JeffEngel wrote:n7axw wrote:I agree with the semtiments being posted here.
But we do need to sober up. What replaces the League will not be sweetness and light. Warlordism. Pocket empires locked in rivalry. Perpetual war as old grudges are settled and replaced by new ones.
The League did keep the peace and allow billions to flourish whatever its obvious faults. That doesn't mean that it can be allowed to go on as is. But it does mean that we need a sober awareness of the consequences.
Don
There is, at least, in this case the Grand Alliance - for this purpose, including Erewhon, Torch, Maya Sector, and likely a lot of other small star nations out there - with a serious trade and political interest in arranging things so that states have stable borders and trade isn't terribly upset by piracy.
It's definitely not going to be a bright shining era of peace and light, and if the MA remains around to stir stuff up - or if the Andermani get too frisky to bite off unwilling bits - it's going to be a lot worse.
But there is still that powerful coalition among the SEM, the Republic of Haven, and like-minded powers that has the interest and some ability to nudge things into a more peaceful arrangement.
For the old, core, long-term Solarian worlds, there's the expectation of peace and good order, and what grudges they hold are going to run headlong into the wall of Grand Alliance disinterest in warlordism and all their neighbors having plenty of interest in setting back up some sort of peaceful modus vivendi. Is that going to be a brick wall or a pillow wall? Too soon to say. But it's going to offer some resistance, and maybe enough.
For places that have "enjoyed" only the costs of the Solarian League without its benefits (or the benefits of sheer time and exposure to developed economies - frankly, that's about all the League's offered) - the chance to get some of their own back may have a lot of appeal. On the other hand, they may not have anything much to support getting their own back. Angry Somali gangsters are not about to create an empire spanning all of east Africa, and here we've got the GA eagerly looking to treat all those worlds like the Talbott Cluster or occupied Meyers. Looking at outright annexation under SEM terms, the Talbott Cluster was very happy, apart from a few crackpots; looking at a local administration subordinate to a light-handed but massively superior metropole, Meyers' government was cordial and obliging.
The rest of the SL is likely to get a third treatment - sponsored and encouraged independent multistellar states - but that's a lot like Talbott only with a treaty relationship with the SEM, Haven, and all the like-minded others instead of the imperial relationship with Manticore. Trying to get Talbotters to form a state with one another was certainly a trick, but clearly the SEM has practice with it by now, there, in Silesia, in Meyers - and with a rougher hand in Endicott and Monica, for that matter.
On the other hand - you'll be dealing with people who should be mightily grateful for being liberated from the damn League, like Meyers - and Meyers was a case where the League had not even been that bad, by comparison. That gratitude should buy a lot of tolerance and patience for setting up better, more responsive smaller interstellar governments.
Oh, I'm not going to say that there aren't going to be bright spots. But by in large things will be pretty grim for a long time for huge sections of the galaxy. Manticore and the rest of the GA can't --and shouldn't-- attempt to exercise the police power that the old League routinely practiced. Lots and lots of people are going to have to become accustomed to being responsible for themselves in ways that they have not been accustomed to being which is going to lead to a sort of Darwinianism that's not going to be pretty.
Don
