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The word surrender.


Haflinger

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There appears to be a lot of confusion over what it means. Many people seem to think it just indicates that the surrendering party is defeated.

This is not the case. It indicates a transfer of control; the surrendering party gives something over to the conqueror.

Here are a number of links to online dictionaries explaining what the word means.

Merriam Webster

American Heritage Dictionary

The Free Dictionary

The Free Dictionary (legal)

Probably the clearest definition in the military context is from Merriam-Webster.

2 a : to give (oneself) up into the power of another especially as a prisoner

b : to give (oneself) over to something (as an influence)

intransitive verb : to give oneself up into the power of another : yield

As you can clearly see, the word surrender means transferring power and control over yourself. A surrendered alliance is not sovereign.

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Surrender, like most words, has several meanings, to varying extents.

I think in the most commonly used context, to surrender is to essentially give your enemy something which you would normally not wish to give them. Think of it as surrendering property, sometimes that property is your sovereignty, but not always..

The type of surrender we see in this game are not exclusively the type of surrender you would consider military in context.

Should you forget to pay your car bill for a few months, the repossession guys might come, and after a brief fist fight, you might hightail out on foot to lick your wounds, effectively surrendering your car for repossession.

Alliances wouldn't agree to anything we see in terms unless they felt they had to, they don't like it, they aren't giving it, they are surrendering it.

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"A surrendered alliance is not sovereign."

Not true - unless the alliance surrenders it's total decision making power in every aspect to another alliance. One can agree to give up control (aka: surrender) in some areas and for periods of time and still remain sovereign in others.

Sovereign =

a : supreme power especially over a body politic

For CN purposes, I like the generally accepted understanding of "surrender" as in agreeing to any terms to end a war other than "we agree to stop fighting each other" and no additional terms.

Really - if it's not that simple, wars will go on and on when they should stop JUST because people fight over the meaning of a word (almost every word has more than one meaning to argue over.) That's rather petty, imo.

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"A surrendered alliance is not sovereign."

Not true - unless the alliance surrenders it's total decision making power in every aspect to another alliance. One can agree to give up control (aka: surrender) in some areas and for periods of time and still remain sovereign in others.

No, that's not how sovereignty works. Otherwise in Canada, provinces would be sovereign. (They're not.) And in the United States, states would be sovereign as well.

Sovereign nations (or alliances in CN) control every aspect of their own affairs. It's like being pregnant, you either are sovereign or you're not.

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They didn't lose, they just didn't win is all.

You didn't beat them, they just admitted defeat.

They would never surrender to the likes of you, just agree to your terms and declare you the victor.

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For Ragnarok, Surrender meant that we no longer had the ability to continue and thus are at the will of the victor. Admitting defeat meant you lost, which is fine with us because we know you can't win them all. There is honor in losing knowing you gave it your all, there is none in surrendering. PoW's in this game surrender, the rest just accept defeat. It was a difference worth fighting for to us.

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For Ragnarok, Surrender meant that we no longer had the ability to continue and thus are at the will of the victor. Admitting defeat meant you lost, which is fine with us because we know you can't win them all. There is honor in losing knowing you gave it your all, there is none in surrendering. PoW's in this game surrender, the rest just accept defeat. It was a difference worth fighting for to us.

Wars don't stop in this instance. You can accept defeat and keep fighting. I'm sure FAN will tell you what that looks like.

The cessation of hostilities occurs when the defeated alliance is presented with a way out. You "no longer had the ability to continue" and you were given the option to stop. You could not have brought that about yourself. You had no control over your affairs. You were "at the will of the victor". In a sense, they allowed you to have peace. You had no ability to win it for yourself.

@OP

You make the point about surrender being about sovereignty, yet we all know how CN works. The only time, by your definition, that an alliance has surrendered is in the cases where a Viceroy was imposed. A surrender in CN has never meant a relinquishing of sovereignty except in a very minimal number of incidents. All you have done is refuse to write "surrender" in the terms. I understand your point, but I think that you misinterpret how the word has been used in CN. Usage is the final arbiter of meaning and in CN, 'surrender' has always been used (perhaps lazily, but that makes no difference) as a synonym for an admission of defeat. All you've succeeded in doing is changing the language, not the meaning.

Rok refused to surrender because, as stated in the quote above, their is no honour in surrendering. That may be so, but to make a fuss about that on Planet Bob is to undermine the end of all previous wars. I say it again: Usage is the final arbiter of meaning. Alliances have surrendered with no damage to their honour because in CN, the word 'surrender' does not mean that they are humiliatingly disallowed their own sovereignty (again, I except the few cases of Viceroys) but instead simply that they were beaten. Rok were beaten too, just like alliances before them and alliances after them. Furthermore, this is certainly not the most honourable defeat (I mean that in a literal sense- I do not intend that to be read as a snarky way of calling them dishonourable) and to single it out for special linguistic specificity seems unnecessary. FAN surrendered. Why? Because they were beaten. Was it dishonourable? Certainly not. Does the wording of their surrender thread have anything to do with that? Not at all.

