I'm currently playing the Southeast in the North America scenario. My initial strategy was to buddy up with the Northeast to take down the West. Despite accepting a number of treaties, the Northeast turned on me and attacked only a few months into the game. The West was more receptive and gave me a mutual defence treaty that eventually evolved into an alliance.
To my surprise, the West honored their treaty and declared war on the Northeast. The war was fairly short and I ended up with the lion's share of territory.
Shortly after that war ended, Mexico declared war on the West. They sent me a note invoking our mutual defense treaty. I had never done a large-scale amphibious op before, so I figured Mexico would be good practice and declared war. Imitating Winfield Scott, I landed in Veracruz and marched toward Mexico City backed by B-52s flying out of Louisiana.
Before I could take the capital, those sneaky Canadians declared war on me. My troops in Mexico took up defensive positions while I dealt with this new threat. Once again, the West honored their treaty and attacked Canada (although they had to think it over for a few weeks). The West and I ended up splitting Canada right down the center.
Turning back to Mexico, the conquest went quickly since I could now commit large numbers of troops. I ended up with most of southern Mexico and the Yucatan (and most importantly, all of Mexico's oil). The West got a whole lot of empty desert.
Here's my problem. It's been a year since Mexico fell. The West, the Carribean, and Central America all have 100% war justification against me, but won't declare war. I have an 11%, 29%, and 4% justification, respectively, against them and the bars are not moving. No amount of money will get me out of my treaties with the West. I have no treaties with the other two. I've tried unilaterally breaking my treaties with the West, but all that does is trash my WM rating and treaty integrity, they still won't attack.
I know there is no WM in the World map, but I don't want to trash my ability for trade/diplomacy getting there.
The thing is, I think the reason the West won't declare war against me is because it literally can't afford to. The West is $3.25 trillion (that's with a "T") in debt and has only $500M in the treasury. It seems to be scraping by on the occasional oil and food sale. Once their belli against me hit 100% and they didn't attack, I tried loading the game from their side to see exactly how bad off they were. They have -1.8% inflation, 9.8% unemployment, a credit rating of 21, and all unit production has halted due to lack of money. Going to Defcon 3 with their enormous army will bankrupt them.
Unfortunately, they still have 100% military approval, so I'm going to have to wade through a lot of unit "blobs" and cover a whole lot of territory to knock them out--hopefully before the WM kicks me out and my economy is in trouble due to my dependence on imported Uranium.
Anyone got any ideas on how to provoke a war (short of cheating and declaring war from their side)? I've tried boycotting exports to them, but they're pretty self-sufficient in everything but coal and the WM has plenty of that available. Their deflation and my steadily rising GDP is eroding my market profits, so I'm not sure that I can wait for a total economic collapse on their side.
Maybe if I give them enough money so they can afford to mobilize...
