[TOP-CnG War Web 2010-02-21]

i thought Legion and TPF had surrendered yesterday. and Menotah surrendered today.

[On The Validity Of Reparations]

reps are not a bad thing in and of themselves. how to define whether reps are a "bad" thing depends entirely on the situation surrounding the war/incident and the reasons behind the war/incident.

for example, i would say that if an alliance is preemptively struck with a reason of "future threat" and the defending alliance loses the war and is summarily crushed during said war, any reps are pretty much bad. especially if the "future threat" has no sound evidence behind it.

in this case, $150 million is seriously chump change and i do believe can be knocked out using only 50 aid slots not 60. 10 nations can easily handle this within one day without sweating.

[Standards for Leadership in This Era of Cybernations]

hmm.... this is a new era. i find myself agreeing with everything that Xiphosis is saying...

good blog, hopefully people will read this and take it to heart.

[On the (current) coalition war]

tl;dr, you're giving a long winded explanation on the technicalities.

so essentially you want to live in some sort of dream world instead of reality? ok gotcha, you go ahead and do that then.

What world do you live in? The medieval European of rigid battlefield vainglorious honor and all that snazzy rhetoric? (hell even they weren't all that rigid)

wow, this has nothing to do with medieval times and in fact you really don't know much about medieval warfare. the whole rigid battlefield bit is from after that and was mainly an adaption of the battlefield tactics used during medieval times. it did not work that well but obviously tradition dies hard.

What is wrong with pre-emptive strikes? War is about exploiting an enemies' weakness (i.e striking early). Take Pearl Harbor for example, where Japan basically decimated America's then-present fleet in the Pacific. A great opening move by Japan. Of course, longer term, America's advantage in resources overpowered Japan, but that isn't the point. America was going to enter sooner or later (America's policy in the 1930's in East Asia was always about limiting Japan's power) and that was the best course of action Japan could have taken.

as for preemptive strikes, yeah they work alright in the beginning but as Tromp stated, in the end you tend to get an enemy that will fight to the bitter end and unless you know you have a huge coalition on your side, will only get you stomped on by more alliances since they will inevitably wonder if they are next.

By that line of logic, we shouldn't place serial killers behind bars for life because we can't actually predict 100% what is going to happen in the future

because that totally relates to what i was talking about. Then you also fail to realize that serial killers are put behind bars for their past crimes not for any future crimes they may commit so yeah this analogy was just a complete and total failure.

No %&$* we can't predict the future 100% accurately, but we can get damn close to that. If you've been paying attention to politics post karma, it's blatantly obvious TOP and CnG were on collision course.

yep it was fairly obvious that TOP and CnG were on a collision course but if you also paid attention you would realize that whoever made the first move would most likely end up on the opposite end of a rather large coalition, especially going in with the half-assed reason that TOP did. (and no, not helping Polaris as that was a minor reason as even pointed out by TOP in their DoW)

Good one hotshot.

well if it fits, it fits.

When you state TOP initiated an "Aggressive war" that implies your side is the victim of said war. Your side is not the "victim" in the sense of how a nation subjected to a tech raid is "victim". CnG was inevitably going to throw the punch, thus TOP are not in a true "Aggressive" war

actually it is a true aggressive war. CnG may or may not have thrown a punch. TOP could very well have thrown the punch at a later date. so again, this is an aggressive war by TOP and can in no way be defined by any logical standard as being defensive.

[On the (current) coalition war]

Oh god, more of the "baw you guys were the aggressors" crap. Again. Jeez, it's like you have a love affair with technicalities.

The treaty web is imminently readable. And you honestly believe CnG wasn't going to enter in the \m/ war? The two sides were well defined in this war, the timing of their engagement is a matter of "when" not "if". But I mean, don't let reality fool you and stop you from playing the victim.

considering the fact that CnG had not entered by the time TOP/IRON DoWed them, then nope they never entered. it does not matter one iota what they may or may not have done. the fact is, when TOP/IRON DoWed, CnG had not entered the war. thus, they were uninvolved and TOP/IRON became the aggressors due to the fact that they targeted uninvolved alliances.

so yes, technicalities mean a whole lot unless you wish to look foolish. by your own thing, the moment Polaris declared on \m/, NSO should have hit FOK because PC was going to enter and it was only a matter of "when" FOK would enter... that is the dumbest !@#$ i have heard. preemptive strikes are retarded because no one can honestly predict the future 100% (take for example peace between \m/ and Polaris within the hour).

but hey, don't let what actually happened fool you and stop you from playing stupid.

[Political Ramifications of the Techraid War]

RoK was as mad at Polar as it was at \m/ for the start of the war, however the final straw was when Polar declared on a SuperFriends ally of RoK's. That was the final straw. If \m/ had declared war on 2 RoK allies you can be sure that RoK would have dropped \m/ like a bad habit.

But I do agree with your 2nd paragraph, as that has always how it has been. In the Initiative era there were several alliances running rampant with their thuggary and hated moves, protected by the Initiative. After the UjW it was BLEU who performed that role, after the War of the Coalition it was Continuum who performed that roll ...time and time again this has happened, so why would now be any different?

could have sworn that GOD had declared on NSO.... i mean, why isn't RoK pissed at that? that kinda forced Polaris's hand.

that would be like Polaris crying over IAA hitting Genesis. IAA is allied to Polaris who is allied to Genesis. Genesis hit Nemesis who is allied to IAA. IAA hits Genesis. if Ragnarok does not want their allies hitting their other allies, then RoK needs to make sure that their allies do not hit the allies of their allies. GOD hit NSO and got hit by Polaris. RoK crying over it is just pathetic. the only legitimate bit of that cancellation was Polaris hitting \m/ and even then, that is 50% \m/'s fault for the breakdown or lack of diplomacy.

[Political Ramifications of the Techraid War]

Great piece.

As for the new hegemony not being here yet, I am tempted to say this war proves it already is here and has been for some time. A hegemony does not have to consist of a single powerbloc or a few dominant blocs, it can also be a dominant mindset. In this new hegemony, power preservation overrides any consideration of right or wrong, very much like it did with the old hegemony.

In the case of this war, the presence of this new hegemony is what made a great war out of the NpO-\m/ conflict. Few outside of Polar wanted to do anything about the FoA raid due to both indifference and their fear of losing any of their political influence. Those who were most upset by Polar's attack on \m/ were not upset mostly because of any morality claim, they were upset that their emerging powerbase was threatened.

With this impending victory, it will be interesting to see how much time it takes for this cycle to repeat. It would be refreshing to see something other than power politics emerge to break this cycle. I do not know if there is any such thing, but a person can dream.

i have to agree with this right here. SF may not "want" to be the new heg, but fact is, they and CnG have and will most likely continue to allow their allies to abuse others without much retribution beyond a finger shake. We saw it with the Athens/FoB raid in which MK/CnG actively protected Athens/FoB against any possible retaliation. RoK canceled on Polaris but has not canceled on \m/. while the Polaris cancellation is understandable i guess, why not \m/? they were part of the problem and did not do much to avoid war, yet it seems Polaris gets full blame from RoK.

it seems that we will most likely end up right back where we started pre-Karma with SuperGrievances being dominant. a few bully and thug alliances will essentially be allowed to run rampant on who they want, while being protected by alliances like RoK and MK and their respective blocs.