GATO

The Gate Alliance Treaty Organization has the unique distinction of being the first and longest-running treaty organization outside the Grand Army Charter Alliance.

History

What eventually became GATO went through several incarnations before finally disbanding. It is most appropriate, when discussing GATO, to first disccuss the Confederation.

The Confederation

Founded by Medina's Prime Minister Tyurin Cage, the Confederation was designed to function similarly to, if not as a replacement for, the Grand Army and its House of Lords. Unlike the Grand Army, the Confederation was first a political alliance, before a military one -- although the military component would become a central part of the Confederation during its brief existence.

The founding signatories of the Terms of Confederation were Cage, Atreus' CEO Eusic Mori, The Esper Union's Hannibal de'Zama, the IJF's Shane Lile, and Kuvalla's King Kusader. Guardia's King Derik was invited to the launch ceremony at Space Station Gamma, but had not been informed of the plans to create the Confederation nor had he been invited as a founding signatory. This snub nearly caused Derik to entirely refuse Guardia's membership, but he was calmed down by Eusic and convinced to remain.

The Confederation boasted as its members several mid-tier nations from both the Core and the Fringe, including most of the nations of Alter-Mana and Alter-Dragon, the nations of the Merge Dimension, Mysidia and Foo. The Kingdom of Carrion was invited to join but ultimately declined.

To the Fringe nations, the promise of the Confederation was an equal footing in Web affairs, which they did not feel they were getting from membership in the Grand Army's political institution. In particular, the Confederation fed off anti-Tasnican sentiment in the Fringe, especially so during the era of the Extraterritoriality Act, which the AAA Corporations used to effectively render themselves immune to the laws of the nations in which they were builting factories, bases, distributing centers and outlets. The Confederation tacitly gave sanction to terrorist groups in Alter who carried out bombing campaigns against Tasnican factories, and so the very existence of the Confederation was sorely distasteful to Tasnica and its allies.

Because of heavy involvement in the Fringe, the Confederation fielded a significant space fleet. Designed jointly by Atreus, Esperian and Medinan engineers, the fleet was the organ around which a larger Confederate Army was built. All member nations put forward their own candidates to lead the Confederate forces, and the Atreus candidate, Mathern, won out over all of them. King Derik secretly took umbrage at this, believing that his own candidate was slighted because Celiose had recently selected Victor Velasco to head SAGA for the Grand Army.

Collapse of the Confederation

The beginning of the end for this treaty organization was the downfall of Tyurin Cage, who was forced to flee from Medina by a rebellion lead by General Rogue and a newly resurrected Mariscul Mervin. Without Cage at the Confederation's head, it slowly fell apart. Soon after, Eusic and Derik had a falling out, and Atreus left Gate to become a Tasnican AAA corporation. As part of becoming Tasnican, Atreus forsook much of the sovereignty it had enjoyed in Gate, and Rhodes insisted that Atreus sever its ties to the Confederation as part of the deal (since the Confederation was still viewed as a largely anti-Tasnican alliance).

Without Cage, Hannibal left to pursue his own start-up treaty organizations the Fascist Pact. Likewise, Kusader and Shane Lile took their exits, and focused their efforts on strengthening the IJF in the face of increasingly contentious challenges from the Merge League. Without Kusader and Shane, Mysidia also withdrew its membership. And so did Foo -- which was a severe loss to the organization, because in its tenure as a Confederate member state Foo had become the alliance's primary infinite resources bitch.

In the end of all things, each and every one of the Confederation's founding signatories had, in one way or another, left the Alliance. Derik relished the opportunity to fill in the power vacuum, and hammer the last few nails in the coffin of an alliance that had so deeply slighted him when it was first founded. What remained of the Confederation was effectively his to do with what he willed.

The Birth of GATO

Rather than let the foundation on which the Confederation was built simply wither and die, Derik decided to found a new organization based on what he had seen as the Confederation's only real strength: empowerment of the Fringe. So with the contingent of Fringe nations who had been Confederate members, Derik drafted the Gate Alliance Treaty -- which is a peculiar name to give to an organization whose focus is Fringe empowerment.

Despite Derik's overwhelming hubris and need to be in control, the Fringe did, in fact, prosper under the auspices of GATO. With Guardia (and to a lesser extend Medina [which was never as powerful or influential as it had been under Cage]) at the helm, GATO pledged itself to the cause of Fringe advocacy, and on several occassions Derik and Rhodes had heated arguments over Tasnican presence in the Fringe, particularly Alter.

