Join the new world

It was a very close race, the closest one so far, and I have to say that if you had made these details clear before the election, then the seat of the presidency would have been yours. That is of course unless in the month that I have been gone, all CR citizens have decided that they want to fight in wars.

Maybe. But I did not want to be called a fear monger or a traitor because I was bringing these up for my own benefit.

The true question here is not if you deserve the position of MoD, but if radim is going to give it to you after you ran against him

Congratulations on an election fight well fought.

I do hope that Radim does listen to this message. In a recent exchange he likened my suggestions that we reach out to maintain peace with all parties as a desperate plea for mercy.

I do not agree with this. Neutrality is a strategic path that has served us well. It is a path or strength, not weakness. We have few resources worthy of taking our territories for and we have few hospitals and defence systems worth taking.

We have seen that MPPs protect nobody and are a route to war. We learned from the recent dissident Hungarian TO attempt that there is no appetite in Hungary or Germany to take our territories. We also see that Slovakia is too much of a target for Hungary for us to consider uniting with them.

Our best option is neutrality... and I think we can offer something different. If we allow ourselves to become a trading hub, then it will be of no benefit of any country to go to war with us. This is how it would work:

All companies are encouraged to open market licenses to Czech Republik. We drop our border tariffs on everything to a minimum. People will come and set up buying organisations in our country, because from here they can get the best value goods from everywhere, and in particular buy goods from countries with which they are at war with. It will then be of no benefit to anyone to attack us, because they will disrupt their own companies' trade massively.

...what do you think?

It would be impossible to become a "trading hub". We don't have enough companies on our own and we don't have the ability to give incentives to other companies either. Places like Hungary and the United States, all have really cheap items because there is a huge population and competition takes place. It would take months for companies to just move over to the CR and start anew, especially because they need new workers.

It would be a much better idea therefore to strengthen our economy first by creating a base for companies. We would aid our own businesses and make them stronger. Once that is finished people will realize that the CR is a good place to have products, and so they will slowly begin to trickle into our nation and add their businesses as well.

Unfortunately it is impossible for us to be a "silk road" where all nations trade through us.

I see this article full personal attack. I just see, Jan Khysl have very extremely ideas. As real Czech citizen I had many bad experiences with this ideas. You should read something about Munich conferencion, the biggest countries gave former Czechoslovakia to Hitler, because he promised him, he will not this countries. I know real life and erepublik life are another, but this ideas are the same. We must help to our allies. Your words are very dangerous, because they will mean international isolation for our country. Tell me, why we shouldn´t help our allies, if they need it???

This is not a personal attack on you at all radim, it is just several citizens discussing politics. You have all the right in the world to aid your allies if they need it, but be aware that these alliances can often cause much more warfare on our own land than previously anticipated.

By the way why have I heard no news of the ESA? They seem to have shrunk out of the major scene with all this warfare going on.

I agree completely that we should remain neutral. It seems that both of the alliances respect our position on this, and choosing one would anger the other. See what happened to Germany-Austria!
I think staying like Switzerland in real life and making it clear we mean no harm to either side is the best possible option. And we really have no benefits for any of our neighbours to invade, in addition to our NAPs with them. And, in all honesty, did get involved in a war we would stand very little chance. We are bordered by Germany, Poland and Italy; none of which are superpowers but they could all crush us. We are at the border of Atlantis (Poland and Germany) and PEACE (Italy, Austria and Hungary), so we must be very careful if we want to remain independent.
Our average strength is 2.71 (39th), our GDP is 97.53 (47th) and our population is 304 (39th). Overall we are the 43rd ranked country in the New World. Let’s not kid ourselves, if we had even one high resource we would be annexed easily. We must remain neutral if we are to survive.
Plus, by having good relations with both Alliances means that if one was to launch a TO attempt or an outright attack, the other should come to our aid. In all of 503 days of eRepublik, the Czech Republic has never been conquered; we have never even declared war on anybody! Let’s keep it that way.
Just my view.

