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Springtime of Nations II: A European Republic Quest

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Driven by Apathy said:
"What business is this of ours?" was indeed my first thought too. This is going to be a mess, and since we can't prevent it, I desire to at least not to be at fault for it.

That being said, if we have to pick sides, "fuck Bulgaria" is in fact an entirely rational stance to take. By doing so, we'd be following a consistent logic when it comes to our foreign policy.

Namely, if you opportunistically go to war with us, there will be hard feelings, and we will give you cause to regret it later. That's not a bad precedent to set, all things considered.
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And I agree with this sentiment: If you try to opportunistically take advantage of the Central European Republic (Pending Name), we will fuck you over.

That said, we could this now by fucking over Bulgaria.
 
[] Plan: El Greco
-[] Kosovo should remain with Serbia.
-[] Nis should go to Serbia.
-[] Northern Macedonia should go to Greece.
-[] Eastern Rumelia should remain with Bulgaria.
-[] Bulgarian Eastern Macedonia should go to Greece.
-[] Ottoman Eastern Macedonia should go to Greece.

Greece is by far the most ideologically pliable Balkan power and occupies an incredibly important strategic region. Frankly, with Allied training, Greece could go on to be our greatest Balkan ally; when Venizelos got in and reformed the military, Greece by and large kicked ass until the Royalists purged the military and got everyone killed chasing Ataturk into the middle of Anatolia.
 
Nyvis said:
[] Plan: good, clean borders
-[] Kosovo should go to Albania.
-[] Nis should go to Serbia.
-[] Northern Macedonia should go to Greece.
-[] Eastern Rumelia should remain with Bulgaria.
-[] Bulgarian Eastern Macedonia should go to Greece.
-[] Ottoman Eastern Macedonia should remain with the Ottoman Empire.
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Hmmm, I wonder if Kosovo to Albania & Northern Macedonia+Bulgarian Eastern Macedonia to Greece could influence Albania & Greece to align against Serbia-Montenegro (which is already pivoting against the Republican Alliance)?

Edit: I think I'll be voting this plan. Serbia-Montenegro already on the way to Entente alignment with their disposition against us, and this could get Albania, Greece, and funnily enough potentially the Ottomans - Albania's nominal suzerain - by "virtue" of not taking anything they own against Serbia-Montenegro, Romania, & Bulgaria.
 
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[] Plan: Albanomacedonia
-[] Kosovo should remain with Serbia.
-[] Nis should go to Serbia.
-[] Northern Macedonia should go to Albania.
-[] Eastern Rumelia should go to the Ottoman Empire.
-[] Bulgarian Eastern Macedonia should go to Greece.
-[] Ottoman Eastern Macedonia should remain with the Ottoman Empire.

Albania +
Serbia /
Ottoman Empire ++
Greece -
Bulgaria ----

While I could make Greece neutral, I think the massively long panhandle is ugly, and I assume they're not going to be TOO upset given they're still getting a piece. Serbia's mildly upset, but I think we can win them over with time. The Ottomans are +2 almost by accident, but I think they're good for running a multinational state based on comments on discord.

Albania is currently, per Etran, a nominally Ottoman territory but in practice mostly independent. As such, I expect them to be more pliable to Alliance influence than Greece, so if there's anyone we should try to make happy, I think it's them. Also, it's good geography for future military conflicts. A friendly Albania basically turns the Adriatic into an Alliance lake - hypothetical 15-16" coastal batteries near Otranto and Vlore would have (just barely) overlapping fields of fire; any attempt by the Entente to enter the Adriatic with anything larger than a destroyer during wartime would need to run a gauntlet of fire from coastal guns. On land, it gives us a nice mountainous border against a possibly Entente-aligned Greece or Serbia. On top of all this, Alexander the Great was Albanian.
 
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Can we like, "recompensate" Bulgaria who we are about bulli by giving them southern Romania or something? There has been too little fucking over Romania and I think it would be funny.

Also, no more adorable little Montenegro puppy :(
 
C_Z said:
While I could make Greece neutral, I think the massively long panhandle is ugly, and I assume they're not going to be TOO upset given they're still getting a piece. Serbia's mildly upset, but I think we can win them over with time. The Ottomans are +2 almost by accident, but I think they're good for running a multinational state based on comments on discord.
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We could just give Greece Northern Macedonia. I'm really uncomfortable with a negative relation with them considering how good of a basing they'd be for the Entente.
 
Nyvis said:
We could just give Greece Northern Macedonia. I'm really uncomfortable with a negative relation with them considering how good of a basing they'd be for the Entente.
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Sure, but that's traded off for Albania, and Greece isn't that critical for the Entente. They have Alexandria and Malta; that's enough for basing I'm the Eastern Med. Getting Albania onside meanwhile takes the Adriatic completely off the table if we have a decent mix of coastal subs and coastal artillery, which frees up our efforts elsewhere.

