Opinion: Ceausescu's Oured The failure of Rodarian lobbying and the power of the anti-Rodarion lobby Jameson Nash (Op-Ed Contributor)
March 16, 2015 10:21 pm
Editor's note: Jameson Nash is a renowned political scientist, professor at the Daniel Hemingway School of Political Science at Northwestern University, and former Brettons Institution scholar. Money drives the government. That much is true, whether you're in the deserts of Mutanga (that's in Husseinarti, for those who don't know) or the palaces of Isn Deslen. But it is especially true in Oured.
In Oured, money does not equal power, but it is frequently the tool through which power can be obtained.
If that much is true, how come all the money in the world has not done the trick for Rodarion and its embattled consul, Octavian Ceausescu? Why has all the money in the world not been enough to polish Rodarion's image among the leaders in Oured? The key here is between the lines.
Where Romula has succeededIt was a chilly autumn evening in the nation's capital in October 1990, the sun hovering above the horizon blanketing the sky in an orange hue. Several blocks from Elizabeth Avenue, on the corner of 10th and Ferst, was a small, rundown restaurant called "Bolo's Wings" (incidentally, the same place would become a household name after
The Braden Times reported two decades later that it was a favorite of then-Vice President Washington Hayes). It was a two-man show, run by an aging chef and entrepreneur of a very modest background named Bolo, and his assistant and cashier Gregor.
It was a tiny eatery, with a small bar-style sitting area next to the register and three booths placed around the edges. At one of these booths sat a young, fiery looking character, his boyish expression radiating from his tall, athletic demeanor; he was a baby Federalist delegate from Carina, Murray Benjy. Across from him sat another young man with mid-length brown hair combed to one side and a paralyzing gaze emanating from his big blue-green eyes. These two men, sitting with two of their colleagues (one of them Senator and soon-to-be President Hayes), laughed and joked about recent events, enjoying time over plates of the tastiest hot wings in Oured.
This was where Benjy first fell for the man across from him, an up-and-coming Rodarian senator from Trajanare, Octavian Ceausescu.
Benjy had spent the 1980s obsessing over confrontation with Rodarion. As a young political science major interning under the human rights-centric National Democrat Arslan Diya's presidential campaign in 1981, Benjy was indoctrinated with a strong sense of the importance of rights and freedoms in global politics. His contempt for Rodarion developed the following year when he worked as a congressional aid for Federalist senator from Sariya, Cody Humbert, then the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs. While running a few errands for people working in Humbert's office, Benjy personally witnessed the murder of 50-year-old Viktor Hasdeu and his 47-year-old wife Yulia, both senior members of the Free Rodarion Alliance and advocates of Rodarian liberty, by gruesome gunshots to the head.
Unbeknownst to him at the time, this was an integral part of the Rodarian intelligence establishment's
Operation Rainbow, a systematic killing of 8 prominent FRA members in Oured in 1982.
Coincidentally, Benjy's boss Senator Humbert became a leading member of the provisional joint Committee for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance, which was formed to investigate the possibility of Rodarian involvement. Benjy had personal insider access to the committee's report which, as revealed to the public when it was eventually published, implicated Rodarian intelligence services for the killings. It was here that the seeds for Benjy's notorious hawkishness towards Rodarion were planted.
And the seeds grew quickly. Unknown to the public, the United Republic engaged in a covert war of assassinations against Rodarion, long held as a Cold War ally. When Benjy was elected a delegate for his state, he became known for his fiery anti-Rodarion stance. His eventual presence on the House Intelligence Committee gave him unprecedented access to much of this information, and it only exacerbated his opinions. He openly criticized the regime in Romula in every way imaginable. He gave passionate speeches on why Rodarian fascism was a much more present evil than far-off Anikatian communism. He enthusiastically supported every possibility of sanctioning Rodarian politicians bar none.
Yet the close of the decade had a calming effect on Benjy. As a detente between the two embattled Cold War allies came to a pinnacle at the turn of the 1990s, something changed in Benjy. Nobody knows exactly why. Some say he was swept by a personal period of intense Christian spirituality; others say the detente cooled his head; yet others claim he realized allying with Rodarion was the only way to swiftly defeat communism. For whatever reason, Benjy reached out to Rodarion. And that's what led to what was arguably the turning point of his political career: his informal meeting with Ceausescu in that Oured wings eatery.
