We have a good thing, but we could have an even better one

Day 1,572, 08:08 • Published in China China • by mihail.cazacu

When ONE was reigning supreme and every EDEN and Terra were either wiped out or on the brink of being wiped out, small countries like Ireland, Israel or Belarus insisted in being members of EDEN.

They could have chosen the easy way out, to side with the winners. Like ABC for instance.

But they didn't.

Why not?

Because EDEN was an alliance where everybody had an equal saying on the matters.

There were no Hungary or Serbia in EDEN, to tell small countries "we're tired of fighting your wars instead of defending our colonies".

There was no Spain anymore, attacking left and right just 4 t3h lulz (the Spanish military philosophy has always been "let's have one war at each border if possible").

There was no Poland anymore, telling the other allies to stay put, not to waste the precious damage needed to defend the Polish colonies ( ah, the good old Rhone-Alps affair!)

So pretty much everything went smoothly because the situations were handled according to the spirit and the letter of the EDEN Treaty.

However recently we had a quite tensed situation which showed the EDEN Treaty fails to cover some important issues.

In theory it might be good if things aren't explicitly written down. Because only God Himself can know what future brings, therefore only He can write a EDEN Treaty which would be perfect for any future situation.

For the rest of us, leaving some situations open for a case-by-case decision makes it possible to adapt as things evolve in eRepublik. And if we can learn anything from the 3 years of eHistory, that is things DO evolve.

The problem is that the recent incidents showed us that sometimes trying to decide without any sort of guidelines can end up with the alliance putting more energy into in-fighting than dealing with the real enemies.

There are many possibilities to improve what we already have, but I can think of two which probably would right now enjoy the largest support among our members:

1.) To put a limit on the number of terms for the leadership positions. If we want the flexibility needed to adapt to future challenges, we need to have a large pool of leaders.

If a person can be elected time and again, we will get a handful of very experienced people while everybody else has little idea how to think beyond the immediate interests. So when those extremely experienced people get bored or Real Life forces them to quit, there aren't any seasoned replacements available.

If a person can only serve 2 times, that means during a year we can have at least 6 sets of people who have experienced thinking globally and harmonizing the interests of countries big and small.

Yes, it means we will have "n00bs" in the HQ more often than we have now. But usually those "n00bs" are ex-Country Presidents, ex-MoDs or ex-MoFAs. So they're not exactly green, are they? And if they ever feel like they need a second opinion, they can always turn for advice to those who have already been in the HQ.

But once advice is given, the decision will still be the responsibility of the person in office. "He/she told me that's the best thing to do" will never be a good excuse, would it?

2.) We need a much clearer set of criteria about what means "trustworthy", "reliable", "cooperation", etc. Without such clear criteria we can always argue about whether a candidate is "trustworthy" or not, if the unilateral action of a member is "constructive" or not, etc.

Of curse the human language itself is full with ambiguity and only God could find a perfect set of criteria. But we only need to define the minimum level of acceptable performance.

Let's take the example of the recent Russian - Norwegian conflict and imagine Russia wants to join EDEN in the future. (Russia is a valuable member of the other friendly alliance, Terra and to my knowledge they are very happy there, but I need a fresh example to illustrate my point).

Would Russia's application be automatically rejected because at several points in time Russia attacked Norway (when Russia was a member of Peace, when Russia was a member of Phoenix and now)?

Would Russia's application be accepted because Russia apologized officially and offered a rent accepted by the Norwegian government?

What if the Norwegian government of today considered the rent and apologies enough to close the conflict, but the Norwegian government of March 2013 holds that against Russia? What is the statute of limitation? (How old must be a conflict till it can't be held against a country anymore?)

What if Russia sends her army to fight for Norway several times in key Norwegian battles, even though there's no MPP between Norway and Russia? Would that be considered a further sign Russia is a trustworthy partner in spite of the recent incident? Or would the Russians be told "well guys, you did it on your own risk, we don't care you helped because we didn't ask for your help in the first place"?

If such criteria are left open to on-the-spot interpretation we might end again debating and escalating inner tensions instead of focusing our energies where it truly matters. That is, on the common enemies.

The Treaty of EDEN is what makes our alliance great, so great that small countries join EDEN even when the enemy mops the floor with the most powerful EDEN members. And still we can make it even better with additions like the ones above.

For a better future. Because the future is where we all will be playing this game.