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by The Palmetto » Sun Mar 10, 2019 8:47 pm
Alaroma wrote:Tagging the Federation of American Carribian States, or FACS
"That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
by Auchterland » Sun Mar 10, 2019 9:03 pm
by Costa Fierro » Sun Mar 10, 2019 10:52 pm
by Costa Fierro » Mon Mar 11, 2019 12:10 am
by Reverend Norv » Mon Mar 11, 2019 4:49 am
by Auchterland » Mon Mar 11, 2019 9:20 am
Auchterland wrote:I'm considering somewhere in SE Asia, but I think I'll wait to see what the Indochina player has planned first. For now, it's a tag.
by Granluras » Mon Mar 11, 2019 12:38 pm
Nationstates Name - Granluras
Nation Name - Rhodesia
Roleplay example link - viewtopic.php?p=35109818#p35109818
Capital - Salisbury
Type of Government - Authoritarian parliamentary republic
Head of State(s) - Zayden Bezuidenhout
Image of Leader -
Party in Power - Rhodesian Front
Executive Title - President
Demographics -Flag -
- Ethnic: 91.3% Shona; 7.2% White; 1.5% Asiatic/other Colored
- Religious: 86.1% Christian; 5.5% Agnostic; 3.7% Traditional Religion; 2.1% Islamic; 2.4% other
National Anthem - https://youtu.be/8xxKsjU5Q3A
Public Goals - Strengthen economy; open up country back to the international market; have either party (Federalists, Integralists, or Nationalists) consolidate power; quell Black insurgency and radicalism; improve relations with Britain
Private Goals - Rewrite the Constitution; reform the voting system (a goal among some Nationalists and Federalists); try to make the Zambezi a maritime trade route; find a great power to align with for benefits; to expand its general lack of foreign influence
Total military size - 312,484 servicemen
Breakdown of ground sector - 576 armored vehicles; 102 artillery pieces; 216 AA guns
Breakdown of naval sector - 22 patrol boats
Breakdown of airforce sector - 53 attack aircraft; 22 cargo/transport aircraft; 13 attack helicopters
Major foreign military suppliers [IF APPLICABLE]- America, Brazil, Germany, USSR
Extra military information - Due to the fact Rhodesia only has Lake Kariba as its main body of water, it’s naval force is very small, only made up of twenty-two foreign-made patrol boats that watch over the reservoir.
Currency - Rhodesian pound ($1/£7)
Major import/export partners - Germany, Brazil, USSR, America, South Africa
Major Domestic Issues - Ethnic tensions rising from Shona majority and Apartheid politics; lack of economic growth and rise in stagflation; destabilizing parliamentary coalition; new, liberal generation of politics threatening old conservative order; decline in fertile agriculture
Major Foreign Issues - Stagnate relations with the CoN; international controversy over Apartheid policies; communism probably; being landlocked is kinda bad
by Reverend Norv » Mon Mar 11, 2019 1:24 pm
Nationstates Name: Norv
Nation Name: Union of American States
Roleplay example link: See my sig.Capital: New York City
Type of Government: Federal (though increasingly centralized) Constitutional Presidential Republic
Head of State: President Henry Rockefeller
Party in Power: Republican Party. The Republicans and the Socialists have been the two main parties of the UAS since 1906. The Republicans have historically been the party of laissez-faire capitalism, free trade, civil rights, aggressive confrontation with the USA, and cooperation with Britain. The Socialists have historically been the party of economic regulation, protectionism, social conservatism, cautious coexistence with the USA, and independence from Britain. Both parties are fully committed to the Union's political consensus around defensive democracy, which sees the UAS as the last bastion of mixed-market liberal democracy on a continent overrun by economic and political authoritarianism.
Executive Title: President of the Union; sometimes introduced abroad as "President of the American Union"
Demographics: The UAS has a population of just over 91 million, and decades of welcoming immigration policies have left it fairly diverse: about ten percent of the population is foreign-born. Fifteen percent of Yankees are black; three percent are Asian, mostly first-generation and second-generation immigrants; just four percent are Hispanic/Latino, a product of the country's distance from the USA's southwest. The remainder are generally white, including a number of immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe. The Catholic Church and mainline Protestant churches each represent about forty percent of the population, while Evangelical churches come a distant third. Interestingly, New York City is both the world's most diverse city, and the city with the largest Jewish population on Earth.
Flag: The Pine Tree Flag, also called the "Appeal to Heaven Flag," which was used by the first northern militia units during the Civil War.
