1 Jun 2020, 08:44

Councillor Greene rose to speak, for the first time in quite a while.

The Union of Duxburian Dominions has a long tradition of service in defense of the region and is thus proud to support the establishment of Eurocorps. Furthermore, we support funding its equipment and missions out of the European budget. While nations must retain key elements of responsibility for their contributions, we shouldn't have a bunch of different standards of varying quality. The institution needs some basic level of standardization if it is to succeed as a fighting force. That said, those standards should be left to them to decide.

Like it or not, the European Union actually already has enemies arrayed against us. The Union of Duxburian Dominions has been a member-state for about 15 years now and has witnessed 6 or 7 major assaults on the region, all of which failed. In one particularly egregious incident, forces from 32 nations in a wide invader coalition attempted to takeover the region, including forces from 2 regions we held embassies with.

Historically, the burden of defending the region has disproportionately fallen upon the shoulders of a handful of prominent Europeans, such as Benevolent Thomas, Deadeye Jack, and in recent times, Vincent Drake. They have all engaged nazis and fascists in direct military conflict for years, so it's not like nazis and fascists don't know about us. We are very much on their radar. Our situation is less like "us considering a list of enemies" and more like "enemies already have us on lists". You can bury your head in the proverbial sand, but that won't make these hostile forces magically go away.

That said, the most practical approach would be not to automatically target any nazi or fascist or invader region that comes along, it would be to allow discretion to take offensive action on a case-by-case basis. We also can't be left toothless by a clause that prohibits all offensive action, that would just be inviting free hostility. So, I offer an amendment:


SECTION II. DEPLOYMENT
I. The Eurocorps may only be deployed to defend defensively to protect the European Union and its allies, or to defend and liberate regions which have been invaded or occupied by other regions. The Eurocorps may be deployed offensively if the target meets institutional criteria as a belligerent threat to the European Union.


What the criteria are can be formally published by Eurocorps and subject to approval by the Internal Affairs Commissioner. The Council retains the ability to serve as another check on what Eurocorps can and cannot do.

To address Councillor Plessis' question, military organizations such as the ADO have purely intra-regional scope while Eurocorps has purely inter-regional scope. Organizations like the ADO physically/literally can't participate in inter-regional missions the way individual member-states can, so it only makes sense to permit member-states to contribute.

Wesley Greene
Councillor of the Duxburian Union