Time to End The Northern War.

Day 2,366, 12:28 • Published in USA USA • by Hale26


eAmerica,

It’s almost never to one’s benefit, being a minority voice in a room of majority-thinking. Especially so in an online community like ours, where the minority views generally don’t care to argue and the majority can go wild with their passions. Regardless, if a few minutes of your time could be borrowed I’d like to raise my contraire point of view.

A large, defining part of ‘Murican politiks as of late has been participation in the War on Canada. As of late is probably too modest of a phrase; We’ve been at this for months. There are young players who probably don’t even know how we got here. Hell, there may just be old players who don’t even know how we got here.

Welp, spoiler alert; The story is long.

Dating from the times of CTRL alliance leaking all the way to the present casus belli that is “Serbian MPP”, the fight we carry on now was long in the making. That is why I can’t fully blame our political class for trying to say this war is beneficial to eAmerica. That’s why I can understand why you, STEREOTYPICAL PLAYER WHO CLICKED THIS BECAUSE IT HAD A FANCY TITLE, possibly supports this war.

That being said, realization and agreement are not one in the same. I am of the firm opinion that this war is not to our benefit by any means and must be ended with a Non-Agression Pact as soon as possible. As a nation, this war has led us to,

Squander vast amounts of damage,

Waste around 1/3rd of our reserve,

Move against a peoples who were not aggressive at all,

Disregarded our international responsibilities and

Use a terrible casus belli.

Those, good reader, are only the cons to this conflict. Don’t get me started on how bad those “Draining LETO damage, holding down Serbia and wasting Kanada money” pros are.

Firstly, lets address the lie that this was is somehow not a waste of damage. Former CP Gnilraps, upon questioning from one of the most experienced (fmr) NSC persons in eAmerica’s history, said this of the conflict;

USA unquestionably fights harder for battles involving... wait for it... USA.

When we don't have any USA battles to fight, we drop in international damage rankings. When we DO have USA battles to fight, we rise in international damage rankings.

So yes. By sucking up what would otherwise be Serbian support damage into battles where we are putting in GREATER damage than we ordinarily would, we are making best use of our national damage resources.

He later went on to insult this leading NSC person, disregarding his views as “butthurt”. Smooth moves, Gnil.

Anyways, we’re being led to believe that we do more effective damage because of the war and drain large amounts of Serbian damage. This is, at best, a misrepresentation.

Firstly, if you’ll notice, we utterly destroy most bars in a campaign against Canada. Do they put up resistance for awhile? Yes, that is true. But for the other half of the campaign we are shooting at nothingness. We’re not wasting any damage but our own, let alone Serbian mobile damage. Not to mention, I sincerely doubt much Serb mobile damage is going our way in light of...recent events.

Example of overkill and waste: Here while this was happening. This article really doesn't have space for the numerous examples of waste and bad priorities I've been provided with, but if you want to see the rest, PM me.

In most of our “battles” against the Canuks, we’re building up 80% bars in what is nothing more than a damage drain. The worst part is that people will often tolerate what is a clear damage drain by the Northern Nemisis on the grounds of; “Well…it’s Kanada”. This mindset is a problem to itself and undoubtably weakens us if a real invasion comes our way. But, that’s not our present point.

The present point: A damage drain is a damage drain is a damage drain. Just because they put bait up for the first few minis doesn’t justify the massive amounts of damage we waste in the rest of the campaign.

For that matter, as shown in examples like this, we're wasting damage trying to beat an unimportant enemy like Canada when we could be doing something actually beneficial.

This war is all centered around the defense of our nation. Correct me if I’m wrong, but opening yourself up to constant damage drains sure doesn’t sound like defending your nation. For that matter, tolerating the waste of damage in said damage drains sounds equally counter-intuitive. If we were /actually/ being invaded, what help is it to have a pissed Damage Drain-starting playerbase to the north and a playerbase that’s tolerant of damage-wasting at home?

Answer: No use.

Now, issue two; The fact that we’re bleeding money.

To date, we’ve spent 3 million USD in public money to hold down Canada. Last time we spent 3 million USD in public money, we beat Serbia and Hungary with 60% of the world’s damage against us. This is where I note that another 3 million USD was used, coming from private hands. Lets make a guess of about 4 million being used against Serbia and 2 million against Hungary, culmative.*

Last time we spent around a 1/3rd of our reserve, we had beaten Serbia out of our lands and into a pummel. This time, we’ve spent that much attempting to eradicate a Serbian proxy.

