Join the new world

In doing this international series of articles, I feel it is important to hear from all sides of the current international political sphere. Not just from reassuring allies, but from enemy communities and states. With Croatia in our borders, I found it interesting to interview Papi Don, the Commander of CrOmega and President of Australia.

I asked him about his current play style, past and present relations with the USA, his current view on the USA, and the the revival of the Croatian community.

Luckily for me, he has no trouble with English, so the interview is presented virtually unedited for your reading pleasure:


1. Don, you’ve gone by different names and you’ve been in all kinds of different places throughout your eRep career. How did you end up landing in Australia? Are you enjoying your time there?

In a lack of fun within the game, people sometimes turn to name changes and stuff like that, can’t say I’m proud on it really. Australia… same reason as a name change really. The game wasn’t challenging enough in eCroatia when we started, so we simply looked for a new adventure, something else to play for, and some other people to meet. We wanted to help a small country; someone who can’t defend itself and I’m proud of what we did here. It’s loads of fun, when you put a small country such as Australia on a 4th place in country power rankings. Not many things around here are bigger pleasure.





2. Wherever you’ve been, I think it’s safe to say that you’ve always remained very “Pro-Croatia.” Have you ever had any complications during your stay in different countries while keeping that stance?

Well, that’s often misunderstood actually. For example, when EDEN has decided to let Turkey in the alliance, I was President of Ireland, EDEN member. We strongly opposed Croatia there, vetoed Turkish entrance twice and eventually left the alliance because we couldn’t agree with Croatia that would be a good move. I think that during my time in Ireland I’ve been only proIrish, Croatia has been Irish allies for years before I got there and I just improved those bonds, but we would often find ourselves on the opposed sides of battlefield after EDEN. Don’t forget we’ve been in Aurora while Croatia has been part of Sirius. And no, I don’t remember any issues because of it, at least never had an issue with the Irish or Australians about it. Foreigners often accused me over various things.





3. By switching nations on a regular basis, you’ve had the opportunity to deal with the USA from different angles. You’ve been a representative of a powerful Croatia, but also as small Ireland. How have American officials treated you differently in different countries?

It’s fair to say that I didn’t really feel the difference personally. While I was representative of Croatia we didn’t had almost any relations with USA and while being Irish representative my personal experience with USA is pretty much alright. We’ve never really faced any hostile behaviour. USA was the only country on our border we never had a war with and I didn’t want that to change. USA also had a good few pro-Irish players who would always fight for us when we needed help. We even shared MPP for a good while. But it’s also safe to say that USA didn’t treat all of the countries with the same attention, which is kinda expected, in reality - no one does.





4. I remember the days when we were involved in the “Imperium” discussions of 2013, which was somewhat of a precursor for Sirius. What were your interactions like with the USA during this time frame? How has the USA-Croatian relationship slowly changed, since the dissolution of Sirius?

Well, I’m not really the right person to answer on this question as I was eIrish at that time, so I can only talk about my knowledge on how Croatian public felt about USA, not on a Government level though. When Sirius was created I was SG of Aurora.

Honestly, for the 95% of my eLife I was considering USA as an ally, or at least not an enemy. I believe other Croats would say the same about at least 80% of their life too. Until the latest American airstrike on Croatia no one in Croatia didn’t consider USA as a top enemy. We kinda hated American diplomacy and they way USA was treating its allies and even enemies, but we didn’t felt USA is our personal enemy.

It’s hard not to dislike when someone attacks smaller countries, never engages to help its allies or wants everything to be their way and that’s how majority of the countries felt about USA. I’m not sure what I hated more, the fact USA is behaving that way, or the fact the other powerhouses in the world actually supported that behavior. Until recently…





5. Since Sirius, WO has pursued his agenda through Pacifica, and by having America cozy up to nations on both sides of the spectrum. It’s led America to 4.5 years of security, with no wipes until now. Meanwhile, other nations have been consistently wiped. Has this not been a successful long-term policy for America?

