Solarian League and Aliens

I am a relative newcomer to the Honorverse but I have become an enthusiastic fan. I have finally finished the entire main line of books and the Saganami Tales. War with the Solarian League is upon us and the Manties are poised to kick ass. The Solarian League is struggling under its own inertia because they cannot get the assembly to make a formal declaration of war. But something occurred to me.

The Solarian Constitution has in it at least one article that can be used to trigger a state of war without an act of the Assembly (the Eridani Edict), but I have to wonder if that is the only one. The Solarian League perceives itself as the guardians of all that is good about the human race, seeing as the Solarians were well aware of the existence of sentient aliens before the League was formed, it would stand to reason that they would have put an article similar to the Edict in the Constitution to cover non-human aggression, something along the lines of "if a human world is attacked by non-humans, the League will automatically declare war and destroy the alien invaders."
Naturally, such a clause would have found its way into obscurity as the likelihood of encountering hostile alien forces dropped with the passage of time the same way that no one but legal scholars remembers what the third amendment of the US Constitution is because it has never been violated in the entire history of the USA.

But then the Tree Cats came along.

Manticorans have never been secretive about the abilities of the Tree Cats and as the language barrier between Humans and The People have finally been brought down it is now public (if not common) knowledge that Tree Cats are empathic telepaths who have been intimately entangled with the Manticoran Royal Family for centuries. The Solarian populace is scared and confused. For the first time in their history they have tasted defeat and those on the inside know that their economy is about to suffer like never before. The populace needs an explanation and here we have aliens with telepathic powers sitting on the shoulder of Queen Elizabeth.

How hard would it really be for the Mandarins to convince a goodly portion of the League populace that Manticore has been taken over by telepathic aliens who are using there human slaves to conquer humanity? Even if most people see it as a BS, some of them won't. Chances are that people will want to believe it because it will make the blatant superiority of Manty fighting abilities easier to swallow. "The aliens are giving Manties super weapons so they can conquer the human race." sort of thing.

Welcome!

that is an interesting twist. I'm not convinced that it would be enough to break the deadlock.

most of those who voted against beowulf's expulsion are those who retain enough independence and for lack of a better term strength of will to see how far off the rails the League has gone.

They were willing to go along until the mandarins showed that A) they are clueless about the current threat, (be that the Manties, or MAlign B) That a SLN admiral almost had the gall to fire on a SDF, (doesn't matter why, just that they almost did) C) The SLN is for beating up on the verge proles, it is not for use aginst core worlds, especially not core worlds that are older then the league! and finally D) Agree with Beowulf's interpretation of the charter that basically says absent war you can't tell us what to do

The beauty of it is that you don't need to break the deadlock if The Constitution has a trigger built in. Remember that the reason the Edict is enshrined in the Constitution is to make sure that the Assembly does not have the ability to deadlock in the case of a violation.

If such an alien article exists the Federal Government can use it as a pretense for assuming wartime powers without a violation of the written Constitution.

That doesn't mean that everyone will go along with it, and I am sure more than one government would be taken aback when the SLN starts co-opting system defense forces for its Wall of Battle, let alone when they start imposing wartime taxes. But at this point the Mandarins must realize that unless they can put the league on a war footing they have no chance. They also know that they can't guarantee a unanimous vote for War. Unless they are willing to burn the League Constitution in its entirety and become a true Military Junta, they need something to sell people that at least has the veneer of legality. Being attacked by upstart neo-barbs is one thing, being invaded by mind controlling aliens is another.

GabrialSagan wrote:How hard would it really be for the Mandarins to convince a goodly portion of the League populace that Manticore has been taken over by telepathic aliens who are using there human slaves to conquer humanity? Even if most people see it as a BS, some of them won't. Chances are that people will want to believe it because it will make the blatant superiority of Manty fighting abilities easier to swallow. "The aliens are giving Manties super weapons so they can conquer the human race." sort of thing.

I think the Mandarins would have an easier time running whatever operations they feel they have to in the spirit of the Constitution as practiced as opposed to as written, than to make out cute and cuddly little natives with flint knives and twine nets as alien masterminds giving Manticore miniaturized fusion plants and FTL communications as part of deal whereby their pawns propel them to galactic domination.