That’s around a third of our reserve spent on holding down a country that didn’t make advances on our nation, that can’t hold any of our land for prolonged periods and really isn’t in a position to launch invasion. 3 million USD, America. One hundred thousand days of salaried pay. Three hundred Mutual Protection Pacts. Money that comes from our 10% Work Tax.

To those that defend this wasteful spending on the grounds that Canada is spending too; Canada is a notably weak nation which is barely in the top 30 for damage. Why are we burning down our financial house to ruin a proxy’s financial house?

We have an entire alliance which would wipe us if they were in a position to. An alliance, for that matter, made up of 3/5 of the world’s strongest nations. One of those nations earning in excess of 100,000 cc usually.

With enemies like that, it’s simply irrational that we expend about 1/3rd** of our resources to ruin a proxy.

I have no image for this. Pretend this works, plz~

Third oversight of this war; Canada was not the aggressor in this conflict and we’re offering them an impossible deal. The Serbian MPP, as explained below, was not an aggressive move. No one can say Canada was gearing up for a war with the eUnited States, either.

What we have done is give a playerbase about 275 strong the choice to either submit to our ideals for their foreign policy, or face perma-wipe. Granted, it would be wonderful if they could just be pro-Sirius or the like. However, this is a game. There is no place for Canada within Pro-Sirius. Pro-Sirius has shown them no love. When Poland was trying to win over Hungary, did they wipe them?

Nope.

Poland left Slovakia and stopped their invasion of the Huns. Why? Because in a game that has as little reprecussions for losing as Erep does, you cannot force people to join your crew. Games do not work that way.

Sure, eAmerica could try to make the game horribly not fun for Canada and essentially destroy them. That too would be flawed, because;

A- Canada has been occupied for almost a year before. We cannot afford to keep up a full-occupation in a game-world like this.

B- Destroying a non-aggressive player base sure doesn’t feel American. I remember an America that was against community destroying moves, considering that it was once a victim of such a thing (The Serbian PTO). Why would America start condoning the very thing we used to call out? The only difference between destroying a player base via PTO and destroying a player base via permanent occupation is the efficiency of the means. The end is the exact same.

Basically: You cannot, in a game with few real consequences for losing, expect to change which team a country plays with through force. A game such as ours, largely based on personal feelings, does not function in that manner.
Back to pictures that work~

AND THE PROBLEMS KEEP ON A COMIN’;

‘Murica, being a big nation, has certain responsibilities in the world. We have certain states, such as Albania, which we aid when they’re in times of need. Make no mistake, this relation is mutually beneficial; It creates goodwill and very loyal allies in a way that is much more difficult, if not impossible, with larger nations.

Supporting smaller friendly nations isn’t really about “bravery”, because our nationhood isn’t challenged usually when we got about supporting them. It’s simply being responsible.

With the advent of the Canada war, the premise of responsibility to partners has apparently disappeared. I direct you to two recent examples; Mexico and The United Kingdom.

On April 24th, Colombia was approaching our border. They were waging a successful war on one of our closest partners, Mexico. Mexico, as shown here and in numerous other articles, holds a special place in our nation’s hearts and geopolitical strategy. It was alongside Mexican players that we expelled the formerly largest and most powerful nation in the eWorld from our borders. If anyone can be called a true partner, it is Mexico.

Now, Colombia isn’t a very threatening nation. Following proper geopolitical thinking, we would simply NE the Colombians when they reached our borders, kick them back to Colombia.

Instead of intervening and pushing back the Colombians, we signed a non-agression pact with them. Why? Well, we had a Canada to hold down.

Because of our inaction, Mexico signed this humiliating NAP with Colombia. This treaty cost our partners both financially, to the tune of 90K USD, and emotionally through a loss and no one really giving a f**k about this helpful small nation.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the only example of us messing up our priorities. In order to hold down the potential Serbian proxy that is Canada, we let France go. France went on to attack the UK. The English were wiped as a result of the French invasion and Taiwanese air-strike that accompanied it. Had we used proper geopolitical thinking, we would of either released France in a controlled manner to Chile or held it and prevented them from thus invading the UK. We did neither so the map looked like this;


Time and time again we let our allies down because we felt like partaking in the series of ongoing, wasteful damage drains and distractions that is the War in Canada. That simply is not wise geopolitical strategy.


NOW, I'm out of pictures

Now, the final issue I seek to address with this whole conflict and one that relates to every point mentioned; Our reason for intervention. Or, casus belli.

Under President WildOwl, we invaded Canada on the grounds that their Serbian MPP was of some threat to us. That if we did not keep them wiped, Serbia would use Canada to do severe harm to us. That is simply untrue.

