Report on the Filipino Community Crisis: Combating Aggressive Expansionism

Ave, Sandum Citizens!

The State of Sandus was contacted this morning concerning a grave situation of political and diplomatic pressures being built up by multiple sides in the Filipino intermicronational community. Our response to appeals from both sides to the State of Sandus will be methodical in its attempt to resolve the situation in the Philippines. Furthermore, accompanying this methodical approach to resolving the situation in the Filipino intermicronational community, the State of Sandus shall apply the same methodology to the deference of both parties in this conflict to our State.

First, this analysis of the situation in the Philippines requires a basic historical understanding — especially from the Sandum perspective, as both parties have called upon Sandus to resolve the situation by aligning itself with one party over the other. Over the past few months, Sandus has recognised the growing tension between the Filipino nation-states, whereby Sandus has often been called upon to act as arbitrator. Sandus has, in these past months, accepted this calling with hesitation: we have insofar provided minimal oversight of the situation while we have provided for general advice in terms of our understanding of the situation. It is not the duty of Sandus to act as the partial arbitrator between states, siding between sides to favour: indeed this goes against the Sandum vision — and the possibly panmicronational vision — of anti-imperialism. This question of «imperialism by invitation» is one which some micronations would hold up and seek to expand their prominence through political means; this is not the path of Sandus. Sandus outright notes that it is not the hegemon of the Filipino intermicronational community and, if Sandus were to take up that role for this particular community, it would make Sandus no better than Spanish and American imperialists who sought to meddle in the native affairs of the Filipino people and state. Sandus is, in brief, aligned with none of the parties in this present situation. Nonetheless, Sandus has travelled down similar paths of territorial expansion and territorial “wars,” meaning that our experience provides a necessary historical analysis for the situation at hand.

Second, the way in which the statesmen of these micronations — which, I digress to note, means that they are polities aspiring to sovereignty and the duties connected with it — has reflected poorly on the parties involved. From what has become apparent from the sides is that this old conflict — the root of which having been lost to outside observers — has meant that the Daikoku Federation, in the interpretation of the Realist paradigm of international studies, has sought for more security by the act of claiming large segments of territory so as to counteract, as it seems, the attempts of Ariana, Kaleido, and their aligned states to undermine the security of the Federation. Ariana, Kaleido, and their aligned states (APM?) — some states which Sandus has never diplomatically interacted with — have begun an operation named “Occupy Daikoku” to present a media campaign to dissuade Daikoku’s citizens from being members of the Federation. In reality, what this represents is characterised by inappropriate and unprofessional on all accounts from these micronationalists:
(1) that Daikoku has expanded its territory without looking beyond the simulationist paradigm this community has created (see: the Fire of the Central Hearth) and seeking to resolve the conflict in Realistic terms of micropatriological study;
(2) that Kaleido, Ariana, and their aligned states have effectively begun a media campaign directed against Daikoku in highly public areas where nonmicronationalists — macronationalists unaware of the very existence of our common micronational phenomenon or of the parties themselves — will misinterpret our common phenomenon;
(3) that Kaleido, Ariana, and their aligned states have begun a generally-worded media campaign seeking to bring citizens to itself for the sole purpose of aggression against Daikoku, an action which reflects poorly on that party and which violated the panmicronational principle of respect for sovereignty of states — a fundamental principle for all micronationalists;
(4) that Kaleido, Ariana, and their aligned states have nefariously contacted other micronational sovereign states (including Sandus), calling on them to divorce themselves from Daikoku, thereby underlining the fact that this media campaign is not as much about Kaleido receiving more citizens as it is about a political and diplomatic game of one-upping the other; this act of calling upon other states to divorce themselves from Daikoku represents that party’s violation of the sovereignty of Daikoku in addition to the violation of the sovereignty of other states, Sandus included.

Without being an unnecessary propaganda piece for Realism, this event underlines the diplomatic faults inherent in a system of simulationist micronationalism. In a system where both parties are divorced from diplomatic and political realities — in other words, where micronations are an independent subset beneath the macronational world —, these sorts of states are prone to the failure of conjuring up respect or legitimacy and of making decisions appropriate for the running of sovereign states by intelligent and sane adults. The very fact that micronationalism exists — that there exists a social phenomenon of people who understand the world of social constructs in relation to the formation of polities and sovereign states — has the inherent implication that its members are adult-minded and mature enough to grasp the understanding of statecraft and the basic needs of diplomacy, and that they move beyond basic understanding to garner an advanced learning from their first-hand projects themselves. In sum, simulationism and hobby micronationalism is the bruise of our entire movement, of all our states and nation-projects: the political and diplomatic failures of simulationism harm all micronations with higher aspirations than just fun and amusement.

In the past, Sandus has been lampooned for its harsh words concerning simulationist and hobby micronationalism, especially for calling those respective practices of micronationalism the scourge of our movement. As Sôgmô, perhaps this interpretation hails from my mentorship by M. Robert Lethler as a micronationalist — a man who certain combated the simulationist and hobby micronations of his day (though, these labels did not exist in his day). As a controversial figure, many disdain his later actions, but the implicit teaching he gave to me was that micronations have the pragmatic potential to change the lives of ourselves and of our communities: micronations are vehicles of social change and of public leadership. This is how simulationism harms micronations as a whole, by misrepresenting our common causes and instilling an image of conflict an hostility into the wider world.

Both states ought to aspire to peaceful cooperation for meeting common goals. These states inhabit land next to each other — making the need for cooperation much more compelling. Sandus is a micronation with no other micronation along its borders and, while this may explain why we have no major rivals in our local diplomatic system, it also means that there is fewer to no fruits for cooperation and interaction between micronations. If both parties were to resolve these disputes and finally come to an agreement on borders, with no desire or impulse for expansion onto another party’s territory (consider condominia?), the possibilities for cooperation are nearly boundless. This cooperation can begin with reducing the territorial size of all the micronations in the system: certainly the population of the states in the Filipino intermicronational community does not inhabit all 87,025,135m² that we have been led to believe these states claim. This responsibility falls to the Daikoku Federational clearly, yet it also falls to Ariana as well (Kaleido’s claim is much more understandable). However, all parties must quit these unnecessary hostilities — the only threat here is not from Sandus or from each other party, but from the deprivation this causes for each state itself. This entire case study, however, proves prominent points in relation to Realist theory for international studies and Realism for micropatriology. 

— Sôgmô Sörgel