namelessfly wrote:Crown Loyalist wrote:The fact of the matter is that David Weber's books are hugely optimistic about the protagonists abilities to fight/defeat/prevent insurgencies without being ruthless about it. A lot of these planets are going to turn into hopeless, hopeless quagmires. But, on the other hand, most of those planets have only not been hopeless quagmires because the people extracting all their wealth to fund the Solarian League's government have used ruthless tactics whenever anyone looked like they might get uppity.
Most of these worlds are effectively in civil wars that have been frozen because one side has KEWs and the will to use them and the other doesn't. Manticore is going to be unfreezing those civil wars (as Mesa's wrangling effectively did in Moebius).
The result is going to be some worlds the side that's been suppressed will be able to easily overwhelm their opposition once KEWs are out of the picture (as the resistance would have done in Moebius), and they'll be fighting small-scale insurgency until they find a way to incorporate all parties into a representative government.
Other worlds, the two sides will be more closely matched and you'll get vicious fighting.
Luckily, situations where the Solarian-favored government has the martial power to overwhelm Manticore's preferred non-Solarian partners in the absence of Solarian/Gendarme support should be rare, given Solarian policies in the verge.
The turning of these places into quagmires will not, however, in and of itself cause Manticore to lose the war. Manticore simply doesn't have the resources to fight them all, barring Terekhov's strategy of killing all the offworlders with a precision strike writ-large. It'll take the public opinion hit out of the inability to do anything else. That's not going to change the end result, though. The bad propaganda about Manticore ruining planets on the verge isn't likely to help the League stay together in the long-term.
Manticore needs to be building these planets back into stable ones. That means functional popular governments. That means everyone living on the planet needs to feel that their rights are protected by the government, including those who previously supported the Solarian protectorate arrangement and benefited from it. Or they need to get hit by a KEW.
I'm a little too tired at the moment to deal with this at any great length, but you seem to be misreading the situation in the Verge quite badly in some respects.
There are, indeed, systems which have been openly taken over, lock, stock, and ballot box, by the OFS with system governors installed to control every aspect of the local government. These systems, however, are quite rare. Many (though by no means all) of them are the consequence of the sort of shooting or cold war situation you have described above, and the OFS presence is very open and overbearing in those instances.
The more common OFS methodology, however, is to worm its way into, corrupt, and then prop up a local government (which was not in the throes of civil war or anything of the sort) through advice, the supply of weapons and other technology, and covert operations which are normally carried out with the knowledge and consent of the official local government. This is the case for the systems which are controlled directly (if invisibly) by OFS (and milked for the funds the SL government requires). In systems which have been handed over to one of the transtellars to be run as wholly owned subsidiaries in return for hefty "fee" payments into the SL government coffers, OFS (normally) fades into the background while the transtellars in question find accommodating local front men of their own to form nice, legal governments which simply want to do whatever the transtellars think might be a good idea.
The Talbott Sector came under none of these models. The one OFS planned to extend to it would have consisted of offering someone like the New Tuscany oligarchs all the money they can steal as long as they're willing to be the League front men, propped up by League economic manipulation, advisers, technology, etc. The propaganda the MA leveled against the Manties inside the Sector was effective in direct proportion to the extent to which the locals could be convinced that Manticore intended to do exactly the same thing OFS would have done. Once it became evident that the Manties weren't interested in cutting sweetheart deals with cliques already in power --- and, in fact, insisted upon the extension of a sector-wide franchise limited only by the need to pay taxes in order to qualify --- it cut the legs out from under most of the potential local resistance movements. Political posturing, splinter groups, and even the occasional lunatic bomber may still be out there, but there's nowhere near the level of unrest which might threaten the general domestic peace or the processes of government.
Any propaganda value the MA got out of the Talbott annexation in the League, on the other hand, couldn't bother the Manties less (see below). For that matter, most of the outrage in the League stems more from the notion that the Manties might get in before OFS or --- even worse --- be preferable to OFS and the League in the locals' eyes.
In the case of the planets under outright, open OFS control, the Manties may well find occupation inevitable, at least in the short term. In the case of planets with existing constitutions which are simply being twisted/used to empower a façade democracy (or whatever) with the OFS operating behind the scenes, the only thing the Manties can do, morally and pragmatically, is to encourage the formation of some sort of coalition government to get the official constitution up and running properly (with amendments as needed) or write a new one from scratch, with Manty economic support to encourage economic stability and the provision of training cadres for military and security forces. In the case of governments which are basically fronts shilling for the transtellars, another variant of the coalition government/constitutional convention would have to be pursued.
The Manties have absolutely no interest in adding anyone to the SEM except on a purely voluntary --- as in "They asked us if we'd let them join" --- basis. They feel no obligation to replace one bad outside controlling power with another one, even if the new one might be "better" for the locals, and while their starship captains may wear white berets, Manticore does not see itself as the moral arbiter of other star nations.
You might be surprised by how willing they'll be to break a few eggs if they absolutely have to, but the reasons would have to be pretty damned compelling (and consist of more than "But you've got money and an open system of government so of course it's your responsibility to help us!"), and if they do feel their national interest requires them to intervene, they won't give a good goddamn for what the SL or the MA may do with that propaganda-wise. There is no Manticoran equivalent of the White Man's Burden, and despite the Liberals' posturing and vapors over Medusa, they're actually pretty damned pragmatic. Moreover, they already know all about negative propaganda, having been hammered with it throughout the Havenite Wars, and there's not a hell of a lot SL or MA propagandists can do that's likely to affect any of the relationships which are really critical to them: Haven, Beowulf, the Andermani, Grayson, Smoking Frog, etc.
Manticore will be perfectly willing to keep a lid on any sort of interstellar adventurism in the Verge, but self-determination is really high on their list of values. They'll keep other people from interfering; aside from that, it's up to the people who frigging live there to decide what they want to do with their lives and their planet. If the locals screw up badly enough to produce a Rawanda-like situation (which, by the way, is highly unlikely on most Verge planets), the GA as a whole might well see no option but to intervene, but it's very unlikely Manticore is going to be doing any nation-building with the dewy-eyed belief that "All we have to do is explain democracy to them, and of course they'll embrace it!"
and, Mangy Fur the Smart Alick Spacecat.