History of the Finnish Cooperation Organization

Timeline
The following is a history of the Finnish Cooperation Organization, as told by Iosif Moldov, Aurora and KanaX.

Birth of a Nation
The Finnish Cooperation Organization originated on the popular Finnish gaming forums, Peliplaneetta.net. In the final months of 2006, Hero of the Organization AZ created his nation on Planet Bob and began telling his comrades in NationStates about CyberNations. The alliance was originally called Peliplaneetta Alliance and it was a typical gaming clan. The dictator of the alliance was a man called Gaeryc.



Peliplaneetta Alliance grew surprisingly fast during its first days of existence. Against all expectations, CyberNations started to gain popularity and soon the alliance had dozens of members. Gaeryc was not known for being a skillful or active leader, and nominated a prominent new member, Iosif Moldov, to be second-in-command as the General of the Alliance. A few days later, as people tired of Gaeryc's inactivity, Iosif Moldov was elected his successor. As a more experienced dweller of Planet Bob, Iosif Moldov immediately started to bring some order to the Alliance: forums were created, a cabinet elected, and the alliance's foreign policies started to define their place in the world. The first alliance to make contact with the FCO was another nationalist alliance, the now-defunct Nordreich, who was to become their closest ally.

In the first elections of alliance in January 2007, four Commissars were chosen to represent the Finnish folk; two military commissioners and two economic commissioners: Uberdude, Enrico, Illi and Napilon. Growth was steady and the alliance started to function normally - an alliance led by a bunch of novices, yes, but still a legitimate, running and working alliance. All was well in the realm.

l'Empire
In February, the wind started to blow. Iosif Moldov, who had ruled the alliance with an iron fist for almost a month now, stepped down in favor of the founder, Az. Iosif himself was coronated to the ceremonial position of Graceful Emperor of the Peliplaneetta Alliance. He was still responsible for the alliance's foreign policies, but he relinquished his voting power in the Senate. The democratic nature of the alliance had been established, and as a result of the weak leadership of Az, the Senate was no longer dependent on the will of the Chancellor. Soon, Az vanished and was replaced by Vice Chancellor Enrico.

During the Imperial era, the alliance also started to grow outside its original boundaries. "Why should we stick with our current name and ideology? We are growing and everything is going more than smoothly: why don't we evolve this process and attempt to create a successful, Finnish nationalist alliance?" people asked. The FCO debuted its flag and was renamed through referendum: Peliplaneetta Alliance was now the Finnish Cooperation Organization.

On the front of foreign policy, the FCO soon made its first breakthroughs. FCO signed an MDP with Nordreich and Rather Good Alliance - which both are defunct at the moment. It would be no exaggeration to say that the Imperial era was the Golden Age of the democratic FCO - during February and March of 2007, FCO made its mark as an alliance and discarded the shell that isolated it from the outer world. Government was steady, though some minor drama occurred when economic commissioner Illi attempted to steal money from the alliance's charity funds, and when military commissioner Prometheus was found out to be a Nordreich spy.

St Paddy's Day's Massacre
On the 17th of March, FCO would taste its first alliance wide war. Nordreich launched a surprise attack on the Libertarian Socialist Federation, "declaring war on Germanophobia". The boulder started to roll as allies of both alliances activated their treaties and alliances such as Byzantine Empire, Socialist Workers' Front, the Syndicate and the FCO itself jumped in.

FCO was bound only by MDP to Nordreich, who initiated the conflict. The Senate, however, decided to declare war in support of Nordreich's cause. Justice commissioner Lord Gobb protested and resigned from his post, stating the sole reason FCO leapt in was "to get some cookies from Martens". This wasn't far from the truth, as those senators who lobbed FCO into the conflict later admitted that they had done this only because they thought it was time for FCO to end its peaceful era, especially if the conflict could be used to improve relations between FCO and the Initiative.

The conflict ended quickly and the socialist bloc was utterly defeated. Byzantine Empire was forced to pay war reperations to FCO and peace swept over Finlandia once again. FCO itself barely participated in the whole of the conflict and even Chancellor Iosif Moldov stated that it was "just [a] symbolic act".



