Minmatar/Caldari: Relations

[Veikitamo_Gesakaarin]

@Diana_Kim

Considering it was slander about me, I know facts about myself way better than anyone else. And without court session in such case my word has greater volume than hers based on mere source of that word.

Yes, it means I can claim it was a slander without the court, as it was affecting my person.

Now, stop derailing thread and get out. I am tired of addressing every crap that trolls bring into threads about me just to derail conversations.

Here we have ladies and gentlemen who agree with me (in my own mind), well known troll, liar and idiot circus performer Diana Kim who does go into threads derailing conversations about why the Federation must be destroyed.

This idiot clown talks about court cases, but she is just idiot like Intara Direct Action who did try to sue me saying I was some kind of corporate operative working for Kaalakiota Corporation who did use my status as an independent capsuleer to create a disreputable persona to facilitate political warfare operations for the company.

This was obvious lie and slander, I am Caldari officer, not some kind of intelligence operative who creates front companies staffed with criminals to conduct hybrid conflict operations in the interests of the State while affording my true employers sufficient plausible deniability.

As we can see, this was why the CPD threw the case out of the CBT at the time, which by the way was the only time an outside agency has ever coerced the CBT to throw a case out of a trial docket because it was so obviously untrue that anyone could see that.

We do not need to believe such conspiracies, or even to believe that I am right now manipulating Diana Kim’s ego and pressing need for public validation and legitimacy to make her slander me in order to maintain a disreputable persona in public.

This is because the truth is I am, in fact, a Caldari officer.

[kul_Shaishi]

@Diana_Kim is a known monarchist and spreads anti-State activities

[Diana_Kim]

@Veikitamo_Gesakaarin

This is because the truth is I am, in fact, a Caldari officer.

No, you are just a gurista, who makes a clown out of herself in IGS. Please clear the board from your nonsence.

@kul_Shaishi

is a known monarchist and spreads anti-State activities

Gesakaarin 2.0?

[Lasairiona_Raske]

Who died and made DK IGS police?

[Elmund_Egivand]

Nobody. She appointed herself, built herself an office made out of shipping container and is now trying to baton us with wound-up biodegradables for breaking illegitimate rules that she has no power to enforce.

[Lasairiona_Raske]

What? How dare you insult an honorable Caldari officer? Cease and desist!

[Elmund_Egivand]

On whose authority?

[Lasairiona_Raske]

Mine! Because I have some sort of complex that makes me think I have control of ALL situations, but I really don’t.

[Arrendis]

Even the example you cite is internally contradictory, and demonstrates that the people who actually wield soft power look at things like ‘economic reconstruction and development’, a blatantly economic lever, as part of ‘soft power’.

Hard power is intimidation, threats, the potential use of force.
Soft power is the other levers of international relations.

@Diana_Kim

THIS IS IGS, NOT KINDERGARTEN.

We know. If this were kindergarten, we’d all be held to a more mature standard of behavior.

[Aradina_Varren]

No one needed to die, it doesn’t have any police.

[Aria_Jenneth]

… I don’t think it’s so much where the lever comes from and more how it’s used, Arrendis.

It seems like, if it’s coercive, it’s hard power. Doesn’t matter if that’s economic coercion, military, or maybe even social. I might have listed “economic” separately, earlier, but … if that’s what we’re arguing over, I guess I just don’t see the average trade deal as much of an exercise of either hard or soft power. If you’re careful to honor it, letter and spirit, for the sake of improving relations, that’s a way of building soft (and a form the Caldari do often use); if you use it as leverage to force concessions, it’s hard.

If you think economic power can’t be hard, you probably haven’t dealt with the Practicals much.

[Arrendis]

Threatening to withhold or cancel economic assistance or treaties would be hard power.
Offering economic assistance and trade deals in order to foster goodwill—even if you work terms and conditions into those deals like ‘none of these products can be produced by slaves’ is still soft power.

The point is: soft power is not just the “squishy touchy-feely emotion-manipulate-y” things you claimed it to be. There’s a hell of a lot greater a variety of options without getting into outright manipulative crap.

[Veikitamo_Gesakaarin]

@Diana_Kim

No, you are just a gurista, who makes a clown out of herself in IGS. Please clear the board from your nonsence.

No, I am a Caldari officer. This is despite the fact that one has to ask themselves, if that was actually true then why would I not be in the Caldari Navy as a capsuleer? Of course, even the most alcoholic brain-dead gopnik prole would know the answer to that, even if you do not.

In the end, every objective I have been set has been accomplished and I can satisfy myself watching people like you, and Aria, trying to use the ammunition against me I so generously provide.