National Anthem: The Battle Hymn of the Republic
Public Goals: The UAS' public policy, regardless of which party may be in power, is shaped by three fundamental doctrines.Private Goals: The UAS is a member of the Commonwealth, but has a larger population and a larger economy than Britain. It is therefore privately committed to making the Commonwealth a more multipolar, multicultural democratic alliance - open to membership by democratic but non-Anglophone states - and an effective counterweight to global authoritarianism. This is a longstanding, private, but well-known Union goal. The Rockefeller administration is also committed to free trade, and works behind the scenes to lower tariff barriers around the world.
- The Stevens Doctrine: Dating to 1885, this doctrine identifies the preservation of constitutional democracy in the New World as the foremost priority of the Union government. It expresses itself in a principled defense of human rights and free elections, an openness to international cooperation and immigration, and a consistent opposition to integralism and communism, both abroad and at home. It justifies the Union's heavy and longstanding investment both in its armed forces and in foreign aid; it explains the Union's opposition to European colonialism; and it underlines the vision of "defensive democracy" that supports relative political consensus at home.
- The Debs Doctrine: Dating to 1915, this doctrine asserts that a populist slide toward authoritarianism - either left-wing or right-wing - can only be averted by the preservation of a high level of social security and mobility. It justifies the Union's investment in public pensions, higher education, and health care, and it represents the organizing principle of the UAS' domestic policy.
- The Kennedy Corollary: Dating to 1964, this doctrine recognizes that in a world of nuclear-armed authoritarian states, including its southern neighbor, the UAS lives under existential threat and cannot afford to lose a single war. It is therefore justified in using any diplomatic, economic, or covert means to protect its independence, and must organize its industry and society for military preparedness to confront a numerically superior opponent.
Total military size: 567,000 active-duty personnel, the bulk in the Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. An additional 750,000 citizen-soldiers belong to ready-reserve units, known as Minuteman Divisions, which can be activated with all their equipment within twenty-four hours. These divisions constitute the bulk of the Union Army, and service in them is required for any able-bodied citizen living within 250 miles of the southern border. Another 900,000 citizen-soldiers are identified in the Individual Ready Reserve, meaning that they are active-duty veterans who can be activated for service immediately in case of emergencies, usually as replacements for casualties.Major foreign military suppliers: None. The UAS possesses a titanic military-industrial complex for a country of its size, and is a substantial net exporter of arms.
- Breakdown of ground sector: The Union Army is the largest of the armed forces, but only because its primary fighting force - the Minuteman Divisions - are ready-reserve forces rather than active-duty units. These divisions are raised from specific cities and regions near the USA border, have monthly drill and training, and are capable of being activated and deployed into combat in their assigned sectors - with helicopters, tanks, and all - in twenty-four hours or less. They are a purely defensive force, not trained or equipped for expeditionary warfare, but their very high cohesion and morale, intimate knowledge of local terrain, and commitment to defending their homes makes them a formidable foe. Their equipment is slightly dated, but exceedingly abundant: the Minuteman Divisions field more than fifteen thousand tanks, for example. The rest of the Union Army is primarily composed of professional officers and administrators who coordinate the Minuteman Divisions in combat, military engineers who maintain the extensive fortifications along the USA border, technical specialists like doctors and lawyers, and the Training Command - which is responsible for the training of new Minutemen and for the constant refresher-training of currently serving reservists.
The Union Marine Corps, on the other hand, is the Union's primary expeditionary unit. With almost 200,000 active-duty (and legendarily tough) professionals, and
with substantially higher standards of training and equipment than the Army, it is one of the world's premier amphibious forces. The Marines were the Union's primary fighting force during the Second World War, and saw fierce combat in Southeast Asia. In the decades since, they have been on the frontlines of brushfire wars in Africa against communist and integralist rebels in former Anglo-German colonies. The Marines are organized in relatively small expeditionary brigades, with integrated aircraft, logistics, and artillery. They are ill-suited for large-front operations far from the sea, but have proved extremely effective at lightning strikes in littoral areas, and in training and advising Union allies like Argentina and Chile. The Marine Corps is also the parent branch for most of the Union's Special Operations Command, an unusually large force of covert-warfare specialists who operate primarily out of uniform, deep behind enemy lines, and - increasingly - in the absence of any declared war.- Breakdown of naval sector: The Union Navy is the best-funded and most prestigious arm of the military. The pride of the Union's East Coast industrial heartland, and the main product of the Union's massive military-industrial complex, it is a globally-deployable blue-water force that compares favorably with the navies of much larger nations. Since the early 1970s, it has been based around carrier battlegroups using the indigenous - and closely guarded - AEGIS combat system, a networked computer system that uses the radars of the entire battlegroup to track and engage threats above, at, and below the waterline. Its focus on cutting-edge technology and information-centric warfare has made each of the Navy's five battlegroups a disproportionate threat to larger, less advanced fleets. The Navy also sails four amphibious assault ships, which are formally seconded to the Marines to support their deployments, and it flies close to half of the total aircraft used by the Union Armed Forces - primarily very modern F/A-18 Hornet fighters. It is with the Navy, in short, that the Union has made its bid to be considered a newcomer to the first rank of military powers.
