filbert wrote:Solarian League diplomacy is a muscle which has not seen much exercise in the past few centuries.
Solarian League diplomacy in the Verge has (with the notable exception of Manticore) had the aspect of simply listening to systems meekly saying "How high?" when SL diplomats have told them to jump. The main diplomatic arm of the SL beyond the "borders" of the League has been the Office of Frontier Security, actually.
In fact, I would guess that SL diplomacy other than OFS seems to have been (IMHO) almost exclusively focused on internal, domestic matters, and relations with the transtellar companies, to the near-total exclusion of anyone outside the SL.
There is not, for instance, anything like a Solarian League embassy in Manticore, Noveau Paris, or Potsdam, as far as we know.
This goes back to the question of the fundamental nature of the Solarian League. It isn't actually a fully-functioning national government as we real-life Earthlings would recognize it. It has aspects of a government, but in my mind it's really more like a future version of the medieval Hanseatic League . . . a trade association with a navy, with a exploitative colonial organization grafted onto it (a main difference from the Hansa).
A very apt analogy. But it is more like the UN now, had the UN been allowed to build a large army. Of course, its current army, or at least the troops it uses, are known for atrocities. Sort of like the Sollies, I guess.
Notice that there really isn't much of a Foreign Relations Department. People talk to Kolkolsov (probably misspelled the name) but he really run the League. They basically have never needed someone for foreign affairs since they just take over their neighbors.
Notice that by not having embassies in Manticore, Haven, Grayson, and Andermann, they have very little idea what is actually going on. They are interested in impact on their trade but that's about it.
There will not be a real peace...more like an armistice, probably with an agreement to let those planets that want to leave having the right to do so. They will lose a lot of planets and I would guess the mandarins might actually be replaced...by others who will dislike the accords as much as the current leaders but are not directly involved in the disaster.
That way in a couple of decades we can expect to see the next fighting.
