Had he been preaching a message of peace and not of violent overthrow of governments, Mohammed’s plea to turn to Islam might have worked on many more people. As it was, most European and Western powers (as well as China) saw his message as nothing more than a direct threat to their own power and their nation’s way of life. Slowly and steadily, the world powers were heading on a collision course due to religious differences and conflicts over how to manage what resources of the world remained.
During the height of the crisis, Mohammed’s message of radical Islam led to the overthrow of the King of Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq. Throughout this turmoil Saudi Arabia fomented hatred and infighting against Shia Islam and began to unite these countries under a new country and banner, the Islamic Republic (IR). After the formation of the IR, several other countries (Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Indonesia) were quick to align themselves with this new coalition of nations. The unification of these countries would allow them to pool their collective resources to survive the Global Depression and emerge a much stronger country.
The de Blasio administration was caught completely off guard by this turn of events, and to the dismay of America’s remaining allies in the Middle East (Kuwait, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Turkey) he ordered the withdrawal and repositioning of the US 5th Fleet to Eilat, Israel. With the economic conditions in the US on the brink of disaster, the administration did not feel America should continue to protect the Middle East (or the rest of the world) and began a series of military withdrawals, leaving a power vacuum in a number of global hotspots.
Although not every country was ready to submit to the leadership of radical Islam, the entire world was feeling the pinch of the Global Depression. By spring of 2027, tensions between nations over livestock and agriculture were commonplace. On the border of Russia, the provinces of the South Caucuses were growing more and more disconnected with Moscow; the citizens of that region were practically being forced into slave labor to grow food for the greater Russian Federation while being allowed to keep very little for their own use. With every bead of sweat that ran down their foreheads while tilling heavy soil on an empty stomach, the farmers were growing a hatred for Moscow. This anger burned, becoming the only fuel that would awaken them in the mornings. Alliances were shifting.
During that spring, a Russian convoy of vehicles that was transporting food was ambushed near the border of Kazakhstan; the drivers and other support staff were mangled and left to die on the side of the road. At first this was treated like an isolated incident. Hunger had certainly caused an increase in violence across the globe. However, over the next couple of months it became clear that this attack was not the act of a rogue group of thieves. Insurgent forces from Kazakhstan and the South Caucuses began to regularly interdict food supplies on their way to Southern Russia and reroute them to their own nation and people. Perhaps they were a little careless in drawing attention to themselves; however, when the same groups began to siphon off larger and larger portions of Caspian Sea oil for their own use, Moscow began to get more heavily involved.
After this supreme miscalculation of the risk, the insurgent rebels would not have such an easy time. The Russian government produced a military show of force that would cause James Bond to tremble. The political dissidents that were caught were tortured and publicly humiliated, using primetime news coverage to increase the “shock and awe” factor; an example had to be made. Russia (like the rest of the world) was struggling to feed its people, so having a couple of provinces revolting and not producing food was something they simply could not tolerate.
Unfortunately for the Russians, the strong response was the wrong play on their part. Their actions spurned even more anger, and pretty soon the situation began to spiral out of control until the entire southern half of Russia was in a full blown revolt against the government. Within a month, no trucks could transport food from the South Caucuses or near Kazakhstan to Russia without being robbed. As food supplies were further disrupted and the one resource that was producing income for the government — oil — continued to be interrupted, the government crackdown became even more severe and urgent.
The winter of 2030 came with a blistering, brutal chill that had not been seen in decades. For seventy plus years, environmentalists claimed world temperatures were increasing, until the 2030s, when it became clear the world was going to be facing a period of global cooling, not associated with carbon emissions. Artic vortexes from the North Pole were becoming common place across North America, bringing sub-zero temperatures and blizzards that were striking remarkably far south; people in Florida were caught completely off guard by the first serious snow they had ever seen. Around the globe, there were fuel shortages and food was in short supply. The frost and ice killed crops with a vengeance, but didn’t hesitate to kill the old, weak or sick of the human kind as well. The global cooling was also effecting the rest of the world, causing a decline in global food production and further extending the global famine.
Russia was beginning to splinter as a nation; more and more provinces were revolting against the central government. Europe was struggling with the massive influx of refugees fleeing Eastern Europe and Africa, all looking for food, safety and shelter. The European Union was beginning to buckle under the strain of both the human and economic suffering. The leaders of the EU shut down the borders with military troops, closing all entry into the EU and turning people away by the hundreds of thousands.
America was fairing no better. The harsh winter had hit the northeast the hardest; tens of thousands of people were being reported dead, frozen to death in their homes because of fuel shortages and inability to afford purchasing what little heating oil was available. Those people that could afford it had to contend with rationing, as well as desperate citizens knocking on their doors begging to be let in. People were beginning to lose their patience with the government and their leaders.
It was during this time of despair and struggle that a new political party was formed in the United States. Its leader was a businessman from Florida named Henry Stein. He christened the new group the Freedom Party (FP) and, in 2030, won the governor’s race as a third party, which drew more attention to the FP. Like most people during this turbulent era, he had lost faith in the political parties of America; therefore, he decided to form his own party as a means of trying to save the once great nation of the United States of America and leave behind the political parties of old.
Henry Stein had served in the U.S. military and fought in the second Iraq War in the mid-2000s; afterwards he became a successful businessman and self-made billionaire. Stein, like most Americans, had become disenfranchised by both parties and the level of corruption that seemed all too rampant in both factions, especially since the Global Depression had begun.
The Freedom Party began as a local political party in Florida, but by the summer of 2032, it had spread throughout Florida and was rapidly expanding across the United States. Over ten million Americans had died from starvation and lack of basic services since the start of the Global Depression. Voters had become so distraught by the warring political parties and the state of the US economy that they began to look for anything, anyone, that could provide them with hope for some kind of better future.
Henry Stein’s group started out as a small state-wide political party in Florida, funded mostly out of his own money. However, with a leader promising measurable change and a country that was rife with political discontent, the group soon turned into a nationwide movement. People wanted strong leadership; they wanted a leader who could turn things around and wasn’t beholden to various political lobbyists and interest groups. While Stein may have had an unassuming appearance on the outside, he was a genius entrepreneur, and he had something that no one else really had at that time — a legitimate plan to restart the economy and the country.