Charnea-Mutul relations

Charnea-Mutul relations

Charnea	Mutul
Diplomatic mission
Embassy of Charnea, K'alak Muul	Embassy of His Divine Lordship, Agnannet
Envoy
Ambassador	Eb'et

History

The first interactions between Mutuleses and Charneans happened in the context of the Ozeros War, circa 1670s. The Mutuleses Companies reached out to the Awakari Empire for help against the Iifae Imamates and their backers: Kembesa and the Eidrusid Caliphate. The Awakari ended up accepting the Mutuleses' offer, sending raiding parties and launching military campaigns against its two neighbors. The victory of the Mutuleses allowed the Awakari to graft themselves unto the world system built by their allies leading to increased trades in spices, textiles, slaves, and other luxury goods from around the world. It's also during this era that, under the influence of texts and theories from the Mutul, appeared the first syncretic schools of thoughts that would evolve into Tamddaism in the next centuries. The most active of these schools would be the eseoteric secret society of the elusive figure known as the Desert Oracle who notably erected the Tazzarat, the first permanent Tamddaist temple and currently the most visited place in Charnea.

Ninvite War

Main article: Ninvite War

The Divine Kingdom exact role in the conflict remain an unclear and debated topic. Official documents concerning the Ninvite war are still classified and kept away by the Central Library with only a minority of historians being allowed to go through a selected panel of files.

Charnea had already been an important client for the Mutulese industry. Before the war, the Mutulese aircraft manufacturer Ik' Chuk' won an important state contract with the Desert Republic, refurbishing its air forces with its K'ak'mul 5 jet fighters, deploying engineers and military trainers alongside the aircrafts. Many of these personel would still be present in the country at the start of the hostility.

Before any known involvement from the Divine Throne, "Mutuleses" volunteers made their apparition in Charnea in 1985. These were Charnean-born Tenerians serving in the Divine Army of the Ninety-Nine Nations who despite their rigorous religious and political training had deserted to return defend their country. To this day, the surviving deserters are officially forbidden from setting foot in the Mutul under threat of capital punishment for high treason if ever arrested, a condemnation unaffected by the various mass or specific pardons granted by the K'uhul Ajaw in the past three decades.

In 1986, the K'uhul Ajaw bought Charnean War bonds for an estimated total of 50 billion Latin solidus. The monetary influx was used notably to buy more K'ak'mul 5 to replenish the air force dwindling number of aircrafts. An operation made easier by the fact the war bonds had already been paid in B'ul, the Mutul' legal currency. Later in the same year, Mutuleses great houses such as the Ilok'tab, the Chel, or the Xiu, agreed to a new joint credit operation to Charnea, injecting another 10 billion in the desert country, while the K'uhul Ajaw validated the demand by Charnea' government to the Mutul' central bank for another 20 billion solidus while the Divine Lord continued to buy various Charnean obligations and bonds and encouraged other Mutuleses investors to do so as well. By 1987, the Mutulese financial support had been massive, reaching a total 100 billion solidus. A large portion of the money will serve to buy aircrafts, vehicles, missiles, guns, and other weapons from the Mutul directly or from other sources such as the then still unstable Elatia.

The reasons behind the Divine Throne late but valuable direct help to Charnea remain unclear. The Desert Country had become during the 20th century a valuable client especially when it came to military affairs. Economically, it is questionable if such a middle-tier economic partner, especially one with a negligible ammount of long-term investments in it, was worth such a risky, sudden, 100 billion loan. Not all of that money was lost to the Mutul as a country: part of it served as a "stimulus check" to the militaro-industrial complex as the Charnean used their B'ulob to buy military equipments and supplies. But a large part of the money went to pay for the training and sustainment of the army, the maintenance of their equipments, the reconstruction of destroyed roads and rails, the stockpiling of rations and other supplies, etc... money virtually lost for the Mutul in the short term.

Some historians and geopoliticians have theorized that the cultural ties between the two countries, symbolised by the Tazzarat, have played their role in convincing the Divine Throne to so massively help Charnea. Especially when the Mutul had just gone through the collapse of one of its partner (Elatia) and might have been scared into action seeing another partner in danger which would have left the Mutul closer and closer to isolation. This vision of the Ninvite War as part of a larger Culture war between the theoreticals White Path world and the Western Monarchies has also been criticized as not matching previous patterns of behavior from the Mutul. The argument of the Divine Throne being concerned about a potential isolation doesn't really add up either when its economy had already picked up after the 50s crisis through partnership with Tsurushima and Sante Reze, tying the Mutul deeply to their respective economic spheres.

A later interpretation of the events was that the Mutul simply seized an opportunity it did not foresee and gambled upon it. When seen from the 2020s, this seems a natural conclusion: following the war, ties between Charnea and the Mutul were deeper than ever with economic, cultural, and even political and military cooperation reaching unprecedented levels. However, this a-posteriori reading seemingly forget that, in the aftermath of the Ninvite War, relations between the two countries became tense, glacial even. The burden of the war debt weighted on all of Charnea and the Divine Throne only agreed to debt reductions if the Charneans were capable of offering something equally valuable in return. It is only after the Seven Day Coup of 2013 that relations between the Mutul and Charnea normalized once more.

Seven Days Coup

There is little information available about the Mutul involvement within the coup. In 2013, Mutuleses financial institutions had been present in Charnea for decades and the relationship between the two countries was tense as the latter was still paying their war debts to the former with rising interests due to low credit notations given by international agencies which judged harshly Charnea' capacity to pay off their debts. It is known however that the Mutuleses present in Charnea at the time of the first coup reacted very poorly to it. A belief shared by many observers was that the putshists were planning to no longer recognize any debt toward foreign entities, a plan that would have costs the Mutuleses investors and even the Divine Throne itself billion of solidus.

However, in the aftermath of the counter-coup led by Martuf Lamine, one of the deserting veterans of the Divine Army of the Ninety-Nine Nations which brought Amina N'Okha to the throne, the Mutul' reaction was overwhelmingly positive. Whereas the markets reacted to the growing uncertainty surrounding Charnea by selling Charnean bonds and getting rid of their Azref reserves, the Divine Throne did the exact contrary and instead lend money to the newly established government which was able to use it to buy back many of the Charnean bonds on the market. When Martuf Lamine then announced a new campaign of bond emmission to raise cashes, it was the Divine Throne and the Mutuleses banks who bought these emmissions despite the very low rating Charnea had at the time. It's only afterward, when Martuf Lamine confirmed that his government would be honoring previous debts, that the Charnean finances began to improve. Martuf was even able to do what previous Charneans heads-of-government had not been able to do and that is to strike a debt reduction deal with the Divine Throne, giving the Charneans more breathing room and improving substantially their ratings.

Comparison

	The Divine Kingdom	Empire of Charnea
Populations	160.6 million (2021)	27.0 million (2020)
Area	2,310,429 km2	2,130,656 km2
Population density	69.34/km2	12.68 km2
Capital	K'alak Muul	Agnannet
Largest city	K'alak Muul	Agnannet
Government	Unitary Absolute Monarchy	Unitary Constitutional Monarchy
Current Leader	K'uhul Ajaw Jasaw Chan K'awiil V (both head of state and government)	Tamenokalt Amina N'Okha (head of state)
Official languages	Mutli	Tamashek
Main religions	Sakbe (100%)	Tamddaism (71%) Sakbe (12%)
GDP (nominal) (2020)	$2.6 trillion ($16,230 per capita)	$599 billion ($22,179 per capita)
Military expenditures