Splendid isolation
Because of the British Empire, the German and Russian Empires were also determined to keep their 4B policies secret from the outside world.
However, there was no hiding the fact that the Russian and German empires had a strong grip on each other.
-Click click click.
-Click click click.
The Kaiser of the German Empire and the Tsar of the Russian Empire, two of the world's great powers.
The photographs of them holding hands and smiling beamingly were front-page news in Europe and North America.
[Russian Empire and German Empire Sign Free Trade Agreement]
[Russian Empire's vast natural resources and grain in exchange for German goods and heavy industry]
[Russia's markets, cut off from the rest of Europe, are opened to the German Empire!]
***
#. Robert Gascoigne Cecil's point of view, Prime Minister of the British Empire
London, the capital of the British Empire.
The Prime Minister's office, 10 Downing Street.
10 Downing Street is the home of the head of the world's most powerful nation, but it's a place where quietness and nobility are more often associated with it than glamor.
But news from the east is about to shake not only 10 Downing Street, but the British Empire.
"Fucking journalists, you Anglo-Saxons, you're not supposed to write stories that are going to bring the British Empire to the brink, you bastards, you're not doing the country any favors, you're causing the stock market to drop vertically because of these articles that would otherwise be ignored!"
-Bang
Prime Minister Robert Gascoigne slammed his fist down hard on his desk.
The smiling face of Wilhelm II in the newspaper that hit his fist further disturbed him.
[German Empire and Russian Empire Growing Closer and Closer: Will the Eight Princes Sign Not Only an Economic Alliance but a Military Alliance?]
-Experts admire and fear the diplomatic skills of the German Imperial Kaiser. After entering into a military alliance with Brazil in the Brazilian Civil War, the German Empire soon signed an economic alliance with Russia. There was no guarantee that a common market would not evolve into a military alliance, he said.
[The British Empire's Great Game of isolating Russia: a temporary defeat for the centuries-old British Empire or the beginning of its decline?]
-Russia's 80-year isolation was shattered by an economic agreement with the German Empire. The Russian Empire, which lacked industrial power, was expected to explode in military might through the wings of the German Empire, the world's second largest industrial power, and India, the British Empire's top priority, could be targeted at any time. Yes, it is. The possibility of the collapse of the hegemony of the British Empire, the most powerful nation in the world, is a possibility!
[What is the central government of the British Empire, which used to wrap itself around the five oceans and six continents, doing, having lost the Great Game, to take economic advantage instead?]
-In the meantime, the Russian market was isolated by our British Empire. And yesterday the shackles were lifted.
Russia's population is 120 million.
I can't help but ask Prime Minister Robert Gascoigne-Cecil.
Will the central government of the British Empire stand idly by while such a huge market opens up?
Will we, the capitalists of Great Britain, clutch our hungry bellies while the capitalists of the German Empire partake of the sweet fruits?
Will we look on dumbly as the German and Russian empires explode in power?
Are we going to repeat the nightmare of the Crimean War?
[The worst prime ministers voted for by the citizens of the British Empire, with #1 being Robert Gascoigne-]
-Bang!
"Fuckers, do you think I want to leave it alone because I want to see what happens? You think I want to sanction them because I feel like it?!"
As soon as Prime Minister Robert Gascoigne Cecil received the news, he called an emergency meeting.
Unsurprisingly, the meeting was attended by two pillars of the British Empire's cabinet: the Home Secretary and the FCO Minister for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.
Unsurprisingly, they were busy holding each other accountable.
"What the hell was the Foreign and Commonwealth Office doing?! Didn't you figure out that the German and Russian Empires were trying to eat each other? You're the reason Pax Britannica is falling apart! Spit out the Counter-Russian Intelligence Service and the Counter-German Intelligence Service now!"
"Hmph! Spit what? Unlike you guys who are holed up on the mainland, moving lazily like pigs, we're running all over the barren land! That's why I asked you to increase the budget! If you had increased the budget, the Russian Intelligence and German Intelligence would be working harder!"
