Robespierre for Officer [FA]

[Robespierre]

Robespierre for Officer
August 2020 & Beyond!

Greetings, all!

Over the course of the past number of months I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being a part of this community. Since joining it in late April I’ve gotten to know a number of great people who are proud to call themselves Rejects and, while at first it was merely a matter of me having some free time on my hands and wanting to help out where I could, assist where I could, and make things better where I could; it's quickly become a lot more than that to me.

After experiencing the relaxed, laid back nature of the Rejected Realms, I too am proud to call myself a Reject and in my six year long career on-site I have yet to find a place as inclusive as this one. As such, it serves to reason that I'd now wish to become involved in a great capacity to help shape the future, so I was happy to accept my nomination.

With that being said, I've decided to declare my candidacy for Officer and, while I'm able to fulfill other portfolios, I've decided to make foreign affairs the focal point of my campaign. It's the area in which I believe myself to be the best fit for as I hope to serve alongside other invaluably talented Officers with different portfolios and because of that my plans for foreign affairs will encompass the entirety of this campaign.

Of course, if you're interested in seeing how I'd perform if given a different area to work with then we can absolutely discuss that also. Anyhow, so as to not waste any time, allow me to present my agenda and let's get into the thick of things!

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Assignments Overhaul


If elected, then one of the tasks that I’d like to begin working on immediately would be to lessen the Foreign Office’s seeming over-reliance on a small group of senior personnel. I believe that this can best be accomplished by reducing the number of embassy assignments that some of our more experienced ambassadors have and by providing newer, more ambitious staffers with ample opportunities to become ambassadors.

My reasoning for this is as follows:

In the case of Bormiar and Fratt, both have three embassy assignments each and together they account for over 27% of the total number of embassy postings (rounded down) that the Rejected Realms maintains. Additionally. Jack also has two embassy postings of his own and, when combined with Bormiar and Fratt’s total, that raises the percentage of embassy assignments shared between just those three ambassadors to over 36% of all embassies.

In order to better optimize our ambassadorial listings and successfully complete an overhaul of the postings that staffers are assigned to, I’d like to actively pursue an idea that was suggested by Bormiar in his recent campaign for Delegate; and that would be to conduct a survey amongst foreign affairs staffers with the goal of figuring out which regions they’d most like to visit and interact with.

It’s important that we’re placing staffers in positions that they’ll be able to succeed in, and as part of that, we’ll first need to know where exactly those positions are. Should I be elected as an Officer and given a foreign affairs portfolio then I will commit myself to do just that and I will put out the aforementioned survey within the first week of my term and begin collecting responses. Staffers will be asked to rank the three regions that they most desire to visit in preferential order and after a sufficient amount of time has been given for staffers to participate in the survey I will then use my judgment to assign newly-minted ambassadors accordingly. Of course, there’s no guarantee that everyone will get the exact postings they indicated on the survey, but nonetheless I will do my best to place them in regions where there are advocated interests.

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Ambassadorial Advisory

It goes without saying that we should always be encouraging interaction between our ambassadors and the communities of the regions that they’re assigned to, but I believe that with a more measured approach as to how we distribute embassy postings we can better organize our Foreign Office and sustain ambassador interest for longer periods of time - thus benefiting our foreign relations pedigree.

Moreover, during the course of the upcoming term, I’d also like to oversee the creation of an ambassadorial advisory board. The foremost purpose of this advisory board would be to work within the Foreign Office and to provide counsel to both the Delegate and the Officer of Foreign Affairs when necessary. Ambassadorial advisory (hereafter referred to as AA) would be a small collective in size and it would be comprised of experienced Rejects who’d be entrusted with providing input on the region’s foreign policy.

Members of this board would be longtime community members and they would act as a sort of “think tank” for the Foreign Office’s agenda. They would serve at the pleasure of the Delegate and/or the Officer of Foreign Affairs, and, as per regional law, they would be given no constitutional authority in setting forth policy for the Office. Even so, their thoughts would be consulted and strongly considered should the need ever arise and I think that having something like this in place could go a long way for supporting long-term regional interests.

