Pacific War

From Gothpoodle

Latest revision as of 21:00, 28 March 2012

Despite all the change of the past century, the transition to the “modern era” can be pinned to one event. The Pacific War of 2084 brought the specter of mass warfare back into the world, and made it clear that Earth’s conflicts were about to escalate to a new level.

The Pacific War

The origins of the war were rooted in the pattern of Chinese settlement overseas. For centuries, Chinese had been settling all over Southeast Asia, forming expatriate communities that often dominated local business. Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand all had particularly large Chinese communities. This Chinese diaspora was further reinforced around the turn of the century, as people fled from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan just ahead of reunification with the People’s Republic.

It was among these Chinese middle-class communities that nanosocialism found its most fertile ground in the revolutionary 2060s. Most of the new nanosocialist regimes of Southeast Asia were driven by the enthusiasm of non-Chinese majorities, but their political and economic leaders tended to be ethnic Chinese. On the other hand, nanosocialism was completely incompatible with the odd blend of Confucianism, communism, and capitalism that had taken root in the Chinese homeland. What followed was a People’s Republic that was at odds with most of the nations of Southeast Asia. Relations between China and the TSA, and especially between China and TSA leader Thailand, deteriorated steadily.

The situation became particularly bad in 2083, when the PRC withdrew diplomatic contact from Thailand and imposed a complete embargo on all communications web exchange, and travel to the TSA bloc. Efforts by the Pacific Rim Alliance to mediate the dispute went nowhere, and for the first time in decades a major war seemed possible.

In June 2084, war finally came, with a Chinese strike against TSA communications and powersat facilities in Earth orbit. The PRC announced its discovery of a TSA “black” research program, developing contagious nanoviruses and other genetic atrocities. Chinese propaganda claimed that these nanoviruses could be released to redesign the genetics of billions of people, or (even more insidiously) to alter their beliefs and make them more susceptible to nanosocialist dogma. The TSA rejected these allegations and vowed to carry on the war by all possible means.

At first, it seemed likely that the war would spread, but a few days after the first Chinese strike the Pacific Rim Alliance and the United States declared themselves neutral. They applied diplomatic pressure to insure that no other powers involved themselves in the conflict; the United States imposed an embargo on helium-3 shipments to both sides. These steps kept the war “limited” in scope – if such a term can be applied to a conflict stretching all the way across the Pacific basin, into Earth orbit and out to the planetary colonies.

The war was fought in many theaters. The People’s Liberation Army moved against Bangkok, Hanoi, and Rangoon, making steady progress despite fierce TSA resistance in the mountains of northern Indochina. The navies of both sides, equipped with fast super-cavitating submarines and hydrofoils, mounted lightning campaigns in the South China Sea. Even thousands of miles from the front lines, facilities were destroyed by commando raids, network intrusion attacks, and the delivery of “devourer” microbot swarms. The TSA’s orbital facilities were destroyed or occupied in the first Chinese attack wave, but sabotage of Chinese space facilities continued throughout the war and a number of nanosocialist AKVs remain unaccounted for even in 2100. Propaganda campaigns promoted internal rebellion on both sides. Casualties were light in comparison with the great mass conflicts of the 20th century, but even so millions of civilians died in the course of the war.

By early 2085, it was clear that China had the upper hand. Hanoi had fallen to Chinese troops, driving the Vietnamese government into the south of the country. The TSA navies had failed to hold the South China Sea, and an invasion of Indonesia or Malaysia seemed imminent. Chinese propaganda was threatening to split the TSA in half, as the South American members of the alliance began quietly to suggest capitulation.

On March 12, about a hundred scientists and political leaders fled Bangkok, apparently traveling to Indonesia but in fact vanishing. The Thai government collapsed the next day, as an alliance of business leaders and second-tier military officers seized power and ejected the remaining nanosocialists. After several hours of confusion, the government of Indonesia seized the leadership of the TSA and opened peace negotiations. The war was over.

Postwar Chill

The long-term implications of the Pacific War have been difficult to assess. China apparently succeeded in its official objectives, destroying the TSA’s black weapons program and bringing down the revolutionary Thai government. Still, for all the violence and destruction, the war settled few issues. If anything it has set off a new period of international tension and conflict. China’s victory in the war established it as the leading power in world affairs, but it has also energized China’s potential rivals to improve their own standing.