"Why are you asking me about the budget? You should go to Congress and tell them!"
"You know the Interior Department eats up more than half of the budget Congress allocates, and if you guys ate a little less, we wouldn't be in this mess right now, you pigs!"
"What, you mongrels who mix yourselves with blacks and yellows!"
As the Minister of Home Affairs and the Minister of Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and FCO were about to snap at each other, their leader, Prime Minister Robert Gascoigne-Cecil, lightened the mood with a fist to each cheek.
-Slap!!!
-Slap!!!
"...It fucking hurts."
"...Wow, I can't believe a man of my noble upbringing would slap me."
"Shut up everyone, this is a crisis in the British Empire, do you want to fight each other?!"
Did they get a slap in the face and come to their senses?
They glared down at the Prime Minister's piercing glare.
In an instant, 10 Downing Street fell silent, and the Prime Minister looked at everyone and said.
"For eighty years, we, the British Empire, have blocked the export of manufactured goods and machine tools to Russia, inhibiting their industrialization and industrialization. But the German Empire has intervened, and the situation has changed completely. What do you think we should do?"
The Minister of the Interior shouted at the Prime Minister's words.
"The German Empire and the Russian Empire, two of the world's three great powers, are getting closer and closer, so I'm asking you to consider inviting the German Empire to join the Great Game."
"...!!!!"
"...!!!!"
"...!!!!"
"...!!!!"
"...!!!!"
The Minister's words drew stunned looks from not only her entire cabinet, but also her fellow Ministry staff.
She was maxed out in terms of internal affairs, but she didn't know much about international logistics and distribution.
On top of that, the British Empire was so pro-market that the state didn't even bother to look at the economy.
"...Why do you see it that way?"
"Joining the German Empire in the Great Game would mean cutting off trade with the German Empire, and that would be the downfall of our economy, the downfall of Europe, the downfall of Western society. Is that really what the Home Secretary wants?"
"....."
The Minister of Commerce looked at her in disbelief.
The economies of the British Empire and the German Empire were already so closely intertwined that a trade embargo would be a decision to cut the body in two, not just one arm.
Furthermore, the British Empire has much more to lose by cutting off trade with the German Empire, which boasts some of the best science in the world, and many of its goods are indispensable.
Doesn't the German Empire have allies in the United States, the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Brazilian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire?
It would be time-consuming, but it could be done.
That is, of course, assuming that the British Empire doesn't sink their logistics ships.
***
-Crack. Click. Click. Click.
"Hmm.... I can't keep the German and Russian empires in check now."
The Chancellor tapped his fingers on his desk, lost in thought.
The FCO Minister of Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, who had been watching him intently, spoke first.
"There is one way."
"...And what is that?"
"We must break with nearly a century of the British Empire's foreign policy of Splendid isolation, and engage Europe in earnest."
"...!!!"
Splendid isolation, the foreign policy pursued by the British Empire from Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli to Robert Gascoigne-Cecil in the late 19th century.
It was a diplomacy of no permanent alliances or accountability with European powers that only a world hegemon could achieve.
And this foreign policy, the pride of the British Empire and the core of its hegemony, is being shaken.
The economic policies of the German Empire and the Russian Empire alone are shaking.
"So who are the possible allies?"
The prime minister, who had been preparing himself as soon as he opened the newspaper, looked at the FCO minister for foreign and commonwealth affairs.
She spoke of a post-Splendid isolation simulation she had created just in case.
"The Republic of France and the Kingdom of Italy to counter the German and Russian Empires in Europe, the United States of America and the Republic of Mexico to counter the Confederate States of America in North America, Argentina to counter the Brazilian Empire in South America, and the Empire of Japan to counter Russia in Asia."
The expansion of the British Empire, along with the German and Russian Empires, would turn on a little earlier.