EXTRY! EXTRY! THE SLN CONQUERS THE MBS!

But returning to a conquered Manticore.

None of their existing allies have the economic or tech base, in 1903 PD, to let them complete Project Gram build up a secret fleet and expel the League from Manticore.

The only power large enough to be likely to pull it off is Haven. But their government is so corrupt they could never be trusted to push the League out of Manticore, much less restore its independence. The Andies, while not a current ally, seem to have the tech bases; but they'd be hard pressed to build the numbers you need - even with all the advantages Project Gram might yield over the next couple decades - to take on the League. And as masters of Realpolitik they'd be very reluctant to start that fight. At best they might allow a Manticoran government in exile (assuming that League was willing to ignore that) in exchange for significant technology transfer. That would at least put them in a possible position to resist further League expansion in their direction. (And if the tech advance played as as per historical, and the League did pick a fight with the IAN in the 1920s, they might be able to force a peace treaty that involved restoring Manticore. Maybe.

OTOH it's hard to say how much of the actual results of Project Gram were shaped by actual war experience. Plus its unlikely that everyone involved could be evacuates; so you might be missing a junior person who had the breakthrough insight historically. So the weapons coming out of it may not be the same as, as soon as, or as good as, what the RMN historically got during the war and the ceasefire.



And as for those left behind on Manicore after the defeat or retreat on the RMN. Well the OFS and Solarian Gendarmes have a lot of experience against resistance movement; and in keeping word of what is going on from getting to the sensitive ears of the wider League population. So any active resistance, or even organized acts of ongoing sabotage, are likely to be very messy with lots of deaths and collateral damage. And even if, by some miracle, the population unites and makes the surface utterly inhospitable for the occupiers that still doesn't restore their independence. In the last resort the OFS could settle for simply imposing a complete orbital blockade (after withdrawing ground forces) and leaving each planet to independently soak in its own juices. But even that is wildly unlikely. But if it did happen control of the Junction still gives them plenty of fees and graft -- more than enough to fund keeping a blockading force in system sufficient to destroy anything attempting to approach or depart the planet. There's simply no way to liberate the system without major external naval support. The kind I already addressed above.

The SKM is very heavily armed. Every non-military person we have seen has a personally owned high energy weapon. There are no records of who has these.

So if you are the SL you don't want an actual insurgency breaking out. It will be very, very bad.

And realistically, there is no reason. You just take 2/3rds or 3/4 of of the Junction revenue, impose some taxes on the the MMM and the financial sector, steal the military budget and you have a huge stream of money and the impact on the SKM citizens is fairly limited.

Jonathan_S wrote:

jtg452 wrote:Forget Grayson as a bolthole for Manty tech.

Ya'll are forgetting why the Graysons and the Manties were allies in the first place. Both of them realized that the Havenites were sniffing around in their direction looking to expand.

The Manties had the means to resist and the Graysons were in a strategic location according to the current doctrine. Why do you think that there's so many Battle of Yeltsin's Star? The whole 'deep strike' doctrine wasn't in existence back then. You proceeded incrementally through an area of space securing key systems and their flanks.

If the Manties are forced to bail on the Graysons before the podlayer era, Grayson ends up being part of Haven. They don't have the tech, hulls or trained manpower (how many 'loaner' officers are still wearing Grayson blue at the current end of the series?) to do more than die heroically.

I argue that this wouldn't be true if Manticore abandoned Grayson because the League had conquered Manticore.

Yes if Manticore unilaterally abandoned Grayson then Haven would likely scoop them up. The Yeltsin system wouldn't be anywhere near as useful to Haven in the middle of a shooting war as it would have been while there was still time, pre-war, to turn it into a forward support base. But it's useful enough.

But in the proposed scenario, with the League occupying Manticore in 1903, Grayson loses all usefulness to Haven. It's a useful position for fighting Manticore; but that now means fighting the League and Haven has zero interest in poking that bear. So strategically it's no longer useful; and by possibly attracting the League's attention the occupation of it is arguably strategically counterproductive. And at this point Grayson doesn't have a large enough economy to temp Haven either.