March Madness
In March of 2007, the Third Great War began. Slowly, but steadily, the conflict expanded from a battle between a few major alliances to a global conflict. Nordreich and FCO joined the fight after Socialist Workers' Front declared war against them. The ink on the treaty with SWF had barely time to dry before it was torn to pieces. The poorly organized blob that was the FCO Army engaged in conflict with Socialist forces, but most of the damage was done by Nordreich and its other allies. Once again, the same things were discussed inside the alliance: "Why are we doing this? Why are we leaping in conflict we don't need to participate in? To please the Initiative?"

For FCO, March was a busy month both for foreign and domestic policy. While the alliance attempted to look solid and united, inside the high walls, feelings were hostile. A couple of members, including justice commissioner emeritus Lord Gobb, had joined the Orange Defense Network and some of the most eager patriots were insulted by this "treachery". Emperor Iosif Moldov, who had rather close relations with some of those who deserted the alliance, got fed up with the attitudes of some members, who took their hostility even to OOC-levels occasionally. Moldov had supported the neutrality of alliance from the very beginning, but this broke the camel's back and he marched out of the alliance to join the ranks of Aegis in Orange Defence Network.

Chancellor Enrico was also upset about the decision to enter the war. The majority of the senate supported war, but he urged all members of the Organization to reject the decision, refuse to fight and to switch from war mode to peace mode. Enrico, however, changed his views rather quickly and expressed his erratic positions on the war indecisively. Enrico's unstable behavior was criticized by many and it surely wasn't positive for Enrico's reputation amongst the senators who were responsible for choosing the Chancellor.

But once again, the Initiative and its allies were victorious. Many opposed the war in fear of losing, but their fears were proven unnecessary.

Götterdammerung
Pretty soon after the war, Chancellor Enrico stated that he was no longer willing to continue as the Chancellor of the Organization and soon resigned thereafter. The Senate had major difficulties when trying to find a successor to him; there were very few people actually willing to take the job and the Senate had rather large disagreements on the matter. None of the volunteers gained more than one vote before Iosif Moldov returned from his little vacation. Most senators changed their votes in support of him, and his second term as Chancellor of the FCO began.

Nothing remarkable happened during the first weeks of Moldov's regime. MADP with Norden Verein was signed and Moldov started to sail towards the blue sphere: towards alliances like Polaris and MCXA. During Moldov's second term, the grounds which formed FCO's BLEU-membership were created.



But then, a lethal discussion concerning reforming the constitution took place. People were complaining about how some government posts were so unpopular that people were let in the government without any competition whatsoever: when there was only one candidate, no elections were held. The solution was simple: let the people elect the Chancellor and let the Chancellor nominate the commissioners. The men behind this new solution were Iosif Moldov, Napilon and member of the parliament, Telchar. The new constitution aimed to create a more democratic alliance by letting people vote for the Chancellor and Field Marshal, who had the actual power in the alliance. Commissioners were now more like plain officials and bureaucrats, more than actual individuals with power on matters of the alliance. the third, but not-so-public reason, was to get rid of "unpleasant ingredients" sitting in the senate and "harming the alliance with their wrong views on things". Moldov and Napilon were too self-confident and overestimated their popularity.

When the elections actually came, things went a bit wrong. Trolling, flaming, attempted coups, blackmailing and dirty politics nearly resulted in a civil war, which fortunately remained in the planning stages. In the end, however, Moldov was victorious. The other candidate for the post of Chancellor, Uberdude, left for Norden Verein in middle of the voting process. This caused a massive exodus; political opponents of Moldov were enraged and left for mostly Norden Verein. Moldov himself felt pretty much unwanted, betrayed, stabbed in the back and deceived. He left the alliance taking his "clique" with him. Most government members were now gone.

