Shanghaied - 2ACW

It won't be like 1861 this time around!
I've put some thought into how it will go... and it won't be pretty.

No I meant with how the Confederacy got an army handed to them on a plate. This will be more complicated.

All sorts of craziness in my plans for that!

57 – Defection

Two people were responsible for the formation of the Armed Forces of the Democratic American Republic. Eleanor Rawlings wasn’t one of them. She was appointed by the Council of Ten as the new country’s Minister for Defence & Security and made many public statements yet the creation of a military force to secure the newborn DAR wasn’t down to her. So much of what she did was in many ways a smokescreen for what really saw that creation.

Darius Fuller, appointed as the senior-most military officer of those armed forces, held primary responsibility for their conception. It was he who persuaded, coerced and threatened his way into forming up the defensive capability so oppose a sure-fire United States effort to demolish the DAR in its infancy. Rawlings had full confidence in him. She knew that many of his motivations were personal, driven by revenge against how he had been harshly treated two years beforehand as part of the political fallout from the Taiwan Conflict, yet allowed those to drive his progress as he stuck his fingers in the eye of those back in DC. The (forcibly) retired US Air Force lieutenant-general pulled off what many had thought was impossible, all so he could gain satisfaction of a personal nature. He did very well indeed in that endeavour.

Alongside Fuller, there was President Walsh. Anyone else at the helm, even in their last days in the White House, would have stopped Fuller doing what he did. That would have taken leadership though: something which Walsh didn’t have. As the loyalty of large sections of the US Armed Forces was lost, he had plenty of opportunities to stop that. Decisive action was needed in just a few places and the whole crescendo of mass defections and resignations would have been averted. Around him there were those who could see what was happening and desperately tried to avert what they saw as the tragedy of inevitable full-scale civil war that was going to come of Fuller having so much success. Walsh didn’t want to listen and when he did, he refused to make a decision. It was all a problem that he didn’t want to deal with too. Using force against fellow Americans, even those betraying their country so openly, just wasn’t in him when it came down to it. He went through the motions of going to the urgent briefings and sending out orders, yet wouldn’t step in with force. Those around him believed that he was of mind to leave sorting it all out to his successor. Fuller was aware of the same timetable about when Walsh would go and Roberts would replace him. In that short period, with Walsh’s ‘aid’, he built an army (and an air force, a navy & a marine corps).


Rawlings’ public announcement of mobilisation was one of her public activities to draw attention away from what Fuller was up to behind the scenes. Two days after the Unilateral Declaration of Independence, the minister instructed military reservists and recent retirees from both the regular and reserve elements of the US Armed Forces who lived in the eight states which formed the DAR to report to National Guard stations in those states. Not to the mobilisation centres and garrisons those of the federal armed forces which were located within DAR territory were her instructions for them to go, but rather to the many various National Guard posts. All across Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon & Washington state there were those sites. Men and women were told to report to them with the message being that they were being called out to defend the sovereignty of the DAR. Back in DC, Walsh had refused the strenuous urging of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to mobilise reservists not just in the other forty-two states, but also to send instructions to reservists in the West to either go to military posts there or cross into union territory to do that. The Acting Secretary of Defence concurred with the president’s thinking that on the latter issue that would only be inflammatory (only the Joint Chiefs were inflamed!) though had disagreed over the need not to mobilise east of the sudden border drawn through the middle of the country. Russell Talbott hadn’t been able to get the president to budge on that. With all three of them – the president, his civilian Pentagon head and the Chair of the Joint Chiefs – disagreeing with each other, nothing had happened in DC as to a response. Out West though, the call was answered. Many reservists and retirees didn’t report for duty at the National Guard posts, or went to the regular garrisons & reserve mobilisation centres, yet the majority did as Rawlings declared was their patriotic duty to do so. Misgivings were plentiful yet tens of thousands service-personnel made themselves available. At the Pentagon, they hadn’t been able to figure out what Rawlings was up to there. They didn’t have knowledge of Fuller’s actions on that matter, that he was behind that as a way to undermine the strength of federal forces while boosting the manpower available to the National Guard units which the DAR already had on-side.

