Remaining holes in SLN intel

n7axw wrote:I don't see Manticore's aims as being imperialistic here. They are more interested in commercial agreements, cultural exchanges and mutual defense agreements than adding more members to the SEM. Frankly, they are going to have their hands full bringing along Silesia and the Quadrant rather than thinking about expansion.

It's pretty easy to paint the Star Empire of Manticore as imperialistic.

kzt wrote:

n7axw wrote:I don't see Manticore's aims as being imperialistic here. They are more interested in commercial agreements, cultural exchanges and mutual defense agreements than adding more members to the SEM. Frankly, they are going to have their hands full bringing along Silesia and the Quadrant rather than thinking about expansion.

It's pretty easy to paint the Star Empire of Manticore as imperialistic.

I suppose I should break out my dictionary here just so we all share a common definition? According to OED(2) (historical) Ruled by an Emperor. So yes Star Empire is Imperialist. (1) A policy of extending a country's power and influence through colonization, use of military force, or other means.

I suppose the Devil is in the details. Accoding to The Imperial Empire of Manticore, their policy is not so much extending its power than reducing that of the 600# Imperial Gorilla, the SL. Textev: Mike Henke's convo with the Grand Poobah to the king of Meyers. We don't want puppet government, we want a stable and popular one that will rule equitably and morally. We would hope to form tradeandcultural relations, but only as equals. (Basically). Compare to the OFS model.

THE LEAGUE is nothing more than the United Nations with a peaekeeping force on steroids. Going back to HotQ, Its more the Houseman model: "We have lots of economic interests in common, lets just get along. And form this mutual protection association to be the policeman." Simplified, sure, but on point.

The Mandarins know the constitution was dead upon ratification, so do the representatives form the systm of Beowulf. They do not need to fracture the Glass droplet that s the league, all they need to do is force a constitutional crisis. There is a whole other topic dealing with this,

Pro tip: If you don't want people to think you are an empire pursuing imperialistic empire building policies a good place to start is not calling yourself an empire or having an emperor or any office with "imperial" in the name.

Joat42 wrote:Maybe I should add that the planning for operation Lacoon and it's different stages is something that must have been going on for a very long time.

If you are a small star nation with something very valuable on the fringes of the Leagues sphere of influence, don't you think they would be a bit nervous about a little visit from OFS? Especially if we look at what transpired in the Travis Long books and it's effect on Manticores thinking when the junction was discovered.

To expand on the background information why operation Lacoon came to be, RFC made a post a long time ago on the topic why Manticore didn't join the Solarian League which quite nicely sums up Manticores opinion of the League.

runsforcelery wrote:Why didn't Manticore join the Solarian League?

Because they were too smart to submerge themselves in an SL whose cracks were already evident to them, mainly. They had the best of both worlds (at least until the RoH went off the rails and became the PRH). As things stood, they had (in no special order):

1. proximity to the core for what they wanted from those worlds;
2. plenty of economic opportunity (Manticore & the merchant marine) from the SL economy without SL bureaucrats;
3. (relatively) corruption-free politics (again, until the RoH went off the rails);
4. a very lengthy tradition of independence;
5. the status of big fish in relatively small ponds rather than a few more minnows in a vast ocean;
6. no desire to invite OFS in while they were busy being OFS locally (the RoH after it went off the rails).

In theory, the SKM could have sought SL membership to hold the PRH at bay, but their estimate of the situation was that the SL was little if any better than the PRH (remember how widely the Manty merchant marine penetrates the Shell and the Verge; Manties knew the reality behind the SL facade entirely too well) and that they had a pretty good chance of standing up to the PRH by themselves. It is remotely --- remotely! --- possible that a sufficiently desperate SKM might have sought League membership/protection if it had turned out that the PRH steamroller couldn't be stopped, but by that time Manty opinon of the Sollies was low enough (remember how few positive impressions of the League you've seen from a Manticoran perspective), that they probably would have preferred to either go down fighting or else make the best negotiated terms they could with the PRH.

Manties like Beowulfans and vice-versa; Manties do not like Sollies, and they draw a clear distinction in their own minds between Beowulfans ("their" Sollies -- you know, the good fellows next door whose families we've been marrying into for the last couple of hundred years) and the rest of that wretched mass of rotten, smug, imperialistic, slavery-enabling, platitude-spouting-but-not-honoring, free-trade-inhibiting, oh-so-superior bastards in the League. [G]

By the time the PoH had gone thoroughly off the rails, the only membership status it was likely to find in the SL would have been as a protectorate writ very large, although its locally produced elite might have been able to cut a deal with OFS to become the local tax-collectors, but Manticore lay between the League and the PRH, and you can be damned sure the SKM would never have stood idly by while the PRH signed up with the SL and the SKM (which knew how much the League was just salivating for the chance to take over the MWHJ) found itself between the "main" SL and a brand new SL lobe which used to be called "Haven."

Looked at in the most positive possible light, Manticore had no more interest in joining the League than Canada (or even Mexico) has in joining the USA. Looked at in a more reasonable light, the SKM had no more desire to join the League than Finland had to join the USSR (or maybe even than Cuba, under present management, has to join the USA). And any extension of the SL into the Haven Sector would, in effect, have had to come through Manticore because of the Junction.

That help?

