Solar League Assembly

What I was thinking is a number of assemblymen of wealthy member planets and their businesses could put heavy pressure on the so-called 5 Mandarins to make some changes. Unfortunately, the Alignment and Manticore-Haven may not allow them to do so. It seems that a number of wealthy planets could form a compact that may help them survive. If they could help the Solar League hang on. I just feel sorry that you have a huge number of core planets that have existed together for over a thousand years that break apart are going to create enormous damage to billions of people.

JeffEngel wrote:

lyonheart wrote:The other problem is that the SL isn't going to be around long enough for another reform movement to evolve, NTM given how corrupt the current assembly is.

RFC has stated the SL won't last 5 years ago when it was still 1921 PD, some have bets it won't last beyond 1925 PD, or even 1924.

The SL is toast, while a rump may eventually form from the remnants made up mainly of the old league, it will be far smaller and hopefully far wiser.

L

It'd be a steep challenge to be less wise!

There's reason to hope that existing reform movements, and the ones that will crop up fast as things keep going down the toilet, will be a part of the new governments formed.

I'm curious about what will draw systems together in a new government. OFS sectors form, administratively at least, somewhat natural groups, but that's only out beyond the SL proper itself. If there are any lower level political divisions inside the League short of individual systems, I recall no mention of them and they certainly don't seem prominent. A very old colony and her daughter colonies may form a group, but that's not going to go too far and Beowulf's example in the Assembly vote shows those bonds aren't strong either. Sheer formless homogeneity of SL space in political terms may be one of the biggest obstacles to arranging stable successor states. The Renaissance Factor may have a large advantage there just out of prior planning.

Well, there has been a mention of a "Judean League," but I don't think we have any details on it. It may be a single planet with a government named "The Judean League," or it may be a collection of planets, in a league, within The League.

Regardless, I suspect that there are several subunits within the league, either formal or informal, based on things like trade reliance, pre-league political units, or even a longterm distrust of neighboring systems. These are the "fracture lines" that the GA is planning on exploiting.

crewdude48 wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:
There's reason to hope that existing reform movements, and the ones that will crop up fast as things keep going down the toilet, will be a part of the new governments formed.

I'm curious about what will draw systems together in a new government. OFS sectors form, administratively at least, somewhat natural groups, but that's only out beyond the SL proper itself. If there are any lower level political divisions inside the League short of individual systems, I recall no mention of them and they certainly don't seem prominent. A very old colony and her daughter colonies may form a group, but that's not going to go too far and Beowulf's example in the Assembly vote shows those bonds aren't strong either. Sheer formless homogeneity of SL space in political terms may be one of the biggest obstacles to arranging stable successor states. The Renaissance Factor may have a large advantage there just out of prior planning.

Well, there has been a mention of a "Judean League," but I don't think we have any details on it. It may be a single planet with a government named "The Judean League," or it may be a collection of planets, in a league, within The League.

Regardless, I suspect that there are several subunits within the league, either formal or informal, based on things like trade reliance, pre-league political units, or even a longterm distrust of neighboring systems. These are the "fracture lines" that the GA is planning on exploiting.

I think the Judean League is outside the SL. My guess is that it is more than a single system but not much more.

The fracture lines the GA is to exploit needn't be the sort that become national borders - it's enough for the basic strategy that the whole League is a fragile entity. It's got an unworkable formal government; it's got a bureaucracy to which no one owes real loyalty; it's seething with corruption; the government, such as it is, is tolerated only because it rests so lightly on the systems which could theoretically offer it legal interference and heavily on frontier systems that cannot resist it. And the GA, the MA, and the war are all jumping up and down on those soft spots.

I suppose the things that could help smaller states coalesce - one having an excess military to offer for protection, trade relations, perhaps common languages or similar genetic mods among colonists to less-than-Earthlike worlds - may well be there without them being things we've seen much of in the books yet.

JeffEngel wrote:Well, there has been a mention of a "Judean League," but I don't think we have any details on it. It may be a single planet with a government named "The Judean League," or it may be a collection of planets, in a league, within The League.

IIRC, it's part of the SL now per comments by David.

james99 wrote:What I was thinking is a number of assemblymen of wealthy member planets and their businesses could put heavy pressure on the so-called 5 Mandarins to make some changes. Unfortunately, the Alignment and Manticore-Haven may not allow them to do so. It seems that a number of wealthy planets could form a compact that may help them survive. If they could help the Solar League hang on. I just feel sorry that you have a huge number of core planets that have existed together for over a thousand years that break apart are going to create enormous damage to billions of people.

You overestimate how important the SL is to the average system, particularly the wealthy ones. Consider that tomorrow you wake up and the UN has declared bankrupcy fired everyone and put their real-estate up for sale. What is the impact of this on China, Russia, the US and the European Union? What are the critical functions that the UN has for these nations? That's about the effect that the SL has on the core systems.

