| |||||||
| Capital (and largest city) |
London | ||||||
| Language | English, Dutch | ||||||
| Religion | Anglican Christianity, Islam | ||||||
| Government | Constitutional Monarchy | ||||||
| Monarch | Queen Beatrix | ||||||
| Prime Minister | Dan Jarvis & Pim Fortuyn | ||||||
| Area | 20,346,540 km² | ||||||
| Established | 1775 | ||||||
The Anglo-Dutch union is a Constitutional Monarchy based in Europe (although it has the majority of its territory in North America). It is a member of the North Seas Alliance and has land borders with the USA, Germany, France , the Russian Federation, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe , Mozambique and Indonesia.
History[]
Founding[]
The initial founding of the Anglo-Dutch union was born out of the Glorious Revolution in 1690 establishing the personal union of the crowns of Scotland, England and the United Provinces. The personal unions early years were turbulent with King William the 3rd often campaigning abroad and after his death the regency of King William the 4th was racked by political rebellion that threatened to separate the new Union. William survived to take the throne in 1706. The act of Union that united Scotland and England did nothing to stop the bickering between nobles from the two Kingdoms. In 1708 William the 4th issued the Proclamation of Union and established a system in which he ruled the United Provinces and his wife ruled Great Britain. This quelled the mutterings of division amongst the Union's nobles for a short time and allowed William to establish a powerful court supporting him and his wife.
Personal Union[]
For 60 years from 1715 to 1775 the Anglo-Dutch Union was ruled under the auspices of first William the 4th and then William the 5th and their respective wives. This had the affect of creating two separate courts for the King in Amsterdam and the Queen in London. Their respective courtiers often plotted against each other and in the colonies abroad there were significant rivalry's between courtiers. In particular the accumulation of British lords and courtiers together in the American colonies made them a political hotbed for dissent. The Williamite regime in Amsterdam was growing angry at the Philadelphian governments to refuse to carry out the orders from Amsterdam.
William the 5th had grown increasingly frustrated at the terms of the Proclamation of Union and the later London agreements and he had plans to disband the union completely, finding a minor English or Dutch royal who would be willing to take the throne in London. The showdown between William and the nobles in Philadelphia came to a head in the summer of 1764 when the members of the American colonial government refused to raise the Taxes that William demanded to pay for the third Carnatic war in India. William was on the brink of disbanding the Union when he suffered a fatal stroke allowing his son William the 6th, who had plotted to succeed his father ahead of his brother to take the throne.
Unlike his father William the 6th had been educated in both London and Amsterdam and had allies in the courts of his other and his father as well as the colonial government in Philadelphia. Unlike his father he refused to renew the Proclamation of Union and took over the ruling of both countries, summoning a joint parliament in London. William had seen the union slowly drifting apart during his fathers reign and he and his sister were determined to revert the changes that the Union had experienced during their fathers reign. Mary traveled to Philadelphia, conducting personal negotiations with the nobles and tried to force them to accept her brothers rules.
In London William the 6th drew up the plans for his integration of the Union into one single federal government but troubles with the natives in America and the Frisians in Europe kept him occupied for ten years, as his insistence on campaigning with his armies often drew him away from London and into far flung outposts of the Empire, leaving his sister to rule alongside parliament in his stead. When he returned to London in 1774 though he had his final plans ready to submit to parliament. Then disaster struck, his spies in America told him that a convention of sixteen expat nobles and ten American citizens of great renoun were meeting in secret in Boston to discuss the possibility of independence for an American state.
Panicking, William sent his sister to Philadelphia to force the American's into staying within the Union with full authority to negotiate with them a deal that included anything up to and including equal parity for the Americas with Britain and the Netherlands in his new federal state. Mary tried to bargain the Americans down from there initial position on independence, offering them limited national autonomy on a par to Scotland before the act of union. They refused and continued to press for independence, forcing her to offer them her brothers offer of complete parity in the Union. There was significant debate between the delegates at this point with one faction of them under Thomas Jefferson refusing point blank to consider any deal that did not guarantee American independence with others led by Lord Washington pushing for the convention to accept the deal that the king was offering. Washington's faction was successful but the Jeffersonians continued to refuse the compromise and would later rebel first against the Union government and then against the French, finally gaining the independent American state that they dreamed of in the Second American war of Independence in Louisiana.
