10-05-2018, 12:42 AM
CoI: I am currently Founder of Meihua, citizen of Lazarus, and administrator of Forest. I maintain nations in those regions as well as a few others elsewhere (Warzone Australia, the Green Shrubbery). I can provide more details as well as a full history of NS participation upon request.
Hey all -
I’m going to be plain and simple here. I do not intend to “shake up the pot” politically very much as Minister of Foreign Affairs, I am not planning any “Gameplay-breaking” new alliances— but at the same time, I believe that the time is now to take a thoughtful look at how we approach our foreign affairs, in the way we organize the ministry and in which groups and events we focus our efforts on.
The most important of my goals is that of a positive approach to foreign affairs. FA has for so long been only about the negative— always on the defensive, always in damage control mode, always about how we can hurt our enemies instead of how we can help our already-existing friends, and, indeed, ourselves. We have begun to always assume malicious intent from outside. And while this is a natural response to the numerous assaults we have sustained in the past year or so, it is not the way to build a healthy interregional diplomacy. I plan to refocus FA onto creating such a positive and healthy global relationship.
In the Gameplay theatre, that entails putting the past behind us. It means working with the fact in mind that while regional strength is important, it means nothing without being likeable. Being friendly to as many people and groups as we can, for as long as we can, instead of needlessly jumping to antagonize— while maintaining a cautious optimism tempered by realism. It means a no-salt diet.
But Gameplay is not what I would focus on this term. At this critical time of rebuilding for TSP, that type of foreign affairs is, quite simply, not what should be driving our region. FA’s role must be to support our internal growth and aid it on its path, not to overpower it with the demands of other regions with political interests in mind. What goes on in Gameplay does not help our region grow in any way— and focusing there is like channeling our energy towards a brick wall. Doing so is not good for our foreign affairs or for our internal affairs, and is only good for the people who hang out there to gossip.
So, like my opponent, I would like to stop using our Gameplay embassy completely for at least this term. We don’t need it for recruitment purposes, as small regions do, and any serious updates should be transmitted to our allies via posts on their forums anyway.
Instead, I would refocus away from dealing with Gameplay and towards regions interested more in cultural cooperation and cross-building than politics. We’ve done several cultural events with XKI and Conch Kingdom/AA in the past— they both might be worth developing deeper relations with; I obviously have a soft spot for Forest because of my roots there (and so I’d hand off anything relating to them to someone else), but I think they have a model worth observing and interacting with; and we really should work on more active relations with UDS. It also might be fun to look into an embassy with South Pacific, so we can finally declare them a colony share some tropical-ness with each other.
To help break down the barriers in working with our embassies, I’d like to work on doing more informal and spontaneous activities with them— e.g. heading over to their discord server and asking if anyone wants to play a game of CAH/CANS. Importantly, this involves making our ambassadors and other members of the FA department besides the minister feel they are empowered to take the initiative on these spontaneous events.
I would also plan to increase our attention to the foreign affairs of the gameside of TSP. We have some embassies in-game for which we don’t have forum embassies, and those should be audited to check their statuses and whether they should be pursued further or removed. I would like to work with the next Local Council to poll RMBers on what regions, if any, they’d like to establish embassies with. (There are a remarkable number of interregional connections through our RMB.) Additionally, I’d plan to create unofficial gameside polls to advise the FA department on whether to accept new embassies.
Finally, I believe we must pay attention to transparency in the ministry and what that entails for its structure. The MoFA team, while it may be able to make quicker decisions sometimes, more often than not becomes the same people arguing over the same topics. Most of all, it’s not in any way transparent to even the other ministry members what is going on. I’d plan to restructure the ministry so that the default decision-making level includes everyone who is a ministry participant, while confidential information is sent directly to the ministry member(s) to whom it is relevant, who would then form a purpose-created “committee” to discuss it (e.g. a committee on a specific cultural event with an embassy, or a committee on a recent development in another GCR).
I have served in the Cabinet for two terms now, through an incredibly vicious cabinet and an admittedly quiet one. In the past term I’ve become the one to make sure things are still getting done (anyone in the cabinet can tell you how many times I’ve poked people to proceed in the post-proscription case works :p). I have contributed to almost all parts of TSP— the military, regional affairs, the Local Council, the WA program, and as a member of the FA team. I believe I have proven over the course of my terms in the cabinet that I am a stable minister who thinks and debates instead of lashing out.
