Treaty of Voskhod

From Acw

After massive successes in the Space Race, Grossdeutschland and the USSR were both posessed of bases on Mars in the closing years of the Twentieth Century. In 2001 they opened joint discussions on the future terraforming of the planet, and those discussions woudl eventually be enshrined in the Treaty signed in Voskhod in 2006.

Reasons for Terraforming

From our modern, 24th Century viewpoint, it is easy to fall into the trap of assuming that the two colonial powers on Mars wanted to terraform it because of population pressures. In fact, in 2001 this was not at all the case; Russia was just happy to have maintained a technological lead, while Germany still had grand plans for a "Thousand Year Reich".

The Treaty and the Migration Crises

As it was, the swift and contentious terraforming method they chose at the Treaty talks played perfectly into their hands. By the early 2100s they each had settlement programs and infrastructure in place that made relocation of incoming environmental refugees a much simpler matter. Russia could divert its funding into the FTL program, while Germany's restrictive immigration programs and overtly racist policies made the migration pressures much less of a problem.