I foresee this type of internal structure resembling the Senior Diplomats of the North Pacific as well as being able to guide newer Delegates and Officers through the international arena in future terms. It’s important that we build upon our region’s foreign affairs infrastructure with the aim of servicing future administrations, and by implementing an idea such as this we can better safeguard our region from possible unforeseen pitfalls and avoid taking a foreign affairs misstep in lieu of future Delegate and Officers who may be less diplomatically inclined or less knowledgeable on interregional relations.

(NOTE: I am aware that something similar to this presently exists in the status quo, however, this would formalize ambassadorial advisory as a concept in the region and would help to ensure that we are always making as informed decisions about foreign affairs choices as we can. Being proactive and being prepared is always the goal.)

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A Calm & Collected Approach

Lastly, when considering who best to place confidence in as Officer of Foreign Affairs, it’s paramount that the general approach and outlook of a candidate is understood. With that in mind, my two key principles are to avoid being rash and to refrain from being reactionary. My campaign favours a more conservative approach to acting in the role and it also supports a focus that’s more set on improving the internal organization of the Office as opposed to making grand diplomatic proclamations and drawing up new treaties.

I’m a firm believer in working collaboratively with other government officials to achieve greater successes, and if elected as an Officer I’d very much be interested in working with the Culture Office as well as the World Assembly Affairs Office to facilitate growth - slowly but surely. That will require me to maintain very visible activity as well as remain hands-on to make certain that what needs to be done is done in a timely manner. I am prepared to devote my time and my effort to those things and hopefully, with your support, I’ll be able to realize the ideas I’ve presented in this campaign.

What that means to me is staying true to ourselves, maintaining a strong sense of who we are as a region (keeping our regional identity), and being level-headed in the decisions that we make. Communicating clearly and effectively, being friendly to allies and partners alike, and raising the bar for perfomance are all things that I'm keen on executing.

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Should you have any questions or comments, feel free to post below in this thread with those inquiries and I’ll aim to provide you with a thoughtful response as soon as I am able. I'd love to hear everyone's feedback and participate in discussions about what I've presented herein, so don't hesistate to reach out to me.

Thank you, and I wish the best of luck to everyone running for this upcoming term!

~ Robes

[Sarah]

Why do you believe FA is the best fit for you?


What would you do if there's a situation where an ambassador is not posting the updates?


How do you feel about ambassadors being used to to post more than foreign updates, as we do now. I see other regions sometimes post their newspapers in embassy forums, what would you think of if we did that? Or if Jack as Culture officer posts his calendar of daily events and we put that in our embassy forums? Do you think there's a line between overshare and undershare?



How would you respond to this request? viewtopic.php?p=10034606#p10034606

[Robespierre]

Heya, Sarah! Thank you for the questions!

Why do you believe FA is the best fit for you?

I think that it's the best fit for me at this time because of my extensive experience in similar roles throughout my past and because of my fellow candidates who are also running for Officer this term.

If you think of each adminisration as puzzle, then I'd say certain individuals fit certain roles better than others and it's my view that foreign affairs is where I can make the most impact for the forseeable future and it's also where my puzzle piece fits in the grand scheme of things; for this puzzle at least.

I want to be somewhere where I can be a catalyst for progress and where I feel I can serve admirably. Foreign affairs is that place, and that's why I've decided to focus my campaign specifically on that portfolio.

What would you do if there's a situation where an ambassador is not posting the updates?

If there's a reason for why they're not posting foreign updates to their assigned regions then I'd first wish to seek that reason out before taking further action. If it's an unwillingness to serve or they just don't feel like taking the time to do it then a replacement would be neccessary and I'd be comfortable making that change.

At the end of the day, we all have real lives and we all volunteer our time to help make this region a better place. For me in my approach it's about having conversations with the staff, sometimes individually, and understanding where there's a need and where there isn't one. Being in tune with that is important if we all hope to work together, but if and when a change needs to be made I'm perfectly fine with doing that for the betterment of the Office and its productivity.

How do you feel about ambassadors being used to to post more than foreign updates, as we do now. I see other regions sometimes post their newspapers in embassy forums, what would you think of if we did that? Or if Jack as Culture officer posts his calendar of daily events and we put that in our embassy forums? Do you think there's a line between overshare and undershare?

