A Nation, of Sorts [Earth II]

[No Taxes]

The night was already bitterly cold, and this late those few people still out were bundled up tightly. Most scurried about quickly with their heads down and eyes averted. The people had learned well, from many years of chaos, warlordism and crime, that it did not pay to be noticed and most certainly after the sun had gone down. One man, however, moved slower than the rest. The casual observer might have taken him to simply to be a romantic enjoying a casual midnight stroll along the freezing banks of the River Volga and in a sense this was true; however the real reason for this particular nightime sojourn lies in the most seemingly peculiar series of events that had led to this moment.

Indeed the man in question, Anatoliy, had been thinking along these lines very closely. While the rest of the city went on with its life largely unaware of the changes that had been brewing for several years and now, finally, were coming to fruition, he was savoring the process that he had been a driving force behind. Anatoliy thought back to his childhood, the few memories he had mostly being of cold, chaos and the endless changing of governments. His family had been fairly well-off and he had thus avoided the hunger and depredation that many had suffered, but as the numerous Nerotikan regimes turned more and more to the left, Anatoliy and his family had been more and more stigmatized. Then had come the wars and the Flu, bringing with them anarchy and death. Warlords had taken control in the countryside and gangs had descended upon the cities taking what little resources and weapons were left.

For a time it had seemed that all men had fully succumbed to their savage, animalistic natures, but then slowly it began to emerge that there was a limit to depravity. Towns began to band together for protection, forging alliances of necessity that slowly grew. Trade begin to resume and cars begin to traverse the long highways again. Warlords found that they could make more money by promoting trade and growth in the areas they controlled rather than simply preying on the weak. A sense of normalcy returned and some begin to see how they might refashion the bonds of nationhood.

Anatoliy still remembered that day the first meeting had been held, with representatives from across the land that would become No Taxes. 736 Delegates from across the region had crowded to the old city hall in Samara to fashion out an agreement of sorts. Anatoliy had stood there that day unique in both the fact that he was one of the few representatives there that had been elected democratically by his district and because of the fact that he was committed to enshrining these democratic freedoms in the constitution of this new nation. Just about the only ideals they had all shared was dislike of chaos and a fierce determination to present a repeat of the past. To this end, some of the first things about the new state agreed upon were that the federal government would be very weak, with individual regions and provinces holding much autonomy and that the state would renounce all forms of militaristic aggression. Everyone had seen the need for some level of military to protect the nation, but there would be serious limits to what it would be able to do.

Nevertheless over the first couple of weeks of the Founding Delegation, as official parlance called it now, it had soon emerged that the main question would be over just how centralized the government would be. While the role of the government in the economy was also a big question, everyone remembered the latter stages of the Nerotikan government and what it had done to the economy and the nation as a whole. There would be a few socialists in the new nation, but not many. The vast majority of delegates wanted a small, weak federal government with little ability to intervene in the provinces or the economy. Standing in contrast to this group, were those who wanted a stronger federal government. However this group was subdivided between those who wanted a stronger central government in order to keep order and those who wanted one for the purposes of guaranteeing democratic liberties across the nation.

It had taken over two years to work out all the details, but eventually a constitution of sorts had been furnished which had produced a compromise between the opposing sides. Even the more radical Provincial Autonomists had seen the need for a federal military to protect the country and defeat the few remaining rogue warlords. But the 7 federal provinces would each be allowed to operate their own militaries, "Territorial Militias" as they were to be called, and with the limited budget of the federal government it looked like some of these militias might be larger than the Federal Military itself. After some concessions to the cities, support had been secured for a clause in the constitution saying that the federal government had the obligation to protect the basic human liberties of all the people of No Taxes, these including namely life, liberty and the pursuit of property, but how exactly it was to do this was left unclear. Above all the federal government was given the power to conduct foreign diplomacy, regulate commerce between the provinces, protect the democratic liberties of the people of No Taxes and, most importantly in the mind of Anatoliy, provide public education to every citizen. Of course this was all left deliberately vague in the constitution, but Anatoliy thought that it was quite an achievement that they had managed to agree on anything at all.

