Defenders: The True Imperialists
Posted by Marxingrad on Wed Jul 17, 2013
Essentially an essay on the true nature of “Defenders”. I wasn’t sure of the most appropriate place to post this:
The realm of NationStates (NS) sees one of the most ferocious concepts of game-play. The raider/defender game, is based on the concept of one force taking control of a region via its World Assembly Delegate (WAD) position in the region, reinforced by endorsements of its own side. These are the raiders. They have an opposition, a yang to their ying, so to speak. That is the defenders, who intervene in regions to stop the raiders from taking control, they will restore the region to its previous form and then move on as if nothing happened.
With the context of the raider/defender game, it is rather clear how raiders are considered Imperialist. Their sole aim is to occupy a region and to turn it into either a short-term or permanent colony of theirs through either tag-raids which lasts one update, or by locking a region and worst-case scenario re-founding it so that their forces permanently hold it. This often results in the complete subjugation and subsequent destruction of the native population, which is often silenced, then summarily banished. The World Factbook Entries (WFE) of the raiders colonies are to lead those interested in joining their forces to the right location. This form of subjugation and recruitment is akin to the enslavement of ancient Empires. The fact that raiders are entirely unbothered about this is obvious for all to see, naked militarist ambition is the height of the game. Whoever can be the more bombastic, totalitarian and evil, win the game.
Therefore it would potentially occupy the mind that the defenders, their opposites are surely the righteous and noble defenders of freedom? It is certainly an image that the defender community likes to bathe in. Glorious, heroic and honourable defenders who seek to hold the gates against the enemy, who march willingly into any military zone with the intent of freeing the subjugated natives from their oppression. Of course, in a simplified dichotomy it would seem so. In reality, it is a myth. A farce played upon the NS community as a whole. The defenders are no less Imperialist than their raider counterparts.
The defenders use a veil of incorruptibility to disguise their ambitions, which once boiled down is reduced to a rather unsubstantial form of apoliticalness. In other words, they use their lack of politics to identify themselves as having no ambition. This is a clever trick and ploy of the liberally minded. The conception of an apolitical defender organisation represents an attempt to suppress anything that challenges the status quo. Much as in history, Great Britain engaged in Imperialist activity in the First World War, to crush upstart militarist nations that challenged Britains hegemony; Germany and Austria. The lack of any prominent political line, means that the organisations are made up of a mixture of liberals, Conservatives, Fascists and confused Social Democrats. This mixture of political ideals however is reflected in a rather systematic suppression of change.
The defenders use the premise of sovereignty as their point of departure; all regions are sovereign and are therefore not to be meddled in. Unless of course, you are a defender and therefore anything that challenges the perceived status quo of the region will result in extreme military force to restore order. As the US tramples over regimes its propped up in the Middle East to ensure that order and democracy are represented, defenders take umbrage to the idea that they are in anyway breaching the national sovereignty, but by extension of their intervention that are replicating the exact same method of military organisation of the raiders, but on the opposing dichotomy. Defenders, also have no qualms about defending the indefensible. In the attempt to ensure sovereignty and the status quo is upheld, they will prop up Fascist, Nazi and other abhorrent regions on the premise that they are entitled to their own sovereignty. This protection of militarist powers is quintessentially a complete contradiction of their supposed ideals. To protect the NS world from militarism, you must also defend regions that are militaristic?! This conscious contradiction is not the only shortsighted aspect of the defenders rhetoric.
In each combat situation, the defenders choose whom to prop up. They attempt to maintain a sense of neutrality by, where possible, using a so-called native to restore order to the region. This is all well and good, but surface perceptions are not an accurate portrayal of what is good and what isnt for a region. They primarily judge this by the nation which possesses the most power, but thats generally a very poor measurement of the designs for the region and its progress forward. This attempt to prop up neutral natives comes at its highest contradiction, when the native continually fails to use this position to put a more permanent measure of protection on the region and is therefore failing simply by inaction to protect the region. This point is part of the crux of the problem with the defenders and their organisations. There attempt to support the status quo of regions, means that they are prepared to intervene against perceived threats to a regions sovereignty because theyd rather see the old established power structures continue to existing. Any coup (or revolution?) is mercilessly crushed, on the premise of preserving the rightful position of power. The recent events in The South Pacific confirm this rhetoric, whereby a nation elevated to the WAD position with a huge revolutionary backing (despite the potential problematic program and its members) was considered to be hostile to the interests of the South Pacific and therefore an organised force of resistance was made to destroy this peoples movement and establish a force that would restore the established elites to power under the guise of protecting democracy.
The defenders interests lie in the false conception of protecting regions as simply firefighting with raiders. A region could be wartorn, with numerous attempts to burn it to the ground by raiders, while defenders continually intervene but only to restore the region to its original form. Sometimes barely even that. This fails to address the greater problem of why the region is targeted and how to stop it. The problem is that the defenders dont wish to alter the established power structures, fearful of incurring the wrath of its elites and backers, the defenders leave thousands of wartorn regions in NS in pieces, unable and unwilling to solve the problem because of inability to identify the cause.
The defenders stand as a pinnacle of established power. Protecting the interests of growing elite regions, working together with powerful forces and using very authoritarian measures within their own organisations, but also continuing to restore their own perception of order to the NS world. Organising their forces to ensure that certain regions are well within their sway, depositing puppets across the NS world to ensure that native populations do not go feral, and ensuring that they have their forces prepared to answer the call at any whim of the ever-growing bureaucratised leadership. The defenders utilise a lexicon of liberal words that are easily misused to construct an image of righteousness, foundations of freedom and liberty are based primarily on the liberty to be attacked over and over again. The freedom to have defenders and raiders pile in at any given update purely to desecrate your region. The objection with non-conformist forces leads to the obvious conclusion, anyone who undertakes raids are raiders and ergo must be evil. The attempt to paint organisations that undertake raids as evil, leads to a very confused way of dealing with these organisations once they take a defensive option. Once these organisations whom raid and defend are caught in the act of protecting a region that they are aligned with on some common ground, the defenders intervene militarily regardless of whether it assists the region, but on the premise of protecting the regions sovereignty. Here belies the greatest contradiction within the defenders ideals. Their perspective is based on the illogical and fraught notion of sovereignty as being the highest ideal. One they trample on an hourly basis.
The defenders are therefore much like the European Imperialist powers of the 19th century, or like the great United States of this century. Militarism is disguised in demagogic words used to trample over the very systems that the defenders purportedly protect. They are unable to bridge this theoretical gulf, because from the very onset their ideals are fraught with contradictions and they are unable to build a cohesive political movement, on the very basis of their means of defending the privileged elites of the NS world.