All of those eight states had significant National Guard elements with each states mobilising them late the year beforehand to deal with civil unrest. California, Oregon and Washington had the largest numbers of personnel on-hand yet the available numbers from the other states weren’t as small as they had been in the recent past. Nationwide transformation and expansion of the National Guard had started when the 47th President was in office as part of her decision to follow then Pentagon advice – and Fuller had been on the planning staff of that – for a larger National Guard: much of that expansion was still happening in early 2029 with nothing fully finished. Regardless, of all the strength that the Army & Air National Guard components of all the eight states combined had, the regular military units of the US Armed Forces based in the West were much stronger in terms of numbers, equipment and training. The history of the United States had seen territorial expansion west and south-west. Much of that had been done using military might and, in the aftermath of territorial acquisition, newly-gained regions had been pacified using armed force. Military garrisons had been established on that territory once taken. Those bases had remained into the Twenty-First Century because, like in the South, there was room there for them. That wasn’t to say that there weren’t garrisons elsewhere, which they were plenty, yet the space available the further westwards away from the original Thirteen Colonies had long been taken advantage of. Military bases of the US Armed Forces were spread across the self-proclaimed territory of the DAR. Into them the year before the UDI when West America turned from a dream to reality had come before that those returning from overseas where they had been in East Asia. The military presence of the United States in Japan and South Korea following the Taiwan Conflict where the Chinese were engaged (outside of those countries) briefly was removed. Many of those military units were split up across the West – rather than being consolidated as whole units at individual facilities – pending a planned move to reorganise things completely. That meant that when Fuller set about getting as much of them to defect as possible to the DAR, there was a good portion of overall American strength on offer in the high stakes game he played with the Pentagon. Before the UDI, there had been efforts made by Vice President Padley and the governors of both California & Hawaii to hold talks with several key military commanders in the West. The politicians were sounding out those generals and admirals about defying feared instructions from Walsh to use military force against civil unrest… they hadn’t known that Walsh never had any intention of doing that. Word had gotten back to the Pentagon about some of those efforts (not all though) and that had seen the firing of a senior US Marine Corps general and warnings sent others about respecting the chain of command. A bad taste was left in the mouth of several key uniformed people at the top about all of that. They’d been angry at how politicians had tried to drag them into disputes with DC while at the same upset with Walsh. Fuller played on the latter feeling, trying to downplay the former, as he sought to get those senior commanders to defect to the Democratic American Republic. He was ‘helped’ by Walsh with that.

Dragged to those many briefings in the White House Situation Room where his National Security Council alerted him to the fact that there was a significant effort being made by the DAR to steal away military units from the United States, the president let it be known that he considered Easterners loyal and Westerners potentially disloyal. That was something that others saw as completely irrational… and also ignored the fact that someone such as Fuller was an Easterner himself. Such expressions of perceived willingness to betray the United States by certain members of the US Armed Forces based on where they were from, and trust in those who came from other states, caused a lot of bad feeling back in DC. It was used by Rawlings in public statements and Fuller in private conversations too when the media gladly revealed it all during extensive criticism of Walsh. Military personnel in the United States swore an oath of loyalty to their country upon donning the uniform. What Walsh saw though were reports of ‘Westerners’ in command of military units out West on the verge of going over to the DAR while ‘Easterners’ were assumed to be loyal. This utterly poisoned how the NSC treated the issue when Fuller was busy in his efforts to win over major portions of the US Armed Forces. Many Westerners were initially dead set against defection yet would change their minds based upon that. Easterners turned their back on the United States too in disgust at such behaviour coming from the country’s commander-in-chief when they heard of all of that: to secure their loyalty would have taken just a little effort rather than assuming they would fall in-line. When Fuller spoke to those senior officers, he travelled extensively across the West visiting military base after base in a flurry of activity. When the scale of his activities were gotten wind of by the Pentagon, orders sent out had told garrisons that Fuller was a traitor and no one was to meet with him. Those should have been obeyed. They weren’t though. He wormed his way in with regards to getting those in uniform to talk to him. Many met with him with the intention of telling him that they had no desire to defect but they gave him a hearing nonetheless part in due to Walsh’s behaviour and also the big deal being made by Rawlings about how much public support that the DAR had among the people of the West. Fuller changed the minds of so many. He either won them over to his cause or talked them into resigning to allow others to lead. Not so much luck was had with US Navy officers as was the case with those top-level people from the US Army, the US Air Force, the US Marine Corps and the US Space Force though. There he wasn’t as successful at first. However, from DC there came the inaction of Walsh with regards to admirals who commanded military forces in the West. Outside of the naval stations along the West Coast and out in Hawaii, there were protesters in support of the DAR blockading the sites (as was the case with other military bases before defection came) as well as nearby National Guard forces on-alert. No orders from the Pentagon for any action to be taken arrived. Naval officers waited for a plan to be announced so as to stop the DAR from taking over the bases as they looked poised to do. All that there was instead were those standing orders to do nothing – no evacuation, no outwards-directed action to take – and that was it. Pressure built within the US Navy bases from lower-level officers for their commanders to join with the DAR when the federal government off in DC did nothing and it eventually worked.

