"Richard A." - читать интересную книгу автора (Lupoff Richard A)

from
an Atlantic to a Pacific orientation.
The new powers to contend with were Japan, China, Soviet Asia.
Western Europe and the eastern United States lapsed into terminal
decadence as loci of civilization. Europe from the Danube to the Urals
passed from Habsburg and Romanoff glitter to a brief democratic flicker
to
a drab gray dusk as Soviet Europe and then into Slavic night. Like its
predecessor of fifteen centuries, the Soviet Empire split in half; like
the western half of the predecessor, the Western Soviet Empire was
overrun
by barbarians. But it did not fall to the barbarians. Not really. It
fell
to its own internal rot. And like the eastern half of the predecessor,
the
Eastern Soviet Empire throve.
By the hundredth anniversary of that death in the Jane Brown Memorial
Hospital, the land mass of the Earth eastward from the Urals to the
Rockies came under unified government. It included dozens of
half-forgotten countries. Tibet. Afghanistan. India. Laos. Australia.
Tonga. The Philippines. Manchuria. Mongolia. California. Baja.
It was called the Asia-Pacific Co-prosperity Sphere.
Europe from the Urals to the English Channel became a peninsula of
forests
and farms. What small vigor remained was concentrated in the region
from
the Danube to the Urals. Slavic influence, walled off in the East by
the
great and burgeoning Asian renaissance, spread northward and westward.
After a pause at the limits of a region running from the Scandinavian
Peninsula to the Iberian, the Slavic Empire launched its rude invasion
fleet. It crossed the English Channel. There was little resistance. The
few defenders of British sovereignty, under the leadership of a fellow
called Harald, were defeated at a place called Runnymede.
The next westward hop was to America. It took the Slavs a while to
prepare
themselves for that. But when they made their move they were greeted
with
flowers and flags. They did not have to conquer. They had only to
occupy
 and administer.
The third power of the world in this time took form to the south of the
Slavic domain. Arab leaders, glutted with petrobux, bought arms and
hired
mercenaries. Governments could not achieve unity but a shadowy group
known
by the cryptic name of opec did. The governments as such withered. The
shadowy opec exercised more and more power. It did so more and more
openly.
Slowly the influence of opec spread westward and southward until all of