The Economist ~ Military and Foreign Affairs Manifesto
Day 956, 09:22
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Published in United Kingdom 
•
by
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by Spite313
Please help the Economist: Vote and Subscribe
Dear Friends,
This, my last of three manifestos, covers the military, foreign affairs and general alliance side of the Presidential job. In many ways, a presidential role can be split into good governance and good management. Governance is executive strategy, people placement, and so on. Management is very much running what we’ve got, taking care of business, and reacting to the situation at hand. The military and foreign affairs areas tend to be more management than governance, and thus manifestos tend to be either brief or full of blather about “our boys” etc which doesn’t impress anyone, especially our actual soldiers. As such my manifesto is going to be divided into three parts. Military developments I think would be positive, alliance developments I will be lobbying for and finally the general management style I will be adopting.
Firstly, the military. Despite some claims to the contrary, I have served within the army. I am not naturally inclined to take the military path in eRepublik, as many of you have guessed politics and economics are much more my thing. However, I do understand the military module, our armed forces and strategic leadership thanks to long months in both cabinet and Phoenix Strategic Command. One of the main challenges for the military in the coming month will be the adaptation to V2. Superficial things like organising labour into skill-groups, and soldiers into rifles/tanks/helis/artillery have already been accomplished. However this is only the tip of the iceberg for soldiers in V2.
Firstly, there are the inherent issues with the module itself. Civilians will currently be useful only for human wave attacks- with they themselves choosing where to fight, with what weapons, and when. This limits our armed forces effectiveness a great deal, especially when fighting from the UK. Adapting to this change will be a difficult and two pronged process. Firstly, the education of citizens, and their recruitment into auxiliary units. Secondly, the further specialisation of the armed forces tactics to ensure that maximum force can be delivered to a point at all times. To tackle the first issue, we must look not forward but backwards.
In the past, vast chunks of our military were not IRC active, and basically worked in companies for guns. The idea was that these citizens would be armed and generally educated by the state, and then given generic battlefield orders via the military hub. The advantage was an educated population, and what effectively constituted a list of our most military-inclined citizens who we could bombard with recruitment messages for IRC with the reward of promotion. I worry now that our officer corps, especially on lower levels, suffers from recruitment issues, as does our whole military structure. An auxiliary unit of volunteers, who could be directed by the army, would be both a means to direct citizens more effectively and a recruitment pool for the armed forces themselves.
Secondly, we will need further specialisation of our military tactics to deal with thus unresolved problems with V2. For example, a lightening attack on a region at 4am British time now presents few problems. With a wall system, it may be knocked underground, but the potential to pick it back up the next day relieves this problem. However, waking up to find your region is full of entrenched American forces who invaded during the night might be a little bit more of an issue. A specialised night-response force, led by our citizens who are real life Americans or Australians (and everywhere in between) might become a necessity if we’re to avoid being sneak attacked by the States.
These are just two of the many problems our armed forces face on the battlefield. In addition to the battlefield issues, we will be facing continued controversy at home unless we do something about the current CGS position. Despite the beliefs of some, I am completely behind the concept of a professional military, led by an appointed member of the General Staff. However, I do believe that the position of CGS should be as subject to removal as any other officer position in the army. This means that the army itself will need to brainstorm a way of keeping a check on the CGS. Whether they choose to transfer those powers to congress or to a vote of the general staff or officer corps I don’t mind. But the position should be regulated, and appointment and removal need to be part of that regulation.
Finally a constant issue since the military began is one of cross-branch transfers. In the past, it was Navy and Special Forces. Now the terms are different, but there are still people who don’t want to graduate from one force to the other, for reasons of community or dislike of individuals in the upper branch. As someone who hung around the Navy for months, I do understand this position. There is a lot of crossover as it is, with SAS officers overseeing regular army units. I would suggest one solution to this is to establish a crossover period, rather than a rigid cut-off point. Within this damage range, soldiers would be free to serve with their existing unit, but would be given all the information about SAS, including their new unit, their new weapons and their new procedures and so on. If someone still doesn’t want to join despite all the benefits, there is nothing that can be done.