The issue that, like the EU, the SL member systems have been largely only paying attention on paper to their defense needs, with the US playing the part of the SL military to the EU, is another issue.

I think that the Solarian League has a much more intimate relationship with most of the core planets than the UN. Probably much more like the EU after remember more than a thousand years. Doesn't anyone feel any regret for a thousand years of history torn up. Let's be blunt, I would like to see the reaction to a joint Manticore-Haven fleet outside of Terra with an invitation for the "five mandarins" to come aboard the flagship to discuss matters. I agree with Honor Harrington that the only way to beat the Solarian League is to break it up into its componet parts. I still feel sorry for all the destruction and a regret for all the shared history that will be destroyed.

james99 wrote:I think that the Solarian League has a much more intimate relationship with most of the core planets than the UN. Probably much more like the EU after remember more than a thousand years. Doesn't anyone feel any regret for a thousand years of history torn up. Let's be blunt, I would like to see the reaction to a joint Manticore-Haven fleet outside of Terra with an invitation for the "five mandarins" to come aboard the flagship to discuss matters. I agree with Honor Harrington that the only way to beat the Solarian League is to break it up into its componet parts. I still feel sorry for all the destruction and a regret for all the shared history that will be destroyed.

There have been a lot of worlds and hundreds of billions of people who have been spared war under the aegis of the Solarian League. But there have been so many worlds and hundreds of billions who have paid for that government with generations of oppression on the Verge and in the Shell.

Those billions under the League have been, wherever their education and information has been a League responsibility, lied to and raised to be brainless, ignorant consumers of whatever easy to grasp propaganda Education and Information has seen fit to sell them, consigning all of humanity outside the League to the status of ignorant savages, who should be grateful for all the misery OFS puts them through for cash. If they even bother to think of them at all.

Very little of that welfare they've enjoyed can be credited to the League. It's been an organization that's policed some borders - but it's been in effect, on that frontier, the largest pirate ever, and the people cozy deep inside are among the beneficiaries of that generational piracy. It's been something that's helped core worlds skip out on defense responsibilities, but those may not weigh so heavily on any star system and those star systems could have worked out a way to be at peace among one another that would not have spawned a monster that kept them unburdened by taxes and safe at home while feeding on those hidden Verge billions and quietly profiting by the bondage of enslaved human beings without number.

I feel very sorry for all those who may die or be maimed, those who will lose friends, family, wealth and careers in the undoing of the League. I do. But the monster has been a parasite feeding on all around it and keeping well-fed and stupid all it can within it for enough centuries. Put a stake in its heart, cut off its head, burn the remains, and help the star systems that once composed its members and ranch animals put together something good in its place.

james99 wrote:I think that the Solarian League has a much more intimate relationship with most of the core planets than the UN. Probably much more like the EU after remember more than a thousand years. Doesn't anyone feel any regret for a thousand years of history torn up. Let's be blunt, I would like to see the reaction to a joint Manticore-Haven fleet outside of Terra with an invitation for the "five mandarins" to come aboard the flagship to discuss matters. I agree with Honor Harrington that the only way to beat the Solarian League is to break it up into its componet parts. I still feel sorry for all the destruction and a regret for all the shared history that will be destroyed.

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James --
Good post -- It has generated a good discussion.
1) IMHO the shared history is not destroyed -- History is History. Records and documentation (credit and blame) may be destroyed but the history remains.
2) Most of the SL Core systems have a common history and trade with Earth / Terra from the reconstruction after Earth's "Final War" (shades of WWI -- "The War to End All Wars") and will likely form a core or rump of a "New SL".
3) The Shell Worlds, The Protectorates and the Verge systems do not have that shared history / national sense or comraderie. In many ways, the Verge and shell worlds are a parallel (on steroids) of the Central and South American countries (or the state of Hawaii) while they were effectively run by oil, fruit and sugar companies, but we don't have to go into that particular bit of history in this forum.

As Thandi notes in Crown of Slaves, or Firebrand notes, many of the Verge worlds hold NO loyalty to the League; those working for the League do it as the best of their available options.

-- Stewart

No system that has lived and grown as the Solar League can be a totally negative system. Even Beowulf has been a member for hundreds of years. Granted many worlds have been ill treated and many have rebelled to be free but no system has been run by angels including Haven and Manticore. I do have a lot of sadness for the breakup of the Solar League.

james99 wrote:No system that has lived and grown as the Solar League can be a totally negative system. Even Beowulf has been a member for hundreds of years. Granted many worlds have been ill treated and many have rebelled to be free but no system has been run by angels including Haven and Manticore. I do have a lot of sadness for the breakup of the Solar League.

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That's essentially the thoughts of Honor's Uncle Jacques B-R y C about the League; and likely the feeling of many in the Core. But that's what is also likely to be the basis of the "rump" League post-conflict.
They will have the history of the old League but will need to learn to see the other sectors as equals. That is NOT the case now.

-- Stewart