Jackson has always been skeptical, or will believe, what the rumors are about.

The Liangxia Empire secretly negotiated an armistice with the Nuland Republic?

If this is the case, it will certainly not be the Nuland Republic that initiated the negotiations, because those politicians in Hwaseong will never negotiate with their opponents when the situation is unfavorable. Even if you want to sit down and talk, it is after winning the battle, grasping the initiative, and having bargaining chips.

Those who sit next to the negotiating table with their bare hands can only be negotiators of defeated countries!

Negotiating with the Liangxia Empire in the current situation, even if the Nuland Republic has not yet been defeated, it will have to pay a more disastrous and completely unacceptable price than the loss of the Khowaii Islands.

If this is the case, even if the negotiations are completed, who would dare to sign the armistice agreement?

Although he was not a politician and had never been to Hwaseong, Jackson knew very well that as long as the president signed the humiliating armistice, he would definitely be overturned, and possibly even assassinated, and the new president who took office would immediately tear up the armistice.

The point is that the situation in the Nuland Republic has not yet reached the point where it needs to make self-sacrifice.

Losing the offensive and defensive battle of the Khowaii Islands is only losing the hope of retaking the Khowaii Islands, and it is not the same as losing to the Liangxia Empire. With the strength of the Nuland Republic and its unparalleled geographical advantages, as long as it seizes the opportunity, there is still hope that it will turn defeat into victory, or at least remain undefeated.

As for whether the Khowaii Islands can be recovered, they have been occupied by the Liangxia Empire for decades, so it is not a big deal to occupy them for a few more decades.

In any case, it was not easy for Liang Xia's army to cross the two oceans and launch an attack on Nuland proper.

From this point of view, it must have been the Liangxia Empire that initiated the negotiations.

However, the problem is that the initiation of negotiations does not necessarily mean that they will be successful.

The Liangxia Empire took the initiative to initiate armistice negotiations, in fact, because it won the offensive and defensive battle of the Khowaii Islands, grasped the initiative in the war, and had bargaining chips. However, in order to negotiate an outcome, it is necessary to make appropriate concessions, or more precisely concessions that will appeal to the Nuland administration.

In Jackson's view, this concession was the return of the Howaii Islands.

Fundamentally speaking, the core contradiction between the Nuland Republic and the Liangxia Empire is actually the Howaii Islands. As for the Arras region, even if both sides claim sovereignty, because the strategic value is relatively small, the Liangxia Empire has actual control, which is not the main contradiction.

It is for this reason that in the decades following the Second Global War, the most important claim of the Nuland Republic was to recover the Khowaii Islands.

The post-war presidents have all taken this as their highest goal.

To this end, the Nuland authorities have made various attempts, including restoring normal diplomatic relations with the Liangxia Empire, and supporting emerging states such as the Van Luo Kingdom.

Obviously, participation in the Third Global War is also aimed at recovering the Khowaii Islands.

According to Jackson's judgment, as long as Stark's battle plan can be implemented smoothly, then after recapturing the Howaii Islands, the Nuland Navy will switch from offensive to defensive, and while vigorously strengthening the defense of the Howaii Islands, it will also contain the Liangxia Empire by sending troops to the Western Continent.

In the end, the Liangxia Empire was still forced to recognize the Khowaii Islands as part of the Nuland Republic and sign an armistice on this condition.

It can be seen that the key is the Khowaii Islands.

Since the Liangxia authorities took the initiative to initiate armistice talks, they must have known that only by ceding the Khowaii Islands could an armistice agreement be signed.

So, will the Liangxia Empire cede the Khowaii Islands?

Undoubtedly, this is a difficult question to answer.

Although there is enough reason to believe that the Liangxia Empire, which has won the offensive and defensive war of the Howaii Islands and seized the initiative in the Guia War, and has absolute military superiority, will certainly not use the Howaii Islands as a bargaining chip, Jackson also knows that as long as the Liangxia authorities want to end the war as soon as possible, reduce the losses caused by the war, and return to the original development track, they must compromise with the Nuland Republic.

To that end, the necessary concessions need to be made in the negotiations.

No longer constrained by the Nuland Republic, the Eastern Bloc, commanded by the Liang Xia Empire, was able to defeat the Western Continent Bloc within a year and dominate the entire World Island.

