An aerial view of the valuable harbor at Crescent City, making it a strategic location.
The Crescent City Crisis was a political crisis taking place in 1993 along the coast of California, pitting the American Provisional Administration against the forces of Ernest Ray "Boss" Jones, a local warlord who had risen to power in the 1980's.
The immediate cause of the conflict was the capture of several APA personnel by Jones's enforcers after the APA had attempted to set up a base nearby, followed by an intense hostage crisis over these APA personnel. However, the larger political context of the situation was the attempts by the APA to reassert its control over the American mainland in the midst of crumbling public confidence in its ability to adequately govern its territories.
Background[]
By the early 1990's, President Bush and the other officials of the APA were growing increasingly frustrated in their attempts to reestablish control over the US mainland...and their Australian/New Zealander hosts were growing increasingly impatient for results. They'd invested a significant amount of effort, time, and Australian/NZ taxpayer money into the project of maintaining the APA, with the expectation that their once-great ally would be able to get back on its feet and restore order to the Pacific region. Now that was seriously in question, and President Bush was under severe pressure to produce rapid results.
Compounding things was the fact that the APA was seeing more and more of its authority sapped away with each passing year, as the ANZUS High Command took more and more direct control over infrastructure, and the Australian Dollar began to displace the American Dollar as the most commonly-used currency, even in Hawaii and Australia, a process dubbed "Aussie-fication" by economists.
For the APA to maintain its ability to make things happen, it needed to do just that: make things happen, and fast. President Bush was aware of the various Acting Regional Presidents in the interior of the North American continent, and needed a stable base on the West Coast from which a steady connection could be maintained with them, and let the mainlanders know that the APA had not abandoned them.
Early days of the expedition to California[]
President Bush, with Lt. Powell by his side, announces the Crescent City expedition from the APA headquarters in Hilo.
One of the main directives from President Bush was for the base at Crescent City to begin attempting to make contact with any remaining civil authorities in California. The greater Los Angeles region and the Bay Area were obviously foregone as losses, given that they had been heavily bombarded by the Soviets, but Lieutenant Powell and his forces hoped to find perhaps surviving Mayors and new local administrations in the region and reunite them under the umbrella of the APA.
To this end, Lt. Powell and his forces, upon arrival, found Crescent City a barely-organized outpost that was just getting by. The APA troops set up headquarters in the former town hall, and read a proclamation from President Bush declaring Crescent City to be the new capital of the "revived" State of California. The Stars and Stripes were raised over the building along with the California Bear flag.
Meanwhile back in Hawaii, President Bush received word that the expedition had landed and been well-received by the locals (who were tired of the anarchy that had reigned in the region). Bush then hastily called a press conference in which he proclaimed to the Hawaiian, Australian, and New Zealander press corps that "the expedition has succeeded. Crescent City is up and running, and California is reborn. This is just the beginning of our planned restoration of the West Coast. In the coming months, we will begin preparations to move some of our core operations to California to coordinate between Hawaii and the government outposts on the mainland." Historians have marked this speech, in retrospect, as premature, and as a moment that accidentally set the APA and the American and ANZC public up for huge disappointments.
Meanwhile, word of the Federal garrison soon filtered out to the gangs who really controlled the area. The gangsters would not be happy about the return of law and order to the region, and quickly began plotting against the APA expedition.
The Hostage Crisis[]
During the third week of the Federal garrison, Lt. Powell was on tour in a small town near Crescent City to open relations with the local Mayor, when suddenly an explosion rocked the convoy. The gangsters in the region had planted a small bomb alongside the road. Lt. Powell survived, but had to be rushed aboard one of the APA ships for medical attention. Lt. Powell--by all accounts a steady and capable military strategist--was now incapacitated, as he slipped back and forth in and out of consciousness, and was eventually brought back to Hawaii. Now, command of the expedition was left to his subordinates, who weren't nearly as capable as the Lieutenant.
The new leader, Sergeant Smith, gave a speech the day after the attack, on the steps of Crescent City's town hall, in which he decried the violent extremism of the gangsters, and promised that law and order would be restored. The military increased its patrols of the area, as Jones's gang retreated back into the woods and resorted to guerilla warfare.
Open Warfare[]
Aftermath[]
Although the American garrison managed to successfully evacuate, the entire fiasco was viewed as a major humiliation for President Bush and the American Provisional Administration. For many Americans who had been rooting for the APA to restore the continent and for many Aussie/Kiwi taxpayers, the Crescent City incident was the "final straw" that caused them to give up on the APA as a viable framework. As an economic recession struck the Oceania region, voters in Australia and New Zealand began pressuring their politicians to cut off the APA's funding and reallocate it towards consolidating a combined military and infrastructure for Australia and New Zealand. ANZC historians would later say that "In Crescent City, the APA died and the ANZC was born."
When word very gradually filtered into the interior of the continent, many Americans left on the mainland despaired that "the APA isn't coming to save us." This propelled many of the survivor states that had formed to begin organizing themselves as more long-term entities. It also made the Provisional government forming in Wyoming become all the more determined to make plans to continue upholding the concept of America in case the faltering APA failed to do the job, as now seemed likely.