Thoughts on Causes and Effects of the Karma War

[Lonely]

From a purely intellectual perspective, the Karma War was a fascinating time. Just as in real life, in the Cyberverse particular ideas and philosophies become dominant at different periods throughout history. These do not arise randomly, rather, they are interconnected, flowing naturally from dominant idea to dominant idea. Thus, upon reflection, it is possible to determine the causal factors of events like the Karma War. It is more difficult to determine the future, because discrepancies arise due to the actions of particular individuals who tilt the boat, but estimates can be made.

So what did lead to the New Pacific Order’s defeat in the Karma War? Can we draw conclusions about the results of Karma’s actions?

For a moment, let us recall that moment in history in which the War of the Coalition took place, for it was perhaps at this time that Pacifica’s downfall began. Pacifica was at the height of its power. It was and remains to this day the most hated and feared alliance in the Cyberverse. There was widespread boredom in the community and frustration with the War of the Coalition’s failure to escalate, due to the cancellations of Polar’s allies. This lead to resentment of those alliances who cancelled their treaties with Polar, and the cancellations came to be viewed as cowardice. It must be noted that not only Pacifica, but some of Pacifica’s closest allies, were involved in cancelling on Polaris, further inciting hatred of Pacifica and accusations that Pacifica had orchestrated Polar’s destruction. It was in this context that revolution occurred.

Pacifica often called them irrelevant, but Vox Populi were quite the opposite. It is true that their power was not in military force. Following the War of the Coalition however, due to the treaty web and sheer statistics of Pacifica and her allies, there were none capable of the military destruction of the hegemony, in any event. Instead, Vox played an entirely different role in the downfall of Pacifica. Perhaps Londo described this best in the late thread, ‘The August Revolution’, by Schattenmann:

“Just as we in Karma fought a physical battle that you could not, so did you fight a battle for the hearts and minds of the Planet that we could not, for to speak out openly and forthrightly was at one time suicidal. We may have seldom spoken, but we were both warriors of karma, which has brought about the current state of things.” – Londo Mollari, from ‘The August Revolution’ by Schattenmann.

Vox Populi’s war on Pacifica was in essence a symbolic conflict. Perhaps at a different moment in history such could be dismissed as unimportant. However, in this instance, to come to that conclusion would be a mistake. Prior to Vox’s formation, despair was rampant in the community, to the extent that events like Manic Monday occurred. In this context, symbolism was precisely what was needed to re-enervate the masses and prevent Cyber Nations from dying. The seizure of a red senate seat, which, traditionally, was the heart of Pacifican territory, proved to the world that Pacifica was not invincible. Vox’s successes also included the attainment of over two hundred members, TOP’s sanction in their temporary transferral to their alliance affiliation, and the sheer act of survival despite Pacifica’s best efforts to exterminate them. Thus, they were not merely a rallying point for enemies of Pacifica who would have their nations reduced to piles of rubble, but a symbol of hope for the Polar allies and sympathisers who were to become the forerunners of Karma.

Over the time that followed, Karma slowly became more distinct as a coalition. It was composed of alliances who were opposed to Pacifica, at first due to dissatisfaction with Pacifica’s perceived betrayal of Polaris but increasingly due to a variance in ethics with Pacifica. This movement towards a new ethics system arose for several reasons, the most important of which was that ethics set Karma apart from Pacifica and motivated people to join their cause. It could otherwise be perceived merely as the rise of a new bloc who would simply replace the old one.

But to state that Karma merely used ethics for their own devices is perhaps an overly-cynical viewpoint on the affair. In my opinion, many in both Vox Populi and Karma honestly believed in Karma ethics and the hope for a new world. Karma’s leadership promoted the rise of the new ethics and it seems unlikely that nobody would believe in their propaganda. It is also important to remember that Pacifica’s policies, like EZI and harsh surrender terms, were perceived to have made Cyber Nations stagnate. This was because they totally eradicated Pacifica’s opposition and opportunities for conflict to arise in the political situation. This would have played a role in peoples’ viewpoint on such policies.

However, whether you take the cynical or optimistic viewpoint, the benefits of ethics in the rise of Karma cannot be denied. They had a critical role in its development. Ethics were used to attack the New Pacific Order and her allies and thus incite the masses towards them, and to unify their otherwise divided coalition for the purposes of destroying a common enemy. This last point is perhaps of most importance, for had they been unable to work with one another effectively, it seems likely that Pacifica would have triumphed in the war.

But this was not the only reason that Karma’s ethics were important. The problem was that Karma came to be perceived to waver in its ethics. For example, in itself, the expulsion of Caffine from Echelon government is not immoral – indeed, little really is – but this action undermined Karma’s credibility because they had opposed the New Pacific Order on such grounds. It is true that Karma was lenient to its opponents at first – for example, MCXA was required to pay barely a tenth of its tech and the last portion was waived anyway – but alliances like Echelon, TPF and especially Pacifica received very harsh terms. This also contradicted the spirit of Karma and the hopes for the dawn of a new era, which had been a powerful influence on the community prior to the Karma War, were shaken.

What influence will this have on the future? Such is difficult to say, for the future is yet unwritten. From what I have observed thus far, however, many people have become cynical and ceased to believe in Karma ethics, or even ethics period. Therefore, I think that in the event that a new hegemony arises and a Vox-esque revolution occurs once more, that support for such a revolution will be more difficult to muster because people cease to hope for a new world.

However, ultimately what the future holds is our decision. Will we allow Karma’s failures to dictate our dreams and aspirations? When the time comes, will we be prepared to fight for what we believe, if merely for the sake of it? Will we allow a new hegemony to form, or will we do everything in our power to prevent it? Do not allow yourselves to be conquered by apathy. In the words of a greater man, let us seize the day, this is our time. For if not now, when?

[Vladimir]

You take an extraordinarily superficial view of events, and the result is that you have a lot of trouble explaining what actually happened.

You ask the question: why did a coalition hell-bent on the creation of a new world fail so spectacularly to deliver it? You hint that perhaps the leaders didn't actually believe it, but fail to take the analysis to its logical conclusions; failing then ask that if this is the case, why did ethics arise at all. You do not do this because you cannot do this; you are constrained by your utopian premises where ideas, rather than narrow material interests, drive the world forward. If the ethics were not real then there should not have been a war; but if they were real then the world should be radically different. Clearly you are missing an underlying mechanism.