In fact, as he walked along the riverbank now reflecting back on it, it seemed to him a miracle that these hundreds of millions of people with different languages, religions and history had been united in the shared bonds of nationhood.But now his fingers were starting to remind him that it was freezing outside and he realized there was a limit to how far exuberance could let him stay out and he begin to make his way home. After all, elections were coming up soon and he had been contemplating a run for mayor of Samara. Between the prestige of being the mayor of the capital city and the special rights and privileges large cities were given under the constitution it looked to be quite the powerful position.

[Layarteb]

Activity in Russia wasn't exactly welcomed. Only weeks earlier had the Cottish wrapped up a major offensive and annexation of some of their former territories. Obliterating the Nerotikan resistance that remained, they expanded the Cottish Realm significantly. The Empire played its own part, using the chaos to destroy an enemy in Yamalia that attempted to attack the Empire. Additionally, the Empire delved into the area of espionage by stealing both the Nerotikan MiG-71 and the Russian AD-142 Yastreb assault rifle. That was all the Empire really needed. Vladimir Nagayev, the leader of the Yamalian forces, was now locked away in a Layartebian prison, awaiting his execution for, in essence, declaring war on the Empire. The Empire had a long, long history with the Nerotikans that was a very bloody history. Over the years, the Empire's forces had slaughtered Nerotikan forces whenever they engaged one another. When the Cottish Flu Pandemic ravaged both the Russians and Nerotikans to the point of extinction, the Empire took it as a sign that the Russian region was never going to be menaced by such lands as hostile as the Nerotikan Council State or the Russian Federation but that was apparently fleeting. Word came down through the Ministry of Intelligence, thanks largely in part to the Cottish that there was activity, eyes turned. How it turned out would be crucial to the understanding of whatever future country took over the region. The last time that the Empire went to war with the Nerotikan state it was before the collapse of their country due to the flu. That conflict fizzled out very quickly and before that the Empire and its allies in the October Alliance had thoroughly beat down the Nerotikans when they attempted to invade Kazakhstan. The Empire alone caused more than twenty thousand casualties, mainly from Vesta missile sorties. If whatever government formed turned out to be hostile to the Empire, they would find that the situation this time would be remarkably different. The Empire wasn't going to be nearly as placid with them like they were with the Nerotikans.

[No Taxes]

"...more election results are coming in now from Yamalia and it appears that there are no surprises here with Autonomist parties doing very well. This continues to fit the pattern we've seen so far of Autonomist dominance in the eastern and northern provinces and the Federalist parties doing very well in the western provinces. We can now accurately predict that Autonomist parties will capture 4 out of the 7 federal provinces with Federalist parties capturing the remaining three. As you know, the make-up of the 9 member Council of Federation is the 7 representatives from the federal provinces, the representative of the Sovereign Cities and the 9th member is elected by nation-wide popular vote. With the popular vote almost certainly going to the Autonomist candidate, this gives the Autonomist parties a majority in the Council. However, the representative of the Sovereign Cities, while not officially part of any political party, is believed to have Federalist tendencies thus denying the Autonomists the super-majority within the council necessary to decide matters of foreign affairs. Nevertheless, it looks very likely that our Premier (De Jure Head of State) will be Autonomist as only a simple majority is required in the Council to choose the position.

The Majilis (Lower House of Government) on the other hand is looking very complicated at the moment. It is looking increasingly less likely that either the Autonomists or Federalists will have a majority by themselves thus meaning that whichever party wants to have the majority will have to work with other, smaller parties. Indeed it seems this new government will have to compromise if it wants to get anything done, which means we can expect to see little broad, policy changes from our constitution anytime soon. However, this new government will have a lot of major decisions on its hands. Only the biggest of these include setting up and organizing the federal military, initiating the promised system of public education, setting the precedent for the use of its budget mandated to come from the federal provinces and initiating foreign diplomacy, among many other issues. Above all else, it looks to be an exciting and groundbreaking time for the nation as a whole.

In other news, with the last ballots now coming in, Anatoliy Cecilio has won the mayoral race in the capital city, Samara. His victory speech is expected to come shortly..."

