AinurBoard

*sips coffee*

Hey Ashton...

Escanthea wrote:

Isaac is a man, thank god. Escantheans would rather die than have a woman on the throne, they'd waste all our treasury on shoes or something. Salic Law is the only Law over here!

Why waste money on useless things like shoes? The blasted things are so restrictive. Men are forced to wear shoes 24/7 here and they certainly complain about aching feet and all that. Whatever, though.

Escanthea wrote:

You just want to give this poor old imperialist a heart attack, don't you?

Not on purpose! Please don't die, that would be a horrible shame!

Escanthea wrote:

I will find you, evil clone, and i will kill you

Oh...
I like the clone...

The morovenian dawn wrote:

*sips coffee*

Hey Ashton...

Hi?

The Bermudan Pentagram wrote:

Clearly the ongoing '5 cubicle' crisis, which is almost, but not quite, inside Feminamia.

Perhaps.

94 block wrote:

Essie attacking some nation that ash has a treaty with, that ends in a chain reaction of more treaties coming into play.

What nation?

94 block wrote:

Maybe Fem?

Well, here's the thing with Fem. Usually, her situation would be a case of "enemy of my enemy", since Escanthea is the aggressive force, and I'm not a fan of Escanthea (IC wise, OOC wise he is awesome). So, in that case, I definitely should be helping her, at least with supplying weapons and ammo to her defense forces and perhaps even starting a no-fly zone so Escanthean planes can't destroy the nation

However, Thalasus has absolutely zero diplomatic communication with Feminamia, due to the fact we simply can't get any diplomat willing to go there because of the mandatory nudity and the very strange (and for Thalasian men, degrading and potentially dangerous) culture they have. Also, it sounds like there are some very serious human rights abuses going down in her country in regards to her treatment of males as essentially slaves. Hell, I was thinking it could be an incident that a particularly ignorant/unlucky Thalasian teenager accidentally wanders down into Feminamia while traveling the world and gets captured for being a man. If I believe that around half of Thalasian citizens will be forced into servitude simply by walking into the country, there is no way that I can consider that country as my friend (no matter how nice she is on the RMB :P).

So, I can't really support Feminamia because of that. If this Escan-Fem conflict makes it into the Incident forums (which should be up as soon as Augustus reads the Admin Task Thread) I would probably have to pull a Switzerland on this one and let the conflict itself be while using it as an excuse to beef up defense spending.

94 block wrote:

Maybe Fem?

It better not be Fem. I will blow his brains out. *loads her rifle*

The Gunslinger Girl wrote:

It better not be Fem. I will blow his brains out. *loads her rifle*

That escalated quickly. Then again, it's not ever un-escalated with you, is it? ;P

Krachtin wrote:

Hello

Hi! Welcome to Ainur!

94 block wrote:

What about essie trying to conquer all the smaller nations, and Turing their military into his. Aka consolidating his forces. What could we do then?

Military conquest generally indicates that the individual nations' militaries have been overrun. Depending on the circumstances, there might well be large forces that could be employed against his enemies; for example, in the Iraq War, Iraq had about 450,000 combatants; thanks to the way the war was conducted, there were only around 10000 combatants killed. That indicates 97% of the military was intact (before the stupid decision was made to disband them). Even assuming WWII technology on hand, in the Battle of France the Germans captured nearly 2 million combatants. Presumably at least some of them could be persuaded to fight, or Vichy France would have been utterly ineffectual.
Depending on the damage to materiel, however, rapid assimilation of fighting forces might not be possible. If you're fast enough on the offensive, you can take out tanks and air power, but if your goal is conquest, you're destroying what will be your own materiel. You'll need to build new weaponry and disseminate it to any captured combatants willing to fight for you. Even so, you'll have a massive amount of POWs to take care of if they're not willing for fight for you, tying up large parts of your armed forces, consuming your supplies, and tying up your administration, which is already overworked trying to integrate your newly captured citizens territory into your nation.
On the other hand, if a lightning offensive is stymied, then you'll run into a battle of attrition. There will be a lot less soldiers left on the enemy side, and a lot less of them will be willing to fight for you, having suffered privations at your hands, and having been subject to extensive propaganda against you.

