I provide a point by-point rebuttal to many of the latest issues raised by V I Lenin, which I would encourage everyone following the debate to read. This time I have not covered all the points he has raised, in part because of the time that would take but mainly because it would involve gross repetition.
Please note that I am placing the mainstay of my arguments in a spoiler for this post only because of the fact several extremely long posts have already been made and that concerns have been expressed over them; this is not intended to indicate that I will deem this approach appropriate in the future.
The rebuttal can be found in the spoiler below:
V I Lenin wrote:You keep saying that you are engaged in military activity to extend your region's power, but how can you extend it?
Have you taken control over any regions, such as Alteran which have made your Empire bigger? Your colonies such as Munster are already yours and you don't need military force to keep them. TNI doesn't have any colonies it seems and neither does Albion. So you have no reason to keep military force.
In fact, this has already been addressed above. Nowhere was it specified that colonisation was the purpose of military activity. Yet I will discuss it again.
Military power can be used for direct coercive effect. For instance, in forcing concessions to the benefit of a region's foreign policy, as with the Slavya treaty, or in The True Rebirth, in both cases following an occupation where demands were made before it was lifted. Another beneficial element to coercive power is the potential to damage enemies through occupations - TNI or the UIAF collectively has invade a total of four FRA regions (TRR, Soviet Union, Fidelia, Slavia) since the start of 2012 and more before then. When the FRA is a geopolitical enemy to our region, then operations aimed at damaging it are to our region's advantage - of course, you can argue about the effectiveness of these individual cases, but the principle that the application of coercive military power can serve the purposes of the region performing that act is very clear. If a region as a whole is orientated towards expanding their power in such contexts, then there is no reason to assume that these are the exclusive concerns of an elite as you would have us believe.
In addition to the direct gains from such offensive activity, there are also indirect and defensive advantages to maintaining a strong and active military. First, if you have a military which is capable of pulling off major operations, then makes you an important strategic partner for other regions who want additional military resources to work with. This gives your region diplomatic leverage and to an extent explains the extenisve alliance network which the LKE, TNI and Albion have built up. Second, a strong and versatile military enables you to pull off strategic maneuvers in unconventional settings, such as the implications of the UIAF's piling tactics for the Osiris operation. Third, it ensures that when you do have interests that need defending, for instance the LKE's former colony of The United Kingdom of Britain, you have capable forces on hand ready to deploy. So there are strong indirect advantages to regional power and interests in maintaining a proactive, powerful military. As it allows you to plan which regions you deploy in and because it does not require you to maintain a constant reactive update force, provided you see no ethical concerns (which we do not), raiding is a superior tool for maintaining and demonstrating a strong and active military as is necessary to accrue these benefits on the scale that the UIAF regions undoubtedly do.
V I Lenin wrote:Moreover, you lose potential friends for your region for no material gain whatsoever for your region. The only people that benefit are the narrow politico-military elite that you are part of.
The LKE, TNI and Albion each have a wide range of very extensive and very powerful allies.
Allies who do not seek to impose constrains on our activities and with which we enjoy a great deal of meaningful cooperation.
A region does not materially benefit in strategic terms from being friends with everyone, in a way that limits its freedom to influence world events.
Either you have meaningful, strategic relationships with selected partners or you have no real relationships by failing to adopt a world agenda.
You may of course disagree with this view, but it is a perfectly viable view and the genuine motivation behind our foreign policies.
V I Lenin wrote:You only do so because you enjoy being destructive, and attacking others. Again, it is bullying. Bullying at both at domestic and international level. Attacking others too weak to oppose you, and keeping your populations at home distracted from their own political system.
The signature issue is about how you like to boost about your personal power. It isn't just about invasions, it is how you like being Emperor, a Duke, Sovereign blah blah blah. It is a question of ego, pure and simple.
And you make others suffer for it.
No, we imperialists gain no particular pleasure from the process of raiding. Indeed, most of us (including me) find military activity in itself boring.
We act in our interests and those of our allies. We do not consider the interests of others or regard ourselves as being under any obligation to do so.
I have the positions in my signature and I list them. That does not mean that they are linked to why we conduct military operations, which was your claim.
No, far from being distracted by military operations, nearly all citizens of TNI, the LKE and Albion are disinterested in them - they spend perhaps a couple of minutes a week moving a nation about, but that is about as much as it impacts on them. It takes a minuscule amount of their time.