Washington and 99 other American's of high standing formed the American commission and traveled to England with Mary in order to take part in the parliament of 1775 which passed in the summer of that year the Acts of Integration finally establishing the Union as a federal state, united and indivisible. King William the 6th became the 1st king of the United Kingdoms of Great Britain, The Netherlands and the Americas establishing the union once and for all and settling the question of possible British or Dutch independence.
Napoleonic Wars[]
During the Napoleonic Wars the Union and the USA were the two strongest powers in the Anti-French coalitions. The Union itself was unable to fight a land war for most of the campaigns as France had occupied the Netherlands in 1808, Instead the Union fought a series of naval campaigns and guerrilla wars until France invaded the USA in 1812.
Once Napoleon had invaded the USA the UK found itself in the ideal position to strike out at Napoleon once and for all. American forces retreated deep into their Indian territories drawing in Napoleon and his army after them until the Anglo-Dutch under Wellington trapped them. The French forces were totally destroyed and Napoleon was forced to flee from America.
Defeated in America France faced opposition in Europe as well and the Union invaded its mainland territories recovering from them. France was crippled and in the Congress of Vienna. The Union received the greatest concessions, it was granted control of most of North America and unrestricted control of the worlds oceans.
Colonial Expansion[]
After the Congress of Vienna in 1814 the division of Europe became set in stone. Assisted by Metternich in Austria the Anglo-Dutch set up their own continental system, forcing all the European states to retain there existing borders or risk a combined Anglo-Dutch, Russian and Austrian assault to restore previous territory and this system, barring the upset caused by the Liberal revolutions of 1848 kept most of the European states in line until Prussia's expansionist moves in the 1860's established the German nation state with the backing of the UK.
Forced to respect European territorial boundaries and with America and Asia locked up by independent states strong enough to give all but the largest European powers a bloody nose the European powers, including the Union began to look to Africa for new places to expand. For the Union with its focus on marine power the key therefore was control of the cape of good hope in Southern Africa and a sizable section of the Mediterranean coast that would allow them to take a shorter overland route from India to the Mediterranean, avoiding the cape entirely and ensuring Anglo-Dutch domination of trade to India. South Africa was the place where the Union had the best early success, Dutch and British farmers and ranchers expanding out of the refueling station at Cape Colony quickly established a network of Anglo-Dutch control reaching as far north as the lands of the Tswana people and the rich diamonds found there. The Cape Colony became the initial flagship colony of the Empire allowing as it did Union ships to take on supplies and later fuel on shipping runs to India or Australia, both of which had been Anglo-Dutch since the 1700's. New Zealand was also an early colony to become incorporated into the empire with the Union forming an alliance with a group of allied and later incorporated Maori tribes in 1840.
The possibility of controlling the possible overland trade route from India to the North African coast remained out of reach for the Anglo-Dutch apparently permanently though as the Ottomans continued to rule Egypt even if through proxies. However when the Egyptian viceroys struck out against the Ottoman Empire itself, threatening to topple it the opportunity came for the Union to enforce its will on Egypt. In alliance with Ottoman troops an Anglo-Dutch ports authority took control of Alexandria and acquired the rights to build a railway through the Ottoman empire to Mumbai allowing them to ship goods directly from India to the port at Alexandria. In addition to this the Anglo-Dutch, in co-operation with the French constructed the Suez canal allowing ships to bypass the Strait of Good Hope. While this had the affect of reducing the importance of the Anglo-Dutch colonies in the cape allowed significantly quicker trade with the more prosperous colonies in the east. For countries other than the union colonies became a point of pride as much as a way of increasing their countries economic might.
The Union became frustrated with the bickering of countries over their competing claims and with the damage they were doing to the economy and in co-ordination with the new German nation held the Berlin conference in 1884, clearly laying out which areas were and were not of limits to the European powers. While the other European countries had been racing each other for relatively meaningless land the UK became more interested in events on the other side of the Atlantic, twice interfering in the affairs of other American nations, first in 1861 to assist the Indian tribes of the USA in defeating the remnants of the east coast white supremacist movement and then in Mexico to remind the French that while they were co-operating in Africa. North America remained an Anglo-Dutch area.
World War One[]
The Union had been allied to Japan since meeting them in the late 1800's and had built up alliances with Prussia/Germany and the Ottoman Empire in the previous century while its alliance from the USA had been in effect since the Anglo-Dutch-American Alliance in 1845 informally this grouping of powers were known as the Imperials. On the other side of the "Fence" was Imperial Russia and her allies (The Allies).