-------------

Leonid Geza locked eyes with the man across from him. Confirming with each other that they were ready, they briefly relaxed both ready to carry out a very coordinated plan as soon as they got the signal. It was a perfect night - clouds covering the moon and snow lightly falling - giving them the darkness and silence they needed to carry out their mission. About a hundred meters up the street lay one of the compounds of a big, local mob boss. An informer had tipped them off that the boss along with several of his lieutenants would be in residence tonight and they had gotten the go order. They had orders to capture alive if possible, yet if there was resistance they had been authorized personally by the mayor to use whatever force was necessary. What was left unsaid of course, was that they had better not leave anyone important alive as going to court would likely only see the city government embarrassed and the mobsters left off free.

So now here was Leonid waiting at 4 in the morning with 107 other members of the newly-founded Samara Metropolitan Police. Most were former mercenaries, veterans of the many wars and conflicts that had plagued this land. Leonid was in the minority, never even having killed a man before. They all had been specially recruited and inducted into this elite, several thousand member force, with the intent to back up normal law enforcement officers and to intervene when the security of the city was threatened. In actuality they were the mayor's private army. For the time being, he was using them to hit very hard the local gangsters and others who opposed the new government. They had of course been briefed beforehand on why they were going in - in this case the gang they were going after was big into human trafficking among other things and obviously needed to be taken out.

Leonid could picture the whole compound perfectly in his head after hours spent poring over blueprints and pictures. It was quite artfully done - it almost had the appearance of yet another wealthy villa in the better-off area of the city. Yet, the details made it quite so obvious that it was much more than an ordinary villa. The layout was common - a rectangular building situated around an inner courtyard, but there were no doors on the outside, apart from the big, heavy gate leading into the inner courtyard with a security post right outside this entrance. Additionally, the only windows on the outside were on the 2nd level and were barred by reinforced steel grating. On the inside there was a large fountain in the middle of the courtyard and several entrances to the building on the sides. Nearly every part of the building looked over the courtyard with windows however, and to Leonid's eyes it looked a bit like a death trap to be inside the courtyard with fire coming down from all the sides.

Nevertheless, he had confidence in the plan and despite a few butterflies in his stomach he felt good. As much as it surprised him, he felt almost elated at the prospect of going in. As they received the signal, they started to advance up the side street towards the main gate to the compound, dashing from cover to cover. When they were 50 yards out, the lights across the entire block went on and he turned on his night vision. They were 5 guards standing outside the gate - snipers on adjacent buildings took care of three of them and the two inside the bullet-proof guard post next to the gate were quickly dispatched with an RPG designed to attract a lot of attention. While snipers covered the windows overlooking the gate, Leonid's squad moved forward to the gate. Leonid laid down suppressive fire on the windows, too, as the squad sergeant planted explosives on the gate. They backed off and then came the blast and the gate was gone. Before rushing in however they proceeded to toss in a liberal amount of smoke grenades through the entryway. Yet several of the guards inside had already started to fire wildly towards the gate opening and Leonid's squad held back knowing that even with the smoke rushing in exactly where all the guards were waiting for them was a bad idea. They started firing through the opening too, hoping to draw all the attention of the guards to the main entrance.

As this had been going, snipers had taken out the guards on the roof and three helicopters full of Police approached the building. The helicopters hovered over the roof as men slid down onto the roof from ropes lowered from the helicopters. Hitting the roof, they ran for cover and then when all of them were down methodically proceeded to blast open the entrances down into the building. It was coordinated precisely so that by the time these men were making their way into the second level of the building, Leonid's squad was rushing in the main entrance. There was still a lot of gunfire, but by this time most of it sounded like it was coming from inside the building. Still he and four others dashed around the fountain quickly and made for one of the doors on the north side of the courtyard. As they blew open the door, Leonid took a moment to become aware of himself - he was definitely frightened and exhilarated, but he realized oddly that there was no place he would have rather been at that moment.

