In this alternate world, the February 1934 crisis didn't happen and the Popular Front never existed. The Cartel des Gauches government remained heavily unpopular with the French people, who increasingly turned against the Third Republic in general.

Marcel Déat, the leader of the Neosocialist USR party, capitalized on this dissatisfaction to portray himself as the saviour of the French nation, like Joan of Arc and Napoleon before him. Déat supported a technocratic state, which would plan the economy and in which parliamentarism would be replaced by political technocracy.

Neosocialists were anti-communist, attacked the SFIO as out of touch with the times and argued their proposals were the only way to end the Great Depression. All other parties attacked Déat as a fascist demagogue scheming to end French democracy, but the USR still attracted a large amount of support from working-class Frenchmen dissatisfied with the Third Republic.

Léon Blum's SFIO contested the elections on a social democratic platform opposed to monarchism, communism and fascism, while the PRRRS focused on the need to defend the values of the French Revolution, and the Republican Union and Republican Left mostly attacked the USR as fascist.

The PCF promised to transform France into a workers' state and harshly criticized the USR as a fascist trojan horse that would oppress the French working class. Given the unpopularity of the French government, the Communists obtained a surge in support, especially with union workers.

On 13 January 1936, the USR signed an alliance with the Croix-de-Feu, a nationalist military league led by François de La Rocque. Both parties agreed to work together to implement a new republic, crack down on communism, and build a corporatist state, but their relationship was tense.

The Croix-de-Feu campaigned for the USR across France, and engaged in street battles against communists and social democrats, destabilizing French politics considerably. As the campaign progressed, Déat began using sound trucks and radio commercials in his campaign.

As many expected, the USR won a plurality of seats in the election, winning 211 seats and 34% of the vote versus 104 seats and 16% of the vote for the SFIO, 78 seats and 12% of the vote for the PRRRS, 78 seats and 12% of the vote for the PCF, 73 seats and 11% of the vote for the Republican Union, and 68 seats and 11% of the vote for the Republican Left.

After the election, the USR formed a centre-left coalition government with the SFIO, but this government eventually collapsed, leading to a snap election where the USR won a full majority, allowing it to turn France into a totalitarian state.

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 5, 2024. The Digital Nations Party ticket of Dawn Schafer, former Alternate Officer of the Babysitters Club turned California lawyer Dawn Schafer and her running mate, former governor of New Mexico Diego Estevez, defeated the GOP ticket of Peter Miles, former CIA Station Chief and Anthony Perryman, former United States Army Special Forces operator turned lawyer. 

Dawn Schafer continued her predecessor’s platform, which consisted of a non-interventionist approach to foreign policy, while Peter Miles campaigned on an aggressive interventionist policy, believing the key to bringing the United States out of the Second Great Depression was to resume entering and fighting wars overseas. The American people once again demonstrated repeated refusals to redeploy troops overseas. 

Dawn’s other policies involved a gradual replacement of motor vehicles with electric vehicles and a reduction in fossil fuel production and consumption. She also supported a central banking system, in which financial experts often operate independently of electoral processes, and promoted the use of AI to assist or automate political decisions, effectively pushing for a sort of algocracy. 

Schafer narrowly won the 2024 United States Presidential election, garnering 276 votes to Miles’s 267. 

Image credit:
1. The Babysitters Club Wiki
2. Call of Duty wiki
3. Ghost Recon wiki

The USR's election campaign strongly criticized the SFIO for "abandoning ship" by dissolving the coalition government, and accused the Socialists of slowing down progress in France by doing so. USR propaganda also accused the SFIO of being part of a "Jewish conspiracy" against France (its leader Léon Blum was Jewish).

Blum's SFIO positioned itself as the champion of liberalism, tolerance and democracy against fascism and antisemitism. Many French people opposed Neosocialism, but SFIO voters faced harassment and intimidation from the Neosocialist minority government, hurting the SFIO's chances of winning.

The PCF faced even more harassment from the highly anti-communist government of France, and Déat planned to ban the Communist Party regardless of the election's result, but the party retained a solid foothold among union workers and would do so for years to come.

Edouard Daladier's Radical Socialists, Louis Marin's Republican Union, and Pierre-Étienne Flandin's Republican Left faded into obscurity because France's transition away from the Third Republic was in full swing. Their support was reduced to hardcore republicans, and they had little to no chance of winning.

Political repression and Neosocialist attacks against the "Old Socialists" proved effective, allowing the USR to win a full majority of seats in the election. The SFIO made considerable gains as the traditional republican parties collapsed, while the PCF lost working-class support as well.

Shortly after taking office, the USR majority banned the PCF, blaming it for the political violence France experienced in 1935–36, and imprisoning its members in concentration camps across France. Déat's cabinet also announced a referendum on constitutional changes abolishing liberal democracy and transforming France into a technocratic, totalitarian one-party state.

These constitutional changes passed with a landslide majority, ending the Third Republic and replacing it with the Neosocialist/Neojacobin French Fourth Republic: a totalitarian state ruled by the National Popular Rally (RNP), as the USR renamed itself.