The war broke out when Japan declared war on Russia and her allies over Russian demands in the Pacific. Before the Union and her allies could declare their support however Russia declared war on the Union taking it as a chance to invade Union territories in the Pacific. In response to this the rest of the Imperial Alliance declared war and WWI began. France invaded both Germany and the Union on what would become the Western front while Russia invaded Germany in the west and Japan in the east. The Ottoman Empire also invaded Russia while Austria-Hungary attacked Germany and the Ottoman Empire.
The Union rushed its new battle cruisers and Dreadnoughts into service to try and control the seas and they soon succeeded in their goal. The Anglo-Dutch main fleet blockaded the main French fleet at Brest until the end of the French involvement in the war while the American and German fleets attempted to blockade the Spanish fleet in Rota. The other parts of the war at sea mainly involved raids on convoys by various nations but these had little affect compared to the larger blockades. The exception to this largely mediocre naval war was in the far east where Russia and the Japanese fought several naval battles with each other.
In the air airplanes and airships saw their first widespread use by both France and Germany as they were used to bomb French and German cities. In addition to this from 1906 onwards Union and German bomber airplanes were used in support of Anglo-Dutch and German attacks into Russia and France while towards the end of the war Union aircraft were launched from RN ships in support of Imperial operations and in scouting out Spanish ships during the last united Allied attack of the war.
After a German/Anglo-Dutch attack using armored cars that captured Paris Napoleon IV was returned to France in a revolution which freed up Anglo-Dutch and German forces to attack Russia along with Japanese and Ottoman forces. Together the four nations were able to make substantial gains into Russia eventually causing a civil war in the country that overthrew the Tsar temporarily although he would later return.
Inter-War Period[]
The Tsar returned to Russia in 1919 and slowly he attempted to rebuild the influence that Russia had lost as a result of its defeat in WWI. He invaded the new Chinese republic although Japan sent advisors and Germany sent the Fernost Kräfte (Far east forces). China welcomed the aid and with German help China won the war. The Union itself suffered a political chaos with the Amsterdam stock market collapsed sending its economy into a downward spiral, with several projects canceled.
In China a brutal civil war broke out and several thousand ex Anglo-Dutch soldiers enlisted in volunteer brigades to fight on both the Fascist and Republican causes. Germany and Japan sent official aid as well while in France a right wing revolution overthrew the monarchy. France sent forces to help the Chinese Fascists who eventually won the Chinese civil war at a great cost in life. The Union however finally emerged from the recession although tensions with France grew with the French government demanding the return of Calais to France.
World War Two[]
The Union refused to hand over Calais to France and war seemed inevitable, it was and France declared war on the Union invading Calais and the Unions European territory. In response to this the old alliances of WWI were reactivated with France calling on the old Allies and the Union calling on the Imperials. On both sides though some nations refused to answer the cause, on the side of the Allies Spain refused to help France while on the Imperial side the Ottoman Empire and the USA didn't respond. In addition two new nations joined the war, China on the side of the Allies and Brazil joined the Imperials.
Unlike the previous war Germany was quickly defeated by combined French, Russian and Austrian forces who soon moved to pacify Serbia which they succeed in. The Ottoman Empire remained suspiciously quiet however and many believed that it would join the allies, This was not the case, however, and the Ottoman Empire soon launched an attack on the Russian fleet at Sevastapol. In addition to this France invaded Spain as a result of rumours regarding Franco's friendship and help to Free German commanders Erwin Rommel and Erich Raeder and the belief that Spain might join the Imperials.
The invasion of Spain would soon prove to be Frances first and bloodiest mistake. Although French forces did capture some Spanish areas they were stopped at the soon to be infamous Montaña línea. In addition the Allies were also failing in Asia where Japan captured Beijing and forced the Chinese government to surrender.
Although 1935 had been a mixed year for both sides it was only a small hint of what was to come. At the beginning of 1936/ end of 1935 the French suffered their first defeat when the Armée du Sud was destroyed by Spanish Forces, it was the tip of a very big iceberg. The USA finally joined the war and with their help Anglo-Dutch forces captured Russian America and crossed the Bering Straits. Closer to home was the destruction of the French fleet which restored the Unions control of the Channel. The only good thing to happen for the Allies was that the Ottoman Empire was forced to withdraw from European Turkey.