As soon as the door was down, he threw in a flashbang and then they rushed in. The room was just as he remembered it - low-ceilinged and crowded with bookshelves against the far wall and a grouping of chairs around a table in the middle. Bullets whizzed past Leonid - there were two guards in the room who had been stunned by the flashbang and were now firing wildly. He fired a quick burst at one of them and one of his bullets struck the man right between the eyes. The books behind the man were sprayed with blood and Leonid watched with a sick fascination as the man crumbled. He had just killed a person for the first time and all that he felt was a disgusted curiosity. He remembered asking others how they had felt killing so many and their answers had varied - some were just following orders, some saw the enemy as less than human because of the crimes they had done and thus had no problem killing and some were forever disturbed. It had been so easy and when Leonid looked back on the moment he realized with a slight, deep horror that he had felt enthralled and almost euphoric by the killing.

They could not stop moving, however, and they cleared the rest of their side of the building with little trouble. Indeed it had seemed almost too easy to be true until they discovered that none of the major bosses had been there. It seemed the gangs had informers among them, too.

-------------

"...and then he said to me: 'Liberty? What for?' Do you not realize the need for action? We must move quickly - if the federal military is not ready then we can use mercs. The longer we wait the more they consolidate power among themselves and their warlord allies."

"I know, I know...but you must realize that these things are not so easy. There are protocols we have to follow - if we go on our own we risk becoming warlords ourselves and inviting only more anarchy. The premier is stupid, but his intentions are good for the most part. We need to drive a wedge between the moderates and the radicals and then we can work with them to drive out the radicals."

"Did you see the election results from Yamalia and Krasnoyarsk? Over 90% of the vote went to the autonomists - everyone sees how illegimate the elections were there and with that kind of example what stops the other provinces from doing the same things. We claim to guarantee the basic rights of all the people of No Taxes, yet these people lack even the most basic democratic liberties."

"I just fear that in our quest to fight this warlordism so quickly we risk becoming monsters ourselves. But all of this talk is pointless anyways - nothing will happen through the government anytime soon and we certainly can't hire out mercs and become warlords ourselves."

"Then just what exactly do you suggest we do ?"

"I had hoped to wait a bit longer to reveal this to you, but there are certain interests in this country that see quite eye to eye on this matter with you - and have more power than you and I could ever hope to have. Putting it simply it really is out of our hands."

"Are you saying we're just some kind of pawns in this larger game?"

"I'm afraid so."

----------------

Official Statement to All Nations of the World

On behalf of the Central Asian Federation of No Taxes, I am Marius Vassily, the Premier of this nation, and the representative of all the people of No Taxes. We wish to greet the world, having recently founded our nation out of the anarchy and chaos that not so long ago destroyed this region. We are a nation founded upon a commitment to democratic principles and our goals are simple - to provide freedom of trade, basic human rights and stability for the citizens of our nation. We wish to establish peaceful democratic relations with all nations of the world and reaffirm our renouncement of military aggression in any form. We only seek freedom of trade and a free, peaceful world in which to achieve this.

Respectfully,
Marius Vassily
Premier of the Central Asian Federation of No Taxes

[Cotland]

The Cottish government had kept a close eye on the situation in the former Nerotikan territories after finally kicking the Nerotikan occupants out of Cotland. It had been a bitter fight. The Cottish population, though dying from the pandemic that had ravaged the country, had been horrified when it realized that the vaunted and much celebrated Cottish armies had been unable to defend the deceased and dying country from its arch enemies, with the result of Cottish soil being occupied by a foreign aggressor for the first time in a millenium. It had rocked the very core of the Cottish people, who had grown accustomed to the Cottish military always winning the battles and siezing the fields, when the Nerotikans had raised their flag over Sankt Petersborg, the fourth largest city in Cotland and capital city of the province of Petersborg. It had taken a full six months of rebuilding strength, regrouping and rearming before the Cottish military had gained the strength to break the stalemate that had developed at the Hallgrim Line, just south of the Petersborg-Finland border. After breaking out from the Karelian isthmus and taking Sankt Petersborg, the Cottish army had finally had the room to manouver that it needed for its signature operations: manouver warfare. In a two month long Blitzkrieg-style campaign, the 450,000 men strong mechanized and armoured formations of the Royal Cottish Army, closely supported by the Royal Cottish Air Force and the clandestine operators from SOKDA, had outmanouvered and defeated the Nerotikan occupation army which had three times its strength, and reclaimed the Cottish territories in the east, taking some nine hundred thousand enemy prisoners of war in the process.

