Rebuilding Manticore's infrastructure

tlb wrote:The acts of war were initiated by Admirals Byng and Crandall and the government of Manticore tried desperately to resolve that issue with the Mandarins, who decided that it was better to continue to be wrong than to ever admit having been wrong. That is the point where Beowulf began to leave the League. Because the SLN initiated the conflict, a declaration of war (which Beowulf could veto) would be required before Beowulf would be legally treasonous.

The third-grade "he started it" argument may not fly.

The League will say it did not initiate an act of war and that Byng's actions were justified, by defending New Tuscany. But the RMN shot back, when Tenth Fleet arrived and destroyed his BC, so it initiated an act of war, thus making Beowulf at that point legally bound to not sell military equipment or other hardware that could be used for military purposes against the League.

Beowulf's argument would be that the Mandarins kept insisting that there was no war, so this mandate did not apply.

Anyway, the point of the current discussion is whether the previous embargo that had been negotiated over 20 T-years before still applied.

tlb wrote:The acts of war were initiated by Admirals Byng and Crandall and the government of Manticore tried desperately to resolve that issue with the Mandarins, who decided that it was better to continue to be wrong than to ever admit having been wrong. That is the point where Beowulf began to leave the League. Because the SLN initiated the conflict, a declaration of war (which Beowulf could veto) would be required before Beowulf would be legally treasonous.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The third-grade "he started it" argument may not fly.

The League will say it did not initiate an act of war and that Byng's actions were justified, by defending New Tuscany. But the RMN shot back, when Tenth Fleet arrived and destroyed his BC, so it initiated an act of war, thus making Beowulf at that point legally bound to not sell military equipment or other hardware that could be used for military purposes against the League.

Beowulf's argument would be that the Mandarins kept insisting that there was no war, so this mandate did not apply.

Anyway, the point of the current discussion is whether the previous embargo that had been negotiated over 20 T-years before still applied.

I do not believe that we have seen stated that the embargo was ever lifted, so we have every right to assume that it continued active through the period that Beowulf was manufacturing weapons for Manticore.

The point of the current discussion depends upon what we are discussing currently and at this moment it is whether Beowulf had a legal right to manufacture those weapons and how serious is the violation if they did not. That is did they just violate the embargo (assuming it was in place) or commit treason under the Constitution.

The Mandarins cannot be arguing that there is no war, when they were sending Filareta to the Manticore home system and accusing Beowulf with complicity for refusing access to the wormhole for the supporting SLN fleet.

So you are correct that the Mandarins claimed that Byng did not commit an act of war and the initiating act was the destruction of Byng's flagship. That was contested in the Assembly, but I do not think that it was resolved. Basically the only way it could be resolved was by a declaration of war, which was not passed prior to the defeat of Filareta and Beowulf's secession from the League.

tlb wrote:

tlb wrote:The acts of war were initiated by Admirals Byng and Crandall and the government of Manticore tried desperately to resolve that issue with the Mandarins, who decided that it was better to continue to be wrong than to ever admit having been wrong. That is the point where Beowulf began to leave the League. Because the SLN initiated the conflict, a declaration of war (which Beowulf could veto) would be required before Beowulf would be legally treasonous.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The third-grade "he started it" argument may not fly.

The League will say it did not initiate an act of war and that Byng's actions were justified, by defending New Tuscany. But the RMN shot back, when Tenth Fleet arrived and destroyed his BC, so it initiated an act of war, thus making Beowulf at that point legally bound to not sell military equipment or other hardware that could be used for military purposes against the League.

Beowulf's argument would be that the Mandarins kept insisting that there was no war, so this mandate did not apply.

Anyway, the point of the current discussion is whether the previous embargo that had been negotiated over 20 T-years before still applied.

I do not believe that we have seen stated that the embargo was ever lifted, so we have every right to assume that it continued active through the period that Beowulf was manufacturing weapons for Manticore.

The point of the current discussion depends upon what we are discussing currently and at this moment it is whether Beowulf had a legal right to manufacture those weapons and how serious is the violation if they did not. That is did they just violate the embargo (assuming it was in place) or commit treason under the Constitution.

The Mandarins cannot be arguing that there is no war, when they were sending Filareta to the Manticore home system and accusing Beowulf with complicity for refusing access to the wormhole for the supporting SLN fleet.

So you are correct that the Mandarins claimed that Byng did not commit an act of war and the initiating act was the destruction of Byng's flagship. That was contested in the Assembly, but I do not think that it was resolved. Basically the only way it could be resolved was by a declaration of war, which was not passed prior to the defeat of Filareta and Beowulf's secession from the League.

Hell yes Beowulf had a right to manufacture those weapons!

They just didn't have a right to use them as condoms while sleeping with the enemy.

BTW, why would the embargo ever be lifted? The variables behind the enactment of the embargo had increased, not lessened. And the players affected by the embargo were not any less of a neobarb than before.

penny wrote:BTW, why would the embargo ever be lifted? The variables behind the enactment of the embargo had increased, not lessened. And the players affected by the embargo were not any less of a neobarb than before.