If an armistice agreement is not reached with the Nuland Republic, it will take 3 or even 5 years for the Liangxia Empire to defeat the Western Continent Group, and it may not be able to achieve a complete victory in the war, and in the end, it will definitely have to spend a lot of resources to clean up the mess after the war.

The key point is, in fact, the third military reform based on the new military doctrine mentioned earlier.

To put it bluntly, as long as the Liang Xia Empire insists on implementing the new military doctrine, it must do everything in its power to control the scale of this global war.

But the question is, don't those guys in Hwaseong know the powerful relationship?

If more than 10 years ago, when Ding Zhennan first put forward the new military doctrine, the Nuland military would still be skeptical, then now, to be precise, after the start of the Poshawan War, no one doubts the value of the new military doctrine, and almost all Nuland officers have become fans of Ding Zhennan.

It's the same with Jackson.

In Jackson's view, the greatest value of the new military doctrine proposed by Ding Zhennan is actually to solve a key problem of limiting war.

Cost.

Of course, it can also be said to be a benefit.

Looking at the past, especially after the First Global War, whether it was a global war or a local war, the investment in almost every war far exceeded the benefits, so even if the war was won, the gains still outweighed the losses, and the war became a loss-making business.

In many cases, war is used as a tool for politicians to achieve their personal ambitions.

Some may think that this is good for the maintenance of peace.

Obviously, such an understanding is very superficial.

War is never an end, but only a means to an end.

The point is that both war and peace are relative.

There is neither absolute war nor absolute peace in this world. War and peace are only relative forms of the relationship between the international community and countries.

To put it bluntly, there is no permanent peace at all.

In fact, the number one factor influencing and determining the international situation is the powerful relationship between countries, which can also be said to be the relationship between interests and contradictions.

If the common interest prevails, the international situation tends to be generally peaceful.

On the contrary, if contradictions prevail, then wars and conflicts will prevail.

There is no doubt that no matter what the method is, it will not be possible to completely eliminate the contradictions between countries. Not to mention the super-hegemony, even within the group of countries, there are conflicts of interest. For example, in the Eastern Bloc, the Narrow Empire and the High Giant Kingdom were constantly in turmoil because of the ownership of several small islands.

Within the group of states, contradictions can also be controlled.

Obviously, in the international community, especially among several superpowers, it will be very difficult to resolve contradictions through consultation and communication.

This is also the key to the inevitability of local wars.

No matter how we look at it, we must admit that local wars have played an irreplaceable role in easing international contradictions and rebalancing the relations between superpowers.

The fact that the situation of general peace was able to remain for more than 40 years after the Second Global War had a lot to do with the frequent local wars that broke out during this period.

Without these local wars, I am afraid that the third global war would have started 20 years earlier.

But the problem is that as the cost of war increases, especially as a few superpowers deplete the war dividends obtained during the Second Global War, the way of fighting a local war by paying proxies is no longer working, or that no superpower is willing to make a loss-making deal.

The most representative is the Polish-Iranian War.

Of course, the Polish-Iranian War can also be seen as a major turning point in post-war international relations.

In this local war, which lasted for more than ten years, the Liang Xia Empire, which was in full swing, burned all its capital, and lost very completely, and even almost lost the throne of the overlord. The Manman Empire and the Nuland Republic also took advantage of this opportunity to regain some of their right to speak and obtain the capital to bargain with the Liangxia Empire. It was during this period that the Republic of Nuland got rid of its status as a defeated country and its hegemonic status was recognized by the international community.

The key is that after the Polish-Iraqi War, the Liangxia Empire never took the initiative to get involved in large-scale local wars!

Even during the Second Southern Subcontinent War, the Liang Xia Empire was mainly threatened, and finally achieved its goal through threats.

Of course, the Empire and the Nuland Republic had similar lessons.

For example, in the first wave of national independence movements before the Polish-Iranian War, in order to maintain its hegemony in the Luxinhai region, the Empire did not hesitate to send troops to suppress the national independence movement in the Beixuan region.

The Nuland Republic, on the other hand, suffered a crushing defeat in the intervention of the Cuban, and its national reputation in the Caribbean and the southern continent has plummeted. Even now, Kuba, who is across the sea from the Republic of Nuland, has firmly pursued an anti-New Zealand strategy, which has become a lingering disease of ringworm in the Republic of Nuland.

Obviously, after the setbacks, the super-hegemony has invariably become a rat trap.