The Alignment's intent is to fracture the League so that they can sweep up the pieces and make everything it's laboratory and model for the improvement of humanity under the nominal Detweiler Plan- with the Star Lines firmly on top and in control.
The Alignment firmly intends to rub Beowulf's nose (and every other part of it) ultimalty in the knowledge that Detweiler was right, Beowulf IS wrong and probalby there will some vestige of a Beowulfian identity allowed to grovel and suffer for centuries as the Alignment grinds the evidence of their failure into them. The Alignment is vindictive and cruel and is practicaly salivating at the prospect of this.

Then there is Beowulf. Why are they at the point where they are leaving the League? The long version is that between what the League has become and what is going on in the sphere of politics and the boiling inter-stellar conflicts brought them to the point where they had to make a decision about just going with all the problems or making the break.

You follow the development of the relationship between Beowulf and it's single largest trading partner (Manticore because of the Junction and Manticore's development as a major merchant shipping power) and you see the particular stresses placed there. And not just by the machinations of the Alignment.
Along with Manticore having developed that merchant shipping empire, the Sigma Draconis Wormhole would have made it a prime target for OFS had Beowulf not be the system on the other end of that wormhole. Beowulf prospered massively from that, at least as much as it's existing trade and treaty links with it's daughter colonies and other trade partners. It's the combination of having to support/protect that trade and daughter-partners and build up against the threat of Haven siezing Manticore and then swallowing Beowulf.
Then the League- being manipulated by the Alignment but also looking for a massive payday in the taking of the Junction - ultimately makes Beowulf face a choice of standing for it's rights (as a League Member under the Constitution) or selling out it's partner. The League also finds itself in the position that it CAN NOT LET MANTICORE SUCESSFULLY DEFEND ITSELF AND RESIST WHAT THE LEAGUE WANTS TO DO. Though it 's not quite put this way, Beowulf's choice is resist (unthinkable from the point of view of the SLN and Mandarins) or go with it and become just another piece of the OFS system for -probably- keeping a share in the terminus and taking whatever crumbs the Buracracy throws their way.

Beowulf knows this is comming. They have the information on Raging Justice. Beowulf is looking at a compromise it decides it isn't willing to make. They can't do it and just live with the League in it's present awfull state, they will become the same as all of the things they deplore about the present state of the League.
You can look at it from the perspective of England standing against Germany at the start of WW II. That' s not a clean anaology because there are too many other things going on in the Honorverse that don't match but essentilay the choice is compromise- again and again and again and nothing gets better and the choices keep getting worse- or fight.

Would Beowulf have announced they were pulling out if the SLN didn't try to force the passage of the wormhole? Not sure, you would have to ask RFC for his thoughts. BUT, it was clear- even before the SLN Task Force showed up to pre-position itself for the attack through the wormhole- that the League was willing to use naked force on a full and founding member of the League to get what it wanted. You make your choice and either fold under threat or you stand and take what happens. There are going to be consequences either way.

ldwechsler wrote:

n7axw wrote:I don't see Manticore's aims as being imperialistic here. They are more interested in commercial agreements, cultural exchanges and mutual defense agreements than adding more members to the SEM. Frankly, they are going to have their hands full bringing along Silesia and the Quadrant rather than thinking about expansion.

Don

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Imperialism is a loaded term. It doesn't just mean take over. When discussing American imperialism OUTSIDE the continental US, we didn't do all that much compared to Europe. But our influence winds up in so many places even when we don't stay all that long.

Yeah, I know. I still find it better to use the term in the classical sense of territorial expansion and empire. In that sense, America is not really imperialistic. It seems to me that using it the other way muddies the meaning of the term. But, then, I guess you have to talk about what we do somehow...

Don

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ldwechsler wrote:

n7axw wrote:I don't see Manticore's aims as being imperialistic here. They are more interested in commercial agreements, cultural exchanges and mutual defense agreements than adding more members to the SEM. Frankly, they are going to have their hands full bringing along Silesia and the Quadrant rather than thinking about expansion.

Don

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Imperialism is a loaded term. It doesn't just mean take over. When discussing American imperialism OUTSIDE the continental US, we didn't do all that much compared to Europe. But our influence winds up in so many places even when we don't stay all that long.

n7axw wrote:Yeah, I know. I still find it better to use the term in the classical sense of territorial expansion and empire. In that sense, America is not really imperialistic. It seems to me that using it the other way muddies the meaning of the term. But, then, I guess you have to talk about what we do somehow...

Don

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The classical sense of empire is to rule more than one PEOPLE, who happen to have territory. The purpose was threefold: a)martial glory and immediate plunder for the leaders of the winner; b)a continuous stream of tribute (taxation); c) securing defensible boarders to keep said tribute coming. It was mostly about the ruling elites getting richer and patting themselves on the back.

Mercantilism was just another method of imperial expansion. Today, it is done with ownership of major industries. I understand Dubai put in a bid once to take control of all US ports? China owned most real estate in Hawaii? Financial competition without the shooting war. Probably has something to do with that whole mutual assured destruction thing.

Rob

How did Beowulf find out about Raging Justice? Surely it wasn't in the news outlets of Old Earth.

cthia wrote:How did Beowulf find out about Raging Justice? Surely it wasn't in the news outlets of Old Earth.

Because the SLN came to them and asked them to join in the fun of a wormhole invasion.

cthia wrote:How did Beowulf find out about Raging Justice? Surely it wasn't in the news outlets of Old Earth.

Theemile wrote:Because the SLN came to them and asked them to join in the fun of a wormhole invasion.

I thought it was more than that, because the Beowulf official already had a good idea what the Solarian officer was going to ask before the first meeting. He arranged to have a Beowulf conference to discuss how to answer before they heard the request.
Sometimes it is just as important to spy on your allies as it is to spy on your enemies.