The UK At Peace - What Next?

Day 1,131, 03:29 • Published in United Kingdom Ireland • by John O'Melveny
And so, all of the UK's major conflicts have come to an end.

The war with the USA is over - a stalemate, both sides bored of each other, USA moving on to bigger and better things (its empire) and the UK moving on to smaller and more annoying things (Ireland). Peace has been declared, and that front is over.
The war with Canada is over - a respectable truce, both sides with a new found respect for each other, both with genuine claims to having come off better in the war. Peace has been signed, and that front is over.
The war with Ireland is over - no question about the victors here. Despite American and Canadian intervention, Ireland was consumed in its entirety by Britain, and the war is closed as a sign of victory to the Brits.

But what now for the UK?
Spectators have commented on the fact that we have two choices - on the one hand, we can go into helping our Phoenix allies. This is a fine task, and not one to be looked down upon. However, we also have to cater to our own country (some would say our country should come first). This includes player retention, recruitment, but a factor that must not be ignored is entertainment for those already here. This is, after all, a game, not a career. Any Prime Minister or Government that does not see entertainment as a genuine reason to go to war surely needs to sort their priorities!
Do we want war with Canada again? No, we've just been there.
Do we want war with Ireland again? No, we've already racked that up to our list of achievements.
Do we want war with America again? Of course not - we wouldn't even bother trying to hold their regions, or attempt wiping them.

So what do we want from a war? What do we look for in a potential target?



Resources.
We went into the final stages of the war with Ireland looking to possibly secure some fruit, as a justification - even though we all knew we just wanted to wipe their country.
So we either have the resource, it is geographically unobtainable, or militarily possible - apart from fruit. So we want fruit here, for a nice food bonus.



Victory.
We want victory, of course. We want either a fair shot at victory, or an assured victory. So we want, ideally, a country smaller than ourselves.



Price-Awareness.
We can be a lot more lenient with our wars with the conditions that we find ourselves in at the moment. You see, we have no annoying wars with bordering EDEN nations to concentrate on, so we can use the 'Natural Enemy' tactic to give ourselves not only a fighting advantage over our enemies, but a free war.
Now that we can secure a free war, we can look at other wars of getting a cheaper war - a small country would be great. Less people, less attack costs. Less regions, less attack costs.
If we naturally border them, that removes blocking attempts, needless fighting and land-swapping (as much as these have been destroyed by the admins now).

So what do we need from a country we go to war with?

A small nation. A neighbouring nation. A non-EDEN, but enemy nation. A nation with fruit.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and the Irish Territories, I present you with Belgium.

With borders with only the UK, Netherlands, Germany and France, this is a great candidate. But what alliances are these neighbours in? Well the UK is in Phoenix. The Netherlands are in Phoenix. Germany is in Phoenix. And France? Why, that's in Phoenix too. Perfect.

What resources does it have? A fruit region - perfect. In fact, the fruit region is land-locked, so easily guarded.

It's a small country too. With only three regions, this nation could be wiped in 48 hours (16 hours per battle per region). With a population of only of only 486 citizens, war couldn't be easier. Not to mention its single MPP, with the USA - which just so happens to run out in four hours.

But what motive do we have against poor Belgium? Isn't this just needless bullying?

No. Not only do we secure a huge Phoenix-only block in a huge part of Western Europe with the annihilation of Belgium, we also give ourselves a foothold in Western Europe - ready and poised to help our allies the French and the Germans. And we definitely owe them it. Germany was wiped whilst we were saved by Phoenix. France helped us in the first Canadian-only UK invasion. They felt betrayed when we signed peace after our first invasion when we could have used our activated MPPs to help them. We owe them this help - and goodness knows we'll have some fun doing it.

Not only this, we have a motive. Scores have been settled with the USA, Ireland and Canada. But one very quiet, cowardly nation fought against us too:

That's the Belgium President fighting against us in our time of need. Despite MPP'ing PHX nations to protect itself, there is Belgium, cowardly hiding behind MPPs, dropping all links with Phoenix allies and MPP'ing USA.

But that was not only a one off event.


Not only that, but reports from Belgium immigrants to the UK say that the entire Belgian military was ordered to fight against us.

And so, UK, we have unfinished business.

We must secure resources for ourselves.

We must entertain ourselves with colonialism.

We must create a huge Phoenix bloc in Western Europe.

We must avenge this insult by the Belgians.

Most of all, we must completely destroy the country that gave us Shadow.

With low costs, and high gains to be had, this is a no-brainer. The only problem is Poland. With an open war, attacking Belgium would cause Poland to automatically take our Belgian regions, and move up to the UK. We must get continue to remove Poland from Germany.
But we must take the cause to the government, to the Prime Minister.

We, the people of Britain, want war with Belgium.