User talk:Slayer of Cliffracers

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Hi, welcome to ! Thanks for your edit to the Talk:First Tiberium War page.

Please leave a message on my talk page if I can help with anything! -- Tagaziel (Talk) 23:14, 26 March 2013

About our argument
Well, it seems like the general problem is that the GDI is portraied as "good guys side" in TD and TS. With no mention of any negative activity on it's part. However, if we take C&C3 - we get yet another picture - with GDI concerned only with the well-being of 20% of population, with remaining 80% free to die in post-apocalyptic wastelands ("yellow zones"), ravaged by tiberium and nuclear warfare and ruled by warlords (due to GDI's shutting down national governments "for security reasons")Terran Ghost (talk) 20:53, April 29, 2013 (UTC)

Yes, basically this originates from the fact that Command and Conquer plotline is at core fairly clear NATO/War on Terror propoganda. What is interesting is that the propoganda of the GDI so closely mirrors (well is identical) to the rhetoric of the War on Terror. What's funny is the game was made before the War on Terror ever happened. So the makers of the game at some level are either the one's who invented the rhetoric or they actually are seeding the rhetoric into the popular consciousness before it was brought out by government (when a suitable terrorist attack happened, if they didn't frame that as well).

As it is I kind of see Nod as the tactical evil (they do bad tactical things like kill civilians) and the GDI as the strategic evil (they start the wars but then avoid killing civilians even though the Noddie soldiers they are killing were civilians anyway before they started the war).

The GDI did actually start the war if you consider that Austria is neutral and Slovakia is Nod so the 'Nod' terrorist attacks or activities cannot really be interpreted as acts of war by Nod against GDI. But the GDI response was definately an act of war against Nod.

There's the small matter of how they seem to believe that nuclear detonators are a good way to 'influence' some Western African countries into essentially holding the line.

GDI seems to be taking a leaf out of George Orwell's book at the start of Tiberium Sun with General Solomon acting as some sort of ultimate Big Brother from the Philadelphia, having apparantly made a system of survaillance to give a precise measurement of the amount of warfare in every area in the world. And his conversation with Nod leader General Hassan is kind of totally like that, we have two global dictators pretending to be enemies but actually in a mutally beneficial arrangement (Solomon describes Hassan as 'useful' but warns him that should this cease then 'useless things tend to dissapear'). That is rather similar to the arrangement in 1984 between Oceania and Eastasia or Eurasia (they alternate).

Slayer of Cliffracers (talk) 17:36, April 30, 2013 (UTC)

Well, seems just so. Tiberian Dawn's plot however was pretty much "general war on terror" and thus pretty straightforward with "good and bad guys" division. As for Tiberian Sun - well Nod are still portrayed as bad guys (they want to genocide all mankind), and the GDI "good guys by virue of opposing bad guys". However, in TS GDI is portrayed as having shut down the United Nations and reduced national governments to irrelevant (or at least taking all military assets from them).

The set is finalized by 2047 with most of national governments definetely shut down by GDI. Terran Ghost (talk) 05:30, May 2, 2013 (UTC)

Except people who use "general war on terror" rhetoric aren't the good guys ever. But you've got a point, as the game plot was likely initially devised as propoganda seeder for the then future war on terror, a propoganda seeder being a medium by which you expose a population to a set of assosiations beforehand in a different context and then trigger those assosiations at a given time by repeating the phrases that trigger the assosiations.

However by the time that Tiberium Wars comes out then the actual war on terror has already tainted the GDI because it's revealed that "general war on terror" rhetoric isn't used by good guys or for good causes. So the GDI becomes a far more obviously bad thing.

Nod then are propoganda strawmen, it's ideology doesn't make sense deliberately because of the assosiations it's supposed to make. Nod believe in Unity, Brotherhood and Peace, but actual terrorist organisations generally promote Disunity, Division and War. Here's the gist of how the different plot elements seed propoganda.

1. Unity, Brotherhood and Peace = Nod are terrorists, so people who promote those ideals in opposition to our War on Terror are therefore terrorists also.

2. Nod are terrorists = People with conventional armies and states can also be terrorists.

3. TD: The Bialystok scandal = When our anti-terrorist warriors are exposed committing atrocities then it is really terrorist lies and the media are actually secretly in leugue with the terrorists.

