September 11, 2000 - A terrorist attack against the United States just like in OTL 2001 is carried out by Al Qaeda. The group elected to move up their timeline hoping to cause more chaos in advance of the Presidential Election. The plan initially looks to have gone better than the Bin Laden and co. could have dreamed, kicking off a market panic and the crash of the Dot Com Bubble.
President Clinton addressed the nation, rallied the international community, and met with political and military leaders much as George W. Bush did with two major differences: 1.) Clinton is a far better speaker than Dubya. 2.) Clinton had the experience, connections, and national security team that only a President near the end of his term can have. Thus the American response was far more effective and rational that what the Bush administration carried out in OTL.
Clinton accepted help offered by Iran and when the US invaded Afghanistan on October 7, 2000 it did so with far better intel. Tora Bora was surrounded with a larger force, and most of Al Qaeda's leadership was killed in the ensuing battle. The US still remained in Afghanistan to oversee a multinational peacekeeping mission, with Clinton holding meetings with Iranian and Pakistani leaders regularly to normalize relations and create a viable exit strategy.
Clinton's popularity surged beyond 90% in the days after 9/11, and there were semi-serious calls to repeal the 22nd Amendment and empower Clinton to serve a 3rd term. Ultimately, Clinton's Vice President, Al Gore (having already received his party’s nomination months before the attacks) won a respectable victory over Texas Governor George W. Bush, holding the White House for the Democrats and inheriting the peacekeeping mission to Afghanistan. Gore also inherited the beginnings of an economic recovery effort that began with the post-attack bipartisan stimulus program.
Gore’s first term would be dominated by the international peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan. Having carried over most of Clinton's cabinet and national security team, the Gore administration maintained a similar strategy of limited American involvement beyond specific combat missions, while supporting the United Nations Transitional Authority in Afghanistan. Iran and Pakistan were given equal seats at the table during this period, and were essential to counterinsurgency operations against the Taliban. This was the most extensive UN peacekeeping mission in its history, and would see the US disengage as the primary actor in Afghanistan by 2003.
The Gore administration made a number of attempts in its first term to enact broader climate policy, but was bogged down by the war, and a Republican controlled House and Senate. Ultimately, the President only managed to push through a Cap and Trade system similar to what the Republicans already wanted. In 2004, Gore led the UN to launch a peacekeeping mission into Darfur rather than see a repeat of the Rwandan Genocide. The UN, its reputation stronger than ever with the administration of Afghanistan, would directly oversee Darfur's governance for over 2 years.
By 2004 the US economy had recovered, and the war was seen as a victory for the United States. Gore would run against popular New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani in 2004, and just barely hold the Presidency, thanks mainly to the strong economy and the fact that Giuliana's only criticism of the Gore administration's foreign policy was his perceived overreliance on the UN. The Christian Right had attempted to use Gore’s support for Stem Cell Research as a wedge issue, but Giuliani’s own prior support for the technology only muddied the Republican message.
Gore had hoped his second term would be defined by the struggle against climate change. The President had made it his mission to tackle what he considered the greatest threat to humanity, but had been continually hampered by Congressional Republicans. There were incremental improvements made in technology through prioritizing specific research, but the Cap and Trade system had only made it possible for polluters to get rich while making largely insignificant reductions in emissions. Then Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005. Gore had maintained James Lee Witt for the first two years of his first term, but had since replaced him with a qualified successor rather than infamous boob Mike Brown. The National Guard was deployed and the relief effort was competently managed, but the scale of the disaster was something Gore used to underscore the threat of Global Warming. Republicans tried to pillory him for politicizing a tragedy, but Gore's message resonated with a lot of voters. The Republicans refusal to even entertain addressing the climate crisis after the tragedy in New Orleans cost them the House in 2006, but not the Senate.
After 2006, Gore pushed hard for a landmark bill that would commit the US to surpassing the Kyoto Protocol’s targets for Greenhouse Gas Reductions. The bill clear the House, but failed in the Senate, forcing the President to adopt multiple executive orders compelling regulatory boards to take stronger legal action against polluters. Gore's final legislative half-victory came in 2005 after the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Gore had hoped to replace Rehnquist with liberal lion John Paul Stevens, but could only succeed in promoting swing seat Anthony Kennedy as Chief while appointing Sonya Sotomayor to the bench in what became a hard won nomination fight.
In 2008 Vice President Joe Lieberman was convinced he was going to be the next President... unfortunately he was the only one convinced of this. The Republicans put their weight behind John McCain/Tim Pawlenty and road to a successful takeover of the White House for the first time in 16 years. McCain entered office with a strong economy, a retaken House, and a booming housing market. McCain was more concerned with Russia's military intervention in Georgia than the peacekeeping missions that defined the Gore administration, and worked to contain the situation by rallying an international coalition that had frankly been getting a lot of practice over the last 8 years. McCain organized a fierce sanctions regime against Putin and worked to bring Ukraine under Viktor Yushchenko into the EU and potentially NATO. Arms were shipped to the Georgians (as they had been under Gore) and the Georgian War became a conflict that was taking ever more resources from Russia to fight... then in 2010 the housing market crashed and the world entered a recession.
