Post-Cold War: Difference between revisions

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{{Topquote|What we may be witnessing is not just the end of [[the Cold War]], or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such … That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.|Francis Fukuyama, ''The End of History and the Last Man''. Unsurprisingly, he has since admitted that in retrospect he was being too optimistic.}}
[[File:Modern_city_dubai.jpg|250px|thumb|right|The future is [almost] now!]]
{{topquote|In an era of stress and anxiety, when the present seems unstable and the future unlikely, the natural response is to retreat and withdraw from reality, taking recourse either in fantasies of the future or in modified visions of a half-imagined past.|Alan Moore's Watchmen}}


After the end of the communist regimes and the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended almost half a century of [[The Cold War|Cold War]]. The ideological, political and economical clashes between different ideologies that had had its apex during World War II had finally ended with the prevalence of capitalism as the dominant economic model and with western-type democracies as the most favoured political models (at least in the West and the ex-Soviet States). The End of the World through nuclear means, [[grimdark|while almost seen as a certainty during many periods of crisis]], had not come to pass, and [[noblebright|a feeling of peace and relief spreaded through the world]]. While the old fear of a world war pretty much dissapeared, the problems of the Cold War were replaced by many other and smaller conundrums all around the globe. This aspect is important, since due to technological advancements and the development of computers and the Internet, the world is more interconnected than ever before, and events that decades ago would've been isolated to a small region could have massive reverberations throughout the globe.
{{topquote|IN MY EXPERIENCE, SUSAN, WITHIN THEIR HEADS TOO MANY HUMANS SPEND A LOT OF TIME IN THE MIDDLE OF WARS THAT HAPPENED CENTURIES AGO.|Death, [[Discworld|Thief of Time]]}}


This period of history is being studied and analyzed by historians as we speak, considering most of the relevant events of this period happened less than 30 years ago and are continuing into the present day (2020, as of this article's writing). There's a reason why historians usually don't touch anything that's happened in the last twenty or so years, so we'll do our best to avoid any [[skub]] and just retell events as they happened and how they relate to one another; which is no easy feat since the world has become more interconnected than ever, with events happening halfway around the world being felt everywhere. Now, pretty much everyone outside of tribes not in regular contact is generally in the know about the affairs of the world due to the fact that anything can be recorded and discussed on 24/7 news networks and the internet definitely made everyone more aware of everyone else.
You are here.


==New World Order: The 1990s==
After the end of most communist regimes and the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended almost half a century of [[The Cold War|Cold War]]. The ideological, political and economical clashes between different ideologies that had had its apex during World War II had [[Skub|finally ended, taken a new form or gone underground depending on who you ask]].
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall or transformation of communist regimes worldwide, the United States found itself catapulted into a position of undisputed supremacy over the globe. Following a short, brutal war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq (which ended in a rather hilarious roflstomp victory for the U.S-led Coalition, which took casualties in the low hundreds compared to Iraq having 85% of it's pre-war armed forces completely wiped out), the U.S began perhaps one of it's greatest decades of economic and cultural prosperity under the dotcom bubble. With it's military might guarding the vital sea and air routes of the world, the 1990s began a period of interconnectivity and increased trade that would be later known as "globalization" (Though for some, the term "Westernization" would be better suited, as much of the world has adopted, at least in part, American cultural, military, and economic doctrines).


This isn't to say that things were all peaches and sunshine for the U.S, however. In many cities across the U.S, many African and Hispanic Americans became utterly fed up with the way the police forces often treated them (in the case of many metropolitan areas like L.A., it was little better than dirt). A boiling point was reached when Rodney King, an African American man (who had a history of armed robbery and beating his wife), was given a retalitory beating by two white police officers on camera after leading a high speed chase through a residential area, resisting arrest and attempting to charge an officer. The news media edited out King's aggresion towards the police, but the jury for the officers would see the full tape and acquit them. This action triggered the Los Angeles race riots, which would leave a scar on the collective consciousness of Americans everywhere. Another dark side to this otherwise happy time was the military debacles in Somalia and the war crime filled Yugoslav Wars. The Yugoslav Wars were the only remotely symmetrical war in recent history between something more than African warlords, but rarely appears in war games (or video games that aren't Tactics Ogre) for the simple reason that nobody can understand what the hell was going on without serious research. The domestic side of the Federal Government lost a lot of trust during the Clinton administration between Bill Clinton's sex scandals and the heavy-handed and openly corrupt response of the FBI and ATF took to dealing with the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas. The agencies repeatedly claiming concern for supposed hostages they didn't know the location but totally existed before ''setting their compound on fire'' and driving over it with an armored vehicle, which would have killed the hostages if they existed, then planting their own equipment as evidence remains a popular example of the ATF's naked corruption to this day.
==The New Cold War==
{{topquote|History repeats, first as a tragedy, then as a farce.|Karl Marx}}


Meanwhile, in the newly reformed state of Russia, things were looking a bit... well, let's just say that the immediate post-Heresy Imperium had it much better than what happened to Russia. Problems ranging from a severe economic collapse, the rise of oligarchs and criminal mobs, a major rebellion in the majority Islamic province of Chechnya, and the government is about as morally pure as your average Tzeentchian cultist all contributed to the post-Soviet Russians generally feeling pretty damned hopeless and betrayed by the West. Boris Yeltsin, the first President of Russia, tried his damndest to fix things, but turning the country around proved to be beyond his skills, and left the office in relative disgrace. Enter one Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer and someone with a more [[God-Emperor of Mankind|authoritarian and straightforward way of doing things]]. He technically stabilized Russia, but has since been continually stirring shit up in the rest of the world ever since.  
After the collapse of the USSR in the 90s, the general feeling in the West and the rest was one of semi-cautious optimism. At long last liberal democracy and capitalism had won the day, the ˝evil empire˝ was gone, and we have reached the end of history according to Francis Fukuyama, things were on the up swing it seemed as the USA was left as the only true superpower in the world.


In Europe, the European Union was officially ratified by the Maaschirt Treaty in 1992, marking for the first time since <s>Rome</s> Napoleon that a singular power has held complete sway over <s>all</s> most of the continent. The EU's goal, amongst many things, was to promote economic and military cooperation amongst its member states. To that end, most nations in the EU abandoned their national currencies for the euro, with <s> only </s> UK, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania and Sweden retaining their own. This group has rapidly moved past the mere economic partnership and into either: an overstate that curtails the freedoms of its member countries who are "represented" by unelected bureaucrats with no method of removing them, an attempt to create a governing body that could step in and stop the squabbling nations of Europe from starting WW3, or a hopelessly incompetent bureaucratic clusterfuck that survives through sheer inertia, depending on your point of view. Or any combination of the three.  
However, this merry period was not to last long, after the 90s which are now ironically seen as somewhat of the last hurrah before the increasing shitstorm of the following century the USA got a series of rude surprises. First was the infamous 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks which saw the first significant attack on American soil by foreign combatants in a century, and a grimly spectacular one at that with close to 3,000 people killed, 25,000 wounded, to say nothing of the damage to infrastructure and collective American psyche. This directly led to America embroiling itself in a series of wars in the Middle East that soon turned into quagmires with no clear winner, with many parallels being drawn to Vietnam. Seven years later the Great Recession of 2008/9 rolled around to further mess up the first decade of M3.  


In the Middle East, however, tensions were steadily rising. Due to events like the discovery of oil in large parts of the region, the disaster that was the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the formation of the Jewish state of Israel in was formerly Arab land and its subsequent occupation of far more territory than it was actually supposed to get, the various Muslim tribes and nations of the Middle East began to look at the Christian and secular nations of the West and Russia with barely restrained hatred, feeling that they had been cheated, stomped on, and oppressed by the ungodly European and American powers over and over again. Many began to long for the glory days of the Golden Age of Islam in the Early Middle Ages, and so started to turn to increasingly radical sects of Islam that promised such a return to power and prestige, such as the Wahhabist sect of Sunni Islam, the state religion of the most powerful islamic nation, Saudi-Arabia. The disastrous invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets in late-Cold War had provided experience to the Mujahideen (roughly translating as "those engaged in a holy war"), experience which was now being turned against those who supported them against the Soviets. A few began to carry out acts of terror against their Israeli and American foes, such as in the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut and the attack on the USS Cole. But the worst was yet to come, as a new, much more disciplined and organized group of Sunni radicals known as Al-Qaeda (in Arabic, literally "The Base" or "The Foundation") came into being, led by wealthy Saudi billionaire and former muhajedeen commander Osama bin Laden. Their strike against the heart of their perceived enemies would forever shatter the ideal of Western triumph and total American supremacy, and usher in a new, long, bloody period of conflict. Of course, the fact that many of these groups were originally trained and armed by the CIA to fight the Soviets and their proxies in Afghanistan and the Iran-Iraq war is often swept under the carpet.
While this was going on and with America's attention arguably focused elsewhere, Russia and China were slowly growing in power and prominence. China was gradually thundering on ever since the late 90s, slowly surpassing Japan after the latter crashed and burned in 1991. By becoming the next ˝workshop of the world˝ China managed to accrue immense global economic influence and achieve economic growth that was nothing short of meteoric. Russia meanwhile was going through their own Age of Strife as the former USSR splintered into a dozen independent republics with all the economic and social turmoil that entails (exacerbated even worse by the rise of a new class of oligarchs hell-bent on plundering it for all it was worth), the ˝˝Russian 90s˝ still evoke fear and horror as young Russians were desperate to get into the universities of all things in order to avoid the poverty of everyday life or the military where one could get gang-raped among other things, all while the total lack of support from the West reminded a lot of Russians about why exactly they had opposed the US in the first place. Russia's GDP fell by more than 3/5ths between 1991 and 1998 and it would take until 2004 for it to recover to soviet levels. This all changed with Vladimir Putin, who managed to pull the country out of the gutter and started to build up its power again. All the while even though Communism had fallen in Russia Authoritarianism persisted under the new banner.  


==9/11 and the War on Terror==
Arguably, the first signs that something was not quite right came in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea by Russia and the still ongoing war in Ukraine, something that was considered impossible in the prior decade ([[Lulz|and ended 207-year-old Swiss neutrality]]). Additionally, while the Arab Spring saw the fall of many dictators from Libya to Egypt and Tunisia, in Syria the Assad dynasty managed to not only hold its own but push back the "moderate Islamists"(mainly Sunni Arabs who want to kill/rob/rape Shi'ites), ISIS/ISIL (Salafists trying to bring back the Islamic caliphates of old), and people who just don't want to be ruled by a despot, with no small amount of help from Russia (though this holding out is probably going the way of the dodo courtesy of Turkey due to dramatic developments in 2022). China meanwhile was acting far more subtly in exerting its geopolitical influence, making huge loans to other countries and its corporations branching out into all sorts of sectors in Africa, Australia and Asia all the while partnering up with Russia in a general though not overtly belligerent counter-western stance.
{{topquote|We have slain a large dragon. But we live now in a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes. And in many ways, the dragon was easier to keep track of.|CIA Director James Woolsey, 1993}}


9/11 can be seen as the catalyst for what would fuel today's paranoia against "terrorism". On September 11, 2001, several Al-Qaeda terrorists hi-jacked 4 commercial flights and crashed them to three different locales, although the most significant of this was the World Trade Center, causing the Twin Towers to collapse and be labeled as the worst terrorist attack on American soil, as it killed nearly 3,000 people. One of the planes - Flight 93 - saw passengers and crew learned of the other suicide attacks and fought back against the terrorists, who chose to crash the plane into a field and kill everyone rather than cede control. This attack was led by a man named Osama Bin Laden.  If you want to subscribe to the tin-foil hat crew, there's been several conspiracy theories related to this, most popular of which is that the American government planned for 9/11 and the entirety of the tragedy, but whether you want to believe those or not is up to you.
The sum of all of this is that as of the third decade of M3 the world is no longer unipolar with USA having to contend with resurgent Russia</ and China, whose imperial ambitions are seemingly once again stirring. While the three powers are not directly inimical to one another, they each are trying to exert their geopolitical interests and being less and less obliged to ask the USA for an opinion.


Anyway, with the world shocked, a worldwide manhunt for Bin Laden occurred, taking the US-led coalition forces to Afghanistan, Iraq, and eventually Pakistan. During their hunt, this resulted in warlords and dictators in the Middle East getting the knife, most notably Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya. Long story short, after a bunch of wacky misadventures and more conflicts than anyone can count: SEAL Team Six, a special operations unit of the US Navy, eventually found and killed Bin Laden during a raid ten years later.  
Cold War II: Electric Boogaloo was likely locked in as of February 2022 with the escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian Conflict into a full scale war with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While we won't elaborate on details due to contemporary news being the most [[Skub]]by part of history, the responses afterwards seem to have drawn a line. One thing we have to note however, is the abysmal Russian performance (especially in logistics) with stories ranging from leadership incompetence in the field, difficulty coordinating waves of untrained recruits and even more humiliating logistical mistakes such as entire armored companies grinding to a halt outside invasion points because they ran out of fuel. Completely overturning wargaming with regards to post-Soviet competence (verdict: quite lackluster for a former superpower) and also demonstrating the horrific effectiveness of guided missiles used on both sides and especially drones like the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drone. Not to mention the fucktons of NATO equipment being poured into Ukraine giving the country a true fighting chance against its bigger neighbor through a far superior military supply line. Based on available information current Russian victories are appear to be achieved through a combination of overwhelming force on key cities and targets with coordinated artillery/air-strikes with armored tank assaults' along with good old fashioned overwhelming numbers, <s>Nevermind that most of these troops are minorities from poor and rural regions.</s> While moderately effective it is a highly inefficient strategy especially with the Ukrainians far more effective use of strategic missile strikes and less wasteful offensive tactics being bolstered by tremendous material support from Europe, accomplishing in days what took the Russians months to do. This has led to reports of poor morale from Russian conscripts and even field commanders. For the moment, this has made any future hot war essentially suicidal without overwhelming numbers if enemy smart weapons aren't disabled first while reminding everyone just how important supply lines and morale are in any warfare (along with actually having a legitimate long-term plan to begin with). [[Conan the Barbarian|After all, what is steel compared to the hand that wields it?]]


