Global Defense Initiative

The Global Defense Initiative, or fully the United Nations Global Defense Initiative, is a fictional militarized branch of the United Nations which is prominently featured in the real-time strategy video games of the Command & Conquer series.

Their official emblem is the motif of a gold color diving eagle set in a silver or light yellow background.

Naming
The organization's official designation is the United Nations Global Defense Initiative. In practice this often becomes shortened by the omitting of "United Nations" from the introduction, leaving simply Global Defense Initiative. This title is commonly shortened itself by referring to the group by its initials - UNGDI or GDI (commonly used). All four of these combinations refer to the same group and are officially recognized, however the abbreviation of GDI has traditionally been used the most frequently throughout the organization's history, both internally as well as externally.

Fact Sheet First Tiberium war
Commonly, GDI. Before 1966, known as Special Operations Group Echo, Black Ops 9.

Founded: 12 October 1995, in accordance with the United Nations Global Defense Act (UNGDA).

Mission: To enforce the United Nations Global Defense Act and uphold the ideals as outlined in the United Nations Charter.

Chief of Staff: during the First Tiberium War: United States Brigadier General Mark Jamison Shepherd, Chief of Staff, United Nations Military Command. Succeeded by Colonel James Solomon in 2026.

Base of Operations: Previously at the United Nations Military Command Centre, location classified. Relocated to the orbital space station "Philadelphia" sometime after the First Tiberium War.

Military Strength: Statistics regarding equipment and personnel are classified. Official military strength lies within parameters of the UNGDA, Article V, Section 3A, Paragraph 12.

Economic Strength: Funded by the United Nations, various international governments, public organisations and private enterprise.

Political Strength: Not applicable. Operates within parameters of UNGDA and under the review of the United Nations Security Council.

Affiliations: The United Nations.



Factions
Numerous specialized divisions exist within the Global Defense Initiative, although the true extent of the organization's vast infrastructure is never entirely revealed throughout the games.

Throughout the First Tiberium War, an elite unit known as the "Dead-6" was active within the GDI Army—a group formed out of the most competent commandos who were charged with special assignments. A passing reference is made in the manual of the original Tiberian Dawn to the GDI Elite Forces Unit, to which the Dead-6 Team was evidently subordinate, in addition to all other GDI commandos. The Dead Six was frequently deployed for special operations and other sensitive missions. At the time of their introduction in Renegade the team had lost two members —Havoc and Sakura— yet despite this retained the name "Dead-6". The name Dead-6 refers to the legal status of the team’s members: each person in the group has been officially "killed", and hence no longer exist. This makes it easier for the team to remain covert and helps GDI by giving them a greater degree of plausible deniability when discussing the team's operations. Their members included Captain Nick "Havoc" Parker, Daryl "Deadeye" MacInnis, Nigel "Gunner" Grant, Shai "Hotwire" Aviv, Erich "Patch" Wulfe, and Sakura Obata. The Dead six was overseen by Brigadier General Adam Locke chief of GDI special warfare operations.

The "Daedalus Team", mentioned in Firestorm, was a group of scientists specialized in Tiberium-related research who were the first to decrypt the Tacitus device on GDI's behalf.

The "Bureau of Mutant Affairs" was a division established in the aftermath of the Second Tiberium War to specifically deal with issues related to The Forgotten, who had begun to exist in the world as the result of mutation caused to human beings by prolonged exposure to Tiberium radiation in heavily affected regions.

A division which is mentioned as well as prominently featured throughout Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars is "InOps", which is assumed to stand for "Intelligence Operations;" the centralized intelligence division of the Global Defense Initiative, which, given the nature of GDI's beginnings, is presumably one of the organization's eldest and core divisions. Another such branch mentioned in Tiberium Wars is the "TacOps" division, which deals with and presumably stands for "Tactical Operations".

Throughout the era ranging from the events portrayed in Tiberian Dawn until well after the events portrayed in Firestorm, GDI acted on behalf, on the orders and under the review of the United Nations Security Council. By the events portrayed in Tiberium Wars, however, GDI was forced to gradually absorb nearly all of its member states into itself in order to compensate for their collapse as traditional countries and nations, as the result of the critical levels of Tiberium infestation that began to manifest themselves in many regions of the world, regions which would come to be known as "yellow zones" and "red zones". GDI subsequently began to establish its own centralized civilian administration and bureaucracy in response to this emergency. By the year of 2047, GDI had effectively been rendered into the largest military and political superstate in history, tasked with overseeing and protecting the "blue zone" regions of the Earth—the last refuges of the civilized world.