This dilemma can only be resolved by taking a new approach from materialist premises. Premises such alliances being self-serving and of the structure behind our international anarchy subsequently driving them inevitably into contradiction with one another. It is only once we have done this that we can begin to look at events afresh.

We can see that over time every international anarchy tends towards a great war due to the dominant alliances becoming a fetter on the rising powers. We can also see that this results in a battle of ideas over how the international structure should look (each group promoting the acceptance of its momentary culture and historical view as universal) and the effects of this. And through an understanding of these events we can also see that it is the former that drives the latter, and not vice versa.

Likewise, we can see that an alliance's ethics derive largely from its position in the international structure, and so once that position changes so do its ethics. Suddenly, harsh terms go from being evil and self defeating to being necessary to constrain potential challengers to the new order. While utterly contradictory, neither of these positions are necessarily incorrect: they simply serve the interests of different people -- or, over time, the same people in different places. This is why they say that power has a logic all of its own; and this is why you saw Karma echoing Pacifican justifications throughout the latter half of the war once it had been won.

See also: Thesis, Antithesis: the Story of a Great War

[Lonely]

You take an extraordinarily superficial view of events, and the result is that you have a lot of trouble explaining what actually happened.

You ask the question: why did a coalition hell-bent on the creation of a new world fail so spectacularly to deliver it? You hint that perhaps the leaders didn't actually believe it, but fail to take the analysis to its logical conclusions; failing then ask that if this is the case, why did ethics arise at all.

If Karma believed in their own ethics, it would seem likely they allowed their decision to give Pacifica harsh terms by their other motivations for the war, namely their hatred of the Order, bitterness over Polar (my comments on which you failed to address, by the way) and other such causes for the war which I stated in my essay. If you adopt the cynical Pacifican position and wonder why ethics would arise if Karma didn’t believe in them – why, I already outlined reasons for such in my essay, albeit merely a few for the sake of brevity. I stated that ‘ethics set Karma apart from Pacifica and motivated people to join their cause’ and ‘ethics were used to attack the New Pacific Order and her allies and thus incite the masses towards them, and to unify their otherwise divided coalition for the purposes of destroying a common enemy.’

You do not do this because you cannot do this; you are constrained by your utopian premises where ideas, rather than narrow material interests, drive the world forward. If the ethics were not real then there should not have been a war; but if they were real then the world should be radically different. Clearly you are missing an underlying mechanism.

Incorrect, if the ethics had not been real there were all sorts of other reasons that the war would have broken out which I outlined in my essay and ethics could be considered a tool of Karma leadership. I would also ask on what basis you deny that ideas have any influence on the progression of the world, for you have not provided evidence of this. Here I would claim that you, not me, are the one constrained by fallacious premises.

This dilemma can only be resolved by taking a new approach from materialist premises. Premises such alliances being self-serving and of the structure behind our international anarchy subsequently driving them inevitably into contradiction with one another. It is only once we have done this that we can begin to look at events afresh.

See what I stated above.

We can see that over time every international anarchy tends towards a great war due to the dominant alliances becoming a fetter on the rising powers.

I actually agree with you on this, hence, in my final paragraph, I called for people to consider attempting to prevent another hegemony from occurring. Perhaps such is impossible, but when have little barriers like that ever stopped mankind?

We can also see that this results in a battle of ideas over how the international structure should look (each group promoting the acceptance of its momentary culture and historical view as universal) and the effects of this. And through an understanding of these events we can also see that it is the former that drives the latter, and not vice versa.

Correct, the effects of something do not drive it, but they may snowball and influence future events.

Likewise, we can see that an alliance's ethics derive largely from its position in the international structure, and so once that position changes so do its ethics. Suddenly, harsh terms go from being evil and self defeating to being necessary to constrain potential challengers to the new order. While utterly contradictory, neither of these positions are necessarily incorrect: they simply serve the interests of different people -- or, over time, the same people in different places. This is why they say that power has a logic all of its own; and this is why you saw Karma echoing Pacifican justifications throughout the latter half of the war once it had been won.

There is not necessarily a cause and effect relationship between Karma's change in political position and when they wavered in their ethics, but if you can provide convincing evidence of this I'm perfectly willing to adopt your viewpoint.

See also: Thesis, Antithesis: the Story of a Great War

I've read it.

Edited October 11, 2009 by The Lonely Man

[Lord Boris]

If Vladimir and TLM use this thread to debate, this could be one epic wall of text.

That said, having read the above posts, I think you both have some very valid points, and I look forward to seeing what this thread develops into.

[Vladimir]

If you have read Thesis, Antithesis, then you will know of my position that just as the world tends inevitably towards bipolarity and war, so too it tends inevitably towards unipolarity and hegemony. The political dynamics of our world leave a wave sprawled across history, going up and down constantly, unconsciously, unquestioningly, trapped by its own nature -- its interests, its incentives, its disincentives.

To begin, I do not debate that there are important feedback mechanisms working through ideas -- ethics, ideologies, histories, and so forth. This is why I noted "and the effects" in my response. What I debate is the idea that these act as the motor of history. Thus in discussing why the war occurred ethics should not form the centrepiece. You almost accept this when you say that in the absence of ethics other reasons would have been found - rendering them irrelevant - but don't quite get to the point that ethics was not a reason at all in the way that you present it.

Since I'm not sure if you realised or not, my questions were those put to your theory, not those that I couldn't answer. So when I ask 'why did ethics arise?' I am not suggesting that I don't have an answer, I'm suggesting that your theory did not explain it.

Your theory claims that ethics were the reason alliances became distant from the Order (despite the fact that these same alliances had stood alongside us for a year and a half while we held the same ethical outlook), and at the same time suggests that the ethics were merely war propaganda. This turns into circular logic, with the ethics causing the distancing and the distancing causing the ethics. This is an incredibly weak position to take, in my opinion, but one could hold it together (just) if they have a starting point to distance the elites and allow war propaganda to come into play.