Despite the shock of the attacks, the people of the United States didn't wholly "unify" as is too often suggested by those who lived at the time. Muslim Americans, and even quite a few who simply ''looked'' Middle Eastern, including Sikhs and South-East Asians, were the targets of hate crimes - arsons, murders, and assaults shot up in the days and weeks after the attacks. It has been asserted that this is the origin of the Western Conservative bias against Muslims and the reignition of fear of foreigners.  This was also a major catalyst for anti-religious groups given that Al-Qaeda is an Islamic terrorist group and the mastermind Bin Laden declared a "holy war" against the United States, resulting in several things including the [[Imperial Truth|New Atheist movement]], a spike in anti-religious crimes and a ''huge'' surge in religiously-motivated villains in fiction for the next two decades (especially Islam and, strangely - since 9/11 wasn't done in the name of this religion, Christianity).
On another note more than a few political and Military scientists have opinioned that this conflict may yet give insight on how major powers will have to counter modern tactics and capabilities. As open conflict with relatively first world nations has been quite rare in recent decades. Advances in the disabling of drone and guided missile technology will likely be a major point of interest for global powers, along with satellite recon and signal jamming. And has opened the door to new leaders in the field arms supply in the future (Germany in particular has stepped up its game on military expenditure not seen in generations in response to renewed Russian aggression). Along with the emboldening of other powers such as China. The lines in a future cold war may well start to draw themselves in the near future.


Despite the success of the Osama Bin Laden raid, the War on Terror never really "ended" and it jump-started the global arms industry into overdrive. It created a demand for more guns, more militarization, more equipment, and more troops, in order to stem the tide of terrorists and rogue elements threatening everyone's safety (if you want to believe the rhetoric, anyway). It's also being seen as pseudo-Imperialism, as while the occupied Middle Eastern territories visited by the coalition are technically held by local governments, its not that easy to miss that the US-led coalition are basically bumping off heads that they don't like and installing people that are more open to their policies into government positions and occupying them with either US troops and/or PMCs (i.e. mercenaries) as "observers" to help stabilize the region and train their troops, essentially turning them into a nation unofficially governed by the US. While it can be argued that said heads were in dire need of a thumping for the sake of the people, this is creating an increasingly common way for the US to expand its sphere of influence, while being able to dodge the bad label associated with imperialism. Needless to say, this created even more of the resentment and hatred that allowed al-Qaeda to gain power in the first place, which combined with the crumbling state of Syria's government ended up setting the stage for ISIS, a more powerful and widespread organization intent on recreating the Islamic Caliphate of old.  
It should be noted that people have been yelling about Cold War II for the past 20+ years, and the term itself is controversial among political scientists and government officials. The former because they don't think we're there yet, the latter because it would inflame tensions with other countries. Leaving aside the significant differing details.


This also created a glamorization of the military by the media that contributed to the war being somewhat normalized in the eyes of the public and painting the coalition forces as heroes (I.E: vidya games like Call of Duty or movies like American Sniper). Call it entertainment or call it propaganda, either way, it contributed to the public being more accepting of what's essentially a world-wide conflict comprised of proxy wars and skirmishes with no clear beginning or end. It also had the effect of massively expanding national governments worldwide in order to "protect and secure" the lives of the citizenry, whereas most libertarians and anarchists viewed it as nothing more than a blatant power grab using security as an excuse.
== Other Regions ==


The US and remaining coalition forces are still technically fighting the War on Terror despite the original aggressors responsible for 9/11 being neutralized. As of writing this article: they're only three years shy of officially beating the Vietnam War in terms of duration. Indeed, it has raised concerns about the purpose of this ongoing conflict, as much of Iraq and Afghanistan is still very much a hotbed for insurrection to the point that Western intervention is no longer having a discernible effect and may very well be actively making it worse. Plus, with the aftermath of the war against ISIS, it has led to yet more intervention by larger neighboring states and more destabilized local conflicts, such as Turkey advancing into Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran conducting a proxy war against each other in Yemen, the crackdown of the Kurdish independence referendum in Northern Iraq, and the Taliban further entrenching themselves in various provinces in Afghanistan.
=== Asia ===
While China's rise has been commented on, it was not the only East Asian country to see a considerable change in fortune at the tail end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand have all emerged as prominent players on the world economy, with a rapid rise in standards of living and economic influence (though increasing political interference from China has negatively affected Taiwan). This has led to a rising China that until fairly recently was seen as a reliable trade partner with the United States. This started due widespread distrust of China over its handling of [[Nurgle|Covid-19]] - exacerbated by China being the origin point of the virus. Accusations on China's cultural genocide on the Uyghurs akin to the lost generations on the Australian Aborigines also soured perceptions from the West leading calls for 'decoupling'. The results of this has been....a mixed-bag. Whilst news of Apple trying to relocate to India has been making rounds. The reality on the ground is that trade deficits has only ''increased'' after the Pandemic and FDI have recovered somewhat, suggesting that the old principle of "Money Walks Bullshit Talks" is ''very much still in play here''. Nevertheless, the opposite ironically, rings true, as Beijing has been accelerating domestic chip and microprocessor production and increasing bilateral relations with ASEAN making Beijing less dependent on Western imports in the long term. Another interesting thing was that Xi removed the term limits for the Presidency. Whether this means he is trying to pull a Putin is unknown. Although given that he still needs to play fancy with the Party Elders and put the other cliques in line suggests that his power is overrated.


==The Great Recession==
Speaking of ASEAN, Southeast Asia is stuck in a increasingly awkward relationship between China and the US. The age-old challenge of balancing US security relationship with Chinese economic relationship has reared its ugly head. Whilst for now, ASEAN Centrality is providing some measure of stability, the rise of Chinese naval power in contrast to declining US capability means that in the long term, Washington's ability to commit its forces on both Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia is becoming suspect given the reality of imperial overstretch. This constant long term worry alongside neglect from the Trump administration had already has an effect to some members. Brunei, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia are already in the 'China camp'. Even 'neutrals' such as Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia has been warming up towards Beijing despite ongoing disputes in the South China Sea. With Jakarta, US admonishment on the 2019 West Papua riots, the AUKUS announcement, the increasing toxicity of US domestic politics and increasing hostile rhetoric on the Taiwan Strait has made Indonesian authorities to trust China more than the US. Beijing in turn, is willing to capitalise on this given Indonesia's geostrategic position and large population. Even traditional US-friendly members such as Vietnam and the Philippines have been pretty careful in playing both sides. China has also recently warmed up the ideas and principles of ASEAN, so a positive is that the region is unlikely to see a repeat of Ukraine and Russia at the very least.
{{topquote|If you owe the bank one hundred dollars, that's your problem. If you owe the bank one hundred million dollars, that's the bank's problem.|J. Paul Getty}}


In 1987 Alan Greenspan became chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank and would hold that office until 2006, leaving behind a legacy of [[just as planned|fuckheug asset bubbles]].  Under the presidencies of Bush the Elder, Clinton, and Bush the Lesser, lending standards became increasingly lax to the point where a well dressed [[Lictor]] could qualify for a mortgage. Prices for homes, stocks, and college educations skyrocketed, but because the dollar menu remained a dollar the talking heads insisted it wasn't inflation.
Notably, India has emerged as a major player on the world scene, particularly with food exports and the service sector (particular in the wake of growing issues with China). Not to mention they are an excellent rest stop for ships taking goods to and from the EU to China, and vice versa. However, the looming effects of climate change impacting South Asia (disruption of weathering, water loss crisis, environmental refugees, heavy chemical processing pollution fucking up the Ganges etc. in a subcontinent that is roughly 70% agricultural) as well as geopolitical threats (Pakistan and China) mean that India's future situation is likely to worsen as time goes by. New Delhi is also trying to eat into China's manufacturing market, although how successful India would be is up in the air, given that competition now is ''intense'' and that India's infrastructure is either simply lacking or is a mother of clusterfucks that makes it uncompetitive. If India had successfully tapped in its manufacturing potential during the 1970s where only China was the rival, New Delhi may have a chance. Now? India has to contend with the rise of East Africa, China, South Korea, ASEAN, Bangladesh and Automation, so it will be a tough mountain to climb to stand out given all the nodes of competition.


Stocks first plummeted in 2000 when everyone decided the likes of yahoo! and pets.com weren't worth a trillion dollars. Then in 2008 the market shit itself again when bankers realized that Lictor was never going to pay off his home loan. But he can still get a bank to pay for his hormagaunts to go to Princeton, so the shoes aren't done falling yet.
Afghanistan on the other hand, had finally gotten rid of the United States as Kabul fell to the Taliban. Whilst the US retreat has been an absolute shitshow, this does not mean that the ruling Taliban is celebrating as decades of fighting has made these fighters [[derp|completely inexperience in handling civilian bureaucracy and governing]]. Afghanistan is now in a even more dire straits given the financial sanctions emplaced by Washington. For the Taliban who has turned from terrorist insurgents into the governors themselves, this is an existential threat. So they are trying to find anyone willing to relieve them economically. So far they only got the Chinese and Russians willing to talk to them. Although the Taliban's greatest goal is in international recognition of their rule.


At the height of the bubble, it was possible for a person to obtain a home loan with no declared income, no declared assets, no down payment, and on negative amortization terms which means the borrower is only aiming to pay the interest on the loan (and maybe not even all of that) in the hope of selling the house later for more than the loan. The sheer quantities of '''[[just as planned]]''' flavor kool-aid everyone was drinking would turn [[Magnus the Red]] several more colors.
Meanwhile, central Asia is...central Asia. After the US's withdrawal from the country following a 17-year occupation, Afghanistan fell back to the Taliban, leading to a diaspora of refugees from the country and a curtailing of all the liberal policies put in place there by the previous puppet government. In short, it went to shit just as you'd expect. Generally, most of the central Asian countries aren't doing much at the moment, although they are falling into the orbit of China given how unreliable Russia has been recently. There was a whole squabble between Azerbaijan and Armenia over dumbass reasons that would never be a thing to begin with if the Imperial Russian and Soviet regimes weren't literal cunts by stoking ethnic tension. Short version: Azerbaijan has oil, so the EU and America are unlikely to do shit given the whole Putin doing the funny in Ukraine.


The overwhelming majority of these loans were variable interest because the Fed had dropped rates so low that for a brief time they were actually paying banks to borrow money (you read that right, not paying them to lend money, paying them to borrow money from the fed; things got crazy).  The result was the economic equivalent of Chernobyl; as soon as it became apparent that rates couldn't go any lower everyone who couldn't pay was wiped out and declared bankruptcy. The banks and investors had been divvying up the anticipated profits from the loans and selling them as securities, and suddenly nobody knew what those securities were actually worth.  As banks and insurance companies started imploding, the US government was obliged to intervene to stave off a complete collapse of the economy, but this was incredibly unpopular.
Something alarming that some commentators have noticed is that for all Russia does wrong, their military strength and status preserved a type of "Pax Russica" in Central Asia. But since their military has dropped the ball pretty heavily, many central Asian nations might be tempted to revive dumbass ethnic tension and starting to get ideas about purging minorities and killing each other. This destabilization will provide an opportunity for China to further influence central Asia, eroding Russia's power and increasing Beijing's economic and political influence.


==The Rise of Extremes, and the Tide of Populism==
=== Europe ===
{{topquote|It's a sad commentary on where politics is today. If someone disagrees with you, you're either Attila the Hun or a leftist liberal.|James R. Leininger}}
The biggest trend of Post Cold War Europe has been a push towards greater integration. The process had begun in the 1950s after WWII in which A: hard-line militarized nationalism was not popular [[nazis|for some fairly obvious reasons]] and B: economic cooperation was seen as a better way to achieve and maintain peace and prosperity. It started with the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, with Germany, France, BeNeLux and Italy and was gradually built on. Eastern Europe was added to the mix after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. The eventual result of which was the European Union. In 1995 the EU introduced the Euro as a Common Currency, which was widely adopted by 1999. Basically the EU exists to make business easier between member states via the 4 freedoms (freedom of movement for people, capital, goods and services), has frameworks for easier cooperation between members and some joint programs like the European Space Agency, some environmental projects and big research initiatives like CERN. Lastly the EU also provides funding for various projects via the Cohesion Fund and the like, enabling smart member states to improve the standard of living along with other benefits for their citizens.


The year 2016 was a shitshow in many, many ways, and its long-term effects have yet to become fully apparent. In hindsight, all those celebrity deaths were quite foreshadowing.  
Things however went rough for the EU following the GFC in 2008 as the EU went into the infamous decade-long Eurozone crisis with big EU players like Germany forcing austerity on smaller members, creating a rise in Euroskepticism, with opposition to the EU and pushback by various localist movements. Most notably Brexit which saw a member state leave for the first time ever, with mixed results for the British Economy and feelings both domestically and abroad...then Russia decided to stick its dick in a blender on February 2022 by creating the largest war in Europe since WW2 by waging a war of conquest on Ukraine. Europe now faces its biggest existential crisis in decades. With the current shitshow going on in the east of the continent several countries have started rearming themselves. This includes Poland, which had a similar history of conflict with Russia and some describe as the next European heavyweight on par with France and Germany, the latter of which also started rearming for the first time in years and allocated a whopping 100 billion euros for the endeavor.