Within this new centralized administration, the body that serves as the leadership of the Global Defense Initiative consists of a number of directors with a clear line of Succession Protocols that determines who would rise in rank should an unexpected event remove several directors from their position. One of these positions is shown to include a Treasury Commissioner. The Tiberium Wars novel would reveal some details about GDI's government. Among these is that GDI's leadership consists of a Council of Directors. GDI's armed forces, officially designated as the GDI United Peacekeepers (GDIUP), are shown to be separate from the civilian bureaucracy.

History
In accordance with the United Nations Global Defense Act (UNGDA), the United Nations' Global Defense Initiative (UNGDI) was founded at the date of October 12, 1995. The proposal stated the following: "The Global Defense Initiative was founded to enforce the United Nations Global Defense Act and uphold the ideals as outlined in the United Nations Charter." Their first supreme commander became the American Brigadier General Mark Jamison Sheppard.

During the First Tiberium War the GDI fought Nod forces on a multitude of fronts. Eventually, Nod propaganda efforts painted the GDI as being responsible for atrocities such as the slaughter of the entire population of Bialystok, (spelled as Byelistok in the game where, ironically, one of the mission choices is to save the town's population from invading Nod troops) through a series of false news programs by Greg Burdette, which forced the GDI to pull back from many territories which were then quickly taken over by Nod supporters. This culminated in the UN becoming forced to discontinue its public funding of the GDI due to fear of public rebuke. Nod began assaulting GDI strongholds everywhere, believing that the organization had been severely weakened by these manipulative efforts.

As it turned out, the UN had faked their financial withdrawal in an attempt to outwit Nod's leader Kane, a brilliant and charismatic man. The plan was successful, and Nod forces were greatly surprised to find the bases they were attacking were heavily fortified. Most attacks were complete victories for the GDI. Two more years of fighting continued, however, until GDI operatives finally located Nod's main global headquarters, the so-called "Temple of Nod", just outside of Sarajevo. A three day battle began between the GDI and Nod's most elite troops. Kane's defenses were at last crippled, and the GDI's most advanced weapon - the orbital Ion Cannon - was activated. The Temple was destroyed, Kane was pronounced dead, and Nod was crippled effectively ending the First Tiberium War.

With the destruction of the Brotherhood's Sarajevo Temple a period of peace dawned, allowing time for the GDI to renew its efforts into researching the Tiberium substance and to study the Brotherhood of Nod's enigmatic and radically advanced Tiberium-based technology. However, GDI forces never recovered Kane's body which was considered by many to be the biggest oversight of the entire war. During these years tabloid headlines and rumors of the continued underground existence of the Brotherhood were commonplace, prompting the GDI to conduct investigations into these sightings before eventually sealing each case with few questions answered. The world remained largely at peace until September 2, 2030, when GDI bases around the world found themselves under heavy fire from Nod units. Aboard the Philadelphia, the GDI's top brass could make little sense of it; the Brotherhood as an organized and globalized militant force was supposed to have been almost eliminated and left divided into small and harmless splinter groups after Kane's death. And then, the unthinkable happened.

The GDI's communication equipment was hacked, and in a broadcast to the "Philadelphia", Kane revealed himself to be alive, thereby declaring his return to the global political and military scene. Alarmed with this development, general James Solomon charged commander Michael "Mack" McNeil with the job of countering the Nod assaults and taking the battle to them, thus initiating the Second Tiberium War.

The final battle this time took place in Cairo, with GDI forces striking once again at the heart of Nod, Kane's pyramid and rebuilt Temple. McNeil and Kane went one-on-one and in the end Kane was impaled with a steel beam. The GDI subsequently secured the mysterious Tacitus device, which could potentially provide the organization with the means to end the Tiberium infestation on the planet.

The alternate non-canonical Nod ending shows Kane's ICBM launchers eliminating the "Philadelphia", allowing him to launch a world-altering Tiberium missile unhindered and transform the earth and all life from carbon-based to Tiberium-based.

