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.