NationStates Jolt Archive

There was once a small hive of insects, oh so very small
Though friendly and similar, they weren't united, not at all
Then came a threat from the West, an army oh so grand
These oil slicked Scarabs, for Allah they claimed insect land
They slaughtered our poor green little buggers
And robbed their precious lives, these muggers
Thus the insects did join and did confer
And a mighty solution they did infer
United as one, all together we must stand
And we shall repel them from our land
So thus they began their grand experiment,
And lo and behold, to the world's amazement
They succeeded and they prevailed
A new Revolution the world hailed
Thousands upon thousands joined as one
The Combine was born, the Combine had won
Stow away your Red Banners and Crosses,
Hide your False Rebels and Capitalist Bosses
True Revolution has begun,
The Black Flag has won!

__________________________________________________

The green glow that seemed to permeate so much of the Combine was, if it was even possible, even more prevalent here; green digital lines, green computer screens, even green little coffee mugs made purely for the purpose of fulfilling that irritating Combine conformist instinct.

Why couldn't we have been a gay Combine? At least that way we'd have some sense of interior decorating, groused the Energy Minister.

She sat in the midst of an entirely black room, lit by the emerald grow of a million installations. In front of her stood a large, makeshift tower, forged out of what appeared to be several chess boards floating above each other. Each of these boards was coated completely in black, and was silhouetted by those ubiquitous lines of emerald. Upon the boards themselves sat identical arrays of glowing, green little insects, vaguely resembling praying mantis' cast in crystal. The pieces were constantly shifting, forging unstable alliances, massing in large groups, and scattering into a million shards; their movement was a blur for the untrained eye. Around the column itself sat a clustered mass of Asiatic men and women clad in identical, Western style black suits and green ties: Armandian bureaucrats. These were no ordinary Armandian bureaucrats, however; they were members of the highest branch of Combine government, the National Symposium. The Symposium, which had a constantly shifting membership---with the odd exception of the Energy Minister---in order to maintain its democratic quality, was assembled before this annoyingly green contraption in order…

….to play a game.

Yes, a game; but this was no ordinary game, oh no!

'tis the game of revolutionaries and rebels, conformists and proletarians!

Fang.

Despite its high tech set up, the game was actually quite old, as the name suggests. Fang had come a long way from its humble village origins; digital displays had replaced wooden, altered chessboards, polycarbonate fibers had replaced strings, and holographic icons had replaced actual fangs. However, the rules and aim of the game remained much the same; these Armandians would engage in the same intellectual challenge their own ancestors had faced, thousands of years ago.

The rules were fairly convoluted, but a brief summary is all most outside observers want or need. The game can be summarized thus: every individual player begins with a set of a few pieces on the board, and is utterly alone, with all other players labeled as 'hostile'. The objective is to eliminate all 'hostile' units. However, it soon becomes evident that, no matter how brilliant your strategy is, you cannot win the game on your own.

This is where the fun begins. In order to win, individual players must form alliances. However, they can only ally once per turn, and their access to information about the structure of alliances is limited. Not only that, but alliances can also be broken at any time, leading to a game where alliances constantly shift, and a skilled player must learn to think several steps ahead in an almost insanely complicated scenario. The optimal strategy is predict your opponents movements in such a way as to form an alliance of perfectly positioned players---since an alliance cannot consist of more than 1/3 of the players---without actually knowing who is allied with whom. In this way, the game manages to teach the seemingly contradictory qualities of teamwork and cunning.

In other words, it is the essential Combine game, and one that Armandians play almost constantly, although many of those they play with don't realize they're taking part.

"Alright," barked the stern faced Minister, "today we play a new game. The game is international diplomacy."

"The players are Depkazia, the INU, NATO, the Holy League, the ashes of Elias, the Sphere, and of course, Beth Gellert."

"The boards are Afghanistan, the Suez, and Western Sahara."

