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All Nations Are Superpowers
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In any given show where there is some sort of global conflict, or speculative fiction of any kind, there will most often be only 2-4 countries involved, and each will be described as a superpower. Obviously, this isn't historically accurate; the Cold War, for example, was primarily between the US and the Soviet Union, but many other countries had a stake in the outcome (e.g. nations along the Iron Curtain, and places like Latin America and Southeast Asia where communism was making headway). If there are two factions they will fairly often be The Empire and The Federation or The Alliance or The Republic, though usually neither is portrayed as "good" in this setup (ala Legend of the Galactic Heroes, or even Gundam), at its most extreme even factions that aren't sovereign nations may be treated with Superpower level resources. Of course, these "superpowers" are frequently Hufflepuff House.
See also Space Filling Empire.
Examples:
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Anime
- Most iterations of Gundam, sometimes there are smaller neutral powers involved, but even they tend to be a collection of neutral powers allied together.
- A variant is seen in Gundam Wing, with the Sanc Kingdom as a rough analogue to Switzerland.
- Code Geass has the world mostly divided up between the EU, the Chinese Federation and the Holy Brittanian Empire.
- Except Australia, for some reason...
- Legend of the Galactic Heroes has the known galaxy divided between The Empire and The Alliance.
- Xam'd Lost Memories seems to have things divided up between the Northern Government and a Southern alliance.
- Last Exile also has two Superpower factions.
Literature
- Nineteen Eighty-Four, of course. All the world belongs to the three "superstates," Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. All three are evil, and there's nothing to choose between them politically. Given that Oceania very rapidly switches which one it's fighting against and which one it's allied with, and the similarities between the supposedly opposing political systems, it is implied that the other two may not exist, or at the very least that the war between them is a sham. With the control that Oceania's government has over information, it's impossible to say one way or the other.
- The post-WW 2 world in Sterling's Draka-verse is divided between the American-led Alliance for Democracy and the Domination of Draka.
Live Action TV
- In the earlier seasons of Stargate SG-1, only the most powerful countries are ever shown to know about the Stargate program. Russia learns about the American program first, soon followed by France, Britain, and China. Those five nations happen to be the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, but they appear to learn about (or suspect) the program independently. By the time of Stargate Atlantis, the Atlantis outpost is found in Antarctica, and all 46 signatory nations to the Antarctic Treaty learn the secret. The Atlantis Expedition is thus a truly multinational one, with representatives from nations such as the Czech Republic, Belgium, and Japan.
Video Games
- Nuclear-war sim DEFCON does this with the world divided up into six equal powers. It works for game balance, but makes for frankly odd geopolitics: South America and Africa are united nuclear powers able to field bomber fleets, navies and ICBMs equal to North America or Russia. Then there's the rest-of-the-world Asian bloc, a unified empire of Japan, China, India, Pakistan, both Koreas, the entire Middle East and everything in between.
- Due to the small number of powerful empires in Civilization-type games, most conflicts will be like this.
- Civilization 5 introduces truly independent city-states, and for a change introduces incentives for allying with them if you should choose not to crush them.
- In Valkyria Chronicles, there is only the Federation and the Empire, and the very tiny and peaceful grand duchy of Gallia, which is the only country still independent.
- Averted in the Fire Emblem Tellius games, where Begnion takes up almost half the continent, with Crimea (the good guys) needing to curry Begnion's favour to defeat Daein (the bad guys, which are around the same size as Crimea but with a better military). There are also lots of smaller Laguz-run countries which don't pose much of a presence separately.
Web Original
- In Ilivais X, the American continents are under control of the Aztec Empire, and the vast majority of the Eurasian continent and Africa are under the Iberian Empire. The Gaia Forces, a neutral zone mostly descended from the space colonies, is allowed a buffer section of Russia and the entirety of Australia.
Real Life
- The world immediately before the First World War actually resembled this. The entire world was basically divided among a few great powers, and, with few exceptions, the remaining places the great powers did not hold direct control (China, Iran, and Central and South America) they still exercised effective control via treaties or other methods of influence: Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Austria, Italy, the Ottoman Empire, and the United States, with a few smaller empires: the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, and Japan. While that may seem like a long list, consider that there are close to two-hundred nations in the world today, and the world of 1914 was indeed a world of superpowers.
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