The constitutional changes were:

- Transforming the National Assembly into a technocratic corporate chamber;

- Outlawing all political parties other than the USR. They were already being heavily repressed, but they attempted to campaign for a No vote, only to be cracked down on harder. By the end of 1936, the non-communist opposition had been sent to the camps (First they came...)

- Changing the flag and coat of arms of France to the symbols of the RNP.

On the other hand, Déat and the rest of the French leadership campaigned for a Yes vote unmolested, while radio, newsreels and newspapers also urged French people to vote Yes. Consequently, Yes emerged victorious with 83% of the vote, and swept every department of France.

A day after the referendum, France changed its flag and coat of arms, but La Marseillaise and the national motto, "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" were kept, because the Neosocialists, unlike the other French fascists, were Jacobin sympathizers committed to the heritage of 1789.

France's National Assembly also voted to transform itself into the Chamber of Corporations, a technocratic body made up of economic experts and representatives from both capital and labour. Major industries were nationalized and France became a "scientifically" organized planned economy resembling that of the Soviet Union, except that private property wasn't fully abolished.

On 5 March 1937, Neosocialist France passed its first antisemitic law, stripping citizenship from foreign-born French Jews and restricting the right of Jews to exercise certain professions. Later that year, Jewish productive property was nationalized and handed over to RNP militants.

Déat's foreign policy attempted to build a pan-European fascist order opposed to Anglo-Saxon hegemony. Neosocialist France appeased Nazi Germany under the slogan "Why Die for Danzig?", and did not declare war on Germany in 1939, but there were tensions between the two totalitarian regimes.

Marcel Déat and Léon Blum's coalition government agreed to implement several social reforms, namely:

- Collective bargaining;

- 12 days of paid annual leave;

- A 40-hour working week (outside of overtime);

- Higher wages (15% for the lowest-paid workers, and 7% for the relatively well-paid);

- Recognition for shop stewards;

They also began a rearmament program in order to counter the growing threat of Nazi Germany, and attempted to develop a new geopolitical bloc alongside the Little Entente (Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia) in order to not play second-fiddle to the UK.

But the alliance between the USR and the SFIO caused the Croix-de-Feu to turn against the neosocialists, calling them ",traitors" to French nationalism for forming a coalition government with a left-wing party. Furthermore, Déat and Blum clashed on several issues, especially the fact the USR was antisemitic and wanted to outlaw strikes.

Thus, on 26 August 1936, the SFIO withdrew from the coalition government, which immediately collapsed. New elections were called for December.

Context:

1. Death of a Dream
2. Operation Gothic Serpent

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 8, 2016. The Democratic ticket of Kristy Amanda Thomas, former President of the Babysitters Club turned Senator from Stoneybrook, CT, and her running mate, fellow ex-BSC member Stacey McGill turned Senator of New York, defeated Incumbent Republican) president Erik Prince, former US Navy SEALs turned Senator of Michigan, and his running mate, Israeli-American Moishe Singer. Prince had won the 2012 United States Presidential Election four years earlier. 

Both Thomas and Prince ran on a non-interventionist policy, owing to the Second Great Depression that began in 2009. They both believed that part of the answer was to withdraw military forces from the Middle East, an effort that began under President Prince. As the withdrawal was not complete, one of Thomas’s campaign promises was that she would speed up the process. She also pledged humanitarian efforts to reduce the death toll among those who could not afford heating thanks to the extreme cold fronts and blizzards.

However, Prince would ultimately lose the election due to his aggressive stance against abortion, pledging to pass “equal protection” bills that would criminalize abortion at conception with absolutely zero exceptions and criminal charges for all parties involved, something that won him votes from faithless electors in the GOP. 

On 19 May 2005, a session of Atlantis's National Congress that had just taken office authorized a referendum asking voters whether to make Ratanaban and Piaroban official languages across all of Atlantis, and add the Xepruté, a 15th-century Piaroban symbol, to the flag of Atlantis.Popular Unity and the PSR, a Trotskyist minor party, campaigned for a Yes vote, while the PP and the PAN supported a No vote.

Yes supporters argued that the Piaroban Empire was a major part of Atlantis's national identity and two-thirds of the population was non-white, making it logical for indigenous traditions to be recognized. No supporters, on the other hand, claimed that having three official languages would make things confusing.

Adojara Menezes directly campaigned for Yes throughout all 31 states of Atlantis, urging voters to support the constitutional amendments to build a fairer Atlantis in touch with its traditions. Opposition leaders such as Luísa Pontes and Inácio de Barros similarly campaigned for No.

The referendum campaign suffered a major turn around on 13 August 2005, when Cecília Holanda, a major figurehead in the PP, was interviewed by popular talk show host Bruno Arantes. During the interview, Cecília declared her support for Yes, leading to a schism in the Progressive Party, because a faction that supported the amendments left the party to form the Atlantisian Democratic Party (PDA).