It was a success, but surely not long-term as you can see now, it was short-term success which lasted much more than anyone would expect. In my personal opinion, being respected enemy is much bigger long term success than being annoying neutral country. It always gives you much bigger scale of tools to use in future shifts of alliances and ‘sides’.

WO is a type of guy who makes things personal. He would personally befriend someone in power in, for example, Romania and then keep his private relations with that person by using his whole country for it. He did the same with Greece, but even some other countries such as Argentina and Poland. He tried it with all countries with impressive damage rankings, including Serbia, except Croatia, Bulgaria and Macedonia as he thought those countries can’t actually change things diplomacy wise.

He was relying on his personal relations to back him up and keep him safe. He misjudged one thing though. Things and people change in various countries and the only thing which stays in this game permanently is the way you’re playing. It will take A LOT of time until USA will be seen as a good ally again. Just look at Poland for example, they’ve been acting like USA did recently few years ago and even today, regardless of their constant coordinated strikes for their allies and regardless of their direct involvement in their allies wars they’re still being seen as average allies, by most.





6. America is criticized for primarily looking out for its own interests in this period. Isn’t that what a nation’s leaders ought to do? If not, how should America change its activity in the world?

There are always decisions and consequences. If you think only on your own interests and fighting only for yourself, you can’t expect others to help you out when it’s your turn to defend yourself. If you help your allies all of the time then you can expect them to be there when you need them. The real key is to find a balance between those two things. Fighting for TP medals and your own interests is a great thing, but if you completely ignore your allies it’s gonna hit you back sooner or later. On the other hand if you help your allies all of the time you’ll never grow strong enough.





7. The USA-Croatia relationship is one that goes back many years. Arrlo recently stated that a war between the USA and Croatia seemed “unthinkable.” Yet, it happened anyways. Is this a step too far? While both sides might engage in peace talks, is the actual USA-Croatian relationship salvageable?

I don’t think anyone in Croatia will call USA an ally, or even a neutral country for a long period of time. When someone you don’t expect to attack you does that, it hurts more than when your known enemy does that. Of course, this game has been through loads of situations like this one and it would be naive to say things will never change.





8. Croatia has seen a resurgence in its activity in the short period before the war, and obviously during the war. How has the revival of your MU, Cromega, contributed to this revival? How much of it was the US attack?

Yes, Croatia today reminds me a lot on Croatia from v1 and that’s a great thing. I don’t think there was a key factor to this, things just went well in all the aspects of the game. Relations with Serbs improved, few old players came back, USA Airstriked us and we had groups such as CrOmega, or more like Libertas (same members, but political party) who has been trying to shake things up, I think everything just blended well together and it worked better than anyone expected.





9. Cromega has returned to a spot of prominence in the eWorld, as it is a major source of damage. Do you plan to essentially make Australia a permanent Cromega colony? What are your plans for the MU?

CrOmega is an old MU and it has some wonderful people who are running various countries even today, that’s a huge advantage for the MU itself because it’s being supported by various people worldwide.

Australia won’t be our permanent place to play in, we came here to help, to help eAustralians, to have fun and I think we did all we could to do that. We had a great war, we’ve wiped Indonesia, signed Union with Peru which will enable safety to eAustralia even when we’re gone. At the beginning of this term we kinda started to plan the return home, to Croatia. Few weeks ago I’ve noticed original Austalians about that and we’ve started to include them in all decisions so they can easily continue good work when we’re gone. Plan for the MU is to go home and become even stronger, bigger and better organized. Before founding CrOmega again this year I’ve spent some time in EZC which is organisational role model for CrOmega.





10. Finally, is there anything you wish to say to the American people, while you have their ear?

I’d be happy if Americans would realize that it’s no one’s fault they ended up in this kind of situation. I have loads of friends in eUSA and I still love most of them. There’s a great organisation when it comes to Government/Congress and generally running things, but there’s almost no critical thinking about diplomacy moves. Americans are being served with stories made up by individuals and if that doesn’t change the whole world will, or already is blaming the whole community for its, obviously, wrong behaviour.

Americans, get more active, take charge of your country, keep your ears open and keep up with the good things you’ve been doing.