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Rachel Harmon is a Professor at University of Virginia Law School, and an expert on policing. Here is the audio and transcript, and here is part of the CWT summary:
She joined Tyler to discuss the best ideas for improving policing, including why good data on policing is so hard to come by, why body cams are not a panacea, the benefits and costs of consolidating police departments, why more female cops won’t necessarily reduce the use of force, how federal programs can sometimes misfire, where changing police selection criteria would and wouldn’t help, whether some policing could be replaced by social workers, the sobering frequency of sexual assaults by police, how a national accreditation system might improve police conduct, what reformers can learn from Camden and elsewhere, and more. They close by discussing the future of law schools, what she learned clerking under Guido Calabresi and Stephen Breyer, why she’s drawn to kickboxing and triathlons, and what two things she looks for in a young legal scholar.
And here is one bit:
COWEN: Should we impose higher educational standards on police forces?
HARMON: There’s mixed evidence on that. Slightly older police officers tend to be better in certain respects, at least, and education is often associated with age. But, again, I don’t think that we can select our way out of problems in policing.
COWEN: But why can’t we? Because different individuals — they behave so differently. They think so differently. Why is it that there’s no change in selection criteria that would get the police to be more the way we want them to be, whatever that might be?
HARMON: I think we could do some things. We could screen out people who have committed misconduct in the past, for example, by decertifying them at the state level and therefore discouraging departments that can’t or don’t care very much about quality of their officers from hiring those officers.
It’s not that we can’t select against problems in policing at all. Sometimes we know that an officer’s problematic, and still he’ll wander around from department to department. I think we should set minimum age standards that are above 18, which many states have as a minimum age standard.
But in terms of education or other more subtle factors, I think the effects can often be subtle, and when we look at what creates problems in policing, departments create officers. The officers don’t preexist a department, really, so what you’re really looking at is the culture of the department, the incentive structures, the supervision, discipline. You can make good officers with imperfect people.
Recommended, interesting throughout, and yes we discuss San Francisco and Singapore too.
The post My Conversation with Rachel Harmon appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

On the morning of December 25th 1946, people all across the USAO were greeted to the one gift everyone wanted for Christmas.
Oliver Drax had been captured. London had fallen. The remaining British high command had opened channels for an immediate unconditional surrender. World War III was finally over. Children were finally going to have their fathers come home. Wives, sisters, girlfriends and mothers who had toiled in the factories to keep the men they cared for armed and able to fight for their country, were now safe. Their job was done. The nation celebrated. New York, Chicago, Toronto, Tijuana, Mexico City, Havana, Managua, Bogota, Caracas, Lima, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Rio De Janeiro, Sydney, Perth, Manilla, Honolulu, Shanghai – all of these cities were abuzz with patriotic festivities, as well as holiday cheer. All over the world, in fact, there were celebrations. Even in parts of the world that had remained neutral – across Europe, Russia, Africa and the Middle East, the flags of the USAO, Republic of Japan and Azad Hind were flown in celebration of the PRA’s hard-won victory.
For six years, the USAO had poured its blood, sweat and tears into toppling its oldest rival and cleansing the world of fascism. Fought long and hard, on every continent. On foreign and domestic soil alike. Faced numerically superior foes who wielded the foulest weapons ever concocted. Millions had served, and millions had died. But for those who never saw home again, their deaths had been vindicated.
The four men responsible for capturing Drax were each awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor – the highest military honor in the United States Armed Forces. They also received awards from several other countries, including the Order of the Golden Kite (from Japan), the Legion of Honor (from France; the Empress herself bestowed them upon the four men, in defiance of the National Action Party), the Iron Cross (from Germany), the Gold Medal of Military Valour (from Italy) and the Order of St. George (from Russia). In 1952, statues of each of them were erected in Washington Square Park, in their hometown of New York City, as part of a larger memorial dedicated to the fighting men of the Blue Battalion; the statues were made out of metal that was forged out of melted-down British tanks, artillery, helmets and small arms, left over after the Battle of New York.