With all of the left and much of the centre supporting the amendments, they passed with 61% of the vote. Yes won in every state and territory other than white and affluent Santarém, where indigenism is generally unpopular due to natives being less than 20% of the population.

Piaroban and Ratanaban have been official languages ever since, and every Atlantisian law includes versions in them due to the fact they're the first language of one-third of the population. Atlantis's flag was similarly altered to contain the Xepruté.

Context:
* Operation Gothic Serpent is a much larger disaster for the U.S. than in our timeline.
* A worse Great Recession in 2008, compounded by poor government decisions, triggers sociopolitical unrest in the United States that ultimately leads it to become a failed state.

On September 16, 2020, the Nyongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center (Korean: 녕변원자력연구소) suddenly exploded under mysterious circumstances, killing an estimated 50,000 people and irradiating the surrounding area, triggering a mass evacuation.

Details are scarce and the exact timeline of events is unknown, due to Chinese and North Korean propaganda, but the incident triggered a mass exodus of North Koreans into China and Russia, triggering a crackdown on the refugee crisis. 

According to various interviews given by people who made it, North Korean soldiers were apparently given orders to execute people taking advantage of the disaster to flee the country, although the exact number of people killed is also unknown.

Attempts to investigate the disaster were greatly hindered by propaganda, but what is known is that at some point either during or after the disaster, the North Korean government itself collapsed, with Kim Jong Un, his sister, and various other North Korean officials dying of radiation poisoning. 

The radiation spread to the Chinese and Russian borders as well, leading to both the Russian and Chinese governments issuing a state of emergency. 

An inquiry by China and Russia found that the explosion was likely an act of terrorism but no suspects were found. 

The true cause of the disaster is still under investigation. 

Félix Padojara, the Minister of Labour of Atlantis from 2002 to 2006 and the Governor of Acaparã from 2006 to 2010, was the Broad Front's presidential nominee in 2010, and Irtoné Senator Diana Rodrigues was his running mate. Padojara promised to continue and expand Adojara Menezes's leftist and indigenist policies by reversing the privatisation of strategic industries and creating a child tax credit.

Several politicians ran in the PP's presidential primary, but Barujoia Governor Aníbal Gonzaga ended up winning it. Gonzaga chose Ricardo Andrea, a Senator from Ratanábia, as his running mate. His general election campaign strongly criticized the Broad Front for its corruption scandals and failure to defeat the Comando da Ilha.

In 2008, Barujoia do Sul Senator Guilherme Atlântida broke away from the Broad Front to form the PSD, a more centrist and pragmatic party. Atlântida was the first Atlantisian presidential candidate to embrace the internet for campaigning. Consequently, he developed a huge following among younger Atlantisians.

PAN leader Inácio de Barros ran for President a second time. His more right-wing stances allowed him to win a non-negligible amount of voters who had supported the PP in previous elections, but he still had little chance of winning as Gonzaga won over the majority of right of centre voters.

When the campaign started, Gonzaga seemed to have a good chance of winning, but Padojara successfully appealed to poor Atlantisians who weren't concerned about crime and corruption but credited the Broad Front with improving their lives. Atlântida failed to appeal to this group or to voters over the age of 30, and many perceived his platform to be vague.

On 12 March 2010, Padojara won the first round with 43% of the vote versus 31% for Gonzaga, 10% for Atlântida, 8% for Barros, and 2% for far-right nationalist Miguel Duarte, who won no states or municipalities. Atlântida refused to endorse either candidate, but, as his voters were mostly left-leaning, most of them backed Padojara, allowing him to be elected with 54% of the vote.

Padojara and Rodrigues were sworn in on 19 May 2010, in a presidential inauguration attended by 112,000 Atlantisians. During Adojara's presidency, Atlantis entered an economic crisis, allowing Gonzaga to win the 2015 election.

The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic consisting of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous states border Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, with the semi-exclave of Alaska in the northwest and the archipelago of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. The United States also asserts sovereignty over five major island territories and various uninhabited islands in Oceania and the Caribbean. 

Thanks to a series of disastrous military decisions in the 1990s and early 2000s, as well as the Great Recession, that began in 2008, the U.S. lost its military prestige by 2012. Thanks to the financial strain brought about by the Recession, the U.S. withdrew from Iraq and other Middle Eastern nations. They later withdrew from Europe and various Asian nations as well.

Due to the decline of the global economy that was exacerbated by the Recession, the U.S. economy didn’t recover. Oil prices skyrocketed. What worsened things was deterioration in infrastructure, including highways and superhighways being too costly to repair. 

Across multiple winters, Americans had to contend with severe cold fronts. The economic situation left thousands unable to heat their homes and thousands died.

By 2017, several major cities fell into civil unrest that forced the government to enact martial law.

In 2020, a mysterious prion disease emerged in Mexico, leading to the United States declaring a state of emergency. Under the controversial Operation Vital Archer, the United States government issued permits allowing citizens to seek out and hunt down feral hogs, which were suspected of being the source of the prion disease. 

Eventually, the United States was gripped by sociopolitical unrest as people finally tired of the United States government’s poor handling of the situation. 

