STGOD! OOC Thread.

[Hotfoot]

What, so when I was overtly gearing up to go to war with Mexico, that was okay, but now that it's revealed that Pacifica was the target, that's not cool?

As far as "durhur declare war", you know what? No, that's not what happened, in any of these cases. More to the point, everything I've done has been underhanded, but above board. This war could have been stopped or blunted at any number of occasions, plenty of people, including mods, knew what was going on, but no one bothered to really get involved or commit the effort to do the most basic of interference.

Also, this is a game about diplomacy and conquest. Without conflict, the game goes nowhere. Everyone would just sit and talk and the entire exercise gets boring after a while. If this were a game of peaceful negotiation and trade, there would have been a higher focus on those elements. It's not, so oh well. I'm playing the game in front of me, and if you want to try and stop me, well hey, come on and do it.

For the record, STGODs rarely last more than a year to begin with, since beyond a certain point things hit critical mass, alliance lines are drawn, and eventually things hit a boiling point.

[General Havoc]

I am and was not under any obligation to wait until my enemies were ready to devour my Empire so as to play by some unspoken set of rules that were never explained. All of the offers of aid I received when the Germans overtly stated there would be a war of aggression against me were of the nature of "I will help you mitigate the terms against you". I therefore worked to the destruction of my enemies. If doing so is offensive to players of this game, I suggest they make their displeasure known in-game, not come here and start blanketly insulting the state of play to be found on these boards because I did not act in a fashion that was to their liking.

[frigidmagi]

I want to point out that if I or the other mods have walked off and just babbled this it would have been abuse of power.

On the other hand I was prepared to blow the lid off anything if anyone showed even the slightly urge at digging into it. One post about spies, one PM about sending observers, SOMETHING!

But that never happened. Also currently Taiping China stands as the only nation to officially condemn the Mughal Empire, many of you have shared borders and much greater freedom of action then that nation. But you didn't even bother to do that.

So no, I am not sympathetic to any complaints. If you find the behavior bad, give an in game consequence for nations that flaunt international law and standards. Otherwise don't be surprised if folks decide there's no reason to ignore them.

[Hadrianvs]

What, so when I was overtly gearing up to go to war with Mexico, that was okay, but now that it's revealed that Pacifica was the target, that's not cool?

Mexico occupies significant territory that was American within living memory. This including a big chunk of the Mississipi River valley which is an important agricultural are and commercial artery. From a roleplaying standpoint, Mexico's territorial holdings in the middle of the continent should be intolerable. Meanwhile, Pacifica's at the other side of this huge mountain rainge.

I think that is the source of the complaints that were absent during the increase of tensions against your southern neighbor. A war with Mexico simply seems to make more sense than a war with Pacifica.

For the record, STGODs rarely last more than a year to begin with, since beyond a certain point things hit critical mass, alliance lines are drawn, and eventually things hit a boiling point.

We could codify this as a one-liner: "All STGODs start in 1914".

[Hotfoot]

Amazingly, I'm getting back a good chunk of the Mississippi territory as a part of this deal, through peaceful means, which is quite a boon. Meanwhile, I'll point out that this timeline is not the normal one. For whatever reason, the North did not strongly contest the Southern secession, and the states that fled back were not treated as states, but rather as protectorates for a long time.

But by all means, appeal to a history that does not exist.

Meanwhile, both Mexico and the United States are Republics, while Pacifica is a very sore reminder of old European ways that infected the American States. Thanks to them, the Monroe Doctrine was nearly impossible to enforce outside of the Caribbean, and also blunted America's westward expansion. While America did blunt the aggressive German move in the Carribean, they could not do much more beyond that. England, France, Germany, and Rome all had holding that could utterly destabilize the power structure in the United States.

[Hadrianvs]

I am and was not under any obligation to wait until my enemies were ready to devour my Empire so as to play by some unspoken set of rules that were never explained.

Eh, I blame the Hungarians. Firstly because everything is automatically Hungary's fault, and secondly because even the German player told me that he felt they were escalating things too quickly.

[Hotfoot]

I don't recall the Hungarians moving a massive airfleet to another nation to be within striking distance while simultaneously demanding the outright surrender of a nation.

Just saying.

[frigidmagi]

Okay guys? Don't debate this back and forth in the OOC thread. If you really are bothered by an action, do something in the game. If you have questions as to why us mods aren't stopping something PM us a question. Otherwise arguing in the OOC is a distraction at best.

