Post war plans

n7axw wrote:

Commodore Oakius wrote:I am wondering the same. If several systems are united by con quest will the Grand Alliance let them stand, as long as no injustices are being carried out, or will they step in and stop them?
I see many syaytems and goveners doing this if the have the naval strength to do so. Will the Grand Alliance stomp on them all because they are doing conquests, or let them go if they are not extremeists?

Darned good question. I suspect that the answer will have to be decided on a case by case basis and how the commercial and military interests of GA members are impacted. That sounds a bit less than idealistic, but GA simply doesn't have the resourses to play cop for the whole galaxy.

Don

spacerguy wrote: I think the key will be the recognition that they can't do everything and many of the worlds/systems/people are on their own.

Choices are going to have to be made which are going to cause many sleepless nights (or maybe decades) and people and worlds are going to die based on them. Glad I've never had to make such choices.

Also, will all the successor states of the SL be willing to abide by the Eridani Edict? Especially when they think they can get away with it in the general chaos?

Commodore Oakius wrote:I am wondering the same. If several systems are united by con quest will the Grand Alliance let them stand, as long as no injustices are being carried out, or will they step in and stop them?
I see many syaytems and goveners doing this if the have the naval strength to do so. Will the Grand Alliance stomp on them all because they are doing conquests, or let them go if they are not extremeists?

hanuman wrote:

Commodore Oakius wrote:I am wondering the same. If several systems are united by con quest will the Grand Alliance let them stand, as long as no injustices are being carried out, or will they step in and stop them?
I see many syaytems and goveners doing this if the have the naval strength to do so. Will the Grand Alliance stomp on them all because they are doing conquests, or let them go if they are not extremeists?

I think someone called it the 'Harrington Doctrine' someplace? Anyways, nowhere did I read that the 'Harrington Doctrine' is in any way concerned with HOW those successor states come into being, just that it will be necessary to break up the Solarian League and suppress any effort to resurrect it in some way. In other words, the Star Empire/Grand Alliance will need to ensure that after the League's disintegration, the star nations that succeed it won't attempt to create a political union of the same scope and form.

Theemile wrote:Remember the Eridani Edict is a law passed by the Solarian League. It is not a convention. No one agreed to it, just everybody knows that if they unleash mega-deaths on a civilian population without regard or chance to surrender, the Solarian League is going to destroy them.

drothgery wrote:

Theemile wrote:Remember the Eridani Edict is a law passed by the Solarian League. It is not a convention. No one agreed to it, just everybody knows that if they unleash mega-deaths on a civilian population without regard or chance to surrender, the Solarian League is going to destroy them.

It's an amendment to the League constitution, actually (and was implemented that way explicitly to get around the problems of passing a law in the League). But the principle behind it -- that There Will Be No Indiscriminate Use of WMDs on Civilians -- is vitally important in the Honorverse; if a non-trivial percentage of states with modern weapons reject it, the human race will not survive.

hanuman wrote:I think someone called it the 'Harrington Doctrine' someplace? Anyways, nowhere did I read that the 'Harrington Doctrine' is in any way concerned with HOW those successor states come into being, just that it will be necessary to break up the Solarian League and suppress any effort to resurrect it in some way. In other words, the Star Empire/Grand Alliance will need to ensure that after the League's disintegration, the star nations that succeed it won't attempt to create a political union of the same scope and form.

Storm from the Shadows
Chapter Forty-four
(Honor Alexander-Harrington speaking)
wrote:"So if we get into an all-out war with the League, our strategy is going to have to have a very definite political element. We'll have to make it clear that the war wasn't our idea. We'll have to drive home the notion that we're not after any sort of punitive peace, that we're not trying to annex any additional territory, that we have no desire to conduct reprisals against people who don't want to fight us. We need to tell them, every step of the way, that what we really want is a negotiated settlement . . . and at the same time, we have to hit the League as a whole so hard that the fracture lines already there under the surface open right up. We have to split the League into separate sectors, into successor states, none of which have the sheer size and concentrated industrial power and manpower of the present league. Successor states that are our own size, or smaller. And we have to negotiate bilateral peace treaties with each of those successor states as they declare their willingness to opt out of the general conflict to get us to stop beating on their heads. And once we have those peace treaties, we have to not only honor them, but step beyond them. We need to use trade incentives, mutual defense pacts, educational assistance, every single thing we can think of to show them that we are—and to really be, not just pretend to be—the sort of neighbor and ally they'll want around. In other words, once we break the League militarily, once we splinter it into multiple, mutually independent star nations, we have to see to it that none of those star nations have any motive to fuse themselves back together and gang up on us all over again."

Weird Harold wrote:

hanuman wrote:I think someone called it the 'Harrington Doctrine' someplace? Anyways, nowhere did I read that the 'Harrington Doctrine' is in any way concerned with HOW those successor states come into being, just that it will be necessary to break up the Solarian League and suppress any effort to resurrect it in some way. In other words, the Star Empire/Grand Alliance will need to ensure that after the League's disintegration, the star nations that succeed it won't attempt to create a political union of the same scope and form.

The "Harrington Doctrine" -- for lack of a better name:

Storm from the Shadows
Chapter Forty-four
(Honor Alexander-Harrington speaking)
wrote:"So if we get into an all-out war with the League, our strategy is going to have to have a very definite political element. We'll have to make it clear that the war wasn't our idea. We'll have to drive home the notion that we're not after any sort of punitive peace, that we're not trying to annex any additional territory, that we have no desire to conduct reprisals against people who don't want to fight us. We need to tell them, every step of the way, that what we really want is a negotiated settlement . . . and at the same time, we have to hit the League as a whole so hard that the fracture lines already there under the surface open right up. We have to split the League into separate sectors, into successor states, none of which have the sheer size and concentrated industrial power and manpower of the present league. Successor states that are our own size, or smaller. And we have to negotiate bilateral peace treaties with each of those successor states as they declare their willingness to opt out of the general conflict to get us to stop beating on their heads. And once we have those peace treaties, we have to not only honor them, but step beyond them. We need to use trade incentives, mutual defense pacts, educational assistance, every single thing we can think of to show them that we are—and to really be, not just pretend to be—the sort of neighbor and ally they'll want around. In other words, once we break the League militarily, once we splinter it into multiple, mutually independent star nations, we have to see to it that none of those star nations have any motive to fuse themselves back together and gang up on us all over again."

That doesn't explicitly exclude warlords and conquerors, but I think the "mutual defense pacts" would bring them into opposition with expansionist polities through pacts with the warlord's neighbors.

Zakharra wrote:I think using force to literally limit the size of the successor states is going to go over like a lead balloon.

Zakharra wrote:If said new nation reforms a something like the SL (but with an effective constitution) and has declared themselves neutral towards the GA, the GA would be killing it's PR image if it forced said new nation to stop growing.

Weird Harold wrote:If the SEM/GA plan works as stated, "...that none of those star nations have any motive to fuse themselves back together," the only way to reform something the size of the SL would be through conquest and mutual defense treaties would come into effect long before it reached SL size.