Some history for the campaign and the main powers, and a list of 'house rules' used during the campaign.
Part 1 - Flashpoint
The second Korean War in 2019 was the beginning of what is now called the Third World War, although experts would say that the resulting war did not really compare in scale to the previous two, despite numerous predictions to the contrary. Indeed, it is more likely that the name stuck because the war, in addition to being significantly larger than anything since the Second World War, was fought mainly across the impoverished countries of Africa.
A series of events during the past year had heightened tensions and led both South Korea and her allies to increase their military readiness, and despite protests from the Chinese, the United States had almost half of its carrier fleet in the Pacific during this time. The discovery and sinking of a pair of North Korean submarines south of Seoul in South Koreans waters led to a violent reaction; including an unsuccessful missile strike on Seoul which many suspect was nuclear in nature. With their gamble a failure, and Allied troops pouring into DMZ, the North Koreans were faced with backing down and trying diplomacy, or fighting a conventional war. The confidence expressed by North Korea’s military leadership that they would be victorious, and would be able to deal with any US ‘interference’ convinced the North Korean Supreme Leader to continue the war. The quality of equipment fielded by the North Korean army caught the allied forces by surprise; leading many to speculate that the Chinese had sold large quantities of modern weapons to them. This suspicion would become fact in the weeks to come.
As the initial attack by the allied forces stalled some 40km north of the old DMZ, an allied amphibious force was assembled to secure a landing further north on the western coast to threaten the capital and force the North Korean army to divide its attention between the fronts. This task force included 4 of the US supercarriers to provide air support and air cover from what remained of the North Korean airforce. On July 23rd, in the middle of the Yellow Sea, some 400km off the North Korean coast, the task force was attacked by advanced North Korean cruise missiles resulting in its almost complete destruction, including the loss of 3 supercarries. Later analysis revealed that the missiles employed had also been Chinese in origin; indeed, the Chinese military had greatly boasted about the supposed effectiveness of its anti-carrier missiles, which had made the nations own plans for carriers obsolete. These claims were generally dismissed by the US Navy and other military experts in the world as nothing more than propaganda, and the cancellation of the carrier program was seen as nothing more than an inability by the Chinese to develop the necessary technology. What was more concerning was that to execute such an attack the North Koreans would have required access to high precision satellite imagery of quality only possessed by the US, the EU, or China.
When confronted with evidence pointing to the use of their missiles and targeting data by the North Koreans, the Chinese denied having sold anything more advanced than small arms and small numbers of combat vehicles to the Koreans. When pressed to make records of these sales transparent to US authorities, Chinese diplomats refused, commenting that perhaps the US had ‘got what it deserved’ for meddling in affairs in Chinas sphere of influence. The United States severed diplomatic connections with China at the beginning of August, and US intelligence services were directed to find the truth about the attacks.
Meanwhile, as the war in Korea slowed down as both sides regrouped, the EU, which had grown to include a limited form of unified military, debated on whether to provide support to the US and her allies in Korea. With some countries still hurting economically from the effects of the 2007 recession, increasing oil prices, and the costs of supporting the newer member states, the EU was in a difficult position; the UK spoke strongly for supporting the efforts, despite having suffered greatly from changes in political leadership over the past years, along with a decline in the financial sector, while Germany and France, their economies finally stable, vehemently disagreed about wasting money and men on a war on the other side of the world. Japan, whose involvement in the Korean war had so far been limited to support through her airforce and navy, passed a law altering Article 9 of their constitution in such as way as to allow the country to use force in defence of both itself and its allies. With the situation in Korea what it was, the change passed almost uncontested and with the support of the US.
A month later, as the allied forces in Korea began to make progress once more after being reinforced by Japanese, Australian and more US troops, the US got the intelligence coup it was after, as a group of operatives infiltrated a Chinese state mainframe and through it most of the Chinese internal network, and collected copious amounts of information. This breakthrough was facilitated by the help of an anonymous third party, who provided detailed information on Chinese network infrastructure to the US; in hindsight, many speculate that as the only other powers with the ability to do something like this were the EU or Russia, and as Russia had more to gain from what followed, they are generally recorded as being the most likely source.
The information extracted included exactly what the US was looking for, and feared to find; clear evidence of not only weapons sales including the missiles used in the attacks, but also of other joint projects to help develop North Koreas military and intelligence services. Amongst these was access to the Chinese GPS equivalent and access to their imaging satellites for use over Korea and the surrounding region, including Japan. 24 hours later there was not a single Chinese satellite left in orbit, commercial or military.