Long term consequences of the League's collapse

Lately I have been in a couple of threads where the short to intermediate term strategy of the GA’s strategy for defeating the League have been discussed. First articulated by Honor Harrington-Alexander a conversation with the queen and her closest advisers, it summarizes something like this.

The League has reached a tipping point in terms of corruption and decay and yet its sheer size makes it dangerous for smaller powers such as Manticiore and its behavior is imperialistic.. The best way to neutralize the League is to break it up into independent star nations, each small enough so that it cannot dominate its neighbors, and then offer trading privileges, access to wormholes and junctions, defensive alliances and friendship so that the tempation to combine into ever larger empires, etc is mitigated.

As a short term strategy to intermediate term strategy, I think this looks good. In fact it is hard to see where Manticore and her allies really have any realistic choice. In fact it needs to be accomplished quickly while the GA’s military tech advantages still are overwhelming. If the League could catch its breath and gain time and resourses to overcome their tech disadvantage, it would only be a matter of time before the GA would be overrun.

But how does all of this look long term? Historically what happens when empires come unglued isn’t pretty. Chaos, warlordism, states that don’t have the legs to last, almost pertetual war over time. The result is a decline in economic activity and the impoverishment of once prosperous areas who are conquered, perhaps repeatedly, and pillaged. One remembers Rome and the beginning of the Dark Ages. The situations are not completely congruent, of course. But they are close enough to make the comparison uncomfortable. The League’s policies in the Verge were pretty nasty and the systems in the shell were disadvantaged for the benefit of the core worlds. But the League kept the peace in areas it dominated and even though the result frequently wasn’t fair, for a substantial portion of human occupied space, peace allowed trade and prosperity to flourish.

So now what? Can the GA step in and take the League’s place? Or is the chaos of the League’s collapse going to provide the Malign its opportunity to impose its vision of the human future on the rest of us?

What do you think?

Don

The GA can't possibly step in and provide order. They're too small and the galaxy is too big. It's going to be a mess for a while, a giant fall of the Roman Empire type mess.

The galaxy is going to go from unipolar to multipolar and it's going to happen pretty fast.

The Mesan Alignment, in the form of the Renaissance Front, is going to create one of the largest - if not the single largest - bloc out of the chaos, but with the GA's influence it won't become the Solarian League revisited, just one of many.

The opportunity for Malign is going to be there for sure. It's not going anywhere until Manticore uncovers the Renaissance Front.

On the other hand, I don't know how much warlordism there'll be. There will definitely be some, probably in the form of OFS offers taking their positions of power and using that to become powerful figures. But, in the core and the shell, those are well developed modern planetary systems fully capable of building their own navies. The real danger is war breaking out between them on the basis of old grievances, but I wouldn't call that warlordism.

n7axw wrote:So now what? Can the GA step in and take the League’s place? Or is the chaos of the League’s collapse going to provide the Malign its opportunity to impose its vision of the human future on the rest of us?

I don't think the GA can or should "take the league's place." The web of bilateral mutual defense treaties with the GA should soften the break-up some by giving the GA standing to stomp on any overly aggressive warlords.

What the universe will look like long term, is going to be a cross between the Talbot Sector under the Rembrandt association and Silesia before the partition with Anderman. There will be pockets of larger, more stable polities; The Maya Secctor, The Renaissance Factor, The Anderman Empire, The GA (collectively and individually) and a stubborn core of the Old League.

The GA will be relatively unaffected by events on the far side of the league where the wormhole network doesn't reach and equally unable to affect the course of events.

Manticore will become the Honorverse equivalent of Switzerland; a center of international banking and neutral arbitration. It already has a good start on that role, or did before the Yawata Strike. With the collapse of the League, Manticore will regain and then surpass its previous position in interstellar finance and "maritime law."

The MAlign will be a very long-term opponent, but it will be a Cold War conducted mostly be the Renaissance Factor and their "empire."

The GA will persist for the lifetimes of Elizabeth, Pritchard, Theisman, Gustav and Chien-Lu Anderman, The Benton Ramirez Y Chu family and the Mayhew line as Protector of Grayson. When one or more of the the leading rulers dies, politics will rear its ugly head and start to break up the GA. Whether that is a violent break-up or simply a parting of the ways -- as France's semi-departure from NATO in the 50's -- depends on who dies and what the political situation might be.

By the time of the break-up of the GA, the SEM will be well established and able to stand alone against most threats; With Grayson and Beowulf in alliance with them, they'll still be big dog on the block.

The military situation universe-wide should be near parity on a ship-for-ship basis. The GA will have solved the Streak and Spider drives and found counters for them. The MAlign and other military forces will have solved FTL comms MDMs, and Podnaughts. A period of MAD/Peace will endure until peacetime corruption and politics subvert readiness for someone and someone else will take advantage.

The first thing the Grand Alliance must get through is the on coming war with the Sollies at first and then as the enemy gets more clearly identified, the MAligment itself.

What the GA does NOT want to do is to take on the League AND the MAlignment... AT THE SAME TIME! That may turn out to a fatal strategic mistake doomed to failure.