I could go on, but like I said in my other manifestos this is supposed to be a taster not a policy document. Next I want to talk about Phoenix, and our place in it. I think saying “we will support our allies” as is the tradition is a bit of a cop-out for a manifesto to be honest. I’d rather spend this section talking about some of the issues facing Phoenix, and how to resolve them. Phoenix is an alliance made up of countries, and as such it relies on active, involved and positive Presidents to drive it forward. The biggest complaint from Phoenix’s staff workers is that the actual core of the alliance -Presidents- don’t offer solutions to issues until it is too late. As someone who has spent eight months as a Phoenix staffer, I won’t make that mistake.
Firstly, we have the legacy of PEACE. Before its collapse, PEACE was the largest alliance hegemony ever to have existed in erep. It consisted of a huge amount of countries, had enormous population and enormous income. As a result, it had the tendency to be quite flabby when it came to international communications, financial efficiency and military co-ordination. Whole countries never contributed and weren’t called on it because there simply wasn’t the time or inclination. Phoenix was initially established to counter that decay. A smaller, more efficient alliance, led by the military, was the ultimate goal of all the treaty signatories. However, we still face many of the issues of PEACE which have remained unresolved. Financially, we have the structures to out-spend EDEN nine times out of ten. Sure EDEN reputably has bots, and has a number of super-rich countries within it. We also have wealthy countries. However, Phoenix needs to adapt its financial policies to be better anticipate spending, and to be less reactionary. Often we raise money when it is needed, which means we can be caught off guard easily, and countries end up draining their treasuries defending on their own. This is easily resolved by having a designated buffer in the treasury, and it’ll be something I lobby for.
Secondly, both alliances are well known for taking huge loans from members. As organisations with no tax income, this is impractical. The UK will be offering no loans to any members if I am elected. The UK is not financially strong enough to do so, and since we always pay our fees promptly there should be no issue here. With the buffer I mentioned earlier, there will be no problem with this as no loans will be necessary. I will also campaign within Phoenix to outright ban loans between Phoenix and its members, as this is basically an admission of incompetence on behalf of the leadership. We have made mistakes in the past, and no blame should be allocated for that. But we need to learn from those mistakes, not emulate them.
Thirdly, Phoenix needs to adopt a much closer relationship with its members. We’re supposed to be the friendly alliance, yet all our articles seem to be either trolling an EDEN country for making a mistake or apologising to our members for something we have failed to do. We need a lot more communication with citizens, newspaper articles in our media which will bring our citizens together. How about short citizen biographies of our Secretary Generals, Supreme Commanders and Treasurers? Perhaps a short fan story describing a battle- written by a citizen of one member state and published by the alliance media in another member’s media. Military alliances are more than just moving soldiers around in a co-ordinated fashion; they’re about keeping up morale and engendering feelings of mutual support and friendship.
Finally, I come to the third part of my article, concerning the management style I will be taking with both the military and our alliance. I am not going to lie- I will be involving myself in the military: as an observer; as someone who is genuinely interested; and as someone who will lend a hand if needed. I am not going to change any plans without your support, but I expect to be able to make suggestions. I have contacts throughout the militaries of the New World, and I want to be able to share ideas and concepts which have worked in other countries. I want to be part of your plans, and want to help you achieve them. As such I will make an attempt, as much as I can, to go back to the old style of a military involved President, like Hassan or Kumnaa. I don’t have their military backgrounds, but I have commitment and I have the desire to get involved.
The military won’t be left to cope in my month in office. It’ll be given every moment of my time that I can spare, to make sure it has all the resources, people and information it needs to survive the first month of V2. I hope this month will be a great revival for the UK military. V2 will bring a new player to the eUK, who will love the better graphics, more complex military module and longer gameplay style. We will need to be ready, and I hope that I can help the military be the best it can be.