When Fuller induced military commanders in turn to defect or quit, no response came from DC. That helped lead to the next incident of defection as everyone could see it wasn’t going to be stopped by Walsh and the Pentagon. There was no plan on offer for anything to be done. No ‘march east’ order was sent or the orders arriving to fly out aircraft & have ships sail as many of those defectors would have accepted if they weren’t instructed to put down the DAR and its traitors with force employed. It would have been chaotic yet wouldn’t have handed Fuller all that he got on a plate either. The Joint Chiefs wanted that done. President-elect Roberts demanded that Walsh do something like that too. Still, nothing was attempted to ensure that there wasn’t a robbing of forces available to Fuller to build the Western Command as he did ready to oppose an attempt at forceful suppression when Roberts would move into the White House. In those multiple crisis meetings in the Situation Room, the president’s chief-of-staff expressed the opinion, one which Walsh fully agreed with, that no matter how many generals sided with the DAR, those military units which they commanded were full of service-personnel from all fifty states. Sunny Park spoke of mutinies that would break out when their commanders followed illegal orders to defect. That would mean that Fuller couldn’t get his hands on an intact military force even if he won over all of those senior people. That would prove to be correct when there were mutinies – as well as many desertions too – yet that didn’t happen on the scale which she and the president envisioned. Moreover, they didn’t understand that Fuller knew that and it had been one of the first things he had said back at that meeting with Padley, Pierce & Rawlings before the UDI when he outlined his plan of action at that early stage. Nor was it appreciated that elsewhere outside of the West, there would first be desertions from US Armed Forces units staying loyal and later on a string of resignations and mutinies there too. Not much of that would be about support for the West but rather the unwillingness to fight fellow Americans. Walsh’s distrust of ‘Westerners’ in uniform that came from how the DAR built its army began to have an immediate effect among those in uniform away from the West even though he didn’t, and had no intention of, sending them into action against their fellow countrymen. Rawlings directed her public statements seemingly inwards when it came to the DAR’s armed forces yet those were covered nationwide by the media and she had been assured by Fuller that there would be a snowball affect there too: all of which would allow for the DAR to make a real fight of keeping the sovereignty gained.


It wasn’t just military garrisons across the West which fell into the hands of the DAR. What else Fuller managed to take for the new country he gave his full allegiance to, without Walsh stopping that, saw the Chair, Vice Chair & all five service chiefs on the Joint Chiefs of Staff resign in unison in response too. Their unprecedented mass resignation came about because their president wouldn’t act in intervention when the DAR seized a plentiful stock of nuclear weapons as well. Like with everything else done, Walsh could have stopped that, should have taken a stand, yet he did nothing but a lot of hand-wringing when the DAR made itself a nuclear power.