As I said in an earlier post, I don't think anyone would have had the time to actively dismiss it. Neither High Ridge nor Grantville would have actively worked to that effect, nor would Pritchart's government.

But it may have gone out simply by their inaction. By the time war ended, neither Manticore nor Haven cared about Solarian hardware coming to each other, so if the embargo lapsed, they wouldn't oppose it. The Solarian companies that were paying attention to the war may have actively lobbied for it to go away in hopes of getting access to the new inventions.

In fact, those companies had probably been actively lobbying for it to go away even earlier, because it was in their business interest to sell hardware. So the moment that Buttercup launched and the Alliance had a line of sight to the end of the war, it might have stopped lobbying to keep the embargo up. With no one supporting it, those Solly companies may have got their wish, only to later find out that Haven wouldn't buy their hardware.

It's also possible other members of the Alliance did welcome Solly sales, so lobbied for the lifting of the embargo. We know Manticore transferred a lot of its older ships to the allies and we also know Erewhon, who was a large partner in the Alliance, did not get all the full tech transfer like Grayson did. So it stands to reason those smaller members, with even less of a tech transfer and with lesser industrial bases, may have wanted to buy replacement parts from the Solly companies to keep their ships functional. And they may have given the League preference over Manticore because of how High Ridge was treating the Alliance.

Anyway, the point is that we haven't heard about the embargo one way or another since the early books. We haven't heard that it was lifted, but we also haven't heard that it was in force. There are arguments for both conditions. All it takes is RFC deciding retroactively what has happened.

The embargo is still being mentioned in Storm from the Shadows (1921PD), after the events of Byng's demise.

penny wrote:BTW, why would the embargo ever be lifted? The variables behind the enactment of the embargo had increased, not lessened. And the players affected by the embargo were not any less of a neobarb than before.

Because it was very unpopular with certain large Solarian interstellar corporations, who really wanted to sell arms and technology to the Haven sector -- and who contribute non-trivially both to the League budget and to contributions to individual politicians.


It was only Manticore's strong arm tactics that got the Assembly to pass the embargo in the first place. So if the High Ridge government stopped twisting the League's arm during the ceasefire period the Assembly might well have taken the opportunity to be helpful to their large donors and removed the embargo.

And at that point the League was still assuming it was invincible, and so wouldn't perceive a security threat from allowing arms and technology sales. (Though presumably there are still rules limiting or prohibiting sale of arms and tech that are classified - so the SLN would have some control over what SLN systems its military-industrial base can export -- but that would be independent of this specific embargo)

tlb wrote:The embargo is still being mentioned in Storm from the Shadows (1921PD), after the events of Byng's demise.

Good catch - I'd forgotten that. And now that I look, yes, Kolokoltsov and Abruzzi certainly complain about it.
But I can't tell from the text whether or not it's still in effect or whether they're just still pissed it was ever passed in the first place.

Storm From the Shadows wrote:[Kolokoltsov]"I think our friends in Manticore have been getting just a little too full of themselves," he went on. "They got away with demanding that technology embargo against the Havenites. They've gotten away with raising their Junction fees across the board to help pay for their damned war. They've just finished dividing the Silesian Confederacy right down the middle with the Andermani. And they've just finished annexing the entire Talbott Sector and shooting up the entire Monican Navy, not to mention turning the League into the villain of the piece in Monica and the Talbott Sector. They must feel like they've been on a roll, and I think it may be time for us to remind them that they're actually only a very tiny fish in a really big pond."
[...]
[Malachai Abruzzi] "They've been getting progressively more uppity for years now—ever since they managed to extort that frigging 'technology embargo' against Haven out of your people, Omosupe."

Both of those are speaking of the act of getting the embargo in the first place; not whether or not it's still in effect. Its removal wouldn't necessarily reduce their ire about it.

And the third place it's mentioned also only speaks to the fact of it happening in the first place; again nothing one way or the other about whether it's ongoing.

Storm From the Shadows wrote:[Grantville internal monolog]The fact that it was winning those battles against heavy numerical odds only seemed to make many Solarians more inclined to see the Star Kingdom as the militarily superior side, and it was only a short hop (for many of them) to somehow transforming Manticore ("I never liked those pushy Manties, anyway. Always too greedy and sure of themselves for a bunch of neobarbs, if you ask me! If I were Haven, I wouldn't much care for 'em either!") into the aggressor. And the Cromarty Government's success in getting the League to embargo tech transfers to the People's Republic had only irritated that traditional Solarian resentment.

Jonathan_S wrote:

tlb wrote:The embargo is still being mentioned in Storm from the Shadows (1921PD), after the events of Byng's demise.

Good catch - I'd forgotten that. And now that I look, yes, Kolokoltsov and Abruzzi certainly complain about it.
But I can't tell from the text whether or not it's still in effect or whether they're just still pissed it was ever passed in the first place.

