To: SUSA
From: Uruguayan Collective
We are not rebelling. We are simply choosing to end our membership in the Union. We were promised rights to autonomy when the Union was formed, and we no longer recognize the foreign policy interests of SUSA to be in line with our ideal nation.
OOC: This is long for a diplomatic message, but it is also a message to our own people as well.
IC:
To: Uruguayan socialists
From: SUSA
CC: The people of the Socialist Union (i.e. this is published in our papers; byline is Luis Carlos Prestes, a high-ranking Socialist Party member)
First: realize that our Leader, Jose Batlle y Ordonez, was one of your own before the Socialist Union was created, so you cannot say that your interests have not been represented.
Second: if you refer to the war in North America, we were not the ones who started the war; it was the Capitalists. But regardless of who started it, we have not sent any more troops to North America and our fleets have not been engaging those of the enemy. The only reason the expeditionary force remains in North America is that we have no safe means of bringing them home. We remain mobilized only because we have seen a demobilization as risky, and would like to remain prepared should the Capitalists decide to extend the war into South America...and potentially harm you. When the war ends (which we hope will be soon), we will demobilize.
Third: we recognize a higher cause than mere constitutional commitments. The protection of socialism on an international scale is indeed in line with the tenets of socialism. What is socialism? In essence, ensuring that the workers are guaranteed the means of survival, and thus allowing them a
practical freedom that is not guaranteed by the
constitutional freedom provided by the capitalist nations (for who is truly free when he is a slave to survival?). Should we not ensure that the workers on the international level also be guaranteed access to this freedom? If we were to say no, we would be no better than capitalists ourselves, hoarding our freedom as they hoard their wealth. That is how our foreign policy has been functioning for the majority of the time in the international theater. We tried to ensure that the Communist government of Jamaica had the means to ensure the people of Jamaica the prerequisite condition of survival for a greater freedom. Again, we did not start that war.
In regards to Bolivia and Paraguay: would it have been just to sit on our hands and do nothing while Salazar abused the Bolivian people? We entrusted Bolivia to Paraguay on the condition that the Paraguayan government did not abuse the Bolivian people, and guarantee the Bolivians the rights any citizen of a socialist nation has. Not only did Paraguay cease to be a socialist nation, Paraguay, under Salazar, began to outright abuse the Bolivians and violate the rights to survival (and therefore freedom) the Bolivians had. To allow this to happen under our watch, after we entrusted Bolivia to Paraguay, would be unjust, immoral, and a violation of the socialist cause. We had a moral imperative to intervene in the Bolivian affair. And now, Bolivia is capable of starting anew, of guaranteeing its people the means of survival that were not present in Paraguay. Do you honestly think that it would be right to sit back and do nothing before?
You do not have a leg to stand on.
Fourth: the socialist cause also gives us the right to forcibly annex you. What good does it do for the socialists to be disunited? We would end up like the nations of North America; disunited and war torn. The failure of the United States did them no good, and the failure of the Socialist Union will do
us and the socialist cause no good. If you leave, what's to stop others from leaving? Where would we be then? At the hands of the Capitalists. It is not only a disfavor to the workers of your nation for us to allow you to leave; it is a disfavor to our own. There may be bloodshed early on, but for us to do nothing would be to invite greater catastrophe in the future.
We realize that at the beginning you were guaranteed autonomy. But times have changed; union is more critical now than it ever was. You would be guaranteed the autonomy to make decisions specific to your collective if you were to remain, as any collective in the Union ought have. But that does not mean that you can leave when the situation does not fit you and the going gets tough. If that were the case, what would be the point of the Socialist Union in the first place? Even if the Socialist Union were purely defensive, if the defensive war were going badly and every collective decided to leave, then they might as well have never been united. The creation of the Socialist Union itself means that you cannot claim autonomy.
We hope you change your mind. If not, at least don't deceive yourselves into thinking you hold the moral high ground.