Although 1936 had been a bad year for the Allies many historians now say that the year they finally lost the war was 1937, from then on they said the defeat of France and her allies was inevitable. This was because for the first time the Imperials were on the offensive, Spanish forces captured much of southern France and Japan and the Union captured much of Siberia. In addition to this the Scandinavian countries joined the war on the side of the Imperials and along with the Union attacked into Northern Russia. This when combined with attacks from the Ottoman Empire through the Caucuses allowed Anglo-Dutch forces to capture Moscow, ending Russia's involvement in the war.
The following year both Germany and the Netherlands were recaptured from the Allies and the Anglo-Dutch tested their first nuclear weapon in the Canadian Arctic. This continual push weakened France allowing the Spanish to capture Nice and the Anglo-Dutch to capture Paris and then unleash Nuclear weapons on Vienna, ending the war and ushering in a new and more deadly kind of warfare.
Cold War[]
At the end of the Second World War the Union was unquestionably the worlds greatest power and stood alone as the only country with Nuclear weapons. The alliances it had built thought soon started to fracture. At the Berlin conference the Union had willingly given up any hope of the Cape to Cairo land and much of its influence in Africa, allowing the Spanish to now exert a greater degree of influence in western Africa. The Berlin conference however only served to cover up the increasing political differences between the Imperials. When Spain and the Ottoman Empire signed the Algiers Pact in 1943 it was clear that the Imperial Alliance was as good as dead with the Union disbanding it three weeks after the Spanish and ottomans met in Algiers. To replace it the Union formed a mutual defense pact with several former Imperial Alliance members as well as other countries who had fought alongside the Union in WWII. The North Seas Alliance (NSA) was distinctly different from the old Imperial Alliance, excluding as it did the USA , Ottoman Empire and the Balkans federation (the successor to Serbia) and including six countries that had not even existed at the original signing of the Imperial Alliance.
Soon the NSA and the Algiers pact found themselves facing off over a variety of issues, political, economic and technological. The Union withdrew from the front lines of world politics and used the NSA as its proxy for several clashes with the Ottomans and Spanish only becoming directly involved in the Cameroon and Cuban crises and sending only limited support to the Italian's in the Italian war. Instead it fought the Spanish in an Arms and Technology Race that they conclusively won, by getting the first man on the moon as well as outproducing the Spanish in terms of military equipment.
The Cold War, as a economic and military conflict really ended in 1967 when the newly elected Ottoman Grand Vizir Cevdet Sunay decided to stop supporting General Franco's military and economic adventures forcing the General to reign in his desires to crush the Union. The real battle fought between the NSA and the Pact therefore came about as a result of the growing independence movements in the Union's colonies. Miscalculations about the way that the Anglo-Dutch went about enfranchising their colonies resulted in pro-independence parties negotiating for the independence of all but a few colonies. These new countries were the perfect battleground for the two Alliances to battle out the second stage of the cold war as the newly elected governments struggled to control their people. This often led to dictatorships backed by either the NSA or the Pact and both sides used their new puppet governments in Africa to wage wars against each other, hoping to establish a government friendly to them. The spiraling costs of these proxy wars, while just bearable by the Anglo-Dutch economy broke the will of the Spanish people, sending there country into depression and after King Carlos took the throne in 1979 the Spanish overwhelmingly rejected any continuation of the the Cold War, ending it in that summer with their withdrawal of support from all Spanish colonies and former colonies excepting Cuba.
Although the Union had won the Cold War and forced Spain's empire to collapse, the cold war had damaged the existing Union beyond repair. As long as Queen Juliana remained Monarch the Union could be held together, barely under her unifying rule. The granting of Independence to the Colonies and the subsequent waves of immigration as well as America's continuing rise at the expense of the the rest of the Union brought the Union to the brink of total collapse with the countries population dividing into strong factions behind political organisations and parties each picking a member of the royal family to support. Juliana held on for as long as she could but the stresses of holding a kingdom together began to show and she was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1986 which finally took her life in the winter of 1991, sending the Union spiraling into civil war. In that sense while the NSA had won the Cold War the Union had in fact lost, Spain had emerged from the Cold War its national identity more intact than ever before and with complete self confidence. The Union on the other hand was a broken shell of its past glories, never again to retain its former strength and with a military that viewed each branch as more of a rival than that of any other nation.
