Thread:Ecoraptor3339/@comment-5496489-20160524151005/@comment-25309944-20161003050806



Alright guys, this is some time in coming. I've got a long post to catch you guys up on what France is going to be doing in Mirus (and more broadly) after the Persan attacked them in 2816. France, ever since its victory in the Great Xonexian Schism, has been very much limited by something called retrenchment, which is essentially a feeling that France was overcommitted to military occupations, foreign ventures, international guarantees, and far, far, far too big militarily for a peacetime society to ever exist.

The Marier administration slashed the military budget, limited foreign involvement, kept the military on an exceedingly tight leash, and sought to pursue French interests in as limited and uncostly a way as possible. Despite how unpopular he was when he left office (I was actually surprised that he was so unpopular abroad), his split personality administration achieved remarkable things during his time in office and its foreign policy was generally successful. He and Alexandre worked together to draw down France's occupations and replaced them with internationally-sanctioned peacekeeping efforts. They helped defend the Milky Way against the Loron Crisis and prevailed in the Commonwealth Civil War and the Borealum Crisis. France exercised its diplomatic talents during the Marko Colonial War.

These did not feel like victories at the time, as they were accompanied by a measure of humiliation. On full display was the dysfunction of French politics and the straight jacket which crippled France's every movement. Yet, somehow, the illusion of French invincibility was maintained.

Baako Anan's administration came into power well loved, with a supportive public, a unified party, and receptive foreign audiences. He advocated a return to France's values, those of liberté, égalité, fraternité, as guiding principles not only in the Nation's civic life, but abroad as well. He believed in a universe of free and equal states, guided by rationality and bound by fair and just institutions in a grand brotherhood of nations. His was a different view of retrenchement. Rather than restrain the use of force in foreign policy by force of will, he wanted to make military force obsolete.

It was ambitious, no doubt, but required no grand moves or initiatives, only the maintenance of current norms and institutions. The Gigaquadrantic systems and guarantees that Alexandre had helped forge would grow and evolve on their own, bringing great wealth, prosperity, and security to France. The French experience during the Borealum Crisis seemed to confirm this, and gave great confidence to French elites that the status quo could continue indefinitely so long as French power and alliances could outweigh the forces of revision and unjust violence.

For four years, from 2812 to 1816, they were right. An attack on French allies by the Hutter Kingdom in the Quadrants in 2812 was forced to end with unconditional withdrawal by an international blockade, the very same strategy employed two years earlier against the Hand of Retribution. All of Xonexi was still at peace enjoying a golden age, but important tectonics were changing in key regions outside Xonexi which caused unease among French publics. The world wasn't as malleable as it was before, French policy didn't move with nearly the same élan, and setbacks and unsatisfying events occurred with more regularity. France needed to get moving again, had to do something about the misery, the injustices, and the slights of the world around it. The myth of French decline began this way.

The tipping point was long in coming. It could have been triggered by any one of the crises France endured, whether in the Marko Colonial War, the Borealum Crisis, the Hal'Sk Civil War, the raising of the Gorge, yet none of these events brought together the right elements at the right time so perfectly than the Persan attack on Menento in 2816. It was a tactical move by a Mirusian power, easily reversible, meant to draw out of hiding a much greater threat to the peace in Mirus.

For the French nation, the world shattered on that day.

I hope to finish my explanation tomorrow.