La Conferencia de Altéa

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Lady Michelle Pavlina Ananto-Sandoval, Countess of Dulnerstaad, Operating Manager of House Ananto:

I have come here to speak on behalf of His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Fredrick III Ananto, Absolute Sovereign of the Empire of Ananto and Kalistan, constituent Nation of the Anantonese Empire and Emperor of the Anantonese Empire.  Forgive the long title:  the pronouncement is dictated by law of our nation.

We offer fraternal Greetings to our Cousin King Romulo I, and sincerely appreciate the opportunity to visit the beautiful and ornately gaudy Villamor Palace.  If we shall say, your good taste in interior decoration rivals that of Lourenne, and even surpasses it.

We come here to speak on the importance of adopting a regional mindset with regard to security.  It is the opinion of His Imperial Majesty that too close an association for nations outside of our region is a primary source for insecurity within our region.  

As such, we hope to support any efforts at regional security, with the aim of advancing the principle of proximate cooperation.  Ideally, our partners would be closer to home rather than farther away.  Kalistan's foray into Artanian affairs was a disaster for Kalistan, on military and humanitarian grounds.  Kalistan lost nearly 60,000 people in that conflict, more than half of them civilian casualties of weapons of mass destruction.  We honor the tremendous and heroic sacrifices of the Luthorian Military and Etxean Partisans in the liberation of that island. Think of what you could have accomplished had your neighbors been more interested in joining your fight in their own back yards, and less interested in what was happening in Seleya and Keris. 

For the cost of the more than 200,000 dead, we had hoped that there would be a more permanent solution to the problem which created the war in the first place.  We were disappointed by the limited gains for which so many paid so high a price, and the security threat is likely more acute now than it was before the war began.  The world has not taken steps to reduce the threat of weapons of mass destruction or of fascist aggression, and as a matter of fact, it is likely that even greater threats still loom ahead of us.

Protecting our region from the threat of belligerence launched at us from the other side of the planet should therefore be of paramount importance.  The only reason that people from the other side of the planet would be in this region is to do the nations of our region harm, and the same goes for the appearance of people from our region in their part of the world.  Our recent experience in war demonstrates this conclusively.  It is our hope that we can find and work with partners here to ensure that nations choose to focus on their own neighborhoods, that nations in Artania focus on the very real threats to world peace that continue to exist in Artania, and let the Anantonese region enjoy the security that we work so hard to maintain, without their participation.

Good fences make good neighbors— we need to mind what is happening in our own yards before we worry about our neighbors’ yard.  We look forward to productive conversation on matters of security and cooperation.  And we thank you for your time and attention.