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Diplomatic Vision
Topic Started: Jun 10 2008, 01:17:42 AM (321 Views)
Duncan King
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Diplomatic Vision and My Journey Across the MDP Web

or

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Moo


Cybernations tends to be a game of polarization. People are either good or evil, right or wrong, black or white, with us or against us. The two year history of the game has been punctuated by intervals of time where people felt that the history of Cybernations had stopped. The eras of the Initiative, the Unjust Path, and, recently, the Continuum, were seen as the end of the game because they were populated by blocs that were so large that no one could ever topple them. However, the fact that two of three of these entities no longer exist suggests that this is not the case. Things do change and nothing is concrete. The fact that Cybernations is in a perpetual state of flux has guided many of my own personal moves in Cybernations and has, in fact, very much effected my own personal history in the game and the diplomatic moves that I make. Where I am today is directly opposed to where I was just over a year ago. How I got to be here is a tale of honor, intrigue, hard work, and friendship. This is my story.

On the evening of March 18, 2007, I was approached by one of the leaders of an alliance that I had recently negotiated a PIAT with and was given warning of an attack on my alliance to be orchestrated later that evening. My alliance was GATO, the alliance attacking was the New Pacific Order, and the war was Great War Three. For the next two hours, another member of GATO and I carried out a PM blitz and were able to PM all GATO members with a warning about the pending attack. Once update hit, I watched from GATO's private IRC channel as the NPO and its allies attacked my alliance. They were soon joined by their allies in GGA, \m/, and MDC. Great War Three had begun. Over the next week, I would be attacked by GGA and taken to zero infrastructure while I watched my friends in other alliances, namely ACID, SWF and BTA, alliances that I had negotiated PIATs with and begged to enter the war, be destroyed. Soon, I would resign from GATO, become very disenchanted, and begin the search for a new paradigm. Exactly one year, one month, and one week later, I again found myself in a private IRC channel during an update blitz of GATO. However, this time I was in NATO and was cheering on my allies in the NPO and IRON as they attacked GATO with their One Vision allies. As I was watching the blitz take place, it occurred to me how far I really was from "home."

Although they are quite universally mocked now, I did learn some things while working in foreign affairs in GATO that continue to help me to this day. Vincent Xander gave me my first job in foreign affairs when he was the GATO Minister of Foreign Affairs. From reading his posts, I learned the importance of tact and tone and how to score points even when your message is not popular. He also gave me advice on how to manage ambassadors and how to keep an embassy active. From Alpert Nation, who was then the head of the Ambassador Corps, I learned how to supervise ambassadors and negotiate treaties. But perhaps the most significant impact on my career was made by Friedrich Meinhoff III, who became the Minister of Foreign Affairs after Vincent Xander. FMIII was different. He had recently joined GATO after a career in Nordreich and had friends on both sides of the WUT-GATO divide. Because he was an outsider, he was not afflicted by the near blind hatred of the NPO that characterized GATO during the pre GW3 era. From him, I learned that people are people and there were no absolutes. FM3 had the idea of trying to bridge the divide between GATO and the NPO and took steps to bring this process to being. Under Fried's direction, I was sent to serve as an ambassador to the Viridian Entente, the alliance that I had fought and been ZIed by during GWII. I had been impressed by how nice the VE fighters had been to me while they were ZIing me and was even further impressed by them once I started operating an embassy their boards. The VE members I talked to were respectful, nice, funny, and cool to be around. It is from my time working as an ambassador under FMIII that I began to develop my first belief about Cybernations:

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People are people and terminal grudges are a bad idea. With very few exceptions, no one playing the game is any more good or evil than anyone else. We are all players of a game and common ground can usually be found if we try. Because of this, holding grudges for a long period of time is a bad idea.


FM3 served as MoFA for one one month term. He lost his reelection bid and was replaced by Epiphanus. Shortly after his loss, FMIII left GATO and joined the New Polar Order. This event, later followed by the move of another friend of mine, Brian Reimer, to the NPO, made a large impact on me. During my time in GATO, I had been indoctrinated with the belief that the NPO and its allies were evil. So the idea that two people who were my friends would join the Orders was very confusing to me. It did not, as the robots say, compute. After FM3 left office, GATO began to take a turn for the worse. The forums were punctuated with large numbers of high profile resignations. VX totally cut off relations with the NPO and gag orders were issued on the Cybernations forums and on embassies. The alliance was headed for war, which it got on the update of March 19. My opinion of GATO steadily got worse during Epiphanus's term as MoFA as I saw openness and fun give way to blind hatred and polarization. I had made up my mind to resign on the day GWIII broke out but stayed in the alliance to fight in the first wave. Once I was ZIed and bill locked, I resigned from GATO and rode out the rest of the war. A couple months later, I found out that the CB that the NPO had attacked GATO off of had, in fact, been accurate. GATO had been so caught up in their hatred of the NPO that they had spied on the NPO. As a result, they had ensured the destructions of themselves and their allies. This brings me to my second maxim about Cybernations:

