- TNP Nation
- McMasterdonia
TITLE: Will there be a NationStates Belt and Road Project?
Written by McMasterdonia and OwenStacey
Regions including many of the game-created regions and prominent user-created regions such as Europeia and 10000 Islands that have been around for a long time have established a robust infrastructure that underpins almost everything that the region does. This infrastructure survives the test of time. It adapts to the shifting sands of the politics of the game, changes to NS rules, and even severe regional calamities and political crises can be overcome with relative ease.
Naturally, this is not the case for younger regions. For those emerging regions, there exist no one-stop database of scripts, supporting infrastructure, or ‘free’ consultants to provide them with the support that they need to ensure the sustainability and longevity of their region. One severe political catastrophe can be enough for the region to come to an end. A sudden resignation of a trusted leader, or the departure of a region mate can spell the end of a regions recruitment, cultural activities, or other key aspects of regional life, where they remain dependent upon one person, who is often but not always, the regional founder.
In The North Pacific, Europeia, 10000 Islands and many other game created regions - our infrastructure stands the test of time. Despite this success at home, there has been limited success in attempts to facilitate regional development. The sharing of technology, ideas, and expertise more broadly has occurred on many occasions on an informal level. So far, this has proven to be the most successful example of regional development occurring through that exchange of knowledge. Nevertheless, there is no formal belt and road project on the part of the major regions to proactively expand our infrastructure and knowledge beyond our shores.
However, the concept of taking the development of regional infrastructure as a foreign policy concept is certainly not a new one. In this article, we will examine a number of examples of this type of initiative - the formal and the informal, in an attempt to answer the question of what a NationStates equivalent of a belt and road project, one that extended beyond the borders of our home regions, would look like.
The NS Republic
The Nationstates Republic (NSR) , and the later revived form in the Nationstates Republic Alliance (NRA) was an alliance of nations led by The West Pacific. Active between 2011 and 2013, the NSR was established with the desire to build a republic of regions, to work with TWP to harness the power of all involved to create an unrivaled power bloc. By choosing to assist each other, the regions involved believed that this mutual cooperation would allow the progress of smaller regions, whose survival would be unlikely without the support of established regions. NSR was a large alliance, containing 19 member regions, who moved away from exclusively a defence alliance and more towards a diplomatic alliance by helping members build strong relationships.
However, whilst there were some strengths to the NSR, its was limited by some fundamental flaws. The main two of these flaws was its size and TWP’s dominance. Being such a large alliance meant that for decisions to be made, there will undoubtedly be a wide range of views and so a consensus between members would have been hard to achieve. As well as this, its large size will have meant that some regions will not have wanted to feel isolated or left out. So, to avoid this, it is likely that some of the smaller regions will have ‘piggybacked’ on larger regions to gain their favour for later assistance. This will ultimately have weakened the alliance because it will have resulted in the larger regions being dominant over the smaller regions who will just go along with whatever is proposed.
NSR gave way to some opportunities, especially for smaller member regions, in the assistance that would have been offered to them from larger regions. By being part of the Alliance, they would have gained knowledge and insight into ways to develop their region and allow them to flourish and grow. This offered opportunities for the smaller regions to grow as well as offering opportunities to the larger regions in that they would have gained the support of smaller regions when it is needed (whether militarily or in the World Assembly. However, these opportunities were weathered by the leadership of TWP over how the alliance was run. This is because the regions dominance meant that the alliance became exposed to the changes in goals of TWP's delegate. This meant that when a delegate was elected that did not have plans for NSR, it ultimately ended due to a lack of continuous support. This therefore suggests that for an alliance such as this to be a success it must be underpinned by the longstanding support of the region, and have supporting infrastructure that can survive shifts in political priorities of regional leaders.
The Grand Architecture Program (GAP)
The Grand Architecture Program was an initiative championed by former Europeian President Anumia in his election campaign of October 2013, as a means of utilising Europeian knowledge and infrastructure to facilitate regional development in upcoming regions of a similar interest. The program was underpinned by the Foreign Cultivation Act 2013. While the program was initiated by President Anumia, the loose concept had been proposed much earlier by the founder of Europeia HEM who opened a discussion on a “good neighbour policy”. The GAP emerged as a fusion of HEM’s policy and Anumia’s own ambitions for Europeia and NationStates.
The GAP involved the appointment of an Architect who would oversee the development of the region under the guidance of the Minister for Cultivation. In addition, a Council of Cultivation was formed with the intention of providing reports to the region on progress made - it would include a number of Europeian officials and a representative of each partner region.
By May of 2014, Europeia had enacted two ‘Construction Partnership Agreements’ under the leadership of Minister Lethen. Nevertheless, soon after, a handover within the Ministry to Minister Ogastein spelled a stalling of progress for the initiative. Minister Ogastein stated that he believed the program was a failure, saying that “We entered into construction partnership agreements with three separate regions and I can tell you with confidence that none of those regions is in a better place as a result of our work.”.
