Shanghaied - 2ACW

I know for once the Chinese would not march into Manila like the IJA before. The Chinese Communist Party knows better. Instead, they would put Manchurian candidates that would make the country pro-Chinese. In that way, it's a sure colonization without occupation and firing a shot. More effective as it saves resources and manpower.

I'm afraid that for TTL, fears of Yellow Peril or Sino-Russian alliance is all too real. I'm even thinking President Makarov of Russia is getting of wary of the PRC. Since China already gobbled up the "rebellious province" after 78 years, the Red Dragon might soon aim to gobble up disputed land such as the Primorsky Krai where Vladivostok is at.

For certain, my ATL self would probably look back at my life on how times were simple in the 2000s and early to mid-2010s. Being a 90s kid, I along with countless others grew up in a world where the United States became the sole superpower after the dissolution of the USSR. Of course, this "peace" would not last long as 9/11 came by followed by the War on Terror. So while we saw America at its might chasing and destroying terrorists, this exhuation of 20 years of war in the Middle East eventually gave way to the rise of China and the Second American Civil War.

A very horrible timeline to live at. As some of my friends say, better start practicing Mandarin and eating with chopsticks.

Also: I would think Beijing would have a lot to say regarding any unification sentiments still lingering on either side of the new Yankee Curtain.

It won't happen at once but it'll come. The US isn't locked out of the Pacific yet the focus will be 'domestic' afterwards.

170 – Cañon City

Samantha Leach was named by President Mitchell as his special envoy for negotiations with the Democratic American Republic. She was a native of Arizona and had been SecState under President Walsh until he’d fired her right before his disastrous time in office had ended. Back when the US Army was tearing its way across Arizona, at one point almost within touching distance of the California state line, Mitchell had been about to make a special appointment using an executive order to see her as a senator from that state ahead of elections. She was a Democrat, a high profile one at that, but he held her in significant regard. There were others who could have taken the post which he gave her, most of the names floated about had been Republicans, yet Mitchell put his faith in Leach. Cynical comments were made by those outside of the Mitchell Administration that should Leach mess up, blame could be put on the Democrats for that. However, Republican critics of what the 50th President was doing where he was ending the war against the secessionists firstly didn’t want him sending anyone to Cañon City, but if he had to they would rather he sent one of them. Mitchell did what he wanted to though and employed Leach for the task.

Right-wing media savaged her appointment. They had already been tearing into SecState Renzi, ‘outed’ as the one who had talked Mitchell into ending the war against the DAR, and added Leach into that. It had been Leach who had been appointed by Walsh, at the behest of Republicans in Congress, to take over at the State Department following the Taiwan Conflict and she had long been blamed for the collapse of America’s influence in Asia following the short Sino-American fight. It was said to be her fault that Japan, South Korea and others had moved into the Chinese orbit – not something everyone agreed upon as fact though – because she was incompetent… or even on the Chinese payroll. OANN went completely over the top in opposition to Leach’s appointment, going pretty damn far with the personal attacks. A wild, nasty allegation was made that there was some sort of ménage à trois between Leach, Renzi and Mitchell: such smears of a sexual nature were common against enemies of that channel. The character attacks came thick and fast with that OANN one setting off more personal ones about the president a week after he had buried his wife.

Leach left DC before that broadcast was made. Along with State Department officials, she flew to Peterson AFB outside of Colorado Springs. That military airbase had been captured by elements of the 82nd Airborne Division during the first week of conflict, back when everything had been going right for the United States’ war effort. It had been somewhere extensively targeted by DAR attacks since then with few air operations able to take place by April. The missiles strikes had stopped though once the ceasefire had come into effect. From Peterson, Leach and her party transferred to a smaller jet than the one they had flown to Colorado on and went down to Fremont County Airport. The short hop to there took Leach past the imposing mountains of the Front Range. The front-lines marking out what had become Eastern Colorado and Western Colorado were deep behind them, back inside the Rockies. A road convoy then was provided from that shot-up but functional local airport into Cañon City. The historic State Armory building in that small city was to be her base of operations for talks with the DAR and she set about setting up shop there.


