Dilandu wrote:Brigade XO wrote:As for someone like the Midguard systems wanting to be the intermediary, there are a couple of things that mitigate against that.
Most prominent in that is that Midguard and Asguard, aside from being the other side of Manticorian space from the SL, neither (we have been told) had any problems with Manticore. Also not mentioned was any problems with the Aldermani. Haven isn't represented as having done anything there. So, with a long history of good relations with their two nearest major traiding partners (not counting any SL based trade connections), Neigher Midguard nor Asguard are likely to be fearfull that Manticore is going to want to swallow them up. The Aldermani might be a question in the looking to expand in their direction BUT the Aldermani (along with Manticore) has half of Silesia to deal with and then it has other potential avenues open.
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They have simple problems with Manticore; the Manticore is a young imperialistic predator, which just came into expandion phase and teamed up with other well-known imperialistic predators to, presumably, conquer more and more. They alredy ripped apart Silesia just because "it was inefficiently ruled and dangerous", yadda, yadda.
About "well, they already have Silesia, surely it would be enough for them?"... well, this kind of thinking was dominant in 1938, when one eager, young imperialistic power invaded neighborhood country and other countries (including the allies of attackrd country) decided to let it be, hoping "well, they already have Sudets, surely it would be enough for them?..." In short - this kind of thinking never worked with imperialistic nations. The empires could exist and prosper only by expansion - and Manticore is a classical empire, after all.
I would rather strongly quibble with your characterization as "Manticore is a classical empire, after all those quotes or characterizing it as "a young imperialistic predator." Now, I'm sure that's how the Solarian League would like to portray them, and that's
definitely the image the Mesan Alignment is trying to paint of them. But Manticore
didn't want the Talbott Sector. Those systems petitioned for membership, and Manticore accepted their petitions, but only on conditions which radically liberalized at least half the regimes involved and
excluded regimes which refused to liberalize. There is a very real fear in Manticore that the huge populations added to the Star
Empire pose a threat to the Star
Kingdom's traditional political stability. By this point, the "Old Manticorans" are a distinctly tiny minority of the total population of the Star Empire, and as yet, they have no way of telling (1) how responsibly their new fellow citizens are going to exercise the franchise or (2) how successful they are going to be in maintaining the sort of stable constitutional monarchy they've had since the Plague Years. This is a genuine concern, and one reason (among many) for the federal structure the imperial constitution has adopted. The Manties have done everything they can think of to "buffer" the Old Star Kingdom against the sudden influx of newly enfranchised voters. In fact, there is a significant movement afoot in Landing to invite Beowulf to join the Old Star Kingdom. It would make sense (assuming Beowulfers decided to become Manticorans) in terms of astrophysics, since they are right on the other side of the wormhole. This is the same logic that makes Trevor's Star and the Lynx System part the Old Star Kingdom. The other reason for it, though, is that Beowulf pretty thoroughly understands the Manticoran system after so many centuries of close partnership and intermarriage, and Beowulf has a huge population. Manticore is going to be a lot less worried about how Beowulfers are going to use their ballots than they are about someone in a Fringe system which has never before had honest, responsible, elective government and that influx of votes into the Old Star Kingdom would help a lot when it comes to proportional representation in the Imperial House of Commons. My point is simply that Manticore was a "classic" empire only in the sense that she was a "classic thalassocracy." She was a trading power, which didn't even have extraterritorial colonies, and if she'd had her druthers, that's what she'd still be. She acquired her "empire" largely out of the need to survive in the face of war with a far larger power and once the shooting stops, there's absolutely no need for her to continue expanding and risking destabilization of her political system while there are strong arguments
against expansion . . . including the fact that she doesn't
need to expand to reestablish the same sort of trading relationships she had before. She may lose some of her penetration of the Solarian League as a consequence of the current unpleasantness, but she's going to pick up far more markets — and probably rapidly
growing ones, even though they'll start out considerably smaller-scale than the Core World markets she may have lost — to replace it.
In Silesia, a huge part of Manticore's motivation in the partitioning was a desperate need to bring the Andermani on board as an ally against Eloise Pritchart's Republic of Haven. Manticore is scarcely a "young" anything, actually. It's been around a long time, it's been a major player on the economic and political fronts for centuries, and it's established its reputation in the Fringe and the Verge the hard way. In short, at least prior to the current unpleasantness, Manticore's word was good in terms of interstellar relations. Even today, its reputation is a hell of a lot better than anybody else out there.
Another part of Manticore's motivation in dividing Silesia with the Andermani is that they had been spending blood and treasure in the Silesians cesspool for a long time and the situation was getting worse, not better. Manticore could make a pretty good argument that its . . . acquisition a somewhat Silesian territory is actually the best thing that could've happened to the people living there, and I'm pretty sure that twenty or thirty years of Manticoran governance will convince most Silesians of the same thing. I'm not saying that it wasn't at least as much and probably more cynical interstellar realpolitik by a star nation fighting for its life as it was any kind of moral crusade to bring good government to the neobarbs, but it wasn't exactly the same sort of thing OFS has been doing for the last several centuries.
The Andermani have
always been "imperialistic" and "expansionist," but it's been a very strange sort of imperialism. With the exception of, I think, two star systems which Gustav Anderman added to his core empire by force of arms (after
de had attacked
him), every star system added to the Andermani Empire
petitioned for admission. Basically, the Andermani have specialized in "rescuing" systems in trouble . . . which is exactly what both they and the Manties did in Silesia.
The People's Republic of Haven
was a classic, aggressive, militarily and territorially expansive empire. The restored Republic of Haven is not, at least under the current administration, and Eloise Pritchart is probably going to have long enough in office to pretty thoroughly break Haven of its conquistador tendencies. It's probably going to be harder for Haven to convince the galaxy at large that this particular leopard really has changed its spots, but the fact that it's no longer acquiring star systems, that it's allowing plebiscites for star systems that want to
leave the Republic, and that it's working very hard to establish normalized relations and trading partnerships with both Manticore and other star systems is going to both add momentum to Pritchart's reforms and, gradually, should go a long way towards restoring Haven's good name.
As I said above, these are scarcely the images the Mandarins and the Mesan Alignment are helping to shore up, Manticore's halo is going to need some serious buffing up after the Alignment and the League's Office of Public Information get done with it. But those appearances are quite different from the reality.
But everyone has at least 
But lets put a bit of realism here; there are no good empires, and interventions with the best intents are still interventions. And peoples did not like when they are conquered by someone who claim to "act for their own good".