How was Haven supposed to fight the SL (Detweiler Plan)?

Killing off the Mandarins might have advanced the plan if it had been the SLN vs the Peeps and the SLN would still have had at least the advantage of numbers since while it was still the PRH Haven didn't have dual drive missles. So if the Mandarins got involved they may have messed with enough things in the military area such that the Navy was less effective.

Killing them off- even two of them- at the point things are going in the crapper with the Alignment manuvers of SLN fleets sgainst Manticore could have had the effect mentioned of being able to blame the dead people for the policies and extend an actual negotiations for settlement of the conflict short of war. Having two more of the them dying (Rajampet's "suicide" would make it three) might also start alarms ringing and somebody will suggest that just possibly Manticore and Haven might be on to something with the manipulations. Bing, Crandall, the Monica incedent....your hitting a threashold of too many coincidences.

Haven and assisination, well, yes they have used it in the past. But Manticore? Besides, whoever would win the bureaucratic fight to step up to the Permanent Undersecretary position of each Department is going to not be in a leadership of the Mandarin group unless they have some massive leverage and that amount of power would likely have propelled them up already.

tlb wrote:Should we take from that the Malign believed that with the process started by Rajampet, there was only one way that Kingsford could proceed; helped along by the analysis offered by Gweon. They did get the attack on Beowulf approved, by lying about the state of readiness.

The optimum Mandarin plan from the League's self-interest would have been to back down, apologize, and rebuild the SLN over a few decades until it was capable of fighting the Grand Alliance. Gweon's advice is designed to divert the Mandarins so that they lose whichever alternate path they take.

If they follow his advice to try and tap more of the Solarian League's wealth to finance the war, then many more League worlds are likely to follow Beowulf into secession on the grounds that they're being taxed by the central tyranny. If they don't follow his advice, then the Grand Alliance pries away more and more of the Verge worlds and keeps reducing the League's cash flow till the GA wins the war. If they do press the war hard with terror tactics, they set up revenge forces outside the League and moral revulsion forces within it that will break it apart one way or the other.

Remember that the Mesan Alliance goal is to shatter the Solarian League so their Renaissance Factor can begin putting the pieces back together in a shape more favorable to the MA long-term plans. They don't care about the Mandarins, or whether they win or lose against the Grand Alliance, except insofar as the strains of the war they've brought about will help to tear the League apart faster or slower.

tlb wrote:Should we take from that the Malign believed that with the process started by Rajampet, there was only one way that Kingsford could proceed; helped along by the analysis offered by Gweon. They did get the attack on Beowulf approved, by lying about the state of readiness.

tonyz wrote:The optimum Mandarin plan from the League's self-interest would have been to back down, apologize, and rebuild the SLN over a few decades until it was capable of fighting the Grand Alliance. Gweon's advice is designed to divert the Mandarins so that they lose whichever alternate path they take.

If they follow his advice to try and tap more of the Solarian League's wealth to finance the war, then many more League worlds are likely to follow Beowulf into secession on the grounds that they're being taxed by the central tyranny. If they don't follow his advice, then the Grand Alliance pries away more and more of the Verge worlds and keeps reducing the League's cash flow till the GA wins the war. If they do press the war hard with terror tactics, they set up revenge forces outside the League and moral revulsion forces within it that will break it apart one way or the other.

Remember that the Mesan Alliance goal is to shatter the Solarian League so their Renaissance Factor can begin putting the pieces back together in a shape more favorable to the MA long-term plans. They don't care about the Mandarins, or whether they win or lose against the Grand Alliance, except insofar as the strains of the war they've brought about will help to tear the League apart faster or slower.

If they had succeeded in getting a Declaration of War, then the individual worlds would put themselves under central control and agree to directly fund the war. This might have better served the Malign ends, because it would generate much more internal pressure in a losing war.

By using the attack on Beowulf as a cover for a vengeance strike on the Beowulf orbital habitats, the war ended up being short-circuited through Honor's direct attack on the Sol System.

Despite the Malign belief in their superiority, I have difficulty seeing how there was any chance of success given the Restoration of the Haven Republic, the massive technological advantage over the Solarian League in particular and the Grand Alliance that resulted from the exposure of the Detweiler Plan.

I continue to think that the extension of the Manticore Wormhole Junction into the Talbot Quadrant, caused a panic reaction in the Mesan Alignment forcing their plan into the endgame when the conditions were not right.

tlb wrote:Despite the Malign belief in their superiority, I have difficulty seeing how there was any chance of success given the Restoration of the Haven Republic, the massive technological advantage over the Solarian League in particular and the Grand Alliance that resulted from the exposure of the Detweiler Plan.

All that is true, but the last chapter of UH makes it even worse. The permanent union/federation/whatever between Haven and Manticore takes the situation even further from the Plan.