"The rules are unknown, the results even more so, and only one thing is certain: in this game, there are the players…and there are the played. The Combine most certainly doesn't fall into the latter. So, without further delay," she smiled fiercely, as her thoughts turned to the vast array of diplomats outside her door.

"…let the games begin."
____________________________________

OOC: Aaaaannnnd I'm back, bitches. This is basically a sort of gathering for all the diplomatic issues that arose while I was gone. So if you have anything to discuss with the Combine, do it here.

Sithin's positions on various world events are likely already known to the Combine, through the mutual link of the Sphere.

On the matter of Afghanistan, early Strainist reservations have all-but evaporated... while there is still concern that Chingiz may twist matters there to his favour, Jakarta has already begun girding itself for an ideological clash with the Central Asian 'caliph'. As home to the world's largest concentration of Muslims, Sujava intends to play a prominent role in the future of the Ummah, spreading the brotherhood of Islamic Socialism further across the globe. Already it proves the heresy of one false Caliph through its actions in Indonesia... if Chingiz were to be bloodied close to home and a muslim socialist state forged amongst the Afghans, who further afield would listen to his ravings?

For these very reasons, Spyr stands firmly behind Combine support of the Western Sahara, Polisario being a brother in both Faith and progressive ideals. Token aid, including a portable RADAR site and its technicians, had been prepared for deployment to the Maghreb, but the entire effort had ground to a halt when Spanish troops had begin an assault on SADR population centres... the Strainists will follow the Combine's lead here, but there is a push to move quickly and expand support, perhaps even to the (equally Islamic but far less socialist) government of Mauritania, so that a proper foothold of Sphere-aligned forces might emerge in North Africa, as everything above was in League hands and almost everything below would either be in similar straits or Soviet grip once the smoke of campaigns there had cleared.

The Suez is a much more complex matter. If it comes to war... Sithin has always thought there would be a breaking point between the forces of revolution and the reactionaries, but they had not expected it to come at this particular moment. To the Lyongese, the choice is obvious... a war must be decisive. Whatever Spyr's disagreements with the Soviets, they are united by a common bond so long as greater threats exist, and the fact of the matter is that Geletian bulk currently keeps counter-revolutionary forces in check... if they fight alone and lose, then it will not be long before Africa is carved entirely back into European colonies and the Indian Ocean is opened to all manner of hostile forces, while there will still remain too many angry Gauls in India to effect an ideological shift. On the other hand, if they fight alone and win, there ends the last hope of the Sphere for displacing the Soviets as leader in the eyes of the world's revolutionary movements. So, the Sphere must stand with the Soviets on the Suez issue.

That is not to say that the Strainists WANT to fight this particular war at this particular time... it is hoped that a peaceful conclusion can be reached instead, and united the forces of Sphere and Indians far outclass potential opposition. But just what such a conclusion might entail is less certain.
The upper echelons of the Strainist Party would be happy with the restoration of the former status quo... let the Egyptians run their own canal, or at least put someone from Mumbai on the board, and return to the Elian scheme of tonnage payments. Trade can then proceed apace, and the way can be kept open for Jakarta to further its efforts to win favour with the regime in Tripoli.
Popular support for such a course is, unfortunately, not particularly high in the Strainist world, for the simple reason that the matter involves a shipping passage, something with which peoples in both People's Republics are familiar. The Lyongese accepted the near-constant passage of USSR and USQ navies, and associated merchant ships, through the Strait of Japan because they were taught that certain routes are too vital to be held by any single entity... today, you do not see Spyr deny passage to Tsaris merchants plying the Japan Strait, nor demand its right to equal demarcation of the Ulleung passage, which would deny the USQ the deepwater channel to its base at Hamhung.
In Sujava, the issue comes down to Malacca, that strait and an attempt to control it having been in large part responsible for the fall of the regime in Singapore. Jakarta has always affirmed the right of all ships to pass unhindered through the Malacca Strait and South China Sea, as has Kuala Lumpur, under the principle that the world's major passages are freed from hindrance. The Suez and Panama number amongst these passages, and their status has always remained an annoyance... Sithin and Jakarta would both like to see the formulation of a proper treaty governing just what passages are held inviolable, and while a document opening channels to free use would doubtless be cheered loudest amongst the general populace, the potential revenues of a tax at Malacca or Ulleung is sure to set Party bureaucrats salivating.