Area 51 in Nevada and Air Force Plant 42 across in California fell into Fuller’s lap first. Those were strategically important sites for the US Armed Forces. A trio of the brand-new B-21 Raider stealth bombers were at the nearby Edwards AFB when AF Plant 42 was taken by a company of California Army National Guard soldiers who Walsh refused permission to have them fired upon when they just took over the place. Then came those nuclear seizures. At Kirtland AFB in New Mexico, a mass of warheads for ICBMs & SLBMs were stored there along with those for decommissioned land-based & in-service airborne cruise missiles. The Nuclear Weapons Centre at Kirtland was kept a good portion of the Enduring Stockpile: weapons not in frontline service. Walsh gave no orders to stop the place being taken using the threat of force. Back in Nevada, at Nellis AFB outside of Las Vegas, there was another big storage site for free-fall nuclear bombs to be used by the US Air Force. An already significant stockpile had been added to in 2026 when all of the B-61 bombs once kept in Western Europe (Belgium, Germany, Italy & the Netherlands) and Turkey had been returned home following the end of the NATO Nuclear Sharing programme. Fuller gained them too for the DAR. Bigger that the stocks at Kirtland and Nellis was what was up in Washington state at NS Bangor. Thousands of SLBM warheads from active and decommissioned missiles were there. A whole battalion of US Marines for security tasks was garrisoned at the site along with a battalion of US Army Rangers at nearby Fort Lewis whom the Pentagon had instructed to stand-to ready to defeat an effort by national guardsmen in DAR service to seize. All Walsh had to do was give the word and that would be forestalled. He didn’t though. American soldiers firing on American soldiers, even with one side committing outrageous acts of treason, just wasn’t something he was prepared to authorise. When the 2nd Infantry Division at Fort Lewis came under the orders of Fuller’s Western Command and began moving troops towards Bangor, and the Rangers were told to stay in-place, those US Marines were told to stand down by their own commander less a huge loss of life occurred. Goodbye said Walsh’s service chiefs after that. They had stayed on through everything else, trying to limit the damage, yet considered their positions untenable in light of the loss of Bangor. That incident there also saw the commander of NB Kitsap, which was a joint base controlling Bangor, NS Bremerton & NAS Whidbey Island, realise that no help was coming and he resigned after giving the order for a stand-down rather than see a fight with fellow American which he feared would take place. At Bremerton, in the dry dock there was the USS Ronald Reagan. Repairs to that aircraft carrier after she’d been hit by Chinese missiles a few years beforehand were complete and she was almost ready to sail: now she belonged to the DAR.

In Hawaii at Camp Smith and in Colorado at Peterson AFB there were two major headquarters posts of vital importance to the US Armed Forces. Camp Smith was home to the US Indo-Pacific Command while Peterson housed NORAD and Northern Command. When Fuller managed to add them to his already impressive swag bag, following that mass resignation of the Joint Chiefs, Walsh didn’t even go to the meeting below the White House when the NSC assembled to discuss options for trying to stop that. He’d completely given up, fed up of ‘talking about traitors’, and left everything to the Acting SecDef. Such a scale of inaction didn’t go unnoticed elsewhere. Out West where there were hold-outs to the threats of a DAR takeover, where local commanders didn’t believe that Fuller would do what he had yet to do and actually use force, there was a collapse of will to any longer stand firm. At NAS Fallon in Nevada, Fort Irwin in California and MCAS Yuma in Arizona there were resignations of commanders rather than defections made: new commanders took over and pledged allegiance to the DAR. Fuller was fast to redirect his small yet mobile forces of selected national guardsmen used in the threatening efforts made elsewhere already ahead of schedule. He moved down the list of places to take over, those of a lower ranking on his target list yet important in the ability of creating his envisioned Western Command. Military storage sites were grabbed without further ado. AMARG – the Boneyard in Arizona where all those aircraft were stored –, MCLB Barstow & Sierra Army Depot in California and Nevada’s Hawthorne Army Depot were prizes not to be sniffed at. Equipment, ammunition and stores from them were of fantastical quantity. The Armed Forces of the DAR would need all that it could take from them.

All of this stunning success might have come without Walsh and the Pentagon being able to have any effect in stopping Fuller yet he faced unseen enemies in the immediate aftermath. Within the DAR, there were those in uniform or who had once been in service who then set out to do as much damage as possible to his Western Command as they fought treason themselves. They began acting individually and collectively. Useless their president might have been, but patriots they were. Assassination, sabotage and incitement to mutiny was on the cards for those on the wild ride that Fuller had set them on.