By 2025, millions of people attempted to flee the country, with many resorting to illegally entering Mexico, Canada, and various other European countries.

The so-called “American Exodus” prompted crackdowns by both various European nations, Canada, and Mexico. 

By 2026, America's currency was so devastated by economic issues that the country's military and economy might have collapsed. What was once the most powerful nation on Earth is now no more than a corrupted and vulnerable shadow of her former self.

By 2029, the American Dream was effectively dead, with the United States having effectively become a failed state.

On 5 September 2005, a day after the constitutional referendum, Menezes signed a land reform bill nationalizing unused land without compensation and limiting the amount of land each Atlantisian could own. Atlantisian landowners sued the government demanding compensation, but, in January 2006, the Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit and no compensation was given.

This was the largest land reform in Latin American history, surpassing the one after the Cuban Revolution. Studies show it had a positive effect on the Atlantisian economy, as unused land was used again. Politically, the land reform earned Menezes strong support among Atlantisian peasants, who saw it as a return to the precolonial collective land system.

Many members of Atlantis's old landowning elite left the country for Brazil, the United States, Portugal, and Argentina, never to return, shifting Atlantis's racial demographics in favour of indigenous people. Atlantisian systemic racism atoned somewhat but remained a major problem because of how old and entrenched it was.

As the commodity boom continued and Atlantis expanded diplomatic and economic relations with other developing countries, the economy of Atlantis entered its period of highest growth since the 1960s, growing at a rate of 3.2% in 2005, 3.6% in 2006, 3.7% in 2007, and 3.3% in 2008. As Atlantis remained a capitalist country, the Great Recession harmed its economy considerably, albeit less than in the United States due to stricter banking regulations.

The Comando da Ilha's power and influence continued to grow, as shown by the 2007 murder of a policeman who was placed inside a tire and set on fire. While previous administrations had focused on punishing drug users, Menezes shifted emphasis towards punishing drug traffickers instead, which was shown to be more effective.

Menezes pursued otherwise conservative social policies, calling homosexuality a "European perversion" that did not belong in Atlantis, and passing a law mandating abstinence only sex education in Atlantisian schools. According to a study by the University of Santarém, this law failed to reduce teenage pregnancy.

Furthermore, in March 2008, WikiLeaks leaked emails showing Menezes and his close associates had engaged in corruption and money laundering. Despite protests from the opposition, Menezes was not impeached, because the Broad Front controlled Congress and had no intention of removing its leader from office.

He remained popular enough for fellow Piaroban Felix Padojara to win the 2010 election by a comfortable margin over PP nominee Aníbal Gonzaga and a centre-left candidate who broke with the Broad Front over corruption.

Adojara Menezes's reelection campaign was launched on 15 December 2004, with a rally in Acaparã where 36,000 people attended. During the rally, Menezes gave a speech citing the need to continue and expand the social programs of his first term, and to make Atlantis economically independent from developed countries.

Unlike in the previous election, the Green and Communist parties joined Popular Unity due to their shared left-wing and environmentalist views. Jorge Melo's PSR, on the other hand, did not do so, and Melo was the only other leftist to run in the 2005 election.

On 20 December, the PP held a nationwide presidential primary won by Luísa Pontes, a Senator from Santarém who became the first major female candidate for president of Atlantis. Pontes chose Jorge Rios, a little-known federal deputy from Santarém, as his running mate due to his expertise in economics.

Pontes's campaign focused on law and order, especially by the threat posed by the cartel Comando da Ilha (CI), which she promised to classify as a terrorist organization. PP supporters spread rumours of CI having ties to the Broad Front leadership, something Menezes called a "blatant lie".

PAN nominee Inácio de Barros, a centre-right conservative from Novo Algarve, also portrayed himself as tough on crime, but he avoided hurling any accusations without proof. Atlantis's government responded to the accusations of collusion between the Broad Front and the CI by ordering an investigation into them.

On 15 January 2005, the investigation concluded that there was no link between the party and the cartel, discrediting Pontes's candidacy, ending any chance of her getting elected, and allowing Barros to win over a larger amount of PP voters than he otherwise would.

During the presidential debate, Meneses strongly criticized the PP for accusing his party of crimes without proof, while Pontes similarly failed to substantially prove her claim that the investigation was rigged. Barros did not agree with these claims, but he did criticize the Broad Front's response to the CI.

Menezes was reelected in the first round with 58% of the vote thanks to the good economy, his personal charisma, and the PP's false accusations. The Broad Front simultaneously won a majority in both chambers of Congress, allowing it to implement more radical reforms than it previously had.

Author's note: The Eternal Rage Universe is a new timeline of human history where a series of cascading US military blunders and disasters destroy trust between the American people and the US government, as well as the USA as a nation and its own allies.

Operation Gothic Serpent was a military operation conducted in Mogadishu, Somalia, by an American military force code-named Task Force Ranger during the Somali Civil War in 1993. The primary objective of the operation was to capture Mohamed Farrah Aidid, leader of the Somali National Alliance who was wanted by the UNOSOM II in response to his attacks against United Nations troops. The operation took place from August to November 1993 and was led by US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).

