[Lonestar] Sweden and the Norwegian Dilemma Part 2

Day 3,213, 09:45 Published in Sweden USA by Hercules Mulligan

Stylish Background Music
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUesKDDcLoQ

Hey,

Today I will once again dig deep into the relation between Sweden and Norway, the article aims to study the situation as well as alternatives for future from a Swedish point of view. Some points which will be addressed are domestic Norwegian politics and their impact on Sweden, our current campaign against the United Kingdom as well as the alternatives for our future relations with our Scandinavian neighbours. Furthermore, opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily the views the Swedish Government, the President or Flashback Sweden.


Again, an article about Norway, in Sweden..

Reflection on the past
Around a year ago, I wrote the first part of this article series. At the time Norway was” invaded” politically by members of a Chilean Military Unit, they had some seats in congress, managed to win the dictatorship position and the future of Norway was uncertain. Looking back, the situation was managed through Norway, Sweden and Finland as we jointly helped by attacking regions, ensuring safe congress elections and help Norway to reclaim the dictatorship position via a coup. One of the reasons that Sweden decided to help out Norway with this was to ensure that we got a training war out of it, as Sweden had been out of the military loop for a while our people wanted war, even a training one.

Sweden and Norway had a very successful TW for quite a while, we shared Resistance Hero, Freedom Fighter, True Patriot and Battle Hero medals with both of our communities getting stronger. However, recently the TW with Norway was paused as Norway wished for it to stop, it’s currently uncertain why. Sweden paid back Norwegian taxes and we always ensured to keep it professional with loads of communication through PM groups and similar. This pause, of course, annoyed Sweden quite a bit, we had helped Norway in almost 5 congress elections in a row to ensure that their country was safe and that their small player base could still do what they wanted and not suffer under Chilean leadership.

The Present
On the other hand, with our TW with Norway paused and the TW with Denmark also on hiatus, in part due to Swedish and German Presidental negligence in attacking the right regions, as well as threats to NE each other.. We had nothing to do, and if you know Sweden, that is pretty horrible for our situation, we have quite a few active citizens but most are fighters and soldiers who are only playing for the wars. Thus, there was, and has been for quite a while, a tremendous pressure on Presidents and Governments to find economically sustainable options for war in our proximity.

I won’t name too many names, but under President Intyala Sweden had been in a similar situation and Intyala crumbled under the pressure, he put Bulgaria as a target for an AirStrike, spent 2 million Swedish SEK and lost the landing battle hard. Since then, Sweden has been trying to work out our economic situation (we spent almost all our reserves on that battle) while at the same trying to find ways for out citizens to enjoy their time. The Training War with Norway and Denmark have been events we have been working to achieve for quite a while, and in them at least our citizens can fight for our flag. This is, of course, vital in today's eRepublik where our Swedish forums are dead, communication is handled in private PM groups and the media has more articles from a random Serbian than Swedes.

It might feel like a long shot, but when the option to invade the United Kingdom was presented, most of us actually felt it might be a fun idea. We researched a bit on their military power (find our calculations here) and found out we might get kicked in the butt. However, we decided to take our chances anyway, with amazing support from our Finish neighbour and our allies in Pacifica, as well as some sweet military planning ensured that we, so far, won all battles quite safely.

However, there are quite a few conflicts leading up to this UK – SWE war, and naturally, most are due to how we got a border with the UK in the first place. Sweden has no natural border to the UK through our core regions, and with the Danish situation that option wasn’t really a possibility either, mostly thanks to FHK, or I at least blame him. So the last remaining option for us to gain a border was to conquer some Norwegian regions and as soon as that had been done, NE UK (via Sorlandet) and start our war. However, this would mean that we had to NE Norway, take some of their regions, against their will and then try our best to work with repairing our relationship. Or did we really need to?


What roles does Norway play in Swedish growth?

Somewhere at this point in the discussion we started talking about how our friendly relationship with Norway and Denmark gave something back to Sweden. I mean, it’s clear how it helped both Norway and partly even Denmark as both are small countries in which hostile forces had tried both PTO and MTO before. In Norway, Sweden and Finland have been working several times throughout the last two years to solve these situations, in Denmark, we in Sweden have helped for several years and more recently Germany has done the same. But back to the topic, Norway gained a lot out of our cooperation, we even gave them back their taxes, ensured we had a strategic plan for congress elections depending on how many regions they wanted, often this information came the 23rd or 24th so we didn't have much time to work with, but we did it anyway. We helped with sending MU forces during the MTO attempt and ensured Norwegian rule.

However, Sweden didn't gain anything but a ~2 months TW, so when this point came up in the discussion there were several citizens, who at earlier points during the last few years had presented similar opinions, who said to just not care too much about what the Norwegians thought. I myself am one of the citizens who proposed and argued for this disregard of Norwegian opinion, the reasons are many but mostly steams from earlier comunication with Norwegians and that I care more about Sweden then Norway. I guess this might raise some eyebrows but try to see the situation from the Swedish perspective, we are sitting here surrounded by allies without many options in terms of war. And let's remember that war is what fuels activity in eRepublik, not having much of it is a safe approach if you wish to decline in terms of population. At this point we took a remarkable decision, to not consider the Norweigan opinion and instead just consider the wishes of the Swedish citizens and our Government. We subsequently set Norway as our Natural Enemy, ensured that our close allies and a bit later even Norwegians knew what was happening. They didn’t like it, but as I wrote before, that was not really a concern of ours.


Swedish Future must contain War.

Future of Scandinavian Relations
As it looks as of now, all of the potential CP candidates and most of the active Government members would like to retain a neutral relation with Norway but not go back to the past “allies” relation we had earlier. I see this as a clear sign of Swedish wish to continue with possible wars via the borders Norwegian and possible, in future, Danish regions give us. I am sure that we can work something out with Norway in terms of assistance during Congress election and if they are in need of help during future MTO attempts. But hopefully what has happened recently means that they understand a relationship is a give and take, not only the latter.

Wishing you all a good rest of the week
//Lonestar 2