The policies of Barrack Obama had become unpopular in many rural and conservative places, such as the Midwest and the Deep South, on top of an increasing racial divide that hadn't been seen since the late 1960s. Fed up with these policies, and with the apparent inaction of many moderate to center-right Republican politicians, a good deal of right-leaning voters turned to more hardcore conservative, right-wing populist candidates... candidates such as Donald Trump (yes, the same one from ''The Apprentice''), who called for tightening already strict regulations against immigration, negotiations for fairer trade deals, an increase in domestic manufacturing, and a return to the Reagan-era "Peace through Strength" mentality (intensified to a degree that some observers thought bordered on authoritarianism). And despite all the odds, Trump won the presidential election through a handy margin in the electoral college against Hillary Clinton (though Hillary won more of the popular vote thanks to the large urban bases in California and New York), due to an appeal to Rust Belt workers and Hillary's association with her husband's scandals (as well as an overcomplicated clusterfuck involving emails that people made a big deal about at the time but now seems kind of dumb).  This was accompanied by the rise of the so-called "Alternative-Right", a hardcore right-wing ideology that espouses ethnonationalism and nativism as its primary goals.
Whilst NATO was revitalized, Europe now faces a daunting prospect of de-industrialization (or at least a shift away from fossil fuels) as Moscow stopped all natural gas and oil flows to the continent whether intentional or unintentional; forcing Brussels to try and keep as much of its industry as possible as European brands started to high-tail it to either the US or China. Nevertheless, despite the humbug with the US over their united front against Russia, increasing American protectionist policy alongside various responses to the Trump administration has made the EU increasingly wary over its reliance and dependence on Washington. Some like Macron have ambitions to make the EU a third 'superpower' pole and it ''may'' be possible....if Brussels manages to hold on, get its shit together and craft its own policies balancing Washington, Beijing and Moscow. Another point of worry is the rise of populist movements which Brussels fears could lead to pseudo-authoritarian countries like Hungary proliferating, that the aforementioned country has been giving Russia interested looks does not help matters either.


Almost immediately, the left accused Trump of colluding with Vladimir Putin in stealing the election from Clinton, and a two-year long investigation was launched (that ultimately found evidence of Russian interference with the election in Trump's favor, but could not find sufficient information to confirm or deny that Trump or his campaign was aware of it or actively cooperating with the Russians; Trump's rapport with Putin at the time continued to arouse suspicion but nobody's willing to go through that whole mess again unless they find a smoking gun), with both sides accusing one another of rigging the election.  Reacting in anger to what they perceived as Trump's violent racism and bigotry, a collection of left-wing anarchist paramilitary groups formed, naming themselves "Anti-Fascist Action", or Antifa, for short. Antifa would disrupt conservative and right-wing rallies, claiming that as Trump's main supporters were sympathetic to Nazi ideology and espoused violence against their opponents, they could not be dealt with through purely non-violent means. In response to this, hardcore right-wing groups like the Proud Boys formed and began to clash on the streets with Antifa, turning the streets of cities like Portland into scenes eerily reminiscent of early-1920s Weimar Germany.
With the enforcement of article 13 restrictions of freedom of speech in europe have become widely embraced by government authorities with the excuse of copyright defense and counter terrorism.
Outside of the EU. Possibly the ''weirdest'' event to have occurred is the growing military and economic relations between China and France. Whilst relatively new, France has been engaging with the Chinese the most out of all the Great Powers in Europe. Analyst suspect that this budding relationship might have to do with the disastrous handling of AUKUS which plunged French trust to the Anglosphere to an all-time low. Since 2022 at least, Macron and Xi has been in lock-steps with one another and Beijing has been increasingly warming to the ideas of treating France as ''its'' special strategic partner in Europe. Of course, results are too early to tell and how far that relationship will go is unknown, but the effects are already there with Paris being the major influencer in driving the EU's approach to be more balanced with Beijing.


In 2018, a surge of left-wing populism enabled the Democrats to dominate the House of Representatives, and hardcore left-wing candidates such as "Democratic Socialist" Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez soon saw themselves propelled to the heights of political power. A political divide in the United States that had slowly been festering since the Bush presidency had grown to fruition; moderates and centrists soon found themselves on the back burner, and the American people polarized into ideologically incompatible camps who began to view each other as traitors to the Republic and wannabe-genocidal dictators.  This was aided by the echo chambers created by social media, which minimized any potentially friendly interactions with the "other side" and has led some commentators and scholars predicting the U.S might see another civil war within a generation.
=== Oceania ===


In Europe, populist movements arose as a result of the perceived overbearing rules and regulations coming from the EU, the migration crisis as a result of the Syrian Civil War, and a general resurgence of nationalism. The most notable of these movements was the '16 British Exit movement (Brexit, for short) that sought the departure of the UK from the EU, and soon, nominally centrist governments in Europe soon found themselves out of power or greatly diminished, replaced by populist right-wing or populist left-wing governments, as the dream of the European Union looked more and more like a fantasy. Brexit itself proved to cause its own problems after it became clear that after leaving the EU, numerous trade deals would need to be renegotiated (among other issues much too complex to describe here) that would profoundly damage the UK's economy if they could not be preserved. The fact the question of Brexit was decided by a referendum of the general public, which was only partly aware of the issues at stake and did not understand the consequences of leaving the EU, did not instill confidence in the government. Moreover, it is possible that if Brexit does end up happening, Scotland may leave the UK in order to preserve their connections to the EU.
The 2010s had been a political clusterfuck in the Land Down Under. Over a decade of [[Game of Thrones]]-style political backstabbings has led Australia to transition to ''[[EPIC FAIL|six Prime Ministers]]''. This levels of dysfunctionality has led the degrading of Australia's stature in the Oceania region and the rise of New Zealand being the only adult in the room. To make matters worse for Australia, rampant political lobbying has turned Australia's potential as a leader in renewable energy into a circus filled with coal and fossil fuel executives. Likewise, neglect and outright political corruption from the Australian liberal coalition had led to the worse bushfires in Australia since 2009, leading to over ''1 billion'' Australian animals to perish in the fires. This neglect was not only restricted to the environment, as it also translates to Australia's diplomacy [[fail]]s towards the Pacific Island Nations, as climate change is very much an existential threat for them. But Canberra's [[That Guy|dismissive attitude]] towards them had cost Australia plenty of goodwill in the region. Suffice to say, the new labour administration has a lot of baggage to unfuck Australia's position, and it will take a ''long time'' to rebuild the lost trust with its island neighbours.


In Russia, Putin's imperialistic ambitions, a paranoid fear of NATO expansion, and possibly a desire to reclaim what had once been a critical port in the old USSR, propelled the large nation into invading its neighbor, Ukraine, in order to "protect Russian minorities in the Donbass and Crimea". Ukraine, having just recently undergone a political revolution that ousted the pro-Russian administration, wasn't having it and fought the Russians and their separatist allies to a virtual standstill in the still-ongoing Donbass War. The Putin regime has also been implicated in several other acts of interfering with other world governments, perhaps as a way to exact revenge for how the West abandoned Russia to its fate after the Soviet Union fell. That said, Putin's stranglehold over Russian politics and elimination of anyone with enough political acumen to take his place has set the stage for a major power vacuum to arise after his death/retirement, and there's no telling if the Russian government as it exists today could survive in his absence.  
=== Africa ===
Within the past few centuries there have been widespread problems across the continent of Africa lingering even after the Cold War.
The causes are numerous and include generational tribalistic conflicts, the slave trade, wars over resources and direct interference from European governments until the end of the Colonial Era during the Cold War. The most prominent example is the Scramble for Africa, which involved building plantations, mines and railways to support plantations and mines with white guys doing as much of the technical work as possible (and with the native inhabitants being deliberately kept uneducated and untrained lest they learn to use the infrastructure by themselves or make more). At the same time, it was a common practice to exacerbate existing tribal conflicts (and sometimes even create new ones!) in order to keep the locals too busy squabbling with each other to join forces against their overlords.


Meanwhile, populist leaders and old-school authoritarians rose up in Turkey, the Philippines, Brazil, Thailand, India and Pakistan, which has put a nail in the coffin for liberalism in those various democratic institutions. In China, President Xi Jinping removed the term limits and became China's most powerful leader since Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping; this coincides with China reverting back to the foreign policy of the Ming Dynasty on steroids and trying to bring back the Sinocentric world order of old. Beijing's initialization of the Belt and Road Initiative throughout Eurasia and the String of Pearls geostrategic security bases around the Indian Ocean is a multinational project that dwarfs the Marshall Plan, and has spooked Washington into trying ways to at least counter some of China's ambitions to various results. The rise of China, combined with the political stagnation of the US and the decline of Western institutions, has bifurcated the Post-Cold War World Order. Unipolarity has ended.
This dependence on a colonial regime running everything combined with the elimination of pre-colonial social structures led to power vacuums when the various foreigners left, which were often filled by authoritarian strong-men.  Various nations also used countries of Africa as a dumping ground for obsolete weapons after the Cold War, which were eagerly seized by governments and warlords seeking to establish control over their newly seized domains. Unsurprisingly, this has led to a series of conflicts and civil wars, notably the Rwandan Genocide. This also discouraged governments of those countries from developing their own technologies when they could claim the cast-offs of Western or Eastern nations for much less effort.  Despite that, there has been a gradual rise in standards of living in many countries of Africa, including fair and free elections, health care and stable economies. Algeria, Tunisia, and Rwanda to name a few have made significant improvements with their GDP and literacy rates. Several nations of Africa are also the world's leading exporters of various goods - for example, Nigeria has seen considerable GDP growth and industrial development over the last three decades. Even so, it has been a long and difficult climb and not without internal corruption in some places.


The future of the world is in flux, as it always has been. Only time will tell whether or not the moderates will again take the reigns of power, or if the status quo is permanently shifted to the left or right. Or if the worst-case scenario predictions about the effects of uncontrolled global climate change come to pass and make that whole question a moot point. After all, it's hard to rule a country when a significant fraction of it is suddenly no longer fit for human inhabitation.
That being said, in many cases Western countries retain disproportionate influence over much of Africa via economic and cultural means (e.g., multinational corporations exploiting cheap labor while reducing countries' access to their own natural resources) while Middle-Eastern and Asian countries are making disturbingly similar in-roads. Some observers have dubbed this phenomenon "neocolonialism"; gaining/retaining control of a region without open use of military force. In this view, the aforementioned exporting is less of a sign of economic progress and more of an indication of their continuing role in extracting resources on the behalf of their former colonizers (this phenomenon is not uniquely inflicted on African countries or solely perpetrated by European nations).


==The Pandemic of 2020 AKA World.exe has paused==
=== The Americas ===
In late 2019 (first confirmed infection was somewhere around middle of December, with a non-connected solo infection showing symptoms on December 1), a new strain of coronavirus appeared in the Hubei province of China. Genome sequencing would later confirm that the virus hopped to humans from bats, which have historically been a source of multiple other epidemics such as Ebola and SARS. 


An airborne respiratory virus, SARS-CoV-2 resembled the common cold, with some studies suggesting that 80% of infected would be asymptomatic or show mild cold-like symptoms (although in hindsight its close relation to a virus that caused a smaller but still major outbreak in 2002 known as SARS should have been a cause for alarm; later studies have since shown that these "asymptomatic" cases develop a variety of health problems later in life). However in a small minority of cases, particularly the elderly and immunocompromised, it could result in severe pneumonia frequently resulting in death, and it spread so quickly that the so-called "small minority" is still likely to end up being millions of cases. Unusually for a pandemic, the virus had almost no effect on the young, in contrast to the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918 which affected the strongest the worst due to life-threatening immune responses. Or at least that was assumed to be the case, right until it was discovered that "recovered" cases in younger individuals had a disproportionately high risk of developing strokes, heart conditions, and other life-threatening problems, although this may be due to selection bias; large scale epidemiological studies are as yet still in progress. Regardless, pneumonia is no joke and a virus that humanity has zero immunity against is a very nasty thing indeed.  
The initial years of the post-cold war have been swimming for North America/USA as the country was left as the only superpower on the planet (so much so that until about 2010s they could even have been considered a hyperpower - a polity that dominates all other states in every major metric). This period extended from about 1989 until 2001, when USA was hit hard by both the 9/11 terrorist attacks (to say nothing of the blowback from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which collectively became the new Vietnam in terms of both length and unpopularity) and in 2008 the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.  However, the country still remains ridiculously wealthy and powerful and has a military good enough to easily squash any other rising superpowers and probably wage war against two while defending the mainland from a third one at the same time. Still, the country has some serious issues - most notably the increasing wealth-gap and the ideological polarization of society not seen since the Vietnam War and the resulting civil unrest. Many of these wedge issues are in fact unresolved conflicts and dilemmas from the 1960s such as the incomplete work of the Civil Rights Movement to address the poorer living conditions of the African-American population, and the debate over the role of the United States on the world's stage and whether America needs to be the 'World's Policeman' has reached boiling point. There's also global events like climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic (and controversial lockdowns to quarantine people during the pandemic causing serious economic issues). Whilst, the USA seems to be in the best position to weather whatever geopolitical upheavals are coming ''in theory'', concerns still abate on the growing political rifts and quite frankly, ''[[fail|idiocy]]'' on domestic political and economic brinkmanship and what this means to the wider international community. Already, the US Dollar's usage has dramatically declined from a high of 75+% to below 50% for the first time in history. The combination of the GOP putting a gun over the US debt ceiling and the DNC's advocacy for constant increases in US spending was one part of the reasons for the decline. What really kicked off the acceleration was the widespread financial sanctions on Russia over Ukraine which, whilst while strategically justified, spooked the shit out of everyone else as from their point-of-view, the Dollar has suddenly been weaponised and is no longer a neutral arbitrator of financing. Although the Dollar isn't going away anytime soon and is still the most trusted currency in the world, its long term prospect is starting to look dire unless Washington does something to regain the world's confidence in its handling of its currency.  