V I Lenin wrote:I also do not need to tell the people of LKE what discuss or debate, but it is clear that you want them to think that they are part of some glorious military project - even though they do not benefit a jot from it, and you get all the personal glory. This is why your militarism is a classic Imperialist tactic - you seek to create enemies and then perpetuate your militaristic system in order to justify your special privileges and ranks.
On the contrary, the region's collective position benefits from military operations in the way that I have described.
It could be said that being the Emperor, I am honoured by the conduct of such operations, but a great many others have honorifics associated with them.
The idea that people in the LKE are distracted by military operations is a complete joke that could only be conceived by someone who has never visited the LKE. LKE citizens are completely detached from military affairs - they support them as a tool, but their personal focus is on domestic activities.
Quite why a region of self-selecting monarchists would need to be distracted by some grand conspiracy in any case I do not know.
V I Lenin wrote:You also keep bringing up your "war" with the FRA and UDL. A pointless struggle that you can never win...all that happens is that innocent regions are attacked so that you can claim mini-victories...it is rather pathetic and benefits your region in no sensible way. Only those at the top that get to pat eachother on the back benefit in the slightest.
The defence and assertion of the LKE's interests on the basis of justified grievances is in fact highly beneficial to our region as a whole.
If you let foreign powers oppose your freedom of action and your interests, without a response, you lose the capacity to assert yourself in the proces.
As a side note, the wars have given a LKE and TNI to a prime position of geopolitical importance which comparable regions do not enjoy.
Those 'at the top' do not pat each other on the back with medals and titles any more than other soldiers are likely to get.
V I Lenin wrote:While you may refuse to recognise moral or ethical dimensions, that doesn't mean that they do not exist. Ultimately you cannot contain morality and the rule of law in your home regions and then disregard it outside.
Simply because you recognise them does not mean they exist.
We certainly can uphold the rule of law, our own democratically decided laws and treaties, without imposing 'ethical' restrictions on our foreign policy.
V I Lenin wrote:Moreover, let every other region that you are allied or "friends" with read this clear - for the Imperialists, there is no morality. Your friendship or alliance is only a scrap of paper and they will not be bound to it, unless they believe that it is in their interest. Effectively, what is being admitted here is that the Imperialists will throw under a bus any region that does help the politico-military elites of these regions...they will not be hindered by anything. And they are quite happy for your region to suffer, as it means nothing to them.
A great message for the world to hear!
On the contrary, the fact that we do not recognise a moral right for other regions not to be invaded does not mean we will not observe our treaties.
Our treaties are not underpinned by any wider morality but by our own law and by our standing in the world, which it is in our interests to preserve.
The LKE, TNI and Albion have never once broken a treaty commitment; the LKE in a time period which is now approaching nine years of existence.
V I Lenin wrote:I will also not take any lectures about hypocrisy from someone who tries to encourage attacks on other Monarchies when they are in fact a Monarch...
The fact that the LKE and The Pacific are monarchies do not mean that they share any interests; indeed our mutual contempt has long been clear.
Moreover, I am not criticising The Pacific for being a monarchy, I have no objection to that - although in the fact The Pacific is much more autocratic than the LKE, a point I have continually made, in that the NPO Emperor has absolute power, so it is in a very different category to the LKE.
It is you who objects to monarchies in principle and condemns the LKE, TNI and Albion on these grounds.
Yet, having done that, you refuse to condemn The Pacific, because it is friendly with Lazarus.
That just goes to show that you are a hypocritical propagandist who is speaking here not out of moral belief but to advance defender-Francoist interests.
V I Lenin wrote:I am using oppression as the unjust application of authority and power, and it does not need to assume cruelty. In the same way that an oppressive weight does not mean a cruel weight...
Oppression is no more synonymous with unequal power than it is with cruelty: it implies that the measures in question have elements of both.
V I Lenin wrote:In terms of nothing being unjust about being governed by a political system they choose to join, I agree that choice doesn't make something unjust - the division of society into ranks that make some people more powerful and some people less equal than others with no rational basis is unjust and that is why I would say that you have an oppressive system.
The right to vote in elections does not equal justice. A oppressive regime can still allow people to vote.
Really all you are saying here is that a region must be unjust and therefore oppressive if it divides its society by having a monarch.