Instead Haven has to decide, with Manticore neutralized, if they can risk pushing around the flank of this new League incursion into the Haven Sector - letting their begin seizing the prize they originally wanted (Silesia) or whether the League presence make any more military expansion too risky to contemplate. But either way Grayson's of no use to them.

Haven under the Legislaturalists and the People's Republic era still had to expand to keep their economy running. Their primary goal was Manticore (that big of a shot in their economic arm would ha e sated their needs for decades and the income from the MWHJ fees would have changed it completely) but opportunity to swallow up their allies wouldn't have been overlooked or passed up. Until the Harrington class were operational, the Graysons didn't have a native built waller that would have been decisively superior to the Havenite Navy.

Jonathan_S wrote:So, it seems to me, that proposing the SLN go to war over their annoyance with Manticore is essentially proposing that in 1800s Britain go to war with, say, Brazil simply because Brazilian crew irritate the port officials at Portsmith, Halifax, Cape Town, etc.

In 1800, Brazil was still was a colony of Portugal. Portugal, on the other hand, was a friendly nation of the United Kingdom, and one of the few that opposed the Napoleonic continental embargo of the UK. When Napoleon's forces invaded Portugal in 1808, the ports in Brazil were opened to British ships, bypassing the need for trade to be carried by Portuguese ships. So yeah, not only would RN not invade, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves (est. 1815) were actually allies.

But later, when the Aberdeen Act was passed in the UK authorising the RN to board and detain any slaver ships bound for Brazil and try their crews in British courts, things changed. If this escalated, it could lead to the RN to drop by in the Guanabara Bay and ask for the Emperor to abdicate. Getting the mineral riches from Brazil, sugar cane, and coffee directly could have been economically beneficial.

So, you know, it could have happened. But not for uppity sailors in Portsmouth or even for a brawl getting out of control in Rio. There would need to be a major economic reason behind it and those reasons dictate how the conqueror would administer the conquered territories.

jtg452 wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:I argue that this wouldn't be true if Manticore abandoned Grayson because the League had conquered Manticore.

Yes if Manticore unilaterally abandoned Grayson then Haven would likely scoop them up. The Yeltsin system wouldn't be anywhere near as useful to Haven in the middle of a shooting war as it would have been while there was still time, pre-war, to turn it into a forward support base. But it's useful enough.

But in the proposed scenario, with the League occupying Manticore in 1903, Grayson loses all usefulness to Haven. It's a useful position for fighting Manticore; but that now means fighting the League and Haven has zero interest in poking that bear. So strategically it's no longer useful; and by possibly attracting the League's attention the occupation of it is arguably strategically counterproductive. And at this point Grayson doesn't have a large enough economy to temp Haven either.

Instead Haven has to decide, with Manticore neutralized, if they can risk pushing around the flank of this new League incursion into the Haven Sector - letting their begin seizing the prize they originally wanted (Silesia) or whether the League presence make any more military expansion too risky to contemplate. But either way Grayson's of no use to them.

Haven under the Legislaturalists and the People's Republic era still had to expand to keep their economy running. Their primary goal was Manticore (that big of a shot in their economic arm would ha e sated their needs for decades and the income from the MWHJ fees would have changed it completely) but opportunity to swallow up their allies wouldn't have been overlooked or passed up. Until the Harrington class were operational, the Graysons didn't have a native built waller that would have been decisively superior to the Havenite Navy.

Yes - without massive and politically painful internal reforms Haven had to keep gobbling up more economically prosperous systems.

However, while it's easy to forget since they spent so long fighting Manticore their original target was the economic wealth of Silesia. They fought Manticore because they couldn't have a powerful system in a position to interfere with their Silesian adventure.