Leach’s instructions from Mitchell and Renzi were to make sure that in negotiations, the United States came out on top. Naturally, as a patriot who wanted the best for her country, and knowing that all eyes were on her, Leach went to Colorado to achieve such a thing. She would have vastly preferred that her trip to Cañon City would have been one where she would have negotiated the surrender of the DAR yet that wasn’t to be. Instead, she was sent there to make the outcome of the Second American Civil War something that would leave the United States in the best possible position post-war. The forty-two states issue was at the top of that. The forty-two were the forty which had never left the union when the DAR was illegally formed along with the wholly recaptured Hawaii as well as Eastern Colorado. Neither of the last two were to be given back to the DAR under any circumstances. When it came to Colorado, Leach was sent to Cañon City to get as much of it as possible. The populated areas east of where the Front Range ran were all in US hands: Denver, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Pueblo etc. The front-lines ran deeper though, right past the halfway point of the state in the north especially. Recent DAR military operations had been successful in capturing some areas deep inside the Rockies but the US hold was pretty deep. Leach was set to use diplomacy to get more than what soldiers had while giving up no more either.

While that was at the top of the list, there was a lot more too. The DAR’s proposed peace deal made the month beforehand, which the basis of negotiations were to be upon, covered a lot more. The State Department had its own matters of concern though the majority of those went alongside over similar things that had come from out of the DAR. Apart from Eastern Colorado and Hawaii, there were the territorial matters of other states. The DAR wanted, and Leach was instructed to agree to, the division of the two countries based down state boundaries outside of Colorado. The United States had troops inside Idaho and New Mexico, both of which the DAR was claiming. On the ground in Montana, Texas and Wyoming there were DAR soldiers. All that had been taken by each outside of the states which each was to take under their control would have to be withdrawn from. Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands had come under temporary control of the DAR during the war – named as the state of Guam & the Marianas – but, like Hawaii, had been retaken by the US. Those islands in the Western Pacific along with all other territories belonging to the United States either in that ocean or elsewhere were all to remain under US control. Any designs upon them by the DAR were to be rejected. It was the same with physical property overseas not limited to embassies or military bases: all of that belonged to the United States with Leach told to reject any attempts at sharing or anything silly.

On the list for Leach went. There were economic matters to consider and the rights of people who wished to leave either the US or the DAR for the other. Infrastructure was something else, so too the national debt. Leach was tasked to deal with the basics of those really complicated matters with the knowledge that detailed negotiations could take years. Then there was Glow-worm. The DAR had promised that they could fix that issue for the United States. Before she had left DC, in meetings with the Acting SecDef, the Joint Chiefs and the senior people from the Intelligence Community, wide-ranging discussions had been had on what would happen with that promised outcome. Being sold a lie, a damaging lie that might take some time to bite, was a fear fear back in DC. They had been tricked before over the computer virus that had rendered so much of the US Armed Forces impotent. Mitchell didn’t want to be fooled again. Vice President Cruz had said that she expected the DAR to play hardball on that matter and mess Leach around. After all, if they gave her the antidote, one that worked straight away, what was to stop the United States from breaking the ceasefire and marching on Sacramento? As the president’s Special Envoy, Leach was assigned to make sure that her country didn’t get shafted over Glow-worm any worse than it already had been. The task was daunting indeed.


After several hours in Cañon City, with preparations underway for once the meetings with the DAR started, Leach learnt who her opposite number would be at the negotiation table. The DAR hadn’t sent it’s foreign minister but instead President Pierce had appointed Greg Antonetti as his own special envoy. Back in late 2028, the retired New Mexico congressmen had been one of those early voices calling for a New America, a Second Republic. Secession hadn’t even been properly talked about back then. Along with others who spoke up early, Mitchell – then VP-elect – had called Antonetti a ‘nobody’ much to his chagrin. Leach knew that Antonetti had been one of those who helped write the constitution of the DAR and had been allied with Pierce rather than the DAR’s first president, but not much had been heard of him since then: Antonetti hadn’t taken up a post in the DAR Parliament nor joined its ranks of ministers. Wanted by the US Government on federal treason charges, Antonetti was being sent to negotiate at the highest level with that same government. In some ways, it was almost as if Pierce had chosen him to poke Mitchell in the eye… but Leach recognised that Antonetti was someone serious. Facing him across the negotiation table would be no easy matter. The man was committed to the cause of the DAR. He was no one’s fool and would pose quite the challenge to try to best.

Antonetti’s people exchanged messages with hers as to a location for where talks would be held. A site was settled upon, just outside of Cañon City itself. There was a community college campus right on the western edge of the city. It hadn’t been used since January but was in good condition. Somewhere a little bit larger would have been better in Leach’s opinion yet she agreed to hold meetings there. Her own base of operations would remain at the nearby State Armory though Antonetti and those who would come with him for the talks, which were certainly not expected to be a one-day event, would travel from inside DAR-controlled territory to the campus there and back. It was up in Salida where Antonetti would be based and so further arrangements had to be made. Between Salida and Cañon City the front-lines ran and those included the famous, tourist-friendly Royal Gorge area which had become a battlefield. Security and travel all needed to be sorted out.

