Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I don't think this provision will be still in place by the time they manage to close the tech gap. I've always understood it as a temporary measure to force the FF units that were effectively acting as pirates to go home and stop bullying verge systems. Or Core systems, with Buccaneer.

Agreed. It was a short term unilateral demand upon their surrender; designed to make it very clear that the first step was to call all SLN units home.

It would have been an unnecessary diversion from the book for Honor to list out a multi-page detailed set of rules. That's something to negotiate between the GA and the new League government once its new Constitution has been ratified and its new government based upon that elected and sworn in.

At that point you negotiate the formal peace treaty. And in the course of working that out you can negotiate how the GA desires can be addressed; to have assurance that the SLN isn't bullying neutrals or acting a pirates. And that can include methods of resolution other than just "treat them as pirates" and have mechanisms for systems to formally invite, or uninvite, SLN presence and how that could be communicated to the GA. How to handle actual emergencies. Ways for reporting and dealing with violations. Etc. Etc.
All the messy complicated details that are what separate an initial surrender demand from a final peace treaty.


But it would have been inappropriate to have been negotiating that with the outgoing failed government; and it takes to long anyway. In the short term yank all the potentially offending units home. Then, as soon as you can, start working out the longer term details with the proper representatives of the (new) League government.

The economics of SL banning (or attempting to ban) it's members from using specially Manticore flagged merchant shipping starts by depriving it's citizens of use of the apparently most numerous merchant shipping collection in the explored galaxy and immediately attaches a penalty (which the LEAGUE isn't collecting) of having to use ships which must pay higher fees to use the Manticore Wormhole Junction and probably a lot of wormhole bridges where there are treaties between SEM and the local system at each end of those bridges that set the transit rates with lower amount for MMM.

What was said was Manticore but that is when talking about the "Haven Sector". It certainly is possible to move freight to and from SL systems to the Republic of Haven (and a bunch of other places in the Haven Sector) without using the Junction but the cost.... Recall that Haven was avoiding the sanctions Manticore put on traffic to it during the 1st war (when it could find Solly's who would sell them military gear) but the time and actual expense was very high.

Can the SL not trade with Manticore. Sure. But that cuts off a massive amount of market which was part of the SL's trade.

SEM has a long history and experience with trade negotiations. We don't know what deals the SL may or may not have cut with various trade ship vendors in reguard to lowering the import or landing (or export) fees of goods between SL worlds for those shippers vs what the regular SL flagged carriers had to pay. Remember these were the FEES which was funding the SL Government.
Heck, Manticore has a history and reputation of being a defining force in Shipping Law and Interstellar Trade Regulations. When MMM ships go into SL space, they fall under SL (and to various levels local System Law) but they have abided by that. Just the same way SL or anybody else's MM has to abide by Manticorian Regulations in the Star Empire or in any independent system. Remember that Manticore didn't have a functioning embassy with the League, they had a representative but the League looked down on those neobarbs. Still, Manticore had and still has all sorts of treaties with hundred and probably thousands of individual systems.

I suspect there are sets of "common regulations and procedures" which are the basis of any trade agreement that is normally set up between Manticore and a system. They apply to ships of both entities, it's the oddball things that causes difficulties. Which is why you can have Transient /Bonded warehouses at wormholes so you don't have to "land" things which are prohibited in a system but just transfer cargo without formally entering the territory and going though customs. That doesn't mean that Customs can't search a ship, it just means that they don't routinely inspect everything in normal operations. So trying to take a slaver though the Junction would have been a truly bad idea. Customs (and the Navy or your local equivalent of a Coast Guard) can stop and inspect for safety and unsafe operations.

My opinion is that although there are going to be people in the League (and elcewhere) that hate Manticore enough to boycott anything to do with them --and that carries over to differnt extents to Haven, because of the GA, mostly it will be people costing themselves a lot of time and money just to feel they have "done something" to Manticore and others.

I am thinking that now is an excellent opportunity for the SL to right a few wrongs. To End in Fire corroborated the fact that Manticore absolutely did corner the market on trade.

What does anyone suppose will happen if Manticore does not like the SL's new Constitution? What if the new Constitution includes provisions to right the imbalance in trade that the MBS causes?

Manticore does not have the right to meddle in the SL's Constitution. The war simply does not give Manticore that right. Victory gave them the right to meddle with their constitution, but not their Constitution.

Also, what about asteroid belts? Who owns them? Isn't ownership of asteroid belts as ambiguous as junctions? Now the SL has to withdraw its mining operations out of asteroid belts it has worked for centuries? I assume all mining operations have a naval unit watching out for the operation. Or pirates can hit the jackpot stealing entire freighters that are full of very valuable resources bound for the SL.

cthia wrote:What does anyone suppose will happen if Manticore does not like the SL's new Constitution? What if the new Constitution includes provisions to right the imbalance in trade that the MBS causes?

Manticore does not have the right to meddle in the SL's Constitution. The war simply does not give Manticore that right. Victory gave them the right to meddle with their constitution, but not their Constitution.