After his capture, Drax was placed under a tight Republican Guard security detail, and flown to Cork, Ireland. Here, a convoy was prepared to transport Drax to Halifax, for his trial in Ottawa. Except this was a lie. In truth, a body double was loaded onto the convoy flagship, and the real Oliver Drax was placed on a submarine, the USS Razorfish. The crew was not aware that Drax was the “high-valued prisoner” they were transporting across the Atlantic. Instead of Halifax, the Razorfish took Drax to the port of Veracruz, where he was loaded onto a train bound for Mexico City, and placed in a small, little-used jailhouse. Only during the train ride across the Mesoamerican countryside, was Drax’s presence in the United States made public. President Navarro made it abundantly clear why he deceived the American people; Oliver Drax was still “Big Brother”, and he still had a vast network of spies and sleeper agents within the USAO. British submarines in the Atlantic were still a factor in play. The US government intended on giving Drax the fair trial he did not deserve, and they were not going to take any chances.
On March 12th 1947, the trial of Oliver Edward Drax began.
The trial was held in Mexico’s Palace of Justice, and was televised in color around the USAO and the world. Drax was not the only man on trial – in fact, he was one of over 100 accused war criminals from across the Greater British Realm’s military, political and economic hierarchy. Contrary to the claims of neo-Draxites today, the British dictator did in fact receive fair legal representation. He just didn’t have a chance at winning his case.
With American, Japanese and Indian commanders in attendance, star witnesses included Australian civilians who saw fighting-age males targeted for killing during the British retreat from the continent; a New Yorker who escaped from Yankee Stadium right when the SB started pulling flamethrowers on the “undesirables” they had interned in the arena; and the Japanese officer who painstakingly documented the mistreatment of Jains in the internment camps of Gujarat. The most chilling portion of the trial came when Irish communist agitator and survivor of the Portlaoise Euthanasia Center, Ethel Mulligan, came on the stand. When American troops found her, her legs had to be amputated due to an aggressive gangrene infection, the end result of guards repeatedly stomping on her kneecaps with their boots. According to Mulligan, for two years, she was left on the floor and raped repeatedly by the guards. Famously, she stated “I had to look up just to see Hell”. Other euthanasia center inmates were brought on the stand to provide testimony as well. They told stories about how the guards would have them move piles of sand from one end of the yard to the other, for no reason, and would randomly execute prisoners, again for no reason – except to break down their understanding of cause and effect, and make them totally submissive and demoralized. They told stories about the cruel and hideous medical experimentation that went on. And they told stories detailing how they were rounded up and taken to these camps, what the criteria was. In exchange for amnesty (in other words, ten-year prison sentences and relocation), camp guards and Special Branch grunts went on the stand as well, to confess to their crimes and testify against their former commanders.
In the end, Drax was asked as to whether or not he pleaded guilty. To which Drax replied: “I plead guilty to driving forward history. I will be vindicated. Your democracy is weakness, your liberty degeneracy, and your justice a farce”. He was sentenced to be hung from the neck until dead. Hours after his sentence was announced, in the evening of March 16th 1947, at 11:23PM, Oliver Drax, aged 52, was found dead in his cell. He had committed suicide via cyanide capsule. Despite attempts to revive him, Drax was pronounced dead at 11:26 PM.
Anyway, with the end of hostilities, the US military began to draw down. Millions of soldiers, marines, airmen and sailors returned home, welcomed back as heroes of war – the “Greatest Generation”. They came back to a revitalized economy, with infrastructure unlike anything before in American history. Even with places like Brazil, the Caribbean, New York, the Philippines and Australia to rebuild, the USAO’s economy was roaring like a mighty engine. Invigorated by victory, the American people were prepared to rebuild the damaged parts of their great nation, supercharged by the power of this new American optimism.
When news of Drax’s capture reached India, even the most die-hard of British holdouts surrendered. British Indian troops began surrendering to the PRA forces en mass. On December 26th 1946, riding on a Japanese O-I superheavy panzer (one of three given to the INA), Subhas Chandra Bose himself led exactly one million soldiers of the Indian National Army into the Indian capital city of Delhi. They then arranged themselves into the largest mass formation in history, on the lawn of Flagstaff House, where British Field Marshal Auchinleck (commander of the British Indian Army) formally surrendered his sword to Bose. Raising Auchinleck’s sabre above his head, Bose summoned forth the thunderous cheers of a million proud Indian soldiers – Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Christian, of every race in India, from Burma to Balochistan – all united in celebration after their arduous march to victory. India was now free, and its glory would now shine brighter than a thousand suns. On August 15th 1947, Bose was elected the first President of the independent Union of Greater India, by an almost unanimous vote.