Now, 25 years later, a much older Senator Murray Benjy is arguably the most pro-Rodarion member of Congress, and he still goes gooey over Consul Ceausescu.
He's become an icon of Rodarion in Oured. His fringe views actually present a compelling argument to an Oured audience stunned by the Rodarian pope and consul and unsure of what to do with them. He's issued the same gospel of detente that headlined the latter half of the 1980s: that the United Republic should reconcile with Rodarion and find a common ground. Rodarion's voice needs to be heard.
"I think if we had better cooperation with Rodarion, we could have averted a relationship that is now in the rocks," says Benjy. "Over the years following the Cold War we have minimized the areas of cooperation and maximized efforts on things that could be viewed as belligerent by Rodarion."
This is as good as it gets for Ceausescu and Pope Constantine in Oured. At a time of worsening tensions, the Rodarian leadership could, now more than ever, stand to have a few friends in the turbulent Emmerian capital. But it increasingly seems to Romula that Benjy is the only ally they have. Rodarian Foreign Minister Mircea Basescu openly blamed Oured for actively pursuing the degradation of relations between the two countries, saying he has "very serious reasons to believe" that the United Republic is pursuing a strategy to topple or change the regime, aided by Benjy's colleagues inside the beltway. "If you look at the U.R. Congress," Basescu remarked, "eighty percent of them have never left the URE. That's why I'm not surprised at the level of Rodarophobia in Congress."
Where Romula has failedThe Rodarophobia in Congress is so extensive that Romula largely lacks any friends in Oured today, save for a few slick yet ineffective lobbyists and publicists that have sucked millions of dollars from Rodarion to help burnish its image. Public affairs giant Travers is the big company on the Rodarian account, earning more than $60 million, according to FES publicly released filings, from the Vatican over the past ten years. And for what? Rodarion is viewed in a more negative light today than it was when Travers was first hired in 2005. Emmerians shrugged when asked in polls if they viewed Rodarion as a threat in 2005, with only 10% of people saying yes, as the middle-Lusankyan country elected a new figurehead for its consulship. Today, that number has risen to 69% in 2015, according to a recent UPN poll.
Of course, not everything is the lobbyists' fault. To spin something in a certain light, there has to be some sort of truth. But when a country aggressively stamps out dissent in its territory, handles its own politics with levels of corruption mirroring banana republics, and supplies arms to rebels to fight in its own cause against a democratic government, reality doesn't provide for a very easy spin. An official who used to work at Travers, and who asked not to be named, described it as "trying to polish a turd."
First hired in 2005, Travers was handpicked by then-Consul-Elect Ion Iliescu to boost Rodarion's image in preparation for an EG3 summit at the tail end of a gruesome recession in Rodarion. Iliescu and many members of his media-savvy administration knew that an Emmerian-style makeover for Rodarian state-owned enterprises would help. And Travers delivered at EG3, arranging media interviews, organizing podcasts, and connecting with Emmerian officials and think tanks to showcase Rodarion in a positive light. Their effort won them a long-term deal with Rodarion that would become one of Travers' most lucrative profiles. Travers publicists, now flying in first class to Romula, boosted their operations, scoring op-eds for Rodarian officials in newspapers, convincing U.R. officials to change their opinions on Rodarion, and starting a new web platform for material disseminated by the Rodarian government.
And that's where the fairy tale ends. Travers laid out advice through briefing papers for Rodarian officials, but they rarely followed through. In 2010 when Rodarion appointed a new ambassador to the United Republic, Travers set up a comprehensive plan to prep Q&A sessions, op-eds, and meetings with Oured influencers. Much of this was ignored. But Travers wasn't surprised; corporate public agencies were known for not heeding advice of hired publicists. But Rodarion was just worse with it, according to a Travers official. And that was not the extent of the failure. The lobbying firm Travers had contracted to handle Rodarian affairs, Lawrie & Holland, had effectively stopped lobbying members of Congress. According to the Travers official, the lobbyists "stopped doing shit".
And so Travers dismissed Lawrie & Holland, understandably. It replaced them with the all-too-notorious firm Eduard Group. Eduard had a unique reputation inside the beltway. Whenever it came to a conversation about human rights in Oured, it was difficult to avoid bringing up the powerful firm. Eduard Group has lobbied for an all-star team of tyrants: Vladimir Makarov, Abdul al-Rawi, Akuchi Chinonso, and Suleiman al-Mutayr. With a roster that includes human rights strongholds like Estovakiva, al-Rawi's Baharaq, Husseinarti, and Ariyadh, the Eduard Group has been described as the "voice of global pariahs" by Mateo Cathaoir of
EPOCH magazine. And there's truth to that statement.
