Repulse: Europe at War 2062-2064 Read Online Free Page A

campaign against Republican challenger Chuck Steele.  The most significant achievement of the first Coll administration had been the comprehensive coastal reinforcement program to protect at-risk littoral areas of the US against sea-level rise, which had reached its maximum extent, employing some two million workers.  In contrast, it was generally judged that the Republican campaign suffered from Steele’s funding by nano-pharma start-ups that were strongly implicated in the Z-T-Cell cancer treatment fiasco.
    On the day of Coll’s inauguration, The New York Times editorialised: ‘The President deservedly returns to a full desk.  Top of the pile is the delicate balancing act of managing relations with China and Russia.  On one hand, Coll knows she has to show resolve towards the Caliphate, but on the other China is likely to insist the rest of the world respects the Caliphate’s isolationist stance.  Coll needs to continue our military’s measured rearmaments program without antagonizing Beijing unduly.’
    By contrast, on the same day The Wall Street Journal prophesised, with surprising accuracy: ‘The American people spoke, and they will now see this once great country humbled even further.  Coll will undoubtedly continue to appease China as it carries on its expansion in Africa and maintains its support for the Persian Caliphate.  If that bastion of dictatorship truly is not lying, then Coll’s biggest foreign policy problem will be Russia.  But if the Caliphate is not the benign home of Muslims it’s been making out to be, then Coll could find events overtake the United States faster than she thinks possible.’
    Many ordinary Americans displayed ambivalence regarding international affairs.  Nancy Strickland, a thirty-two-year-old police officer in Kansas, wrote to a friend: ‘Sure am glad Maddy’s back for a second term, but what I wanna ask her is how building all those walls to keep the sea out for the next fifty years is gonna help us here, in the middle of a drought?  Pete [her partner] says the crops this year are gonna be the worse [sic] in the last ten years.’  Ms Strickland was far from alone: vast swaths of mid-western and southern states had for several years been suffering the lowest rainfall since records began.  In 2020, a mere 5.587% of the mainland United States was desert; by 2060, this figure had increased to 14.013%.
    It has bearing on the narrative of the war to mention these issues.  In addition to a range of domestic problems, President Coll found herself obliged to provide support to approximately two million American citizens who, unprompted, had travelled to numerous low-lying islands and regions around the world suffering inundation from rising sea levels to aid local populations.  At home, millions of US citizens laboured under entirely local concerns, while many more regarded rearmament against a supposed Caliphate threat with the utmost cynicism, a mere ploy by arms manufacturers to improve their financial situation in an economy which remained obstinately stagnant.
    In October 2061, British Prime Minister Napier visited Coll in Washington.  This would be their last meeting before the war.  Their briefing agenda reveals the order of priorities with interesting candour.  Rising sea levels and aid to low-lying countries took up a great deal of their time.  The UN’s waning influence in global affairs caused both women concern, as did Somalia’s forthcoming election, which promised a majority would vote to join the Caliphate.  Napier attempted to pressure Coll to intercede with a US corporation called NanoTech, which was about to sue the English government for lost profits when it adopted a law banning one of NanoTech’s nano-bot treatments for cancer sufferers.
    Napier’s aide, Crispin Webb, noted in his diary: ‘When they talked about the useless UN, the boss gave the President a history lesson.  She asked Coll if she’d heard of the League of Nations.  Coll