Hi there! I’m OfUnknown from Iria. I have been excited to watch the revival of Aurora and have constantly been following the development on the sub. However, with the elections currently in place, one of the topics that was discussed in the debate/paltforms made quite an impact on me that I thought I had to comment on it. More specifically, regarding FriedrichHayek's views on supranational organizations and the NEA..

It has come quite appalling for me when the topic of foreign policy was brought up, that the public image of NEA was represented in such a way, as this point of view is just so different to how the NEA is seen in my eyes. I will be honest, PR has never been the strength of the NEA, and especially being closed off to the eyes of the public, will admittedly form a very distorted image based on what does get presented to the public. As such, I would like to take this opportunity to give some of my insight, having experienced the NEA from the inside, in hopes to give a clearer understanding of what constitutes the NEA.

Firstly, I can’t argue with this, most of what has been presented is true, however, this is not able to represent what the NEA is like now. You have to consider that many of these issues happened many months ago, when the NEA was still very fresh. Just like everything, the development of the NEA over time has very much been a learning process, and the NEA has matured since. I can assure, after every conflict involving the NEA, topics on sovereignty and the role of the NEA have always been discussed, and such topics are of utter importance to states within the NEA. Very much like you guys, we, speaking as individual states, also value our sovereignty and rights. Leading me to my second point, and regarding probably one of the largest misconceptions -

The NEA is not a sovereign political entity, arguably, it isn’t even a political entity at all as “the NEA” yields no political power (at least it longer does), and as such, there is also no such thing as “NEA Land Claims”. The NEA by definition is a platform or forum of discussion for the mutual defense, development, and co-prosperity between participating states and neighboring regions. How effective has the NEA been in fulfilling those objectives? To be frank, the answer is that it’s questionable, there has been positive and there has been negative. But I do want to say one thing: in having what is the “NEA”, we have truly created a unified community. Sure we sometimes have some internal conflicts, like the Eastern Bloc and Fellowship arguing over some drama, but really it is alike how two siblings would argue over the smallest things, and by the end of the day, we are still one big family. I don’t know if you will be able to fully understand this, but I really feel that the NEA has helped bring us together as a quadrant. Personally, the platform has allowed for me to become friends with some of the greatest people from the many states that make of the NEA, these people which otherwise would have had little or no relevance to my Civcraft career, and I value this. I don’t think this sense of a unified community exists in any other quadrant, especially considering our quadrant to be probably the most politically diverse quadrant; I feel this is enough to show the success the NEA has brought.

I hope this helps illustrates an alternative view to the NEA, in that the NEA is not about land, power, wealth or politics, but about community. While I do agree that the reasoning to distance Aurora from larger organizations is perfectly logical, I do hope what I said can shed some light to perhaps, gain a more balanced view of the topic. Lastly, I would like to just welcome you guys back, wish Aurora the very best, and hope to get to know you all more in the future! :)