Kalistan

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Opinion: Nationalists Should support Egelian Deal
Empress understands National Interests best served by regional Cooperation
Kaliburg, Grand Duchy of Ananto
March 30, 5703


Her Imperial Majesty brilliantly threads a needle in Egelion

Editorial
Earlier this month, The moderate Chancellor of the Empire Lord Reg Hanson delivered the final report of the diplomatic efforts in Egelion of Her Imperial Majesty, Empress Carolina II Ananto to the National Assembly, for a pro forma vote of ratification. The Chancellor discussed the history of the crisis, and efforts that were taken on both sides of the Anantonese Ocean to resolve the situation in a way that would allow both nations to claim victory and move toward peace and cooperation. During his nauseatingly milquetoast dissertation about the greatness of cooperation with our current chief geopolitical rivals, about 2/3rds of the Nationalist Caucus walked out of the Assembly in protest.

Their point was that the report sounded like a sop to Egelion rather than evidence that Her Imperial Majesty stood on business in the Egelian capital and they weren't about to sit around and listen to stories about the reasonableness of the Egelian Emperor, or the admittedly modest concessions the Empress was able to wring from him. As one of the protest Nationalists said later, "He wouldn't have given any of those concessions if he did not stand to gain more than he lost from them somewhere else. It is handy just to have Kalistan look the other way while he conducts his imperialist war in New Verham. I'm suprised and deeply saddened she did not demand more from him for that alone!"

The Chancellor, when he was finished, asked for and got an acclamation approval of the report from the Deputies who remained in the Chamber, allowing him yet another win for the Moderate position while entirely sidestepping the legitimate Nationalist concerns that the Empress gave away the entire farm for nothing. It is the latest in a example of the moderate Chancellor demonstrating that he does not need Nationalists to conduct Government Policy, and represents a sea change from when this position was the dominant position under the Chancellor.

But: There is another viewpoint among the Nationalists who stayed, and in fact a number of them (about 15) did stay and voted with the Chancellor on this report. They argued that first, the Nationalist position is to support the interests of the Nation, and nobody personifies National interests like the very embodiment of the Kalistani Nation itself, Her Imperial Majesty. If the Empress says it is in National Interests, it is a Nationalist's job to support her, because after all, she is the one who determines what the National Interest is. We can disagree with her if we like, but if you weigh the opinion of 95 million Kalistanis against the opinion of one Lady when the question is "What is the National interest," she wins every single time. To oppose that is to violate our very reason to exist.

Second: Look at how she represented her Nation in Altea! Despite the very personally insulting things that the Egelian Government said about her, calling her puerile, opportunistic, paranoid, self-destructive, vainglorious, power-hungry, out of control, driven by envy and lacking of any status worthy of Egelian acknowledgement, and a child simply throwing a tantrum, among every other horrible name they could sling at her, when the Egelian Government changed its tone and invited Her Imperial Majesty back to talk, she went and she held her head up proudly as she arrived in Altea. She sent an advanced team to negotiate the preliminaries, as a responsible leader would, so that by the time she herself went, the agreement was all but signed. She demonstrated that the slanders and libels leveled against her were less important to Kalistan than the project of peace.

And she got what she wanted out of the meeting: In all accounts, her agenda was very limited. Peace and more communication. She agreed to some of the asks of the Egelian Government as well. She managed the Kalistani side of the matter with grace and dignity, and made Kalistanis proud of their Empress. And that alone is worth supporting and encouraging because it improves out image abroad and makes us stronger as a nation.

Third: Her grace and dignity through the entire thing has allowed her to clearly enunciate the National Interest with regard to Egelion. It was not about personal pique. It was about the insecurity Fortress Kalistan feels when our neighbors go to war, because they do not go to war in a vacuum. Everything our neighbors do affects our National Security. The War in NEKK, though it did not touch Kalistan, nonetheless was a destabilizing energy in the region, which decreases our Nation's sense of security. The same holds for local nations engaging in places like the Migrants Pass or the seas between Majatra and Seleya. Not because war is happening here, but war can be brought back home, and then Kalistan would be affected though we tried to stay out of it, for no more reason than our neighbors decided to go to war.

