Final Act - American Theater

December 2137: the Third Mexican War began drawing to a close. The American forces gained the upper hand with the arrival of the Colonials, but Mexico made them pay for every inch they took back in the Southwest. Tactical nuclear mines were used in scorched Earth tactics to deny the colonials strategic positions, spreading their lines thin and slowing the advance south to a crawl. The shock of the nuclear strike outside of Salt Lake City, the desperate grapple for Dallas, and the meat grinder of the Battle of Los Angeles that drug on for two weeks, all highlighted just how far Mexico was willing to go to stall the colonials from a full scale invasion of Mexico itself. Small operations were conducted to disrupt the power grid, damage ports, and disable communications, but even with the loss of the Mexican space forces the country was still too powerful to take in a lightning war.

In South America, Mexico's allies found themselves with invaders on every doorstep after the Third Wave of colonial reinforcements arrived. The victory at the Quito tower allowed tens of thousands of forces to descend onto the Continent with ease. Forces from Colombia and Peru were pushed back to their homelands after coming to within a hair's breath of victory in Ecuador. After a surprisingly successful cyber-attack, the bulk of Colombian drones were disabled clearing a rout to a Bogota in May of 2137. Peru was more slow going, with Lima holding out until January 2138. These were minor victories, but boosts to American morale. The fight in Venezuela was still dragging on, and an Amphibious assault against Santiago just wasn't possible until the spring thaw cleared the harbor, and space forces were spread too thin until the second and third waves of colonials arrived. But the big break for the U.S. forces came with the February uprising in Brazil. The various disparate resistance groups had come together (with a little help from the CIA) to stage a chain of attacks on Mexican-Allied positions in the country. The attack caused a panic across the Mexican Sphere, and created an opportunity for attack.

After more than a year of slow, bloody fighting Mexico was pushed back inside their own land, with only a few positions along the border remaining in Mexican hands. Some called for a ceasefire, but the colonials were angry, and vengeful after 15 months fighting just to take back the Homeland; the attacks in Brazil left Mexico confused and vulnerable, and the majority of the country wanted to end the Mexican threat once and for all. The Invasion of Mexico was a two front attack from the North by land and the East by sea. The Northern Invasion was stalled by nuclear attacks along critical positions along the Rio Grande, preventing drones and resupply lines from being established. It wasn't until the Battle Rio Bravo that American forces were able to break through and secure the line into Mexico, while a smaller force took the town of Ojinga to reinforce the North Eastern forces as part of operation Doniphan. Out west, the US enjoyed more success. Earlier in the year the battle of Tijuana-San Diego ended with a relativistic strike, destroying the bulk of the retreating forces from the California campaign. Another strike was used against Nogales, the location of most of Mexico's forces on the Arizona border, smaller forces opposite the town to push south unmolested by Mexican Army units in Operation Trident. Naval forces in the West were largely assigned to amphibious assaults against ports while assisting the combined Space Force and Army push south to the port city of Mazatlan. In the East it was slow going. Any attempt to gain a foothold on the coast was stopped by Mexican nuclear detonations and conventional scorched Earth tactics. The Battle for the North-East would be decided at Monterrey-Saltillo. The battle lasted months, and both sides needed the city to control the North. For Mexico, loosing Monterrey mean loosing a critical position to guard against invasion in the North, for the US, the city was a choke point to Mexico City. As the battle raged, a second front was opened at the critical port city of Veracruz.

As has always been the case, Veracruz was seen as the key to victory in Mexico. Thus it should perhaps have been no surprise that Mexico was willing to destroy the port to rob the Union of a foothold that would take them the Capital. Mexico held nothing back against the Americans, detonating nuclear ordinance every step of the way to Mexico city, and where there were options in the North to withdraw and simply find a new rout, the road to Mexico City was far less flexible; the soldiers of the Veracruz campaign saw some of the heaviest losses of the war, a fact that was true for both sides. The Union responded with the largest bombardment campaign of the War, Operation Starlight, hitting three key military positions surrounding Mexico City. The ash cloud generated from Nuclear and Relativistic strikes blanketed the land and brought nuclear winter to the country. Millions of Mexican nationals poured over the border to flee from the fallout, but the fight in the Southwest hadn't left the region in much better shape. The war took a toll on the Earth that humans had not seen before. By the winter of 2138 the conditions in Mexico had become unbearable, the government was facing food shortages and uprisings across the country, but the Mexican military never yielded. The battle for the capital was a bloodbath, but the city was spared from nuclear or angel fire once the Union broke through the Mexican lines into the city center. President Jaso intended to fight till the last man, but was killed by his Secretary of Defense who promptly agreed to the American terms of surrender. The last battle in South America came to an end a few weeks later after the last holdouts in the Rio de La Plata finally agreed to surrender. 

The informal ceasefire remained in place while millions of Mexicans and Americans fled to the now reopened Quito Tower and the newly completed Macapa Tower. The US Government was offering early colonization passes to war refugees, but found themselves facing a growing demand from would-be colonists around the world affected by the harsh winter of 38'-39'. Some have argued that winter did more to force an end to the war than anything else. Poland sued for peace after a coup overthrew the sitting President after death by exposure became a real problem in most Army units. But the constant around the world was hunger and civil unrest. The U.S. Congress approved a budget infusion to spur the construction of President Halvidar's Global Transit Network, which promised to until the world and a network of new space elevators, and ultimately bring the Earth easy access to the riches of space. All people cared about now was getting food from the colonies to Earth just to get things to quiet down. In Mexico things were even worse. The decimation of their homeland and the "Gran Vaciado" left the country in a state of near lawlessness. U.S. patrol drones were now doing most of the actual police work to keep the country together; and much the same could be said across the Western Hemisphere. With the hemisphere in ruins, and the nuclear winter not expected to end until at least summer of 2140,  the U.S. called for a summit in San Juan. At the conference, largely made up of provisional governments established only in the last few months, the U.S. agreed to pay for reconstruction efforts and aid the local forces in keeping order, functionally formalizing the U.S. occupation as a fact of life. In addition, the U.S. required that the commerce/social service departments and ministries of these countries cede control the the US Department of Commerce and Social Services to place them under the Quantum Economic Model. Doing so would make the delivery of goods and services to those who needed it far more efficient, and would improve the economies of these countries, as it has in the US and the military administered zones in Eurasia. The treaty was signed on April 4th, 2139.