Re: Lifestyles of OU

----------
> From: Jason Stephensen <J.Stephensen@fbs.gu.edu.au>
> To: FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
> Subject: Lifestyles of OU
> Date: Tuesday, 9 September 1997 11:13
> 
> >Talking of politics what exactly is the political outlook in the FT 
> >universe?  Is the ESU dictatorial?  Is the NAC such a wonderful place

> >to live?  And what about the NSL and FSE?  Whats it like to be a 
> >citizen of all these states?  Views?
> 
> Well those that live in the OU have finally got their republic. We
have
all
> the islanders joined to the Union (no more hidden bad reports of our
island
> neighbours leaders I guess) and even New Zealand. (which by that stage
has
> fallen to their more appropriate lower nation then Australia) We have
> settled the Indonesian threat

I'm not sure. The timeline doesn't seem to describe a substantial
victory
by the OU, and the Indonesian Commonwealth is probably a very major
power
in comparison with the OU.

Anyway, the point of this background is to produce situations to
wargame.
You don't want a peaceful border, you want all sorts of covert actions,
starships mysteriously lost in battles no-one ever talks about, raids on
outposts, hiring of mercenaries to carry out deniable attacks and all
sorts
of nastiness (the GZG timeline describes a future that is fairly
unpleasant
in many ways).

>and we at the least live in complete luxury
> defended by some of the best forces. OU is in damn good shape with
less
of
> the internal and external problems that the rest of those major powers
have.

One thing which might dominate OU foreign affairs is how the Indonesians
get on with the ESU. I'd suggest that the IC and ESU are not on the best
of
terms (with the IC occupying territory part of China's tradition sphere
of
influence), so the OU would lean to an enemy-of-my-enemy relationship
with
the Eurasians which would damage any friendship with the NAC, otherwise
a
natural ally for cultural reasons. Certainly the OU appears to take no
part
in the big superpower wars and operates FSE designed hover-APCs, so they
are quite happy to pay license fees to the enemies of the NAC.

As a neutral power, the OU faces a dangerous universe with no great and
powerful friends. It does give an excuse to just buy all your favourite
models and call them OU purchases/license-builds (a lot of starships
would
have become available cheap at the end of the Second Solar War).

The unknown in all this is how important the situation in space is
relative
to that on Earth.

I'd also like to stake the OU's claim on large chunks of Antarctica (the
current Australian and New Zealander claims), the rest presumably going
to
the PAU and NAC.