Before I look at Snowflame's policy, I wish to detail the experience I have in Home Affairs to give more legitimacy to my critiques. Since October 2020 I have been intricately involved in our recruitment & integration efforts alongside many others like The Marconian State. During my time in regional recruitment, we turned around a regional population fall and saw our nations peak at over 400. Recruitment & integration is something I've learned like it's the back of my hand.

Moving to Snowflame's campaign dispatch, the dispatch states:

Snowflame wrote:

The main issue with Thaecia is that it is struggling to retain newer residents, and so the Snowflame Administration will create Operation T.E.A.R (Thaecia Emergency Advancement towards Recruitment) Week 1 of the term. It will be a plan to raise more awareness towards Manual Recruitment and establish incentives towards those who participate.

Having a strong team of manual recruiters is critical to a healthy, growing region. It is how regions like 10000 Islands and Europeia - who are 18 and 14 years old respectively - have maintained at their size for so long, and a goal to improve our manual recruitment infrastructure is commendable.

However, this plan is seriously lacking in detail, thus my questions are simple:

• What does "raise more awareness towards Manual Recruitment" mean?

• How will that raising of awareness be achieved?

• What are the incentives that will be established?

Snowflame's dispatch then moves on to state that an issue Thaecia has is with respect to newcomers leaving the region, and gives the following solution:

Snowflame wrote:

Although there are similar factbooks, we want to further detail all of the positions and events that are available in Thaecia and will encourage those who want to participate that they CAN be successful anywhere (Whether its as a staffer, a recruiter, or a soldier of the military). The issue is that many people want to be "well-known" as soon as possible and feel as if they cannot unless they are a member of Congress immeditaly.

I have long advocated for a shift from what I have termed legislative-based governance to executive-based governance - which means that our region's focus is on its executive, not its legislature. On this issue, it seems Snowflame and I agree, but again, the dispatch gives me far too little detail. Thus, I extend another string of questions:

• Is dispatch form really the best way? We have seen the Foreign Affairs Ministry move towards utilising Google Docs & Sheets, which are far easier to manage from a practical point of view.

• Who will write these dispatches?

• Who will maintain them?

I do not have very much to say regarding Snowflame's proposals for this section - though I do think it is worth pointing out that the Education Ministry does not exist despite this section being labelled as such.

I have little to say on this topic because for the most part I agree with Snowflame that an Education Ministry/Secretary of Education should not exist, as its inherent structure and expectations make it a totally inviable idea.

However, Snowflame's platform still raises some concerns:

Snowflame wrote:

Instead, the Home Affairs Ministry will continuously update factbooks that contain up-to-date information on
1. What to do in Thaecia/How to Get Involved
2. How to use/participate in other aspects of Nationstates such as the General Assembly and the Security Council.
3. How to use NS Code.

Thus, the following questions are again posed:

• This proposal sounds like it is just moving the idea of an Education Ministry/Secretary under the Home Affairs Ministry, and leaving it at that. It does not address the key issue that this initiative has routinely failed to perform the exact same duties Snowflame outlines here. Why would his executive be any different?

• Why are we considering writing dispatches on the General Assembly and Security Council? Thaecia does not have the resources to do that - take it from me, I wrote a Security Council resolution and am the only Thaecian to do so! This goal is far too ambitious for our region right now, and whilst it may be a long-term goal, it simply is not feasible. We do not have the experience, we do not have the interest, we do not have the manpower to give WA writing our best shot.

• A dispatch already exists on how to write BBCode
  

I have been the Minister of Foreign Affairs of this region and have served as a Senior Diplomat for many many months.

Snowflame's Foreign Affairs proposal is a vile and deeply offensive affront to the mountain of work, time and energy that I and so many others have poured into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. If I sound angry, it's because I am.

This quote is the entirety of Snowflame's FA section:

Snowflame wrote:

*The Snowflame administration supports the current structure of the Foreign Affairs Ministry and supports the idea of the Foreign Affairs Council being further involved in issues of Foreign Affairs.

There is zero recognition of the fact that Snowflame - who is a member of the Council of The Black Hawks - is a raider who could place strain on our relationships with defender regions like 10000 Islands and The South Pacific.

There is zero recognition of the fact the Snowflame maliciously infiltrated and was banned from The South Pacific - a region with whom we are building on-site embassies - in an attempt to interfere with their sovereign democratic institutions with respect to a controversial Security Council Resolution. The resolution was deliberately architected by The Black Hawks to rub salt in the wounds of defenders by commending Twobagger, who betrayed 10000 Islands and defected to raiderdom, for their defender work in 10000 Islands. Thaecia's vote against the resolution was a key reason for regions like 10000 Islands accepting our embassy requests.

