The Economist ~ A brief history of recent UK foreign policy

Day 1,920, 12:07 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Spite313
This is part of a new project, called “The University”, whereby we’ll be trying to involve and educate our members, and any other players who want to be involved, through lectures (like this article) and ingame discussion via tutorials. Please note there will be no recruitment involved in this, there will be no requests from us for you to join or do anything else. You also don’t need to be TUP to lead or help out in the project, so if you’re interested in being a Tutor, please message Mr Woldy and he'll help you there.


Dear friends,


In a recent survey it was revealed that significant percentage of players in the UK didn’t know what TWO (the alliance we are a member of) stood for. For those of you don’t know, what it stands for is “The World is Ours”, but the point is that it highlighted the fact that a year of confusing foreign policy, little public explanation and an assumption that people would understand and value information given out of any sort of frame of reference has left people in the UK under-informed about the international situation. I’m hoping to give a brief history of what’s happened in the last year or so. It’s supposed to be background, not an essay, so I won’t be going into specific dates, or giving too much detail. If anyone has specific questions, feel free to stick them in the comments. I’m sure someone can help you.




A dream of unity


Modern history begins with the formation of the ONE alliance. ONE was an alliance initially composed of Hungary, Serbia, Poland and Spain, which later grew to encompass Slovenia, the UK, Iran, Sweden, Indonesia and Macedonia. It was formed out of a tiny seed- the real life friendship between Hungary and Poland. Despite being antagonists in game the real life feeling between them was warm, and under the influence of several senior figures in Poland a burgeoning bilateral alliance between the two countries swelled into a full scale alliance. That relationship not only formed ONE, but paved the way for the burying of other hatchets, which has defined the history of the world since.

As ONE formed, so too did Terra in the Americas. At the time the UK leadership was pro-French and pro-German, and when those countries joined Terra the UK was pulled in. There was a strong pro-Terra faction here in the UK for a long time- a mismatched alliance between those who liked FR/DE, those who wanted closer relations with our RL allies in North America and those who were put off by the presence of Poland (an old enemy) in ONE. However eventually after much internal squabbling the last resistances were eroded and the UK left Terra, officially adopting a proONE approach months later.




Poland can into UK


The primary foreign policy goal of the UK during our time in ONE was to improve relations with Poland. Poland called the UK “Junior” for a long time because of our relative weakness and perceived un-importance. In return the UK tended to throw jibes at Poland ranging from RL ethnic slurs to comments about the fact most of their players were baby boomers. This hostile relationship wasn’t really deep-rooted (being honest, the UK was too insignificant to be a nemesis to Poland) but it was important the UK turned the relationship around completely and made Poland one of our closest allies. The fact that we were one of three ONE/proONE nations in Northern Europe meant that we were in a key strategic position, and of course Poland was the only country which could help us in the event of a North American invasion of the UK.

At the time we still had a very warm relationship with Serbia, and good relations with Hungary and Macedonia, all of which we had been in alliances before. Our relations with Ireland, France, Germany and Canada were very poor, which led to a series of wars. This has, coincidentally, only deepened dislike. All of this came to a head when the UK attacked France in an attempt to assist the Polish wipe, and it backfired terribly, resulting in our occupation. The UK fought hard against Canada, France and Germany, pushing Canada back before falling to the French attack. Poland came to the rescue, crushing France easily. After that brief war, the UK-Polish friendship deepened and the UK was never seriously assaulted again.




No CTRL

As time went on, problems within ONE arose and the alliance collapsed. I could go into detail, but I don’t like repeating myself: I gave an account of that here if anyone is interested in exactly what happened. The critical point here is that after the collapse of ONE, Spain and Poland began negotiations with the USA and Brazil to form a new superpower alliance, CTRL. CTRL would dominate West Europe and the Americas, providing a true third alliance in the world and balancing the old powers focused around EDEN and the Serbo-Hungarian alliance. Our relationship with Poland was so close by this point that the Polish CPs offered us their sponsorship to join the new alliance as it formed.

At the time this was a dubious prospect. CTRL was discussed for many months with little progress. The UK had tried allying with the USA in the past (in Terra) and although we did manage to get on with them, with several of our citizens still living there, our goals were opposed and our alliances with South East Europe put us at odds. The UK thus took a cautious approach, roughly described as a “proPoland” rather than proCTRL policy. This was looked on with some suspicion by North America but readily accepted by our allies in Poland. As CTRL developed, the UK maintained it’s close relationships with Serbia, Hungary, Macedonia and other former allies.




Second time lucky

In time CTRL collapsed as expected beneath the weight of expectation placed on it by both component groups. SPoland didn’t want to give up their allies Serbia and Hungary and BRUSA didn’t want to compromise on other key issues. The fact that the Poles were occupying American allies in West Europe and that the two countries had begun talking for no reason other than to cement a NAP were both contributing factors. CTRL was mainly a damage-based experiment, with EDEN hoping to get Spain and Poland’s damage by the back door, and everyone else hoping that the USA and Brazil would find themselves fighting alongside Serbia and Hungary against them.

As CTRL collapsed, ONE reformed under the guise of “TWO”. The new alliance was designed to be a low-fat version of ONE, with the same minimalist structures which underpinned the highly successful EDEN alliance. Consisting of just six countries, including the original “Big Four”, TWO nonetheless commands about a third of the world’s total damage output. Serbia and Poland alone contribute about 6-10% of the world total damage each, meaning that fighting against TWO is usually an unbalanced affair. The UK was extremely lucky to be invited to the alliance considering our relative strength (we’re by far the smallest and weakest full member) which again is largely a result of our successful foreign policy over this period.




The future

The future of the UK within TWO is a bit of a grey area. Since the last Talon Karrde government no definitive statements have been issued, though all Presidents expressed themselves to be proTWO in their manifestos. The footprint of the UK within the alliance is still fairly strong, though the government could do more to assert itself. This article has hopefully shown the huge importance than foreign affairs has on our lives here in the UK. The whole future of the country: politically, economically and militarily relies on our foreign affairs. It’s important everyone knows about, and works towards, supporting our allies militarily and diplomatically. Without them, we’re pretty much doomed, so we should always be ready to give before they have to ask.


Hope you enjoyed the article, by all means comment! Message Mr Woldy if you want to join one of our upcoming discussion groups to talk about this and other future lectures.


Iain