US Continuity Act (1983: Doomsday)

President Bush signs the Continuity Act as his final executive action, at a ceremony on the grounds of the US Embassy in Canberra.

The United States Continuity Act otherwise known as the US Continuity Act was the final emergency order signed by President George Herbert Walker Bush, just before the dissolution of the American Provisional Administration. Bush had been stalemated in his attempts to reassert stability on the US mainland, and--facing diminishing options--had agreed to end the APA and turn most of its assets over to the authority of the ANZUS Commonwealth, soon to become the ANZC; a few minor assets, such as various portraits, historical documents, and other non-infrastructural properties were handed over to various American expat organizations such as the American Historical Trust of Australia and the American Diaspora Federation for safekeeping and educational purposes. Bush and other surviving American leaders maintained that this represented the end of the US presence in the Pacific but not an end of the nation itself. Many, both in the Australia/Pacific region and across the American homeland, remained hopeful that someday the USA could be reconstituted in some form.

To that end, Bush proposed and signed the Continuity Act, which prepared the way for a legitimate successor to take up the former superpower's mantle. The Act declared the United States' sovereignty and Constitution “temporarily suspended until a legitimate successor – continuing the US traditions of Freedom and Democracy - is elected by the American people”. The Continuity Act is now regarded by the reconstituted United States of America based in Torrington as one of its Founding Documents.

Background

Pre-Doomsday precedents

Continuity of government procedures had been formally enacted by the US government (and many other governments) with the dawn of the Cold War. President Dwight Eisenhower had been the first President to formalize the American plan. In the 1970's, President Jimmy Carter had updated the nation's plans. These updated plans would form much of the basis for what happened in the aftermath of Doomsday. By 1983, the Reagan Administration and the Pentagon had made some minor alterations, but for the most part the protocols were generally closely similar to the form they had taken under Carter.

Doomsday

On the night of September 25, 1983, these plans would be tested, with no room for error or re-dos. As President Reagan, Vice President Bush, House Speaker Tip O'Neill, and various other dignitaries were whisked away to designated safe zones, the military activated its Continuity of Government protocols in full. US military units were ordered to attempt to fan out away from their bases in the hopes of surviving and being around to maintain some level of order after the dust settled. Federal departments enacted plans to establish themselves in secure sites bunkers up and down the so-called Relocation Arc in the Appalachian Mountains. These efforts, sadly, were often in vain, as most officials and military units were unable to flee in time to avoid being in the blast radius of a nuclear bomb or exposed to lethal amounts of radiation in the aftermath of Doomsday.

Still, with the President successfully evacuated to Mount Weather and Vice President Bush sheltering at the Greenbrier with the remnants of Congress, the COG protocols had at least succeeded in preserving a command structure.

However, over the following year, Mount Weather's command center had an increasingly difficult time contacting military units that were both able and ready to follow coordinated plans and orders, as communications and the chain of command increasingly crumbled under the stresses of the impoverished, famine-struck, radiation-plagued post-Doomsday continent. As the remnants of the Federal apparatus increasingly found itself existing as a government without a country, the decision was made to evacuate to new sites in the hopes of securing funds and military assistance to restore order in America. Reagan would lead an administration in Hilo, Hawaii, to work more closely with America's strongest surviving allies, Australia and New Zealand. Bush would go to Colorado to be close to NORAD's surviving underground bunker. When Reagan's plane was lost crossing the Pacific, Bush flew out to replace him. Thus, the American Provisional Administration was born.

The APA and Bush's final legislation

By 1995, Bush had become reluctantly convinced that he had few to no choices left as leader of the APA. The joint governing structures of ANZUS Commonwealth seemed to be a capable new protector for the Pacific islands under the APA's governance.

Meanwhile, it had become clear that a new federation had formed in the Rocky Mountains. Information remained unclear, and contact with the Provisional USA had been mostly indirect, but an exchange of written notes had convinced Bush that this new government had at least a connection to the administration that he had left behind in Colorado. The situation may have broken down along the coasts, but the American spirit was still alive further inland.

Bush still despised the idea of ending the APA, abandoning the American presence in the Pacific basin; but he also genuinely wanted its people to have a government that could adequately protect them. The President thus made the hardest and most gut-wrenching decision of his life.

"He knew plenty of people would hate him for it. Heck, he hated himself for it! But he also felt--at the time--that it was necessary," commented Bush's former Vice President Robert Nesen in a later interview. However, Bush's desire for America to continue led him to devise an idea to accompany the shuttering of the APA: an enabling act for a future US government.

