Chronicles of Toria: Setting the Stage (Vol. 0)

(Act 1) Chapter 10 - The End of an Era

"We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency."

- Douglas MacArthur

"Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated."

- George W. Bush

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With the attacks of 9/11, the US went through a massive shift due to the trauma it caused. It promised to wage a crusade against all terrorist groups and states across the globe, and nothing could stop them.

In the same year as the attacks, the US led the invasion of Afghanistan with the help of sympathetic nations. The Taliban was rapidly defeated by the coalition forces, but the main target of the US, the leader of Al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, escaped capture at the battle of Tora Bora and seemingly disappeared like a ghost. This failure prolonged the US invasion of Afghanistan for a decade and led the US into a global manhunt for a single man. Which would even see a dubious and controversial war in the Middle East led by the US of A, under a flawed casus belli, whose real intentions were as clear as day.

However, even amidst the bad news, good news still appeared. Just two years later, the bloody Korean War came to an end with the death of the KPLA's leader that same year, and consequently, the end of their armed struggle. This ended the conflict with a nationalist KLA victory, but with the nation devastated and utterly broken from almost half a century of continued warfare, the People's Republic of Korea's leadership began a long and slow process of recovery.

But even with the conflict finally over, the Korean leadership and people still felt divided, as the ever-present specter of the Empire of Japan haunted them, even more so with the continuous occupation and cultural cleansing of the island of Jeju. Alongside it, the belief in an eventual return of Japan to the region was seen as an inevitability. Those fears and paranoia would lead the nation to align itself with the Republic of China and also pursue a nuclear program to serve as a deterrent against Japan.

No matter the cost and suffering, this new Korean nation wouldn't allow Japan to conquer it again, and it made a promise to itself that all of Korea would be completely reunited, no matter how long it took; they would make Japan pay for the suffering it caused to the nation and its people.

With the end of the Korean War and Korea's eventual alignment with China, the two nations, alongside the various minor Indian states, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, ratified the Sino-Pacific Security Accord. A military alliance mainly aimed at breaking Japanese hegemony in East Asia, it also secured cooperation between Korea and China in their territorial ambitions in Jeju and Taiwan, respectively.

A year later, the Trident Alliance grew in size as the Baltic States were accepted into the alliance. This practically imprisoned the Russian Baltic Fleet in St. Petersburg, as the only neutral nation in the region was Sweden, which closely worked with the alliance member states. The following year, the US, alongside South Africa, Israel, India, Hyderabad, Bengal, the Philippines, and Liberia, ratified the Treaty of San Francisco, a second attempt by the US to form its own international military alliance.

Much like the Cold War, this new age was becoming another multipolar world, this time between the US, China, and Japan, as the world's center of attention slowly returned to East Asia, as it always had been in the past.