Well, I understand, that TTL Greece is OTL Iran analoge. But Iran has oil. And what is TTL Greece source of income to spend so much money to weapons?
The Empire Parnell Built
- Thread starter Rattigan
- Start date
So I was about to defend this when I took a look in my notes at the current GDP of Greece and, welp, I'll have to change that
It goes to show how screwed France is when it doesn't even make it into the top 15.
It would've been in and around this kind of lists a few decades ago but after the disaster of the Channel Islands War it's just not a significant military player
Has France decided "there are better things to spend money on", or "let's maybe not provoke one of the greatest powers on Earth, which is also right next to us"?
Bit of both. Also, the experience of the '76 really broke whatever link remained between gaullism and the armed forces and French politics since the 90s has mainly been a contest between gaullist factions
In an attempt to make Canadian politics more exciting I took inspiration from the Western country with the weirdest...
No. Officially they're the 'Protectorate of Szeklerland', with the Habsburg Emperor as head of state and Danubia responsible for foreign affairs and defence. In practice, on the foreign affairs question it means that Szeklerland sends a couple of officials to be part of the major Danubian embassies overseas. Defence is out of local hands because it is subject to articles of the Treaty of Pressburg, which limits the size and armament of their armed forces. Other than that they use the Danubian currency (the euro) but are fully independent in domestic affairs, although there is a certain kind of very high level 'oversight' from Vienna.
So, as background, Romania as a whole before this was more or less at the level of development of an OTL Southern European country of the same period (e.g. Italy). Szeklerland itself obviously struggles a bit as an exclave but there are agreements allowing its citizens to get easy work visas in Romania and allowing free movement with Danubia. So it's doing pretty well from remittances. It's still poorer than Romania but has enjoyed growth as a kind of 'off-shore' centre for Romanian and Danubian business.
So if that's the case how exactly did this even happen? Unless Romania was doing Jim Crow levels of discrimination against them(which I doubt with the Danubian's literally right next door) independence movements like that fizzle out generally because the populace don't want to loose their current standard of living. It takes extraordinary situations to get to that point, the Catalan independence movement for example took the great recession and court challenges to the 06 autonomy agreement before it took off.