dsrseraphin wrote:Galactic Sapper wrote:
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Despite the name change, I don't think Manticore really intends to build an empire - at least not on the scale the Solarian League did. While Manticore may need to temporarily help newly-independent systems get themselves set up, they're more likely to let them go their own way as soon as they are able. If the RMN starts downsizing some in the near future, many of those half-pay officers may well end up as loaners helping newly independent systems set up navies and customs patrols of their own.
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Weather or not Manitcore intends to be a bona fide Empire is actually irrelevant. Nature, especially the Human settled portion of it, abhors a (power) vacuum!
Politically there has ALWAYS been a dominant polity within a given region of human settlement. Now that the neobarb Manties have exposed the Solly empire as naked, somebody has to step up and be the dominant one.
Don't forget that the MA
initiated the whole fracas so that
it could be kingpin. The MA now wants to not only be
The Empire but wants it over the dead body of Manticore - not the GA, Manticore specifically. So if Manticore is to survive it will have to beat MA to death and when it does it will already be on the back of the
Imperial Tiger.
Dominant polities have multiple ways to achieve and hold on to their dominance. Post WWII Pax Americana was achieved by a deliberate pushes in military affairs, economic affairs, and cultural affairs. Pax Britannia was achieved the same way. England made favorable nation treaties at the end of a cannon; America did it by treaty and loans.
My suggestion that the GA encourage the creation of a Junction Network Treaty Organization is for the same reason US & UK fostered the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. There will be jockeying in the Verge and among the splinters of the League, some rogue polities will develop and the MA will be out there brewing trouble. So just like the US & UK found themselves after WWII with a destabilized Europe and a grasping resurgent USSR; the GA finds itself with a destabilized League AND a cold war opponent in the MA; an opponent that has superior tech in some areas, ready made proxies, and a deployed covert action network!
The really interesting thing is NATO achieved its goal without a general war - the USSR is no more; and NATO persist, admitting nations that are over the horizon far from the North Atlantic.
Creating a Junction Network Treaty Organization would play to the implied goal of the Harrington Doctrine, nurturing independent polities that cooperate with each other and with the GA, while reducing the need to empire build by anyone that joins the treaty org. Only fools want to kill the goose that lays the
golden eggs.
Once the Junction Network Treaty Organization gets set up, it would be advantageous for Manticore to allow 'mission creep' once pirating heats up, by allowing the treaty org to do convoy duty. The resultant benefits to the GA are: not being accused of pushing warships into intra-national or international space; not having to spend money on maintaining the patrols; and it can sell 'export' versions of frigates & destroyers; all the while looking like the benevolent partner that the say they are.
Manticore may not be in the empire building business but it or the GA will be dragooned into it unless it sets up a straw-man to build the empire around. A junction network treaty organization will win 'hearts & minds' better than direct navy patrols or naked economic favoritism. It also simplifies a potentially complex political landscape.
One last thing, as I said the network should start with those junctions that were affected by Lacoon 2, that does not include the junctions in the GA because they were already in 'owned' by GA members and there was no need to take them over.
-David S.
