Post League Eridani

tlb wrote:I am pretty sure that the current Eridani Edict does not specific an eye for an eye, or in this case a planet for a planet. Instead it says that all responsible individuals will be rounded up and tried for the crime, with execution as the punishment if found guilty.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... ngton/31/0

Yep. The League was so militarily ahead that they didn't need to resort to MAD to enforce the Edict. If they found you'd violated it an overwhelmingly large fleet would show up at the offenders capital system and demand the surrender into their custody of everyone involved in authorizing, supporting, or implementing the violation. (Basically most of the government and military)

Any system foolish enough to refuse would get battalions of marines landing to forcibly take all those people into custody. The League then sets up a new government who will have it firmly impressed upon them that they're not allowed to do that sort of thing.


I'm sure a number of Innocent standers by would end up killed in such a confrontation but the League is NOT making retaliatory "wholesale and wanton slaughter" upon planets foolish enough to cause an Edict violation.

Part of the reason for the Edict was to convince anyone that was attacked in violation of the Edict that they were better off running to the League than launching an "eye for an eye" counter strike. (Because the League would have come down on both parties, retaliation is no mitigation for an Edict violation).



I can't imagine any significant power who decides to enforce that part of the accepted rules of interstellar war would do so with a mass casualty strike because the goal is to minimize those - not to get stuck in an endless cycle of planet killing.

Jonathan_S wrote:

tlb wrote:I am pretty sure that the current Eridani Edict does not specific an eye for an eye, or in this case a planet for a planet. Instead it says that all responsible individuals will be rounded up and tried for the crime, with execution as the punishment if found guilty.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... ngton/31/0

Yep. The League was so militarily ahead that they didn't need to resort to MAD to enforce the Edict. If they found you'd violated it an overwhelmingly large fleet would show up at the offenders capital system and demand the surrender into their custody of everyone involved in authorizing, supporting, or implementing the violation. (Basically most of the government and military)

Any system foolish enough to refuse would get battalions of marines landing to forcibly take all those people into custody. The League then sets up a new government who will have it firmly impressed upon them that they're not allowed to do that sort of thing.


I'm sure a number of Innocent standers by would end up killed in such a confrontation but the League is NOT making retaliatory "wholesale and wanton slaughter" upon planets foolish enough to cause an Edict violation.

Part of the reason for the Edict was to convince anyone that was attacked in violation of the Edict that they were better off running to the League than launching an "eye for an eye" counter strike. (Because the League would have come down on both parties, retaliation is no mitigation for an Edict violation).



I can't imagine any significant power who decides to enforce that part of the accepted rules of interstellar war would do so with a mass casualty strike because the goal is to minimize those - not to get stuck in an endless cycle of planet killing.

No argument from me. I was trying to make the same points, guys. Because several posts bring up the notion of mutually assured destruction. The opening post sets the stage.

Albeit, I am far from betting on exactly what a SLN dispensed by the criminal mindset of Mandarins would have done in every case. Especially if said perpetrators hailed from a planet who are holdouts against League expansion. I certainly wouldn't completely rule out the Mandarins employing a bit of tit-for-tat, just as a warning to others - even if hiding the tit behind an anonymous entity.

And of course, perhaps there's some validity to the notion that simply being arrested and punished is hardly deterrent enough for such a crime of passion.

cthia wrote:Albeit, I am far from betting on exactly what a SLN dispensed by the criminal mindset of Mandarins would have done in every case. Especially if said perpetrators hailed from a planet who are holdouts against League expansion. I certainly wouldn't completely rule out the Mandarins employing a bit of tit-for-tat, just as a warning to others - even if hiding the tit behind an anonymous entity.

And of course, perhaps there's some validity to the notion that simply being arrested and punished is hardly deterrent enough for such a crime of passion.

If a perpetrator was against League expansion under the Mandarins, then this is a perfect way to take over the planet and execute most of the government and military. So why blow up the planet killing all those other people ready to work for the greater good of the League?

I am not sure that an Eridani Edict violation really counts as a crime of passion, more like a crime of insanity; in which case it is better if the people responsible are removed from the gene pool. Whatever the deterrent effect, you still have people who are guilty of mass murder and deserve to die.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:Albeit, I am far from betting on exactly what a SLN dispensed by the criminal mindset of Mandarins would have done in every case. Especially if said perpetrators hailed from a planet who are holdouts against League expansion. I certainly wouldn't completely rule out the Mandarins employing a bit of tit-for-tat, just as a warning to others - even if hiding the tit behind an anonymous entity.

And of course, perhaps there's some validity to the notion that simply being arrested and punished is hardly deterrent enough for such a crime of passion.

If a perpetrator was against League expansion under the Mandarins, then this is a perfect way to take over the planet and execute most of the government and military. So why blow up the planet killing all those other people ready to work for the greater good of the League?