As a result, it will inevitably lead to the fact that the contradictions between the superpowers cannot be resolved, but will only become more and more serious, and in the end, there will be a general outbreak.

Even if everyone knows that the gains of a global war outweigh the losses, the leader of any country will not put the benefits of war in the first place when it comes to life and death, and the main consideration, or even the only consideration, is only how to ensure their own survival.

In a global war, winning is the greatest gain, or only by winning, can there be hope of recovering the cost.

It is in this way that a global war becomes inevitable.

It can be seen that if the problem of the benefits of war can be solved and the launching of local wars can be made profitable, the risk of a global war can be eliminated.

In fact, this is also the key to the fact that the new military doctrine has been highly respected since its birth.

The key is whether it is profitable to wage a local war.

The Battle of Posha Bay gave a near-perfect answer.

Although the total cost of the war was more than NZ$100 billion, and the direct war expenditure alone amounted to NZ$80 billion, it was not much compared to the benefits. For example, the potential extraction value of oil fields in occupied territories alone is in the trillions of dollars. For example, Kuwait's post-war rebuilt market amounted to hundreds of billions of New Zealand dollars, and the profits generated were at least tens of billions of New Zealand dollars.

Crucially, the expenses of the Posha Bay War were not entirely borne by the Liang Xia Empire.

Strictly speaking, the vast majority of the cost of the war was borne by the Allies.

It is equivalent to saying that the Liang Xia Empire used the money of the allies to fight a local war that only won and did not lose!

From this point of view, the Liang Xia Empire not only did not lose money, but also made a lot of money.

According to the analysis of the Nuland military, if there was no outbreak of the third global war, including the post-war arms sales and help Kuwait to rebuild after the war, the Liangxia empire would have been able to profit hundreds of billions of New Zealand dollars from this local war and become the biggest winner.

In fact, the other countries that participated in the war, especially the several countries that bore the costs of the war, did not lose money and also reaped a lot of benefits.

It is a pity that the new military doctrine was born too late.

If it had been born decades earlier, even if it had been ten years earlier, the new military doctrine would have changed the global landscape and could even have turned global wars into history.

In a sense, it was the new form of warfare shown by the Posha Bay War that drove the declining Riman Empire to a dead end.

The Liang Xia Empire had the capital and ability to wage local wars, and benefited from them.

Can the Manman Empire paint a scoop according to the gourd?

The answer is clearly no.

With the strength of the Liangxia Empire in the Posha Bay War, especially the ability to apply high-tech equipment, the future of the Liangxia Empire is extremely bleak, or there is no future at all. In addition, as far as military strategy is concerned, in the third global war that broke out in the ensuing world, the Western Army Corps still pursued the blitzkrieg and the strategy of great depth decades ago, and its basic military theory has not evolved for decades.

In fact, before the end of the Bosa Bay War, the Nuland military had made strategic deductions.

As far as Jackson knew, if the Xilu Empire had not launched a third global war, then in a few years, the Liangxia Empire would have used the necessary means, including war, to control the Republic of There, and at the same time increase its influence in the Beixuan region by strengthening the military deployment in the Xifan Canal, and infiltrate the Beixuan region, shaking the foundation of the Xilu Group on the southern shore of the Luxin Sea, and encircling the Xilu Group from the flank.

If it really wants to develop to this point, the Riman Empire can only disarm and surrender, and there is no chance to fight to the death.

If someone had put forward a new military doctrine ten years earlier, and with the strength of the Liangxia Empire at that time, or to be precise, the strength of the Liangxia Empire, the Manman authorities would not have chosen to take a risk, but would have been able to follow the example of the Liangxia Empire and expand their living space through local wars.

Not to mention anything else, ten years ago, as long as there was theoretical support and the belief that war was profitable, there was a high probability that the Liangxia Empire would force the Liangxia Empire to withdraw its troops from the Xifan Canal through local wars, that is, to retreat to the Kibu Fortress, so as to achieve full control of Lu Xinhai.

With this foundation, the Western Continent Group was able to advance south from the Nile River and from the Shifan Canal to the east, expanding its influence on the world island.

With the expansion of living space, the Xilu Group can fight for at least a few decades before it quickly declines.

Of course, there is no such thing as a desperate fight by starting a global war.

It's a pity that Ding Zhennan was born ten years later.

The question now is, does the Nuland Republic need to follow the example of the Manman Empire and fight the Liangxia Empire?