This is where you bring in the WotC. Now, I have to say, my exclusion of this was simply because it made no sense and I found the philosophical argument more interesting. You say that the cancellations caused frustration among those who were seeking a great war. So really what you are saying is that the great war occurred against the NPO because people were frustrated that they hadn't succeeded in creating a great war against the NPO. This is again circular in nature.

In order to bring it together you have to explain why a great war was sought during the WotC period. Of course, the falsity of this idea is more obvious from my insider perspective, but it should be clear nonetheless. Alliances had been trying to attack Polar since the Unjust War, and had been pressing for us to drop the OoO with them for just as long. During that time relations with various alliances went up, down and everything in between. If they had wanted to create a great war they could have attacked at any point during that time prior to the dropping of the pact.

This isn't to say that had we continued as was that was wouldn't have broken out eventually. As time went on desire to attack Polar became greater and greater, and our political capital to defend them became weaker and weaker (especially after Sponge had launched his direct and public attack on us a month previous) -- had this trend continued the situation may well have broken. But your position still fails on the point.

[Delta1212]

I don't always agree with everything Vladimir says, but I must agree with him in that you present an incredibly superficial view of the events that created the Karma War and its aftermath. There is a whole host of complex interactions and motivations that played out over many months in various interconnected political circles altering political perceptions and relations into a political landscape that was completely reworked until Pacifica walked into a war it no longer had the political might to pull off. Once the war began, the end result was not dictated by a monolithic Karma leadership but by an interplay between various motivations for fighting by the myriad parties making up the coalition including a desire for a new ethical order, simple revenge, lust for power, wanting to see the political world changed up, just defending allies, and half a dozen others, the obvious assumptions regarding who held each generally being rather off or incomplete as several motivations can be proscribed to any given individual, which were all in competition to receive their piece of the victory.

Instead of delving into complexity, you skimmed over a rather shallow surface interpretation of events that, quite frankly, aren't really all that accurate before we even touch upon completeness. Firstly, your view of Vox is rather off, significantly affected by a sort of retroactive memory probably contributed to by Vox's rather appropriate popularity among the general populus. Realistically, however, their efforts didn't bear much tangible fruit until the last couple of months before the Karma War. Prior to that, they occassionally even wound up being counter-productive to their own cause. In fact, their very formation, while adequtely demonstrating a general discontent with the world as it was, also drew away a fairly large chunk of the people who, remaining where they were, could have made an impact on any efforts against Continuum hegemony. Realistically, Vox accomplished two or three major victories. Early on, they demonstrated that keeping a large number of people on a ZI list has a tendency to backfire. Later, the contributed to the establishment of forum dominance by the opposition and, more importantly, a heightened degree of paranoia among Pacifican leadership that undercut some of their relationships. Those last two did not really appear before March. Prior to that, Vox was only marginally more of a presence than Blackstone.

As for why Karma failed in its ethical objectives, simply asking the question demonstrates a fundamental misconception. Karma wasn't fighting for an ethical code. A significant and extremely vocal subset was, but not a majority. Mostly, Karma was fighting to win a war, regardless of what other reasons people had. This mostly didn't impact any other considerations, except in the case of NPO. Most people, especially those actually on the Pacifican front, didn't believe the war would be won if NPO was left intact as it was and so they got terms, which I might remind you didn't include things like forced removal of leadership or members. In fact, your only example of that, Caffine, isn't actually true. Caffine wasn't in Echelon government and had actually left the alliance by the time they finally surrendered. Furthermore, the original term that Xiphosis wanted was that if Caffine ever rejoined Echelon, he'd have to put "I spent the entire Karma War hiding in peace mode" in his bio. Apparently Echelon gov didn't want that term so they renegotiated with KaitlinK to the term that if he ever rejoined, he couldn't a government position. If you want to know why, ask them because I really don't know.

Ultimately, the post-war world is the result of an amalgamation of competing viewpoints stemming from a wide variety of reasons for fighting the war in the first place. Simply labelling it as a single viewpoint that failed because the people in power didn't really hold it is an incredibly simplitic, one-dimensional view of the world.

[Blacky]

For a moment, let us recall that moment in history in which the War of the Coalition took place, for it was perhaps at this time that Pacifica’s downfall began.

The No-CB war was not the time that NPO's downfall began.

In reality it's impossible to pinpoint an exact moment in time where NPO's downfall began because it had such a grip on the world. As the leading power in WUT, and later in Continuum the NPO's loss of power was like a punctured water tank with the contents of the tank a simile for it's power. Few people noted but at the time the Continuum was made up of a major alliance from almost every powerbloc at the time and what this meant was that every alliance to some extent was tied into the NPO or was affected in one way or another by it's power.

If you want to pinpoint a period in time where the NPO's downfall began the timesnap between the formation of The Unjust Path, and the aftermath of the Unjust War would be a far better representation. Certain alliances were isolated at this point and formed blocs away from the major powers whilst at the same time creating their own power. ie; MK, SF, Orang3 {FOK! later joined the Continuum}. Furthermore the replacement for WUT was far from unified by any stretch of the imagination. The Continuum was riddled with divisions and seperate interests. One could even go back further and note that the first FAN war played a part but again this just shows you how difficult it is to pinpoint these things.

The aftermath of the Unjust war was a polarisation of sorts (forgive the pun) whereby the New Polar Order and the New Pacific Order, both sought to gain more and more power. The whole while both becoming almost universally hated. In fact, the irony in stating that the No-CB war was the downfall of the New Pacific Order is that many of the alliances who fought against the New Polar Order were not too fond of the New Pacific Order either. The New Polar Order became a sacrificial lamb of sorts -- insomuch as it spared the New Pacific Order atleast momentarily. The triggers for the No-CB war of course was both Sponge's distate for certain Citadel alliances, taking on Hyperion as a protectorate {despite the fact that several alliances had disputes with their formation}. and also the seeds sown in the Unjust War finally sprouting.

We can see that over time every international anarchy tends towards a great war due to the dominant alliances becoming a fetter on the rising powers.

I think you have the order of it all wrong.

International anarchy = multipolarity.

Our current system can best be described as a mulitpolar system and it came as a result of a great war, not vice versa. The same was true with the period after the Unjust War (except to a lesser degree). What tends to happen is that from a multipolar system a hyperpower will emerge (similar to WUT and the Continuum). This will bring the system back into unipolarity.

