Issues due to the size of polities

Commodore Oakius wrote:Thank you, and yes it does clarify most of my questions. That is much of what I suspected and was concerned for the SEM and the SKM in the future. I am always amazed how you can drop into a forum and word a single response so well that covers so much. Maybe I shouldn't be, writer that you are.

Not to steal you overly long on this topic, but have you gone through the basic concepts of how the SL started? Was it similer to this start up of the SEM and then they could not be maintained or that they destructively expanded? Or did you envision some other cause of the downfall of the SL ideals. I know you had said in other threads that the SL consitiution was riddled with problems. Do you envision those as the primary cause of the corruption and strife? Would the destructive expasion only be a symtom of this, and not a co-cause?

As Hanuman has suggested, the problems with the Solarian League were inherent from the very beginning because of the fashion in which it was originally organized.

The original Solarian League constitution contains all sorts of human rights provisions and other provisions intended to prohibit the growth of a central government which would be able to intervene in the internal affairs of its member worlds. Those provisions, like those in the United States constitution, were defined primarily in negatives: that is, things that the League government could not do to its citizens or to the political and social structures of member planets and star systems. It most emphatically did not define what those member planets' and star systems' governments could do within their own jurisdictions. In other words, there is no provision of the Solarian League constitution equivalent to the US' Fourteenth Amendment which is the primary basis for federal law overriding state and local law on issues of constitutional infringement.

Now, when the Solarian League was created in the wake of Old Earth's Final War, the human race was confronting some significant changes and problems. Obviously, the effort to save the Sol System from the consequences of the weapons used in the Final War (and the aftermath of the war itself) produced an unprecedented density of interstellar traffic to and from Sol. At the same time, however, the beginnings of a true interstellar economy began to emerge as the hyper generator/Warshawski sail/counter-grav combination made (you should pardon the expression) "dirt cheap" interstellar shipping costs possible. There was no true infrastructure to support that interstellar trade, however. Each inhabited star system had its own laws, including those governing its commerce, and interstellar law — especially interstellar admiralty law — was very sadly underdeveloped. In addition, there were a certain number of interstellar bad actors littering the astrographic landscape who could be counted upon to make problems for law-abiding merchants and star systems unless they were somehow constrained to behave themselves.

The solution was the League, which grew out of the multilateral agreements between Beowulf and several of Old Earth's other, older daughter colonies who had rallied to the homeworld's aid when catastrophe struck. This was not a government, and had never been intended to function as one; it was simply an administrative arrangement which had been worked out to provide the efficiency and direction (and avoid duplicate effort) required to bring old Earth back from the brink. One has to remember that Beowulf had been settled for over a thousand T-years at the time the constitution was actually drafted, and some of the other older colony worlds had been settled almost as long. The rescue effort began immediately after the Final War (which began in 975 PD, if I remember correctly, although I didn't look the date up to check it); the League wasn't officially created until the 12th Century PD. Partly that was because the people who initially organized it were too busy for the ensuing 150-200 years with putting old Earth back together again, partly it was because the need for something to straighten out humanity's increasingly chaotic interstellar relations and interactions, and partly it was because it took that long for the people who initially organized it to grasp that they could create a governing entity on that scale. Humanity had grown (not unreasonably) accustomed to thinking of itself as existing in isolated clusters in specific star systems which were fully self-contained units cut off from any other human-occupied star systems by the incredible distances between them. The extent to which the Warshawski sail had changed all of that took a while to trickle through humanity's view of itself and its environment.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending upon one's perspective), the authors of the Solarian constitution didn't really want a true interstellar government. They were, if you will, drafting something much more like the Articles of Confederation than the United States Constitution. In terms of the ability to intervene in the domestic affairs of its citizens, the League might as well not have existed in the view of the people who created it. Its function was to regulate and moderate (not govern) what happened between those star systems, and that was a primary reason for the limitation on the League's ability to enact legislation. In theory, the Solarian League Assembly can/could pass any law it wished so long as it did not infringe upon one of those negative rights provisions of the constitution. In fact, the fact that every member star system of the League has effective veto right means that no truly meaningful laws were ever likely to be passed if there was the least chance that those laws would impinge upon a single member system's perceived rights or be perceived as setting a precedent which might someday impinge upon them. In addition, the constitution was specifically written in a way to starve the central government of funds in order to prohibit its unrestrained growth.