Those shooting at each other previously would need to work together to make things happen so that Leach and Antonetti could do what they had both come to Cañon City to do: end the civil war.

I take that Cañon City is a reference to the Neutral Zone from The Man in the High Castle? Since here it is the venue for negotiations to end the Second American Civil War.

171 – Ceasefire

Between Cañon City and Salida lay the Royal Gorge and also US Highway-50. The mountains and famous canyon in that area were mostly in the hands of US national guardsmen when the ceasefire was called with the furthest DAR Army penetration made eastwards was to Howard, a long way from Cañon City. The 86th Infantry Brigade, part of the 28th Infantry Division, was fighting to defend that region when hostilities came to a close. There were Green Berets also in the area with they too being national guardsmen as well. The fighting had been tough and costly for each side. An order to ceasefire was welcomed by almost everyone despite their feelings upon the war itself and also what would be the diplomatic and political outcome. A lot of blood had been spilled, all of it from fellow Americans with those on each side regarding their opponents as fighting for an illegitimate regime yet being their brothers- & sisters-in-arms too. The ceasefire saw a rotation outwards of the national guardsmen from Connecticut, New York and Vermont with the 86th Brigade shifting north to cover a sector held by regular soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division. Without the halting of shooting, that would have been impossible to do as fast as it was and without bloodshed. Helicopters did most of the work with a lot of US Army Chinooks and also Louisiana Army National Guard Black Hawks involved. 10th Mountain Division soldiers were joined in the area on the eastern side of the front-lines by Rangers and also paratroopers. The latter came from the 1/509 INF (the Geronimo battalion). That was a peacetime training unit which had spent the war in Colorado: it was full of good soldiers who had take on, and overcome, some tough challenges. The influx of new troops was done for security purposes on the order of Lt.–General Reilly. He’d taken over US NORTHCOM late in the war and was well aware that the history books would have him listed as commander when US forces gave in with the fight. It certainly wasn’t his fault, and he wanted to keep on fighting, but he did as his political masters told him and could be sure that history wouldn’t be kind upon him. His reputation was shot and his career was finished. Nonetheless, Reilly set out to end that with utmost professionalism. Making sure that the diplomats could do what they must safety and without hindrance was something he made sure happened.

The wartime-raised 49th Infantry Brigade, volunteers from California, had won recent fights inside the Rockies to take Salida and then get past there before the ceasefire came. There were pre-war Rangers also in the area, active both near the Royal Gorge and also in the Wet Mountain Valley. Huge, imposing peaks along the mountain line where the San Isabel National Forest ran were behind those soldiers and commandos. Such terrain made what many thought would make a good border for the future despite the official position of their government that the whole of Colorado, not just everywhere held on to, was to be the post-war border for the Democratic American Republic. During the wait for peace talks to commence down in Cañon City, while the 49th Infantry Brigade was ordered to hold where it was, those commandos were withdrawn back to the San Isabel line. They weren’t told why that was the case just to do it. Detachments of Rangers retreated using cover and without seeking to expose themselves to their opponents. They gave up ground which they didn’t fully control but had been denying US forces from having full control over. When soldiers wearing the insignia which denoting them as from the famous Geronimo battalion arrived, the DAR Rangers pulled away without taking any shots at them. Exposed helicopters were left alone and there were no ambushes sprung upon deploying US Army paratroopers. They pulled out peacefully.


The front-lines of the Second American Civil War ran down through the middle of the western half of divided America from the Canadian border in the north southwards to the Mexican border. Up in the Idaho Panhandle, where those front-lines started next to the frontier with Canada, the front-lines ran along the course of the Kootenai River upstream and then into Montana. Through the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness down to near Mount Headley before swinging sharply west to the Clark Fork River they went next. Going south from there they ran back into Idaho again across the St Joe & Clearwater National Forests. The Bitterroot Mountains that formed part of the Idaho-Montana state line were where the front-lines then ran before going southwest through Montana again until the Hebgen Lake close to Wyoming. The far western reaches of Wyoming were crossed next when they ran southwards across the extreme expanses of that state that left much of the Yellowstone National Forest in DAR hands while the US held onto everywhere east of the Green River including the small city of Rock Springs. A tiny portion in the far corner of Utah was in US hands before the front-lines went eastwards into Colorado. Along the Wyoming–Colorado state line, they went both north and south of there in a wavy fashion before reaching the Continental Divide at the Routt National Forest.

