Concept:
Donald Trump makes perfect sense if you realize that sometime around 2012, he was captured by a foreign intelligence service and programmed to suddenly believe that he could never be truly happy unless he ruled the planet, and the way there was the presidency. The goal? Chaos. Cause the US to sink into a decade or more of civil unrest, as the inherently liberty-minded majority realize that a small minority have subverted their freedoms, possibly topped off with a civil war. Remove the US from its place as the stabilizing dominant player on the world stage for years.
The question, then, is who owned that intelligence service? The Chinese are the US’ primary economic rival, so they’re a good choice. The Russians are the classic villain, and given what a cartoonishly sinister monster Putin has become, they look better now than at any time in the last 20 years. It could be Hamas, or some other member of the “Death to America” cult, but it would probably take the resources of a state-level operation to have that tech.
No, I think I’m going with a nation no one would ever suspect. A second-rate power otherwise lost in the crowd. A choice that would only make sense after they had already begun their domination of the world in the US’ place. I propose… The Netherlands.
Think about it. A nation which once had dreams of empire. A nation whose former empire was once one of the greatest on earth, with the greatest fleet the world had ever seen. A nation whose people are widely reputed as regarding their own nation and its people as being naturally superior. A nation populated, for lack of a more delicate description, with tall, blonde haired, blue eyed people. A nation which controls the company whose products are the basis for the entire modern semiconductor industry, such an enormous power that the western nations have actually used it to retard Chinese technological progress!
With the USA crippled, and the rest of the world caught up in watching those horrors, and those of a number of regional but potentially epidemic wars, the Dutch begin implementing a series of massive “self-defense” expenditures, building both a large military and a massively subsidized merchant fleet. All of this is funded by a series of restrictions on chip fabrication technologies which allow them to squeeze billions out of their customers and temporarily slow the ability of developed nations to build their most advanced weapons.
As their influence grows, the Dutch begin to step into major international diplomacy, leading to providing peacekeeping forces to several conflicts. Eventually, they use their clout and the US’ crippled state to propose taking over a bunch of formerly US military bases within strategic partners around the world. As the new “World’s Police Officer” starts to stretch their wings, Dutch companies find themselves with stunning advantages in international markets. A panicky Panama, no longer feeling protected by a US in chaos, is convinced by the Dutch to give them commercial control of the canal in return for security guarantees, backed by the new, ultra high-tech Dutch military.
Between subsidies for their companies and control of the single most important trade resource in the world, the Dutch ascend…