The counterpart to this trend is perpetual bipolarity - however that will certainly bring lasting peace through perpetual fighting. In our current system the only time bipolarity exists is in the transition from unipolarity to multipolarity in "war coalitions".

edit: grammar xD

Edited October 11, 2009 by Blacky

[Lonely]

Vladimir,

I concur that the world tends to alternate between hegemony and bi-polarity, but I believe this can be avoided. Whether or not such a situation is desirable is another matter, and one which I will not broach here. Typically hegemony arises as the result of a large-scale war, in which the losing side is annihilated. However, if Karma ethics prevail and take hold in this community, I believe this can be avoided as the losing side will not be entirely destroyed and will thus provide some competition for the victor. If I’m completely honest, I think such a situation is unlikely, but one cannot deny it is a possibility.

I didn’t quite state that in the absence of ethics other reasons for a war would have been found, rather than in the event that Karma did not believe in their own ethics and propaganda (which I have yet to come to a definite conclusion on) that it seems likely ethics were used as a tool in the creation of the war.

I stated that there were several causes for the war, and that ethics rated amongst them, but considered the possibility that there were other motivations originally, and that ethics were a propaganda tool which were to become a cause for the war in themselves. I do not see how this is flawed logic. There is also the possibility that Karma genuinely believed in their ethics and thus ethics were indeed an original cause for the split between Karma and the hegemony. You also stated that many Karma alliances stood by you for months while your ethics (or lack of them) were immoral in their eyes. I think that this is irrelevant, because it took some time for such alliances to get bored as a result of policies like EZI, and for them to perceive the game to have stagnated. Thus, the change in their ethics (provided, of course, that they believed in said ethics. This is a weak point in my argument, because I have not decided on what my position is.) Furthermore, many Karma alliances were never your friends (see Mushroom Kingdom.)

I don’t understand your statements involving the War of the Coalition, because it did not turn into a war which involved Pacifica. Obviously you are aware of this, so perhaps I’ve misunderstood your comments. Or do you refer to the Karma War when you speak of the great war against Pacifica? If so, there’s nothing circular about my arguments, because I’m speaking about two entirely different wars.

In the next paragraph relating to the War of the Coalition, you talked about how if those people who were dissatisfied with Polar’s cancellations were dissatisfied because of the failure to create a Great War, that they could have attacked beforehand and thus my points are invalid. To this I respond that the people to whom I refer were not alliance leaders or people of importance, and thus did not have the authority to attack whom they pleased. I refer rather to the community at large. I would also counter that many people play Cyber Nations for the wars and to claim that they wouldn’t be disappointed at a large scale war is a tall story.

Always a pleasure to debate with you.

[Azaghul]

I disagree with you on a couple of points:

- Dissatisfaction over cancellations on NpO being the prime complaint against NPO. It was one complaint, but I think it's false to say that it was a prime motivator. The first strong alliance to actively leave Hegemony's influence, The Gremlins, were a key member in the coalition against NpO. The 3 main blocks in Karma: C&G, Citadel, and Superfriends, all didn't have much reason to be bitter over cancellations over NpO. In C&G we had our own grievances against NPO from the noCB war, grievances that likely had as much to do with dissatisfaction with NPO as the cancellation on Polar. Citadel was key in taking down Polar. And I can't really recall Superfriends being that concerned with it. Many alliances that left Hegemony and eventually became part of Karma did it only a few weeks or months before the Karma war, not after the noCB war.

- Vox wasn't just about espousing ideals, but about creating the idea of a conflict against Hegemony. Their spying and posting created a siege mentality within Hegemony and often prevented the effective communication of information because they couldn't all trust each other, as well as well as agitating such a culture that already existed within NPO.

- On peace terms, while some had some harsh terms, people forget to consider what they don't include: Forced removals from government, viceroys, wonder decommissioning, and the like. Keep in mind that the great majority of Hegemony's alliances got white peace, in stark contrast to terms given by NPO (especially in the noCB war) in the past to alliances that only came in via treaties.

Echelon's terms were largely hard due to the influence of one alliance. I expect that Caffeine term to be dropped eventually, and other restrictions that made them hard were dropped by individual alliances. The only relatively harsh thing about TPF's terms were reps payments, and those weren't that bad especially in the leniency of restrictions on paying them. A part of both Echelon's and TPFs reps were just paying back what they took in the noCB war. Both TPF's and Echelon's terms were much easier than terms that NPO had imposed on many alliances who had done far less and only fought in defensive wars.

NPO's terms were hard. That was justified because they started the war. They were the only alliance to receive terms of that magnitude. But again, the "contradictions" with supposed Karma ideals are exaggerated here. It presumes an opposition to all hard terms, rather than just excessive terms or hard terms for alliances that didn't deserve them. It also ignores the fact that while NPOs terms are very hard, it is only because of very high reparations payments. Those reparations payments have to be considered on a per-capita basis as well, in which case they aren't very unprecedented. The terms don't include other harsh items imposed by NPO in the past like viceroys, government changes, and wonder decommissioning. In the past NPO had imposed harsh terms equivalent to the ones they received not just to the main instigators, like Karma did to them, but to many alliances on the opposing side who were fighting because of treaty commitments.

[Azaghul]

I don't always agree with everything Vladimir says, but I must agree with him in that you present an incredibly superficial view of the events that created the Karma War and its aftermath. There is a whole host of complex interactions and motivations that played out over many months in various interconnected political circles altering political perceptions and relations into a political landscape that was completely reworked until Pacifica walked into a war it no longer had the political might to pull off. Once the war began, the end result was not dictated by a monolithic Karma leadership but by an interplay between various motivations for fighting by the myriad parties making up the coalition including a desire for a new ethical order, simple revenge, lust for power, wanting to see the political world changed up, just defending allies, and half a dozen others, the obvious assumptions regarding who held each generally being rather off or incomplete as several motivations can be proscribed to any given individual, which were all in competition to receive their piece of the victory.

