| World War III | |||||||||
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 Map of the War's Belligerents in 2051 | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
| Alliance | Coalition | ||||||||
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| Main Alliance Leaders
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Main Coalition Leaders | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
| 1.7 million | 1 million | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| 54,000 | 56,000 | ||||||||
World War III also known as the Third World War (23 November 2051 - January 14, 2055), was a global conflict between the United States and its Allies and the Eurasian Coalition. Fighting took place mainly in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, as well as in parts of the Middle East and North Africa, and North America. The conflict was the first to see combat in Earth Orbit and on the surface of the Moon. The war was characterized by the use of power armor and hypersonic weapons, with the latter enabling precision strikes on critical infrastructure and enemy military assets . Despite its scope, World War III saw relatively few civilian casualties, with 110,000 dead, and just under a million wounded. As the war involved almost every nuclear power at the time, the combatants were able to limit civilian deaths with the threat of mutually assured destruction.
The causes of World War III included unresolved tensions in the aftermath of the Russo-Ukraine War, resurgent militarism in Japan and Turkey, and it was preceded by events including the Turkish invasion of Russia, the Balkan Crisis, outbreak of the Third Sino-Japanese War, the Turkish annexation of Azerbaijan and Japan's annexation of Karafuto. World War III is generally considered to have begun on 23 November 2051, when Japan, under Daitaro Sato, attacked the US Orbital Defense Network and subsequent air and missile strikes were exchanged between the major powers. Per the Bilateral Security Agreement of 2046, Japan and Turkey had marked out "spheres of influence" across Eurasia and agreed to recognize each other's claims to the former Russian Federation and mainland China. After the fall of Zelenskohrad in December 2051, the war in Europe continued primarily between Turkey and Poland, with campaigns in Ukraine and Hungary, as well as the Siege of PO, and the naval Battle of the Mediterranean. By mid-2052, through a series of campaigns and treaties, Turkey occupied or controlled much of southern Europe while NATO had splintered.
Japan aimed to dominate the western Pacific, and by 2048 was at war in mainland China. On Thanksgiving Day 2051, Japan attacked American military positions around the world and in space, including an attack on the Orbital Command Stations and the US mainland, which resulted in the United States declaring war against Japan. Turkey declared war on the US, and Poland declared war on Japan in solidarity with their allies. Japan soon conquered much of the western Pacific, but its advances were halted in 2052 after its defeat in the naval Battle of the Spratly Islands; Turkey and Egypt were defeated in North Africa and at Katowice in Poland. Key setbacks in 2053—including Japanese defeats in the Malay Archipelago, the Allied invasions of Russia, and the defeat of Japan's forces in orbit—cost the Coalition the initiative and forced them into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 2054, the Allies re-established global air superiority while US and UK ground forces came to the relief of Poland. Throughout 2054, Japan suffered reversals in mainland Asia, while the pacific Allies captured key western Pacific islands, and crippled the Japanese Navy. The war in Europe concluded with the liberation of Turkish-occupied territories; the invasion of the southern Balkans by the Allies, and the defeat of the Turkish Army of the Caucuses at Stavropol. With the Allies poised for an invasion of metropolitan Turkey, Turkish President Abdul Şahin deployed tactical nuclear weapons to prepare to defend his territory. The US in turn began loading nuclear warheads on hypersonic aircraft and missiles. Diplomats from both sides met in secret at Asmara and on August 4 the Turks formally sued for peace. After a string of defeats in mainland Asia, and facing economic collapse, Japan similarly agreed to meet to discuss peace terms. A ceasefire went into effect on August 11 and a week later the belligerents met in Geneva to discuss the terms of the armistice. The Treaty of Geneva was signed on 14 January 2055, marking the end of the conflict.
World War III changed the political alignment and social structure of the world, and it set the foundation of international relations for the rest of the 21st century and into the 22nd century. The victorious powers of the war—the United States, Poland, China, and India all formed alliance systems that directly cooperated with the United States, while the sphere's of Turkey and Japan were curtailed. In the wake of the attacks against the Orbital Defense System, the United States annexed Japanese and Turkish assets in space and unilaterally declared military supremacy in space, promising retaliation to any state that attempted to place weapons in orbit or on the Moon. This declaration functionally annexed Earth's Moon to the Untied States, and set the stage for the Amero-Polish Split.
