OAS Founded
1948, 1967
Founded with the specific aim of promoting democracy in the western hemisphere, the OAS has been an occasionally useful body for the promotion of US interests within the hemisphere. It provided international legitimacy for US actions during both the Cuban Missile Crisis and the US invasion of Grenada. Trade promotion and economic development were added to the OAS charter in Buenos Aires in 1967. The revision of the charter also established the existence of permanent OAS diplomatic venues with the creation of a General Assembly in Washington, DC.
Time: Mid War
Side: US
Ops: 1
Removed after event: Yes
As USSR
Several things combine to make this one of the nastiest US cards in the game for the USSR to deal with:
- For starters, 1 Op is obviously not enough to offset the 2 influence. It also makes it unspaceable.
- If neither side is in South America, then it is terrible to just hand it over to the US with such an event.
- Even if both sides are already in South America, OAS Founded has so many different targets for its influence that it is therefore nearly impossible to preemptively defend against (like the US can with Allende).
- In particular, all of the 2-stability battlegrounds in the Americas are vulnerable to OAS Founded. If Brazil is 0/2, then OAS Founded will make it either 2/2 or 2/3, and then a 3 Ops card is enough to take it over.
Accordingly, unless one side or the other has thoroughly locked up the Americas, I hold onto it until I can find one of the following ways of discarding it:
- If neither side is in South America, it’s sometimes worth a speculative gamble to headline OAS Founded, thereby giving you a juicy coup target on AR1. This could backfire horribly, though, if the US lowers DEFCON in the headline, denying you the coup, or if the US puts influence into Chile, whereupon you probably have to realign Chile instead (and give the US the battleground coup).
- Brezhnev Doctrine allows you to space the card or repair its damage with 2 Ops instead of 1. The latter is usually preferable, but the former can be better if the US isn’t in South America yet.
- Five Year Plan, in addition to being able to magically discard scoring cards, can also magically discard OAS Founded if played on AR7 holding only these two cards. It will still trigger the event, but now you have 3 Ops with which to deal with OAS Founded, rather than just 1.
As US
This is a gigantic pain for the USSR to deal with, and so it’s nice if you can return it to the draw deck for the USSR to draw. I often find, however, that I can put it to better use either as a normal event (if neither side is in South America and DEFCON has dropped to 2), or as a particularly painful AR7 play. It is also a nice headline by threatening an advantageous AR1 scoring.
Twilight Strategy 
The nobody-in-South-America-yet headline also has the problem of the US saying “I’ll take 2 in Chile” (or 1 in Chile / 1 in Costa Rica or something). Even blowing a 4 ops on the coup, that’ll require rolling a 4 merely to undo the damage, and a 5 or 6 to get in yourself. Seems too risky.
Very true. You could at least realign Chile, then, but I agree that it’s overall not a good idea.
As the US, this is also a good middle-of-the-turn play because then you definitely can’t get couped out. If you headline it or play it on AR7, you probably have to put both of the influence in Chile to avoid getting couped on AR1. But if you play it in the middle of the turn when Defcon is at 2 you can put 1 inf into 2 separate battle grounds, which makes you harder to re-align out than having both influence in the same battleground (similar to the USSR playing early De-Stalinization and dropping 1 influence into each of the 4 SA battlegrounds).
Agreed. Sometimes I will spread the two influence and break two countries’ control (if I need the access). It’s also a classic AR7 play.
Great article – thanks! I’d never thought of the use of 5YP to get rid of a bad card like this but leave enough ops to do something about it. Great tip.