Either way, it's very difficult to conquer a modern nation and turn its army into one you can make use of; either you have captured the greater part of the army, but it is largely defanged, and logistically difficult to take care of, or you have killed the greater part of it, greatly damaged your own fighting forces, and will doubtless be facing concerted opposition in the form of guerrilla attacks and partisan raids.
Any thought of conquering several nations and integrating their individual militaries with his is thus perhaps assigning too much credit.
Even assuming that the military conquest option was the case, your response would be a very dangerous one, since as I recall Escanthea also has a nuclear program (confirmed by the descriptor of Escanthea as 'remarkable for its ...ubiquitous missile silos'). Anything that might push a cold war into a hot war has the very real risk of igniting thermonuclear war, and while the Conflict Adjustment Laser LagrangIan Orbit ProgrammE (CALLIOPE) could presumably eliminate some of the ICBMs, at the cost of a relatively minor increase in the background radiation, anything involving two nuclear powers throwing them at each other is just bad for business. Good in the short term, since our economy is almost 40% arms sales, but it's so hard to get a stable clientele in a nuclear wasteland.

A more practical, and safer for everyone, possibility is indeed annexation through diplomatic means. However, in order for there to be even a semi-legitimate casus belli, you'll need widespread dissent in order to drum up regional, or even national support for a war. The Anschluss isn't a particularly good example, since Austria was quite happy to be united with Germany. The Sudetenland crisis is probably a better fit, and sanctions may only advance his national support and drive up the timetable, since both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were expansionist because they were hungry for resources. By depriving them of resources they could ordinarily acquire through trade, you have only intensified their need for it, and possibly pushed expansion through diplomatic means into expansion through military ones.
Welcome to being prewar Britain and France. How much appeasement will you be willing to accept before the costs are too high?

I'd say that for any practical international incidents that may include a hot war, you'd want to eliminate any WMDs. If that's unacceptable, consider proxy warfare instead.

The Bermudan Pentagram wrote:

Military conquest generally indicates that the individual nations' militaries have been overrun. Depending on the circumstances, there might well be large forces that could be employed against his enemies; for example, in the Iraq War, Iraq had about 450,000 combatants; thanks to the way the war was conducted, there were only around 10000 combatants killed. That indicates 97% of the military was intact (before the stupid decision was made to disband them). Even assuming WWII technology on hand, in the Battle of France the Germans captured nearly 2 million combatants. Presumably at least some of them could be persuaded to fight, or Vichy France would have been utterly ineffectual.
Depending on the damage to materiel, however, rapid assimilation of fighting forces might not be possible. If you're fast enough on the offensive, you can take out tanks and air power, but if your goal is conquest, you're destroying what will be your own materiel. You'll need to build new weaponry and disseminate it to any captured combatants willing to fight for you. Even so, you'll have a massive amount of POWs to take care of if they're not willing for fight for you, tying up large parts of your armed forces, consuming your supplies, and tying up your administration, which is already overworked trying to integrate your newly captured citizens territory into your nation.
On the other hand, if a lightning offensive is stymied, then you'll run into a battle of attrition. There will be a lot less soldiers left on the enemy side, and a lot less of them will be willing to fight for you, having suffered privations at your hands, and having been subject to extensive propaganda against you.

Either way, it's very difficult to conquer a modern nation and turn its army into one you can make use of; either you have captured the greater part of the army, but it is largely defanged, and logistically difficult to take care of, or you have killed the greater part of it, greatly damaged your own fighting forces, and will doubtless be facing concerted opposition in the form of guerrilla attacks and partisan raids.
Any thought of conquering several nations and integrating their individual militaries with his is thus perhaps assigning too much credit.
Even assuming that the military conquest option was the case, your response would be a very dangerous one, since as I recall Escanthea also has a nuclear program (confirmed by the descriptor of Escanthea as 'remarkable for its ...ubiquitous missile silos'). Anything that might push a cold war into a hot war has the very real risk of igniting thermonuclear war, and while the Conflict Adjustment Laser LagrangIan Orbit ProgrammE (CALLIOPE) could presumably eliminate some of the ICBMs, at the cost of a relatively minor increase in the background radiation, anything involving two nuclear powers throwing them at each other is just bad for business. Good in the short term, since our economy is almost 40% arms sales, but it's so hard to get a stable clientele in a nuclear wasteland.

A more practical, and safer for everyone, possibility is indeed annexation through diplomatic means. However, in order for there to be even a semi-legitimate casus belli, you'll need widespread dissent in order to drum up regional, or even national support for a war. The Anschluss isn't a particularly good example, since Austria was quite happy to be united with Germany. The Sudetenland crisis is probably a better fit, and sanctions may only advance his national support and drive up the timetable, since both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were expansionist because they were hungry for resources. By depriving them of resources they could ordinarily acquire through trade, you have only intensified their need for it, and possibly pushed expansion through diplomatic means into expansion through military ones.
Welcome to being prewar Britain and France. How much appeasement will you be willing to accept before the costs are too high?