Through the end of 2019, it was believed that the virus could be contained to China, but by February 2020 it was clear that containment had failed and that the virus would spread worldwide. With the nationalists and the populist leaders proving themselves unable to handle a disease that respected no borders and unwilling to cooperate with each other long enough to create a productive response that might have kept the virus from becoming a full-fledged pandemic, the global community flailed helplessly in between bouts of passing the buck and playing the blame game as the disease, named "COVID-19", spread across one continent after another.  
South America meanwhile has been a mixed bag. Aside from not really getting much attention or upheaval except for a few countries, it has enjoyed a relative upswing as industrializing Asian countries developed a need for the raw material exports coming out of S. America. Many nations also begun developing and truly industrializing like Chile or North Mexico though many more remain impoverished and forgotten. Of note venezuela's economy collapsed in part due to their dependency on petrol, embargoes and the far left ideologically minded administration of Maduro.  


Widespread government orders to close businesses and pushes for people to remain in their homes resulted in unemployment levels never before seen in history, and the global economy reached its lowest point since the Great Depression in what is now being called the "Great Lockdown". Worldwide air travel ground to a halt, and transportation energy use dropped so precipitously that oil reached ''negative'' value (not an error result, producers are actually paying people to take oil away). The prolonged economic downturn has made a fair number of people talk about the possibility of implementing major reforms such as universal basic income to ensure that economies don't implode entirely, although the reactions to said proposals have been mixed. On the other extreme some politicians have shown a blunt prioritizing of the economy over the people the economy is supposed to serve, which unsurprisingly has not won them much goodwill.
==Technology==
{{topquote|We're living in the age of cellphone cameras. Fuckups ain't tolerated!|Smiling Jack, ''[[Vampire:_The_Masquerade#VtM:_Bloodlines|Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines]]''}}
<!-- This is about tech that impacts storytelling or playing /tg/ stuff. We don't care about the latest gadget or discovery otherwise -->


Even after more stringent lockdown protocols were adopted by at-risk regions, the virus has continued to spread and health care systems throughout the world are being pushed to their limits as people continue to die from COVID-19; as of June 2020 it's already killed more Americans than the entire First World War. With a vaccine still at least a year away (and that's the most optimistic estimate) as of this writing, it's anyone's guess as to how long the pandemic will last...or if the global economy will be able to survive the measures needed to keep the pandemic under control until it ends.
Storytelling, especially settings placed in a contemporary or "modern" era hit a major hurdle in the 90s and especially early 00s as this newfangled thing called "Internet" arose out of a USA government/military project to link computer systems the states and world-over in order to maintain communication after a hypothetical nuclear war. Thing is, once this was released to the general public the network expanded rapidly until it became a new paradigm of human existence, influencing everything from society, politics, economics, the arts, religion - you name it. Story-wise this made any masquerade or hidden "other world" that much more difficult to maintain as now a schmuck who saw that they shouldn't could blurp it out to thousands of other people. Irl-wise the internet revolutionised /tg/ as a community by... enabling /tg/ to exist in the first place by bringing all the isolated groups of fa/tg/uys and ca/tg/irls together weather on 4chan, 1d4chan (shameless plug, suck it) or dozens of other dedicated forums AND enabling them access to mountains of materials for their chosen hobbies.


The effects of the stress placed upon populations during the lockdown would be combined with long-standing racial tensions after video footage of the death of an African-American man at the hands of police went viral across the internet. This recent act of police brutality in the face of a steadily growing sentiment that police forces were corrupt and motivated by bigotry led to an Executive Order banning choke-holds, debates across social media and most notably  large scale protests and riots reminiscent of similar riots in 1968.  There was even a brief insurrection in Seattle where part of the city was taken over and renamed CHAZ (Capital Hill Autonomous Zone; later re-branded CHOP - Capital Hill Occupied Protest - when President Trump threatened to invoke the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurrection_Act_of_1807 Insurrection Act]), followed by a controversial crackdown on civil disorder in various states - such as Portland - by federal agents that's stoked various fears and accusations of democracy coming under threat.
The mass popularity of smartphones has made it increasingly difficult to write a plot that cuts characters off from the outside world. This has forced such plots to be moved further and further from civilization (which fights an uphill battle with ever increasing coverage), into massive disasters where cell phone coverage is disrupted and help won’t be coming anyways, or just straight up adding in supernatural disruption of communications.  


By the middle of 2020 the comparisons to 1968 of a year of 'one goddamn thing after another' were many and apt, and it's not even time for the US presidential election yet.
The rise of mass CCTV and cellphone cameras of increasingly high quality and the ability to post the works taken with them on social media has made it increasingly implausible to keep a [[Masquerade]] going. The original [[World of Darkness]] just [[Gehenna|ends dramatically in 2004]], the year before YouTube launched. The MCB of [[Monster Hunter International]] has all the resources of most of the worlds governments working together to censor the supernatural, but even then those in charge consider exposure an inevitability.  Pretty much any conspiracy will be an open-secret, although it might still be popularly viewed as a conspiracy theory depending on how believable it seems. Paradoxically, in an era of limitless access to knowledge, what knowledge the individual chooses to subscribe to has itself become factionalized, and that can be a tool to uphold a Masquerade in itself. The rise of the "Fake News" paradigm means that a person can be looking at a vampire gouging a throat out of some poor bastard and going "meh" as it must be either CGI or some such, and woe betide any intrepid journalist if they don't have at least a good quality video as anything less will get the "photoshopped!" treatment.


[[Memes]] have never been better though.
Aside from the media and communications , other technological branches are seeing tentative emergence or applications beyond the lab. As of the New 10s (2010-2019) remotely controlled and autonomous UAVs and RPVs popularized as 'drones' have entered commercial usage alongside with multi-pedal robots able to walk, run and perform simple manual tasks while the militaries around the world are actively using aerial combat drones with land and sea variants in development. On another front virtual reality has become a viable entertainment and educational medium due to miniaturization of screens and processors though it still has ways to go in terms of improvement. Artificial intelligence (or rather a set of very adaptive and heuristic algorithms) are also making splashes with the most visible examples being AI capable of emulating speech to varying degrees and art AI capable of creating truly gorgeous and unique pieces of art, likely eventually giving rise to "Expert-Systems" predicted by many sci-fi works.


==The World Powers nowadays==
After the Information Revolution of the late 90s and early 00s biotech is set to become the next big thing. With the Human Genome project completed in 2003 the rate of tech advancement has lowered the costs of individual genomic sequencing from ~100 million USD in 2001 to around 1000 USD making individual genetic screening viable with a popular commercial application being the identification of one's genetic heritage and disease risk. Later during the 2010s a method for targeted genetic editing in-vivo called CRISPR caused a stir among the scientific community as now scientist could genetically modify organisms at any stage of development, not just before birth.
{{topquote|For all the ‘4th Generation of War’ intellectuals running around today saying that the nature of war has fundamentally changed, the tactics are wholly new, etc., I must respectfully say, ‘Not really’: Alexander the Great would not be in the least bit perplexed by the enemy that we face right now in Iraq, and our leaders going into this fight do their troops a disservice by not studying — studying, vice just reading — the men who have gone before us.|General James Mattis}}
With the fall of the Soviet Union and the massive economical crisis Russia suffered while adapting to the new capitalist system, the United States appeared as a global power with no real competition. For a while at least. The United States had to focus their attention in the War against Terror, a massive campaign against terrorism around the globe, in particular after the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001, which ended up with the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings through kidnapped planes. Since then, the United States has been present in the Middle East in one way or another. The world in general has had to adapt their military systems, being prepared to deal with another massive world war, and now have to fight small skirmishes against global terrorism, usually with a heavier weight of intelligence and counter-intelligence over actual military power. At the same time, they also have to deal with the ethical snarl of determining where the lines between "civilian" and "combatant" can be drawn, to say nothing of the suggestion that the War on Terror is really a ploy for the US to build a new empire without openly admitting that's what it's doing.


Outside of the US, Europe continued the process of developing an unified political entity, which ended in the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 with the birth of the European Union. With the fall of the Soviet Union, many ex-republics and other european countries under soviet control joined the EU, event that caused certain frictions with Russia. Also in this period we saw the fracture of Yugoslavia, with the conflicts that followed being some of the most bloody and brutal in Europe since the end of World War II.  
There also has been an increased awareness of [[Frostpunk|humanity's impact on the climate.]] Co2 emissions, resource depletion and destruction of wilderness are increasingly pressing concerns. With them has come a push - especially from younger generations - towards sustainable development, decarbonization and other efforts to reduce humanity's collective footprint. Solar Panels and Wind Farms have become a lot more common, electric cars have come onto the scene along with a pushback against car dependent development, there is renewed interest in nuclear power (both in terms of small-scale fission reactors and promising developments into nuclear fusion) and coal power has been on the decline, among other things. Of course those who profit from said industries have also been fighting against the response, and there's a real chance that a full shift away from fossil fuels might not happen before the effects of said environmental destruction become irreversible. It might not be enough to end human existence outright, but the projections of how climate change will affect the world suggest that it'll screw over a LOT of people in very nasty ways. In the worst case scenario, we'll be unceremoniously driven back into the Stone Age- and since we used up nearly all the easily acquired ores and other natural resources on Earth the first time around we won't be advancing out of it again if that happens.


To further add to the point in Europe right now, with the UK leaving the EU, there is a growing belief that the power vacuum created by Britain is going to make the Franco-German Bloc even more overly dominant. Macron's ambition for a French-dominated EU through a 'European Army' have raised eyebrows amongst Napoleonic/Gaulist analysts. In theory, it makes sense for France to centralize Europe's military under the command of the French as this is Paris' only window of opportunity to not only reinstate itself as the great power of the continent, but also break away from US over-dependence. The window of opportunity is simple in explanation; right now France's old regional adversaries, Germany and the UK, no longer pose a threat. Germany has destroyed its political leadership due to the migration crisis and is militarily castrated. The UK have lost almost all political credibility after the Brexit circus and is on the brink of political fragmentation. Paris right now is the most militarily capable member of the EU and a nuclear armed weapons state in its own right with vast financial influence over its <s>colonies</s> African friends and multiple overseas naval base. However, in practice, the sheer level of bureaucratic clusterfuck in the language barriers of the <s>28</s> 27 member states would be a significant challenge to such an idea. Let alone the fact that South and Eastern Europeans do not like the idea of being dictated by the French, and would rather prefer the Americans under good'ol NATO instead.  Furthermore, Paris has a stagnating and mediocre economy, so we have no idea how Macron is going to balance the budget and, with Berlin's economy contracting to near recession levels, such ideas may prove ''too'' ambitious in the first place. But alas, if Macron wants to role-play Europa Universalis whilst putting on his Napoleon hat, he can be our fucking guest.
Related to the above, the development of alternative energy sources (to fossil fuels) has been advancing at a steady pace and picked up some speed in the 21st century with big gains in solar power which is now seeing full returns on investments in 5-10 years as of the 2020s, making installation for the average Joe more and more viable. Wind and sea power however has entered somewhat of a snag since these energy sources tend to be even more situational than power from the Sun. Aside from green energy, nuclear and hydrogen power have seen some expansion and development with new fission plants being built by a number of nations despite Fukushima and a few nations like Japan, China and EU making headways in developing hydrogen systems. Finally, after over 70 years of research and being "only 30 years away" [[Fallout|we finally achieved nuclear fusion breakthrough at the end of 2022 with a lab based in California]] managing to produce more energy than was required to start the fusion reaction.


[[Japan]], after the economic boom they enjoyed during most of the 80s, suffered one of the biggest asset price crashes in history, sinking their economy. Badly. This was a catastrophic event for many Japanese, and this crisis lasted for over a decade (technically they haven't recovered from it yet). While they are still one of the wealthiest countries in the world, the effects of the 90s crash has had a massive impact on their financial, business and general culture, to the point of being very difficult to find any Japanese work set in modern day that doesn't reference the crisis in any way.
If the War in Ukraine is an indicator, things start to devolve a bit, at least on the symmetrical side of modern warfare. Artillery, combined with precision-guided ammo and reconnaissance via drones, again becomes the supreme weapon on the ground, as satellite intelligence and effective communications showcase how important it is for battalions to remain cohesive in the fog of war; that and Missiles and Shells fired with pinpoint accuracy nullify drawbacks of previous incarnations of artillery (such as an incredible volume of firepower required to destroy any given target, the logistical hassle of supplying a gun battery with enough ammo, in itself an art form, and the requirement to have a rough idea where the target you want to hit from 20 km away is without any visual contact on the ground or a live feed of information like drones provide) making them much safer and more cost-efficient than airstrikes or ground assaults as a result. Electronic Warfare will probably become central to any given military operation, as blocking surveillance, radar systems and guidance systems have become ever more important. At it's core, Ukraine and the reignited Karabakh War shows that anyone facing smart weapons with Cold War shit is going to get butchered like sheep. Unmanned systems are the defining 21st century paradigm shift in military science, while battles will mostly be resolved between smaller reconnaissance-in-force detachments seeking out concealed defenders in vague contested zones.


Many of the old communist countries quickly changed into capitalist economies during the 80s and 90s. Nowadays, there are only a handful of countries that would title themselves as communists, with none of them following a purely pre-91 planned economy (China, Laos and Vietnam changed their economy into a capitalist-like system while retaining much of their political structure, North Korea is basically an absolute monarchy, and Cuba is steadily changing and opening their economy to the world).  
Lastly on the Space front - commercial space endeavors are picking up steam as private companies like Space-X, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are seeing wealthy tourists and corpo brass sent to space. Government initiatives are also getting in on the action with Artemis Accords updating the UN Outer Space Treaty, the Artemis Program succeeding the Apollo Program with ultimate aim of returning humans to the Moon by 2024 and the first test flight managing to get a capsule with dummies around the Moon and back to Earth safely.
China has begun the construction and assembly of it's Tiangong space station which will be their equivalent of the Russian Mir and finally the James Webb telescope launched early in 2021 eclipsed Hubble in both size and capability. Improved launch vehicles mean that the cost of launching payloads into orbit per kilogram has significantly gone down.
Humanity also managed to redirect an asteroid for the first time in history as well, giving the Earth a first workable and proven defense system against potentially dangerous asteroids.
It is possible that we are seeing the beginning of a full fledged Second Space Age and the fulfillment of many of the promises of the last one.


