On Alignment

On Alignment

For years The North Pacific has been a vocal and staunch subscriber of The Independent Manifesto. At that time, as it is now, the military landscape was divided by the dichotomy between raiders and defenders, and The North Pacific found itself naturally drawn to a third way. Independence allowed The North Pacific to pursue more nuanced and pragmatic positions and operations, and ever since, we have continued to pursue policies and operations that further the interests of The North Pacific and our community. Many have criticized the Manifesto and The North Pacific specifically for laying out an ideology that professed to allow the pursuit of regional self-interest, but without ever being able to explain what those values actually were. This criticism was false, and based on a failure to recognize a fundamental truth inherent in Independence: a region's self-interest can and does often change as circumstances around it change, and the needs and wants of the citizens evolve over time.

The last year has revealed in the clearest fashion yet just what The North Pacific's values are, and how they fit with the tenets of The Independent Manifesto. In the process of coming to a better understanding of those values and their place in the NS of 2022, we have come to a clearer understanding of our relationship with the binary R/D world as well. Simply put, it is not in The North Pacific's interest to continue to seek a third way that specifically avoids favoring raiding or defending for the sake of avoiding affiliation, because doing so does not allow us to be consistent and true to our core principles. Instead, we can articulate those principles and advance our values far more effectively by championing a new vision firmly within the R/D spectrum. We wish to share that vision with the world, explain how we got here and where we hope to go from here.

First and foremost: The North Pacific is a staunch believer in democracy, in self-governance and broad freedoms for the residents and citizens of all regions in NationStates. We believe in sovereignty, and in a game community free from fascism, Nazi disruptors, and OOC problematic individuals. Whenever we have seen these things threatened, we have acted. These principles have led us to liberate regions whose identity and freedom were threatened, and to destroy others seeking to spread the poison of fascist thought. We have denounced and acted against those who would invade and permanently destroy communities. Our convictions have resulted in laws in our own region that strictly regulate the types of operations our military can participate in, such that we have taken great care not to allow our soldiers to engage in destructive acts of griefing without the approval of the Regional Assembly. As time has gone on, our fellow Independent Manifesto signatories have done the same. Increasingly we have been left with tag raiding as the most viable type of raid for us to engage in, due not only to our own laws, but the current makeup of the NPA and the partners we can work with.

The trouble is, tag raiding is an activity which has been virtually eliminated as an option in today's military landscape, and which benefited our interests only so far as it helped train our troops and allow us to further our relationship with other organizations and regions. Additionally, given the prevalence of defender operations and an unmistakable shift in culture not only abroad but in The North Pacific, and recent events impacting our partnerships with R/D organizations, we simply do not have a way to partner with those who exclusively engage in raids, nor the will to forge better relations with them.

In such a game state, there are few significant raiding organizations, let alone regions explicitly subscribing to raider ideology. The North Pacific has frequently partnered with two of these long-lasting organizations, The Black Hawks and Lone Wolves United. Recently, The North Pacific suspended our working and diplomatic relationships with these organizations. We will not repeat the specifics, which our previous statement regarding the recent events in Stargate makes abundantly clear. We should also note this is not the first time we have had to suspend working with The Black Hawks, as this was only the latest careless act on their part. They have continually walked up to the line of unacceptable behavior, such as their quorum raid of one of our author's proposals, their repeated hamfisted attempts to interfere with our ally The South Pacific's affairs, and their poor handling of spies and members who leaked information that negatively affected our diplomatic and military affairs; but they have always done so in such a way that they could plausibly profess to be idiots rather than intelligent, malicious manipulators (though there are some who believe they are both).

What we learned in the hours after the events in Stargate was that The Black Hawks continue to be unable to take responsibility for their actions, and that they plead ignorance, even when transparently false, in the mistaken hopes that that would somehow get them out of trouble. The North Pacific has spoken at great length, perhaps at much greater length than is deserved, with The Black Hawks, hoping to instill some measure of caution and respect for our values and our friends. Sadly, they have continuously failed to meet such expectations.

