Honorverse ramblings and musings

you can't really compare them.

yes manticore was a big powerful little system, but it was just that a single system that had to build and maintain its own navy as well the merchant traffic which fuelled so much of its economy

we were talking about league worlds. costs of wages etc are much higher in the league, much like the costs on manticore are much higher then on grayson.

like I said. Manticore is (was) the small, backward place that could build stuff for 3rd (or something similar) of what it would cost to build it in the league and even after shipping it was cheaper to buy from them then it was to build it locally.

just like nowadays with china/japan with cars, ipads, and clothes etc

yes military items aren't quite the same thing but even there to an extent the metaphor holds up as it is not unknown, though admittedly more like african states buying from eurpoe, then the US buying from taiwan.

but the overall point that even for something like warships it can be cheaper to have them built abroad and delivered then it is to invest in industry/knowledge base necessary to build it locally is still valid.

Manticore could have ordered ships from the league, and did to start with but decided fairly early on that they preferred to build their own ships, a combination of military preparedness and the fact that if they built their own freighters it could boost their own economy.

also once the initial costs for industry were dealt with it was likely cheaper for them to build locally then to order from the league, the exact OPPOSITE of what the league faces.

it also meant that the league couldn't pressure them into decisions on the basis of delays to ships ordered from league yards, yet another thing that would not happen in reverse as no way would the SLN buy a ship from neo-barbs

JeffEngel wrote:

cthia wrote:Question.

During the existing 'state' of war between the League and the Manties, would ambassadors of each be allowed to remain on the host planet? Surely not. And with the junctions closed and travel curtailed, how would Manticore know what is going on within the League?

News media ships and some others are still going through the Junction. Illicit bulk trade with Manticore will certainly continue, followed by licit trade with secessionist states. Erewhon, Torch, and Maya are conduits for information out of the League, as well as the Andermani and other small neutral Verge states. And then there are spies, of course.

Whatever information is collected can move freely, safely and rapidly to and from Manticore through the wormhole network, while League information has to go the long way or sneak through wormhole transits. Judging from 2nd Manticore, what Manticore passes through for the League is what Manticore wants the League to know, so the League is likely to get more skittish and skeptical about whatever information passes through that way.

You'd get less information and less reliably than you would with full freedom of courier transit and immediate, certain diplomatic cover for espionage, but there's nothing like an Iron Curtain being dropped by the state of war.

News media ships and some others are still going through the Junction. Illicit bulk trade with Manticore will certainly continue, followed by licit trade with secessionist states. Erewhon, Torch, and Maya are conduits for information out of the League, as well as the Andermani and other small neutral Verge states. And then there are spies, of course.

See, this is why I don't trust sanctions and embargos. They are only as good as their most scrupleless citizen or entity.

How does this illicitness succeed? Certainly all freighters transiting junctions are fine-toothed combed lest there are sympathetic spies or factions. Manifestos and travel itineraries are probably tripe-double checked. And the adjudication of any freighter captains' intransigence in this area will most likely be 'treason in a time of war' -- drawing a death sentence and a seizing of all assets and the possible loss of a freighter.

See, this is why I don't trust sanctions and embargos. They are only as good as their most scrupleless citizen or entity.

How does this illicitness succeed? Certainly all freighters transiting junctions are fine-toothed combed lest there are sympathetic spies or factions. Manifestos and travel itineraries are probably tripe-double checked. And the adjudication of any freighter captains' intransigence in this area will most likely be 'treason in a time of war' -- drawing a death sentence and a seizing of all assets and the possible loss of a freighter.

Illicit trade between enemies has always been a facet of war, and in many cases has been grudgingly accepted. Often such trade is the only way each side could get materiel they coveted. For example, the Spanish and Danes during the 17th century, or the North and South during the American Civil War. Cracking down hard on such trade will simply drive it further underground, and limit the availability of traded resources to your own side. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Duckk wrote:

See, this is why I don't trust sanctions and embargos. They are only as good as their most scrupleless citizen or entity.

How does this illicitness succeed? Certainly all freighters transiting junctions are fine-toothed combed lest there are sympathetic spies or factions. Manifestos and travel itineraries are probably tripe-double checked. And the adjudication of any freighter captains' intransigence in this area will most likely be 'treason in a time of war' -- drawing a death sentence and a seizing of all assets and the possible loss of a freighter.

Illicit trade between enemies has always been a facet of war, and in many cases has been grudgingly accepted. Often such trade is the only way each side could get materiel they coveted. For example, the Spanish and Danes during the 17th century, or the North and South during the American Civil War. Cracking down hard on such trade will simply drive it further underground, and limit the availability of traded resources to your own side. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.

