Hegemon wrote:Somewhat off-topic:
I want to discuss about the real hole in SLN collective intelligence: why no Admiral had enough sense to see plainly that the Solarian League was ripe for a military coup and to seize the opportunity with both hands. What I mean is that if the Solarian public accepted for centuries to be ruled by unelected bureaucrats, it would hardly bat an eyelid to be ruled by another group of unelected bureaucrats, this time the ones commanding SDs and BCs. After all, this is what SLN Battle Fleet and Frontier Fleet are: two additional bureaucracies to the five main ones, but with all the real firepower.
This idea stuck me when I re-read the 2016 revised edition of Edward N. Luttwak's classic "Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook" He defines three preconditions for a military coup to be practicable: a) the political participation must be confined to a small fraction of the population; b) the target state must be substantially independent; c) the target state must have a political center, or, if there are several centers, these must be identifiable, and they must be politically, rather than ethnically, structured. The Solarian League meets all the three conditions !
Think about it: who really supports the Quintet (Kolokoltsov & co):
- The five bureaucracies they lead (including the OFS satraps);
- Some corrupt transstellars;
- Most of the Assembly;
- Many newsies.
- Bueller, Bueller ...
Now, let's say the Solarian CNO simply arrested the Quintet and told the five bureaucracies that the Navy are the new bosses in town or else, who would oppose him ? The answer is nobody of importance. The Solarian ministers could be taken into protective custody by the Navy and threatened with a form of 'Case Buccaneer' on their home planets. A few reporters could be disappeared or shot by 'criminals' in the street to frighten the rest (like Anna Politkovskaia), the transstellars would be told their bribes would be smaller but would go to CNO and other admirals or else their ships would be targeted by 'Case Buccaneer'. The CNO would order the local Frontier Fleet commanders to arrest the OFS satraps and assume their attributes.
The only way to prevent such military coups is to have in place control mechanisms over the armed forces (think Haven's People's Commissioners) combined with a Pretorian Guard hand-picked for its loyalty (think Haven StateSec's SDs and BCs). For example, in the 2016 preface of his book, Luttwak gives the example of Syria, where "even before the civil war now under way, the ruling regime of President Bashar al-Assad already had five separate and competing espionage services", whose main function is to keep their own armed forces under constant scrutiny, and also to run sting operations using agents posing as anti-regime conspirators to rat out disloyal officers and paralyze any would-be coup plotter.
To give another example, in USSR the Communist Party was also paranoid of a military coup and had several precautions against it:
- The screening for communist orthodoxy and political reliability on any officer candidate;
- The direct selection of all flag officers by the Party's Central Committee (or by the Politburo for those with three stars or more) after intense scrutiny on communist orthodoxy and political reliability;
- The personnel 'ethnic mixing and matching' to ensure that no large unit was composed overwhelmingly from one ethnicity (say, Ukrainian) and risked having Nationalist loyalties;
- The presence in Moscow of several NKVD/KGB 'Pretorian Guard' formations, such as the Kremlin Regiment aka UKMK (always a NKVD/KGB function, never an Army one);
- The presence in Moscow of several Army 'Pretorian Guard' formations, such as the 'Kantemirov' Tank Division and the 2nd Guards 'Taman' Motorised Infantry Division.
In USSR there were three additional 'leashes' to keep the army in check:
- Every Army battalion and higher had at least a Peoples' Commissar (replaced by the Political Officer or zampolit during WWII) who reported to the Party's Central Committee;
- Every Army battalion and higher had a 'Special section' headed by a NKVD/KGB officer (these sections were subordinated to a special NKVD branch called SMERSH during WWII);
- Every Army field and flag officer was assigned young female secretaries and telegraphists that were all agents of a third control structure called Peoples' Control or Rabkrin that reported directly to Stalin.
The Quintet has no such external control over SLN, no real power base and no popular legitimacy. A competently planned military coup would wipe them out and it is a miracle no Admiral tried it yet.
Very interesting post. The Mandarins were successful in pulling off their own coup, says one of my Romanian friends. So why not?
A mind from Bucuresti wrote:Someone should go about and pull a Theisman on the Mandarins. Bang bang, this is a coup. Effectively the same thing the Mandarins have done themselves. They have instigated their own coup and the entire apparatus of the Solarian League has made the coup so easy by putting every required key into their hands. I'm from Ro, we think in terms of coups.