Military communication, in this point, is a major win for Kalistani security. If we know what will happen, we can prepare ourselves, and we can theoretically ask if we could support our neighbors or just plan to stay out of the way. This guarantee of communication, and the potential for joint patrols and possible intel sharing is a major gain for Kalistani Security. That would not have happened if she would have gone in there as the firebrand the Nationalist protest Deputies insisted she be. She would have, instead, proved every Egelian slur right about her, much to the Nation's detriment.

It is possible to see this meeting two ways, but we'll use the remainder of this editorial making a case for the second way. The first is the Empress bent the knee to the Egelian Emperor, figuratively, if not literally. In giving him a free hand in New Verham, as her predecessor did in Rildanor, and only gaining a promise to communicate, she essentially was the first to formally confirm Egelion as a global power that we all know it aspires to be.

We could hold that view, but we want to suggest an alternative: In going to Egelian and securing her goals, she not only maintains Kalistani independence of action and policy from the expanding Egelian Empire, but also sets us up to work alongside them in the future on matters that concern us both. Fortress Kalistan is one thing: The strategic doctrine of Kalistan's armed forces aims to make any attempt to apply military force against Kalistan and Ananto, by any power on the globe far too costly as to not be worth it should they succeed. Kalistani planners would rather burn the entire nation to ash than surrender an inch of ground uncontested anywhere. That's one thing.

But let's suppose some foreign power or some block comes in and starts messing with our neighbors, who we must rely on to hold the doors shut while Kalistan gets its war footing spun up? What if Lodamun falls? What is Gaduridos is stolen once more by some malevolent Majatran or Artanian power? Will Kalistan be able to respond in time to help our neighbors, who we absolutely rely on with enough force to make a difference, or will be be relegated to just retreating to our Island and our coast and waiting for the onslaught?

It would be far better in this sense to have the military of a global power working with us, rather than siding with our enemies in this instance. Its not band-wagoning exactly: Egelion's power simply cannot be ignored, given their proximity to our capital. In securing peace and setting a foundation for cooperation with Egelion, Her Imperial Majesty strengthens our Northern and Western approaches, by making Kalistani security to their south an Egelian Imperial Interest. We will never be a protectorate, we will never be a colony, but we can be a comrade in arms by making regional security all of our business. This in our belief secures Kalistani interests far better than being opposed to the entire world AND Egelion like our hardliners want us to be.

It is important for the Nationalists to remember, in diplomacy, we don't always get everything we want. If these hardheaded Deputies and the members of the Nationalist Caucus think we should go back to the days when Kalistan could dictate to the world, it is incumbent on us to remind them that this never happened. If they were trying to give the Chancellor a black eye by walking out, or trying to embarrass the Empress for some slight, like sacking the Chancellor before she could retire because she took that strong nationalist stance, just remember, the Chancellor had the votes without a single Nationalist vote being cast in favor of it. The Deputies have been at this game long enough to know that opposition is pointless, because the Chancellor doesn't move anything he can't pass, without a single Nationalist vote if need be, and when he does move it, it can be assumed to have been commanded by Her Imperial Majesty on some level. So there's actually no effective way to protest within the Legislature--if the Chancellor moves something its going to pass, because the Empress ordered it to.

And finally, we have the words of the former Chancellor of the Empire, the nationalist Lady Ericka Donahue, in retirement in Eshar. "Her Imperial Majesty is far more intelligent than every one of those idiots who walked out of the vote," she said last week in an interview on a different topic. "She is far more intelligent than most people in this nation and we are a pretty well educated nation. She knows what she is doing, and always, always, deserves the benefit of the doubt. She may make mistakes, but that will never be because she is mistaken-- more like she is misled by others. She knows what she is doing, and I gotta tell you, I haven't ever been as convinced that a woman can see the future like I am with her. The only people they embarrassed by walking out is themselves, and the Nationalist Caucus should seriously consider replacing them ahead of the next elections, because they are not serving their constituencies well by doing something stupid like that."

There you have it: nobody could ever consider Lady Donahue a moderate, or a sympathizer of some milquetoast sop to the Egelians. She is a Nationalists' Nationalist who went down preaching a hard nationalist position. And she feels much the same way as we do on the matter. The Empress likely sees something that we don't. She can afford to take a 10,000 foot view. She communicates with others at higher levels than most Kalistanis will ever achieve. We as Nationalists need to rally behind our Empress and should support the Egelian Deal because this cooperation on regional interests serves, among others, Kalistani National Interests too.

@TheNational