Chronology
The start of the war is generally held to be Thanksgiving Day 2051, beginning with the Japanese attack on American forces in space, followed by a massive exchange of missiles and aircraft between the major powers. The United States, Korea, and the Republic of China declared war on Japan two days later. Other dates for the beginning of war include the start of the Third Sino-Japanese War on 8 June 2048.
Others follow the American historian Leland Sambo, who held that the Third Sino-Japanese War and war in the Pacific and the Southeastern Europe occurred simultaneously and the two wars merged in 2051. This article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War III include the Turkish invasion of the Don Republic on 3 October 2046.
The exact date of the war's end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended at the ceasefire of 22 November 2054, rather than the formal surrender of Turkey (2 January 2055); it is even claimed in some American histories that it ended on 8 October 2054. A Treaty of Peace with Turkey was signed in 2057, to formally tie up any loose ends such as compensation to be paid to Allied prisoners of war who had been victims of abuse.
History
Background
Aftermath of the Russo-Ukraine War
The collapse of the Russian Federation had radically altered the map of Eurasia, and the failure of the Multinational Nuclear Non-proliferation Mission (NNPM) exposed the institutional weaknesses of the international system. The cost burden to the Western European members of NATO was deemed too high, and by 2036 only Britain continued to participate in the non-proliferation mission. Turkey, Poland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland and Japan in the Pacific had transitioned to a purely peacekeeping mission to neighboring regions of Russia, while Moldova and Romania exercised Russian troops from Transnistria by 2030.
Ukraine, the victor in the Russo-Ukraine War secured its territory, but required significant foreign investment to survive, which further divided the European allies. Upon Ukraine's admission to NATO, basing rights were granted to several NATO member-states at Sevastopol, later Zelenskohrad. However, as revanchist nationalism rose in Turkey's, and their occupation of the Caucuses began to transition into a neo-colonial project, Ukraine revoked Turkey's lease at Zelenskohrad Naval Base.
Middle East
The post-Ukraine war era saw strife across the Middle East as Turkey was undertaking the NATO mission to the Caucasus and Southern Russia. Turkish troops had been deployed to Northern Syria since 2016 and northern Iraq since 2018, but their military commitments expanded as the US pulled resources to fight the Second American Civil War. Add to this a global shift toward renewable energy sources, the petrostates of the Middle East saw their economies crash by the mid-2030s. Facing state-collapse, and an Iranian invasion, the Saudis agreed to grant Turkey basing rights in 2035, and access to the sizable armory of American-made weapons held by the Kingdom.
From 2035 to 2042 Turkey's presence throughout the middle east expanded as they fought the war with Iran. During that conflict, Turkey came to economically dominate the region, partly via its control over the Middle Eastern solar and greenhouse industries. Meanwhile, Turkey's defense of the air and land routes to Mecca gave it a mandate over Sunni Islam. This gave rise to a new Sunni Islamist movement and with it Islamist Revanchist politicians like Abdul Şahin, who won the Turkish Presidency in 2043 promising the creation of a "New Caliphate."
Western Pacific
In the Pacific, facing a demographic disaster from an aging population and the loss of Tokyo to the Sea despite an immense government effort to construct a robust sea wall network, Japan began more aggressive campaigns into Pacific Russia, China and South East Asia to secure territory for its displaced population, which flooded by the millions into the Pacific Russian territories and Manchuria. Securing their economic and social claims meant a Naval buildup that conflicted directly with US naval interests, and despite formally cordial relations, the Japanese invested heavily into the construction of satellite tracking and ship destroying missile bases in the South Pacific. By middle of the 2040s Japan stood as America's chief rival in Earth Orbit and on the Moon, stationing civilian and military facilities at in-Earth Orbit, the Lagrange points, and on the far side of the moon (though in this area the American presence still dwarfed that of Japan.)
In July 2048, Japan captured the communist Chinese capital of Beijing after instigating the attack on their Manchurian satellite tracking station, which culminated in the Japanese campaign to invade all of China. Communist warlords attempted to retake the capital, and with pressure from the US, the Japanese relented, falling back to their Extraterritorial Districts in the outskirts of Beijing. For the next two years Japan would conduct a number of similar "peace-keeping" activities throughout China, installing puppet governments and expanding their sphere of influence. Containment strategy by the Americans led to economic hardship in Japan, and American peace terms were considered unacceptable by the Sato administration.
