Kettle meet pot. This is basically the line your alliance/allies used for most of the wars on Alpha/allies. It was only after we just stopped playing in a more traditional way, a year or two back, that it changed because we no longer had enough whale targets for y'all.
I can understand The Syndicate's position in that they are developing the traditional/organic whale tier alliance (quite impressively I might add). It's pretty obvious after rolling Rose that tS was the next target at some point. You weren't going to let them get grow to a sea of c40 nations. They weren't going to ally you to consolidate and obtain complete immunity, to their credit again.