in some ways was houseman right?

Puidwen wrote:back in the honor of the queen he was advocating for peace between Haven and Manticore. that was definitely the wrong time to press for it. However a lots of the manticorin military officers seem to give the impression that "It's them or us". Granted a lot of them got over that.

Puidwen wrote:back in the honor of the queen he was advocating for peace between Haven and Manticore. that was definitely the wrong time to press for it. However a lots of the manticorin military officers seem to give the impression that "It's them or us". Granted a lot of them got over that.

Puidwen wrote:back in the honor of the queen he was advocating for peace between Haven and Manticore. that was definitely the wrong time to press for it. However a lots of the manticorin military officers seem to give the impression that "It's them or us". Granted a lot of them got over that.

Chapter 3 wrote:“Reasonable people negotiating in good faith can always reach reasonable compromises, Captain. Take our situation here, for example. Neither Yeltsin’s Star nor the Endicott System have any real resources to attract interstellar commerce, but they each have an inhabited world, with almost nine billion people between them, and they lie less than two days apart for a hyper freighter. That gives them ample opportunity to create local prosperity, yet both economies are at best borderline . . . which is why it’s so absurd that they’ve been at one another’s throats for so long over some silly religious difference! They should be trading with one another, building a mutually supported, secure economic future, not wasting resources on an arms race.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “Once they discover the advantages of peaceful trade—once they each realize their prosperity depends on the other’s—the situation will defuse itself without all this saber rattling.”

-- skip --

“Well, of course they are, Captain.” Houseman’s tone was just short of impatient. “But the best way to do that is to settle the locals’ differences. The potential for instability and Havenite interference will remain as long as their hostility does, whatever else we may accomplish. Once we bring them together, however, we’ll have two friends in the region, and there won’t be any temptation for either of them to invite Haven in for military advantage. The best diplomatic glue is common interest, not simply a common enemy. Indeed,” Houseman sipped his wine, “our entire involvement in this region stems from our own failure to find a common interest with the People’s Republic, and it is a failure. There’s always some way to avoid confrontation if one only looks deep enough and remembers that, in the long run, violence never solves anything. That’s why we have diplomats, Captain Harrington—and why a resort to brute force is an indication of failed diplomacy, nothing more and nothing less.”

-- skip --

“I’m afraid I can’t quite agree with you, Sir,” she said at last, setting her glass down precisely and keeping her voice as pleasant as humanly possible. “Your argument assumes all negotiators are reasonable, first, and second, that they can always agree on what represents a ‘reasonable compromise,’ but if history demonstrates one thing quite clearly, it’s that they aren’t and they can’t. If you can see the advantage of peaceful trade between these people, then surely it ought to be evident to them, but the record indicates no one on either side has ever even discussed the possibility. That suggests a degree of hostility that makes economic self-interest immaterial, which, in turn, suggests that what we consider rationalism may not play a particularly prominent part in their thinking. Even if it did, mistakes happen, Mr. Houseman, and that’s where the people in uniform come in.”

tlb wrote:Houseman was fundamentally wrong, both with regard to Manticore versus Haven and with regard to Grayson versus Masada. His belief was that pointing out a common interest will override ALL elements of conflict between the two states. That common interest would be improving the economy by friendly trade and all would be be forgiven.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I'd phrase it differently, but essentially I agree. On a fundamental level, he was actually right: cooperation does usually create more value than each alone. If there's one thing that we've learned since Mercantilism is that economy and trade are not a zero-sum game. The evidence of that is what happened after Haven started cooperating with the Alliance, forming the Grand Alliance.

munroburton wrote:No. To buy peace with Haven at that time would have required large, ongoing tributes. They would have claimed that holding San Martin entitled them to one-sixth of the entire Junction's total revenue. Then when that got poured into their broken economy and vanished, they'd come back looking for more and more, until they had it all.

For any kind of peace, Haven would have to stop its expansionism. That could only happen if its economy was reformed. Manticore had no way of inducing that. Winning a war and attempting to impose San Martin-like reforms would simply see Havenite governments repeatedly washed out by revolts. After all, Pierre's reforms triggered an uprising which was put down by cluster bombing urban areas.

Even now it is uncertain what will happen to the Republic of Haven as it embraces democracy. Pritchart and Theisman won't be in their respective jobs forever(or will they?!) and Esther McQueen wasn't the last Havenite with more ambition than ability.

munroburton wrote:Even now it is uncertain what will happen to the Republic of Haven as it embraces democracy. Pritchart and Theisman won't be in their respective jobs forever(or will they?!) and Esther McQueen wasn't the last Havenite with more ambition than ability.

munroburton wrote:Even now it is uncertain what will happen to the Republic of Haven as it embraces democracy. Pritchart and Theisman won't be in their respective jobs forever(or will they?!) and Esther McQueen wasn't the last Havenite with more ambition than ability.

Jonathan_S wrote:Pritchart certainly won't - the office of President is term limited to 3 terms and she refused to consider amending the newly restored constitution to change that.

Don't know if Cabinet Secretaries have similar term limits. If not it's possible the next president might try to convince him to remain as Secretary of War under their administration. But even if he agreed I don't see him staying there forever.

(OTOH I wouldn't want to be the first one to seriously break the Republic's newly restored democracy -- not if Theisman is still alive, knowing he put a pulsar dart through the head of the last person to wreck (what was left of) the democracy. Retired or not he could probably quickly pull an effective counter-coup together!)