Invisible Sun (Empire Games, #3)

by Charles Stross

“You turned your country into a prison camp, to protect it and make it safe for Democracy—” Hulius wheezed painfully, then closed his eyes and continued, gauging each word for effect: “You murdered everyone in my former homeland. Now you want to defend your democracy against the Commonwealth by sponsoring a hereditary dictatorship . . . have you looked in a mirror lately?”

USA! USA! USA!

Unfortunately the United States is structurally an imperial project, it’s in our political DNA. We’re always looking for a frontier to expand into, we can’t back down, anyone who admits we’re overmatched gets sidelined and booted out of office by an upstart who insists that we can never be defeated, only betrayed. So we can’t work around obstacles, only power on through the fire.

Brandenburg Airport had opened on schedule in 2012,

Ha! That's proper alternative timeline. Though it did manage to open before Invisible Sun came out.

We needed an observer who is consistently untrustworthy but principled enough to do the right thing.”