Unfortunately for the EPWs, some half a million of these had either been summarily executed for "war crimes" by the Cottish Army, been employed as forced labour and put to clearing minefields, removing unexploded ordinance and other dangerous tasks that the powers that be didn't want to risk Cottish lives doing, or simply "disappeared." Of these latter, most of these had been brought to the military ports in the Kola peninsula, loaded onto old decommissioned cargo ships, towed out to the middle of the North Atlantic, and sunk, sparing the Cottish government the manpower and resources required to maintain these enemies, who the Cottish population hated more than anything else on Earth due in no small part to the fact that the Nerotikans had succeeded where no one else had before them, and also due to the very hateful Cottish propaganda efforts levvied agains the Nerotikans. The surviving EPWs were being held in very spartan POW camps in northern Finland and the Kola Peninsula, living in cold and drafty barracks built in the mid-1930s and not really maintained much since the early 1970s, surrounded by double-layered cortentina-wire fences and guardtowers fitted with machine guns (captured former Nerotikan PKs) and MPs with orders to shoot to kill anyone who attempted escape. The EPWs that remained alive, despite being given adequate amounts of food and medical attention, were cold, miserable and under constant threat of being physically abused by the roaming guards or their fierce and quite unfriendly German Shepherd dogs, who barked and attempted to bite any EPW they saw.

As a result of this institutionalized mistrust and the national trauma, it should come as no surprise that the Cottish government kept a very close eye on the former Nerotikan states, keeping track of what was going on through signals intelligence, human intelligence via intelligence officers and agents operating in the former territories, image intelligence from satellites, and other, more direct means.

The Cottish Intelligence Service (CIS) had done their best to keep the Nerotikan territories disorganized and in chaos, operating under the idea that the more the Nerotikans quarreled and killed themselves, the less a threat they were to Cotland. This had been done by the divide and rule concept, where Cottish agents had played the local warlords up against each other and supplied them with arms and funds, thus encouraging internal warfare in Nerotika. It had worked for a while, but to the great irritation of the Director of CIS, the former Nerotikans had started organizing themselves and started laying the groundwork for a new nation-state. This would in and by itself have been bad enough for the Director, had it not been for the fact that he had orders from the Clandestine Services Oversight Committee in Stortinget, the Cottish national assembly, not to try to sabotage the efforts.

As a result, all CIS could do was observe what was going on and report to the Cottish government in the form of the Defence Council, which consisted of the core of the Council of Ministers as well as the Chief of Defence Staff and some other senior government and military officials.

When the Foreign Ministry intercepted the open message issued by the new government in former Nerotika (henceforth known as No Taxes), it revealed little new that their operatives and agents inside No Taxes. Like the predecessors in Nerotika had done so many times before, the message promised peace and non-aggression. It had made every single Cottish official who had read the message scoff. They remembered all too well the communiqués that had been issued from Volgograd just months prior to the latest Nerotikan attack on Cotland. Back then, the Cottish had believed them. After all, it had been sent out less than two years after the Cottish Army crushed the Nerotikan military, and the Cottish had not expected the Nerotikans to be able to pose a serious threat against Cotland for at least another couple of years. Four months later, as Cotland was starting to succumb to the Pandemic, the Nerotikans attacked.

When the Defence Council was briefed on the communiqué by the Foreign Minister, it decided not to take any chances. The Army had been demobilized following the successful defeat of the Nerotikan occupants, and the people were tired of war. The Eastern Territories, which were the most immediately threatened area of Cotland in the event of a No Taxes offensive, was still in the process of being rebuilt, and a new war so quickly would surely force the Government to spend even more billions on rebuilding. This was quite unacceptable.

