Recognition Procedure Act of 2015 (Tabled)

[bore]

Yesterday, after much thought and reflection, I signed an executive order recognising South America in the Mock Parliament board. To those banging on about this being the senate's responsibility I just don't buy that. In the US, as I understand it recognition has always been the president's responsibility not the legislatures, and I see no reason why this should be different.

The reasons for recognition itself are fairly simple. Recognition is the most basic of all relationships states have, from it, all other things follow. To build a playable relationship we must first recognise South America, then we can work out specifics.

Finally, it is a lot easier to untie than to tie. If relationships don't work we can easily end them and pretend they never existed with no real loss, but if we don't try we'll never know.

[bore]

This seems pretty blatantly unconstitutional. The power to recognise or not recognise a countries government is the presidents and the presidents alone. The senate does not have every power in this game.

[bore]

I echo what Simfan is saying. I don't know the ins and outs of the US constitution, but everyone agrees that the president is solely responsible for recognising states, we've seen that with Truman in Israel and with Obama and Cuba, to name two.

Now there are no powers that the US president has that the atlasian president does not, so it logically follows that the atlasian president has the power to unilaterally recognise countries.

[bore]

But this doesn't make sense. There is no way a distinction can be drawn between playable and non playable countries and even if we could there's no constitutional reason why one is fine and the other is not.

[bore]

Defining what is and is not a playable country doesn't change the main point, that is there is no reason, constitutionally speaking, that a playable country is different from a non playable one. If the president can recognise one (and this, I'm sorry, is not up for debate) he can recognise the other.

To gain a bit of perspective here, let's just see what recognising South America changes in terms of foreign policy:

Now, the GM simulates all events (which is, if we are honest, terribly dull) and the senate responds to them, with South America as a country they members of that board simulate their actions, the GM simulates the rest and the senate responds to it. This is not a massive change.