Breakdown of airforce sector: The Union Air Force is an idiosyncratic branch. Fairly small, and inferior in prestige to the Navy Air Arm, it has only one real responsibility: maintaining air superiority and providing battlefield support over the territory of the Union itself. To this end, it flies only a few aircraft: mostly F-15 air superiority fighters and A-10 attack aircraft, since the Army provides most of its own utility and attack helicopters. It has no long-range or strategic bombing capabilities. Despite this, the Air Force is possessed of a notable quiet professionalism, and its personnel spend more hours in training than any other Union military personnel. They regularly win the Commonwealth's international mock-dogfighting competitions.
Extra military information: As required by the Kennedy Corollary, almost all Union citizens have had some amount of military training, and most Union manufacturers produce at least one product intended for military use. The USA border is heavily fortified, anti-aircraft batteries are located in most major cities, and entire states undergo annual drills in preparation for possible invasion. The Union is also known to have a nuclear-weapons program underway somewhere in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Finally, it has a very well-respected foreign intelligence service - the CIS - that is known for its commitment to covert action as well as intelligence-gathering: its involvement is suspected in scandals, instability, coups, and assassinations in integralist and communist nations around the globe. The CIS' domestic equivalent is the OPC, or Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which is primarily responsible for enforcing the Union's ban on extremist and anti-democratic parties and movements.
Currency: The American Union Dollar. As a longstanding Socialist Party policy, the Union dollar is deliberately kept at about $0.75 of a US dollar, as an indirect subsidy for Union exports to the south. This is unpopular for various reasons with the Republicans, but they have not mustered the political muscle to change it.
Major import/export partners: The Union's largest trading partners are the USA and Canada: it imports most of its oil and gas from the latter, and exports most of its high-tech products to the former. It is also a substantial exporter of food to Britain, France, Germany, and China, and a substantial importer of raw materials - especially the rare earth elements necessary for its advanced manufacturing - from Africa's new democracies and remaining European colonies.
Major Domestic Issues: The Union's basic bipartisan consensus - that it is the frontline of mixed-market liberal democracy, and that its first priority must be to prevent authoritarian invasion or subversion - remains robust and sound. As a result, the Union's main political issues are those that have troubled it for decades: the proper balance of economic regulation and free-market innovation, the dispute over free trade treaties versus protectionist tariffs, the question of how openly to confront the USA on human rights issues and how closely to allow the two Americas' economies to be linked. All of these can produce some acrimony, especially since the Union's industrial economy - while still rapidly growing - is evolving under global market pressures to prioritize high-tech military products and export goods, which has caused real disruption to legacy industries like steel and coal. But by global standards, Yankee politics remain civil and moderate, kept that way by a respected press, an independent judiciary, and fairly rigorous campaign-finance regulations.
Major Foreign Issues: The UAS sees itself as liberal democracy's front line, a state under immense existential threat. It dreads the possibility, remote as it may be, of open war with the USA. It is committed to defending democracies under threat, and has used economic leverage, covert action, military trainers and advisers, and the threat of open intervention to prop up liberal regimes in Argentina, Chile, Southeast Asia, and large areas of Africa. It is working steadily to turn the Commonwealth from a collection of former British colonies into a muscular alliance of all the world's democracies to stem the tide of tyranny. It is a major source of funding and diplomatic support for human rights groups around the globe. Ultimately, the Union sees the world in strongly ideological, occasionally Manichean terms; it considers itself as a major player in a world-historical war between liberty and slavery. Even as it negotiates its tense, mutually dependent relationship with the USA, that attitude remains at the heart of the Union's foreign policy.
History:The Union of American States was born in outrage. Unable to bear the disappointment of John Breckinridge's election, New England abolitionists concluded that the American experiment had been tainted beyond repair by the country's covenant with slavery. Fired with Protestant zeal, and citing the precedent of the American Revolution and the English Civil War, they rebelled in order to create a more godly and free society. Seeing their economic interest with Yankee capital instead of Southern agriculture, the mid-Atlantic states soon joined in the revolt. When Breckinridge demanded that they provide troops to crush the uprising, the Midwestern states responded by seceding as well.