Not a fun situation to be in. Made worse by rotten politicians declaring that some are loyal and others disloyal, Easterners and Westerners, with no evidence when they run their mouth off.
I have an Interlude planned, after the end of part 3, set aboard a ship. This situation will play out there among those aboard.

59 – Recognition

While not anticipated to be something that would happen in an instant, international recognition for the Democratic American Republic didn’t come during its infancy despite hopes it would. Tommy Zane, a Californian politician who had served as the United States’ Ambassador to the UN under the 47th President, failed to gain any traction from overseas where other countries would recognise his in a diplomatic capacity. There wasn’t even real overt willingness shown to do that, to begin the process. The DAR couldn’t function as a real country without that. It wasn’t self-sufficient and there was no intention among its leaders to have their new country as a pariah on the world stage. Pressure was fast put upon Zane as the Minister for Foreign Relations by the Council of Ten to make at least some progress! That was something that was an almost impossible task for Zane. He’d had so much success as UN Ambassador when serving the last country which he did, yet when trying to represent the DAR on the world stage, doors were slammed in his face. Travelling overseas was difficult for him. He couldn’t get anywhere that he needed to without a lot of effort to make a flight somewhere but there were no invitations which were received. He was persona non grata among governments across the globe. His United States passport had been invalidated and due to the unrecognised nation which the DAR was, entry into foreign countries in a diplomatic capability was fraught with technical difficulties let alone the refusal from foreign governments to have anything to do with the DAR. Zane made multiple attempts to use his wealth of global contacts to call people or speak to them online. He knew hundreds of diplomats and politicians. Those who would talk to him, and that wasn’t many, told him that there wasn’t going to be any hint of efforts to come to some sort of arrangement with the country he claimed he represented. Their governments just wouldn’t do that.

In DC, the Acting Secretary of State had got the word out far and wide: the Democratic American Republic was considered by the United States to be an illegal entity and any official diplomatic contact with it risked the wrath of not just the sitting president (in the last days of his lame duck period) but the next one too. It was a message that didn’t need to be made clear to those overseas. Everyone in the world knew what had gone on with the Unilateral Declaration of Independence made, done without any form of democratic vote which excuses could be made around. President-elect Roberts was certain to act to crush the rebellion the moment he was inaugurated. It was just pointless for anyone to seriously consider that the DAR might last beyond a few weeks. Once the rebellion was put down by the incoming 49th President, anyone who had had any sort of relationship with the DAR was going to regret it. Vice President-elect Mitchell had made that clear in public statements and so too had a wealth of American politicians in Congress. Zane was never going to have any luck when those he might have tried to win round faced such cold hard facts as those.

Coming out Beijing was criticism directed at both the DAR and the United States. The Chinese government made statements ‘deploring the internal violence’ and the ‘destabilising uproar caused’. America’s time as a world power was finished, the Chinese said, when they couldn’t keep their ‘own house in order’. Mention was made of the ‘dastardly attack’ made against China two years beforehand with Beijing pointing out how many of those at the top of the ‘regime in Las Vegas’ had been in support of that too. Not to be outdone, the Russians got their digs in as well. Out of Moscow, there were statements from Kremlin spokespeople mocking American democracy and claiming it could only bring chaos to the world. Other unfriendly countries to America such as Burma, Cuba, Iran, Syria & Venezuela had a lot to say too. None of these were nations whose recognition for his new country had Zane sought. Those regimes there oppressed their people and had no democratic character to them at all. They were just getting their cheap shots in.