[Charon]

I am and was not under any obligation to wait until my enemies were ready to devour my Empire so as to play by some unspoken set of rules that were never explained.

Eh, I blame the Hungarians. Firstly because everything is automatically Hungary's fault, and secondly because even the German player told me that he felt they were escalating things too quickly.

I'd feel more pity for Comrade Tortoise if he wasn't the person who escalated it that fast.

But blaming Cat is always a good decision, because at least 75% of the time it's right.

[Hadrianvs]

But by all means, appeal to a history that does not exist.

*shrug* Was just speculating. I don't recall actually voicing any complaint about your invasion.

Thanks to them, the Monroe Doctrine was nearly impossible to enforce outside of the Caribbean,

I'm not seeing how Pacifica makes it impossible for you to enforce the Monroe Doctrine*. They had no designs whatsoever on your territory, all ex-continental holdings in the Americas are accessible through the Atlantic, you control the Panama Canal anyhow, and the Pacificans don't get along with the English.

*Random fun fact, in our world the Monroe Doctrine was actually enforced by the Royal Navy for most of the 19th century.

[Comrade Tortoise]

I am and was not under any obligation to wait until my enemies were ready to devour my Empire so as to play by some unspoken set of rules that were never explained.

Eh, I blame the Hungarians. Firstly because everything is automatically Hungary's fault, and secondly because even the German player told me that he felt they were escalating things too quickly.

I'd feel more pity for Comrade Tortoise if he wasn't the person who escalated it that fast.

But blaming Cat is always a good decision, because at least 75% of the time it's right.

Um... but I didnt. My deployment in the caribbean was accidental at game start, when i brought the hungarians in they "sabre rattled"... I say that because they only made a pretense at sabre rattling to bump up the timetable I had in place that would have slowly escalated to war on a realistic time scale

Then he betrayed me, and had planned to do so on as fast a time scale as they could manage from game start.

So yeah. Blame hungary

[The Cleric]

This game will be a nice learning experience for me, I can say that.

And thank you frigid for rolling the dice for our southern France and African skirmishes. The results look reasonable, although I would have preferred that the Roman's all have mysterious gun jams and were repulsed with 100% fatality rates. Lets work on that for next time :D!

[Cynical Cat]

Of course I accelerated the war.

1) I'm evil

2) the longer it went on, the more likely my secret was to get out

3) An earlier war favored Rome and Hungary

Germany's hostile intent was clear. The smart thing to do would be stack the deck and manipulate the timing in my favor. That leads us to

4) I'm a cat. I don't fight fair and pouncing from ambush is normal behavior from me.

[General Havoc]

Cleric, I gotta say out of game, I'm sorry that this mess descended on your head. Given that CT started this (That's my line and I'm sticking to it ) I would have preferred to throw the brunt of my forces his way. Sadly, the Alps intervened to prevent such a thing. Hopefully there's no hard feelings, it's just the way the politics turned out.

[Slacker]

Slacker, if folks want to declare war they're well within their rights.

Right, but this is a geopolitical sim, and you're the moderator. If a person was roleplaying themselves dramatically against what their character sheet, said, would you let it fly or would there be real consequences? Or would you just say 'NO'. God knows I've done that enough times.

Havoc-realize this wasn't directed at you. People were planning on screwing you without lube from moment one and you were well within your rights to do whatever you could to protect yourself.

If a nation that's in theory a democratic republic decides to declare war on a another relatively liberal country, there needs to be damn good reason. Now certainly the Mughals are probably autocratic enough that they could just declare war, but the Germans? The Americans? Fuck no. Your job as a moderator in this case is to step in as the various non-governmental powers in a country and go "No, this is a bad idea". I don't see a dozen Nazi Germanies or Imperial Japans here. When a constitutional monarchy like the Vasans are is one of the more autocratic governments in the game, then I'm sorry, this sort of thing shouldn't be happening. No offense, and maybe I'm lecturing a little bit, but I've run these kinds of games before. For over a decade in-game time several times, with much greater disparities in player base and goals than this game has. You guys sort of ignored me, and that's fine, I was a new guy who was largely an unknown factor here. But holy hell, I didn't exactly make it a secret that I'd run a number of games before, I know Steve mentioned it in AIM chat. You could've asked me for my opinion, but I know for a fact people were sharpening their knives so they could fuck me instead like you're fucking Steve and people planned to fuck Rome.