As a result of the change in our relationship with our former raider partners, The North Pacific has effectively ceased any feasible raiding activity the NPA could engage in. We have concluded it is currently not in our best interest to work with these organizations, but more than that, it is not in our interest to pursue most raiding operations more generally. The North Pacific is not a community that inspires raiding activity, and while our interests do not center around R/D, the game is in a state where R/D is of much greater interest. Our players, and those who would serve in our military, are no different. Now is a time where our values and the hearts and minds of our citizens are most in alignment with the world of defending, and our commitment to Independent ideals cannot overlook that. If Independence is about focusing only on our interests and paying no mind to how many operations of one type or another we do, then this should not only be unsurprising, but inevitable. It should be noted that our other democratic allies, and even those who do not subscribe to democracy, often protect democracy and its underlying values through their acts of defending. More often than not, the organizations and regions that make up the defender sphere are fighting for the very same values that we have championed for over a decade. We must make this shift to continue to speak credibly on these issues.

The North Pacific is inclined to be a region that defends when it uses its military, and to support and work alongside other regions and organizations which defend. But even though that is true, we must recognize that the defender sphere is diverse and not of one mind. It contains staunch moralists like 10000 Islands and highly competitive updaters like The Grey Wardens, and they do not always agree on vision or tactics. Were The North Pacific to call itself a defender region, many in the defender sphere would disagree with the notion. This is because we have convictions and engage in practices that many defenders would deem unacceptable, and we proudly stand by them. Foremost among these is quorum raiding, but even the fact that The North Pacific is inclined to raid in order to achieve its interests would be a mark against us being considered defenders for some. This sort of response has traditionally caused the continuation of The North Pacific's staunch adherence to Independence and continuing to shy away from ever even favoring one side of the R/D divide. It does not have to.

Especially in today's growing defender consensus, it is important to contextualize when a raid is appropriate. The North Pacific will raid to destroy facist regions; during a time of war; to topple delegates of regions that wronged our region but did not rise to the level of war; and to assist our allies in similar situations. The North Pacific will quorum raid to stop fascist propaganda in the WA; to sanction other regions; and to assist our allies in similar situations. These examples of raids are almost definitionally rare, and we hope, as we always have, that these operations will not be necessary.

The North Pacific today has an obvious default and natural preference in the R/D world. While it wouldn't make sense to define ourselves exclusively by that preference, or lock our military into it, in practice The North Pacific moving forward is almost always going to be a defender when active in the R/D sphere. It is important that we live our principles and values, and defending is a natural extension of them. We hope to inspire our community and consistently strengthen our bonds with our allies through the operations we choose to assist, or sometimes lead, and defending is a natural way to achieve these things. We believe that the defender sphere is diverse enough to have the NPA occupy such a space, and we also believe that we are not alone. Many in our history have been naturally inclined to support defenders and even subscribe to that label, but felt out of place or alienated by the dominant and loudest voices present in the defender sphere. Given our natural alliance with the defender ideology, not to mention our compatibility with it, we wish to further contribute to the diversity of the defender sphere, and show that there is a space for pragmatic players who will strike only when absolutely necessary, and for good reasons, not for malicious ones. We wish to show that raiding is a tool, and that being willing to engage in offense to defend one's principles and values and one's community is as acceptable as invading a region to prevent another invading group from defacing or supplanting it.

Some might call this The North Pacific going defender, others will probably call it a particular kind of Independence. It doesn't matter. This is as fair a description of our values and philosophy regarding R/D as any we can currently imagine. A key part of Independence is being able to eschew the binary labels NS military has used since its inception, but as we all know, people will use whatever labels they wish regardless of how accurate or fair they are, just as they have in the past when referring to regions subscribing to Independence. Given our recent announcement regarding our former raider partners, and a trend that has been years in the making, we do not even believe this shift is much of a shift, but simply an accurate and honest accounting of where things stand now. Practically speaking, it means the end of all unnecessary raiding activity by the NPA, and the permanent end of joint operations with raider organizations. It means an almost exclusive shift to defensive operations and joint operations with defender organizations.

We look forward to playing a bigger part in the R/D sphere in 2022, and in contributing our voice to the chorus of freedom, liberty, and democracy that is so often a hallmark of the defender sphere at its best.