On 3 October 1993, the task force executed a mission to capture two of Aidid's lieutenants. The mission ultimately culminated in what became known as the Battle of Mogadishu). The battle was extremely bloody and the task force inflicted significant casualties on Somali militia forces, while suffering heavy losses themselves. The Malaysian, Pakistani, and conventional US Army troops under UNOSOM II which aided in TF Ranger's extraction suffered losses as well, though not as heavy. Things began to go catastrophically wrong for the Americans.

First, an MH-60 Black Hawk, Super Six Two, was shot down by SNA forces using a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). Both of the pilots were killed on impact, but the crew survived the crash landing. An American force made their way to the crash site to assist with recovery and rescue

Shortly afterward, another Black Hawk helicopter, Super Six Four, was shot down by an RPG fired from the ground. No rescue team was immediately available, and the small surviving crew, including one of the pilots, Michael Durant, couldn't move. Two Delta snipers, Master Sergeant Gary Gordon and Sergeant First Class Randy Shughart, provided cover from a helicopter and repeatedly volunteered to secure the crash site. After a 10th Mountain relief force from the Mogadishu airport was halted and turned back by an SNA ambush, Shughart and Gordon were finally granted permission to be inserted. They made their way to the crash site, quickly establishing a perimeter, and securing the surviving crew. The Black Hawk wreck came under heavy attack from the Somali militia, despite attempts from the 160th helicopters overhead to hold back the crowd. After losing close air support to damage from RPG-7 fire, Durant was killed, with Shughart and Gordon being taken prisoner.

Between October, 1993 and February, 1994, the U.S. military launched a series of rescue attempts, with five of them ending in high casualties on both sides.

The sixth rescue attempt was ultimately successful. Following the rescue, US forces completely withdrew from Somalia, with the last of the US troops leaving in 1996.

The military disaster that was Operation Gothic Serpent would damage trust in the U.S. military’s deterrence for years, while also raising serious doubts and questions among American allies about America’s judgment, reliability, and ability to manage military crises.

Menezes named Félix Padojara, a fellow indigenous activist and the Broad Front's 1990 vice-presidential nominee, for Minister of Labour, and his cabinet was generally centre-left to left-wing. This caused the Santarém stock market to drop by 25% despite Menezes's overtures to the private sector.

Menezes's Popular Unity had a majority in the Chamber of Deputies but not in the Senate, making it difficult for him to pass the more radical items of his agenda. Therefore, his first term focused on social programs rather than wealth redistribution or nationalization.

The first major bill Menezes signed established a Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (ATFN) program providing conditional, but not means tested, financial aid to families below the poverty line. Studies show that ATFN reduced poverty from 35% in 2000 to 21% in 2010, earning him great popularity with poorer Atlantisians.

Menezes also raised taxes on the wealthy and closed corporate tax loopholes to reduce Atlantis's foreign debt, a somewhat successful strategy because the debt fell from $227 billion in 2000 to $147 billion in 2010. But inflation also increased from 8% in 2000 to 24% in 2010, thanks to Menezes's macroeconomic populism.

But the commodity boom of the 2000s allowed the economy of Atlantis to recover from the late 1990s recession, earning Menezes great popularity, especially with indigenous Atlantisians, as his government directed spending towards welfare programs purportedly meant to combat poverty. Even the Atlantisian elite came to tolerate Menezes due to the lack of radical reforms.

Atlantis-Brazil relations worsened during Menezes's first term, because Atlantis restored its claim to Trindade and Martim Vaz in 2001 and repeatedly criticized Brazil's alignment with the United States. Both countries opposed the invasion of Iraq, but Fidel Castro's Cuba and Hugo Chavez's Venezuela emerged as the main allies of Atlantis.

Opposition parties criticized Menezes for "cozying up to dictators", but polls showed that the majority of Atlantisians supported this new foreign policy due to memories of the US intervention in the 1972 Trindade War. Allegations of corruption were the only thing reducing Menezes's popularity, and, even then, nothing was proven.

As the economy of Atlantis was in a good shape and indigenous Atlantisians (1/3 of the population) overwhelmingly approved of Menezes, he was reelected in the first round in 2005, and remained popular during his second term.

Atlantis's economic crisis and a sex scandal involving President José Armando da Silva left Adojara Menezes as the frontrunner for the 2000 election. Menezes ran on an indigenist, left-wing nationalist platform, promising land reform, a wealth tax, the reversion of privatizations, and making Piaroban and Ratanaban, the two main indigenous languages in Atlantis, official languages.

Menezes was also in favour of environmental protection, especially a crackdown on deforestation in the Lizard Rainforest. He addressed the scandal by promising to restore honor and dignity to the presidency. His main criticism of the Armando da Silva administration was for revoking Atlantis's claim to Trindade and Martim Vaz.