"They have a lot of territory, so people were of course going to declare war on them". REALLY? That's *really* an argument you're seriously trying to make in a serious geopolitical context. There are so many things patently absurd with that statement that I'm really not sure where to start.

[Slacker]

What, so when I was overtly gearing up to go to war with Mexico, that was okay, but now that it's revealed that Pacifica was the target, that's not cool?

As far as "durhur declare war", you know what? No, that's not what happened, in any of these cases. More to the point, everything I've done has been underhanded, but above board. This war could have been stopped or blunted at any number of occasions, plenty of people, including mods, knew what was going on, but no one bothered to really get involved or commit the effort to do the most basic of interference.

Also, this is a game about diplomacy and conquest. Without conflict, the game goes nowhere. Everyone would just sit and talk and the entire exercise gets boring after a while. If this were a game of peaceful negotiation and trade, there would have been a higher focus on those elements. It's not, so oh well. I'm playing the game in front of me, and if you want to try and stop me, well hey, come on and do it.

For the record, STGODs rarely last more than a year to begin with, since beyond a certain point things hit critical mass, alliance lines are drawn, and eventually things hit a boiling point.

I've gotten similar games to run for ten or more in-game years, and well over two IRL years. So that's not true.

You had a pre-existing conflict with Mexico. It's stated right there in the first post of the first thread. There's at least a fig leaf there, where everything I've seen in regards to American/Pacifican relations seems to point to a mutually 'meh' relationship.

There's also plenty of room for conflict without these risk style 'Well, I'm going to shank you now' sort of maneuvers. Border wars. Colonial wars. You could have a local war in the Caribbean that wouldn't spread to German tanks rolling into Rome. Fights in Africa, or the American Midwest. Mexico and the US can have a conflict over, say, Texas, that doesn't end with American artillery flattening Mexico City. It seems that everyone's opinion of how things work is very two dimensional, it's on or it's off, with absolute no sense of nuance or escalation.

[Cynical Cat]

Slacker, you're way off base. Your commenting on the motivations of countries where you have next to no diplomatic contacts and no intelligence presence. If you don't understand their motivations, that's not a failure of the game. And, on top of that, you're assuming your opinion is the appropriate one with which we should to evaluate the action of other states.

Steve's Pacificans had existing territorial disputes with the Americans and Mexicans. That the Mexicans were able to drag the Mughals into the war using diplomacy and the promise of war gains, well that's to their credit. I have very little contact with the Mughals and I've noticed they have a large fleet and Pacific ambitions.

Also the contention that a democratic government isn't inclined to either aggression or autocracy is far from established. America didn't hesitate to use war to expand all the way across the continent, take land from Mexico, and seize territory across the ocean as far away as the Philippines and intervene in China. That's just what happened in real life and that's not getting into the whole Imperial Presidency.

The game started with CT throwing a match in a pool of gasoline with the prelude to a multipower war. That caused ruthless realpolitik actions starting in Europe and rippling outwards as far as their colonies and the powers neighboring their colonies and so on. That happened before rules were settled on.

As for you having experience running games, well that doesn't mean you're good at it. Quality, not quantity, is what I care about and quality for you remains an unknown. I've known veteran GMs and players who are absolutely horrible and newbies who are pretty good. Frankly, a recommendation from Steve, who tried force battleship design micromanagement into a world spanning imperial game, cuts no ice with me.

[Hotfoot]

Slacker, I'm not going to argue with you over your experiences versus mine. You want to say something's not true from my experience, that's laughable. You know my life? I've been through this dance several times before, and even the longest running games I've been in have lasted less than a real life year.

As far as overtly stating my intentions, you must be joking. Had anyone sent spies to figure out what was going on, or attempted to intercept my coded transmissions, the jig would have been up. There's what happens publicly, and then what happens privately. The conflict, by the way, was not so much with Mexico as it was with a terrorist group operating in the United States. Mexico wasn't involved at all until overzealous National Guard chased KKK members across the border.

By the way, I did nearly have a colonial war with Germany over the battleships they had posted in the Caribbean. Germany back down and so there was no more to it.

And as far as my own war now? It's not a war of annihilation, and in fact the terms I'll be offering Pacifica will be far more beneficent than the terms Rome is likely to offer France and Germany. Had Steve stayed in, he certainly would have found himself down, but not out. In fact I had expected he would lead an alliance of angry nations against me after he rallied in the Pacific.

