The winter of the void

"We prepare for peace by arming ourselves for war. Everyone, even the aliens know that having the biggest armaments is always the best deterrence for an attack. But us? We're the number one country, we are second to none,the owners of the finish line. And we won't let this unprecedented attack go unanswered"
-President John Harris. 2776

Humanity, man made it to space, what do they do? Explore, after all. It's the final frontier, they send scout ships everywhere, up down left right. Limitless areas of opportunity. Hell we even developed FTL drives to get us to places we want faster.

Years ago, humanity was still fractured, the US was a space nation, along with China, Russian, hell even India colonised and explored a lot of space, but it all changed once an alien race called the chalja's attacked a human colony. Yeah, not a great first contact. During this time, humanity formed into the United Human Federation, eventually pushing back against the invaders, retaking all of their systems, and push the aliens back to their border

And while they did sue for peace, a never ending Cold War is still happening, one where espionage, diplomatic manuevering and proxy happening 24/7 everywhere across a large area of the galaxy.