Climate Change
Rising sea levels, culminating with the lost of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet in 2041, were a major driving force of Japanese action in mainland Asia that led to the war. Japan lost a great deal of territory to the rising sea levels over the last 20 years, forcing a pseudo-colonization of neighboring territories in Asia. The flooding resulted in the military occupation of Chita and Kamchatka and the creation of Extraterritorial Districts all along the North Pacific Basin; in addition, it exposed the weakness of the United Nations as a force to preserve peace. The UN levied sanctions against Japan, who had simultaneously been petitioning the organization for Security Council permanent membership, driving Japan to resign in protest.
Pre-war events
Iran War (2035-2042)
The Iran War was a conflict that began in October 2035 with the Iranian invasion of Southern Iraq and Kuwait. Turkey, launched a counter-invasion from Saudi Arabia, having gained basing rights in 2035, and access to the Saudi armory of American-made weapons. From 2035 to 2042 Turkey, Israel, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia fought primarily Iran and its proxies in Iraq, Kuwait, and occasional border skirmishes into Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia. On August 2036 the Third Arab Spring successfully deposed the Saudi Royal Family from power in Riyadh, forcing Turkey to restore order and establish a provisional military government. The War ended with an armistice in May of 2042, partly as a result of Turkey's successful atmospheric nuclear weapons test in the Persian Gulf on 13 April 2042. The Treaty of Doha redrew the borders of the Middle East and formalized Turkish supremacy over Arabia and the Levant. The conflict exposed the weakness of the United Nations and broader international system, as the United States and its allies were split on support for Turkey following the Third Arab Spring. Japan fully supported Turkey's annexation of territory and Turkey dropped its objections to Japan's annexation of Sakhalin/Karafuto.
Friday Revolution (2040)
Following the flooding of Cairo, rioters in Egypt combated with the military-led government, driving Turkey to deploy peacekeepers. With these troops Turkey installed a pro-Turkey neo-Islamist regime, and secured the Suez Straight. With a position in Egypt, Turkey pushed its sphere west into North Africa, becoming the decisive power in the Eastern Mediterranean. Israel, already on friendly terms with the Turks entered into a mutual non-aggression pact with Turkey following the coup in January 2041. In exchange for recognizing Israel's dominion over the West Bank and portions of southwestern Syria, Israel supposedly aided Turkey in its nuclear weapons program. Control of the Suez Straight meant control over Arabia, and cut off Iranian-backed insurgents in the Levant from their benefactor.
Eurasian occupations and agreements
As the dominant power over the oil and Natural Gas of Southern Russia to the Arabian Peninsula, Turkey found itself as a natural Ally of the Japanese, and established a formal Alliance in 2043, the Eurasian Trade and Security Coalition. While Formal alliances of this type were unusual in this age, the necessity of the global climate and refugee crisis drove these two powers to formalize their interests to secure mutual interests against the rising tide and against American interests. This event forced the United States to realize the new reality in Eurasia, as Turkey and Japan posed a credible risk to uniting the continent under a single power (though not a single state). With an economic depression in the Arab region, Turkey positioned itself as a neo-Islamist power, gathering support from pan-Turkics and Islamic fundamentalists. Facing mutual threats on two fronts, the United States increased support to India and China dramatically, going so far as to support Chinese nationalists over American and Taiwanese puppet regimes in Southern China for the sake of regional cohesion. By 2045, Poland, supported in the US effort to counter the Turks, brought Slovenia and Croatia into the Visegrad Group, despite a limited Turkish Presence in former Bosnia. The Eurozone watched this developing crisis intensely, playing a game of wait and see, but finding itself on increasingly more amicable terms with the Turks, not wanting to see a united power on their eastern border again, and Germany once again made into a battlefield. At this juncture Germany began to a quiet effort to aid the Turks in every way short of war with Poland, by imposing greater influence on Danish and Croatian business interests to prevent Polish access to the Atlantic and therefore the United States.
