Belhavia and Racialist Regimes

The Empire of Belhavia has controversially maintained good, even strong foreign relations throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century with several nations that maintain domestic social arrangements that offends the prevalent common morality, especially from the left, liberals, and the World Council. These countries include the the Union of Westonaria and the Republic of Dacia, both of which have apartheid or racialist regimes.

Introduction

Although the Torah has a conflicting opinion on indentured servitude, by the 1650s the practice had been abolished and the conception of free labor became the accepted social and cultural norm in Belhavian society. When the Empire entered its expansion phrase after the Great Southern War ended in 1715, it joined the Pardesi Great Game in a race for colonies and exploration of the Far East against other imperial powers, such as the Grand Empire of Ulthrannia, the Kingdom of Belfras, and so on.

Belhavia has never condoned or permitted slavery or indentured servitude in its colonies, unlike other colonial powers. However, there were isolated reports of individual landowners who create de facto forced-servitude-style circumstances for their workers, though these instances were rarely tolerated by Imperial and colonial authorities.

However, as these practices were made socially unacceptable, then illegal, across the world, a few nations retained them or expanded them. In 1800, at its founding following its independence from the Papal Republic of Rodarion, Westonaria created a harsh and cruel racial segregationist regime. In 1980 in the aftermath of the collapse of Myrdesia into Dacia and Goredemabwa through a bloody eight-year civil and then interstate war, the former remnants of the Myrdesian government created a rump state called Dacia that re-imposed Myrdesian apartheid and racial segregation at levels many call more callous and ruthless than the Westonarians over its territory.

Westonaria

Belhavian-Westonarian relations emerged at the founding of the Union in 1800, with Belhavian bankers and financiers providing large lines of credits to the new government. The fact that the Union government had put a harsh racial segregationist framework over Westonarian society outraged Provisa polite society and the liberals in the Imperial government. As part of a broader reaction against forced labor and segregationist practices, the 1812 Constitution specifically banned such practices and similar frameworks.

Belhavian Ashizwean colonies were nearby Westonaria in Southwest Ashizwe, and the two settler states often collaborated on local issues, settlement, economic extraction, and defense. Since the 19th century, Westonaria has been a major supplier of gold and diamonds to Belhavia, which has fueled a booming precious metal trade within southern commercial trade networks.

Westonarians also pick Belhavia, besides Rodarion, as the two foreign countries to study abroad, with Westonarian elites coming to Belhavia because of its sterling reputation as a hub of prestigious higher education and because of its socially conservative veneer. Westonarian and Belhavian financial sectors are also interconnected, socially because many Westonarian bankers and financiers studied in college and business school in the Empire, and economically through precious metals and other interlinked commodities.

Lastly, the Union of Westonaria has been a staunch anti-communist power and ally of curtailing and defeating Marxist, revolutionary-leftist, and anti-colonialist movements in the area.

Of all the racialist regimes, the Imperial government objects most strenuously to the Westonarian apartheid regime. However, Belhavia has often ignored or looked the other way on the issue, especially during the Cold War and the earlier colonial period. Especially during the 2001, 2006, and 2010 Isandlwana conflicts, liberal activists have protested and lobbied for trade sanctions or revocation of free-trade treaties, though the government has repeatedly refused to entertain the notion, though since 2005, the opposition Liberal Democrats have repeatedly pushed for the measures.

Since the 1980s, Belhavia has been considered Westonaria's geopolitical patron in world affairs and geopolitics.

Dacia

Belhavian-Dacian relations emerged quickly in late 1980 amid the Myrdesian civil war, when the Belhavian government recognized the new state of Dacia just days after its proclamation in November 1980 as the legal successor to the fallen Myrdesian state. Historians note that the move was equal parts ideological as it was practical: while Belhavia opposed apartheid as a sociopolitical model, the world was at the height of the Cold War and Dacia's opponent, the People's Socialist Republic of Goredemabwa, was a member of the Communist bloc as well as the fact that Belhavia had extensive imports of Myrdesian diamonds and precious metals, much of which fell under the Dacian government's control.

At the same time in November 1980, incumbent Liberal Democratic President Berel Levine was defeated by his Conservative challenger, Imperial Senator Julian Settas. Acceding to Settas' request, supported by a Senate-passed resolution, the outgoing Levine administration recognized Dacia formally. When Settas took office, he orchestrated the passage of the Global Anticommunist Relief and Support Act (GARSA) by June 1981 that provided an influx of low-interest loans, arms, weapons, and war materiél, and military advisors to bolster Dacian military efforts alongside aid from its geopolitical patron, Tarsas.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, after Dacia secured its borders from Goredemabwan aggression, Belhavia and Dacia signed trade agreements and continued strong diplomatic and geopolitical support. Belhavia, along with Tarsas, Rodarion, and the then-WCS, defended Dacia and fellow apartheid state Westonaria from anti-apartheid forces inside the WC until the mid-1990s, when the inevitability of an anti-apartheid resolution sparked both nations to quit the World Council.

Except for a dip in relations during the non-consecutive anti-apartheid center-left presidency of Garrett Holleran in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Belhavian-Dacian relations have remained strong and close.