Months of Stagnation
After both Chancellorial candidates were gone, Field Marshal Sharok was elected to be Moldov's successor. Sharok started to clean the mess caused by the elections, and FCO once again had a nice little senate with nice little senators with nice little gloves on their nice little hands making nice little decisions on nice little things. The alliance, however, suffered from major stagnation and while things went well, the alliance was slowly dying. Sharok was an effective leader, but as growth was non-existant, the membership count dropped like a lead zeppelin. Most government members were inactive or inexperienced, forum activity was very small. Central government hadn't been this weak since January and NoV was even planning cancelling pacts with FCO as it was soon nothing but a dead, rotten cell.



Martial Law
The last straw came when, in August 2007, both Chancellor Sharok and Field Marshal SirJK resigned from the alliance. JJ45, a rather new member and then-current commissioner of foreign affairs, as well as a Nordlander, was appointed as the new Chancellor. JJ had his own views of how the alliance should be run and was not very happy about the democratic nature of the alliance: he introduced martial law and a new constitution, which gave absolute power about the matters of the alliance to the Chancellor. The Chancellor was no longer elected but nominated by the previous Chancellor. The alliance became authoritarian and militarist in nature; all officials, save the Chancellor of Justice, were appointed in position by other officials, forums were controlled more strictly, censorship was practiced, motivational videos and nationalist imagery was used a lot, the military was renamed from Puolustusvoimat ("Defense Forces") to Sotavoimat ("War Forces") and frequent military exercises were commonplace.



The Unjust War
The Initiative, the strongest and the most sovereign military bloc in the game, was in the twilight of its life. Pacifica suffered from schism when Ivan Moldavi attempted to coup emperor TrotskysRevenge, Unjust Path was founded and the Modgate scandal caused major disagreements between Initiative leaders. Several alliances resigned from WUT, and finally, Genmay declared war on the Brotherhood of The Storm, protectorate of New Polar Order for tech raiding Genmay nations. Polaris declares war against Genmay and the Unjust War began.

After Norden Verein had declared war and joined the ranks of the ~ coalition fighting against the Unjust Path, FCO honoured their treaty and joined the feud. Soon after that, the GOONS protectorate CMEA launched full offensive against FCO and duel between these two minor alliances began.

Without any kind of actual foreign support, FCO's position against the slightly stronger, and unquestionably more organized, CMEA was poor. Salvation came from the neutral alliance of UAR which consisted of mainly of ex-FCO-members. Most of them were large nations with nuclear arsenal and when they decided to join the conflict, direction of the very even duel started to change. Final strike was when The Shadowhood declared war against CMEA: CMEA was defeated and pretty soon it surrendered and was forced to pay 27 millions as war indemnities. To further the morale boost caused by the victory, a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evdQNutBxE0) was made to commemorate the alliance's history.

National Rebirth
After Unjust War, things were going better than ever before. There was a shortage of skilled officials however, and thus a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WuVoDNB2uA) was made to alert the membership of the labour shortage and encourage them to take open positions. As a result, some major ex-members such as Moldov, Napilon and Gobb returned to the alliance, and due to succesful reforms of Chancellor JJ, the alliance was able to climb over the problems it had faced prior and said goodbye to stagnation. Due to succesful recruiting programs, membership count skyrocketed and the forums slowly came alive. FCO once again had an actually active and experienced cabinet and things were rolling better than ever. Steady growth continued for months without any kind of major difficulties.



In late 2007, FCO established the now-defunct Empire of Finland, militarily subjucating the micro-alliance World Association of Nuclear Genocide under it's rule. FCO created a government, a charter and forums for it's new colony and ally. Many other aggressive attempts to expand the Empire followed, but they were unsuccessful. When FCO participated in the curbstomping of NADC in January 2008, with great success, the forces of WANG was used to hit some high-priority targets, presenting the formidable efficiency of the small alliance's military.



Yet another motivational video was made to promote a big recruitment campaign (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LLpVavvtCQ&feature=related), leading FCO to reach the peak of 140 members, introducing many new talents to the alliance.