The conflict was long and bloody. The new Union had most of America's heavy industry and half of its population, but little of its military expertise, since the regular Army remained largely loyal to Washington. For the first year of the war, abolitionist militias known as the Minutemen managed to hold the line against federal troops across southern Pennsylvania, in a series of remarkable campaigns led by an Ohioan named Ulysses Grant. At sea, the Union's industrial advantage and New England's seafaring traditions proved initially decisive, imposing a crippling blockade. Ultimately, the intervention of British ships and troops to end the conflict broke the Union's naval dominance, shattered its stubborn defense of the Ohio River Valley, forced it to withdraw from the West, and ultimately obliged it to sign the Treaty of Ottawa in 1870.
The treaty, despite recognizing the Union's independence, required such dramatic territorial concessions that many Yankees saw it as a national humiliation. The subsequent decade saw the Union plunged into chaos. Revanchist militias fought a guerrilla war in southern Indiana and Illinois; racist mobs attacked black refugees from the South in New York and Philadelphia; even abolitionist Protestants called for the eviction of Catholic Irish immigrants. Two constitutional conventions dissolved in chaos. Remarkably, throughout, the economy continued to grow: the South's economic dysfunction meant that foreign investment continued to pour into the factories and mills and coalfields of the Union, laying the foundations for more than a century of industrial power.
Ultimately, the ratification of a compromise constitution at the Fourth Philadelphia Convention - which restored much of the federalism that had initially been abandoned in the North, while shifting substantial power to the president in order to avoid the corrupt gridlock that the slave states had caused in Washington - marked the beginning of the chaos' end. The militia units along the border were federalized and brought to heel, becoming the nucleus of the later Minutemen Divisions. The Republican Party made its peace with the industrial magnates who were increasingly dominant in the Union's economy, and invested heavily in infrastructure, bringing down production and shipping costs with state-operated railroads and canals. The Black Spring of 1885 threw the Union into a panic, but it also marked the beginning of a new national identity: Yankees came to believe that they were the last defenders of freedom in the New World, the plucky underdog manning the barricades against a rising world power bent on economic domination and political tyranny. By the 1890s, the Union Marines were beginning the first of their brushfire interventions in the Caribbean and Latin America, inaugurating a century-long proxy war against the integralists to the south - with the political future of the Western Hemisphere in the balance.
The problem with this whole picture, it soon became clear, was that the Union was seriously corrupt, and becoming more so. The Republican Party held office uninterruptedly from 1881 to 1906, by which time most of its congressmen were hand-picked by men like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. Despairing of the democratic system, and subjected to increasingly unbearable conditions, the Union's industrial workers - who were increasingly African-Americans and European immigrants - turned to more and more radical trade unionism, led by the underground Socialist Party. In 1906, tensions came to a head in a general strike that shut down much of the urban East Coast. After three weeks, the refusal of the Minutemen to intervene, and a disastrous attempt to use the Marines to break the lockout, the government was forced to admit defeat. It legalized the Socialist Party, which swept into office in the next elections, passed a raft of worker protections, and held power for the next twenty years. Those decades fundamentally transformed Union politics, turning health care and education and retirement into public benefits instead of private industries. But under the leadership of Eugene Debs, of Indiana, the Socialists declined to make major revisions to the Union constitution. In fact, with an eye on Stalin's rise in the Soviet Union, the Socialists presented their reforms not as a threat to liberal democracy, but as the best way to protect it from the danger of popular misery and unrest.
As a result, the 1924 elections saw the Republicans returned to power; from that point on, neither party would again control the government for more than six years at a time. The aggressive expansionism of the USA and the Japanese provoked a renewed anxiety in the Union, which led to three fateful decisions. First was a bipartisan agreement to provide external security and internal employment by militarizing the Union economy, primarily through a massive naval buildup. These lucrative contracts would provide the basis for the military-industrial complex that has dominated the Union's economic life ever since. Second, in order to balance the population advantage of the USA, the Republicans authorized the world's highest levels of legal immigration and abolished all racial quotas: producing a massive influx of people from Europe, Africa, Latin America, and East Asia. Finally, in order to gain some measure of diplomatic security, the Union petitioned to join the Commonwealth, ensuring that in any future war Britain and Canada would be able to support it by sea and land, respectively.