Civil War[]
For more information read the Anglo-Dutch Civil War article
In November 1991 Prince Juhan overthrew the democratically elected and appointed Anglo-Dutch government under Princess Beatrix and Prime Minister Neil Kinnock. What followed was ten years of war that killed 26.6 million men globally in five continents. During the Civil-War the Union was permanently changed. The American population became more independent from the idea of the Union to the extent that the American PM Bill Clinton would privately refer to the Beatrixian government that had come with her to America as them while referring to the American government as us and the USA as their misguided cousins. Conversely the two European sections of the Empire became closer than ever before and on the streets of London and Amsterdam, In particular after the German occupation it was common to see an Englishmen and a Dutchman conversing in a mix of English and Dutch and referring to the whole Juhanite Union as we.
The Union avoided much of the Civilian casualties, suffering only two million civilian deaths out of a total of 9.6 million but the war and the devastation that it inflicted on America in particular left nearly six million homeless by the end. The populist population and former radio presenter Pim Fortuyn exploited this to become one of the Union's most popular politicians ever with his Progressive Conservative Party gaining nearly 80% in opinion polls. Fortuyn never had the chance to exploit this in war-time however because of one of the most radical decisions made in Anglo-Dutch history. Both the Juhanite and Beatrixian sides suspended democratic elections, Juhan's government doing so in the immediate aftermath of the Coup and the Beatrixian government declaring the results of the 1996 elections invalid when exit polls suggested that Fortuyn would have won almost 90% of the seats in parliament.
Instead both sides were run by a Military Junta, headed Admiral Van Till on the Beatrixian side and by the Prince himself on the Juhanite side. These two Junta's operated differently and were perceived in radically different ways, something that the Convention Parliament sought to reconcile when it met after the end of the war. Admiral Van Till's Junta ruled in the backrooms before 1996 but after '96 and the Admiral's marriage to the immensely popular Princess he came out in the open as someone perceived to be above the backstabbing and backroom deals of regular politicians and always enjoyed massive popularity. In fact it was only after the return to civilian parliamentary government in 1998 that American citizens began to rebel against the government. Conversely the Prince had never hid the power of his Junta, dreaming of a return to personal rule and while his Religious Democrat backers remained popular during the ten year war he himself became an object of villainous hatred by the end of the war and former religious democrats in the Air Force and civilian population openly discussed the possibility of a republican government and revolution.
The end of result of all this was that when the Beatrixian government finally took control of the entire Union on the 25th of July it inherited a Union more deeply divided than ever before. To solve the issues that it inherited two of the most popular Anglo-Dutch politicians, Pim Fortuyn and Margaret Thatcher alongside the government's representative Gordon Brown chaired the Convention Parliament, a gathering of all 1200 MP's in the Union that met in London. The Convention Parliament, as well as conducting the general governing of the Union also passed three acts that it hoped would correct the problems in Anglo-Dutch society. These acts, The Reconciliation and Punishment Act, The Governance Act and the Succession Act forever changed the Union expanding the powers of the Monarch and the Regional Parliaments, redefining the Union as a Federal state and conducting war trials on several Juhanite and Beatrixian officers and politicians, sentencing Juhan posthumously to Death and imprisoning several high profile Beatrixian and Juhanite officers who had committed offenses against the civilian population.
Modern Day[]
In the Aftermath of the Civil War the Union once again emerged the worlds most powerful nation. Power as always begot jealousy and the new Russian state and the Arab League in the middle east both came to see the new Anglo-Dutch global domination as an affront to their new found power. Ironically, while acting independently, both came up with the same tactic to use against the Anglo-Dutch. Indonesia , while officially decolonised in the 80's remained in reality an Anglo-Dutch puppet state oppressing the countries Muslim majority and supplying the Union with its much needed oil. It was in the words of Admiral Van Till the Union's Dirty laundry and the perfect place to organise a strike against the Union.
Covertly both the Arab League and Russia funded radical Aceh militants. Osama Bin Laden, The Arab leagues spymaster helped train up the Aceh forces with his own personal Al-Quaeda militia and the Russians provided them with military equipment. The end result of this was a series of organisations across Indonesia dedicated to the cause of destroying the Union and freeing Indonesia. In 2002 a group of Aceh militants hijacked KLM flight 167 from Washington and crashed it into the world trade center in London, killing three thousand people.