There also remain concerns over Russia and the rest of the League, and hopes that the combined presence of the Sphere nearby will force Wingert to think twice about massive deployments abroad or into Europe. Having had its northern regions colonized by the last line of Tsars, Lyong is not eager to see Moscow's power grow freely again.

OOC: Is the Sphere fully legitimized and such? Also, if Dra-Pol is no longer playing as Dra-Pol, might I be allowed to take the Beth Gellert route and assume, through previous links and connections, that they're a quasi-client state until a new player moves in?

IC:

The bonds between the Combine and Spyr, albeit new, are already fairly strong, as indicated by their mutual agreement on various issues. The Combine's notorious Diplomatic Corps, over several glasses of the even more notorious green Armandian wine, thus paints for the Spyrians a grand, unified vision of an all out rollback of Islamic fundamentalism.

"What we must fight is the war of the future. While the Indians wage war against the Holy League, the religious feudalists of the present, we must nip the bud of the religious feudalists of the future. If we look closely at the rising Islamofascist currents of today, we see eery parallels to the rise of the Christofascists of the past. Allah's Spear is today's version of Wingert's rebels, Indonesian Kalla is today's Archduke of Tulgary, and the Depkazian Khaganate is today's Louis XX. We must stop them now, so that we don't face yet another League in the future, one who proclaims allegiance to Allah rather than Christ. We waited for too long with the League, and we cannot make that same mistake again."

"Thus we propose an all out, three pronged offensive in the name of Islamic Socialism. The first prong is Indonesia," they said, their fingers tracing the island chain on a map,"where Spyrian soldiers have already broken the back of Kalla. If you need any sort of assistance, financial or military, we stand at ready. The second prong is Afghanistan. The Khaganate has approached us with a compromise deal, however, it excludes the capital of Kabul and a key mineral rich province above it. We don't have the will nor the military capacity to engage in long term nation building in Depkazia---we're expanding our military rapidly, but with such diverse commitments we can't manage it at the time. We hope to form a coalition with you and the INU in order to re-establish the DRA's control over all of Afghanistan. We realize that your manpower commitment to invading Indonesia is extensive, but a token force of Sujavans would put a nice, Muslim face on the entire operation. The third, and perhaps most important, prong, is in the Western Sahara. Armand is already at a state of war with Morocco, and has dispatched an invasion fleet that should be crossing the southern tip of Africa as we speak. It remains to be seen whether the Imperialists will attempt to block us; if they do, we shall link up with our Indian brothers and enter the grand war."

"Moving onto a grander issue...It seems that the constant conflict over international crossings would give Putin's old proposal for a United Nations more validity...Perhaps its because both Putin's and Moerike's proposals were so grand that they failed. If we instead propose a modest security group dedicated to the protection of international waterways, we may yet see it come to life."

[OOC: My impression has been that the Sphere exists in substance, at least, though formal issues have yet to be resolved... there was a thread for it somewhere a while ago. Probably without a treaty of some sort it remains an informal set of connections which the international community is aware of but whose exact nature has yet to be set.

As for Dra-pol... I'm still holding out hope that he'll find new inspiration, though that will probably be the death of Spyr... if there is one rule for the CPRD it is that the nature of the Choson cannot be escaped. As for client state, one would think if DaKhiem were taking direction from anywhere, it'd be the place which gave their current government room and board for the past several years, no? ;) ]

[OOC: Ah, yes, I remember it now, with its amusing graphics. I'll dig it up and reply, then.

Heh. I guess so. Well, at least a Sphere-client state, then. It's just that I hate having a crucial third of our alliance become null for OOC reasons as soon as it starts. If there were IC reasons, I'd be fine, but...]