Be as real Switzerland is silly, her policies of neutrality are only populism. We´re at unstablle region and can you tell me, why other countries should help us, if we will not help them, because "we´re neutral". Look again to real history, do you think if many counties still at 2nd world war neutral, what was the result??? I think nobody from us will not live.

Have a look at this map.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Second_world_war_europe_1941-1942_map_en.png

Switzerland was never invaded by Germany, despite them being able to easily. Why?
1. Neutrality.
2. No real value as strategic area/few resources.
3. Use as a neutral place to store German finances.
4. If Germany had invaded, the Swiss resistance would have been backed by US/UK paratroopers, like the French resistance.

Certainly the first two points apply in our case and perhaps the fourth as well (replace countries with Atlantis/PEACE).

I think the other countries see that they simply have nothing to gain from invading us, and if they were to invade a 'neutral' country they would receive backlash from the media. We pose no risk to them; if they would not invade us for any normal reason, why provoke either alliance by siding with the other?

Martin23230: Switzerland was never invaded not mean, it will be not invaded if Germany was more succeful. It´s about our allies, I can´t be quite if our close allies as Slovakia, Germany or Poland are invaded. Only together cooperation is our last hope.

I would say that comparing this to WWII is quite unfair as the situation is very, very different. We are presented with two alliances that fight over everything, no matter how minute. Drawing ourselves into a conflict like that is very different then being drawn into a conflict like WWII.

I am sorry that you take this as a personal attack, radim. I think your policy is foolhardy and poorly constructed. I like you, but I hate your foreign policy.

Well fighting in a war does not mean that we are choosing sides with Atlanties or with PEACE. We are not in either of those two alliances, yet if we wanted to have an alliance with another nation, I suggest this compromise. For every ally that we want to gain from Atlantis, we will have to take another ally from PEACE. That ensures that we are not in either alliance, and if the PEACE member goes to war with the Atlantis member, then our MPP is cancelled and we remain neutral.

Jan Khysl: sorry that I wrote my comment in czech language, my english is poor.

Neutralita není špatná pokud je respektována všemi státy a jejich slova maji svou váhu. Bojím se však, že tohle není možné tady v tomhle světě. Ano, možná by obě aliance akceptovaly naši neutralitu, ale jen do té doby dokud se jim to bude hodit, pak půjdou všechny ohledy a slova o respektování neutrality stranou a slupnou nás jako malinu. Proto si myslím, že je třeba být připraven na tuto možnost a budovat obranu ať tyto státyy vidí, že jsme ochotni za naši vlast bojovat a že ji nedáme nikomu zadarmo. Dále si myslím, že je třeba podporovat naše spojence a pomáhat jim i když nám to může přinést hněv bojujících velmocí. Prostě jen stát stranou a doufat, že se nám nic nestane je hloupost, takhle to nikdy nefungovalo a fungovat nebude, navíc nevěřím maďarům ani rumunům že by respektovali naši neutrlitu donekonečna a co pak??? Musíme být připraveni, že válka jednou dojde i k nám nesmíme se ji bát.

Osobně bych ve vyvaroval srovnáním světa tzv reálného a virtuálního. Podobnosti jsou, ale jsou i (zásadní) rozdíly. Existuje jedna teze podle které spolu demokracie neválčí, což možná platí ve světe reálném, ale nemyslím, že to platí zde. Pokud nemáme šanci se sami bránit a pokud se nemůžeme spoléhat na to, že nás ostatní budou respektovat a nepokusí se nás podmanit, tak je dle mého zřejmé, že potřebujeme silného spojence. Spojenectví, tak jako každý jiný vztah, přináší jak práva tak i povinnosti.

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Personally I would avoid comparisons of the so called real and virtual world. There are similarities, but there are (major) differences. According to one hypothesis, democracies do not fight each other, which may be true in the real world, but certainly not here. If we are not able to defend ourselves, and if we cannot be sure others will respect us and will not try to conquer us, its clear to me that we need a strong ally. Alliances, as any other relationship, does not grant only rights, but also responsibilities.

