On the Crime of Aggression
Entry posted by Tromp
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Sometimes when there's a war going on I wonder where all the warmongers went to. Whenever there's peace, you see people complaining of boredom, stagnation and more of that jazz, but as soon as a war starts most everyone turns around and becomes a critic. No reason cited is good enough to start a war, even though admin has provided us with little to work with. Isn't that odd? Really, people should accept that the game itself will not give us a lot of causes for war, and that some roleplay simply is necessary to keep everyone interested.
For those who want to simulate politics, social interaction is a vital aspect of this game. There is a need for diversity, not just in emotions and morality, but also in actual behaviour and positioning. Too often we see people parrotting each other, without putting in some effort to reach an own conclusion and act accordingly, or you see people being influenced because of peer pressure. I'd like to tackle one issue which has been annoying to me personally, and that is the idea that (a war of) agression is a crime.
Purely seen from an OOC viewpoint: I literally can't think of any reason why one would want a world in which there is no conflict, other then statcollecting. If that's what CN was supposed to be or become, I'm glad it nowadays isn't, because it certainly isn't my idea of fun. Perhaps there's more to it, who would care to enlighten me on that point?
So yeah, I'm simply not seeing why war in general should be regarded as something bad in a world with infinite resources, where nations can't be exterminated and where there is no nor will there be an 'end'. Those who think war is bad, that aggression is bad, are carrying real life values over into a nationsimulator that is significantly different from the world we know and thus should be treated differently.
I contend that war, that being the result of competition, of strife, of conflict, is good. Anything a person does, who is not a neutral, is something that contributes to the eventual outcome of every form politicking, namely war. It is, ultimately, your destiny to be fighting wars, be they mentally via diplomacy, or be they physically via the destruction of pixels.
To object to war is to say essentially that you don't like the eventual outcome of said war. It is true, morality and the quest for what people perceive to be justice in general is little more then a cover up for weakness, and is meant to give the selfappointed victim a boost in selfesteem. Additional effects this may have are, among others, pity and hatred for victim and perpetrator. All of this is part of the greater struggle for power in this world, to say otherwise would be a lie.
Since war is inevitable on Bob, there is always some alliance that is going to make the first shot. Before I move on, I want to make a minor point.
What precedes this first shot is always the interbellum, a period in which all alliances enjoy (relative) peace to prepare for the next war. Most often during these periods of peace, acts of aggression do occur, yet they are not being responded to with force. Aggressiveness is thus not limited to war only. Now, I'm not going into full detail of what an alliance does or should do at such a point in time, the only point I wanted to make for now is that an alliance who sits still and does little to improve its position is simply asking for trouble, in the same way as an alliance that does too much is asking for trouble, as we are in a world that is characterized by hostility towards one another.
Anyway, to fire the first shot doesn't necessarily mean it makes you the aggressor and thus 'wrong' by default. As mentioned earlier there is always a larger context in which that first shot must be placed, but the focus of people on that first shot while at the same time disregarding the context creates a narrowminded worldview in which little makes sense anymore; where wars are being fought over seemingly next to nothing. However, it is actually very rare that a war is being fought over nothing, even though it appears some people think this is happening, or even would like to see it happen. In reality, war is diplomacy by other means, so when it comes to the point of war this is merely a sign that two parties have conducted diplomacy, and eventually clashed so hard when wielding their power, that they both failed to preserve the peace, not just one of them.
Whether one should label the alliance firing the first shot as "aggressor" is depending on your perspective, in the same way the "justness" of a war is mostly in the eye of the beholder. I have not seen or experienced a universally accepted standard as to what constitutes a legit CB, there will simply always be people who disagree. The question which side is "just" usually shifts to who is winning, be it the perceived defender or be it the aggressor, furthermore an indication that objective justice does not exist. And these positions of aggressor and defender may change over the course of a war, the most notable examples of this being the Karma war and the BiPolar war, where the initial attackers ("aggressors") became defenders later on and vice versa.
What can be concluded from this all is that aggression is not a crime and most importantly, that a defender isn't in the right by default either.
Unless there is an effort to establish a universal standard for CBs that succeeds, I don't see a future in which anyone can claim the objective moral high ground, or justness of a cause.
The only thing I am damn sure of is that aggression is what makes this world go round.
Luckely.
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I feel like I should elaborate on some points, such as the Interbellum and Just War tradition, but these are subjects that deserve their own blog. Maybe I'll get to it some time.
For now, I just wanted to offer an expantion to the argument Azaghul made here under "What's wrong now".
To those who have read this, I hope you enjoyed it and will share your thoughts. 
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