Instead of delving into complexity, you skimmed over a rather shallow surface interpretation of events that, quite frankly, aren't really all that accurate before we even touch upon completeness. Firstly, your view of Vox is rather off, significantly affected by a sort of retroactive memory probably contributed to by Vox's rather appropriate popularity among the general populus. Realistically, however, their efforts didn't bear much tangible fruit until the last couple of months before the Karma War. Prior to that, they occassionally even wound up being counter-productive to their own cause. In fact, their very formation, while adequtely demonstrating a general discontent with the world as it was, also drew away a fairly large chunk of the people who, remaining where they were, could have made an impact on any efforts against Continuum hegemony. Realistically, Vox accomplished two or three major victories. Early on, they demonstrated that keeping a large number of people on a ZI list has a tendency to backfire. Later, the contributed to the establishment of forum dominance by the opposition and, more importantly, a heightened degree of paranoia among Pacifican leadership that undercut some of their relationships. Those last two did not really appear before March. Prior to that, Vox was only marginally more of a presence than Blackstone.

As for why Karma failed in its ethical objectives, simply asking the question demonstrates a fundamental misconception. Karma wasn't fighting for an ethical code. A significant and extremely vocal subset was, but not a majority. Mostly, Karma was fighting to win a war, regardless of what other reasons people had. This mostly didn't impact any other considerations, except in the case of NPO. Most people, especially those actually on the Pacifican front, didn't believe the war would be won if NPO was left intact as it was and so they got terms, which I might remind you didn't include things like forced removal of leadership or members. In fact, your only example of that, Caffine, isn't actually true. Caffine wasn't in Echelon government and had actually left the alliance by the time they finally surrendered. Furthermore, the original term that Xiphosis wanted was that if Caffine ever rejoined Echelon, he'd have to put "I spent the entire Karma War hiding in peace mode" in his bio. Apparently Echelon gov didn't want that term so they renegotiated with KaitlinK to the term that if he ever rejoined, he couldn't a government position. If you want to know why, ask them because I really don't know.

Ultimately, the post-war world is the result of an amalgamation of competing viewpoints stemming from a wide variety of reasons for fighting the war in the first place. Simply labelling it as a single viewpoint that failed because the people in power didn't really hold it is an incredibly simplitic, one-dimensional view of the world.

Very well said. It's a mistake to avoid the diversity within Karma, or the fact that there can be many motives behind an individual's or group's actions, sometimes working together and sometimes competing.

[Vladimir]

I don't have time to write a significant response to any of the points made at the moment (time permitting I will return later), but I would like to note, lest others be confused by Blacky's comment, that when I refer to international anarchy I refer to the international sphere in all of its states, whether unipolar, bipolar or multipolar.

I don't always agree with everything Vladimir says

Why would you say that, Delta?

[Azaghul]

I think you have the order of it all wrong.

International anarchy = multipolarity.

Our current system can best be described as a mulitpolar system and it came as a result of a great war, not vice versa. The same was true with the period after the Unjust War (except to a lesser degree). What tends to happen is that from a multipolar system a hyperpower will emerge (similar to WUT and the Continuum). This will bring the system back into unipolarity.

The counterpart to this trend is perpetual bipolarity - however that will certainly bring lasting peace through perpetual fighting. In our current system the only time bipolarity exists is in the transition from unipolarity to multipolarity in "war coalitions".

edit: grammar xD

Those hyperpower blocks were largely created as a tool by NPO. I don't see anyone trying to re-claim that mantel. Nor would it be likely to succeed, given the far greater number of relatively power alliances than in the past.

[Lonely]

Delta,

I never claimed that Karma held one motivation. Rather, I provided a multitude of different reasons for it, which I have explored in reasonable depth, bearing in mind that I must restrict my essay for the sake of brevity. It’s such a frustrating constraint but otherwise nobody would read it.

I would dispute your claim that Vox Populi were a widely popular movement, particularly at first. Towards the end, they had succeeded in their objectives and decided to disband while they were still popular. As far as Vox’s work taking time to bear fruit is concerned, that is only to be expected given the odds they were up against. I don’t see how they worked against their own cause, and furthermore I think you forget that many of Vox’s founders participated in Manic Monday and thus would have quit Cyber Nations anyway, had they not decided to embark upon a suicide mission and attack Pacifica. I should also mention that without their famous names Vox might never have got underway or been so successful in terms of recruitment and thus the decision of people like Electron Sponge to join was necessarily (and he was no longer the Emperor of Polaris anyway.) They were a much more well-known movement than Blackstone because they were quite open about their identities and took part in a long-term military conflict with Pacifica, which Blackstone failed to do.

The majority of Karma wasn’t fighting for an ethical code? And people say Vladimir is the revisionist here? If this isn’t completely obvious by now I won’t bother to argue it further, but if you want evidence of what Karma stood for, just read the CNF for the last few months. I think your claims that if NPO were left intact the war would not be won are incorrect, for NPO had already taken a beatdown and had lost several hundred members and the vast majority of its nation strength. With regards to Caffine, I was unaware of that

Finally, I never stated that there was one, Karma motivation for doing this. Part of the reason I’ve remained open to different viewpoints on Karma is that they probably have different beliefs and viewpoints on Pacifica and its actions. Therefore I fail to see how my viewpoint is simplistic or one-dimensional.

Edited October 11, 2009 by The Lonely Man

[Blacky]

Once the war began, the end result was not dictated by a monolithic Karma leadership but by an interplay between various motivations for fighting by the myriad parties making up the coalition including a desire for a new ethical order, simple revenge, lust for power, wanting to see the political world changed up, just defending allies, and half a dozen others.

I agree with this fully, and I think it would be rather inaccurate to try and point out hypocrisy where there is none. The alliances within the Karma coalition had different motivations for entering the war and as such it would be fallacious to attempt to apply one alliances motivations for entering the war and applying those standards to another alliance. In fact certain alliances have since admitted that some of their motivations for entering the war on Karma's side included securing light terms for their former allies in the Hegemony. However one must also note that at the same time there was a commonality within the majority of the alliances in the Karma coalition, and this was mostly espoused by leaders such as Archon in the wake of the Karma war. ie; An end to draconian terms which were not warranted by that alliances actions, and end to EZI, and an end to forced disbandment, etc.

edit: spelling mistake xD

Edited October 11, 2009 by Blacky

[Lonely]

I disagree with you on a couple of points:

- Dissatisfaction over cancellations on NpO being the prime complaint against NPO. It was one complaint, but I think it's false to say that it was a prime motivator. The first strong alliance to actively leave Hegemony's influence, The Gremlins, were a key member in the coalition against NpO. The 3 main blocks in Karma: C&G, Citadel, and Superfriends, all didn't have much reason to be bitter over cancellations over NpO. In C&G we had our own grievances against NPO from the noCB war, grievances that likely had as much to do with dissatisfaction with NPO as the cancellation on Polar. Citadel was key in taking down Polar. And I can't really recall Superfriends being that concerned with it. Many alliances that left Hegemony and eventually became part of Karma did it only a few weeks or months before the Karma war, not after the noCB war.

