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Excuse me, mister, but as one said "There is no middle ground ... Either a treaty is honored or it is broken".

This sentence is true. This is not only a matter of logic or definition, as it should be enough ton convince you, but also a matter of historical fact.

The first world war was spawned not because of animosity between countries, but because of their alliances.

Here's an example: France started a war with Germany because of their alliances. They were neutral toward each other, but they had to make war. They had to honour their treaty, and they knew what they signed for, what situation could follow after signing this alliance.

It was a pointless war, yes. Millions of pointless deaths. But they signed their treaty. There was no workaround, no buy-out, the treaty was there, and no matter the consequences, they respected it.


Then again, it was a time where gentlemens were the leaders of the wars. Almost no civilian casualties.

But this should be enough reason to correct this little problem that everyone seems to be unhappy about.

Thats becouse they did not have any real war machines during WW1. Wait anouther 25 years, and they started to get war machines that could advance faster then the civilan population could retreat.

But in reguards to the OP again. I can see both sides of the story. But I think I just figured out an idea on how to solve some of this. New treaties. Or basicaly levels of treaties.

Currently we have mutual defense pact. The effect of the treaty is to lower relations of the attacking country on the country who you have the treaty with. So if A and B have a defense pact, and country C attacks country A, Country B should loose some relations and gain CB on country C.

What I would propose is a new line of treaties.
Defense pact 1
Defense pact 2
Defense pact 3
Defense pact 4
They would be just like the current defense pact line. However it would be in stages, with each requiring the previous pact in order get the new one. and each adding a little more CB and lowering the relations a little bit more. So a country with only a defense pact 1 might not goto war with anouther country (unless they already disliked them a little). and by the time a country has defense pact 4 with each other it would be somthing like automatic war with the attacker. Now having somthing like a defense pact 4 with anouther country would be rather difficult to attain.

Now on the reverse side of this you could also make a new treaty line called offense pact 1,2,3,4. With basicaly the oposite of the defense pact. (Country A and B have a Offensive Pact. Country A attacks Country C. Country B gains CB and looses relations with country C.

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That and also they decided, at least in Napoleon's time, where the battlefields would be, to spare the civilians. True gentlemens.


Anyway, there should not even be 2, let alone 4.


What is it "I'll defend you if you get attacked unless I don't want to/Unless I like the other guy more than you/Unless I don't want to spare any money on this war where I have nothing to win" ?

A treaty is a treaty. You can't have double meaning in a treaty, this is why they used French before to make treaties, in this language, a word means a word, nothing more. No way to play with meanings to go around it.



Alliance means a mutual defense pact + a full transit treaty, mutual defense pact means mutual defense in case of attack.


There can't be levels in this. Or maybe a commercial embargo ? You make a pact to be "Country pals" and if someone tries to attack you, your country pal will not help you in means of war perhaps, but will stop giving military furnitures, oil and so on to the country attacking you.

But it should be a pretty hard pact to acquire, since you just need to befriend Iraq and Saudi Arabia to have 70% of the oil world supply on your side. With that, who the hell would attack you ?

It would mean losing a lot of money if a war happens. Truly, it should be the hardest pact to acquire, even more than the alliance pact.

Treaties in SR2020 are very vaque in thier description. Most would assume that "guaranteed defensive help in time of war " would mean that it will go to war with whomever attacked you but it could mean that it will help in other ways as well. If they sell MG's or other commodities on the world market , it can keep your costs of buying those down. That would help you. Just because they dont auto declare war on someone does not mean that they are not helping you. It just means they are not helping you in the way you wish them to help you.

How many units have you spotted because of one your allies "sees" an enemy unit. Thats help.

Have you ever gotten short on cash or commodities and one of your allies sends you a gift ? Thats help.

Who pulled the strings to get U.N. military advisors deployed to your region ? Thats help

If you have an alliance with another region and that other region falls you get hammered in your U.N. standing, that also works for the AI regions. The U.N. doesnt like it when you break treaties (depending on your settings) but w/o detailed treaties that explains what "defensive help" means then it could mean anything.


WW1 had a lot of civilian deaths as a direct result of the war. They didnt have big bombers leveling cities and was mostly a trench war but the civilian deaths to famine and disease were in the millions.