Since the primary concern of the drafters was to regulate and manage those interstellar affairs of theirs, however, the central government was given some pretty sharp regulatory teeth from the very beginning. And since the staff and infrastructure to make those regulations work — and to provide the Solarian League Navy which would become the League's mailed fist for dealing with any of those "bad actors" out there who made trouble for the League's members — was going to cost money, a revenue source (the various use fees and allowable shipping duties) was provided. At the time, most people's predictions of how big the cash flow of the League was likely to become were absurdly low compared to those which actually exist by Honor's time, the better part of a thousand T-years farther down the road. However, by the same token, most people's predictions of how enormous the League's bureaucracy was likely to become had also been absurdly low (and optimistic).

The problem was threefold. (1) In order to do the job for which it had been created in the first place, the League bureaucracy simply had to get bigger and to continue getting bigger. (2) Because the political organs of the League had been deliberately stultified, and because there was no direct political accountability on the part of the bureaucrats running it in the absence of strong political direction, careerism, cronyism, and corruption became an ever increasing part of the (largely) hidden underbelly of the League. (3) When the Assembly could (rarely) agreed to enact legislation, it left it up to the existing central, permanent bureaucracy to enforce that legislation, which meant that bureaucracy (with the connivance of a Solarian judiciary which was both underdeveloped and thoroughly corrupted by the system it was supposed to keep an eye on) could pretty much interpret the laws to mean whatever the bureaucrats wanted them to mean.

This is how the Office of Frontier Security, which was created by act of the Assembly, became such a nightmare. The drafters of the legislation (those of them who were honest, at any rate) intended OFS to do pretty much what Manticore is doing in the case of Masada and in the Manticore-governed portion of the Silesian Confederacy. It is supposed to prevent malignant system regimes from engaging in the sort of adventurism that leads to interstellar wars and also to intervene in star systems where human rights violations are especially egregious or where the very survival of the inhabited planet(s) of a star system might be in question. Because it was recognized that this was going to be an expensive effort, OFS was specifically allowed to impose "reasonable" fees (not to be confused with the constitutionally-prohibited taxes) in order to finance its operations in a specific star system. There is some evidence to suggest that some of the people involved in drafting the legislation fully understood — and intended to create — the ways in which that provision could be abused, but the majority of the drafters and of the assembly members who voted to pass the legislation clearly never envisioned what Frontier Security was going to become. However, the abuses which occur under OFS' auspices were inherent in the fundamental system from the very beginning because of the lack of political oversight and political accountability.

I'm sure that quite a few of my readers have figured out that an important portion of the Solarian League's literary DNA is to be found in the U.S. Congress' abdication of its responsibilities into the hands of an ever growing horde of bureaucrats and bureaucracies which increasingly govern by regulation rather than by legislation. In the case of the League, however, the system was more inherently flawed from the very beginning, on the one hand, and far less pernicious for the League's member systems, on the other. Even by Honor's time, League policies and regulations had only an indirect and very limited impact on the citizens of its member systems. Remember that the League was specifically structured to stay out of its member systems' domestic affairs, and aside from the fashion in which its regulations on things like interstellar shipping impinge upon those member systems, that's pretty much the way things have stayed. Don't get me wrong. There are instances in which the central bureaucracy's decisions and regulations have had significant economic consequences even for the League's member systems, but these have been primarily secondary effects and, by and large, have been sufficiently modest enough that there's been no massive outcry in those star systems.

