(06-28-2021, 10:26 PM)sandaoguo Wrote: I genuinely don't believe I'm misrepresenting your strategy, but rather I think you're taking my view here as somehow challenging your beliefs or defender cred.

I considered a lot whether I wanted to put that part in my previous post. At worst it was self-aggrandizing and arrogant. It’s also somewhat awkward, I prefer as a public official to stand on the merits of my actions this term rather than the past. My apologies if it came across that way.

The reason why I did mention those things is because at some point your criticism of my thought process rests on a criticism of my judgement and of my ability to balance between strong principled stances and pragmatic efforts to secure our defender position in the field. My record demonstrates that I am actually fairly heavily balanced in the direction you support (ideological purity > risky pragmatism), although perhaps slightly less so than you. Our disagreement is not even about the stance we should take or the resources we should throw into that stance, it’s about whether it is right to have the fight now or later (and, relatedly, whether that was the right author to be bringing the fight). And I think of all disagreements to have in these decisions, it’s a relatively small one.

(06-28-2021, 10:26 PM)sandaoguo Wrote: There's not much balancing to be done when the criteria is "don't do X because it will piss off Y." That's not a balancing act.

Except that wasn’t what was discussed, as explained above. I apologize for being highly defensive here. While there is a legitimate criticism of the role of transactionalism in FA, I hope over the course of this discussion I’ve clarified my stance on that. Additionally, a lot of my defensive posture was dictated by you starting from a position that did mischaracterize my initial claim (as demonstrated above).

(06-28-2021, 10:26 PM)sandaoguo Wrote: I also get that you're not MoFA, but these are the first FA-related things coming out of the Cabinet, along with the first publicized military mission being a fash-bash raid. I'm not criticizing just to criticize. I found the things you said to be surprising exactly because I expected a more defender-fronted strategy from this Cabinet. I'm certainly not one to do the "wait and see" thing, I'd rather point these things out early and quickly.

This is a concrete concern about my performance as a Minister and one I’m happy to address —

Since taking office as MoD, I’ve done a bit of internal infrastructure and outreach work which was badly needed and has put new SPSFers on a training and updating track. Our numbers at update are high, with us fielding between 3 and 7 updaters at every update in the past week. We’ve been active in defending — we participated in two major defenses of occupation-oriented raids from LWU and friends. We’ve participated in every detag effort that’s been attempted, and we bring the fight to taggers at update whenever they appear. There hasn’t been a publicized liberation because there isn’t a major occupation right now — defending is inherently reactive, so I don’t get to pick what there is for us to publicize about.

The reason we are doing the operation in Confederate Army is in large part because we have a window where we have resources spare to devote to such an operation. Additionally, for a defender region the decision to use offensive force is a considered and careful one, and is also one I want to be transparent about justifying to my constituents, hence my more formalized statement on that operation relative to any of our other ones.

We are active in defending and I have already begun discussions with the Minister of Media, General Corps, and Minister of Engagement about organizing and promoting SPSF materials and the organization and dissemination of propaganda.

(06-28-2021, 10:26 PM)sandaoguo Wrote: I don't want this Cabinet to think they're beholden to "strengthening" the TNP alliance because of the gentleman's (read: non-binding) agreement negotiated during the lame-duck. My advice would be there's not much value at all to extract, so approximately zero deference should be made to TNP when it comes to what positions we take, what missions we do, and what SC actions we endorse.

This is now clearer than it was at the start of this conversation, and is duly noted. I won’t speak to Cabinet collective policy beyond to reference what Jay said above — we will work with TNP on areas of mutual interest and against them where mutual interest does not exist. I will also never have us call off a legitimate defensive operation in deference to another region’s priorities except for upholding the gentlemen’s agreement made in the previous Cabinet (which, as Roavin noted, is unlikely to come up during my term).