' Wrote:So tell me, I ask for what must be the millionth time, what do you think would have been an appropriate response short of ignoring it? Please, you must be the hundreth person who wants to say how illogical it is without saying anything about what would have been logical. Hmm? How bout put up or shut up?
I suppose it's because you don't want to hear the only realistic option available to you. Many countries have to take foreign relations developments on the chin, so what makes you different? I'll tell you: It's that you can pick and choose what to percieve, what not to, and justify it all to yourself. This does apply to me as much as anyone else, but it's no fun if you don't at least feel like you can lose if you don't play your cards right. It's not so much of a question of what you can do, but what you can't do. Luckily, because you can do anything here, so can everyone else...
Short of that, you could've traded a similar amount of stuff between Kusari and Rheinland. I would've had splitters on my LN and hornvipers on my KNF, and everyone would've been happy. As it stands, I understand that avenue was not really on the cards.
Everybody likes to be in a position to escalate things as close to war without actually going to war. People push and bend the circumstances so they feel in justifying what they're doing, which is fair enough. But when you go too far, and people can choose to participate or not, those who hold the view that you're being silly are no longer going to participate. It's like responding to a powerplay. How on earth do you do it, without powerplaying yourself? Not that I suggest that it is powerplay, everyone is within their rights to do what they've done. The only -real- problem here has been the lack of immediate and severe consequences.
To be honest with you, diplomacy has never been my preferred solution, as I've said. I've willed Joe many times to smash this faction or rear-end that group, and you should be thanking him for flat-out rejecting the idea of open confrontation, otherwise you really would be in the drink (from an RP perspective).