Since the end of hostilities in the Eastern Territories, the Cottish government had spent billions restoring the border defences with the former Nerotikan territories. The defences were mostly passive in nature, consisting of a continuous double-layered 3 meter high fence (the outermost being electrified) with razor-sharp barbed wire on top, anti-personnel landmines between five and fifteen meters away from the outer fence in the direction of the former Nerotikan territories (which lay another ten meters from the outer edge of the minefield), motion-detection sensors that alerted the nearest border patrol, and a three meter deep, six meter wide anti-tank ditch between the outermost and innermost fences. To prevent tunnelling, the Cottish had driven metal rebars twenty meters down into the ground, creating a metallic mesh that would make difficult tunnelling under the border, not to mention the fact that the fences were placed on concrete foundations placed two meters underneath the ground. Between the innermost fence and the anti-tank ditch, there was a small road for use when patrolling the border. For every 50 kilometers or so, there was a Border Troops garrison manned by the Border Troops, a paramilitary sub-division of the National Police Force responsible for protecting the border, stopping and detaining illegal aliens from entering Cottish territory, and forming the first line of defence in the event of aggressive actions. Now that there was once again the start of a new and centralized government in the territories of the old arch enemy, the Defence Council immediately ordered the Border Troops along the approximately 1,700 kilometer long border Cotland shared with the territories in question to go on heightened alert, which meant that the border patrolling was stepped up, and that the standing military forces in the Eastern Territories should increase their vigilance. As a result, continuous air patrolling using fighter jets was enforced, and the Army Corps' in the areas stepped up their combat-oriented training in order to be as ready as they could be. Simultaneously, the POW camps in the Arctic were notified of the situation, and the EPWs assembled in the various camps so the Commandants would inform them of the situation in their homelands, and remind them that their homeland had forgotten about them and didn't give a damn whether they lived or died.

At the same time, the Cottish government decided to make contact with the Nerotikans for the first time since getting the formal surrender from whatever government official there had been in Volgograd when the Cottish demanded the surrender, lest Volvograd and a dozen other Nerotikan cities be nuked in retaliation for the two hundred fifty plus millions that had died in the Pandemic, which some among the higher levels in the Government believed that the Nerotikans were responsible for. The Realm hadn't been shy to use nuclear ordinance before, in retaliation of the Spizanian nuclear attack upon a Cottish naval battlegroup fifteen years earlier, causing the Realm to retaliate strategically and glass a number of Spizanian military targets in Yemen. Out of fear of a relapse from the Cottish, the Nerotikan official had agreed and the surrender documents signed quickly. Since then, there had been no formal Cottish contact with the territories (save for the CIS involvement).

That was, until now.

Formal Communiqué

To whom it may concern in the so-called "Central Asian Federation of No Taxes",

The Realm of Cotland takes notice of the establishment of a Successor State to the Council State of Nerotika and its claims of wishing peaceful coexistance with the world. His Majesty's Realm heard similar claims from the Council State of Nerotika just prior to the most recent illegal imperialistic war of aggression towards His Majesty's Realm, and duly warns the Successor State that any attempts, or indications thereof, of military aggression against His Majesty's Realm will be met immediately and severely with the military means deemed appropriate by the National Command Authority, against any target in the Successor State, military or otherwise, that the National Command Authority deems necessary.

His Majesty's Realm will also take the opportunity to remind the Successor State that His Majesty's Realm still has in its possession almost 400,000 enemy prisoners of war captured during the most recent Nerotikan illegal imperialistic war of aggression towards the peaceloving Realm of Cotland, and that these enemy prisoners of war will be unfavorably affected by any attempts at aggression towards His Majesty's Realm or His Majesty's Realms interests.

His Majesty's Realm will continue to monitor the sitaution in the Successor State closely, and warns the Successor State to tread lightly.


Signed,

Chancellor Terje Hole
The Realm of Cotland

OOC: Hope you dont mind this. Excellent posts!

[No Taxes]

The No Taxian side of the Cottish border was completely unguarded in stark contrast to the Cottish side. Securing the border was very low priority for the new government because there was virtually nothing smuggled illegally into No Taxes for the simple reason that most things people would normally be looking to smuggle were perfectly legal to own in No Taxes. There was not a single drug that was illegal to possess or produce and virtually all weapons were also legal. Furthermore, gaining No Taxian citizenship was as simple as applying for it and showing that one was in residence in No Taxes for at least one month per year.

