SL Diplomacy

And if you neee close-to-skin scenario... well, lets use imagination:

Let's assume, that USA of Great Depression era were invaded by early-1970s USSR. This would be pretty good model of Manticoran occupation of Silesia; prosperous, vastly superior technologically and industrially society occupied the almost-failed, defunct and outdated state. Of course, the 1920s USA military could provide no more than token resistance against 1970s superior Soviet military (exactly as Silesia against RMN), and the essential parts of the country would be quickly put under Soviet control.

Would the invasion be beneficial for 1920s USA? In purely economical and social therms, yes. From 1920s - especially Depression strike 1920s - the USSR of 197s would looks like a technological and social utopia.The average soviet worker in 1970s lived in prosperity by the 1920s USA worker point of view. The average Soviet citizen of 1920s never faced hunger, never ever feared to lose his job. He have perfect social protection, guaranteed by the state itself. From the 1920s point of view, the 1970s Soviet worker have a granted acces to futuristic, superior medicine, excellent education, equival career opportunites, ect., ect., ect.

Of course, implementation said superior system in 1920s USA would means some downside, too. For example, a relatively small part of population - remaining rich peoples - would losse a major part of their wealth. But it's okay, because the expropriated wealth would be given back to workers, from whom this wealth was extorted by greedy capitalists. You probably would have only a single - Communist - party, but that's okay; after all, the USA have only two parties that really means, and both of them are corrupt and incompetent, and only protected the capitalists. Of course, your military would be placed under general USSR control - but again, for what USA of 1920s used their military, other than to threaten the weaker countries?

So, it seems that such occupation (1920s USA occuped by 1970s USSR) could be really, really good thing, right, comrade RFC? In 20-30 years the Americans would clearly understood, how much they gained by being subjects to the superior USSR power...



But for some strange reason, RFC, I doubt that you would agree...

Neither the US nor Afganistan had anything near popular support for an invasion by the USSR. Both nations have stubborn populations that held moral, cultural and nearly religious aversions against accepting outsiders ruling them.

In addition, the implicit social contract the USSR had with its population required outside support to just feed itself. The promise to keep bread prices low meant demand for bread was massively greater than it needed to be had the USSR command economy been able to produce food at the US levels. Forcing their stupid command economy on the most productive agricultural nation on earth would have destroyed that food production. So, the US would have learned to make do with bread and give up meat and other foods. As for jobs, even 1920's depression era Americans knew more about producing things efficiently than the USSR of the 1970's. So, they had electronics using transistors and vacuum tubes, their QA sucked and their asset utilization was horrible. The Soviet production would have struck their restive American subjects was appallingly wasteful.

Silesia on the other hand, does have a history in dealing with the SKM. There is genuine popular support for Manty governance. There isn't the same degree of stubborn refusal to to be ruled. Had there been, Silesia would have seen true rebellions leading to honest governance. Instrpead , they get the worst from rebellions and the results only change the leadership who benefit from the corruption. The population on the whole gets owed time and time again. After centuries of this sort of abuse, the population is willing to try the devil they know slight less well than their current overlords.

There really isn't any parallel to you analogy.
http://paulgregorysblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/mystery-of-russian-grain-exports-its.html

The key difference between Manticore and most Empires is the level of democracy honestly. If you have a solid democracy annexing a area with a much larger population is still a conquest of sorts, but you aren't really doing the conquering. Now Manticore has taken some measures to insulate themselves from too much democracy, but its still much farther towards the "democracy" end of the scale than a classical empire.

The other difference is the cooperation of the various governments. While we don't see much of the Silly annexation my impression was it was with the cooperation of the local governors. So its more like the U.S. adding Texas than classical conquering. Not a perfect analogy, but still.

Now how the rest of the human inhabited galaxy looks at things may vary. Especially if they come out of the Mesa fiasco looking like they were behind all the nukings.

Anyway, Manticore != classical predatory empire.