The Americans pursued an extremely effective policy of containment against this new Coalition, arming the Poles, Chinese, Indians, and Koreans against the Turks and the Japanese, a policy that in turn drove the Japanese and Turks to increase their military readiness, and so on, driving the planet to war. With a halt in American trade of high tech goods to prevent any technology transfer, Japan and Turkey were left believing a full blockade could be next. With America supporting nationalists efforts in Arabia, Egypt, Russia, and the Ukraine, the Turks were convinced that war would be the next inevitable act by the Americans to cripple them. As such, war plans by the Turks and Japanese began to take shape.
Balkan Crisis (2050)
As the Japanese prepared for their attack against American assets in space, they coordinated with their ally, Turkey, to stage a crisis in the Balkans, pushing the Poles to the absolute edge of war to distract the Americans from activities going on in space. The Turks ordered intelligence agents in Greece to engineer a series of riots by the Albanian minority population near the border during pre-scheduled protests. Turkish sleepers in the Greek national police fired on the crowd of protesters, leading to riots. Through a media campaign and cyber warfare, Turkey was able to inflate the severity of the incident, leading to Albanian forces entering Greece to protect the minority population. After demanding that Albania stand down, Poland mobilized while naval forces in Split confronted Turkish ships in the Adriatic, believing the incident to be a Turkish plot and a prelude to war.
The crisis nearly led to war after Turkey relayed through double agents in Poland that they were scrambling hypersonic missile sites in the Caucasus to attack ports in Split. In a panic, Polish air forces carried out air strikes against the sites, leading to Turkish and Polish crewed ships in the Adriatic nearly firing on each-other before Şahin called for peace talks. While the Geneva peace conference was being mediated by the Americans, Japan prepared to strike, hoping the Americans would rather accept a world with three great empires than risk its own empire in another World War.
Course of the War
Outbreak
The destruction of the American Orbital Defense Network, and its air and naval fleets only prolonged the time until the Coalition defeat by the Alliance system of the United States. With an American declaration of war, rather than the expected negotiations, Japan committed itself to an invasion of American assets on the Moon, believing that while they may not be able to win the war, they could at least secure their positions in Space. Japan easily captured the cities of Aldrin and Armstrong, securing the largest Helium-3 supplies outside of Triton, and pushed south to Tycho. Meanwhile American armored and robotic infantry units fought to secure Pacific territory from the Japanese, who had gone so far as to deploy troops to defend their assets in British Columbia and the Yukon, prompting an American invasion North into Canada.
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| Timeline |
Japan began launching a series of small "Pebble mob" weapons as early as 2049. These weapons were disguised as space debris, none larger than 25 mm2, and numbered in the tens of thousands by November 10. Manufactured and deployed from the Japanese lunar far-side bases via regular traffic in Earth orbit, these objects were intentionally placed in atypical orbits that largely avoided the American orbital defense network, and were individually too small to deal any real damage to any of the three Orbital Command Stations. As such, the OCS early warning systems ignored them as they would any other form of micro-debris. On November 15, 2051 Prime Minister Sato personally gave the order to attack, and the pebble mob course corrected to converge on the three stations on November 23, 2051. By the time the objects were detected as a threat it was too late. Coming in from seemingly random orbits, each OCS platform was impacted by thousands of objects at only a few critical points, simultaneously. The combined force of the impacts tore through the hulls of the stations.
Only seconds after the destruction of the OCS stations, Japan launched a second phase attack on Allied military positions around the Earth in conjunction with the Turks. Conventional missiles and hypersonic aircraft launched with the furthest targets being struck 30 minutes after deployment. With Early Warning capability destroyed, the Allies could not know if they were under attack or what was targeted until after the first missiles hit targets across Eastern Europe and at Sea. Strikes on the US mainland came 4 minutes after the OCS stations were destroyed, carried out by Japanese submarine-launched missiles and aircraft near the Pacific Coast and Rocky Mountains where the US had concentrated the bulk of its hypersonic missiles and aircraft. By the time the Coalition missiles and drones reached their first targets, President Jacobi had ordered a preset war-plan to attack fixed targets in Japan and Turkey, however only 17% of aircraft and missiles in the United States were able to launch before being destroyed. The Allied retaliatory strikes badly damaged the Coalition's air defense and satellite tracking capabilities, as well as disabling a number of military air bases and ports.