What you’re missing here is that people weren’t dissatisfied with the cancellations on Polar because Polar were their friends or allies, or even because they agreed with what Electron Sponge had done previously (his log dump had horribly backfired in terms of PR) but out of disappointment that a great war did not occur. Therefore, the political stances of various modern blocs to Polar are rather irrelevant.

- Vox wasn't just about espousing ideals, but about creating the idea of a conflict against Hegemony. Their spying and posting created a siege mentality within Hegemony and often prevented the effective communication of information because they couldn't all trust each other, as well as well as agitating such a culture that already existed within NPO.

Creating the idea of a conflict against the hegemony could be considered an ideal in itself, I suppose. However, even if it were not, much of what Vox preached did revolve around ethics. It had to.

- On peace terms, while some had some harsh terms, people forget to consider what they don't include: Forced removals from government, viceroys, wonder decommissioning, and the like. Keep in mind that the great majority of Hegemony's alliances got white peace, in stark contrast to terms given by NPO (especially in the noCB war) in the past to alliances that only came in via treaties.

I’ve cited Caffine of Echelon already as a forced removal from government... Delta has called me out on that one, so I will research the matter and comment further later in this thread. However, your point is noted, many hegemony alliances did receive lenient terms, which I noted in my essay already.

Echelon's terms were largely hard due to the influence of one alliance. I expect that Caffeine term to be dropped eventually, and other restrictions that made them hard were dropped by individual alliances. The only relatively harsh thing about TPF's terms were reps payments, and those weren't that bad especially in the leniency of restrictions on paying them. A part of both Echelon's and TPFs reps were just paying back what they took in the noCB war. Both TPF's and Echelon's terms were much easier than terms that NPO had imposed on many alliances who had done far less and only fought in defensive wars.

Yes, TPF and Echelon may have simply been paying back what they took from the War of the Coalition, but that doesn’t make Karma’s actions consistent with their ethics. Should Karma base what it does on the ethical standards of its enemies?

NPO's terms were hard. That was justified because they started the war. They were the only alliance to receive terms of that magnitude. But again, the "contradictions" with supposed Karma ideals are exaggerated here. It presumes an opposition to all hard terms, rather than just excessive terms or hard terms for alliances that didn't deserve them. It also ignores the fact that while NPOs terms are very hard, it is only because of very high reparations payments. Those reparations payments have to be considered on a per-capita basis as well, in which case they aren't very unprecedented. The terms don't include other harsh items imposed by NPO in the past like viceroys, government changes, and wonder decommissioning. In the past NPO had imposed harsh terms equivalent to the ones they received not just to the main instigators, like Karma did to them, but to many alliances on the opposing side who were fighting because of treaty commitments.

Stuff relating to the casus belli, and who was the aggressor in the conflict, seems to me to be completely irrelevant. The tensions were extremely high prior to the discovery that Sethb had spied and war could have broken out half a dozen different ways (for example, the DE crisis.) Therefore, justification for NPO’s harsh terms on the basis that they were the aggressor seems like complete rubbish to me.

Edited October 11, 2009 by The Lonely Man

[Delta1212]

First, regarding Manic Monday, considering that Doitzel is a good friend of mine and that I spent quite a bit of time discussing his decision to leave the game prior to his announcement and, in fact, encouraged him to post goodbye, which had the hilarious unintended consequence of being the first domino in long a chain, rather than simply slipping out the back door, and considering another Vox founder went on to join my alliance and serve in my government for an extended stretch, there is very little about Manic Monday and Vox Populi that I am not well versed in. Including the fact that when Electron Sponge tried to join during the NoCB war he had to be ejected because of the adverse reaction by many Vox members and supporters to the idea of working with him. If you don't believe that Vox occasionally wound up getting underfoot and tripping up its own efforts, I can go drag Doitzel in here to comment. They certainly wound up being helpful in various ways, but that doesn't mean their weren't many times previous when people opposed to Continuum hegemony wished Vox didn't exist.

Now as far as fighting for an ethical code, perhaps you should go talk to people who had access to the Karma boards that were set up for organizing the military efforts. The amount of competing motives played out their to a far greater extent than it did on the forums. A very vocal subset certainly fought for higher moral standards but for many people it was either not a consideration or a secondary one. Because those didn't care as much about the ethical aspects of the movement, well, didn't care, it pretty much carried the day. The "harsh" terms of the Karma War would be considered average or light had they occurred in NoCB or UjW. Saying that Karma failed to present lenient terms is like saying the sky failed to be blue because there is a cloud in it. To hear people talk you'd think it was overcast and raining.

As far as whether my point that NPO would be left intact without terms is accurate or not, that wasn't my point and is really rather irrelevant. People at the time in charge of making the decision believed it was true. In terms of an analysis of how and why something happened, it doesn't really matter whether the reasoning was accurate and debating the accuracy won't change the fact that that was the reasoning.

[TehChron]

The Lonely Man, you're doing an excellent job, and you have my compliments for your skill, but in your case you are arguing from a position of only shallow knowledge at best.

It should be quite apparent to you that you are being contradicted by several of the individuals who would probably know what happened better than you do, and yet you persist they are wrong on the basis of Open World Forum posting. As Vladimir said, you are using a great deal of circular logic in your initial argument, and as both he and Delta said, your understanding of the myriad motivations is superficial at best. Especially with your continued insistence that there was some kind of overarching motivating factor outside of self-interest.

Your latest post stating 1) That you cited the caffine as evidence of an argument of yours without knowing the full story and 2) Insisting that CB's were irrelevant indicates that you possess a profound ignorance of what actually happened.