If there's ever an opportunity for us to utilize our ambassadors in ways that make them much more than what could be seen as glorified update distributers to other regions then I think that's always something that we should want to aim for. I'm glad that we already allow them to do more than that today and if there were new ways suggested to me as to how to go about continuing to do so in the future then I'd definitely be interested in entertaining those ideas.

Of course, there is a line between oversharing and undersharing, but with the example you've given me I think it's fair to say that posting our regional newspaper or making mention of a new issue of it in a foreign update wouldn't be considered oversharing.

I'd actually like for us to do that, as other regions do, and I think that if there's a way for us to better support the work that the TRT staffers and the Editor-in-Chief do then we should definitely work with Media and be supportive in that endeavor of getting more eyes on our publications.

How would you respond to this request? viewtopic.php?p=10034606#p10034606

That's an excellent question and I'm glad that you asked it!

So, when presented with embassy requests there's a sort of checklist that I'd go down and after doing that here this was my assessment of it:

They seem to be a fairly sizable UCR and what really stuck out to me in comparison to everything else they mentioned was how they claim to be a region based on the ideals of democracy, defenderism, and a connected community. If it were me, I'd want to see if that's true and in this case I believe that it is.

What I would want to do is I’d have a look at who their other in-game embassy partners are (as doing so can sometimes be a decent indicator i.e. if they were to have an embassy with a questionable region, etc.) and also I’d want to see if their standing in the world would cause any potential issues for us.

Right off the bat, I see that they have both TEP and TSP as in-game embassy partners and that they also have in-game embassies with TNP and Lazarus. It seems that we share those four embassies in common - which is good. It signifies that they're clearly not some random UCR coming out of the woodwork to seek relations with us.

As a standard, the two things that I’d want to know are A.) Are they the type of UCR that can sometimes be controversial in regards to what characters they allow into their community and B.) Do I see a possible relationship being beneficial to TRR?

If they’ve made a stink in NSGP for being one of the regions where the administrative/moderation teams let harassers/disrupters in the region and endanger their community then that’s an automatic no - defenderism and mutual partners aside. Speaking generally, I wouldn't accept any embassy with a region that endangers their community willfully., but based off of what I do know about them that doesn’t seem to be the case, otherwise I can assure you that they wouldn’t have that many GCR embassies and wouldn't be that populous/prominent of a UCR.

In my opinion, the last thing you want to do is rush for close relations or a treaty or an agreement, etc. So I'd spend some time feeling them out, so to speak. f they want an embassy and they say they’ll post every x amount of days at maximum (in this instance: 30 days), then let us see if they’re really committed to doing that.

If they truly value potential relations with us then they’ll understand why we wouldn’t just make a move to construct an embassy immediately, but as far as I'm concerned the Free Nations Region seems to have passed the "eye test" and I took no issue with Kyo accepting their request.

That was just a sort of roadmap as to what my thought process would be in general as well as how it would specifically apply to that particular embassy request. Ultimately, I would have made the same choice that Kyo did and I would have accepted them.

[Guy]

Do you think the embassy guidelines need updating, or are they fine as-is?

(Personally I haven’t turned my mind to it much. But I’d be very interested to hear the rationale one way or the other, particularly for proposed changes but also to retain the status quo.)

[Robespierre]

Do you think the embassy guidelines need updating, or are they fine as-is?

(Personally I haven’t turned my mind to it much. But I’d be very interested to hear the rationale one way or the other, particularly for proposed changes but also to retain the status quo.)

Hey, Guy! I appreciate the question.

I think that it''s perfectly reasonable to expect that regions who are seeking embassies and foreign relations with us have an established government and meet certain criteria before applying. I'm glad to know that there are already guidelines in place that necessitate having a regional off-ste forum and a functioning regional government before a request for embassies with us is seriously considered, because without both of those things I could anticipate certain difficulties arising when trying to cultivate a friendship.

I'm of the opinion that in order for an interregional relationship to blossom and be able to grow, both parties have to be responsible for investing into that relationship. If a region doesn't have a functioning government that's staffed appropriately or doesn't have a place to carry out the functions of regional administration and management then I find it hard to believe that they'd be able to be responsible and invest their fair share into a potential relationship with the Rejected Realms.