Storm From the Shadows wrote:[Kolokoltsov]"I think our friends in Manticore have been getting just a little too full of themselves," he went on. "They got away with demanding that technology embargo against the Havenites. They've gotten away with raising their Junction fees across the board to help pay for their damned war. They've just finished dividing the Silesian Confederacy right down the middle with the Andermani. And they've just finished annexing the entire Talbott Sector and shooting up the entire Monican Navy, not to mention turning the League into the villain of the piece in Monica and the Talbott Sector. They must feel like they've been on a roll, and I think it may be time for us to remind them that they're actually only a very tiny fish in a really big pond."
[...]
[Malachai Abruzzi] "They've been getting progressively more uppity for years now—ever since they managed to extort that frigging 'technology embargo' against Haven out of your people, Omosupe."

Both of those are speaking of the act of getting the embargo in the first place; not whether or not it's still in effect. Its removal wouldn't necessarily reduce their ire about it.

And the third place it's mentioned also only speaks to the fact of it happening in the first place; again nothing one way or the other about whether it's ongoing.

Storm From the Shadows wrote:[Grantville internal monolog]The fact that it was winning those battles against heavy numerical odds only seemed to make many Solarians more inclined to see the Star Kingdom as the militarily superior side, and it was only a short hop (for many of them) to somehow transforming Manticore ("I never liked those pushy Manties, anyway. Always too greedy and sure of themselves for a bunch of neobarbs, if you ask me! If I were Haven, I wouldn't much care for 'em either!") into the aggressor. And the Cromarty Government's success in getting the League to embargo tech transfers to the People's Republic had only irritated that traditional Solarian resentment.

Thanks a googol for posting that tlb. With sober factotums like yourselves, who needs the drunken wiki.

And thanks for the reminder Jonathan. I do remember it now. I had forgotten the details of the impetus behind the League's embargo. But I couldn't force myself to accept that it was anything more than the SLN's arrogance of not wanting to share their superior tech with neobarbs that might end up using it against them.

But, it all makes sense now. It was extorted out of Omosupe Quartermain's department. Which is the Permanent Senior Undersecretary of Commerce. Don't you smell the smoking gun?!

Those damn pesky neobarbs cornered the market on trade! And they used strong arm tactics to do so.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=10502

But in another thread of mine of the same name, I proposed that Manticore awakened a sleeping giant. The SL never had to put up with the strong arm tactics of the MBS. The SL could have simply boycotted them. The MBS's economy is going to take a very big hit as a result of awakening the lethargic gorilla. Nobody can grow a merchant marine the size of the SL.

Plus, it is just plain old economics. As lucrative as the MBS is, it is not an infinite source of revenue. If it were, the MBS could afford to remain at DEFCON 1 indefinitely. It simply is not realistic to expect the budget to remain at the level it was during war.

I am not saying that it shouldn't, because there is still a threat on the horizon. I am simply saying that convincing civilians that the navy needs to retain its currently bloated wartime budget during peace is much more than simply kids wanting to keep their toys, rather than needing to do so. Which cues my need to respond to tlb ...

.

tlb wrote:

MyCall4Me wrote:I would HOPE that the Grantvills government enjoys a strong support in any rebuilding effort. Especially since any opposition party is probably still licking it's wounds after High Ridge and his supporters fell from grace

penny wrote:You and me both. But the thing is, we don't know what kind of horse-trading QEIII had to do to get her war funded. She might have promised concessions after the war is over in the form of cutbacks, social programs, etc. And the budget will already have to cover a lot of convoys of goods that will be sent to the new systems being added to the economy. Remember the convoy of goods that was initially sent to buy (ok entice) Grayson?

The Queen did not have to do ANY horse trading to get the war funding after the attacks by Haven brought the High Ridge government down. Everyone not in the High Ridge government was hugely in favor of fighting the war after those attacks.

If anything, some of those projects started by the High Ridge government would be ended once the government changed.

There may have been economic trouble caused by shutting the wormholes to freight with the Solarian League, but that was soon offset by trade with Haven, the Andermani Empire and the newly acquired worlds in Silesia. I expect the trade with the Solarian League was mainly carrying freight, because Manticore did not produce trade goods that companies in the League could not create for themselves. The Yawata Strike was far more disruptive than losing the freight with the League.

IINM, I think it was during Obama's presidency that I learned that horse trading is a way of life, and that it is something that even your own supporters demand of you. It is irresponsible for the machinations of the government to miss an opportunity to get what they need. The problem arises when the need isn't real or realistic, thus the request has no merit and it is simply made to handicap the government. That revelation came from the White House Press Secretary.

The Queen would have had to make concessions even to her own party. Her own party has needs as well other than war. And they would be irresponsible not to bargain for things in the future. Legitimate horse trading is a common vehicle of government. Illegitimate horse-trading for no other reason other than to handicap the government is when it becomes a problem.

In other words, it is ok to demand I scratch your back if you scratch mine. But I be damned if I go any lower.