Coalition of Western Republics

A militarist state basing itself on the American Empire, the Coalition of Western Republics is one of the galaxy's superpowers. The modern Coalition’s system of explicitly modeling itself after Imperial America is not unjustified. The Coalition is one of many remnant governments of the old United States, and like all of them claim it is the official one. The modern Coalition was founded on Columbia after the Endless War, a war between its German-speaking and English-speaking colonists. These colonists were descended from government officials, scientists, corporate executives and other VIPs that fled Earth as part of the New Dawn program. New Dawn was a program commissioned by the American and German governments to escape Earth for a habitable world if nuclear war ever occurs. When it finally did in the early 2240s, the American and German governments moved as many important persons as it could onto as many ships as they could and left for the Columbia System, roughly sixty thousand lightyears away. Once there, official continuations of the old governments were established. Economic issues and cultural friction led to the Endless War, which abolished the national governments and replaced them with a pan-national government, intending to expand throughout the stars to find enough land and resources for its growing population. The principle of Manifest Destiny, inherited from the Americans, took on a new form: interstellar colonization and conquest. After colonizing several systems, the Coalition eventually found colonies founded by both pre-war and post-war Earth governments, and promptly conquered them or turned them into puppet states.

Although its government and ideology operate on the assumption that the great bulk of mankind is worthless and debased, it is marginally less authoritarian than its more optimistic neighbors. Most of the Coalition government’s efforts go into maintaining its status as superpower and enforcing social policies demanded by its “moral majority.” The belief among the Coalition government is that a system of natural selection can arise in society, where those who are best in their field rise and those who are not fail. The system manifests itself in free markets, and works best without government intervention. To this end, the Coalition supports free markets all throughout the galaxy, while always trying to safeguard its own. The Coalition considers its free market to be its defining characteristic, and accepting it is a large part of being a Coalitionist.

Socially, the Coalition is more liberal than its neighbors by necessity. Uniformity, it argues, is impossible and does not allow for positive growth in the market. However, activities it deems “un-Biblical” are strictly prohibited. Most cultural control is carried out through propaganda, where the Coalition’s heavy-handed media and strict censorship laws drown out any “subversive” influences. Media that promotes the Coalition’s values are given more outlets to express themselves, while those that do not are restricted, but still allowed to exist in some heavily persecuted communities. Promiscuity and drug use is frowned upon in the Coalition, with pornography and drugs being banned, at least among the civilian populace. Active military and veterans are allowed both, in order to encourage people to join the military and to keep them loyal. While breaking social laws are met with strict punishment, the government does not usually devote its resources to it, although entire sections of the Directorate of State Security specifically deal with social law. Although the official punishment for violating social law is execution, the modern Coalition prefers to conscript offenders or send them to labor and starvation camps. Political crime, especially affiliation with communism, is sentenced purely by conscription.

Religiously, the Coalition government supports the State Church, founded by remnants of various Christian churches that had travelled with the American government to Columbia. The State Church considers itself the legitimate continuation of the Roman Catholic Church and the various Protestant denominations, and has its own pope. All high-ranking clergy are required to be Party members, and the election of pope has to be affirmed by the Coalition Council. The modern Church does not have as much power as it did in the past, and the Directorate of Doctrine and Faith has passed from being a police force as powerful as the DSS to being guards for churches and priests. Modern Coalitionists are not overly outspoken about religion, as everyone’s Christianity is taken for granted. Heresy, while still a crime, is not as actively pursued as in the past, the government simply assumes that heretics will be ostracized by society at large and eventually convert or be driven to misery.

The Coalition promotes miscegenation, emulated to become closer to Imperial America. The idea of miscegenation is rooted in the idea of an ancient “master race,” whose strengths was divided among different racial groups as man migrated throughout the world. Therefore, it is the duty of the government to restore the master race, conveniently justifying the assimilation of other racial groups to have as “even” a mixture as possible. However, Coalition miscegenation policies are much less strict than Imperial America’s, as most believe the theories behind its promotion are outdated and that if there were a “master race,” it has already been achieved by the Coalition, a product of the specialized race quotas of America’s evacuation mission. Despite this, the Coalition still tries to “balance” its master race and the races of other societies and would attempt to mix “impure” populations before fully integrating them in Coalition society, or taking populations of ethnic groups that the main Coalition race is deficient in.

The Coalition’s technology diverged from Earth’s as soon as the ships left the Sol System. Rather than focusing on biotechnology, the Coalition maintained the old pre-war attitude of embracing industrial and atomic technologies. The Coalition is one of the few nations in the galaxy to still use nuclear weaponry in large amounts, and Coalition reactor technology is far more advanced than any other country. However, due to their perpetual fear of electromagnetic pulses, the Coalition is behind in tabulator technology, and while transistors are popular in the civilian market, the military still uses vacuum tube technology. Despite this, Coalition software is very advanced, and Coalition tabulators are very powerful, if bulky. Robotics and automation are much more advanced in the Coalition, with all of their aerospace vehicles and an increasing amount of scouting units being automated. However, these artificial intelligences still pale in comparison to human minds.