4. TS: National boundries are irrelavant = The (inter?)national anti-terrorist power does not need to concern itself with such niceties as national borders and should be able to send troops to wage war or drop bombs at the press of a button without such niceties as diplomacy and national sovereignty.

5. TS: Terrorist weapon of mass-destruction = The terrorists really have the means or the intention to build terrifying weapons of mass-destruction that actually pose a global threat to you or I rather than managing to blow up a  building or two about every few years.

6. Right goes with Might = Wealthy and powerful countries are generally depicted as supporting the righteous GDI while poor and weak countries are generally depicted as supporting the wicked Nod terrorists.

Slayer of Cliffracers (talk) 10:48, May 2, 2013 (UTC)

Just one thing don't get into picture when taking TD's background. Nod were reported to have 49% of world's tiberium harvesting market (which make them very powerful in economical terms), they are also told to build up political influence winning support in many "Third World" nations, but also gaining political grounds even in rich countries such as USA (via "United We Stand" political party) and Great Britain (Nod interests were represented by "Albion First" party). So why would they need "a campaign of urban bombings" (e.g. - blowing up a pair of buiding), including the destrucion of Grain Trade Center in Vienna (some peculiar coincidence, considering the real world war on terror also started with bombing of Trade Center) to start the war with GDI, which still commands the loyalty of many national governments? It would be ... well needless, considering the rise of Nod's financial and political influence in the world. Terran Ghost (talk) 07:39, May 4, 2013 (UTC)

Well the political influence in rich countries is probably a result of the way that GDI would basically usurp so much sovereignty over the world that certain nationalistic parties even in rich countries would object strongly. The parties you mention sound Nationalistic but Nod itself is basically Internationalistic in it's ideology, so the alliance is probably based upon mutual enmity towards the GDI.

If it doesn't make sense it's probably because what's going on isn't what it seems. A campaign of urban bombings in a neutral country supposed to achieve what, turn the country against Nod? At the time as we can see from the way the First Tiberium War works out Nod has plenty of support in Austria while historically Austria was GDI aligned. Is it not likely that the Austrian pro-GDI faction which USED to rule might carry out some terrorist attacks which pro-GDI media would blame on Nod simply to get themselves BACK into power. And they DO get back into power when you think about it.

This is why the game is kind of prophetic. The great powers (GDI) used the terrorist attacks as a pretext to launch a huge war against their rivals. What we are seeing here in truth is rivalry, the core GDI countries (G7) wish to monopolise the world's Tiberium supplies and Nod has basically got one-over on them. Swap Grain Trade Center for World Trade Center and Tiberium for Oil and we basically have the real situation in the War on Terror and Iraq.

Slayer of Cliffracers (talk) 17:17, May 4, 2013 (UTC)

Splitting from Government types talk page
Some really strange things seem to come up during the discussion. The game (TD) itself clearly is from the point that "GDI are good guys and fight for freedom". But there are some european countries that

a) Were Nod-aligned on the onset of conflict

b) Were designated as democratic states or democracies by the GDI prior to GDI occupation of the aforementioned countries.

A+B must mean that Nod captured popular support in such countries, with pro-Nod parties ruling and these states remained thriving democratic regimes. It comes to 2 conclusions logically

1) A nation could be under Nod's protection and still be a democracy in internal political mechanism and individual rights

2) When GDI conquer such nation they must replace democratic government (because population may become even more loyal to Nod cause when subjected to outright agression) with military dictatorship (sometimes effectuated through rigged elections to place GDI-appointed rulers in office)

About number two - how such actions can count as "defending freedom" ? Terran Ghost (talk) 17:03, May 12, 2013 (UTC)

Because the GDI obviously believes in Defending Freedom in rather the same way that Nod believes in Brotherhood, Unity and Peace.

About the governments they conquered, I don't think that they necceserily established military dictatorships in the countries they conquered in the long run. Rather what they probably did is simply disband the militeries of those nations, so it wouldn't matter who the people voted for. To take a look at some of the countries that GDI conquered during the war as they appear in Tiberium Sun.



If you look at the way that the Tiberium Sun campaign map differs from the Tiberium Dawn map, you can see that what the sides fight over is not nations as such but 'militerised zones' of each side. Now the rest of the map is neutral/non-militerised.