People who understand what's happening out in the Protectorates, and people who grasp the extent to which the transstellars and bureaucrats have climbed into bed with one another (especially over the last 200-300 T-years) have recognized that however indirect the consequences in their own star systems may have been, the League has become a cancerous organism as far as the galaxy at large is concerned. Moreover, people like the citizens of Beowulf, recognize the way in which the League's alliance with corrupt transstellars (and I'm speaking here not simply of individual regulators or naval officers within the League, but of the permanent undersecretaries themselves and their staffs) directly impinge on every single one of the League's citizens because of the fashion in which those who are responsible for preventing criminal behavior are instead profiting from those same criminal behaviors. Some of those who recognize the dangers are also insightful enough to recognize that specifically because the central regulatory bureaucracy does not depend upon taxation for its revenue stream, it is far, far more difficult — or would be far, far more difficult, assuming anyone was prepared to make a serious attempt – for the Assembly to somehow regain control of the bureaucracy. In effect, the bureaucracy is the "executive branch" of the Solarian League, and the traditional weapon of the legislature against the executive — the control of funding — is not available to the Assembly because of the way the constitution itself set up the central government's funding.

The extent to which the person-in-the-street in the Solarian League completely misunderstands what's happening between the League and the Grand Alliance is due in no small part to the fact that actual League citizens — which should never be confused with League subjects, since that includes the citizens of the Protectorates — are totally out of touch with what's actually happening in the Verge. They don't know, and in many cases they don't want to know, what the OFS has become and what it has been doing outside the confines of their own reasonably comfortable lives. And because they have no direct participation in League policy (since political oversight is effectively nonexistent), Solarian League voter participation on the interstellar level is incredibly low. The majority of those actively involved in politics, are involved on the intrasystem or purely planetary level. Beyond the hyper limits of their own star systems, they tend to be incredibly poorly informed and largely incurious, and they don't actually identify very strongly with their own "central government" or its policies. They identify strongly with the idea of the Solarian League, but they have only a very imperfect understanding of the Solarian League's reality, and the Mandarins and the (literally) multi-million (as in high numbers of multi-million) direct and indirect employees and members of the League bureaucracy not only prefer for their fellow citizens to remain ignorant, disinterested, and poorly informed but work hard to keep them that way. The avenues through which they do this are well established and well polished, which helps to explain the extent to which they have managed to control the narrative within the League so far. The Battle of Spindle and what happened to Filareta will obviously make that task harder, but readers really shouldn't underestimate the degree to which all of those individuals who are stakeholders in the League's power structure and the corruption which it both engenders and feeds upon are still determined (and well positioned) to continue to control the narrative.

Hope this helps. Now I have to go cook supper, so I don't have time to proofread it properly. If there are any typos or small continuity errors in here, that's why.

Your descriptions of the intentions of the SEM seem rather familiar.

Sort of like Bush Jr and the Neocon's theories about Iraq and Afghanistan.

My sarcasm is tempered by the acknowledgement that I was supportive of these experiments in nation building because I understood what the only realistic alternatives were.

This being acknowledge, why would Manticore's efforts to civilize Masada (Silesia might be doable) be any more successful than Bush's efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan?

runsforcelery wrote:

crewdude48 wrote:Every one joined the SEM voluntarily, just like Masada and Selisia. I am not saying that those worlds are not better off, I'm just saying that there is a precedent for taking systems against their will.

I realize there is a degree of . . . irony, shall we say, in your formulation here. However, there are a couple of points I think should be made.

First, Masada is not a Manty possession and there are no plans to annex the system. Manticore has imposed conditions the planetary government must meet before it regains complete autonomy. In the meantime, Manticore exercise purely a police function, preventing certain specifically proscribed actions and events. For example, the recreation of a Masadan Navy, the reimposition of the laws which deny female equality under the law, etc. A new constitution has been drafted (and ratified) which imposes minimum human rights and citizenship conditions and guarantees freedom of religion and conscience, and Masadan police forces have been created under it which have been armed and trained by Manticore. This is still very much a work in progress, but the intention --- and they're doing better than they really anticipated on keeping within shouting distance of their originally projected schedule --- is that Masada will become an independent star nation under new management in the fullness of time. In the meantime, Manticore has been working to build up the Msadan economy and space infrastructure on the theory that affluence will help in the acceptance of the new political and religious system being set up. Whether a future, fully independent Masada will choose to create, maintain, or seek a close political relationship with Manticore afterward will be up to Masada, although there are obviously reasons to think that might be the case.