The American occupation of Nigeria was very brief, as the Nigerians were fast to get their shit together. The Nigerian Union was founded in 1949, and a few months later, the last American troops left Nigeria.
In the East Indies, things were a little more complicated. In some ways, they were made less complicated than you would think, because the British had spent nearly 200 years creating a federalized mini-Raj out of the East Indies, with institutions and bureaucracy all leading back to Singapore. Though shattered, that bureaucracy merely had to be rebuilt and retooled with democratic institutions, for a coherent nation spanning the Sunda region to get off the ground. Furthermore, the British had been successful in spreading English as the lingua franca in the archipelago, which would prove to be essential to any sort of national unity. The Americans and Japanese worked tirelessly to create an East Indies Federation, which would repurpose the old British colonial structure into a representative federal constitutional republic, similar to the governments in Tokyo and Liberty City. In 1953, the EIF was officially declared independent, and held its first election the following year, in 1954. That same year, the last American and Japanese troops departed.
The Americans and Japanese were quick to remove their troops from India, out of respect to Bose, the INA and the newly-independent UGI. Though the bonds of friendship between the peoples of America, Japan and India were strong and only growing stronger, Bose insisted that building a free India be a job for the Indian people; all security concerns were to be handled by the INA and the new Indian Police Service. That being the case, American and Japanese business investments still played a very prominent role in India’s miraculous 1950’s economic expansion, though Indian entrepreneurship and technocratic infrastructure projects played the biggest role.
Meanwhile, in the Persian Gulf, the Americans and Japanese remained in the region longer than expected. By 1947, the PRA had successfully reinstituted independent constitutional monarchies in Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the Trucial Emirates. However, despite being beaten by the Six Day War with the Yanks and the Japs, and just barely standing after its narrow victory with Egypt, in 1948, the Caliphate of Nejd remained a threat to the newly-independent nations of the Persian Gulf. The kings and emirs of the Gulf pleaded for the Americans and Japanese to remain and protect them from potential Nejdi aggression, and Tokyo and Liberty City agreed to extend their occupation. The pullout date was pushed from 1950 to 1955. The Japanese were willing to go another round with the Nejdis, but the Americans were tired, and unlike Japan, had parts of its own territory to rebuild. When President Bernard Giroux (National Party, Quebec) was elected to office in 1952, he almost strained relations with Japan after deciding to pull out of the Gulf earlier than expected. He had personally seen enough violence, and was already in negotiations with the Egyptian Empire to transfer the burden of protection to Cairo. After meeting with Japanese president Masamune Ito, Giroux convinced the Japanese to pull out from the Persian Gulf ahead of schedule as well.
Oh, yeah, that’s right. President Giroux.
Joaquin Navarro would go on to win an unprecedented fourth term during the 1944 USAO Presidential Election. However, after the war was over and Oliver Drax was dead, he resigned from office in 1947 and handed over the presidency to his VP, Sebastian Reynolds (Labor, Wisconsin). Navarro had tried but was unable to remain emotionally detached from the war which he oversaw. As the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces, when casualty figures came in every single day, he felt personally responsible for each death. They weren’t just numbers or statistics to him, but his soldiers, his citizens. He poured his heart and soul into leading the USAO to victory, but the lawyer and labor organizer from Nogales reached his breaking point midway through the conflict. However, he resolved to stay in office until Drax was brought to justice and the war was over. And that’s exactly what he did.
Reynolds was not as likeable as the affable Navarro, but he managed to lead the Labor Party to a narrow presidential victory in 1948, mostly riding off of his predecessor’s popularity.