Alliance wise I can only say that I will do my best to bring the changes we need to beat EDEN. I will commit the eUK as much as I can to this vision, and try and use my international contacts and friends around the world to bring other countries on board too. We have in the months ahead a massive challenge. Just as this new game will appeal to a lot of real life UK citizens, we will see mass die-offs abroad. Who knows how the world map will change, and how alliances will survive such an upheaval. It’s our job to offer the leadership we’ve always offered. Quietly reasserting our loyalty, showing that brotherhood and trust will always win out over brute strength and wasted gold.
The next month will be one of the most challenging months ever. Sounds like fun.
Iain Keers
Ps. If you missed my previous articles, here is a selection:
The Economist ~ Economics Manifesto
The Economist ~ Running for Prime Minister
The Economist ~ The Economy is sick...again
The Economist ~ Reclaiming Congress
The Economist ~ Thieves in the night
The Economist ~ Alliance Grassroots
The Economist ~ Society and the State
The Economist ~ Rebuilding what we’ve lost
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Dear Friends,
This, my last of three manifestos, covers the military, foreign affairs and general alliance side of the Presidential job. In many ways, a presidential role can be split into good governance and good management. Governance is executive strategy, people placement, and so on. Management is very much running what we’ve got, taking care of business, and reacting to the situation at hand. The military and foreign affairs areas tend to be more management than governance, and thus manifestos tend to be either brief or full of blather about “our boys” etc which doesn’t impress anyone, especially our actual soldiers. As such my manifesto is going to be divided into three parts. Military developments I think would be positive, alliance developments I will be lobbying for and finally the general management style I will be adopting.
Firstly, the military. Despite some claims to the contrary, I have served within the army. I am not naturally inclined to take the military path in eRepublik, as many of you have guessed politics and economics are much more my thing. However, I do understand the military module, our armed forces and strategic leadership thanks to long months in both cabinet and Phoenix Strategic Command. One of the main challenges for the military in the coming month will be the adaptation to V2. Superficial things like organising labour into skill-groups, and soldiers into rifles/tanks/helis/artillery have already been accomplished. However this is only the tip of the iceberg for soldiers in V2.
Firstly, there are the inherent issues with the module itself. Civilians will currently be useful only for human wave attacks- with they themselves choosing where to fight, with what weapons, and when. This limits our armed forces effectiveness a great deal, especially when fighting from the UK. Adapting to this change will be a difficult and two pronged process. Firstly, the education of citizens, and their recruitment into auxiliary units. Secondly, the further specialisation of the armed forces tactics to ensure that maximum force can be delivered to a point at all times. To tackle the first issue, we must look not forward but backwards.
In the past, vast chunks of our military were not IRC active, and basically worked in companies for guns. The idea was that these citizens would be armed and generally educated by the state, and then given generic battlefield orders via the military hub. The advantage was an educated population, and what effectively constituted a list of our most military-inclined citizens who we could bombard with recruitment messages for IRC with the reward of promotion. I worry now that our officer corps, especially on lower levels, suffers from recruitment issues, as does our whole military structure. An auxiliary unit of volunteers, who could be directed by the army, would be both a means to direct citizens more effectively and a recruitment pool for the armed forces themselves.
Secondly, we will need further specialisation of our military tactics to deal with thus unresolved problems with V2. For example, a lightening attack on a region at 4am British time now presents few problems. With a wall system, it may be knocked underground, but the potential to pick it back up the next day relieves this problem. However, waking up to find your region is full of entrenched American forces who invaded during the night might be a little bit more of an issue. A specialised night-response force, led by our citizens who are real life Americans or Australians (and everywhere in between) might become a necessity if we’re to avoid being sneak attacked by the States.
