North American Imperial Union

The North American Imperial Union
The North American Imperial Union was an empire that occupied vast swathes of North and South American territory. Beginning in 2017 as a union between Canada, the USA, and Mexico, the group began to take on expansionist qualities similar to several other world powers at the time, and is generally recognized to have ascended to imperial status less than a decade later. At its height, somewhere between 2060-2080, several dozen former nations were a part of the union. During the 22nd century, it experienced a very rapid decline, accelerated by the rise of several upstart nations and by 2170, it consisted of nothing more than a smattering of territory in North America's mid-west. Most historians agree that the empire's final year as a cohesive union was 2195, and by the beginning of the 23rd century, it had disappeared entirely. It re-emerged towards the end of that same century, a venture which proved to be very short lived.

History
The pioneer of the union is generally recognized to be Jeb Bush. The brother of former American president George W. Bush, he emerged as president of the United States following the 2016 election, beating out the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, by a wide margin. Although Bush's platform initially was leaning towards the right end of the political spectrum, pressure from social justice activists as well as the general public forced him to reconsider his stance and he pushed his campaign to the left wing. As a result, Clinton's platform was driven incredibly far to the left and in the process, lost much support. Upon Bush's inauguration, he was presented with a myriad of challenges. Becoming increasingly prevalent was concern over the proposed ISIS caliphate. The terror group had encroached Syria and Jordan - as was such, Israel began to push for American military support in the region. Knowing that the public would not react favourably to such a decision, Bush decided that in order to spread out the responsibility of any potential campaign, he must join forces with other countries. While the US and the surrounding nations had strong political ties, Bush formed a union in which all countries were obliged to provide military, financial and political support should an adverse situation arise. After months of negotiations, Canada and Mexico joined the union. The union was officially established on May 7th, 2017.

Content with the current situation, Bush began to amalgamate the resources of the three countries. To begin he created a centralized currency, the Amero, very much based on the model of the European Union and their currency, the Euro. Afterwards, he sent in a combined military force of nearly 100,000 soldiers. It was the first military action of its kind - a standing army comprised of soldiers from all three member nations, named the North American Unionized Forces. This was met with some initial criticism, although noting the combined strength of the new military, opposition gradually faded away. The campaign against ISIS continued for nearly a decade - by its end, ISIS had been reduced to a collection of extremists concentrated in central Iraq. While Israel escaped serious harm, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and parts of Iran had been ravaged. The union left a temporary force of 25,000 troops behind in order to ensure that all countries affected could return to normal and also to keep ISIS and other fledgling terror groups at bay. At home, Bush and his administration remained quiet, even as the economy grew increasingly stagnant. While Thomas Mulcair was Prime Minister in Canada and Miguel Fernando President in Mexico, Bush essentially administrated both countries, and their respective heads of state were reduced to puppet figures. A nagging fear that the union was gradually transitioning from a democratic nation to an imperial one was confirmed as Bush announced on October 11th, 2020 that all three countries in the union were being amalgamated into one. The decision was met with intense criticism, but Bush attempted to assuage the growing dissent by noting that both Mulcair and Fernando had agreed to the decision. While never explicitly stating his intention to form a monarchy in place of a democracy, in hindsight, it is clear that Bush was paving the way for such an experiment. Ultimately, he died of natural causes