A monarch is a less democratic element, but all societies have a degree of division and people choosing to join a monarchy accept that condition.
Ultimately, what is more important is judging a totality of a region's features - free and fair elections, free speech, the rule of law - the LKE has them.
V I Lenin wrote:There is no necessary division with regards to a found or root administrator. Those accounts can be open to all citizens if necessary, I agree that would be impractical in some cases, but the point is that this "office" is just that, an office that can be subject to proper control by the people. The idea of making the Founder a King or Emperor or the root administrator a Lord, is ridiculous and oppressive. It just suits you to make up these nonsense statements to keep your own position.
The idea of opening up the founder or root administrator account to all citizens is always impractical - it would permanently destroy any regional security.
Tell you what, go and ask Lazarus to open the root administrator account on its forum to all its citizens and see what they say.
If you have a founder or root administrator, then you have someone who theoretically has absolute power, but delegates to democratic institutions.
Giving the founder or root administrator a monarchical title does not change that aspect of the relationship between them and the region, no.
So it is exactly the same thing as a monarch, except that a monarch's relationship with wider society is regulated and defined to a greater extent.
Thus, there is always the divide you seek to suggest exists with monarchs - the very nature of game and forum mechanics creates it.
V I Lenin wrote:I completely agree with the fact that not all regions should be tolerated, and they should not be tolerated because they are immoral and beyond the Pale - as you see (nice to see that you admit to having morality in Nationstates gameplay after all ). You were the one that tried to bring up diversity as a reason to keep Monarchy, and I am glad that you have backed down.
This is real life morality - representations of Nazism, fascism and slavery are unacceptable and offensive.
On the other hand, raiding a region in an online game does not invoke such real life moral principles.
Our regions have always fought to uphold the values of tolerance and opposition to forms of hatred in NationStates.
V I Lenin wrote:You would not allow arms to put down by LKE because then they would not need to give so much power to a narrow politico-military elite.
There have been several periods where our military has been less active in our history. These have had no effect on support for the monarchy.
We are not going to change the LKE's policy, which we believe to be in its foreign policy interests, to prove a point with you.
V I Lenin wrote:You manipulate elections by existing,
By transmitting brainwaves into the minds of voters instructing them how to vote presumably then?
Or are the LKE's citizens meant to be cowering in fear of my wrath if they choose the wrong candidate?
I never make my political preferences to known to anyone in the LKE; usually I have no preferences as to the main candidates of any strength.
This really is fanciful.
V I Lenin wrote:Your pathetic attempts to avoid defeat are quite outstanding. Ultimately, you were kicked out of a region that you were occupying. The reasons for the defeat may have been out of your control, and they were, which is why the article is useful in highlighting the pointless destructive nature of your activity, but you were defeated and thwarted from your original objectives nonetheless.
To use a sport's analogy again, you are now trying to say "We were the better team, we didn't lose the match though if you ignore the fact that the other team scored more points than us..."
We obtained our objectives by invading the region and occupying it for seven days. We did not intend at any point to occupy it permanently.
A sport's team can affect the outcome of the match by the quality of their play. We can do nothing, whatever our skill or resources, to affect the outcome of a founder revival. Thus, there was no competition in Alteran Empire and without a competition there can be no defeat.
Having written that rebuttal, I would like to re-emphasize the following:
1. V I Lenin's suggestion that the LKE, TNI and Albion are on a brink of a socialist revolution because of events in Lazarus is bizarre and unfounded.
2. The attempt to apply a contorted Marxism to these regions without any genuine knowledge of their internal features leads to nonsense like that.
3. LKE, TNI and Albion citizens are not particularly interested in military activity - it takes a couple of minutes a week of their time at most. It's no distraction whatsoever. On the other hand, our citizens are constantly engaged with domestic activities and domestic politics, including political reforms.
4. Being a monarchy does not make a region inherently oppressive simply because monarchy is a single undemocratic element in a system. Moreover, the argument that the monarch can switch democracy on and off as is convenient for them applies to all founders and root administrators potentially - what matters is the law of the region and whether monarchs/founders choose to observe that law. These rules are observed within the LKE, TNI and Albion.
5. Those who want to understand the actual constitutional history of the LKE, rather than the Gazette's claims of oppression, can refer to HEM's post above.