Second, Silesia. The Manties acquired their share of Silesia through negotiation with and treaty arrangement with the Confederacy's legal government. The circumstances may have carried a flavor of "an offer you can't refuse," but they honored the letter of the law at least procedurally. The objective wasn't to acquire Silesia permanently, however. The objective(s) were to eliminate a source of ongoing tension vis-à-vis the Andermani; bring the Andermani into military alliance at a time when they seemed desperately needed; secure one of Manticore's most important trading areas by cutting local bases and allies out from under the pirates operating there; clean out the slavers who'd made Silesia a big part of their transfer, shipping, and holding facilities; put an end to the long-running insurrections and revolts which had killed millions of Silesians over the years; and create stable local government. To accomplish those goals, Manticore has declared that its share of Silesia is a protectorate and has imposed governors and administrators from the outside, supported by major forces of light and medium fleet units. Eventually, the planets of that protectorate will be allowed to choose to join the Star Empire if that's what they want to do. No one in Manticore envisions forcing them to join the SEM or establishing some sort of permanent military occupation in perpetuity if they don't. In addition, unlike OFS, which sees the protectorates primarily as cash cows, Manticore wants to develop the SIlesian economy in ways which were never possible under the corrupt previous system and its frequent episodes of violence.

To be honest, the greatest risk to Manticore isn't the size it may attain; it's whether or not it can maintain or non-destructively expand the unique amalgam of qualities which made the Star Kingdom of Manticore what it was. That's one reason for the federalism that it's adopted. The main reason is to develop local government hubs or nexii where local problems can be dealt with responsively on the local level without huge communications lags. Imperial policy and law will be created by the imperial parliament which will meet in the Manticore System if only because of the MWHJ, but local autonomy will trump imperial decree/regulation except in certain areas specified constitutionally and accepted by each unit of the SEM as it seeks membership. Economically, imperial policy will be to develop the greatest possible economic strength for all of its citizens everywhere, but just as the political system is based on a dispersed federal model, the SEM isn't going to try to build some intimately integrated economic system in which every part is dependent on every other part or in which some sort of "top down" structure defines what each part of the whole contributes to it. In other words, economies --- like the political system --- will be organized locally, with each "lobe" of the SEM encouraged to develop its own economic strengths rather than depending on anyone else. Central policy will be shaped to help those local economies, but they won't be micromanaged by the imperial parliament, nor will one local economy be subordinated to any of the others. That is, the MWHJ will remain a resource of the SKM, not the SEM. The SKM will be responsible for its share of the imperial budget based on the income and wealth of the SKM as a component of the SEM, but in terms of local law and custom and local economics, it will retain the same autonomy as any other unit of the overall Empire.

The belief (and hope) is that this will (1) allow the SEM's subjects to rule their own lives with an absolute minimum of interference, (2) prevent the sort of bureaucratic monolith needed to try and govern some sort of unitary state over interstellar distances; (3) promote the sort of interstellar free trade which has been the life's blood of the SKM for centuries and extend that same sort of prosperity (if possibly on a lesser scale) to all members of the Star Empire; (4) provide a political "relief valve" to prevent the sort of accumulated pressure which was already driving the SL towards dissolution even before the outbreak of hostilities; and (4) protect the SKM's unique political structure and society in the Manticore Binary System (local autonomy) while continuing to encourage the influx of immigration which has also been part of the SKM for centuries at a rate which can be integrated into the existing society without disrupting it.

I hope this clarifies some of the differences between the SL and the SEM. Specifically, that it clarifies what the SEM has looked at in the SL and decided were the factors which turned it into the dysfunctional, predatory mess it had become by the time of Oyster Bay.

If you really want to understand the beurocracy, go watch "Yes Minister"

With the caveat that David's arrangements for Masada in the series backstory CANNOT be based on the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

David's disposition of Masada, and his earliest remarks on the task as envisioned by the Foreign Ministry and Royal Army, predated Operation Enduring Freedom by ~8 years.