Nevertheless, Europeia persisted and the initiative was carried forward by President Kraketopia who appointed Malashaan as the new Minister for Cultivation. For a time, this proved to be a success with architect assignments being distributed on a timely basis, 6 construction agreements signed (Commonwealth of Kings, The Infinite Alliance, Natan Region, The Union Republic, The Bungle Brigade and Aura Hyperia) and several more in negotiation.
However the size of the project, a lack of communication about its successes, and the perception that the program was a burden upon successive administrations, led to the initiative being dropped. The political will to support such an initiative had come to an end. While some including HEM believed that the program required more time and support to be a success, others believed that for all the good intentions of Europeia, it was not possible to guarantee a core group of dedicated players who would sustain the region for the years ahead.
Despite the initial successes and the support of a significant number of Europeian leaders, the Grand Architecture Program came to an end. It was an incredibly bold initiative - one that required taking risks politically and institutionally - but nevertheless it was considered a failure by many within Europeia. It’s important to remember that for any major project, there are often unrealistic expectations. We can easily dismiss a failed term as Delegate or Minister as par for the course, but when an ambitious foreign policy agenda is pursued, our expectations are heightened and senses are attuned to even a whiff of failure or stalling. This can be enough to end the plans of the boldest of political leaders before they even begin.
Status of Forces Agreements
A more recent initiative also undertaken by Europeia as a means of building new partnerships, training valuable allies, and establishing military forces took place through the ‘Status of Forces Agreements’. This was certainly not as bold an initiative as the GAP, but nonetheless was an attempt to utilise the knowledge of Europeian military leaders to foster positive relations with emerging regions that were interested in forming their own military but lacked the infrastructure and knowledge to do so on their own. Europeia signed two such agreements - one with Merridel and one with Olympia. There is currently no agreement still on the books.
The difficulties with this kind of agreement are similar to the GAP. Despite the best intentions of political and military leaders, the success is largely dependent on that core group of dedicated players in the partner regions. In Merridel’s case this was certainly an issue, and it seems very likely that Olympia also suffered the same personnel deficiency. Olympia states in their WFE that they ceased operations after 500 days and the region is currently founderless. Merridel is still around with 72 nations - but lacks a regional forum and for all intents and purposes appears to have simply stopped recruiting.
The initiative should still be accepted as a reasonable foreign policy initiative. The intent behind building capacity to run and operate a regional military in order to build meaningful diplomatic relationships is a good one. The difficulty as always lies in the ongoing sustainability of the project - and the dedication of the partner region itself to also work to see the project through to completion.
World Assembly Development Program
The World Assembly Development Program (WADP), an initiative pioneered by r3naissanc3r remains a central component of everyday life in The North Pacific. Further to that, the initiative has been championed by the Security Council, successive Vice Delegates, Ministers of World Assembly Affairs, and of course, WA Delegates. The time invested into this initiative has meant that it has continued uninterrupted by political change, resignations, or even the increasingly time poor nature of the creator.
The World Assembly Development Program has been expanded in some form to Balder as the ‘WA Expedition’, and as the ‘World Assembly Advancement Program’ in Europeia. This was made possible by the hard work of the r3naissanc3r as the creator of the programs and the close partnerships that continue to this day between The North Pacific, Balder and Europeia.
The initiative has also encouraged innovation in other allied regions, such as in the The South Pacific has expanded into their own ‘SWAN’ or the Southern World Assembly Initiative, which operates in a similar fashion to the other programs, but was developed by South Pacifican United States of Vietnam. McMasterdonia (one of the authors of this article) and SillyString (Asta) are both acknowledged for their contributions to getting the SWAN initiative up and running.
These programs do not constitute a typical network of foreign policy alliances. However, it’s clear that the strength of these initiatives and the cooperation involved in operating them, have led to a positive flow of ideas between close partners.
What's next?
It is the duty of leading regions to assist in the further development of the game. The strength of the community of NationStates as a whole relies upon the strength of the communities that lie within it. A point of friction is the need to both freely share knowledge and ideas for the objective benefit of the game balanced against the political need to ensure such initiatives satisfy the foreign policy of your home region.
It is clear that many of us who play the game would not consider ourselves to be believers of optimistic diplomacy. However, bold successes of diplomacy that benefit all partners require a high degree of optimism and commitment. We must balance the needs of our communities for the constant validation of the success of such bold initiatives against the measurable and communciatable long term benefits of quiet, conscientious and tireless work in the field of diplomacy.
Even smaller steps, such as the sharing of knowledge through the WADP can be an important step in assisting developing regions to get through the difficult periods of growth where many falter. Game created regions have the obvious benefit of a steady flow of nations spawning each day - but without our initiatives and proactivity to engage with them, this would mean little.
Regional development as a product of foreign policy would require a boldness on the part of our leaders and the political will to see through the projects through the difficult stages, in the hope of forming a sustainable and meaningful development process that facilitates growth for developing regions in a manner that works with their culture and aspirations. While it is not possible for any leading region to simply guarantee a dedicated group of core players to sustain a region over many years, it is certainly possible for us to assist in giving these newer communities the best possible hope of success.