Because you, just like the vast majority of summit goers are all the same to me. So desperate for validation, legitimacy, to have power and authority over others (look at me I’m an officer or a Holder), and to have official recognition, that the very idea, the very concept that there are situations that having official recognition is the very last thing you would want, you become so easy to manipulate.

I just need to look at this thread to see someone like Aria, whose first recourse was to try and attack my legitimacy and reputation as if that was to be a cause of injury and not what I wanted from her.

Such is life however, to be a cynic desperately desiring to be proven wrong, only for everyone I meet proving my cynicism correct.

[Aria_Jenneth]

Well, my sense of exactly what its nature is has evolved a little in the course of this conversation even.

Caldari use of soft power is usually to build a reputation for reliability, building a foundation for further dealings. They often don’t tend to get very involved, otherwise: the welfare of others isn’t their concern or their business for the most part. A lot of what they project is what my predecessor called “porcupine diplomacy” (she was a Patriot supporter), a policy of, “We don’t care what you do over there. You do your thing, we’ll do ours. Mess with us, and you’ll get hurt.”

That’s soft power in the sense that it gives others reason to believe you won’t interfere with their doings, but its core is hard power, however you slice it: the threat of pain. Caldari foreign policy is really a little long on the stick. The carrot’s mostly just a “you can trust us to honor our side of bargains.”

There are exceptions, of course, but, compare that to how the Gallente function. “Here, let’s build you a school. Oh, here are some course materials you’ll want. No charge! (They say nice things about democracy and are pretty critical of backward autocratic regimes, but you were headed that way anyway right?) How much funding did you need for that economic development project? Here, let’s sell you some Gallentean pop culture at a discount-- help you keep morale up. Here, have a Quaffe.”

It’s soft power that envelops and infiltrates and, in the end, dissolves. It’s potent, and it’s hard to fend off without getting really rudely fierce about it, but, if you don’t, there’ll be nothing left of you at the end. Gods and spirits, your people have more recent experience with how this works than the Caldari do, Arrendis.

A lot of who the Caldari are, they are because they’ve spent centuries fighting it off.

[Diana_Kim]

@Veikitamo_Gesakaarin

I just need to look at this thread to see someone like Aria, whose first recourse was to try and attack my legitimacy and reputation as if that was to be a cause of injury and not what I wanted from her.

Your “legitimacy” can’t be attacked, since it is simply absent. I just don’t understand why are you playing this comedy, gurista.

[Arrendis]

@Aria_Jenneth

Caldari use of soft power is usually to build a reputation for reliability, building a foundation for further dealings.

Yes, and my point is that it doesn’t take a genius to realize:

No status quo lasts forever.
Eventually, one of three things will happen:

1. We’re going to go into an offensive war, and become everything we hate.
2. Our only friendly power will be destroyed, or
3. they’re going turn on us.

So what makes more sense as a long-term strategy? Attempt to use the influence the State has, however limited, to reduce the Empire’s willingness to go enslaving people—a strategy that doesn’t actually cost much, over time—or go head-in-the-sand and wait for an inevitable war that can’t help but cost the State in blood and treasure? Even in victory, the State will have lost people, lost resources… and for what? To protect the Empire’s right to decide to enslave them?

Heck, let’s throw another possibility in there, as remote as it might be:

4. The Federation and Republic convince the Empire to give up slavery without the State’s help.

In that scenario, the primary cause of conflict between the Empire and the other two powers largely evaporates. Since there’s no formal treaty beyond non-aggression with the Empire and the State, if the Empire’s not actually at risk of military conflict against the Federation/Republic side of the coin… why do they need the State? The Federation’s bigger. It has more people. It aligns well technologically, without being as cutting-edge as the State, which makes it more likely to want advances the Empire might have that it doesn’t. It, the Federation, is clearly the more beneficial economic partner to court, if there’s no significant, ever-present danger of military conflict overhanging everything.

So… in what scenario, exactly, does the State not attempting to nudge the Empire toward ending slavery align with the State’s interests?

[Diana_Kim]

@Arrendis

Attempt to use the influence the State has, however limited, to reduce the Empire’s willingness to go enslaving people

We are not Federal swines, and we do not influence other nations to change their internal policies. As long as they enslave people on their territory - it is not our business.

All we can influence is selling them tools for enslavement, or not sell them tools for enslavement. And that will depend not on our williness for them to have or not have slavery, but on the profit we will make, considering logistics, construction cost and demand.

