(1) A treaty will be dissolved if the Cabinet reports to the Assembly that a signatory to the treaty has violated its terms. The dissolution report must include detailed evidence, which will be up for a commenting period in the Assembly for one week before the dissolution is legally binding.

What happens if the Cabinet disagrees on whether a signatory to the treaty has violated its terms? Does the cabinet have to unanimously agree that the terms have been violated?

First off welcome to the Assembly.
Second, off I think a smart thing would be if a majority of the Cabinet including the MoFA and/or the MoMA agrees that it has been violated. But generally it is pretty obvious.

Above all else, I hope to be a decent person.
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CoA: August 2016-January 2017
Minister of Foreign Affairs: October 2019-June 2020, October 2020- February 2021

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(1) A treaty will be dissolved if the Cabinet reports to the Assembly that a signatory to the treaty has violated its terms. The dissolution report must include detailed evidence, which will be up for a commenting period in the Assembly for one week before the dissolution is legally binding.

What happens if the Cabinet disagrees on whether a signatory to the treaty has violated its terms? Does the cabinet have to unanimously agree that the terms have been violated?

First off welcome to the Assembly.
Second, off I think a smart thing would be if a majority of the Cabinet including the MoFA and/or the MoMA agrees that it has been violated. But generally it is pretty obvious.

Thank you for the welcome. In response to your comments, I edited some elaboration into my original post.

If the Executive dissolves a treaty, does it count as an executive order? Neither the charter nor this act gives any indication that it wouldn't be. Regardless whether it is or not, I can imagine plausible scenarios where not attaining unanimous approval before submitting a report to the assembly could be a problem. For example, a cabinet member could be involved with the region we're dissolving a treaty with. Given their perspective, they could be utterly convinced that the treaty wasn't violated, and thus unwilling to endorse the report. Then they have an avenue to question the legality of how the Cabinet conducted the dissolution.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Military Affairs - both influential leaders whose jobs involve the ramifications of a treaty - could also disagree about whether a treaty was violated. Perhaps an officer in an ally's military participates in a coalition mission against a TSP mission, but there's disagreement over whether the treaty was broken because that leader could be, depending on one's interpretation, representing a non-allied region. The Army Minister could be convinced that they broke the treaty, while the Foreign Affairs minister could feel totally opposite. Let's say the PM and Delegate 100% agree with the MoMA, but the Minister of Regional Affairs sides with MoFA. What happens then?

Politically, I'd expect that the MoFA would take heavy scrutiny for disagreeing with the cabinet. Typically, he or should would likely resign. But if he or she was stubborn, they might have to be removed by a vote. In that case, I think even moderate amounts of ambiguity about what's needed to dissolve a treaty could unnecessarily cause drama and create a harmful schism.

(This post was last modified: 10-21-2016, 12:31 AM by Anapol.)

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Happy to see you get involved right away, Anapol

A few comments:

• Treaty dissolutions are not executive orders - executive orders are, as our Charter defines them, a specific mechanism that is somewhat like a "temporary law bandaid" that applies for roughly a week (depending on specifics) before being confirmed or dissolved by the Assembly.
  
• In case of a treaty violation, the debate period is an allowance to retract the dissolution. The Cabinet has and collects evidence of a violation, which the Assembly then verifies. If the Assembly were to make a good case that the presented evidence is insufficient, or that the Cabinet should make additional attempts to reconcile the violation, the Cabinet can then retract that and either drop it or try again with new evidence. If a buffer period were required for some reason, it would apply after the mandatory discussion period —but honestly, if the other party breached the terms and reconciliatory attempts fail, at that point the treaty is already effectively dead anyway.
  
• If not specified to require unanimity in the cabinet, it's reasonable to assume that majority support among the 4 cabinet members is implied. One could make an argument that the PM, as leader of the cabinet, decides by which process the cabinet makes these decisions when not specified — while that's maybe de jure the correct interpretation, de facto it would kill the PM's TSP politician career
  

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This motion is now at vote. Please head over to the Voting Chamber to cast your vote!

Above all else, I hope to be a decent person.
Has Been
What's Next?

 

CoA: August 2016-January 2017
Minister of Foreign Affairs: October 2019-June 2020, October 2020- February 2021

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