Updating Pournelle's CoDominium: SinoIndian CoDo Ascendent Scenario

My post 4000 was a reimagining of Pournelle's classic scenario of the CoDominium.  The original scenario was the United States and Soviet Union would unite to control the world to deal with the problem with convergence.  There is no Soviet Union anymore.  We don't have the Alderson Drive, we don't have fusion and we have not developed space nearly as much as the authors originally thought we would by now.  Economic convergence has more than happened.  Things are rather different than the original scenario.

That opened things up for a different scenario altogether.  I outlined my conjectural scenario in the post.  China and Indian come together to produce an alternate CoDominium.  The proximate cause being the Republic of India and People's Republic of China had greatly outdistanced the rest of the world economically and with the technological revolution that was getting underway their great advantage, population, was going to be made less relevant.  To suppress these breakthroughs, China and India came together to suppress the resurgence of the United States, Europe, Japan and possibly others.

However, Noel challenged me on this scenario: how, he asked, would the US fall from grace as the world's hyperpower to the distance second class power, albeit one undergoing a resurgence that forces the top two powers into CoDominium.  Let's explain that, shall we?  What are the causes for the relatively rapid American decline?

Political Sclerosis:  

In this scenario the US undergoes another three more presidential cycles of political deadlock. This is mixed with the continued issues with the US being unable to undertake large projects without massive delays, cost overruns and ineptitude.  This won't last forever.  However it will be enough to stunt growth with the decaying infrastructure and lack of general progress.  There are areas of glory and aptitude, but they are the few shining stars in the sea of bleakness.  Let's dice roll it and state we are at a reduced GDP growth by a half percent per year by itself.  The lack of infrastructure improvement or even replacement reduces the growth by a half percent.  Already, we're a 'mature economy' and have taken it in the shorts by being reduced to a range of between 0 and 2.

The World Changed

I don't mean the human world, sociological or economic or political.  I mean the physical world.  Global Warming is set to whack us but good.  The whole world, really, but it hurt the US more because of our political ossification.  We're assuming the Neo Oligocene here: warmer and drier and the midwest's productivity nosedives and the California central valley is toast.  LA became Detroit on a broad canvas (no water).  Eastern Texas, inland, the Great Lakes States regained population.  The population of the mid Atlantic and north states increased, but often inland. 

India Ignites

I'm positing India's economy starts growing double digits at the start of the 2020s like China has.  India surpasses the US around 2030 to 2035.

China Recovers and Continues

China's economy grows gangbusters in the double digit range again around the same time frame. 

Economics Continue to Favour Large Populations...through the 2040s.

The robopocalypse doesn't happen at least until the 2040s.  The more workers, in manufacturing and innovation, etc. you have the better so long as they are educated.  Double check for India and China.  Both will have populations far larger than the US.

Sum:

The economies of China and India grow gangbusters and get ahead through the 2040s.  Between them, they have economies 5x to 6x the American one.  They are the power houses.  We are not.  We're Britain at best, or Russia.  Sorta.

So Why Form the CoDominium?

You just can't keep a good Yanqi down. 

The economics shift out of favour for India and China.  Three major events.  An American led, but Japanese and European supported Robopocalypse.  The US develops a real fusion drive and then the Alderson Drive.  When the US started to get out of the funk in the late 2030s, after decades of decay, besides seeking ways to improve its economy, it trotted out some of its past glories to reprise and surpass.  Space was one.  

The Chinese and Indians were ahead, to be sure, and that's one reason the Americans were humored at first and even congratulated.  There was a Chinese Moon base.  Ditto for the Indians.  At different edges of the Shackleton Crater.  The Indians and Chinese even captured asteroids, though not for economic reasons: it didn't pay.  The Americans pushed on.  the watershed moment being when the US landed on Mars...in 2047.  Using a fusion drive to get there.  It was pathetic compared to the original CoDo scenario drives (topped out at .1 g and "only" had enough fuel for 25 hours of thrusting), but it got people to Mars in a couple weeks.  And back when the planets aligned right.   China and India caught up and landed in 2048 and 2049 respectively.  Even so, this was...very troubling.

When the US economy growth jumped from the anemic 1 or 2 percent to 3 or 4 percent in from 3032 to 3040 and then really jumped to 5 to 6 percent in 3040 to 3048 with it seemingly going to jump again in the coming years, this brought together India and China.  The world was far from being US dominated, but the structural reform needed to adopt the American, European and Japanese technologies was going to be problematic.  At this point, there was talk of the Americans returning to an ascendant position.  Population size?  Piffle.  Dynamism matters!  The Indian and Chinese politicians knew something had to be done and they began to meet.

