Rome, the USA, and the USSR

And one more: this one is inspired by an old alien space bats discussion thread, something along the lines of "Three superpowers: Rome, the US, and the USSR."

The "Roman Empire" here is of course not the actual pagan, gladiator-killing, slave-holding state, but an Italy unified successfully in Reinassance-early modern times, which looks back to the grandeur of Rome as a model , like Mussolini's Italy (and with rather more justification). The US and USR are not _our_ US and USSR, of course, but functional equivalents: a democratic English (and some Dutch) speaking republic, and a Russian-dominated socialistic dictatorship (with slightly less dumb economics, so it's still afloat in 2007).

Local economic measures convered to OTL dollar equivalents courtesy of Marketplace Earth ([link]).