Free Repulse: Europe at War 2062-2064 by Chris James

superior: ‘The NATO countries shouldn’t go around behaving like they’re still the most powerful militaries in the world.  Europe simply doesn’t get it that it’s a backwater and has been for at least twenty years.  The only people who want to go there are tourists.’
    It is relevant to the beginning of the war to note the global perception of NATO at that time, as its leaders were obliged to keep one eye on public opinion in more populous countries.  For example, when the US tabled a motion at the UN to condemn the Caliphate’s aggression, thirty-four countries rejected it and a further fifty-one abstained.  For many billions of people in Asia and South America, Turkey’s assimilation was a local issue which the country had brought on itself.  This was one more problem which President Coll and Prime Minister Napier had to consider before resorting to a nuclear attack, especially given that they had no certain knowledge of the location of the Caliphate’s centres of weapons production.
    Calmer and more expert military wisdom prevailed as the day wore on.  Appropriate decisions, tactical rather than strategic, were made to accelerate and increase armaments production, and to strengthen the defensive ACA shield along Europe’s borders.  Through Beijing, stern diplomatic warnings were relayed to the Caliphate that any attempted attack on a European country would result in a full-scale counterattack in which NATO could not rule out extensive use of nuclear weapons.  Coll instructed the reactivation of mothballed weapons’ research programmes.  All members agreed at once to increase recruitment to their armed forces.  Tellingly, even on this first day of the war, most NATO leaders appeared to accept that the coming maelstrom would not likely be restricted to a war of machines.
    The thorniest problem Coll had to deal with was Israel.  The country had enjoyed little sympathy since its clandestine attempts to derail the Peace-Buffer Settlement in 2054 became public knowledge.  On Jordan’s and Syria’s assimilation into the Caliphate, the Second Caliph had decreed the withdrawal of all believers to form a buffer-zone along the Caliphate’s new border with Israel.  Some 88% of the remaining Palestinians, Arabs and other Muslims inside Israel elected to relocate to the Caliphate.  The buffer ranged in breadth from fifty kilometres in the south to nearly a hundred at the Golan Heights.  In her 2056 book How the Middle East Found Peace , Jennifer Lewis is scathing in her assessment of the Israeli government’s duplicity: ‘While in public Prime Minister Mendelberg praised the Peace-Buffer Settlement, in private he and many Israeli politicians seethed.  Israel’s economy relied too greatly on military production and sales.  Exports had been falling as traditional markets continued to contract, and the century-old confrontation with Muslims needed to continue to exist.  A final resolution would spell disaster for the economy.  So Mendelberg set Mossad agents to work to undermine the Muslim exodus from Israel’s borders.’
    Lewis goes on to describe in depth how close Israel came to achieving its objective, and praises the Caliphate, and especially the Second Caliph, for seeing through the provocation and not responding with bloodshed.  Thus did the Caliphate establish itself in the eyes of the world not only as non-violent, but as an entity which avoided confrontation at all costs.  However, in 2055 the Second Caliph would be succeeded by the Third Caliph, and a great deal would change, only to be fully revealed on that fateful Monday morning.
    By 2062, Israel’s economy still struggled to export sufficient armaments.  In addition, although Jewish interests retained control of much wealth and therefore power, these fortunes had long been eclipsed by financial conglomerates and banks in China, India and Brazil.  Beijing in particular had little difficulty encouraging Chinese companies to freeze