Of course, but there were never orders to kill and annihilate the civilian population. Today, it's nothing surprising. Happens all the time.


And, NO. There is no way around it, the mutual defense pact is clear. I repeat, WWI happened for this very reason, mutual defense pacts, alliances, no way around it, they made war even though there was no animosity, they just honoured their treaty.


No way around it, when you sign this kind of thing, as the head of a country, you can't go and say "Oh, so you swissards people got attack by Austria ? What, we signed a mutual defense treaty ? Well, we won't ! But we WILL help you in this terrible time of war, we'll send you food and this kind of stuff. No hard feelings, okay ?"


This is turning to ridicule the country, show that you do not keep to your words and so put in danger every single treaty you made with other countries.


Either you respect it, either you don't. The consequences are dire if you dare to think you don't really HAVE to help the country with whom you have signed a treaty of mutual defense, when it is being attacked.


And let's say all these double-meaning treaties are how they should be. There HAS to be a treaty where you actually go to war with the one attacking your ally.

If it's not the mutual defense or the alliance, what is it ?

Tell that to the Armenians living during those times.





What if your ally is attacked by your other ally ? Who would you go to war with ? Why would any leader foolishly go to war if his country does not support a war ? Why did FDR have to wait till Pearl Harbor was bombed to jump into WWII ?

Not all the allies of the U.S were involved in Vietnam , most left it to the U.S. to deal with after the French pulled out who got it from the Brits who pulled out shortly after WWII. Prime Minister Wilson in the mid 60's was unpopular for even giving verbal support to the U.S. Theres only so much any nation will risk when it comes to a war versus diplomacy and politics.

In WWI , you say, that all the alliances and those honoring those alliances is what got all the nations involved in WW1. Now think about it, if you make an alliance and other regions have made an alliance with even more regions, eventually one war will start a regional war that will quickly spread to a world war if all those treaties are "honored".

Just think if all those that were allied with the U.S. sent troops to Veitnam at the height of the Tet offensive and all the nations involved with Hochimin sent in thier troops and then, to honor thier treaties, they all declared war on each other. One might realize that the regional war that it was would have escalated into another world war. Good thing some of the world leaders at the time decided to try and use diplomacy and other means other than declaring WAR.

Yeah, sorry, I thought about that too. I'm talking about the countries of western europe.





Yeah and France refused to go to Iraq and so on and was right to do so in the end. Even so, when Russia starts attacking Germany and other neighbouring countries and you're a european country, you don't go "Oh Russians must have a good reason !" "I like Russian oil. I don't want to stop trading with them."

There are situations where there is OBLIGATIONS. You can NOT go around it.


These are political subtilities, mines and yours, that has to be added to the game. Otherwise, these alliances and mutual defense pact are almost meaningless.

Alliances can be honored in various ways perhaps, but mutual defence is VERY straight forward. You pledge to defend each other. it's that simple. If someone chooses not to honor that pledge when the time arises (for ANY reason) the pledge should cease to exist. It's really not rocket science. Yeah an aliance may have some wiggle room as far as what 'help' is to be expected, a mutual defence pact however, leaves absolutely NO room for interpretation. It is on or off, never somewhere in the middle.

Alliances = military assistance optional
Mutual Defence = military assistance mandatory

I am completely confounded on how anyone could not understand how the term mutual defence can possibly be interpreted to mean anything other than exactly what it is: Mutual Defence.

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"Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something. "
— Robert A. Heinlein

Really.

Until 1980 we had this treaty in China. No where does it say , we would attack whomever attacks China.

http://www.taiwandocuments.org/mutual01.htm



I dont see the autodeclaration of war here.

Me neither, but I also don't see how the above individual article of a treaty has anything to do with Mutual Defence pacts. Its a mutual notification article, quite obviously. It doesn't even contain the term 'mutual defense' ... why would this be an appropriate example?

Maybe this is more in line with the topic of this thread (quoted from the above mentioned treaty):

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"Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something. "
— Robert A. Heinlein

You read Article 2 , Did you not see the BIG BOLD LETTERS ?




Article 2 does not say that one or the other countries will declare war on the aggressor. Aid can come in the form of many things. In the Falklands War , The U.S. didnt declare war on Argentina despite a Mutual Defence pact with Britain but they did help them by offering intell, arms and even offered them the use of an assault ship.