These are just two of the many problems our armed forces face on the battlefield. In addition to the battlefield issues, we will be facing continued controversy at home unless we do something about the current CGS position. Despite the beliefs of some, I am completely behind the concept of a professional military, led by an appointed member of the General Staff. However, I do believe that the position of CGS should be as subject to removal as any other officer position in the army. This means that the army itself will need to brainstorm a way of keeping a check on the CGS. Whether they choose to transfer those powers to congress or to a vote of the general staff or officer corps I don’t mind. But the position should be regulated, and appointment and removal need to be part of that regulation.
Finally a constant issue since the military began is one of cross-branch transfers. In the past, it was Navy and Special Forces. Now the terms are different, but there are still people who don’t want to graduate from one force to the other, for reasons of community or dislike of individuals in the upper branch. As someone who hung around the Navy for months, I do understand this position. There is a lot of crossover as it is, with SAS officers overseeing regular army units. I would suggest one solution to this is to establish a crossover period, rather than a rigid cut-off point. Within this damage range, soldiers would be free to serve with their existing unit, but would be given all the information about SAS, including their new unit, their new weapons and their new procedures and so on. If someone still doesn’t want to join despite all the benefits, there is nothing that can be done.
I could go on, but like I said in my other manifestos this is supposed to be a taster not a policy document. Next I want to talk about Phoenix, and our place in it. I think saying “we will support our allies” as is the tradition is a bit of a cop-out for a manifesto to be honest. I’d rather spend this section talking about some of the issues facing Phoenix, and how to resolve them. Phoenix is an alliance made up of countries, and as such it relies on active, involved and positive Presidents to drive it forward. The biggest complaint from Phoenix’s staff workers is that the actual core of the alliance -Presidents- don’t offer solutions to issues until it is too late. As someone who has spent eight months as a Phoenix staffer, I won’t make that mistake.
Firstly, we have the legacy of PEACE. Before its collapse, PEACE was the largest alliance hegemony ever to have existed in erep. It consisted of a huge amount of countries, had enormous population and enormous income. As a result, it had the tendency to be quite flabby when it came to international communications, financial efficiency and military co-ordination. Whole countries never contributed and weren’t called on it because there simply wasn’t the time or inclination. Phoenix was initially established to counter that decay. A smaller, more efficient alliance, led by the military, was the ultimate goal of all the treaty signatories. However, we still face many of the issues of PEACE which have remained unresolved. Financially, we have the structures to out-spend EDEN nine times out of ten. Sure EDEN reputably has bots, and has a number of super-rich countries within it. We also have wealthy countries. However, Phoenix needs to adapt its financial policies to be better anticipate spending, and to be less reactionary. Often we raise money when it is needed, which means we can be caught off guard easily, and countries end up draining their treasuries defending on their own. This is easily resolved by having a designated buffer in the treasury, and it’ll be something I lobby for.
Secondly, both alliances are well known for taking huge loans from members. As organisations with no tax income, this is impractical. The UK will be offering no loans to any members if I am elected. The UK is not financially strong enough to do so, and since we always pay our fees promptly there should be no issue here. With the buffer I mentioned earlier, there will be no problem with this as no loans will be necessary. I will also campaign within Phoenix to outright ban loans between Phoenix and its members, as this is basically an admission of incompetence on behalf of the leadership. We have made mistakes in the past, and no blame should be allocated for that. But we need to learn from those mistakes, not emulate them.
Thirdly, Phoenix needs to adopt a much closer relationship with its members. We’re supposed to be the friendly alliance, yet all our articles seem to be either trolling an EDEN country for making a mistake or apologising to our members for something we have failed to do. We need a lot more communication with citizens, newspaper articles in our media which will bring our citizens together. How about short citizen biographies of our Secretary Generals, Supreme Commanders and Treasurers? Perhaps a short fan story describing a battle- written by a citizen of one member state and published by the alliance media in another member’s media. Military alliances are more than just moving soldiers around in a co-ordinated fashion; they’re about keeping up morale and engendering feelings of mutual support and friendship.