But let this be a lesson: Neutrality never works unless you're surrounded on all sides by mountains and are good at making clocks, and even then it doesn't usually work well.

[Charon]

Right, but this is a geopolitical sim, and you're the moderator. If a person was roleplaying themselves dramatically against what their character sheet, said, would you let it fly or would there be real consequences? Or would you just say 'NO'. God knows I've done that enough times.

If a nation that's in theory a democratic republic decides to declare war on a another relatively liberal country, there needs to be damn good reason. Now certainly the Mughals are probably autocratic enough that they could just declare war, but the Germans? The Americans? Fuck no. Your job as a moderator in this case is to step in as the various non-governmental powers in a country and go "No, this is a bad idea". I don't see a dozen Nazi Germanies or Imperial Japans here. When a constitutional monarchy like the Vasans are is one of the more autocratic governments in the game, then I'm sorry, this sort of thing shouldn't be happening. No offense, and maybe I'm lecturing a little bit, but I've run these kinds of games before. For over a decade in-game time several times, with much greater disparities in player base and goals than this game has. You guys sort of ignored me, and that's fine, I was a new guy who was largely an unknown factor here. But holy hell, I didn't exactly make it a secret that I'd run a number of games before, I know Steve mentioned it in AIM chat. You could've asked me for my opinion, but I know for a fact people were sharpening their knives so they could fuck me instead like you're fucking Steve and people planned to fuck Rome.

It is the opinion of the mod team that it is not our job to hold people's hands and babysit nations. You are free to do what you want so long as what you are doing is within the realm of possibility. If what you are doing isn't reasonable, there will be consequences. And for the record, if someone was roleplaying dramatically against their character sheet I would roll with it and make their be consequences to their actions. We're in this for the players to play and have fun, not to demand they always play nice and have reasons for being assholes. Yes, you are lecturing, all of the mod team has experience in modding, if you want to give us our opinion that's fine, we might even listen to it.

"They have a lot of territory, so people were of course going to declare war on them". REALLY? That's *really* an argument you're seriously trying to make in a serious geopolitical context. There are so many things patently absurd with that statement that I'm really not sure where to start.

Yeah, because no wars have ever been started over a desire for territory before. You are right in one aspect, usually such wars were given extremely flimsy reasons like "civilizing the savages", or "God Wills it". Reasons that everyone knew were complete bullshit. Steve and Havoc knew people were after their territory, and yes, that is what happens when you do things like grab the ENTIRE PACIFIC OCEAN or the ENTIRE MEDITERRANEAN. There are going to be other people that want that territory for their own purposes and will look for a reason to start a war over the matter. This time people didn't decide to look for excuses, and just like in real life, there will be consequences for this.

Now before you go "You're an idiot because you're fine with the geopolitical context blah blah blah". No, I'm not. I was giving you the cold hard truth of the matter, wars are started over desire for territory, these wars have started over the desire for territory. It should have bloody well been expected that wars would start over this desire for territory. And the Mods have little interest in making everyone play nice and demand that everyone have a legitimate and immediately publicly known reason for doing something. We definitely will not stop someone from declaring war because we don't think they have a good enough reason. We'll just make certain there are consequences to this action.

[Slacker]

Slacker, I'm not going to argue with you over your experiences versus mine. You want to say something's not true from my experience, that's laughable. You know my life? I've been through this dance several times before, and even the longest running games I've been in have lasted less than a real life year.

Ad Astra III: Just shy of 6k posts, ran for something like fourteen game years. I'm not too proud of it, I burnt out a bit and sort of left my assistant running things.

Ad Astra IV. About sixty five hundred posts, 12 game years, three major wars with, at its peak, something like fourteen players. The largest included my nation on the losing side. I did have a co-head moderator, who handled that particular war's moderation, but *eh*

Shattered Sphere II. Battletech universe. Ran from 3062 to ~3074. Had, again, several major wars, was co-head moderator. 7700+ plus posts.

Destiny of the World VI. I confess I wasn't the head moderator for this game, I helped the head moderator out and was responsible for science and technological development in the game, which was current-day setting. Ten game years, a ball hair shy of nine thousand posts.

