The regional forces of The Proletariat Coalition - The Proletariat Defence Forces - make up the military branch of The Proletariat Coalition. It is essentially deployed to defend our home when we are under attack, allies, friends and interests in foreign regions. Not seldomly, we are deployed to defend neutral regions from imperialists and many of our members are either active members of the Intelligence Department of the RLA or active members of the Red Liberty Armed Forces who are deployed every day in the active defence of defenceless regions.
Generally speaking, The Proletariat Defence Forces are part of something much bigger and important. The Red Liberty Armed Forces.
Origin and Command Structure
The centralised armed wing of the Red Liberty Alliance was created out of conflict. The predecessor to the RLA - the MASS Alliance - had no official army. It did not demand that its regions maintain armies either; it was simply expected that a rag-tag would move in to the member-region under attack and endorse the delegate if and when it was necessary. This approach, needless to say, wasn't very efficient.
The RLAF then is structured differently. Officially, each member of the RLA is only obliged to contribute one soldier-nation to RLA command, to be under the direct and singular command of the RLAF heirarchy. Unofficially, the elected Commander of the RLAF oversees all military operations conducted by member-regions of the Red Liberty Alliance. The expression of this authority is the Council for Defence.
The Council, as mentioned in the Charter, is called into being only in times when the alliance faces a declaration of war or when the alliance makes a declaration of war or, least important, if one of the regional commanders who make up the Council wishes to convene it to discuss something of importance. As of today (2nd October 2005), the Council for Defence has never been called into being. When it is convened it is chaired by the Commander of the RLAF.
RLAF Command in times of peace
RLA heirarchy has, as befitting a democratic organisation, never been too rigid. New soldiers can post orders to move in to regions with as much force and effect as their senior or more experienced comrades. In times when the Council for Defence is not in session, the military heirarchy is determined by the sitting Commander. He picks a Deputy which the Central Soviet can approve or not. If it does not, the Commander has to choose someone else; this is a reminder of the ultimate authority of the C-Sov. Beyond that, the RLA Charter demands Five Watchers to act as point men in spotting invasions.
Traditionally the Director of Intelligence has been placed somewhere on the chain of command at the whim of the Commander of the RLAF. Other notables such as regional commanders (e.g. the Minister of Defence in The Proletariat Coalition or the Strategos Nemonos of the Allied States of EuroIslanders) or very active troops also receive a place in the command structure.
The point of the command structure was not to keep troops in line; no amount of bellicose posturing in a game played on the confines of the internet can do that. The point was to keep the RLA safe from unwise engagements. Those in the RLA Command are expected to know when to move against invaders and which targets should receive priority. They are also expected to know the difference between intervening in a war between sovereign states and intervening against invaders who have decided to attack someone elses region just for the fun of it. As a result of this, the form orders usually take are orders not to intervene in specific regions.
Naturally the orders of the Commander of the RLAF supersede all those junior to him - this is still democratic since it was the C-Sov who elected the Commander and expect him or her to have a sense of the best interest of the RLA politically as well as militarily.
Who and where does the RLA fight?
The RLA has fought few engagements in its home regions. Cuba, once a much contested battleground of the Atlantic Alliance and other invader groups, has become stable under the guidance and guardianship of members from TPC and the ASE. It now has a native delegate and government. World Socialist Alliance and the Coalition of Socialist States towards the end of their existence suffered a couple of invasions - most successfully defended. In the end CSS was locked down by RLA Forces under the lead of The Red Factions; all the members moved to a different RLA region, The RED Resurgence, which was just starting out. Democratic Underground was griefed once by someone who became delegate - but the Mods fixed this since griefing is against the rules. Anarchism has been invaded and successfully defended by the RLA and her allies in an operation where my own puppet, Ancient Sparta, took the lead. China is a favourite of invaders and has been defended four times since joining the RLA; however the founder can now be resurrected when the region needs defending so RLA forces relaxed their watch on the region.
All of these engagements were with 'raiders' rather than with sovereign powers. The only time the RLA has intervened in a war between sovereign powers was when ACCEL (the Alliance of Capitalists, Conservatives and Economic Libertarians) invaded the region Socialism; it was at that time a part of the RKKA (a left wing group which claimed revolutionary Marxist origins but had such origins in about the same measure as it had intelligence - very little). This incident was put behind the two powers quickly since the Commander of the day (myself) subsequently issued orders not to intervene in Socialism - and also since the RLA were not the only defender group to intervene.
'Raiders' (sometimes generally referred to as 'invaders') are smash-and-grab bully boys. They conquer regions just for the hell of it, rather than because those regions have done anything wrong toward the 'raider' group. They hold the region - sometimes with passwords - after expelling the delegate which they ousted to take power. Many times these raiders harm the regions they take over and left unmolested, raiders would be a major threat to the very active regions - such as our own. This is why the RLAF targets invaders no matter where they appear. The RLA takes an especially dim view of those who use Fascist or Nazi puppets to invade socialist or left-wing regions; we view this as a threat to the continuation of free left wing discourse within the framework of NationStates - which the fascists are naturally intent on disrupting anyway.
How does the RLAF wage its battles?
Some of you will be new to all this; huge alliances spanning a score of regions, no two of which are alike. Some alliances which are friendly to each other, some which aren't. The origins of all that are beyond my ability to explain right at this time - though if you look me up on messenger or AIM, I would do so.
What I can explain to the new members is how we do battle - which is often casually referred to as 'defending' since we stop the raiders taking over regions, i.e. we defend those regions. Each nation is entitled to be a member of the United Nations and each region is entitled to a United Nations Delegate. The nation in a particular region that has the most endorsements (each member of the UN in that region can endorse other members) from other players becomes the United Nations Delegate. That position comes with certain powers when there is no founder; it can password the region, kick and ban some nations and change the World Factbook Entry.
Invaders move in and endorse one of their own soldiers in the hope of getting more endorsements than the native delegate and so taking over the position of UN Delegate. The change-over between delegates (if a nation gets more endorsements than the UN Delegate of their region) occurs at set times each day. Those times are discussed more at higher security levels. When we notice invaders move in, we follow and either endorse the native delegate (if there is one and if he or she is active and able to kick out the invaders) or we endorse a member of the RLA or one of the allies we frequently work with.
In this way, we make sure invaders never get too powerful - their troops get disillusioned and they never gain enough manpower to take on RLA regions or the regions that belong to our allies.
So, that's a broad overview of the RLAF.
