Kolniari Cold War
| Kolniari Cold War | |||||
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| Part of Year of Distress | |||||
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| Belligerents | |||||
 Union of the Free | |||||
The Kolniari Cold War was a period of increased tensions lasting from 11 November 2022 to 7 December 2022. It was between the two largest and most powerful nations of the Kolniari Sector, the Sprinske Empire and the Union of the Free, but occasionally involving the Duchy of Seitnam. Both nations were officially allied and are both full member states of the BalCasMed Alliance. The Kolniari Cold War came directly before the Kolniaric War which began on 7 December 2022.
Timeline
The Seitnamic War came to an end with the Treaty of New Tripoli on 11 November 2022, it was fought between the nations of the Kolniaric Union and the Duchy of Seitnam. In the aftermath of the war, the Union of the Free’s relationship with the Duchy of Seitnam improved, but their relationship with the Sprinske Empire began a gradual decline. In mid November 2022, the Sprinske Empire’s Davàrage voted to ban communism, which led to the question of whether Stewartism, the Union of the Free’s trademark ideology, would remain legal or not.
Stewartism ban and espionage
A few days after the Sprinske Davàrage voted to ban communism, two separate votes were held on the ideologies of Stewartism and McKeenism. The Davàrage voted unanimously to ban McKeenism, but were a bit more divided on the issue of Stewartism. The vote concluded with 4 votes against Stewartism, 2 votes in favour of keeping it, and one abstained, resulting in the ideology being banned. In the Sprinske Empire’s discord server, the President of the Union of the Free, Zachary Stewart, stated that the ban would lead to a huge increase in tensions between the two nations, and a high possibility of war.
Over the next few days, the nations’ alliance continued to fall apart, the Catanese Republic’s President, Matteo Catania, accused President Zachary Stewart of racism by making a joke about the fact that he is Italian, and threatened to declare war over the incident. The Emperor of Sprinske was informed by his intelligence agency that there was a large congregation of the Union of the Free’s government members including President Zachary Stewart in the Sprinske regional capital of Gorbachevgrad, so he decided to walk to the area where the supposed meeting was taking place and watch to see if there was any activity that seemed suspicious. The Prime Minister of Seitnam, the former Duke Callum was in the area and began shouting, so Emperor Aaron I left the area to avoid his cover being blown.
That night, President Zachary Stewart sent a message via Discord to Emperor Aaron I where he stated that his counter-intelligence agency had detected the act of spying, which was not denied by the Emperor, but he instead stated the reasons for it. This, coupled with the incident with the Mafia Republic, led President Zachary Stewart to believe that there was a plot to destroy the Union of the Free. The tension between countries went public for the first time in the BalCasMed Alliance server, where the leaders of both nations began to dispute over multiple issues including the ban on Stewartism, the espionage, the racism claims by the Mafia Republic, and a large amount of other issues including historical arguments such as the Sprinske Revolution, Civil War and the Second Micronational War on Terror. President Zachary Stewart then asked member states of the BalCasMed Alliance to pick a side in the expected war, but the Head of State of the Republic of Aweland said that the alliance should remain together, and set up a meeting in Aweland’s discord server to resolve the tensions. After 2 hours of arguments, Aweland had drafted the Hope Agreement in which all non-vital intelligence would be shared by both nations to prevent espionage issues in the future. The negotiations were somewhat successful in reducing tensions, but the Kolniaric Cold War would re-ignite again less than a week later.
Space Race
On 1 December 2022, the Sprinske Empire and Union of the Free began arguing again, this time after President Zachary Stewart made a claim in the BalCasMed Alliance server that he had a nuclear weapon, a claim which was not taken seriously by any of the member states and led to Emperor Aaron I declaring that he was a compulsive liar. Both of them continued to argue over missile technology until Emperor Aaron I challenged the Union of the Free to a space race to see who would be the first nation to put a rocket into space.
5 December controversy
On 5 December 2022, the Free of the Union was founded as a parody state of the Union of the Free, which annoyed President Zachary Stewart, who then posted his reasons why he believed that Stewartism was the best ideology in the BCMA server on Discord. Emperor Aaron I then stated that his comments sounded narcissistic, which re-ignited the controversy. This brought up the issue of the ex-BDA leader, who they also argued about, eventually resulting in the Sprinske Empire ending all diplomatic relations with the Union of the Free and expelling them from the Kolniaric Union. The Union of the Free announced that its military would be put on high alert for what Zachary Stewart described as a ‘defensive war,’ soon followed by the Sprinske Empire declaring DEFCON 3 and preparing for a war.
On 6 December 2022, the Sprinske Empire’s MicroWiki page was vandalised, and immediately the Union of the Free was suspected of the vandalism. The other Kolniaric nations all held the same view on the vandalism, and immediately recognised the Union as a terrorist group. Over the next 24 hours, relations between the Kolniaric Union nations and the Union of the Free declined further, and on 7 December, the Sprinske Empire and Grand Duchy of Strathclyde declared war on them, soon followed by the rest of the nations, starting the Kolniaric War.