After the massive humanitarian, agricultural and economical crisis that Mao's "Great Leap Forward" caused, [[Pretend|China adapted their communist system into an capitalist one hidden under a communist name,]] and became the ''de facto'' factory of the world, developing a massive industry and becoming a world power from the first time since more than a century. Its economic and political influence in the world is extremely important in world politics. The relationship between China and the US after the Cold War is....how do we put it...shall we say complicated? The US-China relationship is akin to a marriage still hanging on because both partners are so much in debt with one another that divorcing would be too much trouble for its worth. However, China has had plenty of problems during the last decades, such as the failed "one child" policy and increasing industrial and environmental pollution.  Tensions have strained further with the US pushing for industrial independence from China under Trump and the US retroactively nuking what's left of their reputation with the triple-whammy of the godawful mismanagement of their pandemic control, the (partially related) economic crisis and the George Floyd protests. China has been earning plenty of ill-will given the Chinese provincial government's face-saving cover up of COVID-19, which directly led to the failure to contain the virus (making the Chinese government the most directly responsible group for the global pandemic) and their increasing Human Rights Abuses (the ones against the Uighur Muslims [https://www.businessinsider.com.au/video-chinese-ambassador-confronted-over-blindfolded-uighur-muslims-2020-7?r=US&IR=T looking '''very''' similar to Soviet Russia's treatment of the Baltics]), however, seeing as how nobody did jack shit to Myanmar's Rohingya situation, outside of Western governments usual 'strongly worded letter', geopolitics are gonna geopolitics. Still for all its inconvenience, China is the second most powerful geopolitical entity and has grown to dominate international relations whether detractors like it or not.  [[Skub|Now the question on China's superpower status is nothing more than political skub amongst academics and political scientists, due to how....skubby the ''actual'' credentials to '''''be''''' a superpower is in the first place.]] Whatever the case, if the US ceases to be the world's superpower, China will definitely go for the top spot.
==Society==
{{topquote|The great paradox of the 21st century is that, in this age of powerful technology, the biggest problems we face internationally are problems of the human soul.|Ralph Peters}}
[[File:WaaghStreet1.jpg|thumb|right|200px|The internet brought alien communities into contact with each other...]]
While technology has generally advanced in fits and bursts along the lines predicted by most sci-fi works (major exceptions being AI, mass genetic engineering, widespread cybernetics and space colonisation), society has become somewhat of a mix between prior trends and predictions made by said sci-fi.  


On the other hand of Eurasia, Russia as well tried to recover its influence in world politics, [[Skub|with different degrees of success]]; as mentioned before it now seems to have shifted focus to undermining the influence of other countries instead, particularly that of the US. After somewhat recovering from the massive economic crisis of the 90s, Russia is still one of the most powerful and influential countries worldwide, due to its military weight and nuclear arsenal. Whilst US-China relationship is an overcomplicated trainwreck of interdependence, espionage and trade/IP disputes, Russia-China relations seem to have patched up the divorce from the Sino-Soviet Split. This was due to the fact that both the Russian and Chinese government realized how pointless and petty the split was, and that teaming up was a far more better choice than being divided. Although fears and suspicions still exist, the 2014 Ukraine crisis forced Russia to ignore these old-time fears of China as the relationship towards the West nosedived back to the good old days of the Cold War. The drop in oil prices along with sanctions crippled Russia's already vulnerable economy to the point that, economically speaking, Russia became an economic dwarf. As you can imagine, you can't have another arms race if you don't even have the money to spend them. Fortunately for Russia, this is where China comes in. Although the EU still remains the largest trading partner for Russia, in the long term, trade with China would increase due to China's obviously ''large'' middle class. The Chinese are hungry and in ever present need for oil, gas and foodstuffs, Russia is a giant oil and gas reserve with plenty of fertile ground to farm. Factor in the fact that a friendly China would safeguard Russia's underpopulated and vulnerable Far East and you will see a Russia even more against current Western institutions than the old Soviet days. Nevertheless, as mentioned before, they still have more nukes than anyone, but they have reduced that number considerably due to it's not necessary to have so many nukes anymore, and they are reeeealy expensive to build and maintain.
The predictions that the world will become more united and liberal in addition to the waning of nations in favor of corporations or some other modes of society were only partially realized.  Globalization has indeed made the planet more interconnected but the onus of international relations still rests on the state. Corporate entities have become more powerful and wealthy but they still cooperate with governments (if not slowly merging with them due to intertwining of corporate and political interests) while in places like China and Russia the corpos are merely another arm of the government altogether.


==Technology, science and culture==
The trend towards social liberalism has held partially true with the increase in LGBTQ+ acceptance and diminishment of racism in some places. Political liberalization has however entered something of a slump with the traditional left in EU and USA being relatively dormant though grassroots left is seeing something of a revival in the 2020s. On the other hand Russia and China have moved more towards autocracy and their increasing strength has presented an uncomfortable alternative to the supposedly singularly viable liberal-democratic order, especially with Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Europe has also seen a resurgence of populist, if not hard-right political parties like the french Front Nationale or German Alternative Fur Deutschland with some countries like Hungary and Poland taking on an increasingly right-y colors. In short - politics be skub as usual.
After the world stopped fearing the nuclear holocaust that a MAD would've been, there were many shifts in technological interest. In particular, computer science grew and developed exponentially, with computers becoming a part of everyday life. Modern communications have been affected as well. It is difficult to grasp how big of an impact has the Internet had in shaping modern life but suffice to say it affects every aspect of our lives. Readers of this article are well aware of this since they are using the internet to read it. In particular, the world of entertainment has become really big thanks to this technological level. Videogames replaced movies as the biggest and most profitable entertainment media (thanks in part to the growth of mobile gaming).  


Many of the concerns of the Cold War era still persist, and in many cases, they've only grown with time. Without a nuclear war to worry about, things as environmentalism has changed focus on global warming and the waste of polluting elements into the ocean as their effects grow increasingly noticeable. Another issue relating to culture would be the rise of populist movements in various regions around the globe, from every bend of the ideological spectrum, mostly as a result of the increasing globalization and the presumed decline of what was once the nation-state.  
Politically, it seemed that while the triumphant capitalist-liberal-democratic order was considered the ˝end of history˝, it left many people unfulfilled.  Worse, it started showing flaws that were overlooked during the ideological fight against the USSR (hence the Russian joke how 'almost everything we were told about communism was a lie, and almost everything we were told about capitalism was true'). To not get too deep into the [[Skub|political theory]] of the whole thing, suffice it to say that the guy who predicted the triumph of this system (Francis Fukuyama) also noted that the people may get so bored of it that they may intentionally choose to 'restart the wheel of history'.
[[File:WaaghStreet2.jpg|thumb|right|200px|... And the results were hilarious.]]


===Spaceflight===
Speaking of matters of the soul, religion - in an ironic twist, given it's ''the'' institute based around matters of the soul - was put in the crosshairs with a sharp spike in Western secularism and anti-theistic/anti-religious sentiment.  Though this hostility had been brewing in niches of academia and media long before, now was when it was thrust onto the mainstream.  This was mainly due to acts of religious extremism (most often Islamic ones such as the 9/11), failures of various religious leaders and ideological campaigns magnifying empiricism and subjectivism.  A new wave of religious apologetics emerged in response to this with some arguments from both sides better received than others ([[religion|more on the issue here]]).  This shift in societal attitude towards religion either coincided with or influenced various other socio-political issues listed above and below.
One of the high points of the Post-Cold War era has been the shift of emphasis on space activity away from government agencies and towards commercial ventures.  With the dissolution of the USSR, NASA began collaborating with the Russian government, first with missions to the Mir space station and later with the construction of the International Space Station.   


Beginning with SpaceShipOne in 2003, private enterprise has ticked off a number of firsts and achieved in years what took the military industrial complex decades.  In 2015, SpaceX destroyed the conventional business model of space rocketry by successfully landing and relaunching a first stage rocket. Practical re-usability combined with fixed cost pricing likely heralds the end of the massive government sponsored development programs of the past. New technologies in testing include inflatable modules and 3d printed solar panels constructed after launch.
On a more interpersonal scale, the rise of Internet in general and social media in particular has transformed society to a great degree. The ability to connect with people world over and find hundreds or thousands of people with similar interests has lead to formation of digital communities that can be not only as powerful as the ones irl but sometimes even supersede them to a great degree, for good and ill. This has also made how one behaves online as important if not more so than offline - if you take a dump on a city street at most a few dozen people will see it and forget it in a year without a reminder, if you take a proverbial dump online it has potential to be seen by tens of thousands of people and potentially stay there forever, <s>just look at Chris-chan for example.</s> {{BLAM}} {{BLAM|This heresy shall not be tolerated here!}}


The iconic LC-39A, departure point for the majority of the Saturn and Shuttle launches, is now operated under commercial lease by SpaceX. It is a safe bet that space exploitation is the next trillion dollar mega industry, quadrillion even, unless major AI breakthroughs are made.
On a final note, the COVID-19 pandemic that hit in the late 2019 also had an unintentional effect of forcing vast segments of society to adopt online business and communication models. What this means is that instead of working in a typical cubicle-monkey office one could work from anywhere there was internet - a beach, cafe or a public toilet. While things seem to have calmed down in the latter half of 2022, the ˝work-from-home˝ model is now all but standard for many service jobs, a leap that redefines how a job is perceived before and after the New 10s.
 
==Conclusion & Mineability==
 
The Post-Cold war era is a strange one since it directly succeeds a period of history defined by a clear if at times clandestine fight between two superpowers who were politically and ideologically opposed with plenty of history and cultural distinction for each to have it's own strong flavor. A two-pole world collapsed into a unipolar one which is evolving into a multipolar with no clear ideological struggle to really differentiate the sides.
 
However, this also provides plenty of opportunities to introduce plots and conflicts that are unburdened by vast preset ideologies and factions. Political intrigues between modern state, corporate or even NGO actors, dissolution of countries or formation of new ones upon the collapse of the old order, global terrorism and radicalism, technological, sociological, environmental or neo-ideological struggles and positioning in order to build 'your' faction's or even personal vision of the future!
 
Admittedly the more exotic genres that lend themselves best to the age are Urban Fantasy, post-apocalyptic scenarios and '20 minutes into the future' science fiction. You can also go down the route of [[Shadowrun|Shadowrun]] and have some sort of event return magic to the world though depending on the intensity, it may radically change the setting into something no longer resembling modern world. There is also a somewhat neglected genre of New Weird/Weirdpunk which allows for a variety of historical settings, including modern ones, while having a potential for being truly unique (for example see such works as the comic Shutter, Dysco Elysium, Persona 4/5, Psychonauts...).
 
===Impact on /tg/===
/tg/ is, traditionally, a very low tech hobby. Despite this, it still has managed to incorporate some of the new technologies of the era.
 
One big thing is the rise of e-books. Rather than have a big stack of massive heavy books, you can keep all your books on a small, handy, e-reader. One particular advantage of an electronic book is that the contents can be searched through to quickly get answers to rule questions. The low cost of electronic publishing also means many small groups can easily publish a book and sell it, but this comes at the cost of electronic storefronts being flooded with low effort, poorly written garbage. Electronics also, in theory, lower the need for wasted paper and dice. In practice however, many groups find including any electronics at the table a major distraction and disruptive of play, while many players refuse to trust electronic RNG. Acceptance of computer RNG is actually worse among players into [[Vidya gaems|video games]] due to that medium's documented history of RNG cheating via uneven RNG, poorly randomized number generation, and being easily manipulated. Another issue with electronic books is that [[Wizards of the Coast|some companies]] are Luddites, and refuse to release PDF versions of their books, while others are hamstrung by the IP holder's retarded [[Star Wars|prior licensing agreements]] [[EA|made with the devil]] and legally can’t, or just plain old don't exist anymore and can't do a PDF re-release, but [[Pirate|we have a solution to all those problems]].
 
Another nifty creation has been 3D printers that can create a variety of objects desired from scratch for cheap. Currently 3d printers are only able to print small, inanimate, plastic things (unless you have a very expensive and large one that can do weak metal) and are a far cry from [[Star Trek|Replicator]] technology everyone panicking about "ghost guns" thinks they are. Fortunately the hobby has substantial use for [[Miniature|small, inanimate, plastic things]].  Eventually there will be a reckoning for the entire minifigure gaming industry over the full implications of 3d printing, but for now the technology still remains a wee bit too bothersome if not expensive for the average user to churn out a thousand point army.  However if you have the means and patience to experiment, your imagination is the only limit on what you can do for figure customization.
<!--- Add something about play by post and the internet if you’re more familiar with the history of that than I am. --->


==The appeal of Post-Cold War world==
==The appeal of Post-Cold War world==
Do you like stories of special force operators going on incredibly risky missions to take down terrorists, insurgents, and radicals of any ideological or religious flavor? Then this setting might be right for you, due to the prevalence of the Global War on Terror and the almost-extensive use of special forces such as the Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Spetznaz, SAS, and so on in their fight against the new enemy that has largely replaced the Soviet Union in the minds of many in the West - the radical Islamic "jihadist" organizations such as Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab, ISIS and it's branches (such as the West African branch, Boko Haram) or the Taliban, whose goals range from either kicking all foreign influence out of their country, to establishing a global caliphate.
Do you want something which you could imagine yourself in? Not as some surrogate who was born in a castle or a Victorian slum or in a colony on Alpha Centauri IV or whatever, but '''''You''''' as an individual. Maybe some larger than life events roll through your door to spur you into action from your normal day-by-day routine and possibly you are idealized, but the person who's now running for their life and forced to deal with whatever outlandish thing has come your way is You.
 