At present, I feel as though our current guidelines do a fairly good job of making what's expected quite clear to everyone who approaches us, but that doesn't mean that there aren't a couple of alterations I would make to the guidelines if it were me:

Firstly, the sizing guideline for an embassy region's population specifies the figure of fifty resident nations but also says that having over one-hundred resident nations is preferred. In the interests of ensuring that we only consider serious partners who would be willing to invest their efforts into improving relations with us, I think that an increase in the expected number of nations residing in the region is warranted.

Ideally, I'd like to see that expectation increased to somewhere in the ballpark of two-hundred to three-hundred resident nations, but if the region in question is especially friendly towards us and I see a real opportunity to buid something meaningful then I'd, of course, be willing to deviate from that guideline slightly and accept a region with a smaller population of nations.

Secondly, I'd ease up on the guideline that mentions how a region with an interest in NationStates gameplay is preferred.

I think that both gameplayers and roleplayers, as well as cards players, all have something worthwhile to offer the game, and should a region that's mostly geared towards roleplayers or cards players approach us with something of particular interest then I wouldn't be deterred from establishing embassies on that basis alone.

Generally though, I agree with what's already in place and I favour a more conservative approach to this. We should be expending our efforts wisely and strengthening our diplomatic web through dedication over time. Hopefully this answers your question.

[Sarah]

We've had a lot of discussion on the discord about the right to life embassy and if we should close it, what do you think we should do there?

[Robespierre]

We've had a lot of discussion on the discord about the right to life embassy and if we should close it, what do you think we should do there?

I've reviewed both the statenent that was made on behalf of Right to Life by their President, United Massachusets, as well as the response from the Office of the Consulate of the League of Conservative Nations and the rebuttal that was offered by Quebecshire. In doing so, there were a number of things that I made note of in regards to how both regions conducted themselves publicly and, while I'm unable to speculate as to who has the more accurate account of events, I must say that I am rather disappointed by the statement that was made by Right to Life's World Assembly Delegate.

My rationale for these feelings of disappointment is as follows:

A number of the grievances that were raised by the President of Right to Life were squarely directed toward the nation of San Carlos Islands, who is the League of Conservative Nations' Director of Foreign Affairs. As opposed to directing their statement toward the region itself, the leadership of that region, or even criticizing specific actions taken by the League of Conservative Nations' Director of Foreign Affairs as it relates to San Carlos Islands' job title, they instead chose to air the dirty laundry of a particular nation's comments for all to see in an effort to substantiate their claims of opposition and garner support against the League of Conservative Nations' World Assembly Delegate as it pertains to their vote on General Assembly resolution number four-hundred and ninety-nine (#499) entitled "Access to Abortion".

Indeed, while it is true that any regional officer or government official who is tasked with the management of foreign affairs in their region should be careful as to what views and opinions they espouse publicly, it is also true that San Carlos Islands is but one nation in a community of approximately one-hundred and twenty three (at the time of writing this).

I will not be taking a position on the specific comments made by San Carlos Islands as they were referenced and made light of in Right to Life's statement. However, that being said, do let it be known that viewpoints held by a certain nation in a certain position of leadership for a region don't always translate to the suitability of that nation to hold such position. In fact, often times a seperation can be made between a nation's personal views and the regional views that they profess when acting in an official capacity (e.g. "Director of Foreign Affairs" or "President").

What we see here is what happens when that seperation isn't made, and unless you're a fascist (which I've been given no reason to believe that anyone in LCN, led alone San Carlos Islands themselves, is) then I see nothing wrong with having your own personal opinions whilst still providing service to your region when acting in an official capacity as a government official.

I find the issues that were made known in Right to Life's initial statement to be rather lacking and unsubstantial. While I respect the right of Right to Life, their leadership, and their community to freely express abhorrence towards certain viewpoints or comments made by those that they disagree with, I find the level to which this entire situation has been dramatized to be quite unnecessary.