In other words "We won't allow any goods to enter your domain that you don't need, except for the goods that you do. Hush hush all the way on the down-lo, of course."

360 degrees right back to my original sentiment... "Why bother with such a deceptive, elaborate and costly ruse of illusion."

cthia wrote:

Duckk wrote:Illicit trade between enemies has always been a facet of war, and in many cases has been grudgingly accepted. Often such trade is the only way each side could get materiel they coveted. For example, the Spanish and Danes during the 17th century, or the North and South during the American Civil War. Cracking down hard on such trade will simply drive it further underground, and limit the availability of traded resources to your own side. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.

In other words "We won't allow any goods to enter your domain that you don't need, except for the goods that you do. Hush hush all the way on the down-lo, of course."

360 degrees right back to my original sentiment... "Why bother with such a deceptive, elaborate and costly ruse of illusion."

If you're at war, some goods you really don't want getting through. Some you don't much like getting through. And your ability to control that flow at what cost will vary too.

Stopping ocean-going ships in the Age of Sail - you could get it down to a leak, typically by small ships moving into and out of secondary ports, and leaving what leaks subject to privateering where strict control wasn't quite worth it or doable. Trying to control trade over a vast land frontier - where 'vast' is a matter of the ratio of control capability to distance - really doesn't work well at all. Mostly you manage it, if at all, by closely controlling the movement of stuff you really, really care about (e.g., arms), buying up yourself what you care enough about, and leaving the rest to fall out as it will.

Something else to remember that Duckk brought up indirectly: war isn't a zero-sum game. Making the other guy suffer isn't as important as avoiding suffering yourself. Paying to try to prohibit trade that is going to benefit you about as much as it benefits the enemy is taking two hits to inflict one.

In the Manticore vs. League situation, the cost is relatively cheap for Manticore, given the situation: militarily, they can control the wormhole network without which trade is beastly slow and freighter-intensive; they have the freighters the League would badly need; and the League government's income depends crucially on interstellar trade and protectorate service fees, rather than the wealth of member systems. Note that they're not trying to stop League trade as such: they're "just" depriving it of the wormholes to make it fast and the freighters it's been using.

Out of war, sanctions are about poking people short of war, limiting their options, and trying to shape their behavior to suit your goals. They're going to depend on being able to exercise serious control over what gets to the other party, either by controlling their borders or by getting all significant potential trading partners on board in a way that makes a difference to the trading behavior of their constituents. They pretty well rely on circumstances not being even: you can control their trade and they cannot, at least for specified goods. It's promising at least for multilateral efforts against rogue states if the multilateral effort has the full-blooded support of the states involved. (In the real world, it's a whole lot easier to declare sanctions than to enforce them, so you get international theater instead of international action - when theater is all you ever really had the will to do.)

In the books, the chief sanction issue has been Duke Cromarty's getting the League to embargo tech transfers to Haven under threat of grievously increased Junction fees on League shipping. It got the League government to have a disinterest in having League businesses caught transferring tech to Haven: they get caught, and you all pay for it, so the League government would do its (grumpy) best to make sure it did not happen. (Or: that it was not confirmed or suspected, but in this case, the best way to avoid getting caught was not to do it.) Manticore's Junction control and limited aim gave it the asymmetric advantage it needed to arm-twist the League government. But it put the League government in an awful position - it was forced to try to exercise more control over interstellars than it's well equipped to do; any major interstellar could screw the whole League by violating the embargo, so it was never going to be fair without turning the League government even more into an appendage of the SKM; and the League's not much for being manipulated by a single-system Verge state.

It made the difference winning the First Havenite War (League tech transfers wouldn't've been useful for warfighting for the RHN by the time of the second), but it set up the anti-Manticoran sentiment that set the League on the collision course with Manticore.

JeffEngel wrote:If you're at war, some goods you really don't want getting through. Some you don't much like getting through. And your ability to control that flow at what cost will vary too.

Stopping ocean-going ships in the Age of Sail - you could get it down to a leak, typically by small ships moving into and out of secondary ports, and leaving what leaks subject to privateering where strict control wasn't quite worth it or doable. Trying to control trade over a vast land frontier - where 'vast' is a matter of the ratio of control capability to distance - really doesn't work well at all. Mostly you manage it, if at all, by closely controlling the movement of stuff you really, really care about (e.g., arms), buying up yourself what you care enough about, and leaving the rest to fall out as it will.

Something else to remember that Duckk brought up indirectly: war isn't a zero-sum game. Making the other guy suffer isn't as important as avoiding suffering yourself. Paying to try to prohibit trade that is going to benefit you about as much as it benefits the enemy is taking two hits to inflict one.