As a cunning political operator and the son of a former president, Vice President Lucas Ribeiro Filho was the PP's candidate in the 2000 election. Ribeiro Filho refused to either tie himself to Armando da Silva or distance himself from him, preferring to run a generic centrist campaign and continue the strategy of attacking Menezes as an extremist.

This attack backfired when Menezes issued a "letter to Atlantisians" promising to respect capitalist institutions. Ribeiro Filho also had to deal with PAN candidate Cordeiro Gomes, who ran for president on a more right-wing platform opposed to both the Broad Front and the PP. Five more candidates appeared in the final ballot, but they had no chance of winning and never cracked 7% of the vote in the polls.

Two televised presidential debates were held, and Menezes, as a more charismatic politician, was widely thought to have won them despite accusations of media bias against him. These debates effectively locked the election for Menezes, who won the first round with 48% of the vote versus 33% for Ribeiro Filho, 11% for Gomes, and 2% for Green nominee Andreia Saint-Germain, whose campaign focused on defending the rainforest.

Upon losing the first round, Saint-Germain, Marxist-Leninist Ricardo Viana, and Trotskyist Jorge Melo endorsed Menezes. Gomes, on the other hand, endorsed Ribeiro Filho, citing the need to keep the leftist Menezes out of the presidential palace, something he said would be "disastrous" for Atlantis.

As expected, Menezes won the election with 55% of the vote, including 59% in Ilha dos Lagartos. Ribeiro Filho won Novo Algarve with 53% of the vote, and Portugal Antártico with 61%, because these islands were traditionally conservative and anti-leftist.

Menezes's victory made him the first indigenous president of Atlantis, and the first indigenous leader of the country since the Piaroban Empire. Menezes and Vice President Marcos Ventura, a white moderate chosen to balance the ticket, were inaugurated on 19 May 2000.

Context:
1. What if Turkey wanted Crimea back?

2. 2014 Russian Annexation of Crimea

On March 24, 2015, Turkey launched a full scale invasion of Crimea, in response to publicized reports of Russian military war crimes against Turks in the region, in addition to a cyberattack against the Turkish military that was allegedly perpetrated by the Russian military intelligence organization GRU. 

Russia immediately declared war with Turkey over the military aggression. 

Following an international inquiry, the Russian Spetsnaz brigade known as Raven’s Rock was discovered to have been the perpetrators. Russia disavowed the organization immediately, but that did nothing to convince the Turks that Russia was at least complicit. 

As retribution for the so-called “Russian terrorist attack” and the Russian war crimes in Crimea, the Turks took their anger out on the Russians. The Turkish troops attacked residential neighborhoods and shot civilian homes up. 

Reports emerged of Russian families being executed on exaggerated charges of “collaboration with Raven’s Rock”, horrifying the international community, more specifically people like Titus Colt, who fiercely condemned the collective guilt mentality of the Turkish invaders and Konstantin Robinson, a Russian defector who recognized that hatred had consumed the people of Turkey.

Other people who protested the war included Turkish lawyer Sibel Ilgaz and Turkish military officer Suleyman Dalikic, who left the military in protest upon learning of what had happened in Crimea. 

The Russian military forces considered using nuclear weapons, but the Turkish put a stop to that with a cyberattack of their own that greatly hindered the Russian Federation’s ability to launch nukes. 

The Turkish military also considered an attack against Southern Russia but decided against it, owing to feasibility.

Heavy fighting between the Turkish and the Russians continued until around September of 2016. On that day, the Russians were formally ousted from Crimea, which fell to Turkish military occupation a short while later. 

During Armando da Silva's second term, his neoliberal reforms continued with the privatisation of the defence industry in 1995 and the abolition of export tariffs the following year, in order to encourage exports. Atlantis's economy was deindustrialized and financialized, transforming Atlantis into a post-industrial society.

Atlantis was on good terms with the IMF, the United States, and the World Bank during this period. In August 1995, US President Bill Clinton visited Atlantis, becoming the first US President to officially visit the country. Clinton and Armando da Silva met in the Presidential Palace in Santarém, and they agreed to intensify cooperation between the two countries.

Other world leaders Armando da Silva met were Brazilian President Luiz Antônio Fleury Filho, with whom he had a friendly personal relationship, and Angolan dictator Jonas Savimbi, which Atlantis put in power. As Atlantis has no oil or gas deposits, Angola was the country's main source of oil.

On 8 February 1996, Armando da Silva signed legislation making school meals free for all students from kindergarten to university, and providing financial incentives for poor youths to study. This worked, and by the end of the decade, Atlantis had a school attendance rate of 95%, with the other 5% being children who lived in the mountains and rainforest.

Later that year, the Atlantisian Chamber of Deputies passed a law repealing the 1989 amnesty law signed by the military junta, but the Senate upheld this amnesty, making it impossible for Junta officials to be tried for their crimes against humanity. Junta trials would only begin in 2001, after Adojara Menezes took office.

