Raiding or Piracy?

Zakharra wrote:

Vince wrote:My guess on how it works in the Honorverse, based on historical practice and international law here on Earth:

I think that not only does one side have to declare war, but the side declaring war on another has to give notification of that declaration of war prior to commencing active hostilities.

For example, when the Japanese declared war on the United States in World War II, due to many different factors, the declaration was given by the Japanese ambassadors to the US State Department after the attack on Pearl Harbor had begun.

After the war, some of the Japanese involved were tried and convicted of war crimes because of this failure to give notice of the declaration of war before commencing active hostilities.

Historically, a formal declaration of war wasn't necessary. The declaration is a nicety, not a necessity. A war doesn't have to be declared for it to be a war (examples are the multitude of small wars raging around the world now and down through the centuries). Often times the first notice of war was the first attacks, not a declaration. A formal declaration can be looked upon as something stupid, like giving advanced notice of intent to attack. I think if the Japanese declaration had been delivered on time, it still would have pissed off the US since the timing of it meant that the attack would have already been launched. Even if no declaration had been given, it's not like the US then could have denied it wasn't in a state of war against the Japanese Empire at the time. It was at war, official declaration or not.

IIRC, the Japanese did intend to notify Washington of its declaration of war prior to the strike on Pearl, but its communications with its embassy got messed up. I don't recall how much time before the strike that the notification would have given had it have been delivered on schedule.

Don

n7axw wrote:IIRC, the Japanese did intend to notify Washington of its declaration of war prior to the strike on Pearl, but its communications with its embassy got messed up. I don't recall how much time before the strike that the notification would have given had it have been delivered on schedule.

Don

I want to say that it was supposed to be delivered one hour before the scheduled attack. Moot point though, 'cause it was delivered late.

The reason it was late was that the orders had to be decoded and the first thing decoded was an order for the ambassador to decode the rest of it personally. The ambassador was not as proficient as the code clerk, so it took him too long to decode the declaration.

FWIW, a formal declaration of war matters to the soldiers and sailors who fight the wars; some provisions only apply to participants in a "legal" war. Many Korean and Vietnam era POWs wish those had been declared wars; not that a formal declaration would have stopped the atrocities but they would have formed a basis for post-war prosecutions.

It doesn't really matter if an act is justified by an act of war or not. If your side loses it was illegal. If your side wins it was legal. That has been true since the dawn of civilization and will surely still be true two thousand years from now.
Mike doesn't need to worry. I'm sure that in the unlikely event that the SL wins the war she will have gone down fighting. Since the GA is going to win she will be regarded as one of the heros.

Weird Harold wrote:

n7axw wrote:IIRC, the Japanese did intend to notify Washington of its declaration of war prior to the strike on Pearl, but its communications with its embassy got messed up. I don't recall how much time before the strike that the notification would have given had it have been delivered on schedule.

Don

I want to say that it was supposed to be delivered one hour before the scheduled attack. Moot point though, 'cause it was delivered late.

That sounds about right. But basically they picked a delivery time that technically notified the US Government before the attack but deliberately left insufficient time for the US Government to effectively notify any potential targets.

Even if they'd pulled it off that the kind of technicality that comes off as a major F-U and isn't likely to cause a better reaction than a no-notice attack.

Hi Zakharra,

Quite right.

Making war requires only a single actor, anyone else declaring war is simply frosting on the cake.

Remember, the peeps had never made a formal declaration of war in almost 6 decades of conquering independent systems to loot them for the dolist BLS etc.

Even after the first war ended, some of the occupied systems still chose to stay with the new republic because of the greater potential economic opportunities, implying the peeps were justified in their piracy.

However, I suspect the CPS eventually got around to declaring war on Manticore; after somehow overcoming the ideological hurdles of Manticore somehow going from simply being the legislaturists' latest innocent target to the plutocratic thieves of the people's wealth; however unlikely or illogical that happens to be.

Given Robert S. Pierre's aspirations to rebuild Haven, continuing the war was a very dangerous distraction at best, when ending the war and massively demobilizing the navy could have made his reform efforts much simpler, as the cunning St Just may have suggested, and obviously make Haven much more dangerous to Manticore in the future.

Regarding any off screen parliamentary approval, don't forget the treaty of peace and alliance with Haven, when the Mesan Alignment was identified as the true enemy, the SL as their dupes, so Filareta's crossing the hyper limit effectively confirmed the SL was at war with the GA, remember it was the GA fleet that met him, a sentiment that all the Haven officers evidently agreed with.

Mike's brief to her squadron officers after her dinner in chapter 29, where she makes it plain she construes Filareta's invasion as proof a state of war exists, without reference to any formal declaration certainly protects her subordinate officers, even if they hadn't agreed with her, which might have included their own personal interpretation of the treaty with Haven.

Taking the war to the nearest SLN bases, which happened to be in Meyers, was the same as the RMN reaction in the first Haven war, of preventing the enemy from making further attacks from his advanced bases, and justifiable from many historical examples.

If special parliamentary and congressional approval was required, the apparent considerable government majorities made it redundant to mention when RFC was probably worried about word count.

So there was no way her seizure of Meyers was piracy, its simply war.

L

Zakharra wrote:

Vince wrote:My guess on how it works in the Honorverse, based on historical practice and international law here on Earth:

I think that not only does one side have to declare war, but the side declaring war on another has to give notification of that declaration of war prior to commencing active hostilities.

For example, when the Japanese declared war on the United States in World War II, due to many different factors, the declaration was given by the Japanese ambassadors to the US State Department after the attack on Pearl Harbor had begun.

After the war, some of the Japanese involved were tried and convicted of war crimes because of this failure to give notice of the declaration of war before commencing active hostilities.

Historically, a formal declaration of war wasn't necessary. The declaration is a nicety, not a necessity. A war doesn't have to be declared for it to be a war (examples are the multitude of small wars raging around the world now and down through the centuries). Often times the first notice of war was the first attacks, not a declaration. A formal declaration can be looked upon as something stupid, like giving advanced notice of intent to attack. I think if the Japanese declaration had been delivered on time, it still would have pissed off the US since the timing of it meant that the attack would have already been launched. Even if no declaration had been given, it's not like the US then could have denied it wasn't in a state of war against the Japanese Empire at the time. It was at war, official declaration or not.

Hi lyonheart,

Two points in response to what you've said:

1) IIRC, the line coming out of the Committee and Public Information 9pushed heavily by Cordelia Ransom) was that it was the Manticoran Alliance which began the war by attacking the PRH, not the other way around.

2) He may or may not have been correct, but Pierre felt that continuing the war was the only chance he had of pushing his economic reforms through. The problem wasn't improving the tech base or the educational base, though both of those were essential to the project, it was persuading the Dolists to get off their arses and work for a living. He needed the war, the spectre of Manticore's plutocratic, parasitical rulers hammering on the Peoples' doors to motivate them to do that. Without an external, existential threat to the PRH (or the illusion of one, at least), the Dolists would have stayed welded to their couches rather than accept the hard work and sacrifices needed to restore a functioning economy.

"There was a young lady of Niger who smiled as she rode on a tiger. They returned from the ride with the lady inside. And the smile was on the face of the tiger."

That was Pierre and St Just's problem. They were on the tiger. They needed the war both to divert the navy and to rally the dolists behind the CPS. Manticore provided the scapegoat, the enemy to rally everybody against. Otherwise they would find themselves "inside," probably sooner rather than later.

Don