The following year Aceh militants, in what turned out to be a stunningly bad move broke away from the Indonesian government and formed there own state. The Union struck back, invading and destroying Aceh and establishing military rule. However doing so has upset much of the globes Muslim population and the last few years have not been happy ones for the Anglo-Dutch government. The attack on the WTC remains the highest casualties inflict by a terrorist group but other Muslim groups, funded many believe by Russian and the League have struck since at Washington and Amsterdam. Economically and Socially the Union has never been more successful, its economy continues to grow and the acts of terror committed by Aceh militants and other terrorists have united the Unions people more than the Reconciliation and Punishment acts could ever do, yet the carefully created second Pax Unitae is beginning to crumble and while few yet speak of the Union's decline the Russian republic, ever increasingly militaristic looks to be challenging the Union once again.
Government[]
The Union is a Constitutional Monarchy made up of three states in an permanent union. These states all have their own parliaments but also elect MP's to the Union Parliament in London. The political parties of the Union are divided into three main groupings which can be seen in the table below. In addition to the three main groupings there is the Canadian Liberal Party who have in the past formed Governments with the support of dissidents in the other parties.
| Federal | Socialist Coalition | Conservative Union | Religious Democrats |
| Great Britain | Labour Party | Conservative Party | Liberal Democrats |
| Netherlands | Labour Party | ChristianUnion | Christian Democrat Alliance |
| Americas | New Democratic Party | Progressive Conservative Party | Christian Democrats |
The Current Federal Parliament
Currently a government of national unity under Dan Jarvis of the British Labour Party and Pim Fortuyn of the Progressive Conservative part coverns the Union after an upswing in support for parties outside of the major three left neither coalition able to govern on its own.
The Unions politics are divided into four levels. The highest of these is the Federal level where decisions on large policies and international affairs are decided upon. The seat of the Federal Parliament is in the Houses of Parliament, Westminster and representatives are elected from all three states. A federal election can only be called with the permission of the Monarch and He/She has other functions in addition to this. The Federal parliament is Bicameral and consists of the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The Prime Minister can only be drawn from the commons and the Lords, while having the power to scrutinize the commons and propose its own bills cannot block bills from the Commons. The Commons is elected when the Monarch dismisses parliament or when the MP's four year (Previously five year) term is up. The Lords consists of 300 members of the peerage chosen by the other peers and the monarch to represent the lords and is also the only part of any parliament that the monarch can enter outside of the state opening.
Below this is the National level, this consists of the three governments based in Ottawa, York and Amsterdam. These parliaments decide on domestic matters within each state in the union and are responsible for matters such as health care and social security. Elections to these parliaments can be called at any time by the incumbent Prime Minister although the ruling monarch has some ceremonial functions.
This is followed by the Regional level. At this level of government decisions are made on issues that only effect the surrounding area, for example metropolitan transport and policing. Elections to this level are alongside National elections but the ruling Monarchy is almost totally removed at this level.
At the lowest or County level the local government is in charge of carrying out directives issued by National or Regional governments. County governments have little say in the running of their area although they can recommend changes to the National government. The elections to the County government are separate to the National and Regional level.
Prior to the 4th Convention Parliament in 2002 the role of the monarch in Anglo-Dutch politics was severely limited, The convention parliament rolled back the limitations on monarchical power allowing the Monarch to freely summon and dismiss parliament and to veto laws as well as allowing her to submit laws and enter the federal parliament. The Monarchs role as head of state was also reaffirmed by the Convention Parliament confirming them as commander in chief of the armed forces. However the Convention Parliament also stated that Parliament must be called at least once a year for eight months and that parliament can override the monarch's veto with a 75% majority and even dismiss the Monarch with a 70% vote.
Military[]
The Monarch holds the title of commander-in-chief of the nation's armed forces and appoints its leaders, the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Union Imperial Defense Department administers the armed forces, including the Army, Navy, and Air Force. The Coast Guard is run by the Home Office in peacetime and the Admiralty in time of war.
Military service is voluntary, though conscription may occur in wartime through the Selective Service System. Anglo-Dutch forces can be rapidly deployed by the Air Force's large fleet of transport aircraft, the Navy's active aircraft carriers, and Marine Expeditionary Units at sea with the Navy's Atlantic and Pacific fleets. The military operates 865 bases and facilities abroad, and maintains deployments greater than 100 active duty personnel in 28 foreign countries. The extent of this global military presence has prompted some scholars to describe the Union as maintaining an "empire of bases".