As you are arguing from a position of ignorance, might I suggest either; 1) Researching the matter in depth 2) Quit spinning your wheels in the mud. Despite his attempts to the contrary at times, even Vladimir acknowledges that no amount of skillful debate can allow a factually wrong opinion to become a correct one.

[Lonely]

I’m afraid I’m going out now, and will unfortunately be unable to respond to your posts until my return. Back in a few hours, not to worry.

[Goldie]

cause: NPO attacked OV.

effect: OV had MADP's with VE and GOD and another defense treaty with Vanguard. Enter VE, Superfriends, Complaints & Grievances. Other aggression treaties are activated, and the forces of Karma have been outlined. Friends bail on NPO, only to return afterwards when its less tactically effective. NPO loses scores of score.

[Francesca]

cause: NPO attacked OV.

effect: OV had MADP's with VE and GOD and another defense treaty with Vanguard. Enter VE, Superfriends, Complaints & Grievances. Other aggression treaties are activated, and the forces of Karma have been outlined. Friends bail on NPO, only to return afterwards when its less tactically effective. NPO loses scores of score.

You couldn't have provided a more astute or insightful summary if you'd tried. I actually mean that.

[Azaghul]

What you’re missing here is that people weren’t dissatisfied with the cancellations on Polar because Polar were their friends or allies, or even because they agreed with what Electron Sponge had done previously (his log dump had horribly backfired in terms of PR) but out of disappointment that a great war did not occur. Therefore, the political stances of various modern blocs to Polar are rather irrelevant.

I'm not seeing the dissatisfaction that a great war didn't occur, or that if it did exist that it had anything to do with opposition to NPO after the noCB war.

Creating the idea of a conflict against the hegemony could be considered an ideal in itself, I suppose. However, even if it were not, much of what Vox preached did revolve around ethics. It had to.

I don't disagree, I'm just saying there were other factors at play.

Yes, TPF and Echelon may have simply been paying back what they took from the War of the Coalition, but that doesn’t make Karma’s actions consistent with their ethics. Should Karma base what it does on the ethical standards of its enemies?

What were our ethics? There was never some manifesto everyone signed onto.

There were broad ideas that many bought into, to varying degrees. There were never any official statements or declarations of sentiments against anything but white peace in all situations. While a small handful at times might have made statements against any hard surrender terms, that was never the position of the majority. The sentiment that peripheral alliances should get white peace (or close to it) and that the main players should get harder (but not excessive) terms was widespread, and what generally happened.

Stuff relating to the casus belli, and who was the aggressor in the conflict, seems to me to be completely irrelevant. The tensions were extremely high prior to the discovery that Sethb had spied and war could have broken out half a dozen different ways (for example, the DE crisis.) Therefore, justification for NPO’s harsh terms on the basis that they were the aggressor seems like complete rubbish to me.

Tensions existed, but they didn't have to erupt in conflict. It was NPO that forced a war to happen.

[Walt Kowalski]

I don't always agree with everything Vladimir says, but I must agree with him in that you present an incredibly superficial view of the events that created the Karma War and its aftermath. There is a whole host of complex interactions and motivations that played out over many months in various interconnected political circles altering political perceptions and relations into a political landscape that was completely reworked until Pacifica walked into a war it no longer had the political might to pull off.

Are you trying to say they were not going to get pushed into war in one way or another? That political table had been set, it was fairly obvious something was going to happen regardless of who started it.

Once the war began, the end result was not dictated by a monolithic Karma leadership but by an interplay between various motivations for fighting by the myriad parties making up the coalition including a desire for a new ethical order, simple revenge, lust for power, wanting to see the political world changed up, just defending allies, and half a dozen others, the obvious assumptions regarding who held each generally being rather off or incomplete as several motivations can be proscribed to any given individual, which were all in competition to receive their piece of the victory.

Mah, I agree. Not to say NPO didn't deserve it, but the entire basing behind the Karma war for the Karma sphere (aside from most of Vox) was based on greed, not a want for change. Just greed and vengeance.

Instead of delving into complexity, you skimmed over a rather shallow surface interpretation of events that, quite frankly, aren't really all that accurate before we even touch upon completeness. Firstly, your view of Vox is rather off, significantly affected by a sort of retroactive memory probably contributed to by Vox's rather appropriate popularity among the general populus. Realistically, however, their efforts didn't bear much tangible fruit until the last couple of months before Proxy-Connection: keep-alive

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e Karma War. Prior to that, they occassionally even wound up being counter-productive to their own cause.

Here's where I really start to disagree. Vox, after the majority of the people who just joined because it was cool, was a collection of the very few who wanted NPO down for change rather than greed. Not many Voxians expected "power" after the war ended. What did any of them have to gain aside from seeing their labors come to fruition and seeing change truly take place? Vox had spies in the majority of alliances that you in Karma were against. They were clearly the most vocal, anti-hegemony group on the scene from the start to the finish. That's not counterproductive.

In fact, their very formation, while adequtely demonstrating a general discontent with the world as it was, also drew away a fairly large chunk of the people who, remaining where they were, could have made an impact on any efforts against Continuum hegemony. Realistically, Vox accomplished two or three major victories. Early on, they demonstrated that keeping a large number of people on a ZI list has a tendency to backfire. Later, the contributed to the establishment of forum dominance by the opposition and, more importantly, a heightened degree of paranoia among Pacifican leadership that undercut some of their relationships. Those last two did not really appear before March. Prior to that, Vox was only marginally more of a presence than Blackstone.

To expand on this a bit more, before Vox everyone seemed to be so scared to speak their mind if it contradicted the partyline at all. Vox opened the doors to those without influence. They also exposed to the public many Pacifican hypocrisies that many would not have known about otherwise, such as hidden planning and otherwise. If Pacifica talked, Vox knew. If Pacifica told it's membership something, Vox knew. If Pacifica kept something form it's membership, Vox knew. The difference between they and some others, is that they made others aware as well without fear of consequences.

As for why Karma failed in its ethical objectives, simply asking the question demonstrates a fundamental misconception. Karma wasn't fighting for an ethical code. A significant and extremely vocal subset was, but not a majority. Mostly, Karma was fighting to win a war, regardless of what other reasons people had.