I am not sure that an Eridani Edict violation really counts as a crime of passion, more like a crime of insanity; in which case it is better if the people responsible are removed from the gene pool. Whatever the deterrent effect, you still have people who are guilty of mass murder and deserve to die.

Not actually "blowing up a planet." Simply KEWing it into compliance, same as the tactic recently adopted. The A-bomb only became an effective deterrent when we showed that it works and that we were crazy enough to deploy it.

1. The League “arresting and executing decision makers” is not a very stable counter Planet-killing threat.

“I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” Do we really think that there is a shortage of Nathan Hales in the future? There will, from time to time, come an ideologically motivatedchief executive (yes, I know Hale was not an executive) who is quite willing to die for the cause. Any True Believer really. Being shot against a wall would be a small price for many to guarantee whatever it was they were gaining with a planet-kill.

And if all the EE enforcement guys are going to do is drop a few battalions...phah. Get those bastards down gravity well where you can murder them. Hug their belts so tight they can’t KEW you and see how the enforcers like body bags coming home. Or just ride out the occupation for a decade. These are minor costs when we are talking “do I need to conduct genocide by EEV?” Has already come back as “yes”. Hell, a small nation may decide vaporizing a few planets in a large nation and then using the security bubble from EE enforcers as a shield for a generation is far preferable to being conquered.

We can keep up-scaling the punishment, but until we are talking deliberate countervalue shots, the EE has little weight in an exchange where we’ve already decided to kill billions. That may be “just” KEWing major population centers. Then again, the US still maintains war plans where in the worst case losing a few major cities is an acceptable exchange. Haven’t dusted them off in a while, but look west young man...

Suffice to say, at some point the coercion behind the EE, to be credible against the type of people most like to commit an EEV to begin with, is counter genocide.

2. Cthia and other Morality Will Prevent It: right now, every nuclear power in the world is either a first use or no-first-use state.

First use (Which was until the fall of the USSR the American position) basically says that we won’t commit to nuclear war UNLESS “X”. Which is to say they have already declared that there are certain policy positions - some public, some vague, nation dependent - where they absolutely will cross the moral line of nuking people. India, for instance, very publicly “secretly” keeps nuclear warheads aimed at Beijing and Shanghai, to be fired if the Chinese cross the border and cannot be stopped. Pakistan turns this about on India (who then make plans to see if they can overrun Pakistan fast enough in a war to stop it - they missed their window). The Chinese are no first use ...”except in defense of sovereign territory”, but they consider Taiwan, Scarborough Shoal, etc. to be sovereign territory. To re-iterate, not only are people willing to murder the almight shit out of each other, they are as matter of public policy willing to do it over once would have been business as usual border wars.

The other option is no-first-use. Which sounds righteous. But it means you are dedicated to countervalue targeting. Most first use plans are heavy on counterforce (aka, kill as many of their nukes as possible to limit the blowback) but if the enemy has already launched...nothing left but to fun for the 50/90 line; the point where you can guarantee a civiliational collapse, killing 50% of the targeted population and destroying 90% of the urban areas.

That is the American, British, and French position. To be clear, the biggest champions of Western Liberal Humanism have declared policies under which they will dedicate themselves to killing hundreds of millions if they believe they are on the receiving end of a strike.

Why in the world would I believe humankind has fundamentally changed in a series about imperial wars?

GloriousRuse wrote:The League “arresting and executing decision makers” is not a very stable counter Planet-killing threat.

“I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” Do we really think that there is a shortage of Nathan Hales in the future? There will, from time to time, come an ideologically motivatedchief executive (yes, I know Hale was not an executive) who is quite willing to die for the cause. Any True Believer really. Being shot against a wall would be a small price for many to guarantee whatever it was they were gaining with a planet-kill.

And if all the EE enforcement guys are going to do is drop a few battalions...phah. Get those bastards down gravity well where you can murder them. Hug their belts so tight they can’t KEW you and see how the enforcers like body bags coming home. Or just ride out the occupation for a decade. These are minor costs when we are talking “do I need to conduct genocide by EEV?” Has already come back as “yes”. Hell, a small nation may decide vaporizing a few planets in a large nation and then using the security bubble from EE enforcers as a shield for a generation is far preferable to being conquered.

When you read the text from RFC, you will see that just executing the leaders is not the full punishment: the current government and military is also disbanded and new structures are set up by the occupying power. Whether the planet can really carry out the guerilla actions you propose against a force that controls the orbitals is questionable. What is not questioned is that the small nation has been conquered, just not by the original threat. What is proposed by the Edict is what happened to Germany and Japan after WWII, and does not resemble the situation in Masada; because the only executions there are the result of internal processes.

So there is a dynamic here: to begin with, a small nation can only threaten planet attack against a force that is already in orbital position to conquer them. If they try to preemptively use a planet attack to prevent being conquered, then that will result in being conquered by a force enforcing the Edict.
So you might say, why not threaten the same against the Edict force? I presume that at that point, the planetary death penalty is imposed.
Also I expect that the definition of responsible leaders is interpreted rather broadly.