It was a theoretical paper published by Caltech in which tipped the balance.  Esp when the US president impulsively and promptly built a probe and dispatched it on a 2nd generation fusion rocket to the potential jump point, it accelerated away at 1/4 g and reached the jump point in about six months.  The countdown took place and...poof.  The probe disappeared.  It didn't come back, but vanishing in a flash of light ...

Add in the Americans prepping another expedition.  Their radically growing economy.  The Japanese building their own moon base (national pride!) and the Europeans deciding they made a bad Holy Roman Empire, but a better Federal Union...The Chinese and Indians pulled together to say ixnay on anymore.

The Chinese and Indians declared CoDominium.  No more!  The Indonesians, Russians and the Nigerians joined as junior partners.  The Americans scrambled.  They spit out a dozen ships and away they went to the Alderson Point: manned and large and ...armed  After all, only the Americans could build something that fast, in a year!  (name the dumb movie)

It was WWIII.  No nukes flew.  The attempt to shoot down the ships failed, but few missiles or bombs were used on earth: they were mostly EM weapons, but the deathtoll was still horrific.  Cyberweaponry wrecked havoc.  In the end, China and India prevailed.  And suppressed. No AIs.  No enhancements. No change.  Or minimal possible.  The status quo was not to be disturbed.

They built the Fleet.  And the CoDo Marines.  Conjured from the one military still in excellent shape, with good ties to India and China: Israel.

In time, they would compromise.  There would be Americans in interstellar space.  Even those which didn't travel with the never caught Fugitive Fleet.  They would rule the world for over a century.  It would end in old fashion nuclear fire.  Aluf Lomann's efforts, the feats of Alam Cyrus Zagrosi and Zagrosi's Immortals, and the world of Dual Monarchy of Shiva and its Crown Prince Rama...from them and those would come the Empire of Man.

As for the Fugitive Fleet on Yudkowsky.  They would be discovered by the Empire and peacefully absorbed.  They would even contribute to the Empire.  For a time.  Through accurate knowledge comes power, so the natives of Yudkowsky would say: other wise # in # out.  And the members of the Empire would say no problem could ever survive contact with a Yudkowskian.


Reimagineer's notes:  I don't really buy it.  I guess I am too much of a nationalist at heart.  Its fun to play here, but don't make the mistake of thinking I swallow this whatsoever.  I actually think the US has been through the squeeze and we're about to come out the other side...with a whole of new techniques, tech, and ideas which will revolutionize the world.  In our favour.  You see, its the dynamism that matters in the end and there's none like us. 

Updating Pournelle's CoDominium: the SinoIndian CoDo's Flag

Not super happy with the result.  I'm just learning GIMP and used this as a training wheels exercise. The imagined concept was better than the execution.  There's no sickle and hammer or American Eagle to use here.  The iconic bits are the Ashoka Chakra for India and the yellow stars for China. The Chinese and Indian colors more than clash though,  Yuck.

I tried this as an alternative.  Not much difference.

Suggestions?

Post 4000: Updating Pournelle's CoDominium

Pondering Post 4000

This is not the original post that I intended for post 4000.

Originally, I wanted the next Xenopermain post to take that slot.  However, a few things have dissuaded me.  First off, the post is still too rough around the edges.  It needs a lot more work before its ready.  I've decided to shift bits here and there and make chagnes as well as clean it up.  So, Xenopermian is out.

I went back and saw that my 2000th entry was an argument for the annexation of Mexico.  So, it struck me as something off the wall was needed.  I am too busy to write something with a serious political bent; though, I did consider it.  Then, I thought, why not write about something that is easier and fun.  Something I've kicked around with friends a few times.  Something that could be thought provoking as well as twitting just the right folks.  Like last time.  When I reviewed Through Struggle, The Stars, I referenced the Pournelleverse, in passing.  Then it occured to me.  A whackadilly post that could be fun and fill the 4000 requirement.

So!

Let's look at the Jerry Pournelle CoDominium and see if we might update it and address some of the things that now look a bit...dated.  To put it politely.