Both sides avoided striking nuclear early warning systems, both in space, and on Earth in order to avoid prompting a nuclear exchange. During the air and missile attack, Japanese diplomats in Washington presented Japanese terms for an armistice, further stressing the Sato administration's desire to avoid escalation. Communications between Prime Minister Sato, Foreign Minister Kishi, and Defense Minister Hachitarō all indicated that the Japanese government did not expect an immediate surrender, and continued ongoing deployments of the JSDF to pressure the US into accepting their terms.
Battle for the Moon (2051)
Japan was quick to secure strategic interests in cislunar space and on the surface of the moon, launching an invasion of the Sea of Tranquility during their air and missile attack on the Allies. This assault included the seizure of American stations at the L4 and L5 Asteroid quarries, which cut the US off from its most valuable in-space resources. In addition, Japanese space forces deployed to capture the Tycho Shipyards, and Tranquility Base to deny the United States the ability to rearm and retake their assets at L4 and L5. Armstrong and Aldrin fell after just 2 hours of the Pebble mob attack. Japanese war planners hoped to use the seizure of American colonies in Cislunar space as ransom during future negotiations.
Facing a total loss, the Space Force organized a counterattack to defend Tycho and retake Tranquility, launching 6 Space Force squads and a compliment of drones to repel the Japanese invaders on the Moon. Japanese momentum suffered after taking the Tranquility colonies, as they had underestimated the scale of resistance from the mostly civilian bases. This provided precious minutes for the USSF and Operation La Grange successfully repelled Japan's invasion of Tycho while missiles and drone deployed from concealed positions in Langrenus Crater struck New Osaka and Horikoshi Base.
The battle for Tycho cost Japan nearly a third of its space forces, and after securing the Tycho shipyards for the Allies USSF forces moved north to retake Armstrong and Aldrin. The missile attacks on Horikoshi and New Osaka largely destroyed Japan's ability to send reinforcements from the Far Side. Nearly a day after the destruction of the OCS network, Aldrin and Armstrong were back in American hands, and Japan's surviving lunar forces had fallen back to Horikoshi. Despite the success of Japanese intelligence in the attack on the OCS network and terrestrial targets, they underestimated the number of US military assets on the Moon. Further, despite being aware of the importance of the Tycho shipyards to the US war economy, Japan was completely unaware that the US had a half-finished Orbital Command Station still in drydock. The US would later institute a crash program to complete and upgrade this spacecraft into what would become OCS Retribution.
After the Victory at Tranquility, both the US and Japan held their positions, having lost a significant number of their space forces and expended most of their missiles and drones. Damage to the colonies also forced both sides to divert troops to aid in repairs before any further maneuvers could occur, and an informal ceasefire was agreed to while diplomats negotiated on Earth. This is where the scale of the US presence on the moon played to its advantage, as the US could more easily pull resources from its Lunar colonies than Japan's more modest presence on the moon, and deploy new surface imaging satellites. By November 26, the US had a clear picture of the extent of the damage to Horikoshi and New Osaka. Launching several improvised "base buster" satellites from seized civilian manufacturing hubs at Kepler and Shephard, the US disabled Japanese traffic control stations on the Lunar Far side and attacked Horikoshi from the East, taking the Base on November 29. On December 7, US Space Forces captured the two anchor points for the Japanese Space Elevator. A direct assault on Hayabusa was deemed too difficult given its remaining defensive systems, but by capturing its anchor points it was effectively held hostage by the US.
Black Sea (2051-2052)
After the initial air and missile exchange Turkish troops, already on high alert from the Balkan crisis, moved to capture NATO positions in the Northern Balkans. Simultaneously Turkish naval forces moved against Zelenskohrad and Odesa. With NATO Air Forces and Command and Control centers across Eastern Europe heavily degraded, Poland and Ukraine jointly invoked Article 5 of the NATO treaty on 24 November. The US, Canada, Britain, Portugal, and most of Eastern Europe responded with declarations of war against Turkey by 27 November, however France, Germany, Italy, and Sweden refused to mobilize, citing that Turkey was still officially a member of NATO and thus could not be considered a belligerent nation. France went even further, with Foreign Minister Jean-Michel Debré claiming that Polish and American belligerence had provoked Turkey to take, "defensive action." With Ukrainian forces in Crimea on the brink of collapse, Supreme Allied Commander Europe General Jadyn Blair issued mobilization orders to NATO forces on 29 November, sidestepping the heads of state of NATO's Western European members. In response France officially withdrew from NATO the same day, while Germany and Sweden issued halt orders. Diplomats from Germany and Sweden in Washington begged the United States to accept peace terms for the sake of the alliance, to which American Secretary of State Jordan Levin reportedly responded, "an alliance that won't defend its fellow members from attack is no alliance at all." Germany and Sweden formally withdrew December 2, only hours after Zelenskohrad fell to Turkey.