1949 would see the issue of female soldiers on the frontline brought up. The experiment of women in combat was restricted to residents of the states and territories of Australia and New Zealand, however, their performance during the war was celebrated across the USAO, and many young women were inspired by their service and devotion to country and desired to enlist themselves. However, President Navarro was only reluctantly in favor of the policy, and Reynolds was rather milquetoast about it himself. Pressure from more socially-conservative elements within the Labor Party led Reynolds to move to reverse Navarro’s executive order. In 1949, women were once again barred from serving on the frontline. However, there were still over 11,000 female veterans, many of whom now had their pensions up in the air. But more to the point, they had fought, bled and sustained life-changing injuries, all for the nation they loved. To say nothing of those who made the ultimate sacrifice.
In response, thousands marched on the streets of Unity City, from May 12th-15th 1950. These were female veterans, their male brothers-in-arms, and anyone else who advocated for the passing of the proposed Keane Act. Proposed by senator Marcus Keane (South Australia, Liberal Party), this act would make permanent the effects of Navarro’s now-null executive order, and open up all positions in the United States Armed Forces to anyone, regardless of gender, as long as they were physically and psychologically able to serve. Opposing them were, perhaps ironically, the mainstream of the feminist movement in the USAO, which was largely against women serving in combat. The so-called “Amazon March” saw thousands of service members and aspiring service members camping on the grounds of the National Acropolis, wearing their service fatigues. Most notably was Soledad Muldoon, who wore the fatigues that she was issued in the East Indies – still stained with blood, and with her three Purple Hearts and Silver Star pinned on; adding to the eye that she famously lost at Alice Springs, Muldoon had lost the pinky and ring finger on her left hand to a Boys anti-tank rifle while fighting in Java. Even after everything she had seen and done, Sergeant Muldoon was still full of fight, and she was among the most passionate (if vulgar) speakers at the event; on the 13th, she was detained by the Unity City Metropolitan Police, after getting into a physical altercation with a counterprotester who referred to her as a “butch dyke in need of a man”.
Other, more established voices chimed in to support of the Keane Act. These included General Temuera Rehipeti, who was the commander of the US Army in the Outback; he came to respect the courage and valor of the “GI Jills” during the war in Australia. Additionally, Giroux, though he did not serve in Australia (or anywhere else where female soldiers deployed), believed that anyone who wished to serve their country should be allowed to do so. And then there was an up-and-coming female senator, Madeline Hawthorne (Rhode Island, Liberal Party). She did not have a military background, but went against the feminist current within her party in her advocacy in favor of the Keane Act. Ultimately, the Act was successfully passed by Congress.
Reynolds was unable to win the 1952 election against the National Party candidate, Giroux. The now-legendary war hero became the first successful National Party presidential contender since the party was founded. Speaking French as his only language, he was the first monolingual president of the 20th century, and on the campaign trail, he spoke idealistically of a new American future – one of peace and prosperity. The time for war was over.
Aside from pulling out from the Persian Gulf, Giroux also handled the English Channel Crisis. A week after Giroux’s inauguration in January of 1953, a USAAF Starfire jet patrolling the English Channel flew into French airspace and was shot down by a French jet, killing the American pilot. The radar operator survived and parachuted into Normandy, where he was detained by the French authorities. For context as to France’s political state at the time, the fascist National Action party was on the verge of losing their fragile majority in the French parliament. The British defeat in World War III had discredited their ideology, and their opposition was making rapid advances against them in local elections, with AN’s defeat in the next general election inevitable. Still, National Action still held institutional control of the French government and military for the moment, and that made things very, very tense. The Channel Tunnel (completed in 1904 as a symbol of Franco-British solidarity) was shut down and militarized by both the American and French militaries.
The new US president flew to Paris and spoke not to the French Prime Minister (who was part of National Action), but to the French Empress, who at this point was more widely respected by most French people than the buffoonish and unpopular PM was. After getting snubbed like this, the French PM ordered that the American radar operator, Jimmy “Specs” Wozinski, be released. After being set free from French custody, Giroux surprised him by revealing that he had brought Wozinski’s girlfriend with him to France. Protected by the Secret Service, the couple spent a romantic evening in Paris and the two then flew back to their hometown of Cleveland, Ohio on the president’s plane the next morning.
Giroux also oversaw the admission of some…interesting new parts of the USAO.