I could see giving the Greeks that bit of Ottoman territory, but those borders are really ugly and the areas don't seem to be predominantly Greek; I feel like giving Greece a Bulgarian minority is likely to backfire in that the inevitable inter-ethnic tensions will empower conservative greek nationalist politicians.
 
[] Plan: Learn To Share
-[] Kosovo should be run as a joint Serbian-Albanian condominium.
-[] Nis should go to Serbia.
-[] Northern Macedonia should be run as a joint Serbian-Albanian-Greek condominium.
-[] Eastern Rumelia should go to the Ottoman Empire.
-[] Bulgarian Eastern Macedonia should be run as a joint Greek-Ottoman condominium.
-[] Ottoman Eastern Macedonia should be run as a joint Greek-Ottoman condominium.
 
Look, I understand that everyone's having a fun time coming up with wacky meme plans for Bulgaria, but we need to face facts: we messed up. Serbia is angry, Romania is angry (and highly unlikely to have a revolution at this point), Montenegro doesn't exist anymore, and now we have to deal with the Bulgarian issue on top of all of that. We need to be doing damage control and figuring out how to repair some of the damage that's been done to our Balkan diplomacy, not handing over a bunch of land to the Ottomans on the off chance that it helps their radicals. If that requires us to be punitive towards Bulgaria for the sake of our relations with other countries, so be it; but spite is a shitty way to conduct diplomacy when the fates of millions of people rest on your decisions.
 
Which of these plans entails the smallest amount of impending genocide?

Failing that, fuck Bulgaria and secure the coastline as much as possible.
 
Kirook said:
we messed up. Serbia is angry, Romania is angry (and highly unlikely to have a revolution at this point), Montenegro doesn't exist anymore, and now we have to deal with the Bulgarian issue on top of all of that.
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FWIW the likelihood of a Romanian revolution still depend on the next vote for the Prague Commission's decisions on the rest of former Austrian Empire. Reminder that their nationalist reluctantly supported their Habsburg king's alignment with the League over vague promises (presumanly over Transylvania & Eastern Banat), giving Romania that land to keep their monarchist government from being angry would have just galvanized Maximilian's rule instead.

Edit: errors
 
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Kirook said:
Look, I understand that everyone's having a fun time coming up with wacky meme plans for Bulgaria, but we need to face facts: we messed up. Serbia is angry, Romania is angry (and highly unlikely to have a revolution at this point), Montenegro doesn't exist anymore, and now we have to deal with the Bulgarian issue on top of all of that. We need to be doing damage control and figuring out how to repair some of the damage that's been done to our Balkan diplomacy, not handing over a bunch of land to the Ottomans on the off chance that it helps their radicals. If that requires us to be punitive towards Bulgaria for the sake of our relations with other countries, so be it; but spite is a shitty way to conduct diplomacy when the fates of millions of people rest on your decisions.
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On the other hand, we've been consistently working on our relationship with the Ottomans, and they have much more potential as a useful ally than Bulgaria. I think any chance of Bulgaria having a pro-German uprising or aligning with us is already non-existent, same with the Serbians, I suspect.

Romania's probably not going to have a revolution, but I don't think there was any shot of that after we took Transylvania. We're just setting up a puppet regime to take the rest of things in the next war.

Basically, screwing over our enemies in favor of our allies as much as possible is perfectly viable, especially given that I don't think anyone seriously believes this is going to be the last war.
 
Theaxofwar said:
On the other hand, we've been consistently working on our relationship with the Ottomans, and they have much more potential as a useful ally than Bulgaria.
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I really don't think this is true. They have a liberal party with a small radical wing and that's about it. Serbia and Romania were small enough compared to us that we could exercise a lot of influence over their future direction, but the Ottomans are a great power in their own right (and one without a lot of interest in national revolution because it would fragment their Arab, Kurdish, and Armenian holdings). I'm personally of the opinion that at this point we should be doing our best to woo Serbia and Greece since those are the two countries whose politics we actually have the capacity to change which would cause us the biggest problems if they were to align with the Entente.
 
Will Bulgaria really just peacefully hand over huge portions of territory to its neighbors if the Vienna Conference decided to demand that of the Bulgarians? Should we expect Bulgaria try to resist with force the demands of the Conference members triggering a Balkan war?
 
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Reminder that we don't have to give Ottomans anything to make em happy with us, simply leaving em alone is enough.