We already knew that Karma was far from a united force. Those this seems to me like you're admitting that many just used the banner of Karma, and a name like Karma, for PR purposes. As in, more than half of Karma, if that wasn't their goal. You were fighting to win a war, but the message, whether you liked it or not, seemed to be fighting for change and fighting against a world lead by only one group.

This mostly didn't impact any other considerations, except in the case of NPO. Most people, especially those actually on the Pacifican front, didn't believe the war would be won if NPO was left intact as it was and so they got terms, which I might remind you didn't include things like forced removal of leadership or members.

"Don't worry, we didn't kill him", says the judge. "We just gave him 30 years in prison and a record level fine." Just because you didn't give NPO forced removal, it does not mean that the terms they received were not entirely needless. Of course they needed to have excessive reps, but not THIS excessive. This did not inspire change, except the kind that involved wounding them so much that they could not come back. But winning the war in itself, and causing that much damage to NPO, would be enough change wouldn't it? It would have already been a multipolar world with NPO having received such a beat down, regardless of the added on terms. Which further proves my point: NPO was a declining empire with lots of cash and tech, thus many people went behind the message of change when their actual reasons were greed. And we bought it.

In fact, your only example of that, Caffine, isn't actually true. Caffine wasn't in Echelon government and had actually left the alliance by the time they finally surrendered. Furthermore, the original term that Xiphosis wanted was that if Caffine ever rejoined Echelon, he'd have to put "I spent the entire Karma War hiding in peace mode" in his bio. Apparently Echelon gov didn't want that term so they renegotiated with KaitlinK to the term that if he ever rejoined, he couldn't a government position. If you want to know why, ask them because I really don't know.

Sounds like a stupid $@! trade to me, but meh, their choice I guess.

Ultimately, the post-war world is the result of an amalgamation of competing viewpoints stemming from a wide variety of reasons for fighting the war in the first place. Simply labelling it as a single viewpoint that failed because the people in power didn't really hold it is an incredibly simplitic, one-dimensional view of the world.

Ultimately the post-war world is a multipolar gridlock of people looking to eliminate any possible enemies that they can have, and those that aren't looking to eliminate will probably be the first to go. The people who ran under the Karma banner clearly realize this, as they're the ones who are continuing it. NPO wasn't enough, because n

Edited October 11, 2009 by Walt Kowalski

[Hymenbreach]

People are over analysing.

Twas boredom killed the beast.

[Heft]

The only considerable victory of Vox was engendering such paranoia within the "hegemony" ranks that the Continuum essentially held itself hostage for months before the war and never took the necessary action to prevent its failing. Granted, that was a very considerable victory and without it it's debatable what would have happened, but delta is certainly correct in that the existence and efforts of Vox were at times counter-productive to the goal of weakening the hegemony (Something I began pointing out at least as early as last December, if not earlier, I might add). On the other hand, the only reason Vox enjoyed such success was because of the completely inept way in which they were handled or countered.

The list of things that didn't happen that should have happened or that could have turned the tide is considerable. SF and CnG and others were all afraid that the Continuum would attack them, and they were afraid of that because they recognized it as the logical move for the Continuum to make. The Continuum didn't, or was too wound up in its own moronic petty drama to act on it. Ragnarok could have been attacked in December, Sparta could have been expelled in January, any number of opportunities clearly existed to force a confrontation on Continuum's terms while Continuum was still in control. Some power and influence would have had to have been sacrificed, and in some situations it's even possible to see the hegemony voluntarily breaking itself apart, but those in power would have remained in power and avoided the disaster of the Karma War.

This is all clear in hindsight, but wasn't then. A combination of no one at the top trusting each other, people at the top trying to demonstrate that they weren't evil by not taking these sorts of actions, and conflicting ties being allowed to grow and not being cut early enough is what allowed the Karma War to happen. All of this owes more to the failures of the Hegemony leadership (including myself there for awhile, to be perfectly fair) than to any efforts by the opposition, or what little was materialized. Pacifica, in particular, failed because it failed to provide the leadership that was expected of it. It allowed its allies to run the show, and cohesion and unity among the top powers completely dissolved. Consequently, faith in Pacifican leadership evaporated and people moved elsewhere. The NPO let others control its actions, culminating in letting TORN talk them into a disastrous war. Most succinctly, Pacifica failed because it failed to act like Pacifica.

[Azaghul]

Are you trying to say they were not going to get pushed into war in one way or another? That political table had been set, it was fairly obvious something was going to happen regardless of who started it.

I can pretty much guarantee that no one on the Karma side was gonna start the war, as there were several key players (MHA, TOP, and others) who would have fallen on the NPO side in such an event.

Mah, I agree. Not to say NPO didn't deserve it, but the entire basing behind the Karma war for the Karma sphere (aside from most of Vox) was based on greed, not a want for change. Just greed and vengeance.

Where do you get greed out of this? If you said self-defense, both of themselves, and their allies, you'd be correct. However self defense and ethics are not mutually exclusive.

It is and was perfectly possible to people fight for a combination of self-defense, ideals, vengeance, and other motives at the same time.

We already knew that Karma was far from a united force. Those this seems to me like you're admitting that many just used the banner of Karma, and a name like Karma, for PR purposes. As in, more than half of Karma, if that wasn't their goal. You were fighting to win a war, but the message, whether you liked it or not, seemed to be fighting for change and fighting against a world lead by only one group.

And it didn't happen?

The world is no longer lead by one group. Just because there isn't some sort of fantasy utopia with white peace for everyone for every war doesn't mean that the world isn't better.

"Don't worry, we didn't kill him", says the judge. "We just gave him 30 years in prison and a record level fine." Just because you didn't give NPO forced removal, it does not mean that the terms they received were not entirely needless. Of course they needed to have excessive reps, but not THIS excessive. This did not inspire change, except the kind that involved wounding them so much that they could not come back. But winning the war in itself, and causing that much damage to NPO, would be enough change wouldn't it? It would have already been a multipolar world with NPO having received such a beat down, regardless of the added on terms. Which further proves my point: NPO was a declining empire with lots of cash and tech, thus many people went behind the message of change when their actual reasons were greed. And we bought it.

The reps, as high as they are, hardly made the war profitable for anyone. They make up a fraction of the losses sustained by those fighting NPO.