Finally, I come to the third part of my article, concerning the management style I will be taking with both the military and our alliance. I am not going to lie- I will be involving myself in the military: as an observer; as someone who is genuinely interested; and as someone who will lend a hand if needed. I am not going to change any plans without your support, but I expect to be able to make suggestions. I have contacts throughout the militaries of the New World, and I want to be able to share ideas and concepts which have worked in other countries. I want to be part of your plans, and want to help you achieve them. As such I will make an attempt, as much as I can, to go back to the old style of a military involved President, like Hassan or Kumnaa. I don’t have their military backgrounds, but I have commitment and I have the desire to get involved.
The military won’t be left to cope in my month in office. It’ll be given every moment of my time that I can spare, to make sure it has all the resources, people and information it needs to survive the first month of V2. I hope this month will be a great revival for the UK military. V2 will bring a new player to the eUK, who will love the better graphics, more complex military module and longer gameplay style. We will need to be ready, and I hope that I can help the military be the best it can be.
Alliance wise I can only say that I will do my best to bring the changes we need to beat EDEN. I will commit the eUK as much as I can to this vision, and try and use my international contacts and friends around the world to bring other countries on board too. We have in the months ahead a massive challenge. Just as this new game will appeal to a lot of real life UK citizens, we will see mass die-offs abroad. Who knows how the world map will change, and how alliances will survive such an upheaval. It’s our job to offer the leadership we’ve always offered. Quietly reasserting our loyalty, showing that brotherhood and trust will always win out over brute strength and wasted gold.
The next month will be one of the most challenging months ever. Sounds like fun.
Iain Keers
Ps. If you missed my previous articles, here is a selection:
The Economist ~ Economics Manifesto
The Economist ~ Running for Prime Minister
The Economist ~ The Economy is sick...again
The Economist ~ Reclaiming Congress
The Economist ~ Thieves in the night
The Economist ~ Alliance Grassroots
The Economist ~ Society and the State
The Economist ~ Rebuilding what we’ve lost
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Comments
IAIN FOR PRESIDENT !!!!! The only good choice for UK !!!!
Good read.
I'll be voting for you.
Vote for Iain Keers!
I am impressed.
vote
Nice Manifesto.
A ban on loans sounds interesting; I hope it does make the alliance think more efficiently when spending gold. 😁
Despite what I imagine a few trolls might say, this does have substance 😃
goood luck, Keers. there's a lot of things to do, after and before v2, and any president that wants to win a election needs to talk about it.
A fantastic read. Some good ideas: only confirmed my view that a vote for Iain is best for the country.
A great read. Vote Keers!
Voted
:3
An interesting read.
Vote Keers!
Fantastic ideas, fantastic candidate!
IAIN FOR PM! Vote!
Everyone's dream has become true.
Iain for PM! \o/
"bringing us closer to our allies"
thats a new one 😉
Iain, I have read all three parts of your manifesto, and I'm slapping a big green tick next to your name come the 5th August.
Good luck.
Vote for Iain Keers!
This manifesto actually had information on keers' plans as CP. Sir, I am impressed.
This is amazing.
^ all of the above ^
Im still undecided I read this one first since all I care on is military matters and it has some points I like others I don't, If i have time tomorrow I'll elaborate in a article
Will you be joining SAS companys anytime soon Iain?
Voted form PIL - Brazil
Robalbinio- I don't think anyone can argue I'm not committed to the UK, and I did work a long time in army companies. So no, I won't be working for the Army. Because I don't personally enjoy it enough for it to be worth it, and I'm too old to be punishing myself for the sake of brownie points 😛 Honest answer.
Cool Beans, I'll try and read economics today but graphs >_>
And ya not that old 😛
Personally, I preferred Glados'. All the best of luck to you tomorrow.
Very impressive.
Iain Keers for Prime Minister!
Keers! Keers! Keers! Keers! Keers!
Excellent...thoughtful, informed, rational... It got my vote
voted