Years 1973-1980: The Rise
One of the stipulations of the Treaty of Port Vacuo, alongside its massive reparations, was that Vacuo would cut its air force to 5% of its original strength, its navy to 15%, and its army to 35%. By the time Manchette came to power, the air force was at 21%, the navy was at 30% and the army was at 56%. Manchette believed that Vacuo's military needed to be twice as strong as it was in the peak of the Great War, and thus received many votes from unemployed veterans looking to get back into the military.
In 1973, Gris Manchette and Joseph LaFleur came up with a program to revitalise the military. Key components were:
The creation of a class of aircraft carriers capable of carrying 50-60 aircraft. Vacuo had built 4 carriers in the Great War, but they were destroyed after the war.
A class of fast battleships to replace outdated Great War-era ships.
Jet-powered strategic bombers and fighters. While the RVAF had jet fighters, they were limited in number and were barred from being supersonic.
The restructuring of chemical weapons programs. These had been dismantled after the Great War.
To start the naval side of the project, a massive expansion was conducted at the Scapma Shipyard to build 5 enormous drydocks. As for the army and air force, many new forts and air bases were rapidly constructed.
As Vacuo build up in its military strength, the rest of the world looked at it in worry, yet no one wanted to do anything. No country, whether it was one of the Four Kingdoms or a smaller state, wanted to repeat the horrors of the Great War.
In 1974, a border skirmish occurred between Vacuo and a small state in between Vacuo and Vale on the southern coast of Vytal known as the Democratic People's Republic of Azimuth. Formerly a principality before the Great War, it had fought on the side of Vacuo until a civil war broke out in 1937 that pitted the prince against (reluctantly) Allied-backed rebels that were affiliated with the chief rival of Authoritarianism: Collectivism, an economic system where the workers (in theory) own the means of production. Manchette had made many speeches attacking Collectivists, and had executed hundreds of them in Vacuo. It was only a matter of time before he tried to go after it in other countries.
On September 8, 1974, 6 Vacuouan soldiers and 12 Azimuthian soldiers were killed in a shootout that, according to Manchette, was started by the Azimuthians. In response, he authorised an airstrike to target the border post where the Azimuthian soldiers had come from on September 11, 1974. This killed 43. Azimuth's People's Congress responded by declaring war on Vacuo on September 13, 1974.
Vacuo responded swiftfully and brutally. The next day, 650,000 soldiers from Vacuo marched to the country, which had an armed forces whose combined strength was 500,000. On September 29, Vacuouan forces captured the second biggest city in Azimuth, Kankrina. On October 20, they captured the capital, Voriskyana, after firebombing it and everyone inside it. Finally, on October 29, Vacuouan forces captured the President of Azimuth, Vid Chernyy, and executed him. On the same day, the last Azimuthian forces surrendered. Vacuouan casualties numbered 65,000, compared to 300,000 military and over 5 million civilian casualties for Azimuth, who had a population of 24 million before the war.
The world was shocked, yet no one did anything once again. Many even argued Vacuo was justified because Azimuth had reportedly shot first and because Collectivism was a danger to the rest of Remnant. Vale recalled its ambassador for 4 years, but did not close down its embassy in Vacuo despite many protests.
In 1976, Vacuo reoccupied a demilitarised section of land in the centre of its border with Vale on Vytal. The piece was relatively small, just about 842 square miles and 285,000 residents, but it was rich with coal and steel. Once again, no one did a thing. In that same year, 91% of the 844,000 residents on the formerly Vacuouan island of Vernasa, located in the middle southern portion of Vytal, voted to rejoin Vacuo rather than permanently join Vale.
As all this went on, faunus were beginning to be shipped to Menagerie in large numbers. Vacuo also paid for advertisements encouraging faunus in other states to move to Menagerie. By 1980, over 10 million faunus had moved voluntarily or forcefully been moved to Menagerie. At the time, there were 150 million faunus and 1 billion humans in Remnant, with about 15 million faunus and 87 million humans living in Vacuouan territory.
Even as Vacuo promised of a new and fresh start, many faunus outside of Vacuo were not fooled, especially in Vale, where, at the time, just 20 to 15 years ago, many faunus and humans marched and protested in a massive campaign to end legal discrimination against faunus in Vale. The civil rights leaders of the 1960s in Vale were reinvigorated with a new goal of protesting Vacuouan mistreatment and abuse of faunus. Of course, any attempts to organise such protests in Vacuo would be met with bullets, so faunus outside of Vacuo often protested by boycotting Vacuouan goods and services and protesting outside of Vacuouan embassies.
Gris wrote in his diary about these protests, saying, "These Collectivists and faunus are all conspiring to take me and Vacuo down to the pits of hell. Well, if that is the case, I will make sure they go down to meet the Devil himself instead!"
As this went on, Bo Jintao, the Minister of Information, was tasked with painting these activists as dangerous to Vacuouan society. He did this by playing on fears of a faunus-led Collectivist uprising that would enslave all of Vacuo and do horrific crimes such as raping Vacuouan women and killing Vacuouan infants. The Vacuouan public somehow went along with this, at least in public. After all, doubting anything about the party's leadership and decisions could get you a visit from the National Security Office, which would lead to your "disappearance."