Despite whatever good Guardia did for the Fringe through the vehicle of GATO, perceptions eventually began to sour toward the organization. As Derik grew more fully into the role of headstrong leader, the rest of the Web began to associate GATO first with Guardia, rather than the Fringe. It came to pass that GATO was considered to be one of the Web's four Great Powers, when by far the lionshare of GATO's military power was Guardian. The rest of the Web viewed the other members of the alliance as little more than vassal states, or at worst Guardian colonies, and without GATO behind them no Core nation seemed willing to take these nations seriously. In effect, the protectiveness Guardia showed to its Fringe allies through GATO had relegated them to the diplomatic status of "child-states," unable to cut deals or hold relations except by way of "mother Guardia."

This in turn began to engender anti-Guardian sentiment in the Fringe, especially with the rise of Fringe piracy. In particular, the most celebrated of all Fringe pirates, Talina Svensgaard, seemed to detest Guardians over even the hated Tasnicans.

Death of Derik

When Derik turned up missing (and was presumed dead) after the Battle of Atlantis, many outside observers believed that GATO would die with him, just as the Confederation had collapsed without Cage to lead it. And in fact, Queen Naraya proved somewhat less effective at holding the alliance together than had her late husband. Some chalk this up to Naraya being too grieved by the loss to be able to perform her job, but most agree that even if this were not the case Naraya simply was not as forceful a leader as Derik had been.

Naraya turned the bulk of her attention inward, to Guardia, and to a lesser extent Pandora. She had planned to unite Guardia together with Pandora, and was in talks with her older sister Nalini Pandora to do just that when Archbishop Meres emerged with his scheme to become Regent.

Under Meres' leadership, GATO experienced something of a rebirth. Fringe nations took greater control over the organization's inner workings, and Guardia backed the organization up only as it was needed. Guardia's biggest win for its Fringe allies was when Meres fomented an anti-Tasnican backlash within Guardia, and threatened a complete shut-out of Tasnican goods from the Guardian market. This forced Rhodes Palmerston to strongarm the Tasnican Senate into repealing the Extraterritoriality Act. There are still parades to this day in many cities across the Fringe that celebrate "V-ET" day (or simply Vet Day: the day the ET Act was killed).

Forthena took an active leading role in the organization during this period, and gradually the Fringe's opinion of Guardia began to soften. Eventually, Meres managed to turn the Fringe member states of GATO against the pirates of the Unbound, who claimed to be fighting for Fringe independence. The GATO fleet (which had once been the Confederate fleet) was the first space fleet put to the task of actively policing the Fringe's space lanes.

The Leviathan War

The Leviathan War changed everything. Though Guardia and GATO's role in the war was minimal, consisting of a small presence in Esper during the war's final days and sending troops to protect Bal in the Merge Dimension, the horrors of the war had an effect on all participants.

Guardia slowly began withdrawing from international affairs. The Archbishop began skipping House of Lords meetings, and within a month after the war he decreed that GATO was "disbanded." Immediately after this decree, Rhodes Palmerston is noted for declaring that Tasnica was the Web's sole remaining Great Power, though in retrospect that declaration was somewhat premature.

As Tasnica went about the task of reforming the Grand Army Charter, Forthena and other Fringe nations decided that they did not want GATO to disband. Retaining everything but Guardian membership, the alliance was reborn again as the United Fringe Nations. This, however, was short-lived, as Forthena found itself unable to retain the membership of the nations of Merge (which eventually withdrew due to Guardia's urging) or Alter Dragon (as that world began to descend into war and chaos, with the New Drogen Alliance coming under the assault of the Triad -- an alliance of SimaFort, Guntz and the Highlander clans under Trubolon). Rather than bother to uphold the pretenses of protecting any interests but its own, Forthena simply took what remained of GATO -- including its fleet, which it re-christened as the Forthenan Grand Fleet.

GATO's legacy

Guardia to this day remains a powerful player in the Fringe, and with the return of Derik to Guardia's throne, Gate has once again taken an active lead in representing the interests of its Fringe allies.

GATO's legacy serves as a reminder of the potential for good, non-exploitative relations between Fringe and Core states, even through an age of incredible Imperialist expansion by the Great Powers. Many organizations today, including the Communist Protectorate, have benefitted from this legacy.