A Bit of Background:

The idea of the Codominium seems to have hit print, or at least become most commonly known, through Pournelle and Niven's The Mote in God's Eye, but there were a couple short stories set in the timeline released earlier.  The basic idea was that the United States and the Soviet Union formed an alliance and dominate the world together rather than competing with the other states that were going through convergence with the USA and USSR (at that point largely recovering from the effects of WWII).  Other bits that were included in the basic background were that the world had developed space travel to a significant degree, developed faster than light travel (alderson drive) and that technological research was quashed for the purposes of maintaining the status quo. 

A lot of this is dated.  Badly.  What has to be shelved, dumped and redone?

The Changes to the Geopolitics Leading to the CoDo

The obvious off the top is the extinction of the Soviet Union.  Its a little hard to build the CoDo with a nation no longer in existence.  The primary successor, Russia, to the Soviet Union is not one of the two top nations in the world no matter how you cut it.  It is also not projected to rise above the top of the pack in the next 40+ years.  That means we need to find at least one replacement for the duo to put the Co in CoDo.

The is an obvious answer to that: China.  China is now the second ranked country in terms of, well, virtually everything.  Its slated to become the #1 country some time between 2030 and 2050 (on the outside).  It may even happen sooner.  There's one of the two partners.  The question is whether or not we believe that the US is likely to be the other.

Most likely, the answer is, yes, the United States would be one of the two partners in a CoDo circa 2030 to 2050, at least.  However, there is another possibility that is fun and interesting.  What-if the US is surpassed as the second power.  Or What-if, the US so alienates an up and coming power that they might ally with the Chinese (this is far fetched to the point of unrealistic, but the whole Codo scenario is one that is just that anyways...)

India.  Yep.

Why would they form a CoDo?  The same reason that Pournelle  suggested.  This would mean that other parts of the world were converging with the power of India and China.  If you did this right, it might mean a 'reconvergence' of the US, Japan and EU with their power and economic clout: possibly Nigeria and Brazil or even Russia.  This could be the rise (finally) of technologies that decouple population size with productivity.  Automated factories, frex.

What would an Sino-Indian CoDo look like? Some obvious things is that there's no St Ekaterina.  Another likewise is that Sparta s not the capitol of any Empire follow-on.  The mythology that would follow would be rather different.  When and if they were to encounter the Moties, it'd be under a rather different paradigm than a resurrected 19th century empire.

Warfare of the Sino-Indian CoDo.

Like in the original Pournellean Soviet-American CoDo, neither side would trust the other to have the military.  The question now becomes who do we model the CoDo marines after?  The originals were based on the French Foreign Legion.  That's possible, still, but seems moderately unlikely.  Things have changed since the 1970s and Europe has come into its own as the Holy Roman Empire resurrected.  Neither would probably want the United States as the basis of the military (though my nationalist vanity does want to make that leap here).  Its not likely to be European whatsoever and Japan is 100% certainly out.  If its not the EU and its not the US, who could China and India settle on that would work at least moderately well?  If you are projecting into 2030 to 2050 for the creation of the CoDo?

If you had to pick a nation to base the CoDo military forces on, that pick would have to be based on the fact that the warfare of our updated CoDo is not what the CoDo of original Pournelleverse was like.  He posited ground warfare closer to that of pre-WWI for all but the most major engagements.  That is not what we'd have if we had our jumping off point between 2030 to 2050.  Rather we're likely to see war based on drones and special forces.  Not mass armies, although those may still exist and be of use.  That would leave one of two nations, if the EU and US are excluded: either Russia or Israel.

Russia has a proud tradition with the Spetnaz.  If they could catch up sufficiently technology wise - they are very far behind now - then they are not a bad choice: China and India could work with them.  Lermontov might still be an important name in the updated CoDo-verse.

On the other hand, Israel has a special forces tradition and the tech for dealing with drones and more.  They are a force that would be of use in a significant way.  Neither side would have concerns about Israel leading a military coup against the other.  You're looking at several orders of magnitude difference in people and the Defense Forces have quite the ability.  They also have ties with both militaries.

An Israeli based CoDo military would be...interesting.

As noted, SpecOps, CyberOps and drones will dominate.  Remotely operated machines, powered armor, and...yes, given the setting the CoDo space navy, aka The Fleet.

Space Development, Exploration and the Fleet in the Sino-Indian CoDo

In the original Pournellean timeline, Caltech developed the Alderson drive between 2004 and 2008.   In 2008, the first exploratory ships leave the solar system.  The ships use a fusion drive.  Obviously, this is not happening now.  We have hardly sent manned spacecraft outside the solar system nor have we developed an FTL drive.

So, obviously, this needs to be updated.