P.S. If I was a ancient conspiracy with expertise in subverting and secretly controlling governments I would look at this Manticore expansion as a huge opportunity. Especially if I had some sleepers in Silly-land and Talbot which I bloody well should since those were a customer base and my local neighbors!

PeterZ wrote:Neither the US nor Afganistan had anything near popular support for an invasion by the USSR. Both nations have stubborn populations that held moral, cultural and nearly religious aversions against accepting outsiders ruling them.

Basically that's what I'm trying to say. No one like outsider rule forced upon them. And when one nation - star or old-fashioned Earth - fell under outsider rule, the other nations became very concered... even if occupants claimed to be all benevolent.

In addition, the implicit social contract the USSR had with its population required outside support to just feed itself. The promise to keep bread prices low meant demand for bread was massively greater than it needed to be had the USSR command economy been able to produce food at the US levels. Forcing their stupid command economy on the most productive agricultural nation on earth would have destroyed that food production. So, the US would have learned to make do with bread and give up meat and other foods. As for jobs, even 1920's depression era Americans knew more about producing things efficiently than the USSR of the 1970's. So, they had electronics using transistors and vacuum tubes, their QA sucked and their asset utilization was horrible. The Soviet production would have struck their restive American subjects was appallingly wasteful.

It seems that zero knowlege about "how exactly the Soviet Union worked" is pretty common...

quite possibly a cat wrote:The key difference between Manticore and most Empires is the level of democracy honestly. If you have a solid democracy annexing a area with a much larger population is still a conquest of sorts, but you aren't really doing the conquering. Now Manticore has taken some measures to insulate themselves from too much democracy, but its still much farther towards the "democracy" end of the scale than a classical empire.

Please. The France was a democracy, but still was a pretty classical colonial empire. Yes, more egalitarian (at least in late XIX-early XX century) than most of others, but still pretty much the same type.

quite possibly a cat wrote:The key difference between Manticore and most Empires is the level of democracy honestly. If you have a solid democracy annexing a area with a much larger population is still a conquest of sorts, but you aren't really doing the conquering. Now Manticore has taken some measures to insulate themselves from too much democracy, but its still much farther towards the "democracy" end of the scale than a classical empire.

The other difference is the cooperation of the various governments. While we don't see much of the Silly annexation my impression was it was with the cooperation of the local governors. So its more like the U.S. adding Texas than classical conquering. Not a perfect analogy, but still.

Now how the rest of the human inhabited galaxy looks at things may vary. Especially if they come out of the Mesa fiasco looking like they were behind all the nukings.

Anyway, Manticore != classical predatory empire.

P.S. If I was a ancient conspiracy with expertise in subverting and secretly controlling governments I would look at this Manticore expansion as a huge opportunity. Especially if I had some sleepers in Silly-land and Talbot which I bloody well should since those were a customer base and my local neighbors!

Actually, The Republic of Texas's decision to seek statehood is a pretty darned good analogy for the Talbott Sector. Thanks! Of course, there's still the problem of México no reedificado where both Texas and California are concerned, but we won't mention that lest we give Dilandu any ammunition!

runsforcelery wrote:
Actually, The Republic of Texas's decision to seek statehood is a pretty darned good analogy for the Talbott Sector. Thanks! Of course, there's still the problem of México no reedificado where both Texas and California are concerned, but we won't mention that lest we give Dilandu any ammunition!

Oh, please don't worry; I have enough...

One would hope that Manticore would be rather better at nation building than we are. Technology is more than just new fancy toys. I suspect the Andies probably pioneered a rigorous process of turning failed states into functional polities (albeit it polities which are part of the Empire).

It's also worth nothing that while colonial powers over the last two centuries have often used progressive and enlightened rhetoric, the actual practice has been focused on exploiting the colonized territory and enriching the colonizers. Providing responsible and responsive government usually wasn't high on the list of priorities. Manticore actually intends to be a benevolent government and not simply mouth platitudes while making money hand over fist. Which brings to mind another benefit, Manticore can pay for its Empire with the Junction (assuming interstellar trade remains a real thing once the Solarian League is dealt with). They don't need the "colonies" to pay for themselves in the short or medium term.