With the largest port in the Black Sea secured, Turkey began moving toward Poland directly in a lightning campaign out of Bosnia through Croatia into Hungary. NATO forces withdrew to Hungary on 7 December, while in Ukraine Turkish armored units captured Kyiv by 9 December. During the Battle for Kyiv, President Pavlo Honcharuk was killed in an attempt to retreat to Lviv. General Rustem Vitovsky assumed command and issued a formal surrender to Istanbul, while General Volodymyr Tretyak of Operational Command West formed a war cabinet and continued to resist the Turkish advance with remaining NATO troops.
Balkans (2051-2052)
As Turkish forces moved toward Krakow, the US and British air forces launched a massive airborne counterattack against the Turks, sustaining heavy material losses. Poland restructured its battlefield tactics to avoid concentrating forces in any single location, preferring a dispersed campaign to spread Turkish forces out over a wider area during the winter months where the Turks would be disadvantaged.
After the Anglo-American counterattack, and their advance slowed by Polish insurgent tactics, the Turks approached Germany in secret talks, offering a free hand in Northern Europe should they enter the war on the Coalition's side. Germany entered the war after securing the support of France and the remainder of the European Union in the spring of 2052, striking Poland from the west and stalling British air power in the West.
Coalition advance stalls
Map of Coalition military advances, until mid-2052
On 1 January 2052, the Allied Big Four—the United States, China, Poland and the British—met in Panama to sign a charter agreeing not to sign a separate peace with the Coalition powers.
During 2052, Allied officials debated on the appropriate grand strategy to pursue. All agreed that defeating Turkey was the primary objective. The Americans favored opening up a third front in Russia through an invasion over the North Pole. The Poles argued that military operations should target peripheral areas to wear out Turkish strength, leading to increasing demoralization, and bolster resistance forces. Turkey itself would be subject to a heavy bombing campaign. An offensive against Turkey would then be launched primarily by Allied Armor supported by drone forces. Eventually, the Americans persuaded the Poles that an air campaign in the Balkans and against Turkey was infeasible in 2052 and they should instead resist until the US and Britain could recover their air power.
At the Ottawa Conference in early 2053, the Allies reiterated the statements issued in the 2052 declaration, and demanded the unconditional surrender of their enemies. The British and Americans agreed to continue to press the initiative in Russia by invading St. Petersburg and pushing south into the Ukraine to cut off Coalition supply routs. Polish forces continued to stage stalling tactics once the Turks had reached the Carpathians, destroying roads, bridges, and electrical infrastructure.
Pacific (2052–2053)
By the end of April 2052, Japan and its ally Malaysia had successful taken the Philippines inflicting severe losses on Allied troops and taking a large number of prisoners. Despite stubborn resistance by Taiwanese and U.S. forces the Republic of China was captured by the April 2052.
In early May 2052, Japan initiated operations to capture Hong Kong by amphibious assault and thus sever the remaining supply lines for American support to the Chinese. The initial invasion was a success, but the attempt to send in reinforcements to secure Southern China was thwarted when two Allied naval battle groups made up of American, Australian, and New Zealander forces, fought Japanese naval forces to a draw in the Battle of the Qiongzhou Strait. Japan's next plan was to fall back to Hainan and lure remaining American naval forces into battle to be eliminated; as a diversion, Japan would also send forces to attack military positions and infrastructure in British Columbia and the Yukon where Americans had launched several incursions into the North Pacific. In early June, Japan put its operations into action but the Americans, having launched the Mk. 2 OCS Retribution and support satellites in late May, were fully aware of plans and order of battle, and used this knowledge to achieve a decisive victory at Hainan over the Japanese Navy. The campaign in Canada, while small, prompted a massive American backlash that included the capture of Japan's North American Special Economic Zones and the seizing of all Japanese private assets in the Americas.
