Play as · WW2 1939 · L1 · Himalayan Kingdom · British-Aligned

Bhutan - 1939

Bhutan in 1939 is the Buddhist Himalayan kingdom under King Jigme Wangchuck of the Wangchuck dynasty (in power since the 1907 monarchy-establishment that ended the dual-political-religious Drukpa system that had governed since the seventeenth century) - the second monarch of the dynasty, governing through the post-1910 Treaty of Punakha framework that institutionalized the British-India-aligned foreign-policy structure (Britain assumed responsibility for Bhutan's external relations in exchange for non-interference in domestic affairs and an annual subsidy). Population about 250,000 (estimates vary substantially given the absence of modern census). The strategic identity is the Buddhist Himalayan kingdom with the British-aligned external-affairs framework and the substantial isolation that the Wangchuck-era political-institutional consolidation has institutionalized through the post-1907 reform period.

Starting position

Bhutan has minimal military forces in 1939 - the Royal Bhutan Bodyguard and the small territorial-defense formations totaling perhaps 1,000 personnel under varying levels of training and equipment. Equipment is minimal - traditional weapons supplemented by limited British-supplied small arms. The defense-against-external-threat function is substantially institutionalized through the British-India framework rather than through indigenous military capacity. The economic foundation is substantially subsistence-agricultural with limited yak-and-rice production for export, the substantial Buddhist-monastic institutional architecture that has been the principal cultural-political-economic framework, and the limited cross-Himalayan trade with Tibet to the north and British India to the south.

What turns the campaign

What Bhutan in 1939 wants is the Treaty of Punakha British-aligned framework preserved at the level the post-1910 architecture has institutionalized, the Wangchuck-era political-institutional consolidation continued without producing the kind of Drukpa-era inter-monastic political-religious tensions that the post-1907 framework has substantially absorbed, the Tibetan-and-Indian-frontier strategic geography preserved as the natural defense-and-isolation architecture, and the limited external-engagement maintained at the level the British-India framework provides. What Bhutan fears is a Tibetan crisis (the 1910-1911 Chinese invasion of Tibet had been the principal recent regional-security alarm; the Republican-and-warlord-era Chinese instability has continued the underlying Tibetan-question uncertainty), a British-Indian-political crisis that the looming end of British rule will eventually produce, and a domestic political-institutional crisis if the Wangchuck-era consolidation produces inter-monastic-or-regional tensions.

Signature challenge