Greece and all the countries GDI conquered clearly fall into the latter category. However as we see, while there remained GDI bases in Greece and Bosnia, though the territory is considered de-militerised overall. It is quite likely that there were Anti-GDI governments and peoples in both countries, but none of them had the strength to challenge the GDI openly. To look at the nearby militerised zones, we can see we have Ukraine, Turkey and Italy all of which were allies of the GDI by the end of the First Tiberium War. So basically they are watching over their defeated adversaries. Those countries could be democratic for all it matters, they couldn't possibly challenge the GDI in their position however regularly people elected pro-Nod governments. Until Nod turned up with sufficiant forces to actually challenge the GDI in that area.....

The reason that the Second Tiberium War played out so differently strategically might be that essentially the GDI destroyed all the national armies of the countries that they couldn't rely upon (outside of Africa and the Middle East which are Nod) while at the same time completely absorbing the national armies of their key allies into the core GDI forces. They then became a de-facto world dictatorship ironically because their commitment to freedom prevented them from installing dictatorships over national governments or mantaining a permanant occupation, meaning that the only to secure their military victory over democracies while respecting democracy was to eliminate all powerful independant national armies, thus rendering democracy militerily irrelevant.

Slayer of Cliffracers (talk) 23:05, May 12, 2013 (UTC)

By the Second Tiberium War their commitment to democracy seem to fade away, as the plot unfolds. General Solomon doesn't seem to report to any civilian authority at all, while GDI seem to have the power to wage war in any part of the globe. The zonal division instead of national borders seem to be a sign of what to come - a system of Blue/Yellow/Red zones established sometime prior to 2047.

However, in 2030 civilian affairs and local law enforcement could still be carried by elected national governments. But it also changed with complete implementation of zonal system by 2047, with GDI Council appointing zonal directors to rule over all affairs in the zone. National governments under such system were either completely shut down by the GDI (as was the case in at least Brasil and Iceland) or faded into irrelevance. Terran Ghost (talk) 23:23, May 12, 2013 (UTC)

There is a difference though, the Second Tiberium War system of zones is determined based upon a system of military control, the non-aligned zones being not always strictly neutral territory but territory that is under the sole control of the national governments whatever their formal allegiance and their military forces. But since those forces are laughable, so those areas are considered relatively irrelavant. What matters are the zones of the where core military forces of both factions hold sway and can recruit the local populace or mine the Tiberium.

The Red/Yellow/Blue zones are not really equivilant though, they are defined by the level of Tiberium in the area. That GDI chose the divide the world up in such a manner indicates that what the directors were mostly focusing upon was in reality the harvesting of Tiberium, it's an indication of the amount of investment that each director requires. You simply take the area of the zone and then multiply it by the classification.

I don't think the GDI shut down national governments at such, I reckon it's more correct to say that they used the Tiberium menace as a pretext to confiscate all the national Tiberium mining operations. National governments still matter somewhat because both sides in the Third Tiberium War ended up fighting over the Whitehouse presumably because they wished to install 'their' President on the throne.

I think by the Third Tiberium War, the folly in the earlier system in the sense that it had made mantaining control over large countries like America very difficult, without the ability to legally conscript people or appeal to mass patriotism they simply couldn't raise enough forces to control the territories they had won and keep Nod resurgance from happening as Nod simply retreated into the 'neutral' zones and popped up again.

So the GDI resorted to directly integrating national governments and national militeries rather than largely ignoring them as they had before while 'acquiring' all their Tiberium refineries. This effectively destroyed democracy and whipped up another wave of Nod support thus creating another war.

Slayer of Cliffracers (talk) 14:14, May 13, 2013 (UTC)

As for the Third Tiberium War it is directly stated that national governments have no real power by 2047, and GDI state they mostly exist only "technically" (e.g. on paper), with GDI being the real supranational superpower. Considering the White House mission the building itself was considered only "a morale boost" at least by the GDI.

While technically President of United States could still exist as at least a formal seat of power, his real power is somewhat only nominal, with GDI Council deciding how to rule the Blue Zones and with Yellow Zones being mostly lawless (or Nod-controlled) place.

It seems that by 2030s (Second Tiberium War) GDI only taken military forces from their supporting nations and concerned itself with military/peacekeeping affairs. By 2047 it also take all the civilian buraucracy and local law enforcement into its fold, thus rendering any remaining national governments needless.

