It starts with civil war in Pakistan.
Then the conflict spills over into Kashmir and Afghanistan.
India gets involved, militarizing heavily in the far northwest.
The Chinese clear their throats.
Civil war in Pakistan gets really bad as the stock of the Taliban and comparable groups goes up 10x in value.
Lookalike insurgencies start appearing throughout Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa.
The Americans are compelled to peel out of Afghanistan before Iraq to concentrate on holding fort in Arabia.
Iraq is likewise abandoned.
Central Asia is destabilized.
The northern portion of the Middle East is destabilized.
East Africa is destablized.
Despite best efforts, civil war begins in Saudi Arabia.
US retreats to Atlantic. Contingencies are made to refocus US oil attention on the Atlantic littoral of Africa instead.
Those contingencies are acted upon.
Bushies Get Their Global Jihad. After all, they invented it.. A federation of strongly jihadist states, led by a contentious triumvirate of Pakistan, Arabia and Sudan, arises. Ever horror story the Pubs astroturf out is pretty much true about this movement.. and the movement only exists because Republicans refused to deal with it. Saw it..and chose to let it happened.
Mushroom clouds in South Asia.. Oh, goody. A limited nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan makes life in South Asia interesting.
China to the Rescue.. The Chinese intervene in the Indian Subcontinent for all sorts of reasons including self-interest. In the interest of protecting India from Islamism, Kashmir and Assam are, cough, liberated.
It's not Burma, ya'all.. The Americans strike up a new freedom-loving relationship with Myanmar against Islamism there.
The need, so Washington says, is to fight terrorism in Thailand which has now gotten way out of hand.
Oh, but it's not all bad.
Secular gummints stand with us in the fight on terrah.. A federation of more secularist but perhaps best called modernist Islamist states arises, with Turkey, Egypt and Iran as the main players.
The top goal is contending against the jihadist camp, just as Bush daydreamed about - Muslims fighting Muslims.
Then again, maybe not.. Thing is, they hate the Americans most of all for effing up their civilization. No matter how much aid the Americans are strategically obliged to provide, there is next to zero goodwill remaining for either the USA or its government in the Islamic world.
The favor is now reciprocated.
Congrats, Bush. You just got your neverending war, with not one but two highly motivated, thoroughly hostile camps who will act in concert on only one goal -- the exclusion of American influence from both their growing spheres of influence.
Europe is greatly threatened by these developments, as are Australia and Brazil which retains geopolitical designs in Africa as well as Latin America.
France goes whole hog neocon.. The Europeans farm out between even closer alignment with the Americans, where a sort of praetorian republicanism takes hold and the rhetoric of the neoconservatives is embraced wholesale. France, most threatened in its mind by Islamism, is the new convert, the true believer.
Bundeswehr im Heiliges Land.. The Germans are more sanguine, and tend to lead a faction more inclined to bolster the Modernists in the Islamic world. These qualifies as outright treason in the Americans' eyes, so the two countries are not pals anymore at all.
Ironically, the Israelis become hip to the modernist cause, being friends with Turkey and Egypt already, and the retreat of the Americans has made for some very interesting changes of politics.
One is the stationing of German troops in the Holy Land, mostly in southern Lebanon and Gaza.
The other is the peace treaty with Iran.
Chinese a bit busy. The Chinese have their own issues in South and Southeast Asia and at the same time are forcing the issue of reunification with Taiwan which, now that the Americans are no longer much of a presence in the Western Pacific, is making thinks for the PRC's way of thinking much easier to impose.
Rising Sun Rearming.The government of Japan is, with heavy American pressure, rewriting its constitution and ahead of this move embracing a code called officially anything but New Bushido...but the name sticks. Patriotic iconography is very hip in Nippon these days. So are increases to the budget and the new ICBM program, ahead of a feared stand-off with China.
Corporate Criminality A Go-Go in Russia. Russia is preoccupied, dealing with the collapse of its influence in central Asia and holding authority over an increasingly anarchical Federation; the Moscow diktat is increasingly blown off by regional authorities, who are forming their own defense and foreign policies with underworld and above-ground consortiums, some Russian, some Japanese, some Chinese, some European, some American, with the common motive of extracting resources and buying guns to take back central Asia.
The net effect is to set Russia on the path to complete fragmentation.
China Rising. America Selling It. Into this world the Chinese are clearly ascendant in power, but just in time to deal with a very negative security situation on all their borders. Forcing a political solution with Taiwan is expensive; rights and other concessions not just to the island province but throughout several central-east and southeastern states leads to the creation of the so-called Exception Zone. Beijing conservatives muse this is going to plant the seeds of civil war or, worse, pro-democracy activism. Interestingly enough, the Americans are the biggest help in keeping the lid on this, as China becomes for the short and medium term a huge buyer of American munitions.
Home Front - Think V for Vendetta. The home situation for the United States is as dark as anyone here has dared imagine. Paramilitary security are everywhere. Wide powers of search, surveillance, seizure, interrogation, detention and summary judgment are asserted first by factions with at least nominal institutional legitimacy, then usurped outright in the open by any entity with the money and will to have a squad of hired guns represent its interests.
Bad Western Activism. Rule of law becomes a travesty in situations where defamatory comments on a blog are considered grounds for justifiable homicide, and city councils and school boards are intimidated by the appearance in session of concerned citizens and their openly-brandished firearms. It only takes one or two incidents where shots are fired to make the point.
Professional Military takes fall, Private Armies take over. This behavior is noted at higher levels of government. The response -- fund, arm and empower more security contractors at the expense of the discredited professional military which is officially blamed by civilian chickenhawks for failing and 'losing' not just two wars but pretty much the entirely of American superpower status.
The military resents this bitterly. Many quit.
They join security contractor outfits and go back to work for the same jerks.
Others have other plans but keep their counsel for the time being.
These veterans are watched very closely. Some are preemptively assassinated, fearing they might lead a revolutionary movement.
Two parties, no unity, only one bipartisanship that matters. The political parties are fragmented. Officially there are still only two majors. In practice, there is only one ruling bipartisan coalition -- those with ties to media and munitions. That is the partnership of power -- forcing ones message through, whether listeners like it or not. Most people tune it out; the news is that depressing, and doing so -- embracing more of the apathy that lets such corruption flourish -- only feeds the cycle all the more.
The sense is that the old world is utterly falling apart.
For want of a lack of heart, of vision, of compassion, of flexibility, of imagination and courage, the world falls to shreds and what started as a very optimistic adventure in Iraq leads inevitably to Baghdad-like conditions in many cities in America, as well.