Motf133

Well, this is a bit vague and slaughters a lot of butterflies, but here goes.

Matters began in the late 19th Century where the first steps towards the creation of an Imperial Federation in the British Empire were undertaken, culminating in its establishment in the closing days of WWI. Versailles went mostly as OTL, but with Austria and Bohemia sticking together under the Habsburgs and Slovakia remaining part of Hungary. Meanwhile the US was taking a much more expansionist tone in Central America, beginning to bleed on down into South America.

By the mid 30s, India and Ireland had been granted full Dominion Status, and the Imperial Federation was beginning to see the strains of balancing the shear demographic weight of the Subcontinent with the traditional heartland of Britain and the White Dominions. Perhaps if matters had ended there the whole thing would have collapsed in on itself, but there was another twist to come.

WWII saw a slightly different, right wing anti-Semitic regime in Germany take a much more collaborationist attitude with Slavic minorities in Eastern Europe, with the result that after crushing the French the war in the East dragged out for longer. With America uninterested in anything more than dealing with the Japanese problem, France ended up taking Britain up on the offer of a Commonwealth between her Empire and the Imperial Federation. The war dragged on to 1947 and ended with the Franco-Imperial forces sweeping in a broad arc through Austria, reaching Vienna, Prague and Dresden but with the Soviets pushing north along the Elbe to Lubeck and Hamburg. Schleswig-Holstein was eventually neutralised as part of the Nordic Union in order to get the Russians to withdraw from Hamburg, but the eventual lay of the land led to the Soviets occupying Turkey and most of Greece.

Post war, the need for defence against a USSR which had annexed everything she controlled led to the creation of a European Community of Free Europe, minus the Nordics, which soon negotiated a continuation of the Commonwealth agreement with the Imperial Federation. Save for the Communist takeover of Dakar in the dying days of the war, there has been little overt fighting between the two since- though plenty of covert conflict.

In the east meanwhile The US and USSR coordinated to defeat Japan, with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and Korea taking place shortly before the US utilised newly developed nuclear weapons to bring Japan to surrender. In the aftermath, the US propped up Chiang's regime in China, took advantage of the weakened French State to split Indochina off and then fought a war with the USSR over control of Iran.

The world is thus carefully balanced between the three Superpowers- the US is more industrious and richer as a rule, but has greater issues with imposing her influence abroad both in international relations and justifying it domestically, leading to the least unified of the three spheres. The Soviets on the other hand have greater control over their sphere, but are the economically speaking the worst off in terms of the strength of their core area, and are more likely to be opposed by both the other powers in foreign influence.


The Commonwealth meanwhile would be undisputed master of the planet, if it was not for the vast unwieldy bureaucracy, complicated federal systems and opt outs and delicate negotiations that are intrinsic in keeping it together and maintaining the delicate power blocks that ensure it works for all parties. Ignoring the Imperial Federation (who's own federal organs have atrophied somewhat with the conversion of its legislature to one for the whole Commonwealth), the system of government is quadricameral, comprised of:


-The Chamber of Representatives, elected from all directly administered and autonomous parts of full members (but not sub-national protectorates) by PR.

-The Chamber of Regions which acts as a sort of Senate with the various entities (Bavaria, India, Fiji etc.) having three members each.

-The House of Peers and Princes which serves as an expanded House of Lords and where the heads of the Protectorates have their only input into the system.

-The Commonwealth Secretariat, comprised of the Prime Minister of Great Britain, President of France, Prime Minister of India, President of the Council of the Imperial Federation and Secretary-General of the European Community.

A ceremonial joint executive comprised of the British monarch and an elected President of Europe holds nominal power of this structure.

In this manner, India's dominance in the Representatives is balanced out by it's weakened position in the Regions but equal status in the Secretariat. The slow enfranchisement of Black Africans and Afro-Caribbeans has introduced a third block that is rapidly approaching equal ranking with the others, led by the Union of East Africa.

There is a potential crisis ahead though. The Levantine Four technically qualify as Protectorates of the Imperial Federation at the moment, but in recognition of their important place in the front line against the Communists and American backed states of the Middle East have been granted full voting rights in the Representatives and Regions. Yet there are questions about how they eventually fit into things. A position as full members of the Imperial Federation has been offered, but looks likely to be declined, going it alone within the Commonwealth would be an unprecedented constitutional issue which could cause many of the carefully arranged dominoes to start collapsing. On the other hand, between Tunisia, Tripolitania, French Algeria and Lebanon there is a growing sense that for the Arabs (or at least the right sort of Arabs) might qualify as sufficiently European to be accepted as full members of the Community- a position which could revolutionise the manner in which the French Empire is organised, but would at least fit within the Commonwealth.

The war has been over for 30 years. It's effects are still reverberating strongly.