The new Imperial Foreign Policy
The world that the new French Empire found itself in was one undergoing upheaval. Various wars were continuing around the globe while many other conflicts threatened to erupt into war in the near future.
In Spain the three-sided civil war continued, with the Kingdom rapidly crumbling in the face of an FAI offensive while Xavier and the Carlists sat behind the barricades in northern Spain and made preparations for their own all out attack.
In America the second civil war remained locked in vicious conflict across rapidly changing boundaries. Refugees trying to escape to the relative safety of the Pacific States were prevented from doing so by Federalist, Syndicate and American First militias who shot on sight anyone attempting to leave the occupied territories. However, despite the chaos, the war was approaching the beginning of the end.
In late July, the Federalist general MacArthur had succeeded in recapturing much of the east coast and had successfully pocketed an AUS army in Virginia. The battles to force their surrender led to the devastation of much of the state but at the end of it the US now controlled the entirety of the industrialised east coast. The cities and factories were badly damaged by war and the Federalists were viewed as occupying forces by much of the local populace but, nevertheless, it gave the US forces access to an industrial base larger than that of the CSA and AUS combined.
With the rebel factions now holding mainly only the agrarian states, a Federalist victory was inevitable - even if the lack of food producing states meant that thousands would starve in the coming winter.
Meanwhile, the Russian state was rapidly collapsing. Following the Soviet uprising, Ukraine had seized Russian land all the way to the Volga River. The Russian government had idiotically promptly declared war on Ukraine which had, in turn, brought Ukraine's allies in the Mitteleuropa into the war. The German Kriegsmarine had staged landings in both the Murmansk Peninsula and northern European Russia and had been steadily capturing more land ever since even as the Ukraines continued sweeping eastwards.
The Cossacks of the Don-Kuban union had also seized the opportunity to attack Russia and bands of Cossack marauders were roaming unchallenged across hundreds of miles of Russian territory.
In the east, the Japanese puppet had seized about a third of Siberia, even as the crumbling Russian government had been forced to grant the remainder of Siberia complete autonomy.
However, as the situation in Russia worsened, Siberia too had declared war on the Russian government, attacking the beleaguered loyalist forces on yet another front. It was obvious to all that the Russia was about to cease to exist as a nation, the only question would be which powers would control which slices of Russian land and resources.
The confusing nature of the Second Russian Civil War meant that accurate maps of the situation were impossible to produce - nevertheless, the above is a reasonable attempt at displaying the state of affairs at the start of October 1937. Before the month was out, both Transamur and the Sternberg Khanate would have begun their war of mutual annexation of the still-born Siberian state.
With continuing unrest in the new state of Scandinavia, formed through the Swedish annexation of syndicalist Norway, and France rapidly building up its military, the geopolitical Europe could genuinely be described as one giant mess on October the 21st - the day that Napoleon IV met with De Gaulle to discuss the foreign policy of the new empire.
With both men fervently agreed on the need to reclaim France from the Communards, the obvious requirement was to do whatever was necessary to achieve that goal. The ultimate policy they decided on was infamously suggested and described by De Gaulle was "the Empire has no friends, only interests".
Once the two men had agreed that this would be the, more diplomatically expressed, heart of imperial foreign policy, the next question was how to go about practising it. The African territories of the Kingdom of Spain bordered French North Africa but had been stripped of all garrisons as the Madrid government (as it was still called, despite the fall of Madrid to the FAI only two days earlier) desperately tried every means possible to stop the advance of the Carlists and, more urgently, the anarcho-syndicalists.
Despite the relatively small number of factories in Spanish Africa, they posed a tempting prospect for a nation with an industrial base as stretched as that of the Empire. Thus De Gaulle proposed, and the Emperor agreed to, a declaration of war with the Kingdom of Spain - ostensibly to aid the Carlists but, in reality, to have an excuse to seize Spanish territory.
However, France was not yet ready for war. It would take until at least February for the new troopships to be completed and, without them, it would be impossible to take Spanish Morocco and its factories - the crown of Spain's African possessions.
At the same time, newly recruited native militias and cavalry in the south of the country were moved to strategic positions near Spanish Africa from where they would be able swiftly seize the territory when the time came.
Though it would take until the new year before the Thrid French Empire would be ready for it's first war, the nation was now committed to becoming irreversibly involved in the Spanish War and the affairs of the Catholic League.