So let’s make FA positive again! \o/
Hey all -
I’m going to be plain and simple here. I do not intend to “shake up the pot” politically very much as Minister of Foreign Affairs, I am not planning any “Gameplay-breaking” new alliances— but at the same time, I believe that the time is now to take a thoughtful look at how we approach our foreign affairs, in the way we organize the ministry and in which groups and events we focus our efforts on.
The most important of my goals is that of a positive approach to foreign affairs. FA has for so long been only about the negative— always on the defensive, always in damage control mode, always about how we can hurt our enemies instead of how we can help our already-existing friends, and, indeed, ourselves. We have begun to always assume malicious intent from outside. And while this is a natural response to the numerous assaults we have sustained in the past year or so, it is not the way to build a healthy interregional diplomacy. I plan to refocus FA onto creating such a positive and healthy global relationship.
In the Gameplay theatre, that entails putting the past behind us. It means working with the fact in mind that while regional strength is important, it means nothing without being likeable. Being friendly to as many people and groups as we can, for as long as we can, instead of needlessly jumping to antagonize— while maintaining a cautious optimism tempered by realism. It means a no-salt diet.
But Gameplay is not what I would focus on this term. At this critical time of rebuilding for TSP, that type of foreign affairs is, quite simply, not what should be driving our region. FA’s role must be to support our internal growth and aid it on its path, not to overpower it with the demands of other regions with political interests in mind. What goes on in Gameplay does not help our region grow in any way— and focusing there is like channeling our energy towards a brick wall. Doing so is not good for our foreign affairs or for our internal affairs, and is only good for the people who hang out there to gossip.
So, like my opponent, I would like to stop using our Gameplay embassy completely for at least this term. We don’t need it for recruitment purposes, as small regions do, and any serious updates should be transmitted to our allies via posts on their forums anyway.
Instead, I would refocus away from dealing with Gameplay and towards regions interested more in cultural cooperation and cross-building than politics. We’ve done several cultural events with XKI and Conch Kingdom/AA in the past— they both might be worth developing deeper relations with; I obviously have a soft spot for Forest because of my roots there (and so I’d hand off anything relating to them to someone else), but I think they have a model worth observing and interacting with; and we really should work on more active relations with UDS. It also might be fun to look into an embassy with South Pacific, so we can finally declare them a colony share some tropical-ness with each other.
To help break down the barriers in working with our embassies, I’d like to work on doing more informal and spontaneous activities with them— e.g. heading over to their discord server and asking if anyone wants to play a game of CAH/CANS. Importantly, this involves making our ambassadors and other members of the FA department besides the minister feel they are empowered to take the initiative on these spontaneous events.
I would also plan to increase our attention to the foreign affairs of the gameside of TSP. We have some embassies in-game for which we don’t have forum embassies, and those should be audited to check their statuses and whether they should be pursued further or removed. I would like to work with the next Local Council to poll RMBers on what regions, if any, they’d like to establish embassies with. (There are a remarkable number of interregional connections through our RMB.) Additionally, I’d plan to create unofficial gameside polls to advise the FA department on whether to accept new embassies.
Finally, I believe we must pay attention to transparency in the ministry and what that entails for its structure. The MoFA team, while it may be able to make quicker decisions sometimes, more often than not becomes the same people arguing over the same topics. Most of all, it’s not in any way transparent to even the other ministry members what is going on. I’d plan to restructure the ministry so that the default decision-making level includes everyone who is a ministry participant, while confidential information is sent directly to the ministry member(s) to whom it is relevant, who would then form a purpose-created “committee” to discuss it (e.g. a committee on a specific cultural event with an embassy, or a committee on a recent development in another GCR).
I have served in the Cabinet for two terms now, through an incredibly vicious cabinet and an admittedly quiet one. In the past term I’ve become the one to make sure things are still getting done (anyone in the cabinet can tell you how many times I’ve poked people to proceed in the post-proscription case works :p). I have contributed to almost all parts of TSP— the military, regional affairs, the Local Council, the WA program, and as a member of the FA team. I believe I have proven over the course of my terms in the cabinet that I am a stable minister who thinks and debates instead of lashing out.
So let’s make FA positive again! \o/