There was, however, a culture clash. Rodarian officials had difficulty understanding why lobbyists couldn't simply buy or manipulate journalists. At least initially, they didn't fully understand why they had to try to open up to Emmerian and Free Pardes media, let alone Congress. Volodislavu Yusef, former head of the U.R.-Rodarion Business Council, a lobbying group representing Emmerian and Rodarian companies, said that "Not all Rodarian lawmakers are corrupt, and there is some legitimate lobbying in Romula. But it's a newer phenomenon, and unfortunately to a great extent it still involves simply passing over an envelope to somebody."
Where the anti-Rodarion lobby has succeededNot everything can be blamed on Romula or lobbyists themselves. After all, there's another force at work here, a particularly powerful group of officials and lobbyists who are collectively referred to as the highly organized and systematic anti-Rodarion lobby.
The origins of the anti-Rodarion lobby lie largely in the 1982 Operation Rainbow, which defined Emmerian-Rodarian relations for the next decade. It comprised several influential groups. The most important of these were military hawks arguing for U.R. hegemony who fought the Cold War not just against communism but also against those countries who desired to dissent against an Emmerian-dominated world order. The second group was liberal hawks and organizations formed after the turbulent 1940s to lobby for human rights and freedom internationally. President Diya, as typified by his characteristic "human rights diplomacy", was a closet member of the latter group. This latter group also included organizations like Liberty Watch and Human Rights Observatory, which began to protect global liberties but rapidly transformed into tools to oppose Anikatian and Qaradamlari communism and Rodarian fascism.
The anti-Rodarian lobby lost influence as the Rodarian-Emmerian detente swept global affairs at the close of the 1980s. However, it experienced a rapid revival after the 2001 fall of Communist Anikatia, when war hawks searched for a new enemy and liberal hawks searched for another tyrant. Members of the lobby were afraid of closer cooperation with Rodarion, even in the wake of strengthening ties to a brand new democratic regime in Anikatia that was barely on its feet. They saw Rodarion as the next big threat, 15 years before the rest of Emmeria agreed.
Although Rodarophobia is not a national interest, the anti-Rodarion lobby has succeeded in feeding to the media a harsh image of the country, convincing them that it is a well consolidated and highly dangerous power. A clear example is this: there are thousands of articles in the mainstream UR press implicating the Vatican (and in some cases, the pope or consul personally) for the murder of opposition journalists or defectors or leaders. There are only a handful of pieces questioning these claims. The anti-Rodarion lobby has convinced ideologically diverse groups to push for a tough stance against Rodarion. Organizations like Liberty Watch or the Foundation for Emmerian Security almost universally portray Rodarion as a threat. Rodarophobic rhetoric is standard for numerous members of Congress and policymakers in the Presidential Residence, sympathetic of the Rodarion-threat approach.
The lobby's anti-Rodarion activities have contributed to damaging relations between the U.R. and Rodarion. Anti-Rodarion groups have extensively invested in portraying the country as a relentlessly autocratic regime with little regard for civilian life, promoting a hardline policy against Rodarion among the leadership in Oured. Rodarion's virtually defensive behavior in central Lusankya gets lost in the overall picture. This success for anti-Rodarion groups is largely derived from how the Presidential Residence defines Emmeria's role in the post-Cold War world, predisposed to mistrust Rodarion out of the mirage of Emmerian exceptionalism: that Emmeria leads the world and is the torchbearer of democracy.
And so the lobby's anti-Rodarion rhetoric just this past year in regards to Bogoria has transformed into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whereas the anti-Rodarion lobby has promoted an image distrustful of Rodarian intentions in Bogoria, Rodarion has, in response to the Rodarophobic rhetoric spewing from inside the beltway, ignored the advice of Emmerian officials and pursued a much more unilateral approach to handling Utena. This approach is typified by the prevailing opinion of many Rodarians: that the CDI is dedicated to containing Rodarion's influence as a great power inside its own borders and away from its own neighbors.
Because the anti-Rodarion stance is an issue of global politics more so than a dislike of culture or political system, a stronger Rodarion will continually provoke a negative reaction from leaders in Oured as long as the anti-Rodarion lobby continues to succeed.