The people of New Guinea (mostly the city-folk; the inland tribes were largely apathetic) were opposed to joining the East Indies Federation, on account of New Guinea’s historic place of being neglected during the British administration of the East Indies. Instead, they opted to become an autonomous commonwealth of the USAO, and in 1953, Congress approved their admission. The United States Army Military Government in New Guinea (USAMGNG) was abolished and the Commonwealth of New Guinea was established, with its capital in Port Moresby. New Guinea was joined by the annexation of the Solomon Islands and Nauru.
In the Indian Ocean, the Chagos Archipelago was uncontroversially annexed by the USAO in 1953, as the American Indian Ocean Territory. Mauritius was granted independence as the Republic of Mauritius, though the people of the island voted in favor of free association with the USAO. More controversial was the admission of the Maldives into the USAO. The archipelago was utterly devastated by the battles waged there during the war, but immediately afterwards, the Americans were the first to bring in aid to the Maldivians and attempt to rebuild their homeland. When the time came in 1953 for a referendum on the archipelago’s political future, the people of the Maldives voted to join the USAO, rather than the UGI or independence. This was something of an awkward moment for India and the USAO, at a time when they were on very good terms. There was a bit of a “cold standoff” on the issue for a year, until Bose and Giroux came to an agreement. The Commonwealth of the Maldives was admitted into the Union in 1954, which, along with the newly-acquired territories of Christmas Island and the Cocos-Keeling Islands, the USAO now had complete strategic domination of the Indian Ocean.
Hong Kong was still under American occupation by the Shanghai National Guard when it was annexed into the USAO as a commonwealth, in 1954. In 1934, the GBR exploited the then-ongoing Chinese Civil War and conquered Shenzhen, the city immediately to Hong Kong’s north. When the Americans invaded Hong Kong, Shenzhen was occupied as well. So in 1954, the two remaining factions of the still-ongoing Chinese Civil War both contested the sovereignty of Shenzhen. However, the consensus of the people of Shenzhen was in: they wanted to do with the war. Indeed, as Guangdong was a Later Xin stronghold, the city of Shenzhen had become a refuge for Republican sympathizers. With the war turning against the Republicans in the north, these refugees backed the US administration of Shenzhen, as a way of remaining safe from potential monarchist reprisals. As such, Shenzhen was incorporated into the Commonwealth of Hong Kong, which became the second American territory on mainland Asia, after Shanghai.
Controversially, Malta was annexed into the USAO on September 21st 1955, amid passive-aggressive protest by the Italian Empire. The British had been especially cruel masters in Malta, and the Maltese people viewed their American and Japanese liberators as heroes (a monument to the Japanese soldiers who helped free Malta was erected in 1961; yes, that must sound like the strangest monument to y’all in that other timeline). There was a contingent of Maltese who wished to join Italy, but they ended up losing in the 1955 referendum on the matter. The Commonwealth of Malta would end up being the very first American territory in Europe, and the implications of a permanent American naval presence in the Mediterranean gave European strategic thinkers pause. That is, until they saw which way the wind was blowing in the British Isles.
So let’s talk about that elephant in the room.
The post-war scene in Britain was...surreal.
Following Drax's capture and the unconditional surrender of the British high command, it was as if a 20-year spell had been broken. By the time he committed suicide, there were still those in denial that the war was over, and continued to resist the American occupiers…only to be finally shaken from the dream when they heard of "Big Brother's" demise.
For the majority of Britons, there was a general feeling of not knowing where they were now. Or how they got there. Or where they could possibly go moving forward. A feeling of numbness. They had abolished democracy, killed their neighbors, started the bloodiest war in human history, committed hideous atrocities across the globe, purposefully destroyed their own nation, and all of it for the lies of one man. This feeling of profound disillusionment and lack of direction mixed with the revelations of the euthanasia centers. Not that they existed. They knew that they existed. Most Britons were aware that it was happening. The revelation was that they had tacitly consented to what they now saw with their own eyes. Among the survivors of the "Great Crime" (the BSP regime's campaign of exterminating undesirables) themselves, as much as they were grateful to be alive, they were also overcome by a deep sense of betrayal.
