After the fall of the Soviet Union, it wouldn't take long for a new conflict to arise. This time, the attention of the world would be focused on the constantly war-ravaged Middle East, where the Ba'athist United Arab Republic (UAR), a political union between the former nations of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, would conduct an invasion of Kuwait.

Thanks to its enormous oil deposits, the nation was an economic juggernaut capable of exerting significant influence on the world's oil supply almost by itself. With that economic power, the nation would build an equally massive army composed of what was, at the time, state-of-the-art Soviet equipment.

Yet, the UAR was always treading a fine line. Composed of multiple ethnic and religious groups, the nation was an artificial one born out of the rampant Pan-Arabism of the 1970s as the old colonial empires of Europe collapsed. That meant that if this carefully created balance of pan-nationalism, economic power, and military prowess were to be tipped ever so slightly, the union would fragment into a thousand pieces as all sides would try to assert their claims over the remains.

And the fall of the Soviet Union meant exactly that. With the collapse of its biggest partner, the UAR had lost its main arms and economic supplier. The nation was under a Western-imposed embargo. Additionally, with the rapid privatization of Russian oil and gas companies and the opening of markets in many other previously Soviet-aligned nations, oil prices were rapidly plummeting. The balance was being slowly tipped off course.

The UAR was in a race against time. If nothing was done, the union would enter into an economic recession and dissolve, which neither of its main political elite wanted. When attempts to decrease the production of oil to increase or halt the price freefall failed, the nation saw no other option than to raise their pan-nationalism.

Under the justification of ending the last vestiges of colonial rule in Arabia and righting the wrongs of the past, the UAR leadership declared that the nation of Kuwait, due to its membership in the failed Arab Federation and its history as part of Ottoman Iraq, was a territory that rightfully belonged to the union. They also made accusations that Kuwait was producing more oil than allowed by the OPEC quota and demanded that Kuwait surrender itself and join the union as an Iraqi province in February 1992.

And the result was obvious: the Kuwaiti government refused and was quickly defeated by the UAR. However, the aftermath went completely against the expected results. Instead of the West relenting and ignoring their annexation, the West denounced it and began preparations to force the UAR to leave Kuwait, whether by peace or by force.

The first to raise the issue was the USA, quickly followed by Japan, Britain, France, and China, as well as their respective minor allies. The world was uniting against the UAR, and when the UAR refused to comply with the demands of withdrawing from Kuwait, and its newfound position threatened the Saudi oil fields, military action became the only way to force the UAR to comply with the international demands.

A coalition of 56 nations would be formed to fight against the UAR, and on 17 January 1992, operations against the UAR would begin with a massive air campaign aimed at disrupting and destroying UAR's strategic infrastructure. Yet, even though the coalition held a massive numerical and, to an extent, a technological advantage over the UAR in terms of air power, the Air Campaign was met with stiff resistance from the UAR's equally impressive air force and Anti-Air systems.

For the nations of the Trident Alliance, the air campaign would be a risky but successful affair, thanks in most part to the Japanese and British relatively fresh and personal experiences in dealing with enemy AA systems and aircraft in the late stages of the Korean War and the entire Falklands War. For the OFN members, the US and China, on the other hand, their air campaigns would be equally successful but with much higher losses.

The Levant War would be the first actual conflict in which China would participate after the end of its civil war in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Even though its military attempted to keep up with the West mainly by purchasing American equipment, the ROC military, mired in rampant corruption, would still remain stuck with mostly outdated tactics for the army and navy. However, its air force, with experience in fighting against the Imperial Japanese Air Service, would develop its own tactics in regards to air combat, which would come into play in their part of the operation.

For the US, their situation would be similar to China's, as their last real combat experience was from their less than one year of participation in the Second World War in 1943 and 44. However, the US attempted to upgrade its doctrines over the course of the Cold War to the best of its abilities. But there was only so much one could learn from observing others, and even less to convince all the necessary people to push for comprehensive reforms without failures caused by their own military.

And so, when the air campaign had come to its end, the US would have the highest number of air losses in the conflict, both to enemy aircraft and AA systems, with China coming in a close second place, but mostly from AA systems. Even with the horrible losses suffered by them, the war would continue, and Operation Desert Storm would commence the next day after the end of the air campaign.