Since No Taxes maintained a policy of free trade towards all nations in the world, imposing no tariffs of any kind on exported or imported goods, there was almost no necessity to patrol the border and thus it was not done. And as far as the No Taxian government saw it, it was completely other nation's responsibility to police the movement of goods and people from No Taxes into their nations. This meant they turned a blind eye to the transport of drugs and weapons from No Taxes to other nations, even if these goods were illegal in the other nations. One could see where this might cause some problems, but so far no other nations had protested and No Taxian suppliers of drugs and weapons were making lots of money from export.

Official Message

To Chancellor Terje Hole, The Realm of Cotland,

We understand you wariness regarding our intentions and understand that despite our words of peace it will take a long time to fully convince you that we do not intend any aggression. To further this purpose we ask if it would be possible to hold a meeting between representatives of our nations in order to clear up any standing issues, such as the Nerotikan prisoners of wars in your possession, and to begin to determine the future course of the relationship between our nations. It is our highest priority to establish peaceful relations with our neighbor countries and we hope that our relations can be about looking forward to the future, rather than holding on to the dark past.

Cordially,
Marius Vassily
Premier of the Central Asian Federation of No Taxes

OOC: Of course not, it just makes things more interesting.

[Brydog]

TO: Central Asian Federation of No Taxes
FROM: The Republic of Alaska

Dear Sir or Madam,

Welcome your new nation onto the world stage, and as a sign to a positive future, wish to extend diplomatic relations with your nation. We wish to establish a embassy in your nation and invite you do to the same here in Juneau.

Signed,
Dusty Ljungstrand
President of the Republic of Alaska

[No Taxes]

Official Message

To Dusty Ljungstrand, President of the Republic of Alaska,

We are most pleased to exchange embassies and initiate diplomatic relations with your nation and will set aside a plot of land for your embassy in our capital city, Samara. We hope that this is the start of a bright relationship between our two nations.

Respectfully,
Marius Vassily
Premier of the Central Asian Federation of No Taxes

[Cotland]

Formal Communiqué

Mr Vassily,

His Majesty's Government has after careful deliberations decided to accept the Nerotikan Successor State's request for diplomatic discussions, and will dispatch a Envoy to the Successor State in due course. His Majesty's Envoy will bring with him a mandate to discuss matters which His Majesty's Government believes must be discussed.

His Majesty's Government wish to make it perfectly clear that is considers the Successor State to be personally responsible for the personal safety of His Majesty's Envoy, Mr Jonas Gyldenstierne. Should any harm or foul play befall His Majesty's Envoy, His Majesty's Government will consider this an act of aggressive hostility and respond accordingly.

As a symbol of good faith, His Majesty's Envoy will bring with him personal letters from a number of Enemy Prisoners of War currently held in captivity by His Majesty's Government, for the Successor State to distribute to the Enemy Prisoner of War's relatives.


Signed,

Chancellor Terje Hole
The Realm of Cotland

Skies over Russia
Five days later

The red and white-painted LDC Model 006-100 business jet had just crossed the border between the Cottish territory of Ivanland and the No Taxes territory of Nizhny Novgorod, flying at 35,000 feet towards the No Taxes capital city of Samara.

The jet had just left behind its two escort fighters, F-35A Lightning multirole fighters rigged for stealthy preformance with AMRAAM missiles loaded into the internal weapons bays, thus reducing its radar cross section to a minimum. The fighters were flying in a holding pattern west of the city of Putersk, well inside Cottish airspace but ready to react in the event that the VIP aircraft got into trouble. The Air Force had been "convinced" by the Foreign Ministry that sending armed aircraft into a foreign sovereign state wouldn't achieve the diplomatic result the Government wanted, and since the Cottish military was subjected to its civilian masters in the Government, it had little choice than to comply.

Inside the business jet, the Cottish envoy, Jonas Gyldenstierne nipped to a scotch as he reviewed the intelligence dossier on the Successor State, as the Cottish government consequentely referred to No Taxes as, that CIS had compiled for him. It was interesting reading for the fifty-three year old diplomat. Gyldenstierne was from an old noble family that at one point in time had enjoyed the rights and privelidges as Barons of the County Blekinge in Sweden, only to have their titles and privelidges stripped from them in the early 1800s when Cotland abolished its aristocracy.

