[ WP ] Why did the collective populations of Earth agree to the creation of The United Countries of America ?

It began with an elevator. Well, that's a disservice really, calling it an elevator when you consider it was twenty thousand miles tall and had a docking station in geostationary orbit. But it was an elevator, one of many, and it's the reason we have the UCA. 
 
 Nobody realises how much they need elevators until they do n't have one. Arm full of groceries and an out-of-order sign, you're in for a bad day. Same thing with space elevators, only bigger. You want that shipment of helium for your MRIs and kids balloons? Yeah, not cost-effective to strap a shipping container to a rocket. But put that container on a platform, whiz it up and down and you've got a fresh supply of ore from around the system. 
 
 In theory, there is no difference between theory and reality. In theory, you can build a space elevator anywhere ( caveat bedrock, infrastructure, labour, supply chains ). In reality, it makes sense to put them on the equator. Science. 
 
 The Amazonian Space Elevator, first in the world, went up just north of Brasilia ( the best answer for a pop quiz ). ASE, like ace with a lisp. Nairobi and Jakarta followed. Suddenly all the big trade went through these countries. 
 
 And then they came and they saw and they decided humanity was a threat. 
 
 We fought a war in space. We're fighting a war in space. To fight up there, we needed to get up there. Suddenly the Elevators became the most important military installations in human history. Everything shifted. Economies shut down, starting in the far North and South, until eventually all of humanity resided around the great towers. 
 
 We fought. They won, a lot. Jakarta was broadcast around the planet for a solid week, uninterrupted, endless shots of it falling, crumpling, laying across the jungle and cities and oceans. The region fell before the news footage stopped. 
 
 Nairobi burnt, like a flare in the sky, visible across the Atlantic. A warning pyre. 
 
 Now there's just the Amazonian. The remaining nations have come together, around the one thing that can unite them. The one thing that will save them. 
 
 That's why we're United. That's why we're the United Countries of America. Because the last of us live within a few degrees of the equator and we're clinging to the sky by a thread.