Where pro-Rodarion groups have workedAs I wrote before in this article, not much of the lobbying done on behalf of the Rodarian government has succeeded in shifting the views of Emmerian people or politicians. But a separate, independent force has jumped in and arguably kept Rodarion's image from the bottom of the trash can.
Enter the New Founding Fathers of Emmeria (NFFE).
NFFE is a group in existence since 1988. For many years, its primary goals were to contribute to traditionalist Christian (mostly Catholic) policies in government: anti-abortion, creationism, that type of thing. It formed deep-seated alliances with Islamic and Jewish organizations throughout the country, promoting an image of Emmeria as a conservative, religious nation with God's favor--
Deo Favente, as a traditional Emmerian motto goes.
Around 2006, when NFFE had substantial influence in Oured and in several more conservative states, it began to shift its efforts from solely pro-religion policies to a more comprehensive political platform involving strong support for Rodarion. Playing off of cold warriors' views that Emmeria, like Rodarion, was a religious country, NFFE began to organize donations and support from the nation's Catholics in support of the Vatican. It rapidly became one of the wealthiest lobbying groups in Oured. Between 2006 and 2011, it strongly promoted pro-Rodarion policies, including a major bill passed in 2008 under President Castilla reducing visa restrictions between the United Republic and Rodarion.
But that's where even NFFE's successes grinded to a halt. In 2011, Jayce Lieberman, who served as a treasurer of NFFE from 2002 to 2009, provided
The Oured Tribune a set of documents revealing that NFFE had received a substantial amount of money from Rodarian officials. Under U.R. elections legislation, any group representing foreign interests is required to file its sources of funding and its activities to the Federal Elections Service, which then publishes them for the world to see. NFFE had not, afraid of being accused of being a Rodarian agent.
A major media frenzy ensued as NFFE came under fire for accepting large donations from Rodarian officials without disclosing them under law. In 2013, Archbishop of Chaleur James Grey was arrested by Secret Service agents, who were investigating the Rodarian financial allegations, for helping funnel millions of dollars from the Vatican to NFFE accounts without official disclosure.
While this mostly hurt NFFE, it did not make it easier Rodarion's legitimate lobbyists in Oured--Travers and its contracted firm, Eduardo. Both of them lost years of work and suffered through extensive investigation of all of their foreign accounts by the Secret Service. Members of Congress who had ties with Eduardo's lobbyists were far more reluctant to meet with them. The relationships that had been built over the last decade started to deteriorate again.
NFFE was forced for a few years to back off of the Rodarion rhetoric in the face of what was effectively a public relations disaster. It went back to lobbying solely for Christian concerns. It was part of a large, loose coalition of lobbyists and special interest groups who funneled money to Federalist nominee Alex Vaziri's 2013 presidential campaign. Anyone in Vaziri's Oured knows how difficult it is to handle social issues at the federal level under the current administration. President Vaziri's extensive decentralization of social issues was largely what allowed conservative strongholds like North Morena, Antea, and the Emmerian Far East to hold tight onto pro-life policies and educational theistic evolution (seen by the academic community in those states as superior to the more traditional creationism).
And these efforts in support of the Vaziri campaign brought back NFFE's influence inside the beltway. NFFE has shown signs of carefully and methodically returning to its famous pro-Rodarion plaform, but at a much slower pace to avoid another major public relations disaster. NFFE's efforts as an independent force lobbying in support of Rodarion have been largely successful in eroding the edges of the substantial influence of the anti-Rodarion lobby.
The next few weeks will show who has the strength to win this never-ending tug of war in the nation's capital.
MORE IN OPINION- Opinion: Why Cinigrad is Romula's puppet [ 5243 ]
- Opinion: Mandating flu shots is the moral choice [ 9429 ]
- Opinion: Vaziri's Secret Service a Nat Dem prosecution tool [ 1375 ]
- Opinion: Foreign violence and Emmerian politics [ 872 ]
MORE FROM NBN- Refugee town in Ulthrannia suffers major bomb attack [ 1824 ]
- U.R. Embassy in Ulthrannia: "We are in constant communication with Emmerian citizens in bomb attack" [ 2782 ]
- Insider story: the Arthuristan-Eaglelander Regional Rapid Intervention Force [ 1003 ]
- Bogoria fighting heats up despite cease fire [ 193 ]
Comments [ 5871 ]
E-mail
© NBN 2014
5871 comments STAR THIS DISCUSSION