STEC Archives, Print Document Division
Curator signature: Jer
Format: Speech Transcript & Exhibit Materials
Object: Transcribed speech, [classified] Collection
Location (if known): STEC Archives
Astute readers and news aficionados have no doubt often heard terms like “lend-lease” and “Modern Arsenal of Democracy” raised in the context of the United States. This comparison, while appropriate to an extent, ought to be clarified in light of the war’s conclusion.
Particularly, in light of recent national survey data, it seems that most of us (9/10 Americans surveyed) appear to have some critical misunderstanding of the specifics involved.
As the Abyssal War engulfs the globe, outside of the initial period, we – by nature of our American culture – soon begun to debate internally. The main question surrounding the topic is, of course, some variant of the following, generally in these two components. “Are we contributing our fair share of the war” and “Are we getting proper credit for our generosity” are both fair sentiments, and I wish to address both in detail.
The first question about whether or not we’re contributing our fair share in the war is a reasonable one. While STEC and allies battled it out on the high seas, barring a few unfortunate countries, the threat to humanity’s continued survival as a whole was initially in check. America was in a well defended, reasonably secure position and arguably the only one out of the great powers with this level of security. In fact, it is because of this that we begun contemplating the nature of aid – in greater, visible terms.
In the context of the Abyssal War, students of history with an eye for detail will soon notice that much like its historic predecessor, the terms and details laid out had a simple question as its prerequisite: is this aid necessary and vital in the defense of the United States? This, of course, is never an easy question to answer, and relies heavily on a combination of military and diplomatic feedback and STEC’s own inventory.
War is fluid. What is acceptable in one moment is inadequate in another, and wholly excessive in the next. The unpredictably predictable nature of Abyssal offensives coupled with the difficulty in obtaining predictive intelligence made it difficult for us all to gauge how much is too much. But compare the relative degree of damage we took versus others, and I think – as no doubt we shall see in the decades to come – that overall our decision making was sensible. This program did help in its desire to mitigate the Abyssal War’s effects on the home front.
Thus, “are we contributing our fair share” should really be legally reclassified as “are we contributing our fair share to the UNC arsenal, in the context of this specific series of legislation” and “are we treating our allies fairly.” The answer is unabashedly, yes. American shipgirls are better trained, better equipped, and better supplied than every other nation on this earth thrown together – I’ll leave it to you to figure out what part of that, if any, is simple patriotism and American pride. It is because of this, in fact, that we report a higher overall cost-sharing burden, as well as permitting a number of STEC facilities to produce arms and equipment, particularly airframes and spare parts for airframes, specifically for our allies across the globe.
We also – as the President aptly put – prefer to host the picnic rather than having it be a potluck. A major point of contention in national media has been our logistics policy. Unlike the other major powers, we simply see little sense in having allied shipgirls wasting time and effort in order to adapt to our equipment – as we have the capacity for it, we have no qualms about footing the proverbial costs if it means one less Abyssal threatening American cities or households.
In fact, this is why STEC has entire departments dedicated to feasibility of force integration. A portion of STEC’s own production capability is actually earmarked for development of non-American equipment, originally meant purely for R&D or tactical assessment. It was natural to elevate this to a higher proportion given the global nature of the Abyssal War.
This, of course, brings us to the second question. “Are we getting proper credit.” The answer is that yes, but in general, this is a difficult topic to broach. There has been time to time where our people have felt an insufficient display of gratitude for the help we’ve provided to our allied countries. The vigorous embassy protests, or the much-reported [Classified country] scandal where individual commands were painting over STEC production and sending it to their own allies’ shipgirl services under [Classified country’s shipgirl service marking] are both examples that surfaced during the course of the Abyssal War.
STEC’s official position has always been that isolated instances or incidents do not characterize the relationship as a whole. In these events, Allied governments were swift in action, immediately responding and correcting the mistakes and offering appropriate amends in the form of apologies and investigations. The limited-yet-renewable nature of the legislations in question offers Congress, in particular, a good view into whether or not our allies are playing fair in light of our spirit of collaboration. The fact that these legislation endured until the end of the Abyssal War is therefore telling of the respect and gratitude our allies displayed.