As for the democratic systems - it seemed to fall as the victim of the long war. GDI Council don't seem to be organized on elections' basis, when Boyle get to be GDI Director General after the former Director-General and many other members of the Council were dead after attack on Philadelphia, he took his post via "succession protocols" and did aquire the post as a full-fledged Director-General, instead of "acting Director-General until new elections could be brought". For me it seemed that it lest in 2040s GDI Council relied upon the system of cooptation - with Council itself appointing or removing its members from their offices by majority vote. (the seats on the Council don't seem to be a distinctive posts, but an ex-officio mandates resulting from a person taking the office that was supposed to have a voice on the Council. For example - prior to Philadelphia's destruction Redmond Boyle was a member of GDI Council by virtue of being appointed to the office of GDI's Director of Treasury). Terran Ghost (talk) 15:34, May 13, 2013 (UTC)

Well powerless is not the same thing as needless, certainly GDI intentionally reduced the independant power of the national governments, but it by absorbing such governments into the GDI it is rendering them important as componants of itself. The GDI needs to control the government of America, not because that government now has any power to decide it's own destiny but because it's a key link in the chain between the GDI centre and the administration of America. If a Nod President were installed in the White House then this would result in much of the existing GDI American administration if not military defecting to Nod.

As for the rest it all comes down to what became of the UN after the First Tiberium War. It could be that it was actually abolished due to political opposition to the way that it had suddenly restored GDI funding and the political fallout of the war, so GDI itself became an orphaned organisation. It reminds me somewhat of the way that the Yugoslav army became orphaned after the collapse of Yugoslavia.

Slayer of Cliffracers (talk) 16:55, May 13, 2013 (UTC)

Zonal division may become a little difficulty of putting any legitimate US president into the White House at all - for both sides. As per 2040s GDI seem to concern itself only with security and welfare of Blue Zone population, while leaving Yellow Zone population to their own fate.

United States' territory however is divided between a huge R-7 Red Zone in USA's heartlands (these are now uninhabitable as it seems), two Blue Zones (including B-2 where Washington DC is located) and Y-6 Yellow Zone. Considering massive amount of population still residing in Y-6 it is highly unlikely to even organize something close to general presidential elections for the GDI. GDI Council could just exclude Yellow Zone's unfortunate inhabitants from voting at all - but this would only result in Nod-backed "alternative elections" with yet another government formed. However, it seems that national government are needless for the GDI Council by 2047, because the GDI top brass lists them as only "technically existing" while stating that GDI Council now have all the controls.

So, it is more likely for Nod to even run same sort of elections to have a pretender for US President's seat ready to take the office and issue "a call for fellow citizens to rise against GDI's oppression" at behest of Nod's Inner Circle. Such president could have even really moved into the White House during Nod's brief occupation of B-2 Blue Zone, only to be ousted by GDI forces and replaced with their-appointed director of B-2 Blue Zone. Terran Ghost (talk) 18:32, May 13, 2013 (UTC)

I am not familiar with the setup of the Third Tiberium War. As I understand it the division is first and foremost a geographic one, not a political one, there is no reason to assume that conditions are uniform within an entire zone. That the GDI had appointed a director for each zone and classified the zones by the general level of Tiberium infestation indicates that the original logic of the system was a rather peaceful one of Tiberium harvesting. The director is primarily about controlling the Tiberium refineries and harvesters within his zone and managing the revenue.

The elections wouldn't be held on a zonal basis, the elections would be held within the constitutional boundries of the USA. The only areas that wouldn't vote would essentially be US territory under Nod control. This is where it gets interesting, it has never been the case that a president of America was considered illegitimate if some of America's territory was not under government control, Abraham Lincoln afterall won an election that excluded the Confederate States in the middle of the Civil War. But conversely, the Nod controlled areas can equally elect it's own American President. This is why the control of the White House symbolically matters, the President that sits in the White House can claim with greater legitimacy to *be* the true leader of America.

I think the national governments continued to exist for the same reason the Senate and other republican institutions continued to exist under the effectively monarchical Roman Empire. The reason that they only technically exist is that the GDI at some point approprated all Tiberium operations and then essentially funds all the 'national' armies, there is an US militery officially but it's basically a branch of the GDI militerily. So the course of events is as follows.