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Spying is bad. No matter how the good the information is, it's just not worth it. Spying is one of the few acts universally frowned on in Cybernations and proven allegations of spying are a rock solid CB. Spying not only compromises your members but your allies, who are counting on you to keep their best interests in mind, as well. There is always a better way to get information and, most of the time, someone will just tell you if you ask.


After leaving GATO, I did the freelance-rogue thing for two weeks then founded ICON, the Independent Coalition of Nations, with Brian Reimer, RiverCityDude, and some other friends from GATO. ICON was very much an escape for me from the polarization that had characterized my GATO days. As the Minister of Communications of ICON, I was able to negotiate treaties with a variety of alliances from both sides of the Aegis-WUT divide. This was very freeing for me as I was able to cultivate contacts in alliances on both sides of the divide. Many of these contacts are still useful to me today. There have been numerous occasions where a situation has come up and I've known someone in the opposing alliance, either from my GATO or my ICON days. This brings me to maxim number three:

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You can never have too many friends. In diplomacy, it's as much who you know as what you know. Oftentimes, even the stickiest situation can be resolved quickly by talking to the right person. By reading the Big Boards and using IRC, as well as visiting forums, you can come to know who the "right people" are in any given alliance. By talking to these people, you can cultivate a relationship that helps that ensure that if you ever needed something from their alliance, they would be able to provide it. While you don't necessarily have to treaty every alliance whose government you're familiar with, it is a step I would recommend after a while. If you stay friendly on IRC with an alliance but continually reject treaty offers, the other alliance comes to feel like an unappreciated terminal girlfriend and may begin to resent you. There is a certain strength to a treaty on paper that is lacking in an IRC convo. Treaties should be used as validations of relationships that were already there.


Two things happened during my time in ICON that had an impact on my career in FA and they both, appropriately enough, involved the Unjust Path. The end of August and the beginning of September saw an increase in the amount of tech raids conducted against small alliances. These were best illustrated by the large scale tech raids of small alliances by OFS and GS with the backing of GOONS that were gloated about on the Big Boards. These raids were very frightening to me at the time because ICON was not much bigger than the alliances being attacked and had no military treaties, in fact, our charter banned them. To protect my members from this kind of a raid, I negotiated a protectorate agreement with NATO. This was a watershed moment in ICON's history as it was our first military treaty. We were no longer fully independent. The second event happened less than 10 days after the first, when ICON declared war on GOONS to assist NATO. This war was another watershed for us and represented the entrance of ICON into global politics. We actually did quite well in the war and messed up a handful of GOONS quite well. The fact that ICON had declared war on the side of NATO who was fighting on the side of the NPO against its former WUT treaty partner, GOONS illustrates my fourth maxim of foreign policy:

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Nothing is concrete.: Things change and empires crumble. After GW3, people were complaining that WUT had won the game and many people quit because the game it was "over." It was said that WUT was there to stay. And yet, four months later, it fell. The same complaints are made about the Continuum now, but they, too, will most likely be proven wrong in time. Time is fluid and nothing is concrete. What can seem absolute now can crumble tomorrow. The job of the diplomat is to see the crumbling and prepare accordingly.


In the time after entering the UJP War, ICON began to suffer from inactivity and infighting. These issues eventually led to my departure from ICON and arrival in NATO on November 30, 2007, and ICON's disbandment a week later. Once I joined NATO, I started to work in foreign policy and worked my way up the ladder. I ran for and was elected to Council one month after joining and served as Secretary of the Interior for three months before being elected to my current position. Working in foreign affairs for NATO was quite a bit different than working in it was in ICON. Instead of being a leader of a small alliance with no military treaties, I was working for a large alliance with even larger allies. Instead of relying solely on soft politics (schmoozing, capitulating a bit), I had to learn to use hard politics (threats, attacks) as well. Under the guidance of Anu Drake, I learned how to supplement my persuasion with threats in the case of a particularly reluctant opposing party. This brings me to the final maxim of Cybernations that I will be discussing today:

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Speak softly and carry a big stick. This phrase was made famous on Earth by Teddy Roosevelt and applies in Cybernations as well. It means that you should use persuasion when you can but not be afraid to use force and the threat of force (the "big stick") if it comes down to it. Most of the time, people can be persuaded to cooperate without threats, but sometimes, threatening to destroy them and their friends if they don't cooperate and then actually starting to do it greases the wheels quite a bit.


