Macross Unification War?

[Mafty]

So its established that the Unification Wars preceded the events of the first Macross series (as has been touched on partially in the original series and more in depth in Zero). So is it ever established how the Earth was divided during the war? Were there multiple Power Blocs (like in Gundam 00) , or was it all one collective of anti UN Forces. Backstory for Kim Kabirov says that she came from the vaguely defined South Asian Federation, however Macross Zero shows mass produced units fielded by the Anti-UN Forces.

[Seto Kaiba]

So its established that the Unification Wars preceded the events of the first Macross series (as has been touched on partially in the original series and more in depth in Zero). So is it ever established how the Earth was divided during the war? Were there multiple Power Blocs (like in Gundam 00) , or was it all one collective of anti UN Forces. Backstory for Kim Kabirov says that she came from the vaguely defined South Asian Federation, however Macross Zero shows mass produced units fielded by the Anti-UN Forces.

"It's complicated."

In short, the Unification Wars aren't a period you can consider in terms of international conflicts and power blocs or even in terms of a single root cause for conflict. It's an umbrella term for an exceptionally ugly period full of regional conflicts, civil unrest, and other kinds of strife with a diverse collection of causes that sprang up semi-independently around the world around the time the Earth Unification Government was formed. There wasn't really any common theme initially. It was all the stupid little reasons people go to war... ethnic and religious tensions, resources, existing tensions boiling over as the result of major changes in the political landscape, etc. Once the newly-established Unification Forces started weighing in to keep the peace, it was inevitable that the various militants would start finding common cause with the conspiracy theorists and nationalists who were opposed to the idea of having a world government at all. This eventually snowballed into a loose alliance of anti-government militants and other crazies (the Anti-Unification Alliance) that was being supported by a mixture of regional and local authorities opposed to the Unification Government for one reason or another and crooked defense industry corporations looking to take advantage of a war economy or conduct illegal testing of their new developments in live combat conditions.

There was a certain Eastern European bias among the defense industry side of things, as noted in Macross Zero some Eastern Europeans felt that the Unification Government was being dominated by NATO member nations and many key defense contracts were going to contractors in those states. At the national level, Russia was a major supporter of the Unification Government though it had a fair amount of local and covert support for the Anti-Unification Alliance until the Alliance stupidly chose St. Petersburg to demonstrate that they had acquired thermonuclear reaction weapons. Bombing St. Petersburg off the map turned out to be a huge mistake, as an act of mass murder is generally not a good way to get people in your corner. Russia had previously had a moderate amount of support for the Alliance at the local and regional level, and that support EVAPORATED. Russian separatists withdrew from the Alliance, and their financial and material support cut them off. They all but completely lost their ability to wage war in the course of just a few months. With the Anti-Unification Alliance hobbled and no longer able to offer support to various local and regional troublemakers, the wars quickly petered out and what was left of the Alliance exhausted itself in a series of ill-advised and nigh-suicidal last stands with what little they had in the way of resources like attacking the heavily defended Grand Cannon III in Africa and getting stomped by its garrison, the attack on Mayan shown in Macross Zero, and the suicidal final attack on South Ataria Island in Macross the First.




"Mass produced" is a bit of a strong word for the Anti-Unification Alliance's gear. It had a confused jumble of former Warsaw Pact monkey models and some original designs on hand, but it was all small batch hardware. A few dozen SV-51s and Octos destroids tops.

[Mafty]

Thank you, it's always neat to see more backstory to the Anime, especially because a lot of Macross side material has never been translated. The whole set up can be seen in Macross Zero itself, The eastern European powers can be seen in Nora and DD seemingly being of Eastern European descent( and the SV-51α is apparently based on the 80's Soviet Sukhoi Su-27), The military angle is shown in DD being a defector. Plus the rash nature of the Anti UN is (SPOILER) also shown in the anti UN carpet bombing an entire island chain (despite decrying the atrocities of the Unification Government).

The equipment is probably two fold. Nora and DD's group was rather small, so in universe they probably made the most of the funding and porotypes before it was pulled, out of universe it was probably to have a more exotic array of Variable fighters,

[Seto Kaiba]

Thank you, it's always neat to see more backstory to the Anime, especially because a lot of Macross side material has never been translated.

Gonna be doing a LOT about that in the coming months...

The whole set up can be seen in Macross Zero itself, The eastern European powers can be seen in Nora and DD seemingly being of Eastern European descent( and the SV-51α is apparently based on the 80's Soviet Sukhoi Su-27), The military angle is shown in DD being a defector. Plus the rash nature of the Anti UN is (SPOILER) also shown in the anti UN carpet bombing an entire island chain (despite decrying the atrocities of the Unification Government).

In all fairness, we don't actually know where D.D. and Nora are from. They have Eastern European-sounding names (Ivanov and Polyansky) but that's pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things even today.

While the SV-51 has a Russian-inspired designation and design, it's worth noting that only one of the three companies that collaborated on its design was Russian... the Sukhoi design bureau was assisted by Israel's IAI and Germany's Dornier, based on stolen technical materials developed by North American contractors Stonewell (a bland name version of Rockwell) and Bellcom (a bland name version of Bell-Textron) in cooperation with Japan's Shinnakasu Heavy Industry and the British P&W (obviously Pratt & Whitney) and RR (obviously Rolls-Royce). Likewise, the Octos destroid is actually jointly developed by the Russian Rubin center and Germany's Daimler group. IIRC, the machine guns we see them using are predominantly French in origin, and some of their other equipment is similarly incongruous.

Macross Zero largely built on the existing details of the Alliance and Unification Wars rather than rewrite things. The Anti-Unification Alliance has always been a bit ignorant of the irony inherent in being an international alliance opposed to global unity.

The equipment is probably two fold. Nora and DD's group was rather small, so in universe they probably made the most of the funding and porotypes before it was pulled, out of universe it was probably to have a more exotic array of Variable fighters,

Nora and D.D.'s group may have been small in absolute terms, but it still represented a significant portion of the Anti-Unification Alliance's remaining military strength at the time. The submarine carrier Auderstadt that participated in the Mayan incident was carrying a bit less than a third of all SV-51s produced up to that point. Only thirty-eight SV-51s were ever completed, and the Auderstadt had twelve of them.