Realize these are 90+ in character-like here, we have a distinct OOC board on the Frontier. The archives are still there and viewable for those who have registered accounts on the Frontier. By no means am I taking sole credit for any of these-we generally had a mod staff of 4-5 people making things work. My stuff is, however, available for anyone who wants to see it. Again, people assumed I was some dunderhead brought in because Steve introduced me and you guys didn't like what he wanted out of the navy rules. You know what? I liked the final ruleset better, honestly and absolutely detest SpringSharp. Don't assume.

As for me not having diplomatic contacts or intelligence in the rest of the world, that's patently absurd. We're in the 1930s, not the 1730s. I have a globe spanning colonial empire in an era of motion picture and radio. I'm also capable of reading, very little of what was originally posted by everyone indicated anything like these long-simmering time bombs sitting around the globe. Again, sorry I wasn't privy to any supersecret AIM conversations, but let's examine things on the face of it-when in the course of world events has a democracy outright fabricated a casus bellum in collusion with a second party A: That seems to be some form of dictatorship and B: They have long-standing territorial disputes over specifically to screw over a third party who seems to have rather more in common with the democracy than the tin-pot dictatorship. Your population should be real pissed when this breaks, and when the conspiracy leaks out, and it will, because people talk, your government should have serious problems. Conspiracies don't work on this scale simply because there's too many people involved and they can't keep their traps shut.

[Cynical Cat]

As for me not having diplomatic contacts or intelligence in the rest of the world, that's patently absurd. We're in the 1930s, not the 1730s. I have a globe spanning colonial empire in an era of motion picture and radio. I'm also capable of reading, very little of what was originally posted by everyone indicated anything like these long-simmering time bombs sitting around the globe. Again, sorry I wasn't privy to any supersecret AIM conversations, but let's examine things on the face of it-when in the course of world events has a democracy outright fabricated a casus bellum in collusion with a second party A: That seems to be some form of dictatorship and B: They have long-standing territorial disputes over specifically to screw over a third party who seems to have rather more in common with the democracy than the tin-pot dictatorship. Your population should be real pissed when this breaks, and when the conspiracy leaks out, and it will, because people talk, your government should have serious problems. Conspiracies don't work on this scale simply because there's too many people involved and they can't keep their traps shut.

Did you talk to people?

Did you talk to mods about intelligence operations in specific powers? I did, there were things I specifically wanted to know about and keep tabs on.

I'm going to guess "no". Which means you were hoping such things would come out of routine intelligence and diplomatic work with no effort on your part to discover them. You were expecting closely guarded state secrets on a platter, in the short term, without any effort on your part.

I closely compartmentalized and restricted who would know my plans, but I knew they could leak out. The longer it went on, the greater the chance. And what do you know, we had war in less than six months.

The Soviet Union had plenty of opportunities to learn about Barbarossa and they still got caught by surprise. The US got sucker punched by Pearl Harbor and the subsequent Philippine invasion. Secrets get kept. Intelligence gets gathered and then set aside before being passed up the chain or dismissed by the people near or at the top. If you're not in the know, make an effort to become in the know. Relying on mods to spontaneously tell you well guarded, high level plans when its convenient for you is arrogant and presumptuous.

As for the public opinion side issue, mine was never fully on one side or another and some of them still aren't for the war (see editorial where a number of nations get slagged). Of course the Germans nakedly unreasonable demands and the fact that Hungary is winning is helping.

[Hotfoot]

Ad Astra III: Just shy of 6k posts, ran for something like fourteen game years. I'm not too proud of it, I burnt out a bit and sort of left my assistant running things.

Ad Astra IV. About sixty five hundred posts, 12 game years, three major wars with, at its peak, something like fourteen players. The largest included my nation on the losing side. I did have a co-head moderator, who handled that particular war's moderation, but *eh*

Shattered Sphere II. Battletech universe. Ran from 3062 to ~3074. Had, again, several major wars, was co-head moderator. 7700+ plus posts.

Destiny of the World VI. I confess I wasn't the head moderator for this game, I helped the head moderator out and was responsible for science and technological development in the game, which was current-day setting. Ten game years, a ball hair shy of nine thousand posts.

Slacker, you're not getting it. I've not played any of those games, and thus they're not part of MY EXPERIENCES.

You've been in other similarly styled games, fine, but they're not STGODs as per the ones I've been in on here and SDN.

Realize these are 90+ in character-like here, we have a distinct OOC board on the Frontier. The archives are still there and viewable for those who have registered accounts on the Frontier. By no means am I taking sole credit for any of these-we generally had a mod staff of 4-5 people making things work. My stuff is, however, available for anyone who wants to see it. Again, people assumed I was some dunderhead brought in because Steve introduced me and you guys didn't like what he wanted out of the navy rules. You know what? I liked the final ruleset better, honestly and absolutely detest SpringSharp. Don't assume.

