Editing Post-Cold War (section)

== Other Regions ==

=== 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.

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 [[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.

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 ===
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.

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 ===

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.

=== 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.  

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 ===

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. 

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.