Foreign Affairs Crisis Deepens For The Tampering Trio
Written by Andy
Edited by UPC and Amalteia
The political fallout from the joint statement put out by the New Pacific Order (NPO), Augustin Alliance (AA) and Lone Wolves United (LWU) continues with a cascade of embassy closures and treaty terminations. The statement, posted on 8th April to the NationStates forums, attempted to justify the demand the three powers put forward to the Outback (TO) to depose its legitimate delegate The Walkabout (otherwise known as Bran) in favour of a candidate more sympathetic to their interests. The statement triggered a multi-regional political crisis which began with the afflicted regions’ Rebuttal Regarding The Outback statement, and continues to unravel almost two weeks later, all the while they contend with yet another scandal of their own making.
The blowback against the inflammatory early April statement began quickly, with the West Pacific (TWP) delegate Varanius leading the charge in Rebuttal Regarding The Outback. Signed by TWP, TO, the Plains of Perdition (Perdition), Europeia, The North Pacific (TNP) and Balder, the statement incandescently counters the narratives put forward against Bran’s delegacy and scathes the trio for their actions interfering in a sovereign region’s internal affairs. It concludes with an announcement of TWP’s withdrawal from its bilateral treaty with LWU and from the Pax Polaris Occidens (PPO), detailed excellently by UPC writing for the EBC.
Whilst this encroaching entente might have hoped for that to be the end of their woes, alas it most certainly was not. A mere few days after TWP’s departure from the LWU and PPO treaties, their crisis deepened as more embassies and treaties were put up for the slaughter: Perdition & TO jointly withdrew their embassies with the NPO on 11th April, with TO similarly closing its AA embassies in the same statement; in ‘Moving On’, TWP repealed its bilateral treaties with the NPO & AA on 13th April; Perdition moved to repeal its treaty with the AA on 16th April, shortly after a sincere but ultimately insufficient apology from Emiline (the governor of the AA regions); TNP demolished its embassy with LWU on 17th April; the League & Concord withdrew from its treaty with the AA on 19th April. These events brought the kill count at the time to one embassy and one treaty for LWU, two treaties and two embassies dead for the NPO, and four treaties and one embassy for the AA.
Yet the consequences of these regions' actions still had not yet fully materialised: the 21st April would prove to be a monumental day for inter-regional diplomacy, with several unprececedented shifts making waves across the NationStates multiverse. The first came from a region which historically rarely makes such a scene - Lazarus - which made a statement publicly accusing LWU of attempts to interfere in its affairs and, after an internal vote, the region would issue a proscription against LWU along with abandoning its long-standing Neutral alignment in favour of Defenderdom. Such a move is a major turning point for Lazarus, which for years has abstained from almost all military gameplay in the name of its neutrality, whilst their statement constitutes a further crushing blow to LWU's foreign affairs credibility with a second game-created region (GCR) coming forward with accusations of meddling against them.
Within an hour of the Lazarene statement being posted, LWU was handed two further defeats this time at the hands of its own conspiratorial collaborators. A representative from the AA notified the world that the Alliance would withdraw from its treaty with LWU, citing non-specific platitudes of diverging visions for the future. Mere moments later, Empress Marina of the NPO posted her own statement apologising for the part the NPO played and attempting to take accountability for its actions, concluding the statement similarly with a termination of the NPO's bilateral treaty with LWU.
A diplomatic storm on this scale has not been seen in several years on NationStates. Comparisons have been drawn in the public arena to the backlash Osiris faced after the exposure of Operation Ragnarok, a failed attempt to infiltrate Balder in 2022, and the crisis faced by the NPO in 2018 which made it an inter-regional pariah for years before its image could be rehabilitated, largely by TWP. Given it is entirely possible the ramifications of these regions' meddling have still not yet fully materialised, these comparisons are quite apt. It is clear the advent of these two new sinkers, as predicted by the EBC months ago in its November 2024 article 'New Sinkers Redefine NationStates Gameplay', has left an indelible mark on the multiverse - and they only just got started.
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