The Economist ~ Notes on Portugal and Slovenia

Day 2,203, 05:50 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Spite313



Dear friends,


Most of you are aware that there has been tension these last few weeks between Slovenia and Spain. Spain recently went to war with Portugal, and during the conflict Slovenia lent moral and military support to Portugal. This caused some conflict as obviously the Spanish were not happy that one of their allies had effectively declared war on them via proxy, and throughout the conflict Slovenia made official statements condemning Spain and supporting Portugal. I read the latest of such statements today, and for me it’s the final straw.


Let me be clear here: TWO was founded as a military alliance, our mission statement (such as it is), is to go forth and conquer the world. The clue is, after all, in the name. More precisely this means the pursuit of war to bring us more bonuses, more strategic control of space, and to deny our enemies access to resources and the money which comes with them. This is our absolute mandate and the principle which has kept us united since formation.


Let me just post a quick quote from Howly who represents Slovenia:

“Since Slovenian government cannot support an act of aggression without a proper casus belli, any kind of support to Spain, even if it is in the same alliance as we are, is morally wrong. I am referring to the attack on Portugal.”

Now this is Slovenia clearly stating it will not support war without a proper casus belli (which means case for war for the linguistically challenged). But what exactly is a legitimate casus belli? This is a war game, so the only argument for or against war is the benefit it brings to the country launching the war. For example if Germany was attacked by Poland, you could argue that was an act of aggression since it’s unlikely Germany would provoke Poland into a war it knew it would lose, but nobody would argue there was no casus belli - the casus belli was that Germany had resources Poland wanted, simple as that.

Now let us take another example- the UK wars with Norway and Finland. In this case there was no resource that we needed from those countries, it was simply an exercise. We wanted to have a fight on home soil so we attacked. In this case there are no good reasons at all for the attack other than we felt like it, but of course no country in TWO would MPP Norway. We might not get priority as it isn’t an important war, but nobody would act against an ally for the sake of an enemy countries “moral right” to exist.





Added to this of course is the inevitable hypocrisy of Howly. Both Switzerland and Italy are long term occupied nations which are mostly held down by Slovenia. No country in TWO, including Spain, denies that this is their right as a member of TWO, but Switzerland have been desperate for freedom for a long time. Howly claims to want to give these countries freedom, but his own country opposes him in that. I genuinely can’t understand how any country can elect someone so determined to sabotage not only their allies position but make themselves into hypocrites.


Spain’s congress responded with a shot across the bows by almost passing an MPP with Italy. The response was outraged, but of course there is no material difference between Spain MPPing Italy and Slovenia MPPing Portugal. Both actions are dangerous, a threat to TWO and it would be irresponsible for either to pass. The difference is that the Spanish government opposed the MPP with Italy and did their best to reign their congress in, whereas Howly gave tacit support to the MPP with Portugal throughout the vote.





Finally, Howly claims that to occupy a country like that is morally wrong without a legitimate casus belli. In this he condemns all of his own allies. Spain, Serbia, Poland, Romania, Greece- all of them keep countries occupied without seeking to make any peace deals with them. They are not morally wrong to do so because there is no moral code in war in erepublik. Denying countries congress, taking their bonuses, their tax, trying to PTO them - all of these things have been done and are done on a day to day basis by countries around the world, many of them in TWO. I think Howly needs to clarify what his moral code says about the other five allies in his alliance.


Let me conclude by saying that although I’ve spent most of this article showing the irrationality of siding with an enemy against an ally, I’ll finish with the real reason Howly is doing this. He has a personal vendetta against Spain because of disputes between himself and certain of their leaders in the past. He’s using his position as President of Slovenia to try and damage Spain any way he can. It is irresponsible, and is damaging the reputation of his country, amplifying conflicts within the alliance and encouraging other nations to follow suit in the hope of breaking up TWO. I had hoped never to have to publish an article like this, but frankly Howly seems to have no problem splashing the messy internal business of TWO across the media so I feel obliged to respond in kind.


Iain