The South Pacific

Hello, TSP!

Given the circumstances of this special election, it would be strange and disingenuous to come up with a whole new campaign platform. After such little time, how could I possibly explain a radical shift in why I'm running? Instead, I want to take this opportunity to go into more detail about my platform.

Pivot to Global Cooperation

Our foreign affairs has for too long been focused entirely on the wants and needs of military gameplay. I believe this is wrongheaded and has not served our region well. While there is a place for military considerations in the context of regional security, we should be pivoting to a new doctrine of foreign relations. We should seek out opportunities with regions that enrich our own culture and develop an inter-regional community based not on raider-defender-imperialist rivalries, but on roleplaying, the World Assembly, games, festivals, and conversations.

If elected as Minister of Foreign Affairs, I will strive to create this inter-regional dialogue on day one. We have a burgeoning roleplaying community here on our forums that I would like to leverage, to build links between us and other roleplaying regions. I would like to see more World Assembly resolutions authors seeking out our votes and opinions. In fact, those two things can interact, as our roleplaying community builds on it's fascinating work with the Southern Cooperation Organization.

Having a multidimensional approach to foreign affairs offers us so much more than our past unidimensional focus on "How can this region provide us military units during a coup?" But the benefit of building these non-military ties is that we create natural allies if we do ever end up in that unfortunate situation. The cultural ties we build with other regions and groups of players are stronger than simple military commitments.

Regions that I think fit the kind of mold we're looking for have a long history of inter-regional cooperation, cultural development, and peace-based diplomacy. Taijitu, Greater Dienstad, and the International Democratic Union are User-Created Regions I think we would great additions to our network of partners. The East Pacific is also a potential partner, which is why I advocate repairing our relations right away.

Game-Created Region Affairs

Our foreign policy cannot ignore our brothers and sisters abroad-- the feeders and sinkers of NationStates. We all serve a much larger purpose in this game, and it is important that we maintain peace among ourselves. To that end, I maintain support for building a network of peace alliances among us.

If elected, I also want to help organize a summit of all feeder and sinker regions. The would be a general summit where we can discuss issues that matter to us. It is not a security summit or an ideological summit, but rather a general meeting where bridges can be built and regions can express their interests and ambitions.

The Issue of Lazarus

I strongly support the Cabinet's decision to back the government-in-exile of the People's Republic of Lazarus. In fact, I had provided my counsel suggesting this course of action was in our greater interests. Our treaty ensures that we only recognize the constitutional government of Lazarus, and when their sitting Delegate all but dissolved that constitution, it lost its legitimacy in the eyes of not only our treaty, but the inter-regional community.

We should continue to support the government-in-exile diplomatically, culturally, and militarily.

Does anybody have any questions? Fun scenarios? Cake vs pie?

What is your opinion on the NPO claiming Lazarus as their own? Do you see this having any effect on current/future relations with The Pacific?

Relations with The Pacific were always an iffy subject. The New Pacific Order (NPO) historically has been very isolated, and has done some suspicious things in the past.

As a principle, I strongly oppose any type of coup d'etat in any GCR. This is really not all that different from what Milograd did. Stu was the legally elected Delegate, but then went rogue and effectively dissolved Lazarus' constitution. As such, he really has no legitimacy. I agree with the Cabinet's recent decision to back the government-in-exile. (It's what I had suggested in my PM to the core FA team.)

The attempt by the NPO to basically create a colony out of Lazarus is unacceptable imperialistic behavior. It violates GCR sovereignty and threatens the status of the entire GCR community. It's something we should all be coming together to oppose.

Smoke damaged or non-smoke damaged?


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Despite your defender views, you have supported(I think?) forming embassies with both raider and defender regions. How can we maintain relations with both regions without conflicts?

(04-11-2015, 09:39 PM)Ryccia Wrote: [ -> ]Despite your defender views, you have supported(I think?) forming embassies with both raider and defender regions. How can we maintain relations with both regions without conflicts?

I think you have my platform confused with Wolf's.  His platform is to sign a bunch of treaties with raiders and defenders.

I don't think it's possible for that kind of diplomatic tangle to work out. We would simply be in the middle of a tug-o-war between allies, and sooner or later one side would force us to choose one ally over another.

That's why I support moving away from a foreign policy that's focused on military gameplay and the raider-defender-imperialist rivalry. It's much more beneficial for us, as a region that isn't focused on military affairs, to pivot towards a more culture-focused foreign policy. We should look for regions that can enrich our own growing roleplay community, create good cross-regional conversations, and be focused more on peaceful things than about invading this region or opposing that group of raiders.

To clarify, does that mean we should not engage with defender or raider regions, or that our focus for relationships should be culture, regardless of that region's military alignment?

It's the latter. I don't think we need to avoid raider and defender regions altogether. I would hope that focusing on things other than military gameplay would lead to less tensions among us and R/D regions.

Thank you for at least bothering to put a campaign thread up Glen, unlike your opponents, at least so far. Although still undecided, I can't vote for someone who doesn't even bother to put a campaign thread up. Bit disappointed in the others actually.

No questions from me at this point, as without anything to compare it to, you have my vote by default.