Edit: The Falklands might be a bad example because it (the Nato Treaty )only covers members and thier territories north of the Tropic of Cancer.

You are right. That pact SPECIFICALLY does not require anyone to do anything at all, but does contain provisions about working towards specific goals.

However, in game you cannot make specialized custom agreements. You do not get to stipulate article by article what the Mutual Defense pact ACTUALLY does or tries to do. I've not read NATO treaties, but I seriously doubt that that treaty is so vaguely worded on the issue of military assistance. I could be wrong (and have been when making assumptions, but hey let's toss those dice! ).

Nevertheless, the point remains that the game describes (or described, not sure if it still does, will have to check) mutual defense treaties as GAURANTEED DEFENSIVE HELP IN TIME OF WAR. That article is very unambiguous. So again, why are we bringing up examples from treaties that have no basis within the game we are talking about?

I did see the term Mutual Defense in the title, but not within the actual posted article. Also, To me article 2 did imply that military assistance was expected. No one is foolish enough to think that Taiwan could force the US go to war with someone they did not want to. But I don't see anwhere that states that it is okay for the US to sit back and do absolutely nothing.

It seems prefectly clear that assistance (including of a military nature) was to be expected and that if one or the other party were not being 'assisted' the treaty would be, by default void. Certainly if China attacked Taiwan and the US did nothing but tell them which direction they were going to be completely overrun from and then wished them good luck, it would be within Taiwan's right to believe that the US was not living up to the agreements arrived at in the pact, making the pact void.

At the very least they would probably feel betrayed by the US, not trusting them much ever again (imho). That was what I was pointing out. If the agreement itself is unable to be dropped at will (without dropping every other agreement you have), then the terms of the agreement as stated in game, not between Taiwan and the US, should be mandatory as well.

Jeez sorry that took so long. Really the point is about game mechanics (since game mechanics don't allow the flexability of a real world treaty). I am sure there are many Mutual Defense pacts throughout history that specifically require one nation to defend another in times of war that could be used as counter-examples but we don't get the flexability in-game to define treaties case-by-case, so I believe the Mutual Defense treaty should simply do what it states it will within the game.

There are already mechanics for someone to choose to defend/aid someone else they have good relationships with that are analogous with the treaty that has been cited previously. A non-binding mutual defense pact seems like empty (except perhaps, of frustration) fluff in a game like this. To me, it seems redundant and misleading.

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"Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something. "
— Robert A. Heinlein

Because the game is designed to simulate real world realtionships. Therfore it will attempt to react in the way the designers intended which is based off thier research of the real world. Theres alot of things the AI considers before it declares war on another region. This link explains that.

http://www.bgforums.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=12500&p=77965&hilit=considers#p77965

Also, Defensive Help can come in many forms, I listed a few before that may be in game.

Most Mutual Defence Treaties are created as a deterrence for war but a look back in history at WWI and you will see treaties outlining specific aid that each nation will bear.

http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/francorussianmilitaryconvention.htm


This treaty details specifics of troop deployments. Under this treaty if Russia was attacked by Germany or Austria then France would HAVE to attack Germany. Treaties such as this is what caused all of Europe to get involved into what should have been a war between 2 countries. Now we know it as WWI

I doubt you find treaties worded this way anymore but there might be a few. BG probally has done alot more research into them and developed the mutual defence treaty in game as more of what they represent,More as a deterrent. Of course I could be wrong about thier intentions.

It will ve VERY rare in this day and age to find a pact that specifically states that you must go to war with someone.
A politician would much rather have a treaty that would give them every right to go to war but no obligation, so they wont get stuck in a situation that would have two options: Enter a war they really shouldnt or Not honour the treaty and have serious international reprucusions.

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NEVER go to Canberra.

First a chuckle.....
There were tons of civ casualties in Napoleons wars and in ww1.

Than another.Chuckle....
Though mutual defense treaties can ask parties to go to war when a memeber of said treaty is attacked, there is no quaranty.
So while id like to see it happen more often in the game, it doesnt have to.

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This post approved by Tkobo:Official Rabble Rouser of the United Yahoos
Chuckle TM