Unibot III wrote:To that end, I think that a soft coup, not a coup d’état, is NPO’s strategy going forward. The goal isn’t to make a splash and create a crisis, the goal is the gradual restoration of a powerful sphere of influence. The latter requires a deft exercise of soft power, entryism, and cultural diffusion. The natural place to start is where the NPO was previously influential.
You know, the fact that you try to explain my own region to me is kind of laughable since I have access to things you never will from both past and present and am in the Senate personally. When it comes to information possessed, I have access to more of it than you do.
You trying to tell me my own thought process on TEP is probably the most absurd part of all of this. The Rahls were inevitable because there was nothing I could do in the situation at hand. TEP made it very clear when I originally objected before leaving to a foreign presence influencing the region that they were content with the state of things. My only interest in regards to TEP is in TEP's welfare because, in case you've forgotten, I was there for a very long time and was even Delegate. I still care a lot about TEP. I believe wholly in TEP's regional sovereignty and respect them. If NPO ever for any reason sought to bring harm to TEP and I had no ability to stop it, I would leave. Just because I've joined the Senate doesn't change my feelings for TEP and it certainly hasn't suddenly turned me into an imperialistic expansionist.
Had the objective before the Scardino coup been solely to stop the Rahls, the ideal time to step in would have been when everyone assumed they would legally soft coup through the Magisterium and Concordat reforms, not when they hard couped and burned out any semblance of legitimacy. It was widely expected that this was the plan across the game. If stopping the Rahls from being rivals in GCR control was our interest in the long run, the fact that they were likely to soft coup and there would be no way to counter them with legitimate means would have been the moment to step in. We did not, because there was no non-subversive way to interfere in TEP's business. As it so happened, TEP noticed it on their own and took steps to counter it themselves.
There is no reason now, when we're friendly with TEP through purely natural means and there is no foreign power controlling it, that we should try to rebuild it in our image even legally. In case you didn't notice, or forgot while revising history, the regions with which NPO interfered in the past were either openly enemies to the Order or neutral, not close friends. TEP and NPO have been on largely good terms since the time of Loop and Francos Spain, with a brief interlude during the NLO incident where Ramaeus and his Cabinet (which included me) cut ties over comments made by members of NPO and discourse denied to our officials by the NLO government.
So yes, go right ahead and peddle your narrative of the thought process of the Senate at the time. The fact that you are wrong - again - doesn't change.
cuz the parrot keeps pooping on the carpet. We can't remove Lib though because he's an NPO plant. 
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