Dilandu wrote:

quite possibly a cat wrote:The key difference between Manticore and most Empires is the level of democracy honestly. If you have a solid democracy annexing a area with a much larger population is still a conquest of sorts, but you aren't really doing the conquering. Now Manticore has taken some measures to insulate themselves from too much democracy, but its still much farther towards the "democracy" end of the scale than a classical empire.

Please. The France was a democracy, but still was a pretty classical colonial empire. Yes, more egalitarian (at least in late XIX-early XX century) than most of others, but still pretty much the same type.

Dilandu, I think you're still missing what I consider to be the critical difference between Manticore and even "democratic France."

Among other charming traits, late 19th-century France (like the rest of 19th-century Europe . . . and North America) still rejoiced in what I believe I could conservatively call a less than enlightened racial attitude towards non-Europeans and Paris wasn't really interested in extending democracy to anyone but Frenchmen. (For that matter, the French don't seem to have been all that interested in extending democracy to Frenchwomen until after World War II! ) Manticore, on the other hand, despite the fact that it's a monarchy, has a genuine commitment to representative government and — having the horrible example of the People's Republic right in front of it — recognizes the impossibility of maintaining long-term stability and control without extending that representative government to all of its citizens. For that matter, unless I'm mistaken, the mere fact that someone lived in one of the French Empire's colonial possessions didn't make that person a French citizen. I might be wrong about that, since that particular aspect of French history has never drawn my deep attention, but my impression is that they were French subjects, not French citizens. It's true that, technically, any citizen of the Star Empire will be a subject of Empress Elizabeth, but the folks in the newly acquired territories will also be full citizens of the Star Empire, which is most definitely not part of the DNA of your "classic empires."

The critical thing here is that, except in the case of Silesia, Manticore has never acquired a star system that didn't first seek annexation by Manticore. (And even in Silesia, the existing government — such as it was and what there had been of it — was able to negotiate for a relatively "soft landing" as the quid pro quo for accepting "voluntary" annexation.)

I would submit that there's likely to be a huge difference between the way nativists and nationalists look at having been conquered by force of arms or annexed against the will of their fellow citizens as opposed to joining another nationstate at the will of their fellow citizens, openly expressed at the ballot box and initiated by their own, sovereign governmentsy. That's why the example of Texas is, I think, a good one.

If Puerto Rico finally decides to become a US state and game all the advantages of statehood instead of simply enjoying many of them, it might be an even better example, except for the extended timeframe involved.

I'm fully in agreement with you that Manticore's actions are going to be portrayed as negatively as possible by its interstellar adversaries and that a lot of folks in both the Fringe and the Verge are going to have their doubts about this new Star Empire when it emerges from its war against the Solarian League so much bigger than it was — territorially, I mean — before the Havenite Wars. And there's no doubt that Manticore is going to do some stuff that seems perfectly reasonable to it but which will be perceived (and in many cases, not without reason) as arrogant and imperialistic. That's one of the penalties paid by any internationally dominant power, however benign it may think its motivations are.

Dilandu,
I have never lived under the Soviets. The USSR had a comparable population and natural resources as the US, but managed only a tithe of the economic activity. When forced into supporting an expanded military sufficient to offset the US under Reagan, the Soviet system crashed and burned.

I don't need to live under the Soviet system to know it would have taken the productive US agriculture system and ruined it. It would have further squandered the limited available capital in the 1920's US.

The example above regarding the Republic of Texas requesting annexation is a case in point. A stubborn population requested inclusion into the lesser of two outside imperial evils rather than remain independent and at risk of being forcibly governed by an outsider. That sounds like the choice Silesia had with one small difference; the objectionable governance comes from their own oligarchs.