Why did it take so long to deal with Silesia?

Minor issue which I'm sure has many plausible answers but none-the-less I found odd:

Every time Silesia is described in the books it is in the most derogatory tones. Honor calls Silesia "a continual, ongoing meltdown into anarchy." We know that the Silesian Navy was a joke and its political structure riddled with corruption (to include providing sanctuary to pirates and slavers). My question is: why did it take so long for Manticore to finally decide to work with the Andermani and clean house? This would have provided several immediate benefits:

1) The cost (in both treasure and lives) to Manticoran shipping and trade interests from piracy would be greatly reduced.

2) As a corollary to 1, trade with Silesia would experience a boom with huge positive economic benefits.

3) It would free up units that were otherwise assigned to escort duties (this might be offset by the need to provide defense forces, but with the Andermani placated, you could probably get away with providing only a nodal police force).

4) It would end the wholly unnecessary friction with the Andermani. In fact, with a little creative diplomacy, they could have tipped the Andermani from "neutral in our favor" to "actively resisting Havenite aggression." The Andermani were already wary of and hostile to Haven, and Manticore was desperate for more hulls early in the conflict. Seems like a natural symbiotic arrangement to me.

5) There is a strong moral argument for destroying the safe haven for slavers, pirates, and petty warlords and freeing the innocent civilians in Silesia from the graft, corruption, and abuse of their governors.

Given all of this, it is a bit baffling to me why Manticore was so adamant for so long about preserving Silesian "independence."

Domestic political concerns in the Star Kingdom. The traditionally opposition parties(conservatives, progressives and liberals) fought the annexation of Basilisk tooth and claw. They would have revolted at the prospect of anything like what actually happened to Silesia in the end.

It wasn't until the conclusion of Operation Thunderbolt and the total rout of those parties, with High Ridge in prison, Descroix vanished and New Kiev ousted by Cathy that more pragmatical policies could be implemented.

In addition to those domestic concerns, the SKM always had concerns about what might happen if the Andermani Empire absorbed Silesia entirely, potentially emerging as a second hostile superpower, this one with its economical policies in order and a fleet presence in the Gregor system.

A) Manticore had no reason to let the Anderman Empire expand. The Empire was a rival to Manticore, and potentially a danger to face after dealing with Haven. Remember that the Anderman Empire was carefully watching the Havenite War to see if they could gain any advantage from it.

B) There was a huge resistance in the Parliament to anything that smacked of imperialism, let alone something as blatant as taking over foreign systems like that. There is no way that it would have been accepted before the Empire was already a reality.

C) Not even Queen Elizabeth was imagining the creation of a multi-system state before Trevor's Star asked to join, and then the Talbott Cluster terminus was discovered.

Remember, there was a powerful anti-expansion faction operating domestically. Up until the Conservative/Liberal/Progressive meltdown of 1919, the faction was big enough to stymie any attempt to annex Silesia. It's also important to note that there were enough Centrists, Crown Loyalists, and independents willing to cross the isle for any number of reasons, whether it be protecting their own privilege, fear of diluting the Manticoran social mix, and so on. Following the ascension of the Alexander government and resumption of hostilities, those factors are no longer in play. The 3 Opposition parties disintegrated, and the situation was so manifestly dire that it was critical to get the Andermani involved. And if the only way to get the Andermani involved was to break up Silesia, well, then that's what it takes.

DarkEnigma wrote:Given all of this, it is a bit baffling to me why Manticore was so adamant for so long about preserving Silesian "independence."

That was more about preserving Silesian independence from forceful annexation by the Andermani. One thing to remember here is that until King Roger's buildup against Haven, Manticore's foreign policy was rather isolationist. They were willing to protect their own shipping, but they didn't have territorial ambitions beyond securing the Termini of the Junction; the will and capability to directly intervene in the affairs of another Star Nation, even one as dysfunctional as Silesia, just wasn't there prior to the Havenite War.

As for your points, well, consider how true each of them are with regards to the US or Europe vis a vis Africa, and how much willingness there is for us to send troops in there to restore order. Nationbuilding, as the past decades have shown, is really hard, and requires a lot of dedicated effort before it can turn a good profit; It's no wonder to my mind that a nation as fundamentally isolationist as the SKM would stay out of it as much as possible. That they also don't want a nation as ...mercurial... as the Andermani to gobble up a bunch of systems and become yet another potential threat is also quite understandable.

A big part of it was probably political. Don't forget the dog-fighting that went on just in regards to the "annexation" of Basilisk when Manticore actually had a valid reason for being there. For the most part (ie until recently) Manticore was anti-expansionist. They had three planets that weren't even completely populated and had no real reason to spread out and they weren't interested in expansion for expansion's sake.

