I remember being Legion's Minister of Communications, which meant I had a nice title and could act like I was important without really being important at all. I was one of those Legionnaires who thought our refusal to enter was complete and total idiocy, so I jumped ship on the first day of war and rejoined GATO. I ended up getting gang-raped by TOP in one of the more impressive attacks made on my nation. I also remember being appointed Battalion Commander of GATO's top nations, and how everyone was getting absolutely clobbered. GATO had such high turnover in the upper ranks due to its constant infighting that there simply weren't that many people who could stay in the alliance long without burning out. After like a week of fighting there was more GATO drama when the foreign minister tried to get peace but was overruled for !@#$%^&* drama reasons, and that was the point I pretty much gave up on GATO.
I think the problem with CN these days is that there are very few fossils like myself left over from the early days, when the political situation was so much more malleable and an MDP was the highest you went with a treaty. Everyone knew where they stood politically. Nowadays, we have leaders who came to power largely during the Hegemony era, and the caution and fear of being rolled still clings as a relic of those times. Hopefully the recent tryst has made it clear where people fall and we'll see more open aggression between the two sides, but I doubt it.