RoFAvin 3.0
Plain FAcking awesome

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Ohai, fellow South Pacificans! I am once again asking for your support to be your Minister of Foreign Affairs.

In this past term, we did a bunch of things:

• We issued a Cabinet Order outlining the South Pacific’s policy on Frontier regions for when these are added to the game. To my knowledge, we’re still the only region to have actually issued policy in anticipation of F/S.
  
• We talked to a bunch of regions about F/S, showing them our Cabinet order, asking them about their plans, and generally exchanging in a dialog about our expectations for how F/S will affect the interregional political landscape. All of these meetings had at least one ministry staffer tagging along to see diplomatic discussions in practice.
  • The North Pacific
    
  • The West Pacific
    
  • The Pacific
    
  • Balder
    
  • The Rejected Realms
    
  • Conch Kingdom
    
  • Union of Democratic States
    
  • The Order of the Grey Wardens
    
  • 10000 Islands
• We worked more on the region wiki pages and now have many more awesome pages! Most of them are now more than mere stubs. These pages are a great reference to anyone, be they regular South Pacificans interested in the wider interregional world, Ambassadors getting started on a new assigned regions, or even for the Minister themselves - I myself referenced the wiki pages a few times in the past term, which was much easier than having to hunt for the information myself.
  
• We amicably repealed the Conch Kingdom treaty. Most treaties aren’t ended amicably, but we in TSP are Built Different.
  
• We entered into a non-aggression pact with Balder, with a beautiful statement drafted by Ike that I hope becomes a template for how to do these things in the future, within TSP and elsewhere.
  
• We standardized how our ambassadors submit updates from their assigned regions. If you ever saw anybody mentioning THE FORM, this is what they’re talking about.
  
• There are more things in the pipeline that started this term, including another bilateral treaty plus maybe even a big multilateral thing!
  

In my opinion, this was a good term! It wasn’t perfect, though, and there is much more work to be done!

• We need to get better at Ambassador onboarding. I already have ideas for this, specifically using another form to serve as a checklist. With our wiki pages giving Ambassadors the initial information they need to get going, this will be easier than ever.
  
• In the same vein as above, we need a new ambassador guide. Some efforts were made in the past term to write a new one based on existing documents we have, but that never panned out. This term, I want to sit down and write it myself.
  
• While we briefly had a full ambassador roster in the past term, we no longer do. I want to work with MoE to fill up the roster.
  
• We need to prepare for the 10 year anniversary of the Aurora Alliance with our sister feeder The North Pacific!
  
• We need to get better at showing the fruits of our ambassador’s work to the region better. I did issue one foreign news digest in the past term, but admittedly dropped the ball afterward. I want to work with the rest of Cabinet (particularly MoM) to find a more sustainable way of packaging the information feed we already have established into consumable content for interested South Pacificans.
  
• There are more regions we need to talk to about F/S! The East Pacific, Free Nations Region, and quite a few others are still missing. Once that is all concluded, I will write a report to the Assembly about what we have found out.
  
• Those things in the pipeline I mentioned? Those need to get done, of course.
  

Of course, no MoFA campaign is complete without stating policy views:

• We are democratic, defender, and defenders of democracy. We are also willing to work with almost anyone in good faith if our interests align and good faith is reciprocated. That has been a hallmark of my foreign policy and that will not change.
  
• A notable recent development is a general shift of Manifesto-Independent regions to rather lean toward our side of the interregional landscape and away from our enemies in raiderdom. We shouldn’t squander this opportunity, and instead be welcoming without being overbearing, by showing and demonstrating the mutual benefits to be had by these shifts.
  
• And of course, when it comes to Ambassadors, I wrote a manifesto called The modern South Pacifican Ambassador.
  

Finally, a little bit about me:
(Note to the Election Commissioner: This section constitutes my conflict of interest disclosure)

• Hi. I’m a dad. I like tetris. I have a nice beard. I’ve also been a loyal South Pacifican ever since I was founded on April 7, 2016.
  
• I am our longest serving Prime Minister, at 5 full terms (20 months!) non-consecutively. It’s fair to say that I have been the most FA-forward Prime Minister we have had, at least in recent times.
  
• I have also been an FA advisor for years and was usually involved at least as a consultant for nearly all major FA events of the past few years. And now, I will have served two full terms as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
  
• I am also a citizen in Lazarus, serve as Chief Justice in Mariner Trench (the companion region to the MT Army), and am a Commander in the Order of the Grey Wardens. I have no intentions of attaining any political position in any of these, and I see the potential for conflicts as extremely low (and so far, history has validated this).
  
• My home region is, and always has been, the South Pacific. If conflicted between the South Pacific and any place else, I will always choose TSP, no exception.
  

And that’s all! As always - I encourage you to ask any and all questions that you have. I will be delighted to answer them, and you will find that I am quite an afFAble fellow.

Reply

There are more things in the pipeline that started this term, including another bilateral treaty plus maybe even a big multilateral thing!

You had my vote here.

4× Cabinet minister /// 1× OWL director /// CRS member /// SPSF

My History

Reply

In their recent statement, TNP's delegate stated that the region would reserve its right to continue quorum raiding. Will you try to preserve the agreement you made with them last year, or will you try to extract concessions from them?

What strategies will you employ to promote the defender cause?

Who are our closest allies at this time in terms of both regions and leaders?

How do you envision cooperating and coordinating with the prime minister and minister of defense in the Foreign Affairs Council?

You mentioned that there is another bilateral treaty in the works. Any hint on what region that may be?

4× Cabinet minister /// 1× OWL director /// CRS member /// SPSF

My History

Reply

Thanks for the questions!