Rebellion
The 6th of March saw the last Finnish imperialist war, a day to be remembered; Operation Kuovi. The target was Kuovistoliitto, a relatively small Finnish alliance which had previously declined to merge into FCO. The goal was to forcefully annex and assimilate Kuovistoliitto into the Greater Fatherland, FCO. Kuovistoliitto resisted and refused FCO's demands upon being attacked, and the operation raised a lot of criticism on the forums, not only from the opponents of imperialism but also many loyal members, including government members, among them the future Chancellors Moldov and KanaX, who did not want to raise their bayonets against their own countrymen. JJ's government officials censored the criticism and edited it to be supportive in nature, instead. The situation only became worse, and the operation was called off the following day.



Dingo, FCO's then-ex-member and then-current-member of CPCN, warned Kuovistoliitto of the attacks beforehand. Dingo was declared Enemy of the State. FCO pursued it's ToA partner CPCN to extradite Dingo to FCO to be executed for alleged spying and other mischief, but sufficient evidence could not be provided and Dingo remained in CPCN, until relations improved and the Enemy of the State status was lifted three months later on June 6th, 2008.

Due to imperialist wars of conquest, generally aggressive foreign policy, the NADC war, and heavy forum censorship practised by JJ's government, SirJK attempted to coup the government on the 10th of March by removing the government officials' admin rights and access to the forums, but utterly failed and surrendered on the next day. SirJK has since apologized and again become a respected and fully fledged member of FCO. A few months later, as a result of the same reasons: unsuccesful foreign policy and rather questionable imperialist plans, FCO was kicked out from BLEU. Despite all this, the first half of year 2008 can be described as the second Golden Age of the Organization as it hadn't ever been as active, as well organized or as powerful before.

Devastation and Reconstruction


A defining moment for the organization came in the spring of 2008, when Continuum attacked the long-time ally of FCO, Norden Verein. Even though there were no illusions on what FCO would face should it enter the war, FCO honoured the Pact of Steel and declared war on TPF. As a result, a multitude of TPF's allies, Continuum and otherwise, declared war on FCO. After some two months of fighting, FCO's strength was reduced to a mere fraction of the strength it possessed before the war, and peace talks with the Continuum began. FCO surrendered to the Continuum on June 7th, 2008 and received strict peace terms.



After the war, FCO began to rebuild its strength and the whole alliance worked tirelessly to pay the war reparations to the Continuum. The efforts of Decker, Commissar of Foreign Affairs at the time, deserve recognition and his good relations with FOK eased the burden of FCO significantly. WANG voluntarily helped FCO rebuild by sending more than $75 million foreign aid. As a result, Chancellor JJ45 replaced the imperial colony treaty, binding WANG to FCO's will, with an ordinary MDoAP that granted WANG full sovereingty.

JJ45 resigned from the Chancellor's position in the middle of August after a full year in office. The long-reigning leader held a speech which brought tears in the eyes of many, encompassing his memoirs from the early days of his journey on CN among the ranks of Rather Good Alliance and Norden Verein to the eventful period of his leadership of the Finnish folk, as well as taking pride for his achivements while also admitting having made numerous mistakes. The great man chose Iosif Moldov as his successor, and Iosif was now tasked with leading FCO to a new era of growth. JJ later joined Vox Populi and fought for a cause he deemed just and rational at that time, speculating that it would be his last battle on the soil of Digiterra.

Under Iosif Moldov's rule, a new consitution was erected, leading the alliance towards democratic republicanism. A new flag, made long ago by JJ45, was intoduced, replacing the iron eagle with a more Finnish symbol, and a new website and forum was created by Decker. FCO was stable, more established as a professional alliance, and old members started coming back. Even the former Chancellor JJ45, who in the meantime had become Aurora much to the astonishment of everyone, decided that she wanted to return to the ranks of FCO among her comrades, surrendered to the forces of Continuum and joined the Organization. Economic growth in the later half of 2008 was immense.



The Dawn of a New Era
On the new year's eve, Iosif Moldov resigned from FCO and appointed the successful Commissar of Foreign Affairs, KanaX, as his successor.

The alliance's household affairs began stagnating, but this was to be resolved. The Commissar of Economy, PuliSher, organized a massive economic program aimed to accelerate the growth of smaller nations and to bring most members above the technology level of 500. The program started successfully; in a mere month, the alliance had gained about 200,000 NS. As the member count had been declining again, a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLJHAj_5lLI) was made to encourage recruitment. The campaign was successful; newcomers began arriving, some old-schoolers returned and the membership began growing.