Bush knew that the American diaspora--from the residents in the Pacific to the bedraggled survivors on the bombed-out mainland--ardently missed the old America and many dreamed it could someday return. Bush wanted to facilitate such a return, whether it was at the initiative of the people of the APA states, the shadowy new federation in the interior, or any other group or faction. Bush proposed an act to lend legitimacy to a future American government, provided that it could meet certain criteria: be democratically-elected by Americans, be established on American soil, and enshrine the US Constitution as its governing document.

The Provisional US Government, isolated in the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains, and would soon have a strong claim to take up the mantle that President Bush had left for them. The new USA now considers the Act to be one source of its legal continuity with the prewar United States, together with the cooperation of former members of Reagan's cabinet, the work of the U.S. military, and the democratic actions of the citizens of the region.

Text

It is with deep regret that we must announce the closure of the American Provisional Administration. However, as outlined in the Declaration of Independence, a nation and its government are separate entities. A nation creates its government to serve its needs and to protect its rights. Although the American Provisional Administration is coming to an end, we maintain the hope that the American people will someday enact a new government to replace it and reunify our people.

Therefore, it must be stated that although the APA will be defunct, the nation is not. The sovereignty of our nation in the Pacific is temporarily suspended, but the American spirit is not. With this act, I as president hereby empower a legitimate successor – continuing the US traditions of Freedom and Democracy and enshrining the US Constitution as its governing document- to take up the mantle of the nation at such time as it is elected by the American people. This document shall be considered an enabling act for the authority and legitimacy of that new government.

We still hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The new government that will someday lay claim to these ideals on American soil will indeed be the means of continuing our great nation.

God bless you all, and may God bless and reunite America.

Reception

The Continuity Act was reported in Australian newspapers as rather more minor news compared to the news of the APA's shuttering. A typical newspaper layout during the summer of 1995 would feature major news about the closure of the APA and the gradual shutdown of its agencies in large caps on the front page, with only minor mentions of the Continuity Act in the less-noticeable columns on the interior pages of the paper. Nevertheless, the news spurred hopeful yearnings from the American refugee community in the ANZC and across the Pacific islands that had formerly been under the APA's control.

The news of the Continuity Act took longer to reach the North American mainland, given the deep difficulties in communication in the 1990's. Here too, it was met with wistfulness and longing, accompanied by despair over whether the Act would ever actually be enacted. Nevertheless, as the news gradually trickled into the Provisional USA forming in the interior of the continent, there were growing agreement that the PUSA could someday invoke the Act.

The news of the Continuity Act gradually reached the Caribbean, where the Americans of the US Atlantic Remnant angrily decried the President's decision to shut down the APA, and many American islanders viewed the Continuity Act as a weak apology for the APA's decision to "commit national suicide" (in the words of one Charlotte Amalie-based newspaper). Given that the USAR had formed explicitly as a rejection of the Gathering Order and had existed in implicit defiance (or at least questioning) of the APA's authority to make decisions for the US diaspora, the common opinion in the American Caribbean was that the APA was making a "cowardly" choice by daring to give up American sovereignty, that the APA had no authority to make such a decision anyway, and that the USAR would "carry on American sovereignty uninterrupted here at home, in the waters that Columbus sailed all those years ago" (in the words of the USAR's Governor in a brief statement to the local press). Thus, popular opinion towards the Continuity Act in the USAR could be divided into two camps: 1. those who viewed the USAR itself as an already-existing and legitimate successor for the Continuity Act to enable as the continuation of America, and 2. those who viewed the Act as unnecessary, since the USAR was determined to continue American sovereignty regardless of what the distant APA did or didn't do.

The members of the newly-formed Committee to Restore the United States of America responded in a similar fashion to the Americans of the USAR, and CRUSA would develop a strong following in the islands.

The original copy of the Continuity Act signed by Pres. Bush is now on display at the Library of Congress's Founding Documents exhibit in Torrington.

Legacy

The restored United States of America now regards the US Continuity Act as one of the nation's Founding Documents, along with the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, US Constitution, the resolution calling for a 1991 constitutional convention, and the 2010 proclamation that the new government of the USA was no longer just provisional. Copies of each of these documents, including the original copy of the Continuity Act (donated by former President Bush to the Library of Congress) are now on display at the Library of Congress's new physical site in Torrington.