I'd say that for any practical international incidents that may include a hot war, you'd want to eliminate any WMDs. If that's unacceptable, consider proxy warfare instead.

I don't think such a conquest would be Escanthea's goal. They would be far more likely to work in an imperialist/MIC way, gaining resources for military use by military force, rather than gaining military by military force.

Also, it should be pointed out that neither Escanthea or I are capable of destroying the world like the USA and USSR were/are. I currently posses 150 un-salted hydrogen warheads capable of delivery via bombers, cruise missiles, and a few dozen ICBMs. Escanthea has similar capabilities and a few more warheads. It is also DRT defense policy only to use nuclear weapons in response to:

A. In retaliation to a strategic nuclear attack on Thalasus, or
B. In a tactical setting where an unacceptable defeat is imminent. For example, if all the "melee" ships (such as destroyers and LCS), carriers and battleships of the First Fleet were destroyed in battle and there is at least one warhead-carrying missile cruiser standing, the Admiral of the First Fleet or the captain of the surviving nuclear vessel would authorize the Aquila Protocol (a launch of three low-yield nuclear cruise missiles and nine decoys), ensuring that the attacking fleet would be completely destroyed and earning a Pyrrhic victory for Thalasus.

Thalasian involvement would only be airspace/ocean denial and small-scale air strikes in the most serious of cases. Selling cheap weapons and supporting rebels is standard Thalasian diplomacy where Escanthea is involved.

The Bermudan Pentagram wrote:

Oh, I'm sure. But I was talking about the hypothetical scenario that block proposed, which involved military conquest and assimilation. However, even if assimilating local fighters was not the goal, if it's not done, a large part of the military will be tied up with what is essentially garrison duty, whether in terms of preventing partisan attacks, guarding POW camps, or even just generally in terms of keeping 'boots on the ground' to keep the local population docile.
Military expansionism for the purpose of resource acquisition with the end goal of waging longer, larger wars is self-defeating, since unless the civilian population sees accruing benefits, regime change is a real risk. Moreover, unless the political leadership has a very strong grasp on the military (such as the Soviet Armed Forces, the PLA, or the Wehrmacht), the more powerful the military gets, the greater the risk of a military coup. And at that point, in most practical senses the country is run by the military.

Also: while I'm not operating on the assumption that Thalasus and Escanthea are USA/USSR level nuclear powers, the fact remains that both of you are members of a mutual defense organization (ADDO and FLOAT, though I'm not sure how many members of each there are, or if there are even members of FLOAT). Which means that nuclear response by one member of FLOAT, hypothetically, may spark retaliation from ALL nuclear-armed members of ADDO, with a corresponding response from the remaining members of FLOAT. Mutually Assured Destruction is a terrifying concept. Universally Assured Destruction is an unfortunate corollary of that dangerous hypothetical (despite assurances from BP State Arms that the CALLIOPE satellites can 'totes handle like, a hundred nukes, brah').

Finally, while airspace/ocean denial seems like a minor thing, recall that the Cuban Missile Crisis was, essentially, the US attempting to deny the transport of materiel to Cuba. And that was probably the only time in US history that we were at DEFCON 2.

On a less serious note, battleships? This is the 21st century!

Fair enough.

That is a good point. ADDO does not yet have an official nuclear policy, but we do have a standard defense pact, so it stands to reason that nuclear retaliation (even if nukes only hit one ADDO nation) would count as a defense pact requirement. And while FLOAT only has one or two member states, a conflict like this could potentially escalate to a doomsday scenario. I'll call a council for ADDO nations to determine proper nuclear policy.

I said such a response would only be in the very worst cases. So, I still stand by that policy. Only a scenario as threatening to us as Cuban armament was to America would warrant blockade... erm... "containment" or air strikes and airspace denial.

Our Nikali-class battleships are built with modern heavy composite armor, are powered by both nuclear and diesel generators, use ten different types radar systems and hundreds of thousands of integrated sensors with a supercomputer, and are armed by modern long-range adjustable artillery in three sectional large turrets each with a separate targeting system, 4 SAM installations, 6 cruise missile launchers, eight CIWS, and more small guns than you can shake a stick at. It's a 21st century battleship, and we have ten of them in our fleet.

Be prepared to have a snarky sidekick, GG.

😀😀😀Chris Christie

94 block wrote:

Be prepared to have a snarky sidekick, GG.

I can use the help in keeping you in line. :P

Krachtin wrote:

Who do like being elected in 2016?

I, personally, will wait until the candidates are nominated and then pick the lesser of the two evils. I wish there was the option of "None of the Above".