Ultimately, the Second World War proved to be a proxy conflict with the USA instead of an open one. The Socialists were deeply reluctant to enter a war that seemed to pit British colonial interests against Japanese authoritarianism, but Republican President Franklin Roosevelt ultimately negotiated a grand bargain whereby the Union would declare war on Japan, if the European Allies would agree not to reimpose colonial rule in the liberated territories. That diplomatic masterstroke simultaneously brought the powerful Union Navy and Marine Corps into the war, positioned the Union as the champion of colonial peoples worldwide, and established the Union as a major global player. Over the next two years, the Union Marines proved invaluable both in lightning operations to secure strategic ports, and in training Southeast Asian rebels to wage guerrilla war against Japan; meanwhile, after two early defeats, the Union Navy developed the germ of a revolutionary theory of "full-spectrum defense" - which would find realization decades later in the AEGIS system.
The four decades since 1947 have, by and large, been a golden age for the Union. The steady alternation in power of the Republicans and the Socialists has prevented any dramatic policy changes, but encouraged high levels of immigration and investment, which in turn have contributed to consistent economic growth through the expansion of the interlinked high-tech consumer-goods industry and the arms industry. Abroad, the CIS, Navy, and Marines have worked together to provide security for Latin America's few remaining democracies, for Southeast Asia's post-colonial states, and for the new democracies of Africa: mostly former colonies of Britain and Germany. As a result, the Yankee public has become accustomed to a certain consistent, low level of foreign warfare: "better to fight the integralists in Angola than in Pittsburgh," admitted former Socialist President William E. Rodriguez.
Only three major crises interrupted the calm. The first was a four-year war in Burma against USSR-backed communist rebels, which ultimately escalated to suck in more than a hundred thousand Marines - but which ultimately ended in a moderately successful, negotiated settlement in 1970. The second was an abrupt economic crash in 1974, caused by a stock market bubble and triggered by a fall in the price of Canadian oil; it was the recovery from that crisis that provoked the Union's shift away from legacy industries like steel and toward new manufacturing like electronics, causing mild but prolonged economic dislocation in much of the Midwest. Finally, in 1982, a firefight between Union and USA military advisers on the Chilean-Peruvian border escalated to the point that the Minutemen Divisions were activated and the entire Air Force was scrambled, before both governments walked back from the brink; it was after that crisis that the UAS is believed to have begun its secret nuclear program.
Nevertheless, 1990 finds the UAS as one of the world's more successful nations, especially for its size and unpromising position: a prosperous industrial powerhouse, a stable democracy, and a well-respected diplomatic broker, with one of the world's most advanced navies and an exceptionally experienced Marine Corps. While it still looks south with constant vigilance to its larger and more powerful neighbor, it is well-equipped to weather the coming storm.
by The Palmetto » Mon Mar 11, 2019 2:29 pm
"That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
by Granluras » Mon Mar 11, 2019 2:30 pm
The Palmetto wrote:Rhodesia and the UAS are accepted! I'm loving that app, Norv.Rhodesia, you're lucky to have survived an extra decade. Prepare for the ride of your life.
by Reverend Norv » Mon Mar 11, 2019 2:31 pm
The Palmetto wrote:Rhodesia and the UAS are accepted! I'm loving that app, Norv.Rhodesia, you're lucky to have survived an extra decade. Prepare for the ride of your life.
by The Palmetto » Mon Mar 11, 2019 2:32 pm
"That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
by New Cobastheia » Mon Mar 11, 2019 2:44 pm
by New Cobastheia » Mon Mar 11, 2019 3:01 pm
by The Palmetto » Mon Mar 11, 2019 3:18 pm
New Cobastheia wrote:I'm leaning towards Canada, if you wouldn't mind telling me I am a little curious about it's standing in the world as Canada doesn't appear very often in the OP.
"That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
by New Cobastheia » Mon Mar 11, 2019 4:27 pm
The Palmetto wrote:New Cobastheia wrote:I'm leaning towards Canada, if you wouldn't mind telling me I am a little curious about it's standing in the world as Canada doesn't appear very often in the OP.
It's a democratic middle power with close ties to the U.K. and, to some extent, the UAS. You can make your own lore so long as it doesn't deviate too far from this, but I'm willing to help if requested.
by The Palmetto » Mon Mar 11, 2019 5:18 pm
"That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
by Chewion » Tue Mar 12, 2019 12:39 am
by The National Dominion of Hungary » Tue Mar 12, 2019 3:10 am
Chewion wrote:Hey USSR, I should point out you’re in violation of the 50 nuke limit treaty.
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