Although the Levant War was primarily focused on liberating Kuwait, the land invasion of the United Arab Republic (UAR) would be accompanied by two more invasion forces. One from Turkey with the objectives of securing the cities of Latakia, Aleppo, and Raqqa. Another one from Israel with the aim of capturing Lebanon, alongside the capture of the cities of Tartus, Tadmur, and Damascus. These invasion forces' strategic objective was to pin down the UAR Syrian Army in the west to prevent them from reinforcing the Iraqi Army.

Through deception with a very eye-catching naval bombardment of the UAR's coastline in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea, its forces would be tricked into thinking that the coalition invasion would be through an amphibious landing. In response, the UAR military would set up their defensive lines toward the sea, and then the Coalition's land invasion began.

In Iraq, the Coalition would manage to defeat the Iraqi army forces with relative ease, as the Coalition forces considerably outmatched the Iraqi forces, and the flat terrain assisted in providing favorable terrain for a large-scale armored run through the UAR border. In Syria, the situation would be similar but with more setbacks as the uneven terrain hindered the advance of the coalition forces, albeit with low casualties as the Syrian forces were also caught by surprise and outmatched.

By the 28th of February, the Syrian army of the UAR would be encircled with their backs to the sea. In Iraq, the Coalition was at the gates of Basra and Baghdad. With Kuwait liberated, the Coalition and the UAR would end hostilities. The Gulf War had ended in a stunning Coalition victory, but that would only bring more chaos to the region.

With its defeat, the UAR would finally collapse under its own weight, and from its corpse, the countries of Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq would be brought back to the map. In less than a year, war would return to the region, with both nations still reeling from economic and political downturns. The dictator who rose to power in Iraq would declare war on Syria in an attempt to seize their eastern oil fields.

The two nations with roughly equal forces would wage a bloody war of attrition as neither side was able to gain an advantage over the other, especially after their losses to the coalition a year prior. This war would bring many other players into the fray.

Iran, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and so on and so forth would begin supporting a variety of groups and sides, all in an attempt to weaken Syria and Iraq as much as possible. Countless revolts would begin to surge in both nations, and one of such groups would be the Kurdish people.

With the Syrian and Iraqi armies being exhausted from years of conflict, the Kurdish people would manage to seize the opportunity and achieve a string of victories against both armies. With American and even Iranian support, they would, against all odds, break away from Iraq and Syria as a de facto independent nation.

With the loss of their northern regions, a Shia revolt in southern Iraq, and an anti-government revolt in Northwestern Syria, the nations of Syria and Iraq would end their war. However, with their forces exhausted and unrest still rising, the two nations were now in a state of civil war, as international players all bid for their sides to win.

In a similar vein, in Central Asia, the Civil War in Afghanistan was still ongoing, with the various groups vying for power. One of them, a radical and fundamentalist Islamic group known as the Taliban, would manage to seize Kabul in 1996 and most of the regions with a Pashtun majority, making it the strongest group in the nation, but still not strong enough to control all of Afghanistan. However, inside the Taliban, there was a group formerly supported by the CIA, which vowed to bring down the great devil.

In the Far East, the Korean War continued to rage on as well, as the KPLA and KLA continued to fight for power in the region. The Korean Liberation Army was being supported by China, while the Korean People's Liberation Army, having lost its main partner, the USSR, would make a deal with their devil and accept Japanese support, only offered by Japan to prolong the conflict as much as possible.

Another significant change that struck East Asia was the exit of the Republic of China from the Organization of Free Nations. The alliance, which had only stood as another layer against communism, had long become defunct in most of its purposes. Worse, without the great boogeyman that was the USSR to threaten the Chinese Nationalists, the growing disagreements between the Americans and Chinese in regards to their OFN policies would finally reach a breaking point in 1999, culminating with the exit of China and many of the other Asian members with it.

This would turn into a massive blow for the OFN, which quickly began to crumble as the various other nations still part of the alliance began leaving one after the other. Since China, the second biggest member of the alliance, had exited, was there any reason to trust in its efficacy?

With the fall of the USSR and the Moscow Pact in 1991, and the collapse of the OFN in 1999, for a brief period of time, the Trident Alliance would be the sole remaining international military alliance of the Cold War. When the turn of the century arrived, the world was hopeful that a new age of peace would be upon them. However, such ideals were soon shattered a year later, on the infamous day of September 11th, 2001.

For the first time in almost a century, American soil would become a war zone. The American populace would be subjected to the taste of war, and its scars would plague the nation for a long time. On that day in September, two planes hijacked by terrorists belonging to the group Al-Qaeda crashed into the Twin Towers in New York, with a third plane crashing into the Pentagon building in Washington D.C.

The Global War on Terror had begun.