Trapped into a total denouncement before the UDI was made, Canada’s Prime Minister stuck firm in her opposition to her nation’s newest neighbour. The DAR bordered the far western reaches of Canada and there had been much cross-border traffic in the days since the split within America became real. Americans had entered Canada from out of the DAR – through Washington state into British Columbia – with the intention of not remaining in a country where they claimed they would be oppressed. That caused the Canadian PM all sorts of political problems. Moreover, out in Vancouver, there had been demonstrations since the previous November by Canadian citizens against the presidential election end result. Once the DAR was established, with Maria Arreola Rodriquez president of that country (someone whom the majority of Canadians nationwide believed had rightfully won the White House), that support there on Canada’s West Coast had increased. Canadians weren’t protesting in the streets demanding that they be allowed to join with their neighbours to the south, yet there was a lot of vocal support for the ‘democracy’ being seen in the West of the United States. The PM tried to keep a lid on that, fearing violence in Vancouver and elsewhere. Zane tried to enter Canada through Vancouver. He flew into the airport on a private jet but wasn’t allowed to get off it. Using an order-in-council, the PM had to employ extraordinary powers when faced with that diplomatic nightmare. If he’d gotten off the plane, and been seen to especially, a major spat with the United States could have erupted. She knew Zane personally and he sent word that he was in Canada to meet with her privately. The PM had his jet fueled-up and told him to leave. If he didn’t, Zane was told that she would have him arrested by immigration officials and held with the outcome she expected with that to be DC issuing an extradition request. Off back to his unrecognised country Zane had flown when the PM stood as firm as she did. There was no other choice for her.

Across the Atlantic, off his own back, the British PM had made repeated public statements of opposition to the Democratic American Republic the moment that it was declared. He had warned Walsh the previous year about the troubles that would come from allowing ‘left-wing separatism’ (the UK’s Scottish troubles) to go unchecked and felt vindicated. There had already been opening ties established with Mitchell by the PM: the Roberts Administration had a good friend in London was the message sent, and MAR had an enemy. The EU President had come out in opposition to the DAR yet she hadn’t been as forceful as the British PM was. The manner in which the new country had been established troubled her yet the political positions of the government which MAR led when it came to world affairs aligned pretty well with that of the EU. Roberts wasn’t demonised on the Continent yet Mitchell was when it came to his own world-view. In a private talk with the French President and German Chancellor, the EU President said that she would have liked to work with the DAR yet that was impossible. The EU was a partner and friend of the United States which transcended the change in administration. There was plenty of talk of democracy from the DAR yet none of that had been seen. Like everyone else, she also considered it almost a given that federal United States forces would put down the rebellion within with rapid haste. Something else which was looked at was the situation in the Baltics. The prime ministers from Britain and Canada, the EU president and those senior European leaders had a conference call where they discussed the possibility of the Americans pulling out of the Baltics. The NATO-led mission there was a joint effort among them all yet the Americans were really needed. Every day which passed with worse news coming out of the United States about the damage being done to the United States’ military posture – even with the certainty that in the end that would all be repaired – made many consider that that was increasingly likely. The British PM had raised the matter with Mitchell yet didn’t ask for, considered that he couldn’t ask for, a firm guarantee that a withdrawal due to troubles at home would never happen. The rest of NATO knew that they would be rather exposed if the unthinkable happened and the Americans went home yet the unthinkable became more and more possible. They made plans for that eventuality… hoping to have no need for them in the end.


Massachusetts’ Senator Laura Yorke had called the protest movement which had first been in support of freeing Shauna McCleary from federal custody and then the Campaign for a Democratic America a ‘franchise operation’. In places such as Salt Lake City (before everything got out of hand there), up over the border in Vancouver and in Eastern & Central parts of the United States, there had been street demonstrations as well as sit-ins and harassment of federal officers in so-called ‘pro-democracy’ activities. None of that was coordinated from out West despite the conspirational assertions of others. An idea was spread, advice was given on how to do things from afar and then the organisers got to work. Numbers of participants outside of the West were far lower than they had been in that part of the country. Violence and civil unrest did occur yet not on a big enough scale. That was especially the case after the UDI made to form the Democratic American Republic when so many outside of the West were turned off by what happened there. In the Texan City of El Paso, that had been the case until the middle of January 2029: dedicated activists who couldn’t bring out the large numbers of people that they desired too. Things changed though as the weekend of the 15th / 16th / 17th approached. The activists got their act together and planned for big rallies starting late on the Friday. Due to what had occurred up in Utah, there was no way that the Texan authorities were going to stand for that. Governor Carrier Garner refused to sit idly by and allow a situation to spin out of control. El Paso was in the Trans-Pecos region of Texas (Far West Texas as some called it) and was bordered by Mexico to the south and the rebellious state of New Mexico to the north. There were military units under DAR control – national guardsmen from California and New Mexico – just over the state line and El Paso had committed traitors in there in her opinion. Not an inch of Texan territory would be lost, she declared when talking to her fellow Texan Roberts, while Walsh sat twiddling his thumbs.