And even on land borders it's usually fairly easy to interdict the high volume, inexpensive transport options (rivers and canals; or later railroads). So even if you can't come close to totally stopping the trade of contraband without extraordinary and counter-productive measures, you can still harm the enemies ability to sustain the war by reducing the amount of material they can receive, making it take longer to get there, and making it cost more.

That can be enough, and well worth doing.

Manticore can fairly easily shut off trade through the captured wormholes. If they end up trading with ex-League members then, at least in the short term, they can probably insist that ships using wormholes to do that can only travel in escorted convoys. You know, for safety. If that just happens to keep ship owners from diverting to more lucrative markets that are still in the League; who's to object .
That won't necessarily stop the ex-League worlds from reselling material to still-League worlds, but it's still cut down on the velocity of trade to the rump League and drive up costs.

And if people want to take the long way through hyper to trade directly with the League at their own risk, that's probably not worth attempting to seriously interdict. But it's also a long and slow enough flight that the volume that can be moved that way without being blatantly obvious is fairly low, and the costs would be fairly high (6-12 months wages, fuel, and maintenance getting paid for out of the revenue of that single trip). That 's not going to be enough to keep the Laocoon blockade from being a body blow to the League's economy. (And of course the League government that relies on wormhole tolls for much of its funding is getting zero from this smuggling traffic; so they're still pretty screwed budget-wise as well)


My long-winded point is that a blockade or economic sanctions is not an all-or-nothing game. The fact that it can't be prefect doesn't mean it won't still have some useful effects.

In my mind's eye, and if you can't tell, allow me to say it formally, sanctions and embargos are a sore point for me. Always will be. Sanctions against the Nazi regime didn't do Jack Schit, except punish the German ppl. It had little or no effect on the Nazi war machine. Usually since ppl preparing for war stockpile much needn't resources anyways. Or in Germany's case, seize upon needed resources from lateral conquests.

In today's wars, the tactic of blockading is well known. Even expected. Countries hold off on declaring war until they are ready, much like both Manticore and Haven did.

The only blockades that truly work in modern times, IMO, are those that directly cut off supply lines from an enemy's prong of attack. Otherwise, the country may temporarily suffer, but their war effort -- not so much.

And I'd like to know what instrument measures the effectiveness of a blockade anyways? -- the FUBI? (Foolhardy Users Blockade Index -- to be nice.)

A blockade is nothing more than a pipe dream of a pacifier to American people when you aren't prepared to tell them...

SAY IT!... SAY IT!... SAY IT!... AHHHHH!... AHHHH!...

OK! I'll say it...

"WE CAN'T DO JACK SCHIT SHORT OF GOING IN THERE AND BLOWING UP THOSE COMMIE - bASTARDS!"

https://youtu.be/Xfi4s8cjLFI

cthia wrote:In my mind's eye, and if you can't tell, allow me to say it formally, sanctions and embargos are a sore point for me. Always will be. Sanctions against the Nazi regime didn't do Jack Schit, except punish the German ppl. It had little or no effect on the Nazi war machine. Usually since ppl preparing for war stockpile much needn't resources anyways. Or in Germany's case, seize upon needed resources from lateral conquests.

I think the WWI one was in fact pretty effective. Though it was pretty aggressively enforced.

And of course the people get impacted before those who the government considers important. That's how it works, it's the job of the government to do the things it considers important. Not losing a war is usually pretty high on the list once one starts.

cthia wrote:In my mind's eye, and if you can't tell, allow me to say it formally, sanctions and embargos are a sore point for me. Always will be. Sanctions against the Nazi regime didn't do Jack Schit, except punish the German ppl. It had little or no effect on the Nazi war machine. Usually since ppl preparing for war stockpile much needn't resources anyways. Or in Germany's case, seize upon needed resources from lateral conquests.

In today's wars, the tactic of blockading is well known. Even expected. Countries hold off on declaring war until they are ready, much like both Manticore and Haven did.

The only blockades that truly work in modern times, IMO, are those that directly cut off supply lines from an enemy's prong of attack. Otherwise, the country may temporarily suffer, but their war effort -- not so much.

Well the US submarine campaign against Japanese oil tankers, once it got going, had pretty serious direct impacts on their war effort.

They had to leave their fleet dispersed near points of oil production, which denied them the option to consolidate and train a fleet together before throwing it into action. Instead you had ships steaming in from all over attempting to arrive simultaneously to hit the US forces - which very often failed to achieve the necessary timing.
It also meant there wasn't enough aviation fuel for proper flight training, as the war went on. Which only made their poor training decisions work even worse; contributing heavily to their investment in kamakaze tactics -- if the barely trained pilots almost certainly were going to survive to make it home from their first combat mission you may as well give them less of the precious fuel and a higher hit probability and ask them to just ram their targets.