After the Senate elections in early January, the new Senators unanimously voted to make the system more authoritarian; the Chancellor was granted the right to punish lawbreaking members as he deems fit, to declare wars on other alliances, and to overturn law proposals if the Senate isn't unanimous. Additionally, the Chancellor was placed in charge of the Council of Commissars, whose members were no longer appointed by votes, but by the Chancellor himself. The Commissar of Economy was given the authority to dictate the economical affairs of all member nations, while the Commissar of Defense was renamed back to Field Marshal and was given authority to dictate the military affairs of all member nations.

During the first quarter of 2009, two treaties were signed. A mutual defense-pact with Aquatic Coalition Front and a mutual defense and optional agression-pact with iFOK. Both alliances had good relations with FCO long before the signing of the treaties and the alliances could be considered the first true friends FCO gained after the Continuum-NoV-war.

The months of peace before the Karma War were a prosperous time, although critcized by some as boring and lacking in progress. The government of the alliance went through a lot of changes, with Aurora, PuliSher and others resigning from their positions and new Commissars appointed in their place. FCO reached new heights of power, the organization of the alliance was rationalized and the alliance was once again part of the international community, thanks to the efforts of KanaX, Paavi1, Riku123 and many others.

Karma War
On April 21, NPO and TORN attacked Ordo Verde and this started a chain of events that led to the outbreak of the Karma War. FCO, via their treaty with iFOK, joined the offensive with The Stickmen against GGA on April 23. This was the first war FCO entered since the Continuum-NoV-war and the members were thrilled to fight in a global conflict once again.

The initial offensive against GGA exceeded expectations, mainly due to careful planning and the activity and availability of members during the critical period of the offensive. The efficiency of the armed forces of FCO had been doubted several times in the past, but the well-organized offensive cleared at least some of those doubts. For the first time, FCO also had a respectable amount of nuclear weapons and the authorization to use them as soon as possible. This had devastating consequences for GGA and although GGA retaliated, the damage done to FCO was nothing compared to the damage done to GGA.

FCO was invited to join the Stickmen-bloc, as fighting alongside with them had brought FCO and the alliances of Stickmen closer together. The Senate of FCO unanimously accepted this invintation and the inclusion of FCO to the bloc was announced on the 30th of April in 2009.

GGA, reduced below FCO's NS, surrendered to the Karma forces on the 13th of May 2009 and FCO's part in the Karma War had thus ended. Chancellor KanaX thanked the membership in a short speech and FCO could once again walk with her head held high. No more were people talking about the defeat in Continuum-NoV-war, but about the victory in Karma War.

The conduct of the war was analyzed by the government and several shortcomings were pointed out. Since Sharok had resigned his position as Field Marshal, FCO quickly needed an active and capable Field Marshal to carry out the plans made for the military. KanaX chose Aurora, whose record of offices spoke for itself.

In the beginning of June, the Commission of Popular Enlightenment was merged back to the Commission of Domestic Affairs and the office of the Commissar of Popular Enlightenment was abolished.

Move to purple
A somewhat historical event for FCO was when the Stickmen-bloc collectively decided to join the purple team. FCO had been in the blue team since the dawn of the alliance's history and such a move sparked some critique from former members. Nevertheless, the move was announced and the wheels started rolling, perhaps a bit too fast for many of the members. Trade circles were incomplete and people saw no gain in changing their circles.

End of an era
On the 28th of July, KanaX resigned from his position as Chancellor, due to growing weary of ruling the alliance and lacking the necessary time to commit himself to it and the game in general. He had thought about this since the end of the war with GGA, and figured it had been postponed too much already. KanaX named Decker as his successor, who remained in office for a few minutes, enough to announce the formation of a triumvirate consisting of himself, Gaslo and Aurora. This was the first time FCO had ever been ruled by a triumvirate and marked the end of the chancellorial system which had been in use since the formation of FCO.