Garner sent the 71st Airborne Brigade to El Paso. That unit was part of the larger 36th Infantry Division, a Texas Army National Guard formation which had been expanded significantly in the previous years. The whole division, plus other units, had been activated ahead of the elections the November before. There were already national guardsmen in the El Paso area. However, she used her gubernatorial authority to declare partial martial law in El Paso and the county within it sharing the same name. Thousands of those soldiers went the area with most them having some deal of experience with recent civil unrest elsewhere in Texas (Dallas & Houston). They were joined by hundreds of Texan Rangers as well. Without getting the sort of answer she wanted from the Pentagon about the security situation of the military base at Fort Bliss, she deployed some of the soldiers she sent to Far West Texas there too. They stayed outside but on-hand to stop anyone seizing control of the facility while the majority of those usually garrisoned there were off in the Baltics. Garner had concerns that the DAR military commander might try to grab Fort Bliss – in her beloved Texas! – just as he had recently taken all those other military bases in the West.

El Paso was shut down. When the protest organisers tried to get things going, they were detained. Complaints were made about the legality of that yet Garner carried on doing what she was doing. National Guardsmen enforced martial law throughout that weekend in El Paso. The planned demonstrations never got off the ground. Garner had other elements of the 71st Airborne Brigade right up against the state line with New Mexico, what the DAR considered to be their border with the United States. El Paso sat right in the corner out there in Far West Texas with Mexico to the south and south-west while the DAR was to the west and north of the city. Defensive positions were established with air cover on-call for those on the ground – the Texas Air National Guard operated F-16s as well as MQ-9 Reaper armed UAVs – should they need it. If it came to a fight, if military units who’d joined the DAR came south, Garner had her mind made up to oppose that with more of the 36th Infantry Division as well as everything else she could throw into it. Governors such as her across the country had been outraged at what had been done in the West, and what had so recently happened with Salt Lake City, where the president did nothing to stop clear military aggression from the rebels taking orders from Las Vegas. Full-scale war between state forces rather than federal forces was something that Garner was prepared to see occur if necessary.

Don’t mess with Texas.

Early on that Saturday morning, one the Texan national guardsmen, a captain commanding a rifle company located just to the west of El Paso proper, where the Rio Grande meandered as it did ahead of reaching the US-Mexico Border, saw someone on the other side of the ‘border’ who he recognised. It wasn’t south into Mexico he was looking, but west into the DAR instead. A first lieutenant in the New Mexico Army National Guard who had been on a field exercise for cross state purposes with him in 2027 was commanding a platoon of riflemen too. The captain called out to the lieutenant, calling him ‘pal’ as he did so. National guardsmen from the two sides were all around with everyone’s attention gained. Making a show of things, the captain opened his hip holster slowly and left his pistol atop the bonnet of his HMMWV before walking slowly over the state line. He entered New Mexico and the DAR. Meeting the man who came over from Texas and the United States, after making a show of leaving behind his own weapon too, the lieutenant approached him. It seemed like hundreds, thousands of sets of eyes were on them. They shook hands: their political leaders wouldn’t be happy. The two of them made a trade too. They swapped a tin of coffee for a box of MREs. That had started out as a joke yet each side needed what the other had and an agreement was struck on that. A gentleman’s agreement on something else was struck too. The two of them assured the other that they wouldn’t cause any danger to the lives of those on the other side unnecessarily. Everyone had weapons and political tension was high, but accidents would be avoided at all costs. Of course, if orders came to do ‘something stupid as fight’, things would be different. Their meeting was short but beneficial for each. Neither uniformed officer wanted to see conflict and had just easily sorted out any confusion between them of intentions. Bigger issues were at stake, the fate of nations, yet they each didn’t want those issues to be resolved by a fight. They were all Americans after all!

Nonetheless, elsewhere there were those seemingly hell-bent on causing a war and making sure that any reasonable exchange and agreeing to talk things out was never going to happen. Two more states within the union which was the United States of America ended up joining the Democratic American Republic that weekend before the new president’s inauguration.

And his whole country too.