Short Victorious War wrote:"We've got to continue expanding our economic base if we're going to maintain the Basic Living Stipend payments," De La Sangliere said heavily. "And if the CRU did take Walter out, I think we have to be very cautious about curtailing the BLS."
Harris nodded somberly. Two-thirds of Haven's home-world population was now on the Dole, and rampant inflation was an economic fact of life. Faced with a treasury which had been effectively empty for over a century, desperation had driven Frankel to propose limiting BLS adjustments to the inflation rate, maintaining its actual buying power without increase. The carefully phrased "leaks" Jessup had arranged to test-flight the idea had provoked riots in virtually every Prole housing unit, and, two months later, Kanamashi had put twelve explosive pulser darts into Frankel's chest, requiring a closed-coffin state funeral.
It was, Harris reflected grimly, one of the less ambiguous "protest votes" on record, and he understood the near panic thoughts of actual BLS cuts woke in his cabinet colleagues.
"Given those considerations," De La Sangliere went on, "we've got to gain access to the systems beyond Manticore, especially the Silesian Confederacy. If anyone knows some way we can grab them off without fighting Manticore first, I, for one, would be delighted to hear of it."
"There isn't one." Palmer-Levy looked around the table, daring anyone to disagree with her flat assertion. No one did, and Jessup endorsed her comment with a sharp nod. Bergren looked far more unhappy than either of his colleagues, but the dapper foreign minister also nodded unwilling assent.

Manticore's junction is probably a bigger prize; certainly a more concentrated one (and unlike the economies of captured systems not one Havenite control was likely to wreck). But whether or not we feel they should have been focusing on that prize; they weren't. Silesia was their preferred target.


And in this hypothetical, with the League in control of Manticore and its Junction, that prize is off the table anyway. So Haven's choice is either crippling internal reforms; or hoping that with OFS in charge of the MBS that now Haven can go into Silesia and "can grab them off without fighting Manticore first".

Ok, back to what if.

Manticore has a really large navy for a single system (ok binary but one entity) and is a massive trade and economic powerhouse. It has this really close ally (trade and we suspect various levels of military agreements) in Beowulf which it has agreed (not had to, agreeded) to share terminus rights/responsilibities at the Beowulf end of the wormhole. And Haven is chewing it's way closer.
So what is to prevent Manticore for applying for membership in the League with Beowulf as sponsor. We don't really know (do we?) what are the requiremets for League Membership. If you get "helped" by OFS you can eventualy get some actual League status. Population, Gross System Product by capita? Length of times as indpendent system? What?

We don't actualy know if any League Member is a Monarchy. There certainly are enough other operations. Beowulf is a Corporation- of sorts. Manticore is a Constitutional Monarchy (and patterend quite closely with the UK).

Manticore would NOT have to give up it's Navy. Beowulf has a signifcant one. Others in the League have at least SDF's, not a lot of detail on that. But Beowulf uses it's SDF (dam big SDF) for commerce protection and....well they do have that wormhole that generates a lot of credits.
That would have been at least one option to avoid Haven. I'm sure there is detail on why that wasn't considered buried somewhere, will have to reread House of Steel.
But it would have been a solution. It also probably would not have kept Manticore from later aquireing other systems. There isn't any mention of that kind of prohibition I can remember.

Different thought.
Manticore would not have been able to do a very good job of implimeneting Lacoon I against the League if it didn't have the Navy to stand up to the SLN. That - in 1903- probably have gotten a much harder response from the Bureaucracy as Member Systems etc started complaining and I suspect a Commission would have been sent to Manticore (under SLN accompaniment) to Investigate what was going on and there would be a fair number of OFS personel involved. Steel guantlet in velve gove (with spikes sticking out of it).

Lacoon II also has a very differnt effect. Not only does Manticore not have the next generations of ships/weapons/etc, but actual taking of non-Manticore termini or bridges would probably be treated as piracy by the Bureaucracy and BF/FF would be sent to recover those asssets of League Members or OFS "clients". Suddenly this neobarb system (forget they provide someting like 55% of the shipping capasity of the League and their Junction is the single most signifcant wormhole asset in the know galaxy) is "raiding" League Members and Protectorates and must be not only stopped but punished and brough under the influence and control of the Solarian League for the good it the League and the misguided if not insane criminals of Manticore.

So much for reasoned response