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Making a moral defense of the US war on Mexico may not be the brightest move politically at the moment, but there's been some criticisms of this campaign that I think need to be addressed.

Every player who decides to take some interest in the international stage starts by developing a fresh faced set of ideals. Imperialism is bad. Self-determination of the nation state overrides everything. Countries who show aggression towards others and their citizens are going to spend an eternity in cyber Hell being prodded with fiery pitchforks. It doesn't matter, in this ideology, who you're allied to. It doesn't matter what history a country has or who they've warred with in the past.

Of course, these ideals do not always leave a player. I myself have something of a soft spot for Greece and Israel, and was overjoyed when the resistance wars started. But one thing that does happen to players as they gain experience on the world stage is that they realise that there's no black and white moralism in international politics. No country in eRepublik has had a perfect track record, and that especially goes for some countries whose independence and/or advancement is called for. ATLANTIS isn't perfect, and neither is PEACE by a longshot. One day, both alliances will break down into something sustainable, but until then, all we have is a very simple truth: We hate them, they hate us. We want to expand our influence at their detriment, and vice versa.

If all this sounds like hardcore cynicism, then let me relay to you the incident that turned me to this school of thought. Back home, there was a big issue in Congress over post-independence Germany. Some Congressmen, including myself, wanted to sign a MPP with the Germans so the Swedish could not target them again. It didn't matter that Sweden were our long-standing allies, the Germans needed self determination and protection to that effect. Poor dears. In a bid to talk us round, the anti-MPP lobby reminded us of Germany's history. Sweden conquered Germany in a war that the latter had started, and they were doing it in some ways to protect the Germans against the full wrath of the Poles, who they'd also declared war on. This, you could be argued, was a past administration, but a leaked PM from Justin Tyme proved that the Germans were intent on conquering the Czech Republic when their own safety was assured. International politics are amoral! If you don't hit them, they'll hit you. And they'll put some arm into it.

But how, you may ask, does this relate to Mexico? Well, the United States is serving its own interests by invading another country. That's amoral foreign policy at its best, and every big country in eRep has either done it before or tried it. Fact.

There's also been the 'hypocrite' allegation, pointing out that the USA has attacked (verbally and physically) PEACE countries for their own imperialism. Is it really about imperialism? Nawp. It's (in the verbal sense) making us look better and making them look worse. They do the same whenever they can. Both of us know that we're both being hypocrites, but that's how foreign policy works. On the physical side, the French wars were not about imperialism in Switzerland. It was old business needing to be ironed out.

Frankly, dear reader, as long as eRepublik has a war module nations are going to do whatever the hell they want. It's built in to our Darwinistic nature; some survive, others don't. Invading Mexico is working towards joining the former category, and that's good enough for me.