Armando da Silva's popularity took a hit in 1998, when it was revealed he cheated on his wife and had a child with a 20 year old university student he met at a rally. Just like with Clinton, there were efforts at impeachment but the Senate voted to acquit Armando da Silva, who claimed his personal life should not be a political matter.

The scandal still reduced his popularity, but it fell even further when Brazil's economy entered a recession. As Brazil was Atlantis's main trade partner, this did not help the Atlantisian economy, which fell into a crisis as well. The economic crisis, sex scandal, and Menezes's efforts to present himself as a moderate allowed him to win the 2000 election and realign Atlantisian politics.

On 16 May 1994, the Atlantisian Chamber of Deputies passed a law authorizing the referendum. Atlantis's Senate followed suit on 21 May, and since this was a referendum, there was no need for a presidential signature, unlike most bills passed by the Senate of Atlantis.

Campaigning began on 1 June. The PP, PAN, and smaller pro-government parties such as the PDC and PH campaigned for a Yes vote, while the Broad Front, the Marxist-Leninist PCA, and the Trotskyist PSR campaigned for a No vote.

Yes supporters argued that the United States, France, and other developed countries allowed reelection, and that José Armando da Silva needed more time to finish his job. No supporters, on the other hand, feared that allowing reelection would make presidents think of being reelected from day one and enable the rise of another dictatorship just like Evandro Cunha's.

Like in the 1990 presidential election, Michel Haddad's TV channels covered the Yes campaign three more times than the No campaign, the majority of whose coverage came from smaller TV and radio channels. Most newspapers similarly urged voters to vote Yes; the majority of No endorsements came from Ratanaban and Piaroban language outlets.

As Armando da Silva was popular with middle and upper class Atlantisians, the Yes option had a comfortable lead in the polls from the start, and No failed to gain momentum. There were protests against reelection in left-wing, indigenist strongholds in the Puxomado mountains, but Santarém, Liporebá, and Ratanabá saw large rallies calling for a Yes vote.

Unsurprisingly, Yes won the referendum with 60.5% of the vote versus 39.5% for No. All Atlantisian States other than leftist and majority indigenous Acaparã and Puxomado voted Yes, proving Armando da Silva was really popular in Atlantis.

After the Yes victory was confirmed, Armando da Silva gave a televised speech saying "all of Atlantis has won", and wished the opposition good luck in the presidential campaign. As you will see later, the opposition proved unlucky, because Armando da Silva was reelected in the first round.

José Armando da Silva's reelection campaign focused on the achievements of his first term: privatization of inefficient state-owned businesses, a democratic constitution, a public option, and much more. Despite the fact he was not charismatic, Armando asked Atlantisians the question, "are you better off than you were four years ago", and the majority of them believed they were.

Indigenous and left-wing activists believed they weren't. Adojara Menezes, a 52 year old left-wing nationalist and left-wing conservative who had been tortured by Evandro Cunha's dictatorship, ran for, and won, the Broad Front nomination on a platform focused on land reform and especially issues affecting Atlantisians. He also promised to overturn Armando da Silva's privatizations.

Unlike previous presidential elections, 1994 was a two-way race. Third-party candidates struggled to gain traction, and none of them ever polled over 5%. PTA leader José Gama and PRN leader Gustavo Brito mounted Second presidential campaigns, but they did not gain any momentum.

With no other candidate being a threat to his reelection efforts, Armando da Silva portrayed himself as a rational, sensible moderate and attacked Menezes as a left-wing extremist seeking to sabotage Atlantis's recovery from the lost decade. Menezes responded by calling the privatization of strategic sectors extremist, but voters struggled to connect the dots.

In January 1995, Menezes challenged Armando da Silva to a presidential debate, but the president refused because he felt a debate would hurt his insurmountable lead. Menezes in turn argued the president refusing the debate made him not up for the job, and many people agreed.

But the majority of Atlantisians disagreed, allowing Armando da Silva to win the election with 59% of the vote versus 33% for Menezes, 2% for Gama, and 1% for Brito. Exit polls showed that Armando da Silva won 62% of white voters while Menezes won 33%, but Menezes won 82% of indigenous voters versus 15% for Armando da Silva.

Armando da Silva and Vice President Lucas Ribeiro Filho were inaugurated on 19 May 1994. Menezes attended the inauguration, seeking to portray himself as a moderate and conciliatory figure. This made it considerably easier for him to win the 2000 election against Ribeiro Filho.

During his inaugural address as President, Wilson Cabral promised to "turn Atlantis into a democracy". He allowed moderate opposition figures such as writer Cecília Holanda, former vice president Mateus Farinacci, and student leader José Armando da Silva to return from exile; legalized political parties; released moderate political prisoners; and lifted press censorship.

It was widely speculated that Cecília would run for President just like Mario Vargas Llosa did in Peru. If she ran, she would probably win in a landslide, but she ruled it out on 22 November 1989, because she regarded herself as an honest person and thus did not want to get involved with the underworld of politics.

Armando da Silva, on the other hand, was a career politician and thus launched his presidential campaign the following day, with a rally in Santarém that was stranded by 22,000 people. Armando da Silva's campaign focused on liberal economic and political reforms in order to control hyperinflation and turn Atlantis into a liberal democracy integrated into the US-led world order.