In their recent statement, TNP's delegate stated that the region would reserve its right to continue quorum raiding. Will you try to preserve the agreement you made with them last year, or will you try to extract concessions from them?

In an ideal world, that agreement wouldn't exist at all and instead we would have a broader consensus on the sanctity of Delegates and their votes, even if we disagree with their votes. As welcome as TNP's recent announcement was, their doubling down on their quorum raid policy was a sour point in it for me. I'm not a fan of preserving the agreement in the sense of working towards keeping it, but as an expression of status quo I would stick to its terms so long as it doesn't interfere with other obligations. Fortunately, these situations will be very rare.

What strategies will you employ to promote the defender cause?

Be open about who we are, and not be afraid of driving the narrative. We have the clout to lead and influence opinion, and we should use it when appropriate.

Who are our closest allies at this time in terms of both regions and leaders?

There isn't a single answer to this, because what "closest" means is highly contextual, and reducing our robust diplomatic portfolio down to one "closest" is selling the others short.

That being said, it should be possible to find who we've most aligned with in some time frame on Security Council, generally WA matters, military ops, and other things, which might be a fun statistical project for a TSJ article.

How do you envision cooperating and coordinating with the prime minister and minister of defense in the Foreign Affairs Council?

Same as before - there's a channel, and we coordinate there. It's a very good model that combines the benefits of the accursed #mofa-hq from back in the day without the personality-driven drawbacks that led it to explode. There are a few things that happen beyond FAC, for example when there are dedicated negotiation servers or such, but in an ideal world a summary from there should always be reflected back into the FAC.

I did begin a project this term for having standardized reporting of summaries of diplomatic discussions, currently only accessible to senior Cabinet but something I want to generally make available for FAC. It's a small amount of work to make that generally FAC-accessible, and requires some extra discipline (by me, primarily) to make sure it gets used as it should, but it'll be a great asset once it's finished.

You mentioned that there is another bilateral treaty in the works. Any hint on what region that may be?

We were approached by TGW. That might seem surprising but it makes sense; we'll brief the Assembly about this very very soon (as in, before elections are over).

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1. While vital to the region and ministry itself, when looking from outside in, he Ambassador position may at times look like a glorified messenger who reposts texts in RMB, Regional Forums, and Discords. Do you think this may in part be the reason why the region doesn't have a full roster of ambassadors? What else is necessary to accomplish from the Ministries side to ensure a full roster of ambassadors notwithstanding the work between MoFA and MoE to recruit more aggressively? Should there be more information be available on the responsibilities of an Ambassador to entice interest other than 'maybe you will get to be a MoFA one day?" (ie. (On Ambassadors)

2. How important is it for you as the Minister of Foreign Affairs to mentor, or to allow and encourage those experienced to mentor, Ambassadors? What was done in your current term, and what could be done in your next term if elected, on this issue?

3. Somewhat related to first two questions; how heavily the MoFA staffers were involved in discussing, debating, and drafting the two treaties the Assembly recently signed into law?

4. What are your thoughts on mustaches? Are you pro- or anti- moustache? Do you believe beards and moustaches can coexist peacefully?

Reply

Hi LFP, thank you for the questions!

1. While vital to the region and ministry itself, when looking from outside in, he Ambassador position may at times look like a glorified messenger who reposts texts in RMB, Regional Forums, and Discords. Do you think this may in part be the reason why the region doesn't have a full roster of ambassadors? What else is necessary to accomplish from the Ministries side to ensure a full roster of ambassadors notwithstanding the work between MoFA and MoE to recruit more aggressively? Should there be more information be available on the responsibilities of an Ambassador to entice interest other than 'maybe you will get to be a MoFA one day?" (ie. (On Ambassadors)

While that information gathering is certainly still a part of the Ambassador job, I've been working towards making the Ambassador job be even more (see the modern South Pacifican Ambassador). With regard to recruitment specifically, I assume you're referring to the informational blurb here, which is under MoE's purview, and the MoFA-specific text there was presumably written by Jay since that was during his MoFA term. So - yes, that should be updated, and I would expect that to happen as part of a more comprehensive effort in tandem with MoE.

But going beyond what we will plan with MoE (which is what you asked), widening FA discussions from the ambassador halls to South Pacificans broadly will also help to get more people interested and involved. For that to happen, the information to talk about has to get to South Pacificans first, i.e. the digests mentioned in the campaign or some other format.

2. How important is it for you as the Minister of Foreign Affairs to mentor, or to allow and encourage those experienced to mentor, Ambassadors? What was done in your current term, and what could be done in your next term if elected, on this issue?

It's the most important part! I always took at least one MoFA staffer with me to every diplomatic discussion we had to observe and see things up close. More experienced ambassadors would also be tasked with some part of the diplomatic discussion, and while that didn't happen this term, it happened in my previous term.

3. Somewhat related to first two questions; how heavily the MoFA staffers were involved in discussing, debating, and drafting the two treaties the Assembly recently signed into law?

There was only one treaty signed into law, which was the Balder treaty; for that one, I started a discussion about it in the Ambassador's Halls before taking it to the Assembly. With the other one, you're presumably referring to the CK treaty repeal; that one didn't have as much discussion (it probably should have).

4. What are your thoughts on mustaches? Are you pro- or anti- moustache? Do you believe beards and moustaches can coexist peacefully?

Moustaches are inferior to beards in every way; that being said, we're an inclusive region so I would never (openly) discriminate against somebody with a moustache.

(This post was last modified: 02-05-2022, 10:31 PM by Roavin.)

Reply

Moustaches are inferior to beards in every way; that being said, we're an inclusive region so I would never (openly) discriminate against somebody with a moustache.

I take back my vote

4× Cabinet minister /// 1× OWL director /// CRS member /// SPSF

My History

Reply