The reason that I'm disappointed is because Right to Life does not seem to acknowledge, nor respect, that separation and thus the situation has been allowed to escalate. Personally, I find Right to Life's threats to "seriously evaluate [their] future diplomatic status [with the League of Conservative Nations]" to be petty, and in this case, I see it as a sort of bully tactic to dissuade anyone from disagreeing with their pro-life stance.

Though I take no issue with Right to Life's reserving of the right to decide who they partner with and on what basis they partner with them, I also fail to see how leveraging, if not threatening, to cease diplomatic cooperation with a previous partner simply because you disagree with a particular member of a given community's personal viewpoints and comments is at all appropriate; much less to make demands of a regional officer's resignation where they have no standing to be making such demands.

Whether or not this situation demands a response from us to begin with is another conversation entirely, but presuming that it does then I would consult with the Delegate and most likely recommend either a talk with Right to Life's leadership or the exploration of the option of embassy closure.

[Sarah]

Thank you for your thoughtful response! I can tell you're putting a lot of thought into this.

How would you react to getting assigned a different office, say the WA office?

[frattastan]

Which one of our alliances is most underutilised and has more room to grow?

[Robespierre]

Thank you for your thoughtful response! I can tell you're putting a lot of thought into this.

How would you react to getting assigned a different office, say the WA office?

It’s not my preferred option. Though I’m able to do the job and I believe that I’d be able to do it competently, it’s not what I’ve geared my campaign toward. I’ll leave it at that.

Which one of our alliances is most underutilised and has more room to grow?

Probably either the January Accords or the Forest Treaty of Harmony and Friendship.

I say the January Accords because it’s been awhile since we’ve hosted an event with those regions and when working in conjunction with Culture I think there’s room to grow and improve that relationship. We already share similar regional values so I think that building up that alliance is possible.

I say the Forest Treaty of Harmony and Friendship because Forest is a prominent UCR and have been for awhile now. I’d be interested to see what that alliance becomes and what the relationship develops into.

[Gorundu]

We've had a lot of discussion on the discord about the right to life embassy and if we should close it, what do you think we should do there?

Whether or not this situation demands a response from us to begin with is another conversation entirely, but presuming that it does then I would consult with the Delegate and most likely recommend either a talk with Right to Life's leadership or the exploration of the option of embassy closure.

So why is whether or not the situation demands a response another conversation, and what are the two sides to it? And if you do have a talk with RtL's leadership, what would you say to them and what kinds of responses would convince you to either close the embassy/keep it open?

[Robespierre]

We've had a lot of discussion on the discord about the right to life embassy and if we should close it, what do you think we should do there?

Whether or not this situation demands a response from us to begin with is another conversation entirely, but presuming that it does then I would consult with the Delegate and most likely recommend either a talk with Right to Life's leadership or the exploration of the option of embassy closure.

So why is whether or not the situation demands a response another conversation, and what are the two sides to it? And if you do have a talk with RtL's leadership, what would you say to them and what kinds of responses would convince you to either close the embassy/keep it open?

Well, the problem is that for the Right to Life embassy in particular we already don’t distribute foreign updates to them and in general it’s not a very active embassy. The status quo makes it to where there’s little tangible benefit to keeping that relationship going, so it’s hard to see a scenario in which we’d keep it anyway despite that.

I say that it’s another conversation entirely because we don’t have relations with the League of Conservative Nations. If these were two embassy partners of ours that were having difficulties getting along then perhaps it would be our place to mediate or speak on it so as to preserve both relationships. However, in this case, a relationship with the LCN is non-existent and a relationship with RtL is of little value to us.

If I were to speak with their leadership then it’d likely be a conversation that preemptively suggests that we’ll be removing embassies. I suppose that it would be bad form to just revoke an embassy and not even offer any sort of explanation or closure reasoning to a former embassy partner, so it’d probably be along the lines of “Hey, this isn’t working out.”

It’s nobody’s fault per se that it isn’t working out, but with Christian Democrats no longer in the Rejected Realms and us not really engaging with them on any level I’d have a hard time keeping the embassy at this point. If they were to be overly friendly or receptive to what we had to say then maybe the relationship would end up being better off for it, but for the reasons I outlined above that still wouldn’t justify having the embassy to begin with since we don’t really use it.