On the other side of the coin, there were the Americans. Or rather, what the British people saw in the Americans. They had believed Drax's propaganda for so long – that the Yanks were coming to destroy the British nation. And yet, as early as after Operation Chemo, the American public (already rationing fuel and food back home) donated to their enemies generous gifts of food, blankets and other supplies to the English and Welsh war refugees residing in Ireland. And let's talk about these refugees. They weren't just civilians – they were also British soldiers, left for dead in Wales, Cornwall and northwest England, with their eyes blistering, losing their ability to breathe, and their hated enemies went to the trouble of saving their lives – pulling them from the smog, washing the phosgene from their eyes, and bringing them to doctors. The Americans went out of their way to rescue their foes from the poisons their own governments had unleashed upon them. And in the immediate aftermath of the British surrender, even more supplies started pouring in.
And more than just supplies. American civilians volunteered to cross the Atlantic and help out with the worsening humanitarian crisis in Britain. Veterans of the national work programs in the USAO came over and began work on rebuilding bridges and getting hospitals back up and running. The winter of 1946-47 grew colder, and American coal was brought in to help keep millions of Britons warm. As the snow began to pile up higher and higher, the Short Bulls were repurposed to plow the roads and streets, and winterized US Army rotorwings delivered food and supplies to remote villages. When the snow melted in the Spring of ’47, creating devastating floods, the US military was there as well to help. Doctors from the Americas flooded hospitals in the British Isles to deal with the vast ocean of injuries from the war, as well as the rise in diseases such as dysentery and rickets. And as part of Operation Cartwheel II (1946-1963), the US Army Corps of Engineers worked to quarantine the contaminated White Zones, bringing in experts in decontamination from Australia to help clean up the areas affected by Operation Chemo.
Drax was not just proven wrong. The nation that had every reason to destroy the British people – the nation whom Drax had invaded, bombed, gassed and murdered – was as vigorous in helping their enemies as they were fighting them.
The British people had been complicit in the unforgivable. And the American people still forgave them. This was not mercy: this was grace.
The Stars and Stripes of the American occupiers became something that the average Briton would find themselves looking at in ways they never did before. It was where the ration centers and medical camps were, sure, but it also came to represent something else. Every day, it became less and less the cloth of a foreign nation. The Union Jack? Not so much. It was the flag flown by the United States Army Military Government in Great Britain and Ireland (USAMGGBI – literally nobody called it by this acronym), but to many, it symbolized something dead, which could never come back. As dead as the Flash and Circle flags that were being torn down and burned all across the Isles.
The Irish were not coy in their pro-Americanism. For the English, however, it was a difficult pill to swallow. Three times, Britain had fought the Americans. First in 1776. Then in 1860. And finally in 1939. And three times, they lost. And now the Eagle had decisively bested the Lion, in a way that could never be disputed or minimized. Drax was right about one thing: history and providence chose nations. But Britain had not been chosen.
But Ireland was not merely agreeing to the proposition of liking the USAO or thanking them for liberation. No, they were agreeing to things more drastic than just that. And more so than even Ireland, Great Britain was in need of those drastic things. The age of British independence was over: their military was shattered, their economy was burnt out, almost all of their industry and infrastructure now lay in ruin, and the nation itself had very little will to live.
To many, the very notion of British nationalism had been discredited. Desiccated. What did it mean in 1947?
The Americans occupied Great Britain and Ireland for ten years, from 1946 until 1956. During this time, the Military Government held a series of nonbinding referendums on the future of the British Isles. Whether they would choose to pursue a closer association with continental Europe, or with the USAO. In the void of a post-nationalist Britain, Pan-European and pro-American factions emerged, and they argued as to which would be better for the British Isles going forward. At this point, only a minority had a genuine desire to remain 100% independent.
On June 23rd 1955, a binding referendum was held in the British Isles. The options were independence or joining the USAO. In the end, the latter was chosen, by a factor of 62% in Great Britain (74% in Ireland). A month later, the Federation of the British Isles was formally announced and the annexation was formalized on June 23rd 1956.