I agree with Kuba007 and Zdenek. While in the real world even small countries with good diplomacy can have some influence, in eRepublic the only thing that matters is strength, and by strength I mean number of citizens. Yes, we can speak about neutrality and how it will ensure our sovereignity, but the truth is we're nothing to our neighbours. In case that we would be attacked, noone would help us - that is the price for "neutrality". It makes us look weak. We can't make friends with all countries around us, it's not gonna work. The more "friends" we'd have the shallower our relationships with them would be.

What we should do (and I get this won't be popular) is to make just one friend, but a strong one - and by friend I mean alliance. There's no way around it, as long as we're on our own, everybody can potentionally screw with us.
Think about it, would a nation rather attack neutral country, or a country which is in alliance with some super-nation?

I'm still a noob in erepublik but I have to agree with our president. I want to help our allies so they will help us. How simple is such mutial pact? And as a true citizen and ecitizen of Czech Republic I'm saying hell yeah!!! Let's fight. Cheers

For some reason I believe that this article is going to spark some major debate regarding: hospitals, defense systems, and taxes on weapons. And it seems clear that there will definitely be some new legislation that will be passed, legislation that will probably prepare ourselves for a war if it were to come within a reasonable distance from us. Besides it seems that there is enough of an opposing movement against radim that either this congress, or the one voted in on the 25th, would be willing to impeach this President, certainly if a war moves closer to our borders.

Now Jura 52 claims that having one superally would make it a poor choice for another nation to attack us. But what ally would we choose? The most powerful of course would be the USA, but their distance does not make them the advantageous choice. Hungary would be a good local choice, but with their possible radical takeover, their interests would sooner turn to them conquering us than protecting us.

And I agree with DaLe that our nation is stagnant and that people just come and go through the CR without really caring. This is because we have a poor economy, no alliances, no wars, and no possibility to gain EP or vast wealth. So we need to begin discussing new ideas that can stimulate the CR.

Whoa, slow down a minute Xavier. Who's been talking about impeaching radim? If the opposition felt that re-electing radim would jeopardize our country, then the opposition should have done a better job in calling radim out on these issues before the elections.
That doesn't mean that radim is going to have a quiet term though, but there seems to be no major reason for president impeachment.

I didn't mean "LET'S GO IMPEACH RADIM!!!!" I meant that if there were a crisis like a war coming closer to us, if radim kept to his old ways, then he would probably be impeached. It wasn't a threat just an observation

We will have to see how that works out, but I do hope that our country will stay quiet until we are able to donate more gold to the treasury for alliances.

Why don't you make a proposal to congress then?

The donate function is not working. No one can donate any money to the treasury.

Then send an email to the admins, and wait the three days it usually takes them to respond to a problem

XH: Haha, we tried that, nothing happened. Looks like admins don't care about us.
And it wouldn't make any difference what country we'd join as long as it is a Peace/Atlantis country. None of the countries would dare attack us if they knew we have a whole alliance behind us.

Yeah but being in an alliance with one nation doesn't mean that there is an entire group behind us. unless of course our mpp activates their mpps, which causes WWII?

An attack towards solitary nation is easier than an attack on whole alliance. Because if we were for example in alliance with Germany and some PEACE country attacked us, then Germany could take it as an attack on them and would act accordingly.

Then Germany would be the best choice of an ally, and we should try to persuade congress to create an alliance with them. It will be a brand new idea that Germany will approve of, and our people will love as well. By allying now we can't be conquered because any attack would result in a massive triggering of MPPs causing a massive world war. Then once the war is started no country would want to take us over because their borders would be attacked by more powerful nations, and so we just aid our allies when we can and be happy that we will remain free.

By the way has radim written a new speech or decided on his cabinet? Or should we just assume that his cabinet is the same.

We'll talk about with the President, decide our actions. Then we'd probably have to do a nation-wide referendum about it, because allying with Germany is a serious step.

About the cabinet, I assume that he's working on it.