Timeline Divergence: America overcomes rampant calls for neutrality during the Pacific Wars, and instead pursues an invasion against the Japanese Empire to counterweight the growing Soviet regime in Europe. As in WW2, they commence a strategy of island hopping to free the democratic governments of Asia from the shackles of the Japanese warmonger. Come peacetime, they form an alliance ala-EU, now plotting the demise of Communism in Europe as an Asian corridor of the United States, preparing to spread the boon of Democracy everywhere with the financial and diplomatic backing of NATO and the United Nations.

Timeline Divergence: Japanese Imperialism completes the Siberian Expedition, and, with aid from their Fascist revolutionaries in the Balkans, topples the Soviet regime. The Rising Sun flies over the Kremlin, looking Westward. East Asia is integrated into the Japanese Empire, while Southeast Asia is puppeted under the control of Filipino Neo-Nationalists, bridging distant cultures to Hirohito; specifically, through Emilio Aguinaldo, a prime collaborator and hearty supporter of Fascism. Together, as a tyrannical successor of the Greater East-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, Aguinaldo and Hirohito amass the Empire of Pan-Asiatic States, anxious to strike Pearl Harbor together at any given moment.

Timeline Divergence: The Restoration fails in Japan, and the Japanese people face immense corruption from the bureaucratic government, causing widespread poverty. After a coup supported by Kuomintang China and a newly-independent Philippine Commonwealth, Republican Japan, without much of a choice, joins a united front against the West by collaborating economies with East Asia and Southeast Asia. The Association, much like ASEAN in the real world, operates as a radical centrist regime with KMT China as its most focal member, despite constant strife with its feudal rivals. Fighting Mao's Communist aspirations fueled by Soviet Trotskyism, outproducing subversive saboteur Western markets, and standing against the rising tide of irredentist Fascists; the Association seeks to maintain low-conflict peace through a common currency and a balancing council for as long as possible-- but this peace and the shield it bears against chaotic radicals, becomes more tenuous with each day passing, as more and more people demand bigger and bigger changes clashing all over the political spectrum.