But that was something of a special case where their war effort relied exclusively on an imported critical material; and the routes it could be imported over couldn't be secured from persistent attack.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:In my mind's eye, and if you can't tell, allow me to say it formally, sanctions and embargos are a sore point for me. Always will be. Sanctions against the Nazi regime didn't do Jack Schit, except punish the German ppl. It had little or no effect on the Nazi war machine. Usually since ppl preparing for war stockpile much needn't resources anyways. Or in Germany's case, seize upon needed resources from lateral conquests.

In today's wars, the tactic of blockading is well known. Even expected. Countries hold off on declaring war until they are ready, much like both Manticore and Haven did.

The only blockades that truly work in modern times, IMO, are those that directly cut off supply lines from an enemy's prong of attack. Otherwise, the country may temporarily suffer, but their war effort -- not so much.

Well the US submarine campaign against Japanese oil tankers, once it got going, had pretty serious direct impacts on their war effort.

They had to leave their fleet dispersed near points of oil production, which denied them the option to consolidate and train a fleet together before throwing it into action. Instead you had ships steaming in from all over attempting to arrive simultaneously to hit the US forces - which very often failed to achieve the necessary timing.
It also meant there wasn't enough aviation fuel for proper flight training, as the war went on. Which only made their poor training decisions work even worse; contributing heavily to their investment in kamakaze tactics -- if the barely trained pilots almost certainly were going to survive to make it home from their first combat mission you may as well give them less of the precious fuel and a higher hit probability and ask them to just ram their targets.

But that was something of a special case where their war effort relied exclusively on an imported critical material; and the routes it could be imported over couldn't be secured from persistent attack.

Granted. But like I said, in WWII the blockade didn't do Jack to Germany. By then, the entire history of bloackades had been heeded. Germany would have been ignorant not to have put in place contingency plans after the severe lost of half a million of its people to starvation from an earlier blockade during WWI. But in WWII it was to be different.

I'm not arguing against it having been effective in the past. There are many good examples. It was highly effective against Germany in WWI. In modern warfare however, I'm afraid larger countries have become much too savvy. And smaller entities use other means.

Wikipedia wrote:Pre-war situation in Germany
While the armed forces were being built up, imports were reduced to the barest minimum required, severe price and wage controls were introduced, unions outlawed and, aware that certain commodities would be difficult to obtain once the blockade began, deals were made with Sweden, Romania, Turkey, Spain, Finland and Yugoslavia to facilitate the stockpiling of vital materials such as tungsten, oil, nickel, wool and cotton that would be needed to supply the armed forces in wartime. Heavy investment was made in ersatz (synthetic) industries to produce goods from natural resources Germany did have, such as textiles made from cellulose, rubber and oil made from coal, sugar and ethyl alcohol from wood, and materials for the print industry produced from potato tops. There were also ersatz foodstuffs such as coffee made from chicory and beer from sugar beet. Germany also invested in foreign industries and agricultural schemes aimed at directly meeting their particular needs, such as a plan to grow more soya beans and sunflower instead of maize in Romania.

The Ministry of Economic Warfare
One lesson that was learnt from WWI was that although the navy could stop ships on the open seas, little could be done about traders who acted as the middleman, importing materials the Nazis needed into their own neutral country then transporting it overland to Germany for a profit.[27] Leigh–Ross spent the months before the war compiling a massive dossier on the annual quantities of materials the countries bordering Germany normally imported so that if they exceeded these levels in wartime, pressure could be brought on the authorities in those countries to take action. Diplomats from the Scandinavian nations, as well as Italy and the Balkan countries, who were also major suppliers to Germany, were given quota lists of various commodities and told they could import these amounts and no more, or action would be taken against them.

Modern day blockades are simply pipe dreams, IMHO, unless directed right at the rear areas of an enemy's prong of attack. Otherwise, they are simply useless -- other than selling the American people a very expensive pacifier.

References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_ ... E2%80%9345

There is a book out there somewhere, that is a more informative read. It offers a historical perspective on the tactical and strategic analysis of blockades and sanctions -- incorporating strategic considerations like bridges, canals, etc. And gives a sobering opinion of the effectiveness of the blockade implemented against Germany. It also gives account of how little effect it has on a scrupleless dictator who would pass the suffering down to a half million of his starving people.

These blockades only hurt innocent people. Not war efforts. A half million German ppl died of starvation in WWI. It also, IMO, was a main motivator for the NAZI war machine to commit such nameless atrocities toward the Jewish people -- rather than worry about feeding them.

In case you were interested in the major fuse of my disdain against blockades.