Plenty of other historical examples of nation-building are available. Both disasters and successes.

dreamrider

I suspect that major difference between Manticore's efforts and the US's efforts is that Manticore's government is better set up for a very long term effort.

IMO a ruling monarch (like Queen Elizabeth) doesn't face re-election and can focus on things other than the "next election".

An elected President can start a long-term project only to see the next President just discard the project.

A Manticorian Monarch can exert his/her considerable influence to keep such a project going even in the face of a change in government.

Of course, Prolong means the Monarch will be around decades longer than any current day person.

namelessfly wrote:Your descriptions of the intentions of the SEM seem rather familiar.

Sort of like Bush Jr and the Neocon's theories about Iraq and Afghanistan.

My sarcasm is tempered by the acknowledgement that I was supportive of these experiments in nation building because I understood what the only realistic alternatives were.

This being acknowledge, why would Manticore's efforts to civilize Masada (Silesia might be doable) be any more successful than Bush's efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan?

runsforcelery wrote:I realize there is a degree of . . . irony, shall we say, in your formulation here. However, there are a couple of points I think should be made.

First, Masada is not a Manty possession and there are no plans to annex the system. Manticore has imposed conditions the planetary government must meet before it regains complete autonomy. In the meantime, Manticore exercise purely a police function, preventing certain specifically proscribed actions and events. For example, the recreation of a Masadan Navy, the reimposition of the laws which deny female equality under the law, etc. A new constitution has been drafted (and ratified) which imposes minimum human rights and citizenship conditions and guarantees freedom of religion and conscience, and Masadan police forces have been created under it which have been armed and trained by Manticore. This is still very much a work in progress, but the intention --- and they're doing better than they really anticipated on keeping within shouting distance of their originally projected schedule --- is that Masada will become an independent star nation under new management in the fullness of time. In the meantime, Manticore has been working to build up the Msadan economy and space infrastructure on the theory that affluence will help in the acceptance of the new political and religious system being set up. Whether a future, fully independent Masada will choose to create, maintain, or seek a close political relationship with Manticore afterward will be up to Masada, although there are obviously reasons to think that might be the case.

Second, Silesia. The Manties acquired their share of Silesia through negotiation with and treaty arrangement with the Confederacy's legal government. The circumstances may have carried a flavor of "an offer you can't refuse," but they honored the letter of the law at least procedurally. The objective wasn't to acquire Silesia permanently, however. The objective(s) were to eliminate a source of ongoing tension vis-à-vis the Andermani; bring the Andermani into military alliance at a time when they seemed desperately needed; secure one of Manticore's most important trading areas by cutting local bases and allies out from under the pirates operating there; clean out the slavers who'd made Silesia a big part of their transfer, shipping, and holding facilities; put an end to the long-running insurrections and revolts which had killed millions of Silesians over the years; and create stable local government. To accomplish those goals, Manticore has declared that its share of Silesia is a protectorate and has imposed governors and administrators from the outside, supported by major forces of light and medium fleet units. Eventually, the planets of that protectorate will be allowed to choose to join the Star Empire if that's what they want to do. No one in Manticore envisions forcing them to join the SEM or establishing some sort of permanent military occupation in perpetuity if they don't. In addition, unlike OFS, which sees the protectorates primarily as cash cows, Manticore wants to develop the SIlesian economy in ways which were never possible under the corrupt previous system and its frequent episodes of violence.