South through Colorado the front-lines went, generally along that great dividing line of peaks putting Steamboat Springs on the DAR side and Kremmling in US hands. Southwest of Mount Powell, they went sharpy westwards to see a good portion of Interstate-70 in US hands along with the Vail area. There was a big salient there before the front-lines went back east just as pointedly to the Continental Divide again to then turn south along the mountains of the Mosquito Range leaving the upper reaches of the valley of the Arkansas River in DAR hands all the way down to Salida. Past Howard along the line of the San Isabel peaks, they next ran south to near the La Veta Pass and through the Culebra Range all the way into New Mexico. The Taos Mountains formed the front-lines there in that state at first before they went eastwards, leaving Raton and the northeastern corner of New Mexico in US hands, before stretching right across the expanse of the Llano Estacado to the Texas state line near Guadalupe Peak. A small portion of Far West Texas was in DAR hands all the way to the Mexican frontier though with El Paso still in US hands despite being near surrounded.

Through Colorado and New Mexico, where those front-lines ran there were a lot of opposing forces on either side of them. Large troop concentrations remained despite all of the victories won and defeats incurred over one another throughout the war. The situation to the north, across Wyoming, Montana & Idaho was different. ‘Too much warm butter spread over plentiful soggy toast’ was how the US IX Corps commander described his deployments in that region. The DAR’s Idaho Corps was in a similar position with too few soldiers and a lot of ground to cover. There were gaps everywhere, no man’s land, and the front-lines were just a series of strong-points surrounded by neutral ground. To those who hadn’t seen the battlefields and who would imagine what the front-lines were like, they would think that they were like they were elsewhere. That would have meant maybe a million soldiers though to properly form a recognisable front-line: such a thing was certainly not the case at all.


Ceasefire violations took place ahead of the planned talks beginning in Cañon City. Up and down that huge, winding front-line trace, and throughout the rear areas, there were shots exchanged. Isolated gunfights and shelling took place. The reasons for each incident were varied though superiors weren’t very forgiving of subordinates who opened fire when there was supposed to be a ceasefire on. The actions of irregulars not respecting the end to the fighting were at the root cause of almost all of the breaches though. Guerrillas, partisans and domestic terrorist extremists were all active. In the Inland Northwest, the situation was the worse but Colorado was also the scene of their activities. There was no respect for the front-lines and no ceasefire which they agreed to taking part in. They took shots at soldiers on both sides too. Standing orders for those fighting under the command of NORTHCOM and the DAR’s Western Command were that no communication was to be had with the opposing side unless that was in the Cañon City area where high-level diplomatic negotiations were to be held. Without being able to talk to one another to stop misunderstandings, there was fire exchanged. Irregulars either sought to attack one side, slip through the middle or even get the opposing armies to fight through trickery. Deaths and injuries were recorded among those in uniform during the ceasefire.

However, it didn’t break down. What occurred was seen for what it was. Those lower down the command chain, in the firing line, didn’t see what the generals did when it came to the bigger picture. Orders to continue to enforce a no shooting policy were rammed down the throats of subordinates. The war was over with and there was to be no shooting the other side unless they were openly attacked first!

In a couple of those incidents, gunfights started when special forces detachments from each side slipped through the front-lines going home. They were often disguised as irregulars but also ran into accidents too when making the trek home. Both the DAR and the US had commandos on each other’s territory before the ceasefire came into effect. They were sent orders to pull out and make their way back home. There was no desire by Reilly and his opposite number to see special forces teams surrender and turn themselves in when deep inside enemy territory following the outcome of talks at Cañon City. To do that would see their missions exposed, equipment captured and the possible ‘disappearance’ of members. The civil war had been a remarkable clean one throughout though dirty incidents had happened: most had involved commandos. Where it was judged possible that deployed special forces could make it back to the front-lines and through them without exposure, they were ordered to do just that. Other teams couldn’t though. They were deep behind enemy lines, far away from any possible escape to be made on foot. Yet, none had been sent off to their dangerous missions completely without a back-up plan for escape though. Weapons, equipment and supplies were buried and the team members split up while donning civilian attire complete with identification to denote them as ordinary citizens. They would begin to try and make their own way back through planned egress routes, but ones fraught with danger too.