Kirook said:
I'm personally of the opinion that at this point we should be doing our best to woo Serbia and Greece since those are the two countries whose politics we actually have the capacity to change which would cause us the biggest problems if they were to align with the Entente.
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We've ended possibility of the conservative monarchy (their system of governance atm per QM) ruling Serbia-Montenegro to be in alignment with the Alliance after we decide to keep the former Croatia-Slavonia explicitly Allied

As for damage control, IMO Nyvis' plan might be best for that by producing results which could align Albania & Greece together (and potentially the Porte too) - against Serbia-Montenegro, Bulgaria, & Romania.

I will also reiterate that angering the Romanian government was always unavoidable since giving them Transylvania would have made revolution even less likely by making its Habsburg monarch come out as winners after dragging Romanians into the Great Eastern War and having the state's army regulars & reservists turned to war casualties (they were already dipping into green conscripts).

BoredStudent1414 said:
Will Bulgaria really just peacefully hand over huge clunks of territory to its neighbors if the Vienna Conference decided to demand that of the Bulgarians? Should we expect Bulgaria try to resist with force the demands of the Conference members triggering a Balkan war?
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@Etranger would Bulgaria try to fight it out against territorial cessions, and would the Entente jointly try to defeat such backlash against Bulgarian cessions decided in the conference alongside the Alliance - or at least back Bulgaria's foes?

Edit: hopefully caught the post's errors.
Edit2: further errors.
 
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C_Z said:
Sure, but that's traded off for Albania, and Greece isn't that critical for the Entente. They have Alexandria and Malta; that's enough for basing I'm the Eastern Med. Getting Albania onside meanwhile takes the Adriatic completely off the table if we have a decent mix of coastal subs and coastal artillery, which frees up our efforts elsewhere.

I could see giving the Greeks that bit of Ottoman territory, but those borders are really ugly and the areas don't seem to be predominantly Greek; I feel like giving Greece a Bulgarian minority is likely to backfire in that the inevitable inter-ethnic tensions will empower conservative greek nationalist politicians.
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Greece isn't just an issue for basing in the eastern med in general but for basing right by the Adriatic. Corfu closes the Adriatic easily as well as Albania and the UK in fact held to it for quite some time because of that.
 
[] Plan: Balance of Power
-[] Kosovo should remain with Serbia.
-[] Nis should go to Serbia.
-[] Northern Macedonia should remain with Bulgaria.
-[] Eastern Rumelia should remain with Bulgaria.
-[] Bulgarian Eastern Macedonia should go to Greece.
-[] Ottoman Eastern Macedonia should remain with the Ottoman Empire.

I for one am glad we're at this stage of the conference, we have a chance to rearrange the borders of the Balkans. I just think it's fundamentally unsound to use this as an opportunity to aggrandize any one of these powers, who are not our friends and have important ideological differences with us. Our goal, in my opinion, should be to make minor adjustments to Balkan borders, to keep these powers hostile to each other. If Bulgaria is totally mutilated, then they'll be tossed to the side and the Entente will look to swing one of the other powers. By keeping a more balanced approach, we make it hard for the Entente to support one power without sending another into our arms. It will also make the individual strength of each weaker and less of a concern if they align against us.

We don't have friends in the Balkans, but we do have interests. Keeping them all roughly equally happy and without crippling any of them reduces the chance of facing a major front here next war, and doesn't tie us to any monarchist government.
 
Aedan777 said:
[] Plan: Balance of Power
-[] Kosovo should remain with Serbia.
-[] Nis should go to Serbia.
-[] Northern Macedonia should remain with Bulgaria.
-[] Eastern Rumelia should remain with Bulgaria.
-[] Bulgarian Eastern Macedonia should go to Greece.
-[] Ottoman Eastern Macedonia should remain with the Ottoman Empire.

I for one am glad we're at this stage of the conference, we have a chance to rearrange the borders of the Balkans. I just think it's fundamentally unsound to use this as an opportunity to aggrandize any one of these powers, who are not our friends and have important ideological differences with us. Our goal, in my opinion, should be to make minor adjustments to Balkan borders, to keep these powers hostile to each other. If Bulgaria is totally mutilated, then they'll be tossed to the side and the Entente will look to swing one of the other powers. By keeping a more balanced approach, we make it hard for the Entente to support one power without sending another into our arms. It will also make the individual strength of each weaker and less of a concern if they align against us.

We don't have friends in the Balkans, but we do have interests. Keeping them all roughly equally happy and without crippling any of them reduces the chance of facing a major front here next war, and doesn't tie us to any monarchist government.
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I'm with Aedan on this one too. At the very least leaving Northern Macedonia with Bulgaria gives everyone else something to worry about besides the damn Commies.
 
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