To be honest, the greatest risk to Manticore isn't the size it may attain; it's whether or not it can maintain or non-destructively expand the unique amalgam of qualities which made the Star Kingdom of Manticore what it was. That's one reason for the federalism that it's adopted. The main reason is to develop local government hubs or nexii where local problems can be dealt with responsively on the local level without huge communications lags. Imperial policy and law will be created by the imperial parliament which will meet in the Manticore System if only because of the MWHJ, but local autonomy will trump imperial decree/regulation except in certain areas specified constitutionally and accepted by each unit of the SEM as it seeks membership. Economically, imperial policy will be to develop the greatest possible economic strength for all of its citizens everywhere, but just as the political system is based on a dispersed federal model, the SEM isn't going to try to build some intimately integrated economic system in which every part is dependent on every other part or in which some sort of "top down" structure defines what each part of the whole contributes to it. In other words, economies --- like the political system --- will be organized locally, with each "lobe" of the SEM encouraged to develop its own economic strengths rather than depending on anyone else. Central policy will be shaped to help those local economies, but they won't be micromanaged by the imperial parliament, nor will one local economy be subordinated to any of the others. That is, the MWHJ will remain a resource of the SKM, not the SEM. The SKM will be responsible for its share of the imperial budget based on the income and wealth of the SKM as a component of the SEM, but in terms of local law and custom and local economics, it will retain the same autonomy as any other unit of the overall Empire.

The belief (and hope) is that this will (1) allow the SEM's subjects to rule their own lives with an absolute minimum of interference, (2) prevent the sort of bureaucratic monolith needed to try and govern some sort of unitary state over interstellar distances; (3) promote the sort of interstellar free trade which has been the life's blood of the SKM for centuries and extend that same sort of prosperity (if possibly on a lesser scale) to all members of the Star Empire; (4) provide a political "relief valve" to prevent the sort of accumulated pressure which was already driving the SL towards dissolution even before the outbreak of hostilities; and (4) protect the SKM's unique political structure and society in the Manticore Binary System (local autonomy) while continuing to encourage the influx of immigration which has also been part of the SKM for centuries at a rate which can be integrated into the existing society without disrupting it.

I hope this clarifies some of the differences between the SL and the SEM. Specifically, that it clarifies what the SEM has looked at in the SL and decided were the factors which turned it into the dysfunctional, predatory mess it had become by the time of Oyster Bay.

DrakBibliophile wrote:I suspect that major difference between Manticore's efforts and the US's efforts is that Manticore's government is better set up for a very long term effort.

IMO a ruling monarch (like Queen Elizabeth) doesn't face re-election and can focus on things other than the "next election".

An elected President can start a long-term project only to see the next President just discard the project.

A Manticorian Monarch can exert his/her considerable influence to keep such a project going even in the face of a change in government.

Good case in point is the US Space program. We get a president who supports it, gives them the funding to do something, and next thing you know the new guy guts NASA to the bone, or in some cases starts amputating said bones altogether.

First and formost, RFC, thank you so much for taking the time. I Was hoping it was something like that.

runsforcelery wrote:(SNIP)
I'm sure that quite a few of my readers have figured out that an important portion of the Solarian League's literary DNA is to be found in the U.S. Congress' abdication of its responsibilities into the hands of an ever growing horde of bureaucrats and bureaucracies which increasingly govern by regulation rather than by legislation. In the case of the League, however, the system was more inherently flawed from the very beginning, on the one hand, and far less pernicious for the League's member systems, on the other. Even by Honor's time, League policies and regulations had only an indirect and very limited impact on the citizens of its member systems. Remember that the League was specifically structured to stay out of its member systems' domestic affairs, and aside from the fashion in which its regulations on things like interstellar shipping impinge upon those member systems, that's pretty much the way things have stayed. Don't get me wrong. There are instances in which the central bureaucracy's decisions and regulations have had significant economic consequences even for the League's member systems, but these have been primarily secondary effects and, by and large, have been sufficiently modest enough that there's been no massive outcry in those star systems.
(SNIP)

I agree with the concern about the bureaucracies. I feel the same about things and I see that the SL is a dangerous sign of what might happen.
Thanks again.

Uh: no Prince Obama? And no Minister Rumsfeld?

namelessfly wrote:Your descriptions of the intentions of the SEM seem rather familiar.

Sort of like Bush Jr and the Neocon's theories about Iraq and Afghanistan.

My sarcasm is tempered by the acknowledgement that I was supportive of these experiments in nation building because I understood what the only realistic alternatives were.

