Following discussion in Discord, I said I would write up a draft and we could continue debate on the subject of full vs regional proscription after that. So here's the draft, accompanied by my thoughts on proscription put into better and more coherent detail.

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Proscription of The Black Hawks

Following the statement released by the Cabinet on November 11, 2020, regarding an attempt by members of The Black Hawks to subvert and manipulate the Office of WA Legislation (OWL) voting program, the Cabinet met and discussed further actions. We have decided that this violation of sovereignty qualifies as an act of hostility under Article 1, Section 1(d) of the Proscription Act: “Exploiting, manipulating, or unduly influencing elections or votes.”

The Cabinet hereby issues a full proscription of The Black Hawks, under the powers granted to us by Article 3 of the Proscription Act. This proscription prohibits any member of The Black Hawks from having a nation in any regions under the jurisdiction of the Coalition of the South Pacific or any of our off-site properties. We take this action not only to help ensure our security and integrity the OWL program, but also to deter future attempts to subvert the South Pacific with a clear message: you will be caught and you will face the maximum punishment under our laws.

The Black Hawks have a long history of targeting the South Pacific, with attempts at infiltration and conspiracies to subvert the government and destroy the region. This latest act against our region shows that the region and its leadership and members has not changed over the years. While publicly their leadership claims to have not authorized an act of aggression against the South Pacific, it is not a credible denial. Furthermore, even if we accept the premise that the Council of Hawks did not authorize its members manipulate our World Assembly program, the conclusion we must draw is that we cannot trust any member of The Black Hawks to not attack our sovereignty in the future. Targeted individual proscriptions would prove fruitless.

The more time has passed by, the clearer it has become that The Black Hawks, as a whole organization and region, is an enemy of the South Pacific. We shall harbor no enemies in our jurisdictions.

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Why we should issue a full proscription

The above draft statement offers my general justification for a full proscription, but I want to address the points raised on Discord about a regional vs. a full proscription. I think the only strong decision here is to issue a full proscription. A regional proscription would be a half-measure, and TBH has not showed they deserve to be spared the maximum punishment here.

Roavin has argued that a regional proscription isn’t a half-measure, because “a proscription is a proscription.” I disagree and I think he’s wrong on this front for two reasons. First, the law delineates two different forms of proscription (and calls one “full”) for a reason. Just definitionally, the option that isn’t a “full” proscription is a “less than full” one. Regional proscriptions are very obviously a lesser form punishment, i.e. a half-measure. Secondly, that’s exactly how proscriptions have been treated by previous Cabinets. When you look at the list of extant proscriptions and read the justifications for them, the pattern is quite clear. McMannia/HYDRA was fully proscribed for infiltrating, but The Ragerian Imperium was only regionally proscribed because McMannia was no longer in leadership there. Core leadership of Rahl is fully proscribed, but the underlings and associates who work with them are only regionally proscribed because they’re not the same level. It’s very clear that there’s a distinction of regional proscriptions as lesser than full proscriptions, and full proscriptions are reserved for the worst of enemies.

That’s why it’s personally frustrating for me that, despite the previous 2+ years of TBH being hostile and pulling these stunts, the instinct of the Cabinet is to choose the lesser form of proscription. TBH is either an enemy or they’re a minor nuisance. If they’re an enemy, then we need to take the kid gloves off and go full force in how we handle them. A full proscription is, quite literally, full force.

The logic of having two levels of proscriptions is based on, in my opinion, a rather flimsy idea that we can win over the hearts and minds of members of enemy regions/organizations. If we allow them in our Discord and forum, they can see how great of a region we are and be convinced to turn their backs of our enemies and cross over to us. I don’t believe this is a realistic view of the game when it comes to TSP. And I think that’s gambling with our long-term security in any case. Roavin’s experience in The Grey Wardens, where this “win them over” approach was born, does not translate perfectly to TSP as a GCR. There’s also no compelling reason why we would even want to try to win over TBHers, which is itself a massively risky endeavor.

First, we aren’t a defender organization with a region, but a community grown from a GCR. We don’t have a founder that guarantees our regional security. If we did, we could be a lot less lax with handling enemies. We weren’t founded as a defender organization. Rather, we’re a democratic region that only recently became defender in the grand scheme of history, and the foundations of our alignment are not fully set like TRR’s.

Second, our history has no shortage of examples of what happens when you allow a disconnect between declaring somebody a security threat but allowing them to stick around. There’s a fundamental cognitive dissonance in saying, “TBH is a grave threat to our community, but they are totally welcome to participate in our community.” That dissonance results invariably in people wondering over time why we even consider somebody an enemy, even if the underlying reasons why they were proscribed haven’t changed. It took years to proscribe the Rahl Family exactly because this dynamic is so corrosive to regional security. “Dali is a such nice and cool guy, why are you being so harsh and saying he’s a security threat?” was the mantra for years whenever I pointed out that Empire/Rahl are untrustworthy and targeting TSP. I would go so far to say that the primary reason why our existing regional proscriptions work is because those proscribed decided it wasn't worth it to stick around, not because regional proscriptions are themselves inherently stable.

That’s why I’m skeptical that we should even employ regional proscriptions moving forward, though that is a larger conversation. I think the idea was useful 2-3 years ago, when it was a compromise for Belshaft’s intransigence about proscriptions. In other words, it was better than nothing. But we absolutely should not be considering lesser regional proscriptions the default. That is just bad security policy. If we consider a person/region/organization an enemy, then there is no reason to say they should be allowed into any part of TSP. We are not obligated to be a public space for all of NationStates.