Do you like stories of special force operators going on incredibly risky missions to take down terrorists, insurgents, and radicals of any ideological or religious flavor? Then this setting might be right for you, due to the prevalence of the Global War on Terror and the almost-extensive use of special forces such as the Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Spetznaz, SAS, and so on.  Their chief foe is a new enemy that has largely replaced the Soviet Union in the minds of many in the West - the radical Islamic "jihadist" organizations such as Al-Qaeda, the Taliban or ISIS and its branches (such as the West African branch, Boko Haram).  Their goals range from either kicking all foreign influence out of their country to establishing a global caliphate. The current increasingly polarizing culture war can also be used as inspiration for stories regarding insurgents and radicals of any ideological flavor, albeit something where "handle with care" very much applies for risk of coming across as preachy or [[Skub|adding fuel to the fire]]. 
 
Other potential foes can be found in the world of technology, serving as fertile ground for near future sci-fi stories.  This era is (currently) as close as we can get to cyberpunk, which lends itself well to the genre.  The concept of A.I. as threats or the fear of society undergoing a technological collapse can also find inspiration from here, given the Y2K problem at the turn of the millennium.  Big-tech companies getting trigger-happy with censorship from the 2010's onwards also lends itself well to references and themes in cyberpunk stories. 


Wargame wise, there is some appeal in recreating the various, drawn-out conflicts such as in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan (to date the longest war in American history at over 17 years if one doesn't count the Korean War, which the US never officially declared war during and has spent most of its existence cold.), pitting the well-equipped, organized, and disciplined forces of the Western powers against the zealotry, tenaciousness, and cunning of the various insurgent and terrorist groups that plague the region. Due to the rather asymmetric nature of these wars, as well as the murkiness that comes with it, it's not as popular as the more conventionally focused, more-or-less Black-And-White morality of World War 2 setting.
Wargame wise, there is some appeal in recreating the various, drawn-out conflicts such as in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan (to date the longest war in American history at over 17 years if one doesn't count the Korean War, which the US never officially declared war during and has spent most of its existence cold.), pitting [[Team Yankee|the well-equipped, organized, and disciplined forces of the Western powers]] against the zealotry, tenaciousness, and cunning of the various insurgent and terrorist groups that plague the region. Due to the rather asymmetric nature of these wars, as well as the murkiness that comes with it, it's not as popular as the more conventionally focused, more-or-less Black-And-White morality of World War 2 setting. Similarly, the COVID-19 Pandemic can also be used as inspiration for various types of stories regarding pandemics, especially if one wants to up the stakes with things such as a zombie virus. 


[[Urban Fantasy]] and Superheroes are often set in the current Post-Cold War era. By making fictional, fantastical threats one avoids the question of what the hell is there left to fight. It also benefits from being a world that's largely prebuilt and known to players, allowing writers to focus exclusively on what's different.
[[Urban Fantasy]] and [[Supers|Superheroes]] are often set in the current Post-Cold War era. By making fictional, fantastical threats one avoids the question of what the hell is there left to fight. It also benefits from being a world that's largely prebuilt and known to players, allowing writers to focus exclusively on what's different. Specifically in regards to superheroes, note how every two decades or so a gigantic cosmic retcon storm hits and resets the universe by pushing a catalyst point (Superman's arrival and Captain America being pulled out of the ice, simultaneously pushing the births of/major influencing events on characters or reemergence of old powers to the modern world equally long) forward by some years, allowing contemporary stories to be explored without retconning old stories completely, through saying that they happened but no longer matter as big gigantic cosmic event reset the universe, and not indirectly locking new audiences out of continuity by constantly having to read older stuff, allowing anyone to pickup new series issue 1 and read older stuff at leisure.


{{Time Periods}}
{{Time Periods}}
[[Category: History]]
[[Category: History]]

Latest revision as of 09:43, 22 June 2023

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The future is [almost] now!

"In an era of stress and anxiety, when the present seems unstable and the future unlikely, the natural response is to retreat and withdraw from reality, taking recourse either in fantasies of the future or in modified visions of a half-imagined past."

– Alan Moore's Watchmen

"IN MY EXPERIENCE, SUSAN, WITHIN THEIR HEADS TOO MANY HUMANS SPEND A LOT OF TIME IN THE MIDDLE OF WARS THAT HAPPENED CENTURIES AGO."

– Death, Thief of Time

You are here.

After the end of most communist regimes and the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended almost half a century of Cold War. The ideological, political and economical clashes between different ideologies that had had its apex during World War II had finally ended, taken a new form or gone underground depending on who you ask.

The New Cold War[edit]

"History repeats, first as a tragedy, then as a farce."

– Karl Marx

After the collapse of the USSR in the 90s, the general feeling in the West and the rest was one of semi-cautious optimism. At long last liberal democracy and capitalism had won the day, the ˝evil empire˝ was gone, and we have reached the end of history according to Francis Fukuyama, things were on the up swing it seemed as the USA was left as the only true superpower in the world.

However, this merry period was not to last long, after the 90s which are now ironically seen as somewhat of the last hurrah before the increasing shitstorm of the following century the USA got a series of rude surprises. First was the infamous 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks which saw the first significant attack on American soil by foreign combatants in a century, and a grimly spectacular one at that with close to 3,000 people killed, 25,000 wounded, to say nothing of the damage to infrastructure and collective American psyche. This directly led to America embroiling itself in a series of wars in the Middle East that soon turned into quagmires with no clear winner, with many parallels being drawn to Vietnam. Seven years later the Great Recession of 2008/9 rolled around to further mess up the first decade of M3.

While this was going on and with America's attention arguably focused elsewhere, Russia and China were slowly growing in power and prominence. China was gradually thundering on ever since the late 90s, slowly surpassing Japan after the latter crashed and burned in 1991. By becoming the next ˝workshop of the world˝ China managed to accrue immense global economic influence and achieve economic growth that was nothing short of meteoric. Russia meanwhile was going through their own Age of Strife as the former USSR splintered into a dozen independent republics with all the economic and social turmoil that entails (exacerbated even worse by the rise of a new class of oligarchs hell-bent on plundering it for all it was worth), the ˝˝Russian 90s˝ still evoke fear and horror as young Russians were desperate to get into the universities of all things in order to avoid the poverty of everyday life or the military where one could get gang-raped among other things, all while the total lack of support from the West reminded a lot of Russians about why exactly they had opposed the US in the first place. Russia's GDP fell by more than 3/5ths between 1991 and 1998 and it would take until 2004 for it to recover to soviet levels. This all changed with Vladimir Putin, who managed to pull the country out of the gutter and started to build up its power again. All the while even though Communism had fallen in Russia Authoritarianism persisted under the new banner.

Arguably, the first signs that something was not quite right came in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea by Russia and the still ongoing war in Ukraine, something that was considered impossible in the prior decade (and ended 207-year-old Swiss neutrality). Additionally, while the Arab Spring saw the fall of many dictators from Libya to Egypt and Tunisia, in Syria the Assad dynasty managed to not only hold its own but push back the "moderate Islamists"(mainly Sunni Arabs who want to kill/rob/rape Shi'ites), ISIS/ISIL (Salafists trying to bring back the Islamic caliphates of old), and people who just don't want to be ruled by a despot, with no small amount of help from Russia (though this holding out is probably going the way of the dodo courtesy of Turkey due to dramatic developments in 2022). China meanwhile was acting far more subtly in exerting its geopolitical influence, making huge loans to other countries and its corporations branching out into all sorts of sectors in Africa, Australia and Asia all the while partnering up with Russia in a general though not overtly belligerent counter-western stance.

The sum of all of this is that as of the third decade of M3 the world is no longer unipolar with USA having to contend with resurgent Russia</ and China, whose imperial ambitions are seemingly once again stirring. While the three powers are not directly inimical to one another, they each are trying to exert their geopolitical interests and being less and less obliged to ask the USA for an opinion.

Cold War II: Electric Boogaloo was likely locked in as of February 2022 with the escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian Conflict into a full scale war with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While we won't elaborate on details due to contemporary news being the most Skubby part of history, the responses afterwards seem to have drawn a line. One thing we have to note however, is the abysmal Russian performance (especially in logistics) with stories ranging from leadership incompetence in the field, difficulty coordinating waves of untrained recruits and even more humiliating logistical mistakes such as entire armored companies grinding to a halt outside invasion points because they ran out of fuel. Completely overturning wargaming with regards to post-Soviet competence (verdict: quite lackluster for a former superpower) and also demonstrating the horrific effectiveness of guided missiles used on both sides and especially drones like the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drone. Not to mention the fucktons of NATO equipment being poured into Ukraine giving the country a true fighting chance against its bigger neighbor through a far superior military supply line. Based on available information current Russian victories are appear to be achieved through a combination of overwhelming force on key cities and targets with coordinated artillery/air-strikes with armored tank assaults' along with good old fashioned overwhelming numbers, Nevermind that most of these troops are minorities from poor and rural regions. While moderately effective it is a highly inefficient strategy especially with the Ukrainians far more effective use of strategic missile strikes and less wasteful offensive tactics being bolstered by tremendous material support from Europe, accomplishing in days what took the Russians months to do. This has led to reports of poor morale from Russian conscripts and even field commanders. For the moment, this has made any future hot war essentially suicidal without overwhelming numbers if enemy smart weapons aren't disabled first while reminding everyone just how important supply lines and morale are in any warfare (along with actually having a legitimate long-term plan to begin with). After all, what is steel compared to the hand that wields it?

On another note more than a few political and Military scientists have opinioned that this conflict may yet give insight on how major powers will have to counter modern tactics and capabilities. As open conflict with relatively first world nations has been quite rare in recent decades. Advances in the disabling of drone and guided missile technology will likely be a major point of interest for global powers, along with satellite recon and signal jamming. And has opened the door to new leaders in the field arms supply in the future (Germany in particular has stepped up its game on military expenditure not seen in generations in response to renewed Russian aggression). Along with the emboldening of other powers such as China. The lines in a future cold war may well start to draw themselves in the near future.

It should be noted that people have been yelling about Cold War II for the past 20+ years, and the term itself is controversial among political scientists and government officials. The former because they don't think we're there yet, the latter because it would inflame tensions with other countries. Leaving aside the significant differing details.

Other Regions[edit]

Asia[edit]

While China's rise has been commented on, it was not the only East Asian country to see a considerable change in fortune at the tail end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand have all emerged as prominent players on the world economy, with a rapid rise in standards of living and economic influence (though increasing political interference from China has negatively affected Taiwan). This has led to a rising China that until fairly recently was seen as a reliable trade partner with the United States. This started due widespread distrust of China over its handling of Covid-19 - exacerbated by China being the origin point of the virus. Accusations on China's cultural genocide on the Uyghurs akin to the lost generations on the Australian Aborigines also soured perceptions from the West leading calls for 'decoupling'. The results of this has been....a mixed-bag. Whilst news of Apple trying to relocate to India has been making rounds. The reality on the ground is that trade deficits has only increased after the Pandemic and FDI have recovered somewhat, suggesting that the old principle of "Money Walks Bullshit Talks" is very much still in play here. Nevertheless, the opposite ironically, rings true, as Beijing has been accelerating domestic chip and microprocessor production and increasing bilateral relations with ASEAN making Beijing less dependent on Western imports in the long term. Another interesting thing was that Xi removed the term limits for the Presidency. Whether this means he is trying to pull a Putin is unknown. Although given that he still needs to play fancy with the Party Elders and put the other cliques in line suggests that his power is overrated.

Speaking of ASEAN, Southeast Asia is stuck in a increasingly awkward relationship between China and the US. The age-old challenge of balancing US security relationship with Chinese economic relationship has reared its ugly head. Whilst for now, ASEAN Centrality is providing some measure of stability, the rise of Chinese naval power in contrast to declining US capability means that in the long term, Washington's ability to commit its forces on both Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia is becoming suspect given the reality of imperial overstretch. This constant long term worry alongside neglect from the Trump administration had already has an effect to some members. Brunei, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia are already in the 'China camp'. Even 'neutrals' such as Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia has been warming up towards Beijing despite ongoing disputes in the South China Sea. With Jakarta, US admonishment on the 2019 West Papua riots, the AUKUS announcement, the increasing toxicity of US domestic politics and increasing hostile rhetoric on the Taiwan Strait has made Indonesian authorities to trust China more than the US. Beijing in turn, is willing to capitalise on this given Indonesia's geostrategic position and large population. Even traditional US-friendly members such as Vietnam and the Philippines have been pretty careful in playing both sides. China has also recently warmed up the ideas and principles of ASEAN, so a positive is that the region is unlikely to see a repeat of Ukraine and Russia at the very least.

Notably, India has emerged as a major player on the world scene, particularly with food exports and the service sector (particular in the wake of growing issues with China). Not to mention they are an excellent rest stop for ships taking goods to and from the EU to China, and vice versa. However, the looming effects of climate change impacting South Asia (disruption of weathering, water loss crisis, environmental refugees, heavy chemical processing pollution fucking up the Ganges etc. in a subcontinent that is roughly 70% agricultural) as well as geopolitical threats (Pakistan and China) mean that India's future situation is likely to worsen as time goes by. New Delhi is also trying to eat into China's manufacturing market, although how successful India would be is up in the air, given that competition now is intense and that India's infrastructure is either simply lacking or is a mother of clusterfucks that makes it uncompetitive. If India had successfully tapped in its manufacturing potential during the 1970s where only China was the rival, New Delhi may have a chance. Now? India has to contend with the rise of East Africa, China, South Korea, ASEAN, Bangladesh and Automation, so it will be a tough mountain to climb to stand out given all the nodes of competition.