With its capacity for aggressive action greatly diminished as a result of the Battle of Hainan, Japan chose to focus on securing its interests in mainland China. The Americans planned a counter-attack against Japanese positions in Malaysia, and their bases in the South China Sea, the first step toward securing the Strait of Malacca.
Both plans started in July, but by mid-September, the Battle for the South China Sea took priority for the Japanese, and troops in Malaysia were ordered to withdraw from Borneo area to the northern part of the island, where they faced Australian and United States troops in the Battle of Sarawak. The South China Sea soon became a focal point for both sides with Marines and naval forces in the battle for the islands. By the start of 2053, the Japanese were forced to fall back to defend Vietnam and Southern China from invasion.
Allies gain momentum
After the South China Sea Campaign, the Allies initiated several operations against Japan in the Pacific. In May 2053, Japanese forces in the Yukon surrendered after being cut off from communications from the home islands and staging several attacks on major highways and ports in the region. Soon after, the U.S., with support from Australian and New Zealand forces, began major operations to breach Japan's perimeter in South East Asia by capturing Hanoi with help from anti-Japanese resistance fighters, and capturing the walled port of Hong Kong in a joint attack with Chinese forces.
Operation Avenger
By the summer of 2053, American air superiority had reached pre-war levels, and the US began a more aggressive campaign against Coalition targets worldwide. Asteroid Cruithne, captured from deep space in 2052, was finally preposition above Ecuador in February 2054, and access to space via all three elevators resumed by the end of March. The reactivation of the elevators brought much needed supplies of Helium-3 back to Earth, powering next generation micro-fusion devices used by the United States military and their allies, and Japanese forces had been completely driven out of their positions in Cislunar space.
With space supremacy re-established the US carried out a massive orbital drop of Space Marines and materials into mainland China by March to cripple Japan's military activities in China and destroy supply lines to the Extraterritorial Districts and Special Economic Zones.
Allied victory
In the Pacific Cislunar theater, American forces accompanied by the forces advanced on Akiyama station, the last asteroid controlled by Japan, having successfully cleared L4 by the end of February 2054. US Space Forces landed on Akiyama in April 2054 and captured the asteroid following a battle which destroyed the remainder of the Japanese space fleet. The fall of Akiyama completed the effort to re-establish American supremacy in space.
Meanwhile, the Space Force were conducting orbital bombardment campaigns against strategic military centers in Japan in an effort to destroy Japanese war industry and terrorize the population. While few civilians were killed in these strikes, the psychological impact of American orbital weapons striking the Japanese mainland was powerful.
Operation Rope-a-dope
In June of 2054 the US organized a worldwide offensive coordinated by space forces against Coalition surface vessels and a bombardment attack against the remaining Japanese troops in China. Simultaneously strikes were carried out against Germany that left the country's military and their French allies in shambles. With the Japanese forces depleted and the Poles closing in on Turkey, the US offered the Coalition forces peace terms. Turkey accepted without hesitation for the US to pressure the Poles into a ceasefire, while Sato deliberated with his cabinet for three days before agreeing to enter into negotiations.
Germany and France separately sued for peace after US reinforcements arrived in Poland, and by 2055, Japan and Turkey, beaten back to their original claims, surrendered at the Geneva Peace Conference.
Aftermath
Formal end to the war
At the Geneva peace conference, the war's belligerents negotiated a formal armistice to end the war. The United States agreed to honor Japan's interests in Chita and Kamchatka, while Japan agreed to remove all forces from the rest of mainland Eurasia. Turkey agreed to a withdraw back into the Caucasus and leave Serbia and Croatia as a buffer zone, and accept a Chinese presence in Central Asia. Poland, having suffered the most during the war, screamed for Turkish blood, and demanded territory concessions from Germany. The United States vetoed these calls, but did impose limitations on the size and type of Turkish and Japanese near-space weapon systems.
American dominance over space
As per the treaties the US issued a ban on all military space activities by every nation, save for itself. Combined with American efforts to maintain a Turkish presence in the Caucasus, the ban helped lead to the Amero-Polish Schism, as even Poland was forbidden from developing space based weapon systems. The war established several new paradigms, the shift of European power to the East, American dominance over space, and the shift from total war to war fought by precision and armored infantrymen. Many new states were carved out of the peripheries of the coalition to provide buffer zones, and keep Eurasia in chaos, and power in balance.