[Aria_Jenneth]

Arrendis, there are certain things the Caldari mostly just don’t do. There’s a morally relativistic strain running through the State that a lot of other peoples (including the Amarr) have trouble understanding, and it’s by no means limited to the Achura. Its heart goes like this:

Our way is ours. Your way is yours.

There’s more to it, of course, but a way of looking at it is that the Caldari are nearly unique (I don’t know how the Matari look at it, but otherwise …) in considering mercenary work good, honorable labor that can be undertaken by honorable Caldari-- even if the people they are fighting and killing are Caldari security personnel.

Mercenaries are professionals providing a service. It’s nothing personal, and it’s a mercenary’s proper role to serve a client. If that client’s needs force a confrontation with State forces-- well, so be it.

Naturally it’s a little messier than that. If Mordu’s Legion took contracts against the State all that often I imagine their standing would wither. But I think most pilots handling wetwork for the State have faced the Legion a time or three. Relations remain excellent. It’s just business, and duty. That’s understood. We all do as we must.

To this day, it’s understood that Mordu’s mercenaries are guaranteed State citizenship when they retire.

The Amarr are way farther removed from the State than Mordu’s Legion. The practice of slavery is similarly seen as proper for the Amarr, though it would be unacceptable for any Caldari. The Caldari keep the Amarrian faith out of the State, the same as they do for anyone else. They don’t interfere in Amarrian culture beyond offering to sell them stuff, the same as for anyone else. If some of that stuff is TCMC’s, and those get installed in humans, well, what the customer does with a product is none of the supplier’s concern.

There are a bunch of ways the Caldari could arguably be well-served by influencing the cultures of others. It might actually be a particularly poetic form of vengeance on the Federation, to manipulate its democracy into a failure state and laugh as it crumbles, as a thought. But that’s not who the Caldari are. The Caldari are themselves. And if someone, or even a lot of someones, or even every last someone, should choose to join their interests against the State, they’d most likely take it with the same half-grim, half-jolly attitude.

To the Caldari, life is a crucible, burning weakness away. They are determined to weather every test, without becoming other than themselves. They might not actively seek trouble, and don’t turn up their noses at allies, but, to the threat of yet another outnumbered battle, I can pretty well summarize the collective Caldari attitude:

“Bring it on.”

Pretty sure Veik’s been sharpening her sword for just that kind of eventuality.

They’re a little jingoistic, really, and it’s not for no reason. The Citadel’s not called that because it looks like a castle, you know.

[Halcyon_Ember]

@Veikitamo_Gesakaarin

to have power and authority over others

Really? Who’d want power over this lot?

[Veikitamo_Gesakaarin]

@Halcyon_Ember

Really? Who’d want power over this lot?

It is because capsuleers are obsessed with this notion of relevancy – irrespective of whether it is someone like Diana Kim trying to impress upon others the importance of their rank or someone like Arrendis trying to impress the fear of Titans (Which, given the GSF history of feeding killmails in lowsec as dubious at best, but I suppose I can give Pryce a call for HIC points if DBRB ever fatfinger expresses another Asakai redux).

It is remarkably petty, but it is also a pettiness I have found to be useful. I have an obligation to protect the truth, and there is a reason why I take such care to maintain my edgy shitlord persona in public – it causes people to hate me. Because other capsuleers despise me, if they were ever to encounter the truth about me, they will never utter it. Why? Because that truth might contain my official involvement with the apparatus of the State, and in their minds that is what they desire most in their quests for relevancy: official recognition. Their loathing cannot abide me being afforded what they desire most. As such, while I may not be able to rely upon the discretion of others, I can always rely upon their sheer pettiness and ego to maintain silence.

Even someone like Aria, a seeker of objective truths can be made to use herself against herself. You know, there are those studies about the infallibility of human memory. Of how people can be shown a doctored image of themselves at some place and time, and given enough suggestion they will convince themselves that they were somewhere they never were. It has always been simple to make people believe something they themselves want to believe. I provided Aria with the very things she wanted to believe, because it is difficult to make others think the best of another. The worst however? It’s always easy to believe the worst.

Ah, yes, it must be true I am a TCMC controlled puppet; or I love Achuran schoolgirls; or that I really am just that damn edgy. A seeker of truth, with the truth staring her right in the face, well deflected now because her ego demands that she believe the worst, the worst she believes because it is what I want her to believe. Because she has been useful like that.

I can even let my mask slip like this for a little while, because I know I can always rely upon capsuleer ego and pettiness. I might lay low for awhile because there’s that old adage about how the masses forget everything within three months. Then I’ll find the opportunity to say something particularly edgy somewhere, as I step on to the stage, and in the spectacle of public theatre be again what others believe me to be.