It's going to go past looking like standard BS and into stuff that's simply comical or clinically paranoid.

JeffEngel wrote:I think the Mandarins would have an easier time running whatever operations they feel they have to in the spirit of the Constitution as practiced as opposed to as written, than to make out cute and cuddly little natives with flint knives and twine nets as alien masterminds giving Manticore miniaturized fusion plants and FTL communications as part of deal whereby their pawns propel them to galactic domination.

It's going to go past looking like standard BS and into stuff that's simply comical or clinically paranoid.

I was thinking more along the lines that the tech boosts would be implied rather than stated. Even if the Mandarins acknowledge that the Tree Cats did not impart technical knowledge onto the Manties, they are still telepathic aliens who literally ride atop the Manticoran royalty.

History is full of people using blatantly bullshit excuses as pretenses, the Riechstag fire comes to the front of my mind. Even the lightest of pretenses can get the ball rolling in an atmosphere of fear and desperation.

another problem. most if not all SDF's worth conscripting/co-opting are going to fall into that category i mentioned earlier of, for whatever reason you prefer, not being willing to be conscripted.

Possibly going so far as to use force to prevent said co-opting. which will just spark the civil war and mass leaving that the mandarins are trying to prevent by attacking beowulf.

The league has only lasted so long because no-one was really trying to break it. Sure a number of folks within and without were disgusted by a lot of Frontier Security antics and the "we are from Solly space the only civilised section of the galaxy" grated, but no-one ever really thought seriously about about forcing change from the outside. it just wasn't doable until a small, very rich system had to figure out a way to not become the local bully's next victim.

it doesn't really matter what the mandrin's use as a reason, aliens or whatever else. People now see that you can fight the "invincible" SLN and even if you only have simmilar tech (i'm sure i read somewhere in the pearls that most SDF are better equipped then the SLN) if your people have any real talent at tactics/stretgy and drill crews properly you can do so much more damage proportionally the the SLN even if they have greater numbers.

GabrialSagan wrote:I am a relative newcomer to the Honorverse but I have become an enthusiastic fan. I have finally finished the entire main line of books and the Saganami Tales. War with the Solarian League is upon us and the Manties are poised to kick ass. The Solarian League is struggling under its own inertia because they cannot get the assembly to make a formal declaration of war. But something occurred to me.

The Solarian Constitution has in it at least one article that can be used to trigger a state of war without an act of the Assembly (the Eridani Edict), but I have to wonder if that is the only one. The Solarian League perceives itself as the guardians of all that is good about the human race, seeing as the Solarians were well aware of the existence of sentient aliens before the League was formed, it would stand to reason that they would have put an article similar to the Edict in the Constitution to cover non-human aggression, something along the lines of "if a human world is attacked by non-humans, the League will automatically declare war and destroy the alien invaders."
Naturally, such a clause would have found its way into obscurity as the likelihood of encountering hostile alien forces dropped with the passage of time the same way that no one but legal scholars remembers what the third amendment of the US Constitution is because it has never been violated in the entire history of the USA.

But then the Tree Cats came along.

Manticorans have never been secretive about the abilities of the Tree Cats and as the language barrier between Humans and The People have finally been brought down it is now public (if not common) knowledge that Tree Cats are empathic telepaths who have been intimately entangled with the Manticoran Royal Family for centuries. The Solarian populace is scared and confused. For the first time in their history they have tasted defeat and those on the inside know that their economy is about to suffer like never before. The populace needs an explanation and here we have aliens with telepathic powers sitting on the shoulder of Queen Elizabeth.

How hard would it really be for the Mandarins to convince a goodly portion of the League populace that Manticore has been taken over by telepathic aliens who are using there human slaves to conquer humanity? Even if most people see it as a BS, some of them won't. Chances are that people will want to believe it because it will make the blatant superiority of Manty fighting abilities easier to swallow. "The aliens are giving Manties super weapons so they can conquer the human race." sort of thing.

I posted something similar to this treecat conspiracy in a thread far away. Who's to say that the treecats don't have a plan to take over mankind. They can sense our emotions but we can't sense theirs. Who's to say that they aren't controlling Elizabeth by subliminal suggestion.