Nanosocialism and the Transpacific Socialist Alliance were not destroyed in the conflict. Indeed, under Indonesian management the TSA has recovered much prestige. The “crimes against humanity” committed by the prewar Thai leadership have been repudiated, and the alliance’s economy has recovered to better than prewar levels. As an ideology, nanosocialism continues to gain new adherents, especially in Africa, India and the Americas. India’s role in world affairs appears ready to take on unique significance. Its massive population and growing economy have already brought it into the Great Power ranks. It also seems possible that India will go nanosocialist in the near future, a prospect which frightens many around the world. India’s admission to the TSA would more than double the alliance’s population and economic output, putting it in rough parity with China itself and shifting the balance of power worldwide.

Chinese dominance has been challenged once again by the Pacific Rim Alliance. After the war, the new Thai government quickly reached an understanding with the PRA, negotiating for entry into the alliance even while the final peace accord with China remained to be signed. When these arrangements became public in 2086, relations between China and the PRA cooled dramatically. Today, Asia and the Pacific basin are the main flashpoint for future world conflict, as a three-cornered “cold war” is under way between China and its two rival alliances.

The last major power to enjoy a resurgence in the postwar era has been the United States. Long considered to be in decline, the U.S. has been greatly energized by a string of recent military and diplomatic successes. The American economy has been growing rapidly in recent years, and it seems possible that the U.S. will regain the technological lead it lost in the early 2070s. All of this has encouraged the United States to return to an activist stance, aggressively seeking influence and prestige around the world.

March of the Machines

While humanity has become more and more diverse, new forms of sentience have appeared on Earth. Among these are the final achievement of Third Wave digital civilization: fully sapient computers.

The arrival of sapient AI has actually been a long process. The first computers capable of passing the socalled “Turing test” appeared as early as 2015, depending on how strictly one applies Turing’s criteria. Certainly the most advanced machines of the time could run software granting them the ability to interact with humans in idiomatic “natural” language, developing distinctive personalities of their own. In the course of the 21st century, computer hardware and software continued to advance, and such personality simulations became commonplace. By the 2040s even a typical personal computer could interact with its user as if it were a friendly and cooperative sapient being.

Such machines were certainly intelligent, but the question of whether they were sapient beings remained open. In some sense, that question remains open to the present day. The nature of consciousness remains obscure, so it remains impossible to prove or disprove the selfawareness of any advanced computer. Asking the machines themselves is no help – some claim to be selfaware, others (sometimes of the same model, with the same software base) claim not to be. Hard-line “vitalists” continue to maintain that only biological organisms can be said to be creative, sapient beings, but this position is harder to defend with each passing year. Today, most people simply don’t worry about it, and treat anything that behaves intelligently as a human-equivalent. In any case, about the time of the Pacific War, machines of human-level intelligence became cheap and widely available. Today almost any desktop, vehicle or cybershell “brain” has the potential for intelligence about equal to that of an unmodified human being. Such computers can be built and maintained for much lower cost than that necessary to “build” and maintain a human being. The most advanced machines have attained what would be considered genius-level intelligence in a human. Although such computers are extremely expensive, they have certain advantages over human beings – they are much better at concentrating on a specific task, they can correlate vast amounts of information very quickly, and they can use a much wider variety of sensory equipment.

As a result, the long rear-guard action fought by human labor against the advance of automation is entering its last stages. Machine intelligence can now replace biological intelligence in a tremendous variety of occupations, including creative and decision-making tasks. Indeed, it is now possible for biological intelligence to become machine intelligence, using the new “downloading” technologies.

This situation is bringing many of the most developed nations to the point of crisis. In most of these societies, unemployment is rising very rapidly and putting considerable strain on society. Most futurists believe that Earth is moving toward a global “leisure society,” in which most human beings need not work at all. How to attain such a goal remains unclear. Some nations are building massive social-spending programs, ensuring that the chronically underemployed have a minimum income sufficient even for a few luxuries. Others, less accustomed to running a welfare state, are suffering serious social tensions. These are often generational (as young unemployed find themselves envying the older investor class) or ethnic (as unemployed immigrants find themselves envying wealthy natives). There is also a strong anti-technological bias in some of today’s labor movements, as the unemployed violently resist the further spread of automation.

Meanwhile, it’s unclear whether the machines themselves are willing to support an “unproductive” class of biological citizens. Most intelligent computers are simply programmed to work loyally, but many of the most intelligent are self-programming, and are liable to question their place in society. So far there has been no organized machine resistance, but there are a number of “machine liberation” movements worldwide, supported by both intelligent machines and biological citizens. Some nations have responded by defining categories of citizenship for emancipated computers, or even by giving advanced infomorphs a role in government