died, until the litany reads like a graveyard: Toronto, Los Angeles, Moscow, Hong Kong, Auckland, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Miami, Bangkok, Chicago, Paris, Athens, Madrid, Boston, Berlin, Sydney: all these cities fell in the second decade of the twenty-second century *alone*. Any and every city with a population over ten thousand fell, and a large portion of the smaller cities were destroyed as well. In all this destruction, with campaign after campaign, with approximately 78% of the output potential of humanity put towards warfare, it is a wonder that humanity survived [14]. The nonuse of nuclear weapons can be directly attributed to the stripping of all usable launch vehicles during the early days of the war. Once the ICBMs had been dismantled, leaving behind the warheads, it was considered impractical to use them, especially when their use would preclude the usability of the very lands the confederation tried to conquer. There is another reason for the nonuse of nuclear weapons, a reason that directly ties into the reason why this narrative of the Formation Wars has thus far ignored the state of Japan at this time. On 3 July 2100, the senshi awoke from their slumber and began reawakening the others. Japan was the only country in which they made a concerted effort to wake every person; elsewhere they simply awoke those who could awake all the others. Therefore, the reawakening of Japan took some time, and by the time the senshi had completed this and could take notice of what else was going on in the world, they found that the Wars had already begun. Sailor Moon (this was of course before her coronation as Neo-Queen) could have conceivably used the ginzuishou to stop this, but several writings (Hanashizu 2392, Zanuno 3005) would indicate that even the ginzuishou has its limits [15]. Those limits would appear to have been reached with the revival of Japan. However, the other senshi would appear to have had some sort of powers over the world as well. How else can we account for the deaths of some three dozen people, all of whom left behind records and journals making clear that they, more than anyone else in a position to do anything about it, wanted to use nuclear weapons? *** "Blind luck?" asked Eileen. "It's what happened every other time we've been to the brink." "Sometimes blind luck is just another name we use for divine intervention." *** And so the war wore on . . . until it happened. Crystal Tokyo. *** "And?" "And," said Jen, laying back in her chair, "that's it. Until volume two. It's a short book, and it should be. I'm not going to include every single battle and every single general." "Hm." "Well, what do you think?" "It's okay." Jen growled. "Okay? What kind of criticism is that? That doesn't help me!" Eileen smiled a devious smile. "Make me." Jen smiled as well, but quickly wiped it off her face to keep up appearnaces. "Oh, I will." She pounced. [1] Many credit ANZAC commitments as a key factor in keeping the war from escalating too fast in far Southeast Asia and Oceania. This is, I think, a point overlooked by some Crystal Tokyo historians. [2] This was also, of course, the birthday of Serenity. Much has been made of this in less reputable chronicles; the author feels that it is simply another bizarre coincidence. However, it is rather suspicious that after that day, no further reports of senshi activity were made until the end of the Silence. [3] For a more detailed depiction of the importance of those islands to politics in that part of the world, see Edward Ogea, A Geographical History of Eastern Asia, 2000. [4] And so it shall remain; the sacking and destruction of Washington DC in 2120 was extremely unfortunate from a historical standpoint. The National Archives were inexcusably sluggish in dispersing and duplicating records, including the infamous Clinton tapes, the seal on which was to be broken in 2135. A group of archeologists claimed to have found fragments of the tapes in 2904, but this remains unverified, and the team refuses to release the alleged fragments for peer review. [5] The cyclical view of history is perhaps one of the most perturbing in the field. Simply stated (and perhaps oversimplified), this view states that nations are prone to cycles of warfare, that these cycles are completely inevitable, and therefore that they are immune to attempts at diplomacy. Even a brief overview of this theory is beyond the scope of this book; for a detailed explanation, see the classic work by Setsuna Meiou on Japanese history from the postwar period to the present, which I feel no serious student of history can be without. [6] This, more than anything else, is what horrifies modern-day politicians: that the world spent nine trillion US dollars (and these are 1999 US dollars!) on the war, a sum patently inconceivable, and thus pointless to convert into modern-day yen. Several texts exist on why such an exorbitant sum was spent in two years, see especially Heise, "On the Financial Aspects of the Third World War," Cooke Publishing Company, New Zealand, 2150. [7] Much has been made of this message, which, verbatim, was 'People of Earth. Go to your basements. Go to your cellars. Go into hiding. You will be safe there. Wait and do not panic.' Of course, the veracity of that statement cannot be overstated. [8] The quotes are intentional; I personally do not believe that there is adequate historical evidence to support the beginning of a new 'age' of anything. Indeed, the near-absence of the very term thaumaturgy (originally used as a term denoting a wonder worker, from the Greek) in common-day speech would indicate that most people aren't even aware that there was a time magic wasn't in everyday life, and indeed fail to realize that this is the case now. It would seem to the author that Clarke's Law has never held more adamantly than here, when the line between magic and thirty-first century technology has blurred past the point of recognition. [9] Some have pooh-poohed the reports of this phenomenon as due to the enormous psychological stresses that people of the Silence lived in. The author, having been in similarly stressful conditions, can assure the reader from first-hand experience that this is not the case. [10] Notably, the ferocious rate of fuel consumption during the war was the final nail in the coffin of internal combustion engines, which today can only be found in textbooks and museums. [11] To this day, no-one knows who started them, and it is unlikely that anyone ever will. With nine confederations fighting amongst themselves, and with two different resistance groups fighting anyone who attempted to gain a foothold anywhere, there are far too many suspects to ever determine who set Arabia on fire. [12] Chemical weapons were also used, to a slightly lesser degree, during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq conflict, but certainly not on the scale used in 2112 and on. [13] However, it was not until 2802 that human beings could survive in Arabia without protective gear. [14] Survival being used here lightly. The best estimates for casualty figures over the course of the Formation Wars comes out to around 6 or 7 billion dead, or a number *greater* than that of the population before 1999. This is of course easily accounted for; the fertility boom of the early 2100s has been widely noted, as has the frighteningly low population of Earth immediately following the war and for a long time afterwards. Little wonder that the Formation Wars are often called "Malthus's Revenge." [15] It is worth noting that Sailor Pluto has remained silent on this topic; the limitations of the ginzuishou are not once mentioned in her landmark work.