The FBI would be the first of its kind in American history. In the interests of preserving a degree of British and Irish autonomy, a sub-federation of British and Irish states and territories would be created. These states and territories would use a republican variant of the parliamentary system, and elect representatives to their own sub-federal parliament which would convene in the rebuilt Palace of Westminster in London. This, in addition to the representatives which they would elect to the Senate and House of Representatives in Unity City. They would even be able to elect their own sub-federal Prime Minister, as well as the USAO president. The FBI would have a greater degree of ability to interact with the outside world than would most USAO states and territories; for instance, the FBI would be able to communicate with the European Customs Union, independent of the rest of the USAO, and would be able to interact with the French Empire directly, mostly on issues pertaining to the Channel Tunnel. The FBI would use its own localized version of the USAO Dollar (using a different range of colors and featuring the faces of British republican figures such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine and William Godwin), as well as have its own flag, to be flown alongside the flag of the USAO; this flag would have a blue field, with stars for each of the states that made up the FBI, and inside the circle of stars, a round representation of the old Union Jack.
The FBI would be divided into the states of Ulster, Connacht, Munster, Leinster, Wales, Cumbria, Lancashire, Manchester, Northumbria, East Mercia, West Mercia, Yorkshire, Cornwall, Wessex, Sussex, Kent, Essex, East Anglia, Moray, Galloway, Western Isles, Shetland, Highland, Strathclyde, Orkney and Shetland. The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands became commonwealth territories. Greater London became London, DB (District of Britannia) – an independent federal district similar to that of Liberty City, DC or the other two USAO capital districts.
Other parts of the former British Empire were added to the FBI. The South Atlantic Islands of St. Helena, Ascension, Tristan da Cuna, South Shetland, South Orkney and South Georgia (which were all captured during the war with little difficulty) were admitted into the FBI, as was the American Indian Ocean Territory (renamed the “British Indian Ocean Territory”). Malta, seeing the benefits of being tied to an entity with a more Europe-focused set of interests, while also being part of the USAO, also signed on to join the FBI. And lastly, in the Pacific Ocean, Nauru, the Solomon Islands and the Pitcairn Islands opted to become part of the FBI.
With this, the United States’ “end of history” had finally arrived. Two historic rivals had become one nation.
The incorporation of Britain into the USAO in 1956 would end up being one of the last great moves of President Giroux, who would become a one-term president when he refrained from running for reelection before the start of the 1956 USAO Presidential Election. He felt that his time as president was well-spent, and retired to his small hometown in Quebec with his wife. The 1956 USAO Presidential Election was instead won by the historic first female POTUS, Madeline Hawthorne (remember her from earlier); the sight of the slightly-built 5’ 2½” Hawthorne shaking hands with the bulky 6’ 8’ former president was immortalized in an iconic luzograph. For many, Hawthorne represented the transition from a nation at war, to a nation now at peace. She would be the first US President to visit the British Isles as their president; the British Isles had voted overwhelmingly for her, with the exception of Ireland, which mostly went for Giroux’s former VP, Ezra Ramos (Venezuela, National).
Hawthorne had won in no small part due to her activism in getting the Keane Act passed, but many still held traditional views on the role of women, and were skeptical that a woman could lead the largest nation on Earth. Her first test came in 1957, when she successfully negotiated a peaceful resolution to the Shan Crisis. See, Thailand had come to occupy the Shan Country during World War III, and ultimately annexed the territory. However, the Americans and Japanese overlooked serious human rights abuses by the Thai forces occupying the region, particularly, atrocities committed against rebellious Shan tribes. Many Shan people petitioned for India to intervene on their behalf, and President Bose, after almost a decade of tension with Thailand, began mobilizing troops on the border with Shan Country. Indian-backed Shan militias made a bold assault on government positions on May 1st 1957, only to be defeated by the Royal Thai Army. A series of subsequent border skirmishes brought the two countries on the brink of conflict, with the Indians preparing to dedicate hundreds of thousands of troops, and the Thais threatening to deploy leftover British chemical weapons. The USAO and Japan stepped in, with Hawthorne ultimately clinching a peace agreement. At the time, she was celebrated for her diplomacy, though in the end, this would end up kicking the can down the sidewalk until 1971.