There's no issue with Caltech developing the drive still, but its as likely to be John Hopkins or MIT or Stanford or Berkeley or even someone at CERN discovering it rather than the JP/N bias to SoCal.  It might even be one of the Chinese, Japanese or Indian universities.  The Chinese have been working on entanglement and you could even handwave an update to the Alderson Drive that matches this.  Spooky action at a distance being the key to the existence of the Alderson Drive...or whatever Chinese name would be attached.  For geopolitical reasons, it'd be better if it was either the US or EU that developed it...and that might be part of the reason that the Sino-Indian CoDo developed.  We could keep the name Alderson for that reason.

Given that the Alderson Drive is really, really unfriendly to computers, people are going to necessary.  That would mean a massive expansion past the ISS.  I can say in 40 years, its possible to have the presence in space to support the idea of the Fleet and whatnot, but it will be tough.  We've learned just how hard it is to get off world and only some sort of ideological reason will do, rather than economic.  Two rising powers overtaking the former leader would probably do and then they attempt to outdo one another would be best.

The second problem with the Fleet is that we STILL do not have anything like a fusion drive that is used in the CoDo universe.  The NIF has failed to produce inertial confinement fusion and probably lacks the power to do so.  This means that we would need to have a breakthrough here in a big way.  Even if we do, we're likely to see accelerations and whatnot that fit more with those shown in Through Struggle, The Stars, than those shown off in the Pournelleverse for a SinoIndian CoDo.  However, the use of antimatter would be questionable, to me at least.

The third bit that is radically different from the original CoDo setting is that we are discovering exoplanets at a rate that is amazing, even has someone that has dabbled in that 20 years ago.  We're highly likely to have the habitable worlds IDed prior to the formation of the SinoIndian CoDo.  The largest that the CoDo was supposed to be was ~200 light years across.  By 2050, we're likely to have found all the planets within that sphere and very likely we will have found all the habitable worlds. 

There are 15,000 worlds within 100 ly.  If there is even 1% with habitable worlds, the SinoIndian CoDo is likely to have 150 worlds that it could settle.  Assuming that they are all reachable.

Demise of the SinoIndian CoDo

The CoDo in the Pournelleverse tore itself apart.  The Soviets and the Americans, even though they had become so much like each other, hated one another.  The extremism we have in Congress with nuclear weapons.  That could happen here, too.

Personally, it feels more likely that the other powers would revolt.  At some point, the burden of India and China running the world and known space absolutely would become too much.  The Americans, Brazillians, Europeans and Japanese (perhaps Nigerians and Indonesians) are going to chafe at the limitations.  Even one of them throwing in shoes to the gears of everything could set off a conflagration. 

If we give this new CoDo a 100 year lifespan like the original, then we're seeing everything go up in flames around 2150 +/-.  Earth gets bombarded into oblivion, nuclear and otherwise, and the Fleet has an exodus.

Where the fleet settles...IDK.  An Indian constitutional monarchical world?    Attempting to fit into the original theme here.  Half going to New Beijing?  Or some such.

Far Flung into the Future

Assuming that you attempted to keep even remotely to the timeline, even if changed for the future, there's one more thing.  Supersoldiers that the Saurons produced as their ideal made sense at the time that Pournelle and Niven wrote their book: it was 30 years after WWII and the super race nonsense that the Nazis espoused.  That resonated with the readership.  This.  Was.  Evil.  These days, as noted in Through Struggle, The Stars, everyone is likely to get gene upgrades in the future, just like we get dental work done.  Superhuman?  Perhaps, but not by the comparison between their peers.  What sort of nemesis could be something that would bring down the Empire?

I would suggest naming the world of the nemesis 'Blight,' 'Vinge,' 'Kurzweil,' or 'Stross,' to be honest. That traitorous villain ought to be blatant and apparent.  And amusing.  One starship escapes the empire crashing war to...a system with a habitable Moon?

And the folks that the Moties meet...well...they are not named Roderick or Sally, let's just say and I'd be more worried about the Moties than Humanity.

Wrapping Up and Summing Up.

There ought to more to go in and play with to update.  However, I'm out of time.  We have a SinoIndian CoDominium with a starship fleet with a CoDo Marine Corps derived from the Israelis.  All because the Soviet Union fell and the US didn't find an FTL before losing its hyperpowerhood.  Tsk.

I hope you enjoyed post 4k and I at least got this bug out of my head.  Back to regular blogging.  And the XenoPermian.