What, indeed, would stop the small planet from threatening the planet-kill the enforcers? Nothing. It is, in fact, a wholly reasonable option. Until planetary destruction and effective genocide comes in. Hence the EE being based on guaranteed MAD.

Except for the league can take a dead planet or three. The SEM...not so much. Which is the first post in this thread. A small nation...even a large nation...knew that if it came to it, you couldn’t realistically out-EEV the league. It would be certain death for you and they could soak it up. The GA? The threat of a few planet kills could very effectively make them back down.

GloriousRuse wrote:What, indeed, would stop the small planet from threatening the planet-kill the enforcers? Nothing. It is, in fact, a wholly reasonable option. Except for the league can take a dead planet or three. The SEM...not so much. Which is the first post in this thread.

True (*); which is why we expect the League to be part of the enforcement body, after the restriction on SLN ships being outside League area is modified. Perhaps ad hoc multi-stellar forces are set up, should the situation arise.

* Actually after the Talbot Quarter is fully integrated, the only nation that cannot afford this is Grayson; so they should not be part of the enforcement group.

First, that supposes the reformed League survives and does not either fracture to pieces or become 19th century China.

If it does, it is quite clear that any number of barbs might, with profliferation we’ve already seen in Maya, portions of the verge, the emerging Renaissance Factor, and so forth can now be militarily potent enough even with limited tonnage to inflict unacceptable levels of destruction versus the league. A squadron of Sagami-esque cruisers could theoretically kill dozens of worlds until a 400 ship fleet could be brought to the party. It’s one thing to lose one world in three hundred to set an example no one will forget. It’s abother to commit your member states to dying in the tens of planets for someone else’s war.

Which means until the SLN modernizes, it can’t take the risk of enforcing the EE except in self defense. Of course, once modernized...Weber might give the Manties a free pass, but he’d be cheating...because a revanchist League fresh with a call to glory and getting over barbarian humiliation won’t end well for the SEM. But, I digress.

Back to topic, if the new league cannot guarantee the EE, then it falls to the GA. Is it likely that Haven is willing to lose a planet or three so the Manties can feel righteous? And how long would the Talbot sector stay aligned if the SEM core let’s its newest members get killed? As for Grayson, they’re part of the SEM. And even if Grayson doesn’t come to the party, I bet the possibility of killing them would cause a lot of internal hand wringing in the SEM.

That’s where a red team puts its leverage. The GA might, if it were a unified whole, be willing to accept some planetary losses. As a coalition of individual governments, none of the governments are in position to trade away planets. Even the Manties have to realize that short of Deus Ex Weber, taking losses in the core guts them, and taking losses in Talbot will forever be proof that when you sign on with the SKM, you sign on to be eradicated for their ambitions as a rule enforcing hegemon.

GloriousRuse wrote:First, that supposes the reformed League survives and does not either fracture to pieces or become 19th century China.

If it does, it is quite clear that any number of barbs might, with profliferation we’ve already seen in Maya, portions of the verge, the emerging Renaissance Factor, and so forth can now be militarily potent enough even with limited tonnage to inflict unacceptable levels of destruction versus the league. A squadron of Sagami-esque cruisers could theoretically kill dozens of worlds until a 400 ship fleet could be brought to the party. It’s one thing to lose one world in three hundred to set an example no one will forget. It’s abother to commit your member states to dying in the tens of planets for someone else’s war.

Which means until the SLN modernizes, it can’t take the risk of enforcing the EE except in self defense. Of course, once modernized...Weber might give the Manties a free pass, but he’d be cheating...because a revanchist League fresh with a call to glory and getting over barbarian humiliation won’t end well for the SEM. But, I digress.

Back to topic, if the new league cannot guarantee the EE, then it falls to the GA. Is it likely that Haven is willing to lose a planet or three so the Manties can feel righteous? And how long would the Talbot sector stay aligned if the SEM core let’s its newest members get killed? As for Grayson, they’re part of the SEM. And even if Grayson doesn’t come to the party, I bet the possibility of killing them would cause a lot of internal hand wringing in the SEM.

That’s where a red team puts its leverage. The GA might, if it were a unified whole, be willing to accept some planetary losses. As a coalition of individual governments, none of the governments are in position to trade away planets. Even the Manties have to realize that short of Deus Ex Weber, taking losses in the core guts them, and taking losses in Talbot will forever be proof that when you sign on with the SKM, you sign on to be eradicated for their ambitions as a rule enforcing hegemon.

Notice that the Manticore Navy went to bat for a planet that was not even part of the SEM at Hypathia. Having big friends is a way of protection. It doesn't always work but we haven't had a major war in Europe for almost three quarters of a century.