You can appear to be honorable. Is working if they are naive. Reputation is not always true.
And how, exactly, do you intend to have a reputation for being honorable when you act in the complete opposite fashion?
Make them to appear guilty! You only need to be ready for oportunity.
Because clearly people will believe you, and not them.
We are speaking about the common people? Or about everyone?
Weâre speaking about people who would seriously wonder why they should have you as an ally.
You can rely on your own people not caring how you treated nasty smelly foreigners if you present it right, but that doesnât work as well on foreign rulers.
Foreign rulers are more concerned about their own profits, and less about how honorable i am. Most of rulers know there is the danger of backstabing, they only donât know sure if and when.
Because they will believe they will profit from allying with you . . . why again?
You seem to assume that foreign rulers will just blindly trust you while you merrily go around doing things that inspire distrust.
âWhy should we ally with someone who is probably a bigger threat to us than the polity weâre supposedly allying against?â
They donât trust me, but they need things. They will think to betray me as well.
And they will believe they will get those things from helping you because . . .
Itâs the crickets, right?
Iâm sure there will always be fools willing to believe anything someone says, no matter what information justifies doubt, but those are not the kind of people who make valuable allies.
Is an endless game of blood, pain, and death. We are not a little of topic now?
Looking history probe you wrong continuously. Rulers kept plotting and pacting whence they secrecy trying wipe the other from existence. Independence war in Spain against Napoleon make a clear example. Honesty doesnât care as much as gain. Think in the opium war and how England tried make china bought the drugs only to them. Democratic countries still selling weapons to the bloody dictators in Africa and buying their bloody diamonts and rare metals while acting as a goodies in United Nations ⌠War never changes
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People do not trust and voluntarily work with people who shamelessly rip up treaties and whose friends have a tendency to end up as their latest conquests.
So no. History proves that people who donât backstab their allies tend to have allies as opposed to nations blindly going into alliances for the sake of self-destruction.
That doesnât mean âbehave at the height of moral behavior at all timesâ, that means âbehave so that someone would actually think allying with you would be beneficial to their interestsâ.
Thatâs perfectly consistent with democracies selling weapons to African dictators or Britain selling opium to China, itâs not consistent with being seen as treacherous and unreliable so that there is no gain to trusting you - only making yourself vulnerable.
âLetâs work together to divide Poland.â wouldnât be very appealing to people who thought that they would lose rather than gain.
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We think similarly while being in the contrary spectrum. I am a hobbes follower 
But yes a ruler had âwordâ even a ruthless bastard. Even the treacherous countries respect international customs and have been that way since the beginning. International politics is so similar to a merchant credit and fame is everything. More than reason o morals
Yeah. I think the relevant Machiavelli line is that it is good to be feared, but not hated.
People who are seen as terrible to cross, but safe to interact with if not provoked tend to do pretty well.
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Actually, to paraphrase Machiavelli wrote that itâs better to be loved and feared, but if you canât do both itâs safer to be feared alone, but to avoid hatred even when instilling fear.
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Wow, thatâs very interesting discussion. In my opinion forming an alliance is possible only if both sides could gain from this arrangement, but as history not once prove when one side is stronger than the other and donât need benefits coming from alliance anymore they cut them off.
@Elfwine, you mentioned Poland and I think itâs a great example. Poland made alliance with France and Great Britain befor Second World War. When Germany invaded Poland those two countries had declared war on Germany on 3 September, though in the end their aid to Poland in the September campaign was very limited.
Another example could be situation that occur after Battle of Britain, Britain and the other Allies yielded to Josef Stalin, and the contributions of the Polish pilots were all but forgotten. Polish airmen were not even permitted to march in the London victory parade after the war ended.
My point is that when alliance are great thing, they not last forever most rulers are ready to abond or attack their allies if that is beneficial for them. (Thatâs why when I greatly disaprove what Churchill did to Poland/Polish people I am able to understand that. He did what was the best for his country despite his commitment)
I donât know enough about the subject to know how those Poles who were involved in the Battle of Britain and related were treated (beyond that they deserved a great deal of appreciation) except what others have said, but what Damian is proposing sounds more like Stalinâs behavior or worse than Churchillâs - attacking a former ally (if one can use that there), not merely rationalizing not defending them.
Well, honestly I think that both you and Damien represent two extreme point of view. In my opinion allie is someone who you canât fully trust but you also canât not trust at all because this misses the point of having ally at all.
But returning to the reason of this discussion. I think that Arthurâs way of handling the baronâs rebelion was not the best. They raised a hand on their king and instead of punishing them in any way Arthur start to negotiate with them. That kind of behaviour may encourage the rest of the minions to rebelion if they wonât like something what crown do.
They raised a hand against their king, their efforts were violently suppressed, and Arthur pardoned the survivors. Iâm not sure that people who expect to lose are going to rebel as much as people think.