This being acknowledge, why would Manticore's efforts to civilize Masada (Silesia might be doable) be any more successful than Bush's efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Direwolf18 wrote:

DrakBibliophile wrote:I suspect that major difference between Manticore's efforts and the US's efforts is that Manticore's government is better set up for a very long term effort.

IMO a ruling monarch (like Queen Elizabeth) doesn't face re-election and can focus on things other than the "next election".

An elected President can start a long-term project only to see the next President just discard the project.

A Manticorian Monarch can exert his/her considerable influence to keep such a project going even in the face of a change in government.

Good case in point is the US Space program. We get a president who supports it, gives them the funding to do something, and next thing you know the new guy guts NASA to the bone, or in some cases starts amputating said bones altogether.

The biggest differences are two in number:

(1) Manticore went into Masada in the reconstruction phase, not in the conquest phase. A huge part of the Bush Administration's problems (and missteps) in Iraq stemmed (IMO; I'm not trying to start any flame wars here) from the same sorts of over-optimistic assumptions and lack of clear, analytical thinking which characterized the initial Allied (and especially US) attitude towards de-Nazifying Germany after WW II. The nasty Nazis had hijacked and brainwashed the German people. Once the German people had been forced to confront the truth about the Nazis, their war crimes, and the Holocaust, the German nation would be well-behaved once more and well on the path to recovery. As part of the process, obviously anyone who had ever been a member of the Nazi Party must be banned from political office and purged from the (rebuilt) German police and military organizations. This, however, overlooked the centrality of some of those one-time members of the Nazi party to their national and local economies and societies, and it was just a tad difficult to rebuild a military and/or police force from which anyone who’d ever had any affiliation with the Nazi Party was unacceptable for military service. I’m not arguing that retaining ardent, unreconstructed Nazis in such positions would have been a good idea; I’m simply pointing out that this view of things grossly oversimplified exactly what membership in the party had meant, how some people had gotten there, and the extent to which people who’d lonce been members of the party could become something else. It also overlooked the pragmatic consideration that making bricks requires straw. That is, that one cannot always have what one wants to have and that the secret to accomplishing one’s goals depends on making the best — and most realistic — use of what one actually does have.

In the case of Germany, a little thing called the Cold War supervened and policies changed quickly in Western Germany which, coupled with the Marshall Plan led to the "German Miracle" which rebuilt West Germany's economy. The problem wasn't with the Allies' intentions in Germany's case, or with their post-war objectives (at least until the Cold War came along and they realized Uncle Joe was just as cynical a practitioner of real politik as Churchill had warned everyone he was) so much as it was a misunderstanding of the political and economic terrain and a failure to think through their post-war plans as thoroughly as they had threshed out their plans for actually fighting the war.

In Iraq's case, the Administration made the huge error of concentrating a hell of a lot more thought on how to defeat Saddam than it did on carefully — and realistically --- analyzing the political, economic, and social structure of Iraq and planning just as carefully on how to replace Saddam with a reasonably stable regime. The notion of disbanding Saddam's military without creating a new one or giving thousands of young men whose only skills were with weapons different employment was . . . not optimal, shall we say? The enormous underestimation of the bitterness of Sunni-Shiite hostility and that the teeny problem that the guys who planned the war didn't take into account little things like the fact that Iraq was an essentially socialist economy with the government as the primary employer (which meant that if you were going to overthrow that government you had to figure out a way to keep the economy running instead of relying on "unleashing capitalism) provided plenty more of the same sort of forehead-smacking, "D'oh!" sorts of moments. And it was unconscionable that it took so long for people to start figuring out what they'd gotten wrong and begin getting at least some of it right. That doesn't mean that it couldn't have been gotten right from the beginning, however, in which case I suspect the results would have been very different. If nothing else, the US public's war weariness probably wouldn't have kicked in anywhere near so soon if there'd been a public perception that the Administration had a reasonable (or at least clear) policy towards rebuilding Iraq and was pursuing it steadily.