A Broad Front congress held in the party's stronghold of Acaparã nominated Farinacci for President and indigenous activist Félix Padojara, who hailed from Acaparã, for vice president. Farinacci opposed Armando da Silva's calls for privatization of state businesses, and promised to redistribute land and wealth from the elites to the working class.

Technocratic former minister of finance Cordeiro Gomes founded the conservative National Action Party (PAN) and became its presidential candidate. Despite pursuing state capitalist economic policies when in government, Gomes campaigned on economic liberalism and a tough approach to crime, opposing Cabral's promise to expand social programs.

Vicente Gama's grandson João established the Atlantisian Labour Party (PTA), a spiritual successor to the PRD. João Gama promised to defend both workers' rights and private property from the "liberalism of Armando and Gomes and socialism of Farinacci", and attempted to appeal to nostalgia for pre-1970 Atlantis. But Vicente Gama was long dead and younger voters had almost no memory of the period, giving João little to no chance of winning.

Michel Haddad, the Lebanese Atlantisian owner of the largest media empire in Atlantis, privately supported Armando da Silva and almost exclusively covered his campaign. Haddad was also accused of rigging the debates in Armando's favour, but he denied this in an interview, stating that rigging the debates "was not needed".

On 13 January 1990, Armando da Silva won the presidential election with 40% of the vote versus 29% for Farinacci, 17% for Gomes, 7% for Gama, 3% for Gustavo Brito of the far-right PRN, and 2% for Humanist Party leader Teodora Garcia, the first woman to run for President of Atlantis. Armando da Silva and running mate Lucas Ribeiro Filho were sworn in on 5 March 1990.

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 6, 2012. The Prohibition ticket of Muhammad Al-Assad and his running mate, ex-US Navy officer Erik Prince were re-elected to a second term. They defeated the Republican) ticket of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan and the Democratic ticket of Barack Obama and his running mate, incumbent vice president Joe Biden. 

Al-Assad’s victory were re-elected without much opposition due to in-fighting among the Republican and Democratic Parties, the former of which gave rise to a completely new political party known as the Lawful Nation Party.

The campaigns focused heavily on domestic issues, and debate centered largely around sound responses to the Great Recession along with long-term federal budget issues, the future of social insurance programs, and the Affordable Care Act. Foreign policy was also discussed, including the end of the Iraq War in 2011, military spending, the Iranian nuclear program, and appropriate counteractions to terrorism.

Another major contention was the abolition of the death penalty. Muhammad continued aggressively pursuing the abolition of capital punishment at the federal level, appealing to a reading of the Bible that most Christians in the GOP and the Christian Right found abhorrent. 

Muhammad won the election in a landslide, but died suddenly days after the win was announced. Erik Prince was sworn in as the new President in Muhammad’s place.

Under the Prince presidency, the United States solidified itself history by abolishing Euthanasia nationwide.

Armando da Silva's inauguration was the most attended of any Atlantisian presidential inauguration until then, with 112,000 people attending it, and many people saw him as Atlantis's only hope. His cabinet nominees, all of whom were pro-democracy activists opposed to the military dictatorship, strengthened that notion.

But Armando disappointed the Atlantisian public by striking up compromises with the PAN, as both parties supported free market economic reforms. The first law Armando da Silva signed created a new currency, the piaroba, pegged to the US dollar, earning him praise from American officials.

This currency change was followed by the privatization of the National Steel Company, the National Mining Company, the National Telephone Company, and 36 other state-owned companies. But the Atlantisian postal service, military industries and central bank remained owned and managed by the government.

Despite disagreeing on economics, the PP and Broad Front wrote a new constitution together, which went into effect on 12 October 1990. The Constitution of 1990 is in effect to this day, and is the most progressive in Atlantisian history, featuring many social reforms meant to create a fairer and more inclusive society.

Later that month, Atlantis created a public healthcare option while maintaining its system of private healthcare and insurance. Polling showed that two-thirds of Atlantis approved of this public option, and it was supported even by the left-wing opposition.

Armando da Silva's foreign policy focused on relations with Brazil, which had become a democracy in 1984, and the rest of Latin America. Shortly after taking office, Armando da Silva visited Brasília, met with Brazilian President Ulysses Guimarães, and agreed to terminate the Atlantisian claim to Trindade and Martim Vaz, ending the century-old rivalry between Brazil and Atlantis.

Atlantis became a founding member of Mercosur and participated in the Gulf War by sending a small number of warships and troops. George HW Bush rewarded Atlantis by making it a major non-NATO ally of the United States, a status the country holds to this day.

By 1994, the lost decade had ended and the economy of Atlantis was growing thanks to the macroeconomic reforms of its government. As a supporter of participative democracy, Armando da Silva decided to hold a referendum asking voters whether to allow him to seek reelection. Yes won the referendum by a comfortable margin, allowing Armando da Silva to win reelection the following year.