Join the new world

Seeing as though we are expected to hopefully be increasing our active population, I wanted to write a series on the various aspects of the ePhilippine’s life, so that newcomers have an idea what to expect.

As for my credentials, I have lived here for a year and a half now, been President three times with 4 overall mandates, served in almost the entire cabinet and been a soldier, a military commander, an ambassador, a Foreign Affairs guru, Chairman of Sol and PACMAN Minister of Defense, and the list goes on. I have done more for the Philippines and the Philippines has done more for me than any other eCountry in this game. I thank you all for providing that experience for me.

A Brief Look at the Past

The Philippines started out with no friends, loaded to the gills with Brazillian and Spanish PTOers. For many months afterwards, the Philippines had a poisonous attitude towards those countries, and the particular virulence of the Secta del Guru Varnish [the Spanish PTO group], as well all of its neighbors being members, led the Philippines to apply, and eventually be accepted, into PEACE GC. It should be noted that the United Kingdom was one of the only (if not the only one) countries that voted against the Philippines joining, and further split the chasm between the UK and the Philippines. Most of the early Presidents (BigBoyBulley and HazzN) were from the UK and helped stave off the even more foreign PTOs.

However, it was mostly for show--membership in PEACE meant nothing other than a little line of text that said they were. It was presumed that Indonesia would not take out an alliance mate, and that was the most influential part of the reasoning to stay within PEACE even though the Philippines was not active within it.

During this time, the Philippines also played a role in creating Sol, and was heavily involved with that in concurrence with the Sol Wargames started shortly before the alliance took shape. Those were the days of not-so-epic battles over Sabah every other day. The Philippines stuck to its neutrality, though helped Sol-mate China considerably through landswaps with the United States, eventually earning the significant ire of Indonesia, leading to the Indonesian-Philippine War, which after a month eventually ended with the Philippines being wiped out, then the United States coming in under President PigInZen (Familiar, at all?) to save it. It was in this war that we lost the great parties of the past, such as the Filipino Progressive Movement--the harbringer of most Presidents--and the Philippine Health Party, which held the Presidency for 5 months at the end of the country’s life. At one point, the Philippines only existed in two regions in China that had been swapped to them. The level of friendly working together has mostly gone away, however, with the elimination of the capacity to landswap, with China and the United States, as has its previously extremely tight relationship with Malaysia and Singapore.

PACMAN was the last abortive attempts at being active in an alliance again, which was proposed to unify the militaries of Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. Getting three small countries organized into a decent military force that could get everyone active and excited, as well as maybe actually have an impact on a battle or two was the main goal, however, things bogged down as the approvals never came out of Singapore and Malaysia was so disorganized it was hard to make heads or tails of the situation, especially with Fruitcommando as a President that most everyone disliked, as well as being massively unstable. He declared war on Singapore twice, having Malaysia wiped once and almost again. Back in the Sol days, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines arguably made up the core of the alliance--the members that repeatedly put it on the line to help allies and stood for true neutrality in a polarized world. By the time PACMAN dissolved due to Malaysia’s inability to support their own soldiers within it, that spirit of cooperation died.

Contemporary Foreign Affairs

As it stands right now, we are in self-enforced isolation from the rest of the world, and even take a stauncher stance on staying out of the polarized super-alliance structures without an agreement between all of our neighbors. It is not as though we do not wish to participate in the superalliances, no, but we have one of the hardest to maintain places in the eWorld. Above is China, whom we have been friends with in the past when their nation was considerably different--the days of Aliao and Snayke. The new China is a much more aggressive beast, militarily powerful, and sometimes forgets that we were there for them so long ago. The latest ‘cooperative’ war we had with them was a complete surprise to us, as they started declaring us a Natural Enemy before we had any idea what was going on.

Below us stands Indonesia, who has repeatedly tolerated our presence even though they could easily take us out, and we have worked with them even moreso as of late, handing over Mindanao, an iron region, without a fight, and swapping Visayas to them when they wished to go into South America via Colombia.

It is between these two powers, currently duking it out on our own regions, that the Philippines desperately tries to hold a balance. We dream of a day where we can live without these two behemoths breathing down each other’s necks, and we can go back to dreaming of participating in an alliance some day without fearing our neighbor’s reaction.

As for our smaller neighbors, Taiwan and Colombia, we’re in good standing with Taiwan--their military presence helped us massively in our war with Colombia. With Colombia we have warred, and won, against, but we have no desire to see that repeated once again on both sides. It was an expensive and desperate affair for us, and a series of tough defeats for Colombia on the other.

One of the continual goals for the Philippines is to get a regional alliance going with true friends, but will it ever happen?



Hekter