The decision to finally deal with Silesia wasn't arrived at easily and its planning and implementation were difficult. In the process of Manticore becoming an empire, the annexation of Silesia is the one part that makes some people uneasy. Of all the territorial additions, it's the one that is closest to expansion by force which is something that Manticore had so far avoided.

I imagine that foreign perceptions also had some impact on dealing with the Silesia problem. Think about all the crap that certain nations today get for "meddling" in other countries' affairs (I apologize for mentioning real-world stuff and that's all I'll say). The decision to partition Silesia went counter to what the prevailing Manticoran political climate was like for most of its existence. Changing that stance takes time.

Excellent points all. Manticore's inherent isolationist bias is a perfectly plausible reasoning. I did consider that before I asked my question, but I thought that someone as savvy as Cromarty would have been able to make the case for bringing the formidable Andermani Navy to bear against Haven (and all those economic benefits to grease palms with as icing on the cake).

What I forgot though was that Manticore was whipping Haven's keister just fine without Andermani aid during the early stages of the war.

A few points to mention.

Prior to the buildup by King Roger, the navy was not very large. Nor did it have any thought of expansion outside it's own star system. Manticore was purely a regional power, despite its enormous wealth. It had quite a lot of light units for a navy at peacetime, but not many capital units. Most of the pressure it could bring to bear was economic, not military. Its capital units included a SD that was in service over two centuries, and mostly consisted of BBs.

As well, the Conservative Association probably didn't care much about a bunch of neobarbs slaugtering each other. They barely cared about their own systems "commoners." Smuggling, Selling munitions, abetting slavers, and funding piracy were all acts that members probably took part in.

While I don't mean to suggest that all of the CA was involved in such practices (One must be polite, after all), I imagine a select few had a very vested interest in keeping a strong polity out of Silesia. The same was probably true of the Progressive and Liberal parties to a degree, and even several of the Crown Loyalists and Centrists had members engaged in at least slavery. As the old Ferengi axiom goes, "War is good for buisiness."

One thing we have to remember is that the circumstances thrown up by Operation Thunderbolt, and in particular the decision by the RoH to include an attack on Sidemore Station in Thunderbolt, were unique and completely unexpected.

Manticore and the Andermani Empire have been rivals in Silesia for centuries. They've shared a common interest in suppressing the piracy and general lawlessness plaguing the Confederacy, and probably cooperated from time to time in doing so, but 'dealing with' the 'Silesian Question' would require a wholesale replacement of the existing structures of governance in the Confederacy by something able to impose order. Whether that was by the establishment of a stronger government backed by an outside military or an outright annexation, it would give whichever power was sponsoring the change a huge advantage in the territory. Neither side was willing to tolerate the other doing that.

The Andermani put the pursuit of their 'legimate interests' in Silesia on hold during the First Havenite War because Gustav didn't want to do anything that would distract the RMN from fighting the Peeps. Whatever immediate advantage was gained by encroaching on Silesia would pale before the fact that Manticoran defeat would leave the Empire facing an enlarged by still desperately hungry People's Republic now in control of the Junction, with wormhole access to the Empire via Gregor and a jumping-off point at Basilisk for its own advances into Silesia. Better to face a commercially expansionist Manticore than a militarily expansionist People's Republic.

During the High Ridge ceasefire, the Empire decided it was time to establish a new status quo in Silesia, even if that meant a clash with the RMN. The Republic's attack on Honor's task force at Sidemore changed Gustav's strategic thinking. Clearly the Republic was as much of a threat to the Empire's sphere of influence as the People's Republic had ever been, and unlike the People's Republic it was prepared to deploy large forces into the Empire's back yard. The Empire and the Star Kingdom's common interests now included the defeat of the Republic of Haven, and so they both accepted a quick and dirty resolution to the Silesia issue.

This resolution has landed both the Empire and the Star Kingdom/Empire with a huge new administrative responsibility, representing a radical change in policy for both. The Empire is at least accustomed to expansion, but it has always been at a relatively slow pace, certainly compared to the People's Republic - I believe a figure of one system per ten years has been mentioned as the Andermani norm - and now they've taken on several centuries worth of expansion in one go.

Weber has painted a rather optimistic scenario of the SEM's imperialism. Anyone reading Jerry Pournelle's fiction or his website are aware of the historical precedents of imperialism transforming a free republic into a totalitarian empire. Rome is the classic example but Athens followed the same path.

The ongoing experience of the US with imperialism is probably perceived by Manticore as another example of imperialism transforming a society from a democratic republic into an empire. By many objective measures, the US is far less free than before WW-2 and Roosevelt. The fact that a US President can routinely wage war without the consent much less a formal declaration of war from Congress would shock Roosevelt and all of his predecessors. The fact that the US usually refrains from exploiting it's conquests economically has mitigated the transformation somewhat.

Manticore is no doubt dissuaded from imperialism by observing how conquest has affected the RoH.