Aside from being a negotiator, she also proved to be a fighter. When the “Third Phase” of the Brazilian Violence began in 1957, she ordered martial law in the counties of those Brazilian states where the newly-formed ELB (Exército para a Libertação do Brasil – “Army for the Liberation of Brazil”) was active. The ELB was a monarchist, Brazilian ultranationalist organization, and represented a consolidation of several Brazilian separatist groups that had survived the federal crackdown during World War III, and were reinvigorated by those Brazilian veterans who returned from South Africa either disillusioned or too shellshocked to reintegrate into society. However, the Third Phase also marked the emergence of the Brazilian Patriota movement, which was also dominated by returning veterans, who, by contrast, returned with a renewed sense of American nationalism. Even though President Hawthorne’s federal crackdown was actually criticized as too harsh (reports of “enhanced interrogation” tsking place on Devil’s Island have only recently been declassified in 1984, albeit in a heavily-redacted form), the Patriotas felt as though the Feds weren’t going far enough, and they formed the FPdA (Força Patriótica de Autodefesa – “Patriotic Self-Defense Force”). Both groups of veterans brought an increased level of lethality to the Brazilian Violence. Sometimes it was a series of nail bombs or a “Brazilian Necktie”, or a shoot-out in the street. That’s how it went in the cities. Out in the countryside, the both militia groups waged outright wars against each other, and the authorities, though the FPdA guerillas were more likely to surrender to the Feds, whilst the ELB had a habit of pretending to surrender. The Third Phase would last from 1957 until 1963.
The Hawthorne Administration also saw the expansion of nuclear power across the USAO. The technology was developed in Germany during World War III, and though some speculated as to the potential applications of atomic weapons, this was later debunked: detonating a hypothetical atomic bomb would set the atmosphere on fire and sterilize the planet. Anyway, not wanting to be left behind, Hawthorne sponsored legislation to foster the construction of nuclear power facilities across the USAO.
Hawthorne lastly oversaw the admission of South Africa into the USAO, as the final addition to the Union in 1959. Oh, right. South African entry into the USAO had been in the pipeline since 1952. The fact was, during the war, the Combat-SB was very effective in their scorched-earth tactics. This included burning down farmland and destroying any infrastructure they could, including the infamous detonation of a cargo ship carrying thousands of tons of fertilizer in the port of Cape Town; the explosion ripped the harbor with the force of a small nuclear weapon, and caused massive damage to South Africa’s most important port of entry. On top of that, the independent Federation of South Africa appeared massively incapable of managing its economy. South Africa became independent in 1951, but by 1956, the economy had flatlined, and the country was forced to forsake its own currency and adopt the much more powerful US Dollar. Seeing the arrangement that had been established in Britain, an effort in South Africa began with a push for admission into the USAO. They were ultimately successful, and following a referendum in 1958, the people of South Africa voted 69% to join the USAO. Congress debated whether or not to go through with the annexation, but Hawthorne was supportive of South African entry into the USAO, and she was able to sway many detractors of South African entry to her side of the argument. In 1959, Congress voted in favor of annexing the Federation of South Africa.
Hawthorne was not successful in winning the 1960 USAO Presidential Election, and instead lost to Fidel Castro (Cuba, Conservative). Castro’s election was a major upset, and indeed, Castro did not win by a large margin.
After three years of preparation, in 1961, the Federation of South Africa was formally admitted into the USAO, as the Federation of South Africa. Yes, they kept the old name. Like the FBI, the FSA uses its own version of the US Dollar, has its own flag, maintains the parliamentary system for every state, and for the federation as a whole, and is able to interact with intergovernmental organizations in Africa, such as the Trans-Africa Railway Association. The Federation was made up of the states of Good Hope, Griqualand West, Stellaland, Botswana, Orange Free State, Transkei, Ciskei, Lesotho, Natal, Swaziland, Transvaal, KwaZulu, Zimbabwe, Rhodesia and the island state of Réunion. Territories included Walvis Bay, the Namaqualand Territory, the Kalahari Territory and the Territory of the Prince Edward Islands (subantarctic islands, very sparsely inhabited). And finally, a capital district in the form of Pretoria, DA (District of Azania).