Peace treaties and national boundaries
The United States gained more than just a formal recognition of its claims to space (though these territories would not be given any kind of representation in Congress), it also found itself directly occupying British Columbia (Cascadia) and the Yukon after the Japanese surrender, as well as direct control over the Guyanas after the French sued for Peace. With Britain in shambles still, American and former British forces organized a hasty alliance in the former Eurozone to prevent Polish expansion westward, but the degree of integration of Britain into the American system became so entrenched that the British found themselves in a Free Association with the United States, along with Newfoundland and even Australia by the end of the year. The ecological disaster from the flood effected many other territories far worse, but Britain was one of the few that was loosing its culture. With more than 70% of its population now living in either Newfoundland or the United States, many were unsure of what the future held.
War reparations
Hope came from the Earth Working Group, a consortium of businesses, NGOs and governments that for the last ten years had undertaken an ambitious project to apply terraforming techniques being used on Mars and Venus to Earth to cope with the effects of climate change. After a decade of work in Greenland, Antarctica, Kazakhstan, the Sahara Desert, and the Australian Outback, as well as several smaller projects from Utah to the Great Rift Valley, sea levels had already fallen to 20 meters above pre-Anthropocene levels. Operations continued uninterrupted by the war, as artificial basins were created in existing basins and ancient river beads. The excess of sand and rock would be used to reconstruct the world's beaches, and create hills around the new Seas and lakes to create an artificial rain-shadow effect. New forests and grasslands were planted along the Kanduna river's expanded tributary, and around the growing new seas and rivers to further promote a healthy biosphere. With the positioning of several solar shields in polar orbit above the North and South Poles a rapid drop in polar temperatures and return the North and South polar ice began as well, further dropping sea levels. The shields would not return the Glaciers of the South Greenland Ice Sheet, however, as this ice sheet was the last of those from the ice age, and was doomed regardless of human intervention. Rather the temperature would fall just enough to keep snow on the ground and Solar radiation from being absorbed by rock and soil to heat the pole.
The Arctic nations were, naturally, furious at this effort, as it would return their lands to frozen tundra year round, and destroy their booming economies. With oil outmoded by space based energy sources, however, the rest of the world turned a deaf ear to these calls, and it seemed war between the Arctic nations and their larger southern neighbors may come only a few short years after the end of the last world war.
In Culture
Like the First and Second World War's before it, the Third World War had a profound impact on American popular culture. While Japan had been one of the primary exporters of entertainment to the United States during the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the increasing degree of anti-Japanese sentiment caused this relationship to wither. It should be noted that the degree of anti-Turkish and anti-Japanese prejudice during the war, while still quite hostile, was not as pronounced as that of the two previous wars; for instance there were no internment camps to hold "enemy aliens." This can largely be attributed to the aging and decline of the baby-boomer generation, and the resultant decrease in racial tensions as opposed to national tensions. Since virtually all Americans of Japanese descent willingly identified as American, their loyalty to America was not questioned because of their race. Many Virtuals released during the war and afterwards focused on Turkey and Japan as the villains, just as movies produced after the first two World Wars capitalized on the appeal of Germany and Japan as antagonists. Examples included Devil Dogs: Battle For The Pacific (released in 2049, and focusing on the Pacific theater of World War II), X-day: War For Japan (released in 2053, and detailing an alternate-history world where the US was force to invade Japan), Dracula-Vampire Wars (released in 2054, and involving fighting the Ottoman Turks) and Guns of Warsaw (released 2058, and set during the Battle of Poland). The trade sanctions on Japan were lifted after the war, resulting in a brand-new influx of trade with Japan during the 2060s and beyond.
The war was not universally popular in the United States, and a small but vocal movement of Japanophiles made frequent demonstrations against the Jacobi administration for what they saw as "unnecessary" sanctions against non-war-related Japanese products. At a time when American popular culture was actively distancing itself from Japan and banning imports of Japanese media, these individuals were largely responsible for the preservation of popular pre-war works. Those that fought in the war were referred to as the Armored Generation.