The only way the GA has a snow balls chance in hades of winning is to quickly force some sort of negotiated settlement with the Sollies. Force a quick, victorious war?

The major problem with that is what if the Sollies prove to be a harder nut to crack? Sure the GA can gun down the Sollie fleet, but what then? How do you hold the planets?

The very last thing the GA wants to have happen is to give the Sollie League any time to get their act together. I for one do not see the League rolling over quickly, which is bad.

The long term prospects of the known human part of the galaxy is very grim, with perhaps hundreds of years of regional unrest, civil war, economic collapse, a huge dieback, etc..

Almost would make me think, (if I lived then) about finding some sort of island of stability during this up and coming dark ages and just ride things out. The Andy Empire?

HB of CJ (old coot) LT.CM. I love this forum!!

HB of CJ wrote:The only way the GA has a snow balls chance in hades of winning is to quickly force some sort of negotiated settlement with the Sollies. Force a quick, victorious war?

Ah yes, the myth of the Short, Victorious War -- such as what got Haven into so much trouble.

The GA does NOT want a quick negotiated settlement, they want to destroy the League. They (and the MAlign) want the league to break up into independent systems and polities too small to be a future threat.

The only way the GA can survive is to foment secession as Beowulf has done, and disrupt any attempt at reorganization by the existing League bureaucrats.

HB of CJ wrote:The first thing the Grand Alliance must get through is the on coming war with the Sollies at first and then as the enemy gets more clearly identified, the MAligment itself.

What the GA does NOT want to do is to take on the League AND the MAlignment... AT THE SAME TIME! That may turn out to a fatal strategic mistake doomed to failure.

The only way the GA has a snow balls chance in hades of winning is to quickly force some sort of negotiated settlement with the Sollies. Force a quick, victorious war?

The major problem with that is what if the Sollies prove to be a harder nut to crack? Sure the GA can gun down the Sollie fleet, but what then? How do you hold the planets?

The very last thing the GA wants to have happen is to give the Sollie League any time to get their act together. I for one do not see the League rolling over quickly, which is bad.

The long term prospects of the known human part of the galaxy is very grim, with perhaps hundreds of years of regional unrest, civil war, economic collapse, a huge dieback, etc..

Almost would make me think, (if I lived then) about finding some sort of island of stability during this up and coming dark ages and just ride things out. The Andy Empire?

HB of CJ (old coot) LT.CM. I love this forum!!

It is hard for me to see the League surviving in its present form for any extended period of time. In my own view, it breaks up fairly quickly, as much due to internal divisions as to military pressure.

Don

Asimov's Foundation series was all about what happens when a large interstellar empire collapses, and there have been a number of other stories relating to this theme, even RFC has a series.
I personally think that the Honorverse has sufficient stable mini empires to ride the storm out without a complete collapse.

We know league members had their own defense fleet but only minor forces in most cases, those that were proper fleets were more advanced than the league fleets. The thing is even if a system had only minor fleet units, would their system defense system, reflect their hypercapability strength.
I hope the transtellars crash and burn, destroyed or co opted.
The power base o the galaxy will shift from sol, to the terminii network. I see manticore empire being first amongst equals in the network, their ships travelling everywhere, while have uses the alliance to sell their goods everywhere those ships travel.
I was thinking the RF would have wanted to be the one who gained the network.
I see the core and the shell being more developed, will potentially be able to create warships, but with the manties advantage, for the time being will go to war with their neighbours, as the terminii generally shutdown for warships means, they have no easy access to the verge. with the collapse of the league, long distance shipping will be dangerous.
the verge might be filled with factions, but very few have true large scale induustrial ability, so the ships can be dealt with in time.

HB of CJ wrote:The first thing the Grand Alliance must get through is the on coming war with the Sollies at first and then as the enemy gets more clearly identified, the MAligment itself.

What the GA does NOT want to do is to take on the League AND the MAlignment... AT THE SAME TIME! That may turn out to a fatal strategic mistake doomed to failure.

The only way the GA has a snow balls chance in hades of winning is to quickly force some sort of negotiated settlement with the Sollies. Force a quick, victorious war?

Why? This is not Germany that does not want a two-front war against France and Russia.
First the SL is massively inferior right now in terms of combat strength, and this must be used to break them up. A negotiated settlement only allows them to potentially rebuild and become a threat again.
Second how do you propose to fight the MAlign? There is only one known base, Mesa, and it has/will be occupied. Intelligence doesn't need so much men/money/resources that the GA could not devote attention to all its opponents simultaneously.

Whitecold wrote:Why? This is not Germany that does not want a two-front war against France and Russia.
First the SL is massively inferior right now in terms of combat strength, and this must be used to break them up. A negotiated settlement only allows them to potentially rebuild and become a threat again.
Second how do you propose to fight the MAlign? There is only one known base, Mesa, and it has/will be occupied. Intelligence doesn't need so much men/money/resources that the GA could not devote attention to all its opponents simultaneously.

Exactly. This isn't like a country waging a war on two fronts, it's more like a country waging a war and, at the same time, conduct a huge international organized crime investigation.