1. First Tiberium War: Primerily faught by national armies, core armies of Nod and GDI relatively small.

2. Second Tiberium War: Primerily faught by now extensive core armies of Nod and GDI, national armies are largely small and poorly equipped by comparison with only a minor role if any.

3. Third Tiberium War: GDI has taken over the Tiberium income of all nations under it's sway through it's zonal directors and used this to expand the national armies of all it's nations while bringing them completely under their control and reducing them to GDI branches.

The reason for the change in strategy between the first and second wars was because GDI could not reliably control particularly the defeated nations in Europe and mantain 'freedom' in those countries. So they opted to de-militerise the world and build up their core forces.

The reason for the change in strategy between the second war and the third was that the second revealed the limitations of the strategy, GDI was unable to easily control the territory that it had conquered. So it opted to help itself to the nations Tiberium operations through the system of zones and use that money to both expand and buy off the world's national armies, along with the governments too. This increased their pool of available manpower allowing them to control territory, but without national loyalty being a serious problem like it was in 1st Tiberium War.

Slayer of Cliffracers (talk) 16:16, May 14, 2013 (UTC)

Per 3-rd Tiberium War they may still be national governments existing in some form somewhere, but definetely no national militaries survived as a regular forces. The collapse of national militaries and law enforcement is very thing causing breakdown of law and order in Yellow Zones (by 2047 they are generally lawless areas ruled by warlords and armed gangs, unless a Yellow Zone is directly controlled by GDI or Nod forces). At some point Nod and GDI simply absorbed the manpower and inventory of national armies while stripping them from any sign of national alignment. This is true for GDI's United Peacekeeping Force or for Nod's regular troops. Nod-aligned militias could still remain somewhat nationally aligned to some point, however.

Monarchy is not exclusive with keeping or even creating some sort of representative Council or Parliament (with varying responsibility and powers), as a matter of fact.

As for the war.

1. For First Tiberium War - seem rather plausible. However, something really strange is the standartization of arms and equipment, strange for a bundle of national armies under one banner (however, this could be mitigated, assuming that some generalized unit names such as "medium tank" or "APC" means not only M1 Abrams or M113 but any MBT or APC  in GDI-aligned forces).

2. Seems rather true - at least for GDI that have taken all national militaries in its countries absorbed into GDI core forces, but this leaved civilian buraucracy and law enforcement up to national governments.

3. And yes, by the 3-rd War it get even further by GDI taking over law enforcement and civilian buraucracy in its nations as well, reducing national governments to techically existing.Terran Ghost (talk) 17:50, May 14, 2013 (UTC)

1. Well in the Red Alert Universe, the Allies militeries are already standardised already. Pretty much all the supporters of the GDI in Europe come from those who were in the Allies during Red Alert. While in Africa most of the GDI supporters armies will be armed by those nations. If 'GDI' arsenal is basically a development on Allied arsenal it makes kinda sense.

2. Yes that leaves us with the question of what Nod forces actually consisted of. They appear strategically to operate in a similar fashion to the GDI, establishing zones of control over specific often politically arbitery areas. But the basic nature of the forces between the two sides could not be more different.

The GDI forces seem to be essentially a specialised urban counter-intersurgancy outfit, hence why they have phased out the heavy tanks they used in the 1st War in favour of small and huge walkers. Walkers are only superior to tanks in a single context, that of fighting infantry in dense cities, indicating that GDI faced serious resistance from urban guerilla groups. The logic behind walkers was probably to allow a minimum of manpower to repress the maximum number of poorly armed people, their abandonment of tanks indicates they had stopped facing armies on open fields.

The Nod forces seem at core to be a hodge-podge of forces, judging from the unit buildup we have a mix of national armies (where they get the Turret Tanks from) and souped up guerilla groups reinforced by some units researched and built in places securely under Nod control like Africa. It seems that Nod was ultimately held together by certain key generals, such as General Hassan and General Vega and then General Slavik. This indicates then that although with a higher irregular content, the command system of Nod in Second Tiberium War was basically similar to that of both factions in 1st Tiberium War, a number of seperate overlapping forces under a single command. But without the existance (outside perhaps traditional Nod territory) of coherant central national commands.

3.  But they nevertheless they mostly kept those institutions in existance, even as they reduced their independant means and scope of operation. The reason for this development was to increase the amount of local manpower available to the GDI by absorbing the national armies and administrations. They continued to technically exist  but did so as completely GDI dependant organisations but they probably did mantain some national distinctions, patriotism being useful to some extent (hence the logic of their assimilation).

