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Dispatch → Factbook → History
The Years o' Leid [WIP]
"Today we bring you a heartwarming report here on the Public Broadcasting Trade, eighteen-hundred-hour news. Over the course of the past two days, with a detachment of tanks and jeeps, rebels in the Brazilian Armed Forces have steamrolled bravely across Brasília, overthrowing the government of the traitorous President Goulart, away visiting Russia. This marks the beginning of the revolution in South America's biggest country, with the National Congress declaring a vacancy of the presidency today, the 2nd of April. The patriotic military leaders are to enter power soon."Here at PBT, we ask: which country's armed forces will next liberate its people from the corrupt, red scumbags? Well, Ernie, what do you think?
"I sure hope it's Argentina! (audience laughs) In all seriousness..."
Preface
The ashes of the II Great European War's end created a new horizon for the Americas. While in Asia the spectre of communism ran rampantly free, and Europe, led by Russia and Germany, saw a mass expansion of its already large industrial prowess and social democratic reforms, the Americas stood out in a path of liberty and brotherhood, led by the United States. Already under President Hume, a new framework had been developed: the Freedom Doctrine. Against communism, those down south would need to mind their Uncle Sam but work together in an effort to rid the continent of the ideology ─ at least in theory.
President John Alexander Hume was an out-of-the-box-thinking man. He was an American nobleman, son of the Hume Landmen of Greenmount, which had as a family chiefed the state since their arrival from Scotland in the 1820s. The Humes had indeed long had a knack for furthering their own interests, growing rich in the Highlands after the Catholic exodus and then moving to America. President Hume was educated in the free market ideals of Adam Smith and indeed the Freedom Doctrine was a result of careful observation of economics worldwide, and sought to find a way to both please leaders on the continent and prevent peasants' revolts.


But Hume also recognised that the Doctrine would not work under the leadership of the elites that ruled countries south of the United States. It was necessary in the strongman's view that a strongman be given the reins to prevent communism and as such starting in 1943 American intelligence readied itself for an upheaval of democracy, all in the name of freedom. Propaganda and convincing the urban middle class would be the easy part ─ after all, Hume had already entered the White House doing this, and the Federal Chair of Investigation (FCI) and newly created Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), created after the war to focus on this new task, had plenty of men trained in creating anti-fascist propaganda during the conflict.
There would be, of course, the big prizes to go after, and the smaller ones. There were, of course, countries more at risk or more prepared for a putsch that would go first, but the desired effect was all the same: to lull gullible governments into a false trust and stab them in the back, with the Generals and Marshals doing the dirty work and the only traceable American involvement a smile from the mysterious figure always hanging near the generals, or in the trade unions. President Hume would remark in a meeting with the new CIA director, Myles Thornbridge, that the world had already been moved too leftward by the Great Depression.
The Foundations
Saint Paul was, finally, at peace. Fathers could work to earn their dues, and mothers could feed their children with their husband's salary. This was thanks to Lord Osbert Mackenzie, despite his noble birth a revolutionary figure in the Pauline Labour and left-wing movement, who had enacted some of the most far-reaching and left-wing policies on the continent. Even his opponents could not deny the fact that the political violence, at a crisis point just awaiting the final nail in the coffin mere years ago, had subsided because the factory workers no longer were hungry and no longer were angry. But, on the continent, there was a nation far from happy.
China had been quietly growing its economy during the II Great War while Europe fought. As the world's largest communist nation, it was essential to pose a real threat to the United States, capitalism's emerging giant. Its attention was focused on India, a neighbour and potential power embroiled in a civil war and on the precipice of socialism, but it also paid attention to potential allies worldwide, and in South America networks focused on agreements with only a few countries: Saint Paul was one of them. The CIA knew this, and Hume worried that if even one country was allowed to fall, as Chile briefly did in 1932, it would be a slippery slope for the rest of the continent.
But as Mackenzie was re-elected as Saint Paul's most popular leader in its brief democratic history, Hume reached his eight years in power, and the precedent set by General Washington, and one the learned man scrambled to respect, was to step aside. The country had grown fatigued by Unionist rule, and the Liberals ascended to power. As they themselves turned in a more left-wing direction, socialists and social democrats in the Americas grew more relieved, lulled into a false sense of comfort that the rumours of the CIA planning to topple regimes were put to rest. But despite Liberal politics, the new President, Joachim Barrow, continued to approve of the CIA's blueprint.
Under a new sense of comfort, Pauline ministers grew confident to try and find new alliances, visiting new countries, such as Khoikhoia, Mexico, and most important of all, China. When Mackenzie's Secretary of the Exterior, Brian Pentland, touched down in Beijing to discuss agrarian reform, the CIA panicked ─ it was clear that it was a priority to talk to the Pauline generals. Because most of all they feared the slippery slope, and a reasonably populated and not too economically weak or poor nation going the socialist route first would be a disaster. With President Barrow's full support, inroads into the Pauline Armed Forces would be made.