I think you're being a fool because you're trying to tell me that my experiences are false, which is in a word, stupid.

As for me not having diplomatic contacts or intelligence in the rest of the world, that's patently absurd. We're in the 1930s, not the 1730s. I have a globe spanning colonial empire in an era of motion picture and radio. I'm also capable of reading, very little of what was originally posted by everyone indicated anything like these long-simmering time bombs sitting around the globe. Again, sorry I wasn't privy to any supersecret AIM conversations, but let's examine things on the face of it-when in the course of world events has a democracy outright fabricated a casus bellum in collusion with a second party A: That seems to be some form of dictatorship and B: They have long-standing territorial disputes over specifically to screw over a third party who seems to have rather more in common with the democracy than the tin-pot dictatorship. Your population should be real pissed when this breaks, and when the conspiracy leaks out, and it will, because people talk, your government should have serious problems. Conspiracies don't work on this scale simply because there's too many people involved and they can't keep their traps shut.

Wait, what? Pacifica is a Monarchy, Mexico is a Republic, and the USA has had it's corrupt politicians under the thumb of a man who has them over a barrel.

Moreover, when what breaks? Wars have been started with less cause and this isn't 2030 with massive intelligence networks. Need I remind you of "Remember the Maine?" Yeah, lots of outrage there, right?

As CynCat pointed out, you never made an official move to find out what was going on. You want intel for free? Pray for an event to give you an intelligence leak. Otherwise, you've got to use the spies you have to actually, you know, DO things.

Expecting to have conspiracies revealed with no effort is laughable at best. The mods were fully aware of the situation and ready to turn me in the moment someone posted an intelligence operation. I got away with this because quite simply, NO ONE DID.

[frigidmagi]

Slacker, no offense meant, but my job is to ensure that the game rules as posted in the OOB are followed. Determining the correct politics for each state is not. If you disagree, well that's a difference in game style. My belief is in these games it's the player and the player alone who should determine how that nation behaves. Since I'm the mod, we're doing it my way. If next game were to come along and you were the mod, we would do it your way.

As for spies and diplomacy, you have exactly what you post and move as having. I'm sorry if you misunderstood that. My reasons for this are fairly simple, everyone is gonna have different beliefs over what they should get without posting or acting. Everyone is gonna have different beliefs over what they should be able to hide. My time is finite. I work, have classes and run this game as well as attempt to have a social life when I can cram it after homework and shifts. That means anything that will require alot of time, like managing everyone's intelligence networks and what not, isn't gonna happen. Now I'm sure you're a busy man to, maybe you're better at time management but I'm not you. This is how I'm gonna manage the demands on my time.

Also in the common tradition most of the players here share, if you don't do it in the game, you didn't do it. In other words if you don't post or PM about spies, you're not doing any intell work. This prevents people from manufacturing advantages which Steve has complained to me about players doing in SDN's game more then once. Is it overly simplistic? Yes, I'll grant you that. But a simple solution in these situations is often the best one in my mind. I apologize for not explaining that ahead of time, that's my mistake and I take responsibility for it.

That said I am not shifting my position. If the players want to act like manics or idiots, they have a right to. There will be no great hand reaching down from the heavens to force people to play certain ways. It is up to players to enforce a code of in game behavior, not the mods. Just as in real life it up to the nations of the world to enforce correct behavior on other nations. That's how this game is gonna be. It's not changing.

[Cynical Cat]

*Random fun fact, in our world the Monroe Doctrine was actually enforced by the Royal Navy for most of the 19th century.

That's because the British liked the Monroe Doctrine because it froze other European powers (but not the British) out of the New World. Hardly shocking the British were in favor of something that they felt served their interests. If things had gone a little different the Doctrine would have been a joint American-British declaration.

[Hadrianvs]

That's because the British liked the Monroe Doctrine because it froze other European powers (but not the British) out of the New World. Hardly shocking the British were in favor of something that they felt served their interests. If things had gone a little different the Doctrine would have been a joint American-British declaration.

The more relevant point is that without the Royal Navy the Monroe Doctrine would have been an utterly toothless declaration. The United States had no capacity to enforce it until the 1880s or 1890s, which I happen to think is amusing.