When challenged about his history in The South Pacific by Xernon in the Prime Ministerial Debate, Snowflame had this to say:

Snowflame wrote:

With all due respect Xernon, you completely misconstrued info involving my relations with other regions. Last I checked this was about helping Thaecia, not making another region happy. If we had some type of money on what regions anyone has angered, we would all be rich and then some.

Not only is this response outrageously dishonest (check the posts I linked!) and flagrantly disrespectful, it manipulates voters by suggesting that Xernon's genuine concern for regional FA is solely to appease other regions rather than for the good of Thaecia. The suggestion that the region's co-founder is acting in the interests of other regions is so ludicrously absurd, and I know for a fact that Snowflame is better than that horrifically bad-faith and dishonest lie. Snow, you seriously need to do better.

I can tell that Snowflame, reading the above paragraphs, will read this and roll his eyes. Others may not agree that what the paragraphs highlight is important, some may say that we should not care for the opinions of another region in our own internal elections - and in part I agree! But if you want a Prime Minister who will maintain the great work the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has done, some consideration to how the relationships with our allies & friends will be impacted by the democratic choices we as a region make is absolutely necessary.

Even if you are not concerned by the impact a Prime Minister - who is simultaneously a member of the leadership of a twice-condemned raider organisation - could have on our Foreign Affairs with defenders, there is something direly concerning that Snowflame did not have the honesty, transparency or integrity to be upfront with the electorate about his history with our friends and the problems that history may cause.

There is also zero mention of Snowflame's stance on the balance between "large" and "small" embassies particular with respect to GCRs vs UCRs - despite criticising Xernon for caring too much about GCRs in the Prime Ministerial debate.

As Snowflame proudly flaunted in the debate, he has served as a fellow Senior Diplomat - is this the kind of Foreign Affairs platform I'd expect from a Senior Diplomat? Hell no.

This section made me so unbelievably angry that, having said pretty much everything I need to, I'm just going to move on.

In fairness to Snowflame, his military policy is quite good. The unaligned status of the regional military has done a wonder for the region's internal activity and Foreign Affairs, and moving towards either side of the Raider/Defender spectrum likely would not be a very good idea. Similarly, the section recognises that the current text of the Military Commission Act (2020) and the provisions it sets out poses a dire threat to operational security, and hopes such provisions will be repealed by the incoming Congress.

I do think this section could use further elaboration, for example how exactly we can use the military to integrate and build the region internally as well as how the military can aid our Foreign Affairs. Further elaboration on how the military would be supported in terms of recruitment would also be nice, but overall this section is decent.

Snowflame details 4 more miscellaneous policies:

Snowflame wrote:

*Town halls every week with either the Prime Minister or the Deputy Prime Minister.

I have served 2 terms as the region's Prime Minister, so has Korsinia. The Bigtopia, Rayekka & The Islamic Country of Honour served 1 term each. I fully expect that all 5 Prime Ministers would say that this is an honourable and well-intentioned goal which unfortunately simply is not possible to follow through on. The role of Prime Minister of Thaecia can crush its occupants under a mountain of responsibility, and weekly town halls will drain a Prime Minister's much-needed energy incredibly quickly. Considering that most politically-engaged citizens are already informed enough to maintain high standards of executive transparency, this goal is going to spend a lot of the executive's energy on something that is not going to contribute much to the region. I strongly advise Snowflame to abandon this target, though I reiterate that I believe the intentions are good.

Snowflame wrote:

*Working on ways to involve more newcomers in Executive Affairs.

This is fairly vague and tells me nothing about how Snowflame plans on doing so.

Snowflame wrote:

*Climate Emergency Speech (with special guest speakers).

To the best of my recollection, never before in Thaecian history has Snowflame ever cared for "IRL" or "OOC" issues such as Climate Change. He has never mentioned it in any of his numerous Congressional/Speaker elections, or in any of his Prime Ministerial/Presidential elections. I understand that a not-insignificant portion of voters would like to see our IC government take action on OOC/RL issues like Climate Change, which kind of leads me to question why Snowflame brings it up now? I'm also finding myself questioning why - if Snowflame truly cares about these issues - other OOC/RL issues are not mentioned like the ongoing fight for criminal justice reform and LGBTQ+ liberation. Besides, "guest speakers"? We are a NationStates region, not a university. Why would the region benefit from having "guest speakers" write to us about issues on which we almost all already agree? Who are these guest speakers? How do we know them? There are a lot of questions about this profoundly bizarre proposal.

Snowflame wrote:

*Speak to Congressional leaders about the possibility of an internship program for Congress in order to maintain retention in Thaecia.

This proposal has been tried a few times with limited success. I don't mean to be a pessimist and if Snowflame really feels passionate about setting that up then I certainly won't rain on the parade, but it's a program which takes a lot of effort to set up and it's possible our energy may be better spent elsewhere.