The old nobility still enjoyed their accumilated personal fortunes though, which helped immensely in maintaining their social status as pillars of society and academica. The children of the old noble families still attended the best private schools money could pay for, and as in almost any country, the higher educated got the higher-paying jobs. It therefore came as little surprise that Jonas Gyldenstierne had graduated summa cum laude with a Masters Degree in International Relations from the Royal University of Copenhagen and joined the Diplomatic Corps not long after, working his way upwards towards the position he now enjoyed as Senior Diplomat in the Foreign Ministry's prestigious European Office. As a result, when the Nerotikan Successor State reemerged, Gyldenstierne was the obvious choice.

The jet would fly the 600 kilometers from the border to Samara in a little over an hour, after which it would land at Samara's airport and hopefully receive a suitable welcome from the No Taxes government. Aside from Gyldenstierne and his six aides and assistants, three Security Officers from the Diplomatic Protection Service made up the official entourage, as well as the two Air Force pilots, the Air Force purser and two MPs tasked with protecting the aircraft while it was on the ground. The Security Officers carried compact pistols and concealed PDWs, while the Air Force personnel and the MPs had standard issue pistols and assault rifles. All this had been notified the No Taxes government in advance.

OOC: You can just do the arrival and getting the entourage to the meeting and stuff.

[Layarteb]

History was not in the Empire's court with the Nerotikan successor state. The Empire had never been allied to it nor ever had any formal diplomatic relations, save for launching tons of military hardware into the country, primarily with Kazakhstan. When news came that the Cottish were going to accept a meeting, there was some hope. For all the bad blood that the Nerotikans had with the Empire, it paled in comparison to what they held with the Cottish. If the Cottish could establish peaceful relations, so too could the Empire, perhaps. There was nothing wrong with that either. Far removed from the area of central Asia, the Empire was entirely unaffected by the Nerotikan successor state's willingness to establish itself, for now. In light of the matter, it was decided that the Empire wouldn't simply ignore them but rather put themselves on the higher ground.

Official Communique

Priority: High
Recipient: Central Asian Federation of No Taxes
Origin: Empire of Layarteb - Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Classification Level: Secure
Subject: Introduction


History being what it is, the Empire hopes this communique is found on neutral grounds. Given the blood between our two nations, we need not state what a precarious situation this must present for your government. The Empire wishes to look upon the past as simply the past. If this is acceptable, the Empire will hope to see the establishment of the Central Asian Federation of No Taxes in peaceful means and with peaceful intentions.

Sincerely,
The Minister of Foreign Affairs

Classification Levels

Standard: Standard classification is the normal level of encryption. It is equivalent to the standard levels of encryption seen on most secure e-mail clients.

Confidential: Confidential classification is a higher level of encryption than "Standard" but it is not heavily encrypted. It is used mostly for flash traffic to foreign countries and requires some additional decoding time. It uses 512-bit RSA encryption methods and has several key ciphers that change unpredictably.

Secure: Secure communiques use 1024-bit RSA encryption and several key ciphers within them that change unpredictably to ensure that message traffic is not hacked or decoded. Access to said messages would require heavy cracking software and significant resources but it is not "uncrackable." It can be a viable level through 2010.

Encrypted: Encrypted classification is the second highest level of classification. It is uses 2048-bit RSA encryption and multiple key ciphers within it to ensure that cracking it would take such a significant amount of time to accomplish that, should it be done, the message's usefulness would have already expired. Though anything is crackable, because of the methods employed, this level is often considered "uncrackable" by current capabilities. To ensure revolving protecting, ciphers and encryption algorithms will change unpredictably. This level is sufficient until 2030.

Maximum: Maximum classification is the highest level of classification available. It uses 3072-bit RSA encryption and multiple key ciphers that change unpredictably. It can provide protection past 2030.

Experimental: Currently not a fully recognized level, experimental denotes a category using 15360-bit RSA encryption and multiple key ciphers that change unpredictably. It is not in full operational use as of yet.

[Layarteb]

.:. bump .:.