Afghanistan on the other hand, had finally gotten rid of the United States as Kabul fell to the Taliban. Whilst the US retreat has been an absolute shitshow, this does not mean that the ruling Taliban is celebrating as decades of fighting has made these fighters completely inexperience in handling civilian bureaucracy and governing. Afghanistan is now in a even more dire straits given the financial sanctions emplaced by Washington. For the Taliban who has turned from terrorist insurgents into the governors themselves, this is an existential threat. So they are trying to find anyone willing to relieve them economically. So far they only got the Chinese and Russians willing to talk to them. Although the Taliban's greatest goal is in international recognition of their rule.

Meanwhile, central Asia is...central Asia. After the US's withdrawal from the country following a 17-year occupation, Afghanistan fell back to the Taliban, leading to a diaspora of refugees from the country and a curtailing of all the liberal policies put in place there by the previous puppet government. In short, it went to shit just as you'd expect. Generally, most of the central Asian countries aren't doing much at the moment, although they are falling into the orbit of China given how unreliable Russia has been recently. There was a whole squabble between Azerbaijan and Armenia over dumbass reasons that would never be a thing to begin with if the Imperial Russian and Soviet regimes weren't literal cunts by stoking ethnic tension. Short version: Azerbaijan has oil, so the EU and America are unlikely to do shit given the whole Putin doing the funny in Ukraine.

Something alarming that some commentators have noticed is that for all Russia does wrong, their military strength and status preserved a type of "Pax Russica" in Central Asia. But since their military has dropped the ball pretty heavily, many central Asian nations might be tempted to revive dumbass ethnic tension and starting to get ideas about purging minorities and killing each other. This destabilization will provide an opportunity for China to further influence central Asia, eroding Russia's power and increasing Beijing's economic and political influence.

Europe[edit]

The biggest trend of Post Cold War Europe has been a push towards greater integration. The process had begun in the 1950s after WWII in which A: hard-line militarized nationalism was not popular for some fairly obvious reasons and B: economic cooperation was seen as a better way to achieve and maintain peace and prosperity. It started with the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, with Germany, France, BeNeLux and Italy and was gradually built on. Eastern Europe was added to the mix after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. The eventual result of which was the European Union. In 1995 the EU introduced the Euro as a Common Currency, which was widely adopted by 1999. Basically the EU exists to make business easier between member states via the 4 freedoms (freedom of movement for people, capital, goods and services), has frameworks for easier cooperation between members and some joint programs like the European Space Agency, some environmental projects and big research initiatives like CERN. Lastly the EU also provides funding for various projects via the Cohesion Fund and the like, enabling smart member states to improve the standard of living along with other benefits for their citizens.

Things however went rough for the EU following the GFC in 2008 as the EU went into the infamous decade-long Eurozone crisis with big EU players like Germany forcing austerity on smaller members, creating a rise in Euroskepticism, with opposition to the EU and pushback by various localist movements. Most notably Brexit which saw a member state leave for the first time ever, with mixed results for the British Economy and feelings both domestically and abroad...then Russia decided to stick its dick in a blender on February 2022 by creating the largest war in Europe since WW2 by waging a war of conquest on Ukraine. Europe now faces its biggest existential crisis in decades. With the current shitshow going on in the east of the continent several countries have started rearming themselves. This includes Poland, which had a similar history of conflict with Russia and some describe as the next European heavyweight on par with France and Germany, the latter of which also started rearming for the first time in years and allocated a whopping 100 billion euros for the endeavor.

Whilst NATO was revitalized, Europe now faces a daunting prospect of de-industrialization (or at least a shift away from fossil fuels) as Moscow stopped all natural gas and oil flows to the continent whether intentional or unintentional; forcing Brussels to try and keep as much of its industry as possible as European brands started to high-tail it to either the US or China. Nevertheless, despite the humbug with the US over their united front against Russia, increasing American protectionist policy alongside various responses to the Trump administration has made the EU increasingly wary over its reliance and dependence on Washington. Some like Macron have ambitions to make the EU a third 'superpower' pole and it may be possible....if Brussels manages to hold on, get its shit together and craft its own policies balancing Washington, Beijing and Moscow. Another point of worry is the rise of populist movements which Brussels fears could lead to pseudo-authoritarian countries like Hungary proliferating, that the aforementioned country has been giving Russia interested looks does not help matters either.

With the enforcement of article 13 restrictions of freedom of speech in europe have become widely embraced by government authorities with the excuse of copyright defense and counter terrorism.

Outside of the EU. Possibly the weirdest event to have occurred is the growing military and economic relations between China and France. Whilst relatively new, France has been engaging with the Chinese the most out of all the Great Powers in Europe. Analyst suspect that this budding relationship might have to do with the disastrous handling of AUKUS which plunged French trust to the Anglosphere to an all-time low. Since 2022 at least, Macron and Xi has been in lock-steps with one another and Beijing has been increasingly warming to the ideas of treating France as its special strategic partner in Europe. Of course, results are too early to tell and how far that relationship will go is unknown, but the effects are already there with Paris being the major influencer in driving the EU's approach to be more balanced with Beijing.

Oceania[edit]

The 2010s had been a political clusterfuck in the Land Down Under. Over a decade of Game of Thrones-style political backstabbings has led Australia to transition to six Prime Ministers. This levels of dysfunctionality has led the degrading of Australia's stature in the Oceania region and the rise of New Zealand being the only adult in the room. To make matters worse for Australia, rampant political lobbying has turned Australia's potential as a leader in renewable energy into a circus filled with coal and fossil fuel executives. Likewise, neglect and outright political corruption from the Australian liberal coalition had led to the worse bushfires in Australia since 2009, leading to over 1 billion Australian animals to perish in the fires. This neglect was not only restricted to the environment, as it also translates to Australia's diplomacy fails towards the Pacific Island Nations, as climate change is very much an existential threat for them. But Canberra's dismissive attitude towards them had cost Australia plenty of goodwill in the region. Suffice to say, the new labour administration has a lot of baggage to unfuck Australia's position, and it will take a long time to rebuild the lost trust with its island neighbours.

Africa[edit]

Within the past few centuries there have been widespread problems across the continent of Africa lingering even after the Cold War. The causes are numerous and include generational tribalistic conflicts, the slave trade, wars over resources and direct interference from European governments until the end of the Colonial Era during the Cold War. The most prominent example is the Scramble for Africa, which involved building plantations, mines and railways to support plantations and mines with white guys doing as much of the technical work as possible (and with the native inhabitants being deliberately kept uneducated and untrained lest they learn to use the infrastructure by themselves or make more). At the same time, it was a common practice to exacerbate existing tribal conflicts (and sometimes even create new ones!) in order to keep the locals too busy squabbling with each other to join forces against their overlords.

This dependence on a colonial regime running everything combined with the elimination of pre-colonial social structures led to power vacuums when the various foreigners left, which were often filled by authoritarian strong-men. Various nations also used countries of Africa as a dumping ground for obsolete weapons after the Cold War, which were eagerly seized by governments and warlords seeking to establish control over their newly seized domains. Unsurprisingly, this has led to a series of conflicts and civil wars, notably the Rwandan Genocide. This also discouraged governments of those countries from developing their own technologies when they could claim the cast-offs of Western or Eastern nations for much less effort. Despite that, there has been a gradual rise in standards of living in many countries of Africa, including fair and free elections, health care and stable economies. Algeria, Tunisia, and Rwanda to name a few have made significant improvements with their GDP and literacy rates. Several nations of Africa are also the world's leading exporters of various goods - for example, Nigeria has seen considerable GDP growth and industrial development over the last three decades. Even so, it has been a long and difficult climb and not without internal corruption in some places.

That being said, in many cases Western countries retain disproportionate influence over much of Africa via economic and cultural means (e.g., multinational corporations exploiting cheap labor while reducing countries' access to their own natural resources) while Middle-Eastern and Asian countries are making disturbingly similar in-roads. Some observers have dubbed this phenomenon "neocolonialism"; gaining/retaining control of a region without open use of military force. In this view, the aforementioned exporting is less of a sign of economic progress and more of an indication of their continuing role in extracting resources on the behalf of their former colonizers (this phenomenon is not uniquely inflicted on African countries or solely perpetrated by European nations).

The Americas[edit]

The initial years of the post-cold war have been swimming for North America/USA as the country was left as the only superpower on the planet (so much so that until about 2010s they could even have been considered a hyperpower - a polity that dominates all other states in every major metric). This period extended from about 1989 until 2001, when USA was hit hard by both the 9/11 terrorist attacks (to say nothing of the blowback from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which collectively became the new Vietnam in terms of both length and unpopularity) and in 2008 the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. However, the country still remains ridiculously wealthy and powerful and has a military good enough to easily squash any other rising superpowers and probably wage war against two while defending the mainland from a third one at the same time. Still, the country has some serious issues - most notably the increasing wealth-gap and the ideological polarization of society not seen since the Vietnam War and the resulting civil unrest. Many of these wedge issues are in fact unresolved conflicts and dilemmas from the 1960s such as the incomplete work of the Civil Rights Movement to address the poorer living conditions of the African-American population, and the debate over the role of the United States on the world's stage and whether America needs to be the 'World's Policeman' has reached boiling point. There's also global events like climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic (and controversial lockdowns to quarantine people during the pandemic causing serious economic issues). Whilst, the USA seems to be in the best position to weather whatever geopolitical upheavals are coming in theory, concerns still abate on the growing political rifts and quite frankly, idiocy on domestic political and economic brinkmanship and what this means to the wider international community. Already, the US Dollar's usage has dramatically declined from a high of 75+% to below 50% for the first time in history. The combination of the GOP putting a gun over the US debt ceiling and the DNC's advocacy for constant increases in US spending was one part of the reasons for the decline. What really kicked off the acceleration was the widespread financial sanctions on Russia over Ukraine which, whilst while strategically justified, spooked the shit out of everyone else as from their point-of-view, the Dollar has suddenly been weaponised and is no longer a neutral arbitrator of financing. Although the Dollar isn't going away anytime soon and is still the most trusted currency in the world, its long term prospect is starting to look dire unless Washington does something to regain the world's confidence in its handling of its currency.

South America meanwhile has been a mixed bag. Aside from not really getting much attention or upheaval except for a few countries, it has enjoyed a relative upswing as industrializing Asian countries developed a need for the raw material exports coming out of S. America. Many nations also begun developing and truly industrializing like Chile or North Mexico though many more remain impoverished and forgotten. Of note venezuela's economy collapsed in part due to their dependency on petrol, embargoes and the far left ideologically minded administration of Maduro.

Technology[edit]

"We're living in the age of cellphone cameras. Fuckups ain't tolerated!"

– Smiling Jack, Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines

Storytelling, especially settings placed in a contemporary or "modern" era hit a major hurdle in the 90s and especially early 00s as this newfangled thing called "Internet" arose out of a USA government/military project to link computer systems the states and world-over in order to maintain communication after a hypothetical nuclear war. Thing is, once this was released to the general public the network expanded rapidly until it became a new paradigm of human existence, influencing everything from society, politics, economics, the arts, religion - you name it. Story-wise this made any masquerade or hidden "other world" that much more difficult to maintain as now a schmuck who saw that they shouldn't could blurp it out to thousands of other people. Irl-wise the internet revolutionised /tg/ as a community by... enabling /tg/ to exist in the first place by bringing all the isolated groups of fa/tg/uys and ca/tg/irls together weather on 4chan, 1d4chan (shameless plug, suck it) or dozens of other dedicated forums AND enabling them access to mountains of materials for their chosen hobbies.

The mass popularity of smartphones has made it increasingly difficult to write a plot that cuts characters off from the outside world. This has forced such plots to be moved further and further from civilization (which fights an uphill battle with ever increasing coverage), into massive disasters where cell phone coverage is disrupted and help won’t be coming anyways, or just straight up adding in supernatural disruption of communications.

The rise of mass CCTV and cellphone cameras of increasingly high quality and the ability to post the works taken with them on social media has made it increasingly implausible to keep a Masquerade going. The original World of Darkness just ends dramatically in 2004, the year before YouTube launched. The MCB of Monster Hunter International has all the resources of most of the worlds governments working together to censor the supernatural, but even then those in charge consider exposure an inevitability. Pretty much any conspiracy will be an open-secret, although it might still be popularly viewed as a conspiracy theory depending on how believable it seems. Paradoxically, in an era of limitless access to knowledge, what knowledge the individual chooses to subscribe to has itself become factionalized, and that can be a tool to uphold a Masquerade in itself. The rise of the "Fake News" paradigm means that a person can be looking at a vampire gouging a throat out of some poor bastard and going "meh" as it must be either CGI or some such, and woe betide any intrepid journalist if they don't have at least a good quality video as anything less will get the "photoshopped!" treatment.

Aside from the media and communications , other technological branches are seeing tentative emergence or applications beyond the lab. As of the New 10s (2010-2019) remotely controlled and autonomous UAVs and RPVs popularized as 'drones' have entered commercial usage alongside with multi-pedal robots able to walk, run and perform simple manual tasks while the militaries around the world are actively using aerial combat drones with land and sea variants in development. On another front virtual reality has become a viable entertainment and educational medium due to miniaturization of screens and processors though it still has ways to go in terms of improvement. Artificial intelligence (or rather a set of very adaptive and heuristic algorithms) are also making splashes with the most visible examples being AI capable of emulating speech to varying degrees and art AI capable of creating truly gorgeous and unique pieces of art, likely eventually giving rise to "Expert-Systems" predicted by many sci-fi works.

After the Information Revolution of the late 90s and early 00s biotech is set to become the next big thing. With the Human Genome project completed in 2003 the rate of tech advancement has lowered the costs of individual genomic sequencing from ~100 million USD in 2001 to around 1000 USD making individual genetic screening viable with a popular commercial application being the identification of one's genetic heritage and disease risk. Later during the 2010s a method for targeted genetic editing in-vivo called CRISPR caused a stir among the scientific community as now scientist could genetically modify organisms at any stage of development, not just before birth.