The question of why the Yellow Zones were generally lawless needs answering though, it makes little sense for it to be simply down to Tiberium, because that's a common threat which tends to promote social cohesion. It might be that the reason that they *are* Yellow Zones is for the same reason they are lawless. The GDI forces were able to defeat Nod some of time but they weren't able to control the territory they had taken while the Nod forces were able to defeat GDI some of the time but they couldn't get at them in space.

The eventual situation is an ongoing conflict which extensively disrupts life in the warzones and annihilates the local administration and law enforcement. At the same time it prevents the effective harvesting of Tiberium, causing Tiberium to predominate in those areas. With both organisation essentially reaching the point of MAD, it became neccesery for them to cannibalise the national militeries and administrations rendering their existance purely technical.

Slayer of Cliffracers (talk) 12:22, May 15, 2013 (UTC)

1. It may be. However, we do not know of any details of what happened between Red Alert 1 and Tiberian Dawn, save for the fact, that universes may not be connected at all (release version of Red Alert 1 have reference to Tiberian Dawn only in the end of Soviet campaign).

3. We do not know if such institution are in existence at all. Per 3-rd Tiberium War no mention of national governments do appear - both GDI and Nod seem to switch to direct control of civilian affairs in their controlled areas, while majority of Yellow Zones are a lawless place ruled by warlords and gangs.

By 2047 GDI brands itself as a "centralised political super-state" and all national governments under it's hold "they are still technically around". This could easily mean, that the latter exist only on paper or being reduced to simply propaganda mouthpiece puppets with no real political power. But, there are evidence that some GDI-backed national governments (including at least Australia and Russia, but may be more) retained some limited functionality and still have something of the control over their own yellow-zone and blue zone designated territory (via local militias and leased GDI United Peacekeeper Corps forces) - however even if such stories are true - surviving governments are subjected to GDI Council's authority and control.

As for Nod - their propaganda states that the Brotherhood is responsible for social welfare programs and law&order in Nod-controlled areas, not Nod-backed national governments as per First Tiberium War. However, Kane Wrath said that at least between 2031 and 2047 there were Nod-affiliated nationalist movements around, still pledging loyalty to their own Terran Ghost (talk) 10:39, May 19, 2013 (UTC)

1. Well actually we do because we have the whole rest of the Red Alert Series and that derives from Red Alert 1. Where it gets complicated is 'only' the timelines and the non-canonical endings. And why would be a large number of references to what is ultimately the future to then? And a future based upon an unexpected turn of events, the arrival of Tiberium.

2.  There is no such in reality as 'direct control' over anything. At the end of day any government in charge of something larger than a village has to delegate power to lesser adminstrative units. Even more so on a global scale, both Nod and GDI would have to delegate nearly all power to their local authorities even if they in theory mantained complete control over these authorities.

Centralised Political Super-State is basically another way of saying Empire. And Empires had always relied upon local collaborators to run their adminstration to some extent, from the Satraps of the Ancient Persian Empire, to the Roman client-kings, to the British Sepoys and Rajas and the Tutsu adminstrations set up by the Belgians to rule (and divide) the territory that was under the control.

So the arrangement will be just that, the central GDI authorities will have established or coopted local governments to mantain their rule but will have reduced the comparitive militery, political and economic leverage of those governments to the point that they can no longer chart an independant course. As elementery politics would have it, it is easier to prop up unpopular minorities for this role than popular majority group leaders.

What we haven't discussed much though is how Nod by contrast is organised. By the same token as with GDI, because Nod is also made up of componants that ultimately must be in some sense local, Nod-backed local governments aspiring or holding national power could well be considered Nod. Running a truly international administration would be difficult in their position anyhow. I reckon Nod organisation can be summarised as follows.

1.  First Tiberium War: Nod is organised as a set of national armies with a small componant of core international forces. However Nod possesses greater independant means than GDI especially after the UN funding cut, meaning that Nod national armies probably recieved recieved far more support centrally than GDI national armies did. Consequently the boundries between core and national forces would have blurred considerably as the war progressed.