Firstly, we’ve had countries with Serbian MPPs beside us before. It was never an issue. Look at Portugal or Taiwan, two nations that have Serbian MPPs and border eUS cores. Portugal, a nation not on good terms with America by any means, is actually a much more threatening proxy than Canada because they have strong ties to South American powers. If we’re wiping anyone because they could be used as a Serb proxy, we should’ve wiped Portugal.

Now that we’ve established that this conflict does not properly do away with the issue of Serbian proxies, we must bring up the second point; Serbia cannot be at our doorstep without literally being at our doorstep. At the start of this article it was established that nations fight harder for themselves than other nations. The former NSC-types I usually associate with call this, in part, the “2-clicker” effect.

Canada’s Serbian MPP does not mean they are, all of the sudden, unbeatable and capable of holding down our cores. If Serbian MPPs really did make a nation unbeatable, how did we wipe Portugal? Portugal had a Serbian MPP. For that matter, why was Cyprus able to wipe Israel? They too have a Serbian MPP.

Serbian MPPs are not some auto-win cheat card, let alone in a world of balanced damage between the two main factions.

The third issue is that holding down Canada does not actually make us any safer if we were to be invaded. Last time Serbia invaded the United States they gained a foothold in Western Europe, called on proxies like Taiwan and partners like Hungary, then invaded us. If this scenario somehow played out, all that would change by occupying Canada is that we have one more Resistance War to win when ASTERIA opens up a multi-front blitz against the United States. That doesn’t actually help us. For that matter, Canada would just have to win one resistance war to declare war on us with Serbian support.

Canada now is very willing to negotiate. After months of occupation and the perfect opportunity to get revenge, they would be considerably less so.

Fourth issue with the whole Serbian MPP thing is that we’re in no position to be invaded. An invasion of the United States is a long, painful process because we have 50-states. One nation alone cannot best us, let alone in a world where the damage difference between the two factions is less than 10%.

Now, I’ve been told that some people would retort to this by saying that they are planning for “4 months in advance”; A fact that still doesn’t alter the argument. Regardless, some are essentially planning for the crumbling/fall of either Sirius or Aurora.

Do you see how little sense that makes? In a game where nations are on the map one week and off the next, some are planning for 4 months in advance: For our alliance to break up in the early phases of a world war.

I’m sorry, but that’s just paranoia. By that frame of mind, we’d live in fields instead of houses. Why? Obviously because one day we might just lose our house, so why bother?


It’s hard to admit you’re wrong when you’ve been led to believe something strongly. But, facts are facts. We as a nation are making the wrong call by pretending this war is of any real benefit to our nation. This war is of no benefit to our playerbase as a whole.

There is no shame in admitting you’re wrong on the internet. I want all of you to give even just one of these points a nice, hard read. If you’re still convinced the war is a good idea, maybe another. Or 3, if you’re feeling ambitious. Hell, all 5.

If you still truly believe this war is of some benefit to us as a playerbase, argue with me. I’ll be a bit slow to respond, likely. But I will take your views into account and listen with open ears.

However, if you do not believe the lie that we somehow benefit from this war, say so.

I need your comments in favor. I need your votes in favor. I need to find out that you, are in favor of changing course.

This conflict is one of the largest geopolitical mistakes we’ve ever made in this game and is of no benefit to us, by any stretch of the word. If you are ready to end it, I need one thing from you.

Fill out this quick and simple form.

The only way we’re going to start playing the game right again is if we voice our disagreement with the status quo. I need you to message your Congressmen, your Cabinet and your Party President.

We’ve wasted a 1/3rd of our reserve, Billions in damage down the drain, abandoned countless allied citizens, severely weakened our nation’s security, spun misrepresentation upon misrepresentation and engaged in the oppression of a peaceful playerbase.

We can end this, Murica. Help me, Help you.

~Hale26
IhavenofancytitleButCouldDamnWellUseOneRightAboutNo

Aside A: This was wrote over the course of 2 weeks, some time put in every other day or so. If you notice any big errors, lemme know.

Aside B: Thank you to n0s3 and Seppo for providing me with a lot of thought in regards to this war, and those screenies. These guys are amazing when it comes to strategy in Erep, having executed countless cost-efficient campaigns between them. It saddens me to see that the current Executive does not value their knowledge.

*I was one of the Congressmen who approved and faciliated President Oblige's monetary requests. Guess is an unnecessarily loose word.
**Based on last knowledge of our reserves. Should be about right.