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The Political Situation of the United Kingdom

The United Kingdom finds itself in a precarious position. It is a landbridge between the forces of the US and Canada and the wealth of regions that reside in Eastern Europe. To what extent is our introduction into the formal alliance of ONE to blame for the three-pronged attack now being initiated by Canada, France and Ireland? The reality of the situation is that this precarious situation was, in the words of the Country President himself, "inevitable". According to the Country President, this informal alliance between the three countries to attack the United Kingdom was likely to have happened regardless and was only brought forward due to the mission - "Enter 2012 as a true patriot" - where citizens must defeat three hundred citizens for their country.

Each of the countries fighting against us no doubt feels, in some sense, that they have a personal vendetta against the United Kingdom. Let us first look to the nation that borders us to the West - Ireland. Our war with Ireland has gone on for many months and it has become the "national consciousness" to defeat the Irish wherever possible, not simply because of the fruit bonuses that come with both Louth and Shannon (Irish regions). Canada is increasingly being seen as the "big brother" to little Ireland, coming to their support and fighting in their battle whenever they can. Indeed, only a few months ago, a joint initiative by Ireland and Canada resulted in many of our regions being taken and our own government recruiting the assistance of Sweden in defending our regions.

France, on the other hand, is a political hotbed of confusion. Traditionally, France and the United Kingdom were engaged in a non-aggressive pact (NAP) where neither of the countries would fight against the other in battles for original regions. Now, the argument is different from both sides. If you speak to the French government, they will argue that this pact (known as the Strausbourg Treaty) was abandoned when the United Kingdom signed a mutual protection pact (MPP) with Poland and fought against France. The United Kingdom argues otherwise and states that the French fought against the United Kingdom in defending London, one of the few regions to have been occupied until recently.

The fragile political situation between France and the United Kingdom has no doubt escalated as the United Kingdom entered into the formal alliance with ONE and France shifted more towards a TERRA/EDEN (TEDEN) stance. If we view this shift in foreign and military policy as being the aggravating circumstance in France's involvement in this war, it provides a situation where we are completely abandoning any future relationship in favour of integration with ONE nations. If our relationship with Sweden was to deteriorate or if Denmark occupied the entirety of Sweden, we might find ourselves bordering four enemy nations.



The Future for the United Kingdom

The future of the United Kingdom lies in two directions. The United Kingdom either abandons its policy of integration into the alliance of ONE and focuses on a defense of its nations or the United Kingdom considers closing these wars through a negotiation of peace with these nations and focuses on the international scale of the war by focusing damage on critical battles (critical battles here being defined as those battles that would have a severe impact on the productivity and effectiveness of both TERRA and EDEN).

I, for one, personally favour the latter option. The United Kingdom, in terms of relative bonuses, is not the greatest or the most valuable to defend. Its existence will always be plagued by battles in part because of the "national consciousness" that is inherently part of our nation and in part because it is a land-bridge between two opposing alliances. Rather than dedicate ourselves to a defense of a nation where the bonuses are not comparable to other ONE nations and we become embroiled in these feuds that run for many months without ever ceasing, we ought to focus more on mobility and international alliances.

The vision of "old" was to have a mobile force that would travel across the world throwing its damage into important battles. Now, with mutual protection pacts, it is relatively unnecessary but, nevertheless, it seems reasonable to focus on this shift towards international cosmopolitanism, rather than nationalism and patriotism. The pride of Britain ought not to be in the "meaningless" defintions we applied to regions - London having never been taken (now irrelevant), Northern Ireland being "British" (it has no economic value and simply causes friction between Ireland and Britain), the United Kingdom having never been wiped (now looking increasingly unlikely to be retained).

The opposite argument from the view of the international alliances may well be that our war with Ireland has always proved a useful "damage drain" for ONE. The Irish, Canadians and the Croations regularly tank in these battles in order to frustrate and antagonise the British population. By doing this, they reduce the damage being placed in battles between Brazil and bordering nations, Poland and the US, etc. Were we to take the decision to focus on international battles, the damage drain would no longer exist, therefore placing us in a situation where our damage figures (certainly not in any way comparable to many of ONE's national damage) would be the focus and we would become increasingly irrelevant. Our purpose, to drain damage from key battles, would be redundant.

The United Kingdom, then, is in a conundrum. It finds itself pressing against the warm chest of ONE in an effort to increase its international reputation but, in doing so, finds itself the principle target for battles between the two alliances. Its future lies in deciding where it wants to stand and realising that the important feature is in how we supply our citizens in order to increase our damage. Do we follow the direction that Poland has taken where it makes an effort to guide all two-clickers into a single military unit in order to focus damage or do we focus on increasing supplies for the military and seek to increase strength and damage through investment? Only time will truly tell what the United Kingdom will do.