So if nothing is concrete and there's no such thing as good and evil, where does that leave a diplomat in Cybernations? What can you do to succeed? One: Always keep an open mind and always be looking for the neutral or the enemy that can become a friend. Two: Never take anything for granted. Don't assume that just because something is here today it will be here tomorrow. Keep your eyes open and see patterns before you are affected by them. And three: Take care of your allies. When I was in GATO, I always wondered why NPO was so popular with its allies when they were so "evil." Now that I'm in NATO, I know: they're really great allies and have your back. This is a far cry from GATO, who let its hatred of NPO get in the way and ended up dooming its allies when they entered the war to defend it. You don't always have to agree with things your allies do, but you should at least know that they won't do anything stupid to doom your alliance and they should be able to know the same. If you are able to do these things, you will be ready for a successful career in Cybernations.

I hope this was helpful and interesting. Are there any questions?
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SirWilliam92
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Wow, great post DK... i know i don't really hang around NATO much anymore... too distracted in CityEmpires (in which i recently became a leader of a country :) ), but many of these same policies apply to CE diplomacy as well so i found it a very good read with many, well illistrated points. Glad i rocked up to read it today :)
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Golden Boy
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Dk that was a great read.

You and I have very similar pasts.

Since at heart I am a small alliance guy, I have a few questions about ICON. You said military treaties were outlawed by your charter. What was the reasoning for this and did your members share the same fear of the GOON tech raiding menace?
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Bud


Quote:
 
[Speak softly and carry a big stick. This phrase was made famous on Earth by Teddy Roosevelt and applies in Cybernations as well. It means that you should use persuasion when you can but not be afraid to use force and the threat of force (the "big stick") if it comes down to it. Most of the time, people can be persuaded to cooperate without threats, but sometimes, threatening to destroy them and their friends if they don't cooperate and then actually starting to do it greases the wheels quite a bit./quote]

There is truth in this as I have seen it done masterfully. Not to the extent that of actuall attacks but a quick threat sometimes changes the perspective of the negotiations..
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Brian Reimer
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That one Polish guy

Golden Boy
Jun 10 2008, 11:01:01 AM
Dk that was a great read.

You and I have very similar pasts.

Since at heart I am a small alliance guy, I have a few questions about ICON. You said military treaties were outlawed by your charter. What was the reasoning for this and did your members share the same fear of the GOON tech raiding menace?
I can try and field this question on behalf of DK because our diplomatic theories are quite alike (and it was a mutual idea we had at the founding of ICON).

At the time of ICON's founding, I was a member of the NPO, DK was a member of GATO. We maintained a tight friendship throughout the war, and once peace was reached, we discussed the foundations of ICON. One of ICON's main goals was to reach beyond a polarized web (at that time, it was the Initiative and AEGIS).

ICON wanted to be a truly independent alliance. We wanted to be diplomatically loved, yet did not want to sign MDP-type treaties because we did not want to be forcefully bound to another alliance's policy. ICON wanted to survive on her own merits.

As for tech raiding. ICON eventually signed a protectorate treaty with NATO to protect against such happenings. A small part of the membership was weary of this, but soon, level heads prevailed and we maintained a strong protection relationship with NATO until the time of ICON's disbandment.
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Duncan King
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Golden Boy
Jun 10 2008, 11:01:01 AM
Dk that was a great read.

You and I have very similar pasts.

Since at heart I am a small alliance guy, I have a few questions about ICON. You said military treaties were outlawed by your charter. What was the reasoning for this and did your members share the same fear of the GOON tech raiding menace?
BR was accurate as to the ban on MDPs. We were both so sick of the Initiative-Aegis divide so barring MDPs a way to make sure that we would never be caught in that kind of a situation.

As for the GOONS tech raiders, we were always above five members and quickly rose above 10, which protected us from the majority of tech raiders. We did get a few incidents, but I was always able to get them to back off by asking nicely. When GOONS started backing Golden Sabres and OFS in their aggressive tech raiding, I did become concerned and it was at this point that we became a NATO protectorate. ICON was independent for five months before it was a protectorate.
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