VOICE-OVER:
Geopolitics was
changed forever by the Move. While the surface topography of our
continents was largely preserved, wedges of foreign material were
introduced below the Mohorovicic discontinuity—below the crust—and
in the deep ocean floor, to act as spacers. The distances between
points separated by deep ocean were, of necessity, changed, and not
in our geopolitical favor. While the tactical balance of power
after the Move was much as it had been before, the great circle
flight paths our strategic missiles were designed for—over the
polar ice cap and down into the communist empire—were distorted and
stretched, placing the enemy targets outside their range.
Meanwhile, although our manned bombers could still reach Moscow
with in-flight refueling, the changed map would have forced them to
traverse thousands of miles of hostile airspace en route. The Move
rendered most of our strategic preparations useless. If the British
had been willing to stand firm, we might have prevailed—but in
retrospect, what went for us also went for the Soviets, and it is
hard to condemn the British for being unwilling to take the full
force of the inevitable Soviet bombardment alone.
In retrospect the
only reason this was not a complete disaster for us is that the
Soviets were caught in the same disarray as ourselves. But the
specter of Communism now dominates Western Europe: the supposedly
independent nations of the European Union are as much in thrall to
Moscow as the client states of the Warsaw Pact. Only the ongoing
British State of Emergency offers us any residual geopolitical
traction on the red continent, and in the long term we must
anticipate that the British, too, will be driven to reach an
accommodation with the Soviet Union.