There also has been an increased awareness of humanity's impact on the climate. Co2 emissions, resource depletion and destruction of wilderness are increasingly pressing concerns. With them has come a push - especially from younger generations - towards sustainable development, decarbonization and other efforts to reduce humanity's collective footprint. Solar Panels and Wind Farms have become a lot more common, electric cars have come onto the scene along with a pushback against car dependent development, there is renewed interest in nuclear power (both in terms of small-scale fission reactors and promising developments into nuclear fusion) and coal power has been on the decline, among other things. Of course those who profit from said industries have also been fighting against the response, and there's a real chance that a full shift away from fossil fuels might not happen before the effects of said environmental destruction become irreversible. It might not be enough to end human existence outright, but the projections of how climate change will affect the world suggest that it'll screw over a LOT of people in very nasty ways. In the worst case scenario, we'll be unceremoniously driven back into the Stone Age- and since we used up nearly all the easily acquired ores and other natural resources on Earth the first time around we won't be advancing out of it again if that happens.

Related to the above, the development of alternative energy sources (to fossil fuels) has been advancing at a steady pace and picked up some speed in the 21st century with big gains in solar power which is now seeing full returns on investments in 5-10 years as of the 2020s, making installation for the average Joe more and more viable. Wind and sea power however has entered somewhat of a snag since these energy sources tend to be even more situational than power from the Sun. Aside from green energy, nuclear and hydrogen power have seen some expansion and development with new fission plants being built by a number of nations despite Fukushima and a few nations like Japan, China and EU making headways in developing hydrogen systems. Finally, after over 70 years of research and being "only 30 years away" we finally achieved nuclear fusion breakthrough at the end of 2022 with a lab based in California managing to produce more energy than was required to start the fusion reaction.

If the War in Ukraine is an indicator, things start to devolve a bit, at least on the symmetrical side of modern warfare. Artillery, combined with precision-guided ammo and reconnaissance via drones, again becomes the supreme weapon on the ground, as satellite intelligence and effective communications showcase how important it is for battalions to remain cohesive in the fog of war; that and Missiles and Shells fired with pinpoint accuracy nullify drawbacks of previous incarnations of artillery (such as an incredible volume of firepower required to destroy any given target, the logistical hassle of supplying a gun battery with enough ammo, in itself an art form, and the requirement to have a rough idea where the target you want to hit from 20 km away is without any visual contact on the ground or a live feed of information like drones provide) making them much safer and more cost-efficient than airstrikes or ground assaults as a result. Electronic Warfare will probably become central to any given military operation, as blocking surveillance, radar systems and guidance systems have become ever more important. At it's core, Ukraine and the reignited Karabakh War shows that anyone facing smart weapons with Cold War shit is going to get butchered like sheep. Unmanned systems are the defining 21st century paradigm shift in military science, while battles will mostly be resolved between smaller reconnaissance-in-force detachments seeking out concealed defenders in vague contested zones.

Lastly on the Space front - commercial space endeavors are picking up steam as private companies like Space-X, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are seeing wealthy tourists and corpo brass sent to space. Government initiatives are also getting in on the action with Artemis Accords updating the UN Outer Space Treaty, the Artemis Program succeeding the Apollo Program with ultimate aim of returning humans to the Moon by 2024 and the first test flight managing to get a capsule with dummies around the Moon and back to Earth safely. China has begun the construction and assembly of it's Tiangong space station which will be their equivalent of the Russian Mir and finally the James Webb telescope launched early in 2021 eclipsed Hubble in both size and capability. Improved launch vehicles mean that the cost of launching payloads into orbit per kilogram has significantly gone down. Humanity also managed to redirect an asteroid for the first time in history as well, giving the Earth a first workable and proven defense system against potentially dangerous asteroids. It is possible that we are seeing the beginning of a full fledged Second Space Age and the fulfillment of many of the promises of the last one.

Society[edit]

"The great paradox of the 21st century is that, in this age of powerful technology, the biggest problems we face internationally are problems of the human soul."

– Ralph Peters
The internet brought alien communities into contact with each other...

While technology has generally advanced in fits and bursts along the lines predicted by most sci-fi works (major exceptions being AI, mass genetic engineering, widespread cybernetics and space colonisation), society has become somewhat of a mix between prior trends and predictions made by said sci-fi.

The predictions that the world will become more united and liberal in addition to the waning of nations in favor of corporations or some other modes of society were only partially realized. Globalization has indeed made the planet more interconnected but the onus of international relations still rests on the state. Corporate entities have become more powerful and wealthy but they still cooperate with governments (if not slowly merging with them due to intertwining of corporate and political interests) while in places like China and Russia the corpos are merely another arm of the government altogether.

The trend towards social liberalism has held partially true with the increase in LGBTQ+ acceptance and diminishment of racism in some places. Political liberalization has however entered something of a slump with the traditional left in EU and USA being relatively dormant though grassroots left is seeing something of a revival in the 2020s. On the other hand Russia and China have moved more towards autocracy and their increasing strength has presented an uncomfortable alternative to the supposedly singularly viable liberal-democratic order, especially with Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Europe has also seen a resurgence of populist, if not hard-right political parties like the french Front Nationale or German Alternative Fur Deutschland with some countries like Hungary and Poland taking on an increasingly right-y colors. In short - politics be skub as usual.

Politically, it seemed that while the triumphant capitalist-liberal-democratic order was considered the ˝end of history˝, it left many people unfulfilled. Worse, it started showing flaws that were overlooked during the ideological fight against the USSR (hence the Russian joke how 'almost everything we were told about communism was a lie, and almost everything we were told about capitalism was true'). To not get too deep into the political theory of the whole thing, suffice it to say that the guy who predicted the triumph of this system (Francis Fukuyama) also noted that the people may get so bored of it that they may intentionally choose to 'restart the wheel of history'.

... And the results were hilarious.

Speaking of matters of the soul, religion - in an ironic twist, given it's the institute based around matters of the soul - was put in the crosshairs with a sharp spike in Western secularism and anti-theistic/anti-religious sentiment. Though this hostility had been brewing in niches of academia and media long before, now was when it was thrust onto the mainstream. This was mainly due to acts of religious extremism (most often Islamic ones such as the 9/11), failures of various religious leaders and ideological campaigns magnifying empiricism and subjectivism. A new wave of religious apologetics emerged in response to this with some arguments from both sides better received than others (more on the issue here). This shift in societal attitude towards religion either coincided with or influenced various other socio-political issues listed above and below.

On a more interpersonal scale, the rise of Internet in general and social media in particular has transformed society to a great degree. The ability to connect with people world over and find hundreds or thousands of people with similar interests has lead to formation of digital communities that can be not only as powerful as the ones irl but sometimes even supersede them to a great degree, for good and ill. This has also made how one behaves online as important if not more so than offline - if you take a dump on a city street at most a few dozen people will see it and forget it in a year without a reminder, if you take a proverbial dump online it has potential to be seen by tens of thousands of people and potentially stay there forever, just look at Chris-chan for example. *BLAM* This heresy shall not be tolerated here!

On a final note, the COVID-19 pandemic that hit in the late 2019 also had an unintentional effect of forcing vast segments of society to adopt online business and communication models. What this means is that instead of working in a typical cubicle-monkey office one could work from anywhere there was internet - a beach, cafe or a public toilet. While things seem to have calmed down in the latter half of 2022, the ˝work-from-home˝ model is now all but standard for many service jobs, a leap that redefines how a job is perceived before and after the New 10s.

Conclusion & Mineability[edit]

The Post-Cold war era is a strange one since it directly succeeds a period of history defined by a clear if at times clandestine fight between two superpowers who were politically and ideologically opposed with plenty of history and cultural distinction for each to have it's own strong flavor. A two-pole world collapsed into a unipolar one which is evolving into a multipolar with no clear ideological struggle to really differentiate the sides.

However, this also provides plenty of opportunities to introduce plots and conflicts that are unburdened by vast preset ideologies and factions. Political intrigues between modern state, corporate or even NGO actors, dissolution of countries or formation of new ones upon the collapse of the old order, global terrorism and radicalism, technological, sociological, environmental or neo-ideological struggles and positioning in order to build 'your' faction's or even personal vision of the future!

Admittedly the more exotic genres that lend themselves best to the age are Urban Fantasy, post-apocalyptic scenarios and '20 minutes into the future' science fiction. You can also go down the route of Shadowrun and have some sort of event return magic to the world though depending on the intensity, it may radically change the setting into something no longer resembling modern world. There is also a somewhat neglected genre of New Weird/Weirdpunk which allows for a variety of historical settings, including modern ones, while having a potential for being truly unique (for example see such works as the comic Shutter, Dysco Elysium, Persona 4/5, Psychonauts...).

Impact on /tg/[edit]

/tg/ is, traditionally, a very low tech hobby. Despite this, it still has managed to incorporate some of the new technologies of the era.

One big thing is the rise of e-books. Rather than have a big stack of massive heavy books, you can keep all your books on a small, handy, e-reader. One particular advantage of an electronic book is that the contents can be searched through to quickly get answers to rule questions. The low cost of electronic publishing also means many small groups can easily publish a book and sell it, but this comes at the cost of electronic storefronts being flooded with low effort, poorly written garbage. Electronics also, in theory, lower the need for wasted paper and dice. In practice however, many groups find including any electronics at the table a major distraction and disruptive of play, while many players refuse to trust electronic RNG. Acceptance of computer RNG is actually worse among players into video games due to that medium's documented history of RNG cheating via uneven RNG, poorly randomized number generation, and being easily manipulated. Another issue with electronic books is that some companies are Luddites, and refuse to release PDF versions of their books, while others are hamstrung by the IP holder's retarded prior licensing agreements made with the devil and legally can’t, or just plain old don't exist anymore and can't do a PDF re-release, but we have a solution to all those problems.

Another nifty creation has been 3D printers that can create a variety of objects desired from scratch for cheap. Currently 3d printers are only able to print small, inanimate, plastic things (unless you have a very expensive and large one that can do weak metal) and are a far cry from Replicator technology everyone panicking about "ghost guns" thinks they are. Fortunately the hobby has substantial use for small, inanimate, plastic things. Eventually there will be a reckoning for the entire minifigure gaming industry over the full implications of 3d printing, but for now the technology still remains a wee bit too bothersome if not expensive for the average user to churn out a thousand point army. However if you have the means and patience to experiment, your imagination is the only limit on what you can do for figure customization.

The appeal of Post-Cold War world[edit]

Do you want something which you could imagine yourself in? Not as some surrogate who was born in a castle or a Victorian slum or in a colony on Alpha Centauri IV or whatever, but You as an individual. Maybe some larger than life events roll through your door to spur you into action from your normal day-by-day routine and possibly you are idealized, but the person who's now running for their life and forced to deal with whatever outlandish thing has come your way is You.

Do you like stories of special force operators going on incredibly risky missions to take down terrorists, insurgents, and radicals of any ideological or religious flavor? Then this setting might be right for you, due to the prevalence of the Global War on Terror and the almost-extensive use of special forces such as the Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Spetznaz, SAS, and so on. Their chief foe is a new enemy that has largely replaced the Soviet Union in the minds of many in the West - the radical Islamic "jihadist" organizations such as Al-Qaeda, the Taliban or ISIS and its branches (such as the West African branch, Boko Haram). Their goals range from either kicking all foreign influence out of their country to establishing a global caliphate. The current increasingly polarizing culture war can also be used as inspiration for stories regarding insurgents and radicals of any ideological flavor, albeit something where "handle with care" very much applies for risk of coming across as preachy or adding fuel to the fire.

Other potential foes can be found in the world of technology, serving as fertile ground for near future sci-fi stories. This era is (currently) as close as we can get to cyberpunk, which lends itself well to the genre. The concept of A.I. as threats or the fear of society undergoing a technological collapse can also find inspiration from here, given the Y2K problem at the turn of the millennium. Big-tech companies getting trigger-happy with censorship from the 2010's onwards also lends itself well to references and themes in cyberpunk stories.

Wargame wise, there is some appeal in recreating the various, drawn-out conflicts such as in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan (to date the longest war in American history at over 17 years if one doesn't count the Korean War, which the US never officially declared war during and has spent most of its existence cold.), pitting the well-equipped, organized, and disciplined forces of the Western powers against the zealotry, tenaciousness, and cunning of the various insurgent and terrorist groups that plague the region. Due to the rather asymmetric nature of these wars, as well as the murkiness that comes with it, it's not as popular as the more conventionally focused, more-or-less Black-And-White morality of World War 2 setting. Similarly, the COVID-19 Pandemic can also be used as inspiration for various types of stories regarding pandemics, especially if one wants to up the stakes with things such as a zombie virus.

Urban Fantasy and Superheroes are often set in the current Post-Cold War era. By making fictional, fantastical threats one avoids the question of what the hell is there left to fight. It also benefits from being a world that's largely prebuilt and known to players, allowing writers to focus exclusively on what's different. Specifically in regards to superheroes, note how every two decades or so a gigantic cosmic retcon storm hits and resets the universe by pushing a catalyst point (Superman's arrival and Captain America being pulled out of the ice, simultaneously pushing the births of/major influencing events on characters or reemergence of old powers to the modern world equally long) forward by some years, allowing contemporary stories to be explored without retconning old stories completely, through saying that they happened but no longer matter as big gigantic cosmic event reset the universe, and not indirectly locking new audiences out of continuity by constantly having to read older stuff, allowing anyone to pickup new series issue 1 and read older stuff at leisure.

Historical Time Periods
Deep Time: Prehistory
Premodern: Stone Age - Bronze Age - Classical Period - Dark Age - High Middle Ages - Renaissance
Modern: Age of Enlightenment - Industrial Revolution - The World Wars - The Cold War - Post-Cold War
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