2. Second Tiberium War:  Nod is an polyglot array forces, with the consistant unifying theme of being ultimately accountable in theory to a small number of generals with an international field of operations. The forces are drawn from local guerillas, national militaries, rebellious armies and the remnants of the core Nod forces from the First Tiberium War. The latter however probably acted mostly as bodyguards and elite soldiers for the generals but in general a diverse array of different forces were thrown together in a 'melting pot' by their loyalty to a common commander.

3. Third Tiberium War: Nod is an array of basically national militias that obey paralell national rebel administrations that consider the GDI administrations to have betrayed their nations. Core Nod forces and their officers had probably been all but wiped out by GDI during the aftermath of the Second Tiberium War, meaning that the central Nod organisation is basically diminished, what we instead have is a vague loyalty to Kane (we see how vague it really is by the Fourth Tiberium War) and mostly fear and hatred towards the GDI. The GDI is unable to deal with them individually because they all undermine the legitimacy of their own client administrations and those administrations have too little power relative to GDI in order that there be any power left for GDI to offer the Nod rebels in negotiations.

Slayer of Cliffracers (talk) 21:18, May 19, 2013 (UTC)

1. We really do not know if any Red Alert's event ever happened in Tiberium universe, and if Red Alert 1's events happened, than out of what campaign's end came the series of events leading to TW1.

2. Of course GDI should have some local government units, however, there are two general questions

a. Do they have any independent powers while following GDI Council's commands in general policy as modern-day western-type federations' local governments have? By Second Tiberium Wars it was clearly the case - it could be also by the 3-rd war, but I am somewhat confused by existence of GDI's so-called Zonal Directors, who seem to rule some zone-related (e.g. local) affairs......

b. The question about national identities. Since Yellow Zones are generally lawless place and Blue Zones are scattered across the globe would GDI concern itself with preservation of governments based on nation-state identities existed before Tiberium? C&C3's in-game Intelligence Database state that between second and third Tiberium Wars "national identities gradually faded" (however, to unknown degree). It would seem more logical for GDI for example, to organize elections for governors (or directors) and legislatures of individual zones than having to resort to old governments of nation-states, that simply are not united any more in most cases or turned into zones of anarchy wholesale. However, on the countrary, we have evidence that at least some "symbols of the past governments" such as the White House have at least ideological value and could be a valuable trophy for both sides... Terran Ghost (talk) 03:56, May 20, 2013 (UTC)

1. We do know that one of the paths for Red Alert 1 happened in the Tiberium Universe. Beyond that you are sort of correct.

2. Well an in-game map is shown here.

From the map we can see that unlike in Tiberium Sun where both sides fight over territory with little regard for national boundries Tiberium Wars has the sides fighting over specific countries, similar to the way it worked in the First Tiberium War. However this time clearly countries do not have a clear ability to chart an independant course in the conflict.

I don't know of things are really as orderly as having official independant powers or not, especially given the sheer scale of the administration we are talking about. What we probably had is a labyrinth of overlapping organisations making up the GDIs administration, with nobody really knowing clearly what powers they are supposed to have.

The Zonal Directors (and zones in general) were clearly initially envisoned to be based upon Tiberium harvesting, that's why they are classified according to their Tiberium presence. This made some sort of sense, Tiberium is not something which exactly cares out national boundries. However for lack of any official federal structure they probably ended up filling the void between the central GDI administration and the national governments.

The contradiction you note which is heightened by the way that the map apparantly works, is possibly resolvable if one looks at this decline in nationalism as being primarily a feuture among GDI supporters, their statement about national governments only technically existing is basically then contempt for they don't believe in.

But Nod supporters might well be motivated by nationalistic feelings against the GDI which would fit with the general pattern in history by which empires (such as the GDI at this point) tend to be faced with violent nationalistic opposition.

This would explain why the GDI needs to control the Whitehouse. It needs to have it's puppet president officially in charge of America in order to delegitimise Nod's nationalistic paralell rebel administration. If the Nod administration gains control of the Whitehouse then it can claim to be the American government thus making it an AmericaVSGDI battle rather than American Nod vs American GDI. Because Nod has set up paralell administrations virtually everwhere, GDI is unable to establish a more rational global administrative form than national governments (as complete the fading away of nations); as the moment they eliminate a traditional national government, the Nod alternative national government then becomes the legitimate government of that nation.

Slayer of Cliffracers (talk) 12:00, May 20, 2013 (UTC)