50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 725 The Situation Becomes Increasingly Irreversible

The current situation in Java is as follows.

Prabowo Subiyando, Hato's son-in-law, is known as a member of the Hato faction as a representative of Hato's legacy.

The Hattoists took over some of the power and personnel from the Hatto era, and their sphere of influence was mainly in the west and north.

This includes the area north of Jakarta, including North and South Sumatra, Kalimantan and its surrounding islands.

Among these are Riau Province, which guards the vital waterway through Malacca, and the three wealthiest provinces: East and North Kalimantan, which are richest in resources.

Image: An economic diagram for the 21st century. I couldn't find one from the 1980s, but the meaning is clear enough.

Colonel Latif led a group of opposition and centrist forces who had been marginalized by the Hatto faction in the past, because they had formed a party called the Progressive Party, which was known to outsiders as the Progressives.

His sphere of influence is mainly in the east and south, including most of Java Island south of Jakarta, Sulawesi Province, Papua Province and its surrounding islands.

The most economically developed regions are the areas surrounding Jakarta, Central Sulawesi, West Papua, and the industrially developed West Java industrial region.

In terms of economy and population, the Hattoists are superior; in terms of military strength and territory size, the Progressive Party is superior.

Both sides want to seize Jakarta, the most central city in Java, so the Jakarta area has become the focus of their struggle.

However, both sides lack sufficient control over their respective subordinate regions, and in many places, they only obey orders but not directives.

For example, the eastern and northern Kalimantan provinces, which have relatively good mining economies, only nominally obey Prabowo's leadership.

In reality, not a single penny of the tax revenue from the two provinces in the past few months has reached Prabowo.

Colonel Latif's situation was similar.

They now have two open battlefronts: one is the struggle for Jakarta, and the other is in North Kalimantan and Central Sulawesi.

Both sides also dispatched an unknown number of task forces, traveling by small boats or even passenger ships, to penetrate into each other's sphere of influence and try every means to erode the islands controlled by the other.

Java is a country of thousands of islands, and to control its territory, it needs naval ships.

However, both sides' navies have suffered heavy losses in the past few months, especially their main warships, which have been severely damaged by Sun Zhiwei several times.

Currently, the Hatto navy is divided into four parts, stationed in Banda Aceh, Malacca, North Kalimantan, and Jakarta.

Banda Aceh was established to control the rebellion in the Aceh region; Malacca was a vital strategic point that required troop deployment; North Kalimantan was established to collect local tax revenue; and Jakarta was established as the front line of the standoff.

The Progressive Party's navy was also divided into four parts, stationed in Jakarta, North Sulawesi, West Papua, and Timor.

Leaving aside Jakarta, the fleets in North Sulawesi and West Papua were all in it for money, and Timor Island was for stability, but it has now been destroyed.

This meant that neither side could perfectly control their respective territories, and the islands were riddled with holes, with representatives from both sides constantly moving back and forth between them.

Now none of them know which of their subordinates are truly loyal and which have been turned against them; ambitious individuals across Java harbor their own ulterior motives.

Larger cities began to build their own armed forces, and cities with ports began to build maritime guards, using the taxes they withheld.

This is already the pace of a chaotic world, even more chaotic than the period of warlord infighting in the Beiyang Army. The only difference is that other places are accumulating strength and have not yet started fighting.

Without international mediation, both sides are now locked in fierce fighting on two fronts, and their soldiers are unable to back down. In particular, recently, both sides' main forces in Jakarta received ample supplies, resulting in a surge in combat effectiveness.

As a result, the intensity of the fighting in Jakarta escalated rapidly, leading to heavy losses on both sides. Currently, half of Jakarta has been reduced to ruins.

The situation remained deadlocked, but now war has broken out behind both sides.

In Prabowo, the situations in Aceh and Greater Natuna are unstable.

Meanwhile, in Latif, the situations in Timor and Papua are unstable.

Sun Zhiwei is one of the masterminds behind all of this, but he is not the only one.

For example, Australia is showing signs of involvement in the Timor Islands region, and they are even preparing to send troops directly to Timor Island.

This is not surprising. In recent years, under Harto's leadership, Java was filled with an aggressive mentality, and many surrounding areas were invaded by Java.

Faced with such a powerful neighbor, Australia is under great pressure. For the sake of national security, they have no choice but to be on good terms with Java, even though they have long harbored resentment towards Java.

Now the opportunity has come. With Hatto gone, this is the perfect chance for them to drive Javanese influence outwards.

Controlling Timor Island would provide Australia with an overseas defense line in the northwest, which would be crucial for its surrounding security.

There are also resistance forces in Papua, backed by the Dutch.

Papua Island had been Dutch territory for centuries, and now it's been occupied by Java. How could they possibly swallow this insult?

Although the Netherlands is no longer what it used to be, it was once a powerful nation in European history and remains one of the developed countries today.

As the saying goes, even a starved camel is bigger than a horse. They may not be able to defeat modern superpowers, but they are more than capable of causing trouble in small regional countries.

America, who used to stop them, now has a very ambiguous attitude. She says a few words without any real substance, but takes no concrete action.

There's also the Aceh region, where the resistance forces have Indian connections.

This is not hard to understand. The Bay of Bengal, which is controlled by India, is located just outside Malacca, but the Indians do not gain much benefit from this open sea area.

They can set up checkpoints on both sides of Malacca to collect tolls, and build port warehouses to make money in the long term.

Once outside of Malacca and into open waters, the ships began to disperse, and they couldn't get all of them to dock at their ports.

The Indians had long wanted a foothold in Malacca, so their support for the Acehnese people in northern Malacca was a logical step.

In reality, Prabowo and Latif had long wanted to quit, but they had already paid such a high price.

Both sides have suffered over 100,000 casualties, and the seeds of hatred have been sown. At this point, it's not so easy to stop the war.

If they didn't receive enough benefits to distribute to their subordinates, they wouldn't be able to explain themselves to the soldiers who fought so hard.

Sun Zhiwei's goal was to prolong the war and make the four surrounding fires burn even brighter so that he could profit from them.

(End of this chapter)