Shortly after Kane's second "death", it was revealed that the vaccine which The Forgotten leader Tratos had developed and had administered to his kin Umagon proved to be ineffective in curing, or even halting, Tiberium mutations within a human being, instead grossly accelerating mutations. Time began running out quickly as the Tiberium infestation increasingly continued to threaten the future and the very survival of humanity on Earth. The GDI thus began to focus the majority of its resources and efforts into unlocking the secrets of the Tacitus while defending themselves against the remainder of the Brotherhood. Tratos however was assassinated by forces led by the Nod player commander during the Nod campaign. This left the GDI with no alternative other than to attempt to capture the Brotherhood's artificial intelligence unit named CABAL, which was rumored to be able to decode all the information contained within the Tacitus device by means similar to those of Tratos. Anton Slavik, leading what was left of Nod's core, organized armed forces after the conclusion of the Second Tiberium War, was also working on reactivating CABAL in order to regain their logistical and tactical advantages, and more importantly to prevent the Brotherhood of Nod from fracturing into splinter groups again as it did after the conclusion of the First Tiberium War. When GDI forces recovered the final piece to the Tacitus however, CABAL suddenly turned on both the GDI and Nod in a move that would reveal itself to be part of an independent and premeditated plan of the AI itself. CABAL's increasing threat eventually led to an unholy alliance between GDI forces and the Brotherhood of Nod, with both armies destroying two fronts of CABAL's cyborg production and resource gathering facilities. Their missions succeeded, with the GDI and Nod mounting a final assault on the renegade artificial intelligence's system core.

Upon CABAL's termination, GDI researchers apparently managed to develop a "cure" for the Tiberium infestation on Earth based on the information they recovered from the Tacitus device. This appears in Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars through sonic disrupters that can break down Tiberium at the molecular level. However, the device also delivered a warning of a future alien invasion.

Over the seventeen year period of peace that would follow after the Firestorm incidents and the Global Defense Initiative acquiring the mysterious Tacitus device, many things would begin to change. GDI gradually began to shut down what would become over 60% of their military bases and outposts worldwide, and additionally began to retire the bulk of their walker technology used primarily in the Second Tiberium War in favor of upgraded designs of more traditional weapon platforms. Officially, all of this was done in a bid to cut costs in response to the economic strains that came with human civilization becoming increasingly displaced and isolated into the few pockets of still habitable land across the world, as the result of the Tiberium substance's continued and relentless spreading over the Earth's surface. Many of the individual nations in the world collapsed, leaving only GDI to pick up the pieces and forcing the organization to become not only the military unification of its member states, but their administrative and political unification as well.

By the year of 2047, Tiberium contamination on Earth had progressed to such a degree that GDI was prompted into dividing the surface of the planet into three distinct types of geographical zones based on the levels of local infestation. 30% of the world's surface has been designated as "red zones", which had suffered the worst contamination and can no longer support human - or otherwise carbon-based - life. 50% of the regions in the world have been designated as "yellow zones", which are dangerously contaminated yet still contain most of the world's population. Decades of war and civil unrest have left these regions in a state of social collapse, and had continued to provide the Brotherhood of Nod with opportunity for concealment and large-scale recruitment over the years. The remaining 20% of the Earth's surface is unscarred by Tiberium outbreak and is relatively untouched by war. These "blue zones" are considered the last refuge and hope of the human civilized world, and have been placed under the direct protection of the Global Defense Initiative.

The apparent peace between GDI and Nod of the last seventeen years proves to have been the silence before the storm however, as the Brotherhood of Nod suddenly infiltrates Goddard Space Center and disables GDI's A-SAT defense systems responsible for defending GDI's space operations from hostile attacks. Nod then launches a nuclear missile at the Philadelphia at the precise moment GDI's senior leadership is in council on board, virtually beheading the organization and throwing them into chaos as Nod launches a coordinated attack upon every major blue zone in the world. GDI manages to recover and re-organize itself however, and repels Nod from the blue zones after several weeks of fierce urban warfare, and launches a counterattack upon what is thought to be a Nod chemical weapons facility in Egypt. It is revealed that this facility was researching and developing a liquid Tiberium bomb of unprecedented power. GDI cripples Nod's nuclear capabilities in Cairo before proceeding to Sarajevo and firing the ion cannon on the Brotherhood's "Temple Prime" by order of acting GDI director Redmond Boyle, against the wishes of GDI General Granger. The Ion Cannon hits a liquid Tiberium deposit beneath the "Temple Prime", vaporizing it and inadvertently causing a large chain reaction of destruction across Eastern Europe which results in the death of millions within the region.

At the moment GDI believes it has prevailed a third time, alien invaders known only as the Scrin suddenly descend from the reaches of space and wreak havoc upon GDI and Nod alike. GDI discovers the invaders are constructing massive, monolithic towers for an unknown purpose and, after barely managing to withstand the initial planetary assault of the invaders, sets out to systematically destroy each of them. One tower survives the conflict however, and is as a result of its completion partially phased into another dimension and thus invulnerable to all forms of weaponry known to mankind. GDI has nonetheless won the day; Kane is seemingly dead, Nod is scattered, and GDI's destruction of the alien control node in Italy has neutralized all alien forces.