In fact, turning your own defeat into a PR stunt seems far more dishonourable and ignoble than simply accepting it.

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If you want to bring RL into this, there are numerous cases (see especially the member-states of the EU, or international tribunals) where countries relinquish some of their powers to international organizations. Yet, they are still considered sovereign entities.

You say there is no gray area - I argue that there will always be a gray area. In fact, seeing as every country except the Vatican City has agreed to abide by the UN Charter, one could use the same logic to state that none of them are truly sovereign entities.

A document of surrender, like any other treaty agreed to between alliances, will limit or infringe upon the sovereignty of each alliance in some way - for even the victorious alliances agree to declare peace with the defeated ones. Has Viridia lost its sovereignty by agreeing to stop attacks on Polaris? I doubt you would agree to that statement, yet your "all or nothing" argument would suggest that you should.

There is also a large difference between conditional and unconditional surrender. The latter will see the defeated alliance surrender its sovereignty to the victorious alliances; to "give (oneself) up into the power of another", who then dictates the actions of the surrendered alliance. The same goes for any type of viceroy situation. This is vastly different from a conditional surrender, which is by far the norm in CN. These terms or conditions of surrender limit the sovereignty of both defeated and victorious alliances - the defeated alliances agree to perform their responsibilities agreed to under the terms of surrender, while the victorious alliances implicitly agree not to go farther than the conditions of surrender allow them to.

Perhaps, instead of providing a definition of surrender, you would be better off providing the definition of sovereignty:

sov·er·eign·ty

–noun

3. supreme and independent power or authority in government as possessed or claimed by a state or community.

The key is whether or not the defeated alliances have the power to make their own decisions, and unless they cede away that power, they normally do. Viridia has no power to overrule the decisions of the Polar government, or make decisions on her behalf. The only limit on Polar's sovereignty at this point in time is the international agreements that her government has pledged to honour and uphold - not only terms of surrender, but all treaties with other alliances.

To surrender doesn't mean an exceptional loss of sovereignty, unless the terms of surrender make it so.

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You make the point about surrender being about sovereignty, yet we all know how CN works. The only time, by your definition, that an alliance has surrendered is in the cases where a Viceroy was imposed. A surrender in CN has never meant a relinquishing of sovereignty except in a very minimal number of incidents.

This is once again false; most peace deals contain no re-entry clauses.

No re-entry clauses violate sovereignty. If you've agreed to a no re-entry clause, your decision-making is restricted by it. And it affects that most sacred of sovereign powers, the right to declare war.

The tricky part is where you get alliances like Nueva Vida and Ragnarok who didn't agree to a no re-entry clause, and so their sovereignty remains intact.

If you want to bring RL into this, there are numerous cases (see especially the member-states of the EU, or international tribunals) where countries relinquish some of their powers to international organizations. Yet, they are still considered sovereign entities.

The EU is a minefield when it comes to sovereignty theory, and I'd prefer not to discuss it here because it's going to fly over the heads of 95% or more of the posters here. It is worth noting though that directives of the European Parliament have no binding power until they are ratified into law by European legislatures.

No international tribunal (arguably outside the EU, which as I said is a minefield) has the power to directly bind states into action. Some states support the decisions of people like the International Criminal Court and choose to abide by them, or in some cases use their own sovereign power to put decisions of said tribunals into effect. But there is no international police force waiting to enforce international law on states.

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This is once again false; most peace deals contain no re-entry clauses.

No re-entry clauses violate sovereignty. If you've agreed to a no re-entry clause, your decision-making is restricted by it. And it affects that most sacred of sovereign powers, the right to declare war.

The tricky part is where you get alliances like Nueva Vida and Ragnarok who didn't agree to a no re-entry clause, and so their sovereignty remains intact.

So surely a defeated alliance, still at war, has also lost its sovereignty. They don't even have the power to exist in peace. They don't have that privilege. They require the permission of the victorious alliance. I use "permission" to mean that they are reliant on the victor deciding that they will deign to return that element of their sovereignty.

Peace with a "no re-entry" clause is surely far more sovereign. But then again, it's black and white? Or are we not going to discuss the EU?

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So surely a defeated alliance, still at war, has also lost its sovereignty. They don't even have the power to exist in peace. They don't have that privilege. They require the permission of the victorious alliance. I use "permission" to mean that they are reliant on the victor deciding that they will deign to return that element of their sovereignty.

Peace with a "no re-entry" clause is surely far more sovereign. But then again, it's black and white? Or are we not going to discuss the EU?

Sovereignty does not carry with it a guarantee of peace. Please find out what the word means and come back.

(I'll give you a hint: the word derives from medieval ideas of kingship. Medieval kings were basically constantly at war.)

"A surrendering alliance is not sovereign"

When did Invicta surrender to NPO?

This blog really has nothing to do directly with any IC politics, it's about what words mean. You can skip your propaganda posts here, and go directly to RV's blog instead.

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