McCain pushed forward a $300 Billion mortgage buyout program in which the Treasury would purchase and renegotiate faulty home loans, while also bailing out the financial sector. Both plans passed, but pissed off both parties, and the Republicans were sincerely trounced in the Midterms. McCain's agenda ground to a halt, and for the next two years arms and support Georgia were left at levels that were simply too low to defend against the Russians. McCain spent his final years of his administration tirelessly working to bring Ukraine into the EU and NATO, only to be routinely blocked by Hungary.
In 2012 McCain suffered one of the biggest electoral defeats of a Republican in recent history after former First Lady, and New York Senator Hillary Clinton won her party’s nomination. The Clinton/Obama ticket, thanks in part to endorsement of the most popular former President alive, road to a strong victory and entered office with the launch of a recovery act that when combined with McCain's own plan prior to the 2010 midterms led to a speedier recovery than the Great Recession saw in OTL. The Hillary Clinton administration placed a strong emphasis on Green Jobs, the reestablishment of the Civilian Conservation Corps and a healthcare reform program spearheaded by Vice President Obama which created a Medicare Buy-In program. By 2014 after 4 years of recession, the economy had finally recovered, granting Democrats a continued presence in the House. Those Republicans that remained in office after 2010, 2012, and 2014 were some of the most radical right wingers in a generation, but they were seen as little more than nuisance at the time.
Hillary Clinton’s first year in office also saw her enjoy the fruits of McCain's labor internationally, with Ukraine joining the EU in 2013, which prompted Russia to launch another invasion while still fighting a guerilla war in Georgia. Clinton recommitted the country to the international aid and sanctions regime ably aided by her Secretary of State, Joe Biden. By the 2016 election, Russia had splintered apart. Their attempt to seize all of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine had failed after 6 years of western arms and training flowing to the Ukrainian armed, an equal number of years of devastating mountain warfare in Georgia, all made worse by a global decline in demand for petroleum. Clinton would defeat former VP Pawlenty easily in 2016 as Russia imploded in on itself and in her second term launch an international nuclear-non-proliferation mission to Russia.
Back in Afghanistan, Iran used its connections to the Hazaras and Aimaq to secure a sphere of influence over the country's western and central regions. This provided a reliable overland supply rout into the Afghan heartland, along with troops who frankly had a better understanding of the politics of the region than the US. The Iranians pretty monopolized the Sistan Basin and took control of Afghanistan's best farmland, but the region did stop growing opium. Iranian ag companies in southern Afghanistan are fiercely protected by the Iranian military after the UN ended their peacekeeping mission. This has since devolved into an ethnic cleansing mission against the local Pashto and Baluchis, leading to the rise of new terrorist groups that threaten the stability of Pakistan. The US has been annoyingly silent on this issue as Iran is an essential ally against Assyria, and the free flow of Iranian oil was a critical tool in the destruction of the Russian economy.
Clinton’s 2nd term would also see the US increase its support to the Assyrian Opposition movement that rose after the Arab Spring failed to unseat Saddam. The Iraqi despot had deployed the Republican Guard to aid his ally Assad, and in 2011 the two nations merged into a single state, the Arab Federation of Assyria. With US troops deployed in UN peacekeeping missions across Russia, following two decades of similar missions (most fairly successful), and now an air campaign over Assyria, a sizable segment of the American public was growing tired of international entanglements.
So it was that in 2020 after a strong recovery and achieving an international order without some of its worst actors, the Democrats thought now would be a great time to nominate a protectionist radical: Bernie Sanders. Sanders had help from the fact that popular Vice President Obama had abruptly announced his intent to not seek the Presidency, with rumors surrounding the VP’s marital troubles and personality conflicts with the President. In addition, Secretary of State Joe Biden had to drop out of the race right before the first primaries as he came under increasing fire for his son's own trouble with the law. Sanders was able to take advantage of a crowded field of hastily entered candidates from the center of his party to eek out a plurality of the popular vote and go on to win a majority of delegates by the convention. Sanders faced off against Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor, turned Senator after winning the late Ted Kennedy's old seat. Sanders lost by one of the biggest margins of a democrat in decades, but his campaign created a movement within the Democratic party that overtly and loudly identified with his political positions.
Romney would be left to deal with the Democratic Socialist Caucus of the Democratic Party and his own party's rising America First movement of Nazis-in-all-but-name. After four years of political paralysis, another minor recession, and growing frustrations over the peacekeeping mission in Russia, Romney looked like he’d be unseated in 2024. However, another chaotic Democratic primary that led to the nomination of California Governor Newsom, and the DSC refusing to endorse the party’s chosen candidate, Romney won a second term despite losing the popular vote. This was mostly thanks to a surge in support for third party candidates, particularly from the Green Party who nominated noted public health “skeptic” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who ran on a platform of banning stem cell therapies.
The story for this scenario was first drafted for Charles Randall on Patreon.