Relax wrote:
To start with, history has shown, over and over, when an Empire falls, the end result is massive numbers of wars for the next half century following in its collapsed wake as those left behind struggle to create a new identity while also fighting off those who wish "yours" to become their identity. Now add in Prolong to this mix, and the power struggle combatants will only prolong this death knell.
That may be true to a degree for empires or nations that are more tightly organized, but it is far from true for the League. The League is hundreds or thousands of nations within one large nation and in that nation does not seem to encourage strong patriotic feeling amongst its citizens. Take the SLN, the League and its government down and now you end up with a few thousand nations that start looking for allies, the older and more industrially developed systems will either unite in a few larger nations or alliances or look towards the GA for assistance because they have something to offer the GA members. The smaller less developed systems will remain in small one and two systems nations with resources restricting them to small system defense navies. The Protectorates and those like them are the worst of all because by and large they will require ground troops and decades of occupations and bloodshed to unite them and stop the infighting.
The core and shell worlds will go their own way because they have their own national beliefs, of course some will see this as the perfect time to settle old scores or two be the big dog and will start fights, others will see piracy as a profitable activity but hundreds of core and shell worlds having near parity with the GA would mean that the GA cannot force them to do anything or act as Galactic Police unless it behaves in the same way as Frontier Fleet.
Relax wrote:
It would not be difficult for the Manticore Empire or Havenite Empire to place a Billion people in Uniform 20 years down the line. Havenites could already do so with 150 worlds at their disposal. No, this number of uniformed men and women will not be ground forces. That is not what they would need to do. Garrisoning a planet is not needed for the most part. Need to do is stop those planets that intrinsically hate you, to stop spreading this hatred to other planets and therefore creating an anti GA core with 100 Billion people at their disposal to start the major wars up all over again. Policing its sky's on the other hand is would keep them suppressed long enough for the local states to figure things out without the intrinsic hatred coloring their initial galactic policies.
Yes it most definitely would, because after every prolonged war people want their loved once back home, they want their friends and family members to not have to die in foreign territory.
Also, ground forces are exactly what is needed unless you are suggesting that the hundreds or thousands of protectorate systems should be to their own devises to slaughter their citizens? I mean come on, FF might be bad but creating a power vacuum in systems that may not have the structure to govern themselves properly, kind of like what happened after the colonial powers left Africa. Basically, what you seem to be suggesting is to ensure that the GA confine the slaughter to the planet’s surface rather than letting them go in to space... Kind of hard to explain why Manticore let the situation in Silesian confederacy stand for hundreds of years without intervention other than protecting their shipping and taking down the odd pirate or two but they will step up and police hundreds or thousands of systems.
Relax wrote:
There most certainly will be such planets 20 years post GA/MA conflict. There will be such places probably 100 years afterwards due to prolong. Hatred and political ambition takes generations to die down, not years. Masada on a political level. Would not be surprised if they would need to do this to around 100 planets. This by itself will cause the GA to continue fielding vast armada of ships and soldiers.
The thousands of shell systems will need decades of occupation by GA troops to be able to get some level of stability, think about how many GA troops would be needed to occupy hundreds or thousands of systems with population ranging from a few hundred million to say 5-6 billion? You can keep the population contained with a few destroyers and cruisers, you can keep pirates away with the same number of ships, but the GA would not be able to pacify planets with destroyers and cruisers as they will need boots on the ground.
Relax wrote: Then add in that by default due to Manticoran Junction, the new galactic order is going to congregate around the Wormhole Junctions. Foremost among them will be Manticore. Uh, who will hold jurisdiction over the 2nd largest wormhole network that the Malign is currently hiding? Can't see Manticore NOT having an extremely large influence over this new 5 junction wormhole. Long term their influence will wane as local folks take control, but 20 years from now, post GA/MA conflict? Oh yea. Still there. This will set "international law". To uphold this law requires force, otherwise it withers quickly.
So? How many atrocities have been stopped because international law exists? How many millions of men, women and children have been slaughtered even though its against international law? Why do you think that it would be different when the scale is galactic rather than restricted just to a single planet? What would happen is that the GA members will take an interest in the systems/sectors that would be great trade prospects and will not be too willing to involve themselves in policing the rest. And you know what? You have to be willing to use force to uphold the law, and as noble as that is in and of itself, it is not enough for the voters in a democracy to justify sending their sons,daughters, mothers, fathers, brothers etc... to their death. If a noble concept was all that we needed we as a species would have achieved world peace 5,000 years ago.
Relax wrote:
See, talking about ship totals, your tens of thousands stated(larger than the SLN...) and types etc for this discussion are completely pointless as ones strategic assumptions dictate the force structure. Manning the ship totals under the new low crew sizing, is brutally easy. 10,000 x 1000 would only be 10,000,000. A single planet would have no problem doing this by itself with a population of 3-5 Billion. GA empires are now well north of 50 planets each and in 20 years all of them will probably be closer to 200. So, to be a true strain on these new burgeoning empires, would require a force of 100,000 ships or so in manning requirements.
Let me ask you this simple question, for those 10,000,000 service men and women, how many do you need to support? Do the math on the US navy, it has somewhere in the neighbourhood of 400,000 sailors but only about 120,000 of them are on ships if every ship is 100% manned and that is not counting the 180,000+ civilians assisting. Same goes for the Army, in a combat situation out of a force of 100,000 only a few thousand would be in the actual combat units. And when we are dealing with interstellar war, for every soldier on the front we would have 5 in support, for every 1,000 sailors on a ship you would need 10,000 in support. So there goes your theory, your 10,000,000 sailors just turned into 110,000,000 sailors not counting the tens if not hundreds of millions of civilians working for the Military directly, or working for the shipbuilding/maintenance of the military in general. It is easy to suggest numbers for a theoretical military but imagine how hard it would be the convince the qualified people to join up? Can you convince 10,000,000 Americans to join the military in order to police the world’s hotspots? Or 1,000,000 Canadians? I highly doubt you can.
You are also assuming that all members of the GA will expand dramatically, I don't think that either Manticore or Haven are interested in adding too many League member systems and I doubt Grayson is interested in adding any to their total. And you will have a lot of problems convincing systems on one side of the League to assist in keeping the peace on the other side of the League.
Relax wrote:Manning is not the issue. Rather political climate and direction IS the driving factor. If there are multiple ex SL Core segments of around 50-100 planets who do not like you very much(Extremely high probability) and I say there most certainly will be, these planets will be going balls to the wall to increase their own military strength. This essentially will create a cold war atmosphere. Yea, the GA saved their asses from the Malign, but if truth be told, the SL Core was probably a lot closer aligned with the MALIGN, than you. There will be little thanks going your direction. That is for sure.
Manning is a big issue because the GA will be forced to either recruit sub-par candidates or conscript people to fill their ranks. If your argument held any water then both Manticore and Haven would not have felt strain on their trained manpower.
And since the GA will not conscript the numbers they need they will have a manpower shortage, well short of what is needed to be a Galactic Police, then add the financial cost and the cost to the population in terms of sacrifice and the people will not put up with it.
So most likely we will see a fractured League that ends up with many single system nations and a number of multi system nations some which may end up being quite large, in the hundreds of systems range.All of them would be building a military force to protect themselves and further their national interest which most likely would not involve letting the GA police them in their own territory.