At any rate, I agree that some entity could capitalize on this thought -- using the wider lack of understanding and paranoia regarding the 'cats. The MAlign could literally launch a smear campaign of war against the 'cats. Perhaps a few nut jobs carrying pulsers and killing a few 'cats will cause tension between human/'cat.

If people can be made to believe that a comet is a space ship come to deliver from evil, then the sky is the limit.

Any conspiracy theories about treecats coming from the SL would have to wait until someone in power actually believes that treecats are anything more than very bright pets.

Quinlan73 wrote:Any conspiracy theories about treecats coming from the SL would have to wait until someone in power actually believes that treecats are anything more than very bright pets.

Why? Whether or not they actually are sentient is secondary. The important thing is that someone in power can convince enough people on enough worlds to go along with the idea to facilitate the use of wartime powers. Some people, many people, will see right through the facade, but that does not change the fact that millions of Solarian spacers are dead, hundreds of SDs have been destroyed, and the economy is tanking in a fashion that was inconceivable a few years ago.
Then the president of the League announces that The League is at war with mind controlling aliens. Ed and info flood the media with real reports from Manticore about the abilities of the 'cats mixed with some good propaganda and it won't be to long before a considerable portion of the population is rallying to defend humanity from alien aggression.

The real issue comes when the SLN comes to enforce the wartime powers what does that system government do? Many of their people will protest federal tyranny... and those people would be smeared as traitors and alien collaborators by the new federalist faction with most people caught in the middle.

The advantage that the federalists have is political inertia.The League is still seen as practically a force of nature and unlike Beowulf most system defense fleets don't have a fleet able to stand up to Battle Fleet when they come to town to enforce the Federal Government's Constitutionally valid wartime powers, especially when some of those SDF officers are bound to be pro-federalist themselves.

The aliens are a pretense for the Mandarins to do what they know they have to do anyway to survive: assume absolute power, bypass the Assembly, impose direct taxation and assume command of all Solarian SDF forces.

GabrialSagan wrote:I am a relative newcomer to the Honorverse but I have become an enthusiastic fan. I have finally finished the entire main line of books and the Saganami Tales. War with the Solarian League is upon us and the Manties are poised to kick ass. The Solarian League is struggling under its own inertia because they cannot get the assembly to make a formal declaration of war. But something occurred to me.

The Solarian Constitution has in it at least one article that can be used to trigger a state of war without an act of the Assembly (the Eridani Edict), but I have to wonder if that is the only one. The Solarian League perceives itself as the guardians of all that is good about the human race, seeing as the Solarians were well aware of the existence of sentient aliens before the League was formed, it would stand to reason that they would have put an article similar to the Edict in the Constitution to cover non-human aggression, something along the lines of "if a human world is attacked by non-humans, the League will automatically declare war and destroy the alien invaders."
Naturally, such a clause would have found its way into obscurity as the likelihood of encountering hostile alien forces dropped with the passage of time the same way that no one but legal scholars remembers what the third amendment of the US Constitution is because it has never been violated in the entire history of the USA.

The Eridani Edict was established as a specific, exceptional response to a specific, known, painfully familiar problem. They made that exception to the League's gridlock-near-guaranteed voting system specifically to make sure the EE had teeth, and they bothered because they'd had a horrible history of genocidal bombardments. And even then, they had a very specific set of conditions for what would trigger it - not just any WMD that landed on an inhabited planet - and a specific response: ending the particular chain of command responsible for that act.

Given all that as background, I don't believe it would stand to reason that they'd have another article providing for war against alien aggressors. How to frame it with comparable specificity would crop up if you take the EE as a precedent; how to respond would be another. Humanity was already rather ashamed of how it'd dealt with some other alien civilizations - guaranteeing the possibility of unleashing the Solarian League on them without a vote or discussion would be a standing blot on humanity's cred with aliens. It'd cast a shadow over the League's standing as the hero of humankind, and wouldn't be something to fade into obscurity that readily. (Compare the U.S. Constitution's provision of 3/5ths of a person status for representation and taxation for slaves.)

Furthermore, the Mandarins can't much afford to draw attention to little-known clauses of the Constitution as dubious sources of authority to do an end-run around the Constitution otherwise. Their entire position relies on treating the written Constitution as a mere historical curiosity with little or no current bearing.