Manticore started, in Masada's case, with the military conquest of the system and planet as the response to aggression by the existing system government. It hadn't had any reason to expect it was going to need a "Masada policy" prior to that event. Instead, it found itself with a sudden, unexpectedly acquired military and moral responsibility it couldn't (and wouldn't) walk away from by simply declaring victory and going home. Because of that, it consulted very carefully with Grayson in order to gain insight into and as much indepth understanding of and insight into Masada (and conducted its own analysis of Masada based on firsthand observation) before formulating its post-conquest policy. In addition, the SKM’s policy goals were very clearly enunciated from the outset, as was the SKM’s willingness to be flexible in its means for achieving those goals. That is, the policy’s strategy was very clear, the policy’s pragmatic constraints and opportunities were as carefully analyzed as possible, and the policy’s tactics were subject to continual critical evaluation and modification in light of actual results and newly observed/detected/created realities on the ground.

Which brings me to ---

(2) Continuity of policy. One may take whatever position one wants on whether or not the Iraq War was a good idea to begin with and also on how well the post-military phase was conducted by the Bush Administration. Unfortunately, policies, whether good or bad, have consequences and create the starting point for any new policy. A hallmark of US policy over the years has been that administrations frequently ignore the fact that even policies against which the newly elected president campaigned bitterly and with honest outrage are still the starting point for where his own policies begin and that anything constructive he intends to accomplish has to springboard from that starting point. This has accounted for many a whiplash moment in US policies, domestic and foreign alike, and I would argue that the result has very often been far, far worse than might have been accomplished by a more gradual modification of the existing policy, even if it was a bad one to begin with.

This is not, of course, unique to the US experience, but one advantage of hereditary forms of government (I am sometimes tempted to say the only advantage) is that there is far less pressure for the "new broom" to "sweep clean." Policy discontinuities can still be wrenching (as an historic example the shifts following Henry VIII's death between Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth), but I think there's been a somewhat better chance historically of continuity. The huge differences in Manticore's case (as opposed to the US in Iraq) is that (a) the monarch has a greater degree of constitutionally protected control over government policies, both foreign and domestic; (b) the SKM's system is hereditary and the monarch cannot be simply voted out of office, (c) that both Elizabeth and Roger are prolong recipients, and (d) that the entire Masada situation emerged from a lengthy Cold War just as it started to turn hot.

As a result of (d), the situation vis-à-vis Grayson and Masada is much closer in American experience (and attitudes) to the situation vis-à-vis North and South Korea than to the war in Iraq. That is, Manticore is making a substantial but not enormous investment of manpower and economic and military resources in stabilizing (or helping to stabilize) a relationship of huge importance to a local regional ally, although in this case Grayson is actually a lot more akin in importance to Manticore to Western Europe's importance to the US rather than South Korea's.

As a result of (a), the monarchy's commitment to staying the course in Masada's case is vitally important. If the monarch says the SKM is staying, then the SKM is by God staying, whoever the hell gets elected PM, or there will be hell to pay and no pitch hot domestically.

As a result of (b) and (c), the monarch doesn't have to worry about being voted out of office, which is a huge boon to maintaining continuity of policy at the national level, and the same person is likely to be monarch for well over a century, which is an even greater boon to continuity. And one of the implications of this which is equally important, in my view, is that virtually all of the fanatics who are likely to prove truly intractable are not prolong recipients. If you assume that Elizabeth is 45 at the time (I think she's actually a little younger than that) and that she will live to be 250 T-years old, she has another 210 years on the throne, barring accident or abdication. If you assume that the average Masadan reactionary was also 45 at the same time (the real hardcore reactionaries were even older) and that in the absences of prolong they will live to be no more than 110, then they have only 65 years left before they're all dead, and they will begin becoming increasingly irrelevant within 20-30 years. That gives Manticore a huge advantage in successfully restructuring the planet as long as nothing happens to change the monarchy's policy objectives in the interim.

So is it a reasonable comparison to how the average SL citizens thinks about OFS and the verge is how the average western taxpayer thinks about UN peacekeepers? I'm fairly sure that not many Germans or Americans get kept up at night thinking about the (taxpayer supported) peacekeeper child sex/rape scandals that seem to reoccur with monotonous regularity, so my guess is that about as many SL citizens worry about how OFS works.