Stand-offs and Flashpoints

A flashpoint is a live dispute between two sides: a divided nation, a claim on another country's provinces, a colony demanding independence, an insurgency or a coup plot. Each carries a tension score from 0 to 100. When tension reaches 100, the flashpoint ignites into a stand-off: an international crisis in which the powers take sides, a temperature climbs toward war, and the two leaders try to bargain their way out. This article covers the diplomacy of disputes and stand-offs; the Flashpoints and Crises article covers the crisis screen and its wider politics.

Stages

A flashpoint's stage follows its tension:

A dispute is live only while both sides exist and hold land. One between states that do not yet exist lies dormant, and a successor state takes over its predecessor's side: when the Korean occupation zones become North and South Korea, the dispute passes to them.

Where disputes come from

Only two flashpoints are authored for 1946, the Greek Civil War and Indochina, both risings of a local movement. Every other dispute grows out of the state of the world, at the start and every month after:

• Lost provinces. A country claiming provinces another holds can raise a dispute over them; the worse their relations, the likelier and hotter it is. In 1946 Iran's claim on the Soviet zone of Iran is certain on the first day, and Yugoslavia's claim on Trieste likely.
• Divided nations, such as the Chinese Communists and the Republic of China, or the two Korean states once both exist.
• Insurgencies, when an agitated opposition faction holds strongholds in its country and a foreign power of its ideology becomes its patron (see Foreign Backing).
• Separatist movements, where a stateless nation's agitated faction dominates the provinces it claims.
• Colonial independence, as a colony's most agitated movement presses its overlord.
• Coup plots, opened by a faction's leading foreign sponsor (see Coups and Power Struggles).

No two disputes between the same pair run at once, and a settled pair rests for ten years.

Why tension moves

Tension drifts daily from named causes, each shown on the crisis screen: high mutual Threat Levels between the parties, Unrest in the disputed provinces, aggressive or hostile postures (Détente and non-aggression cool it), rival superpower spheres, hostile relations, public supporters on either side, mediators, and any Security Council resolution. While the two parties are at war with each other, tension stays frozen.

Stances

Any country that is not a party can take one public stance on a flashpoint: support the claimant or the defender as Sympathetic, Committed or Guarantor, or act as Mediator. A stance costs political capital once, when taken or changed, and the price rises with the dispute's stage. A stance is popular when it backs your own bloc or opposes the rival superpower's: popular stances are cheap to take and costly to drop, unpopular ones dear to take and repay political capital when dropped. Switching sides also costs prestige.

Supporters raise tension and mediators lower it. When the flashpoint ignites, Committed and Guarantor supporters enter the stand-off already backing their side. Treaty guarantees are shown alongside stances, but a guarantor still has to declare itself to be committed.

Moves on a dispute

Outside a stand-off, everyone involved has moves, each costing political capital and on a cooldown:

• Claimant: Press the Claim, Stage a Border Incident (tension soars, at a cost in prestige and the defender's opinion), Propose Talks.
• Defender: Stand Firm, Offer Concessions.
• Outsiders: Call for Restraint, or as a great power Issue a Public Warning.
• Backers: Send Arms to the side they support, from their own stockpile, without pledging to fight. Arms add to that side's strength at the bargaining table.
• Both parties, if they recognise each other, can sign a Shelve the Claim treaty (the Standstill Agreement): nothing is ceded, but tension drops to zero and stays low until a provocation, as Kashmir, Korea and the Taiwan Strait stayed frozen for decades.

Any UN member can take a Simmering or hotter dispute to the Security Council, which votes thirty days later. A resolution needs seven votes; a permanent member voting against one that has them vetoes it and loses prestige. A passed resolution cuts tension at once and halves any rise for a year.

Diplomats can be sent too: Good Offices and Shuttle Diplomacy to cool a dispute or a stand-off, Canvass the Powers to win a great power's public backing, a Security Council Delegation to win elected members' votes, Manufacture Incident and Undermine Talks to heat it, Watch the Flashpoint to expose foreign plots, and an International Campaign to sway great-power opinion. See Diplomatic Missions.

The stand-off

At tension 100 the stand-off opens with a 30-day window in which the powers take sides. The great powers here are the sphere leaders who are nobody's subject: in 1946 the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and France. When the window closes, escalation begins whoever stands behind each side.

During escalation the crisis temperature rises one point a day plus the pressure of the leaders' alert levels and forward nuclear forces, never less than a quarter point a day. War begins at 100. The screen separates conventional from nuclear pressure and estimates the time to war at the current posture (see Nuclear Program).

Bargaining

Either leader may offer to keep the status quo, grant the demand, or, for a territorial claim, hand over selected disputed provinces, optionally adding a treasury payment (paid only on acceptance, even into debt). One offer may be pending at a time; a rejection adds three temperature points and allows a counter-offer. A committed participant may invite an uncommitted great power of its bloc to sponsor its side, adding five temperature points if it accepts.

AI leaders weigh the share of the demand granted, the compensation against their economy, both coalitions' strength, the nuclear balance, whether the superpowers stand on opposite sides (which makes them keener to settle), their own backers' resolve, the leverage the other side holds, and the risk of war. From temperature 45 they actively seek compromises, such as offering the less valuable half of the claimed provinces.

How it ends

• Settlement. The agreed terms are carried out; any territory or payment is signed as a treaty between the two leaders.
• Backdown. One side concedes before the temperature peaks, and pays in prestige.
• War. At 100 the coalitions go to war. A colony first declares independence; an insurgency rises. Committed and Guarantor backers fight; Sympathetic ones stay out (see Wars).

A settlement that leaves the claim standing, such as the status quo, a partition or an armistice, calms the dispute rather than ending it: tension falls to zero and stays there until a provocation lifts it back to Simmering.