Also, what about asteroid belts? Who owns them? Isn't ownership of asteroid belts as ambiguous as junctions? Now the SL has to withdraw its mining operations out of asteroid belts it has worked for centuries? I assume all mining operations have a naval unit watching out for the operation. Or pirates can hit the jackpot stealing entire freighters that are full of very valuable resources bound for the SL.

First, you are wrong about the Grand Alliance's power over the new Constitution: the easiest way to see this is the expected response if the convention simply returned the previous setup. However I doubt that Manticore would care about provisions that attempt to address trade imbalances; anyway a constitution usually does nothing more than saying that the resulting government has the power to regulate trade involving the member states.

Second, I do no believe that the ownership of asteroid belts is ambiguous; I think a very strong statement was made that all mineral rights belong to to the planets that own the star systems. It was not the Solarian League that was conducting mining operations all over the Verge; instead it was the interstellar corporations that were doing so, backed by the corrupt power of OFS and the Frontier Fleet - both of whom are now gone.

cthia wrote:I

Manticore does not have the right to meddle in the SL's Constitution. The war simply does not give Manticore that right. Victory gave them the right to meddle with their constitution, but not their Constitution.

Tell that to the Constitution of the Empire of Japan and the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany.

cthia wrote:Also, what about asteroid belts? Who owns them? Isn't ownership of asteroid belts as ambiguous as junctions? Now the SL has to withdraw its mining operations out of asteroid belts it has worked for centuries? I assume all mining operations have a naval unit watching out for the operation. Or pirates can hit the jackpot stealing entire freighters that are full of very valuable resources bound for the SL.

Only the Kuiper belt would likely be outside the 12-hour limit. (the 12 hour limit for Sol is 'just' beyond Pluto (5.4 LH); well 36 light minutes, 647 million km, past Pluto)
So the main asteroid belt(s) would be well inside it and therefore unambiguously under the ownership of that system's owner. (Well, assuming they had forces to patrol it -- you only get the smaller 12 light-minute limit if you've no military to assert control over the larger 12 light-hour limit)

cthia wrote:Manticore does not have the right to meddle in the SL's Constitution. The war simply does not give Manticore that right. Victory gave them the right to meddle with their constitution, but not their Constitution.

Fox2! wrote:Tell that to the Constitution of the Empire of Japan and the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Good points, in fact the constitution imposed by the USA under Gen. MacArthur officially ended the Japanese Empire; allowing the title "Emperor" to continue, but shorn of all overseas possessions.

Harrington's imposition of terms on the SL was NOT the same as the surrender on Germany or Japan. but you can fight that out at your leisure.

Manticore may have sort of "cornered trade" in the SL but no more than the owners of the Panama Canal or Suez cornered it from points A to B respective of their locations. The owners of the companies (control of both of them are now in the hands of the national governments but operated by specific corporations with some minority stockholders -its complicated) ONLY offer a shortcut vs the free historic navigation of open ocean/seas.
One function of the ability of MMM to attract business THAT GOES THROUGH THE MANTICORE JUNCTION AND SOME SPECIFIC TRADE PARTNERS FOR WHICH MANTICORE HOLDS (MOSTLY EXPLORATION RIGHTS/SHARES LIKE IDAHO/JUNKERS) is that because they are Manticore flagged merchant ships. It may be-is probably likely- that many MMM ships take greater care in pricing loads/trips and combined with probable greater effiencies of operations, can underbid other carrying ships over a given route. ONE of the things we have been shown is that bidding (and so underbidding) against the "deals" cooked up between various SL officials/officials of various SL systems and their friends in the carrying trade are noted in bits and pieces of the books about how MMM ships got in trouble. Not that they did anything wrong but they offered better prices. So, you want to fix the corruption at home in the SL or just let it slide?
The League certainly has the right to set the tariffs/fees for cargo within the League. It also has the right/oppertunity to NEGOTIATE more favorable rates with non-League Polities or with the Transtellars which are sort-of not bases anywhere the League set the rules.
Recall that there was no Manticorian Embasy on Earth......the SL in all it's complexity decided it wasn't going to recognize Manticore and the diplomatic staff from Manticore had to piggy back off the Beowulf Embassy----which is sort of odd unless you think of the League as just that---a League and it's MEMBERS had official formal diplomatic System/multi-system polity representation like embassies but non-League entities don't get the same level of presence.
They get more like Trade Missions----yeah, it's complicated.

However, at this point the SL 2.0 is really really really going to want a full-up Embasy from SEM- and Republic of Haven, and probably Alderman Empire but they might not want that level from Grason or even Erwhon...certainly not from Alizon or Zanzabar. Again, it's complicated.

At this point the SL dam well knows that if it wants to get more favorable terms on transits of it's merchant flagged ships thought the MWJ, it is going to have to make it worth Manticore's while to do so.
Oddly- or probably not so oddly- you have the situations like Beowulf with Manticore where we gather that Beowulf gets a preferred transit rate PER PRIVATE TREATY with SEM vs Beowulf as a SL member. We have no idea of merchant marine flagged by Beowulf daughter colonies share that preferred rate.
But it is all politics, trade, alliances and mutual self interest .

The Kuiper Belt around Sol may be outside the 12 our limit but it is orbiting Sol and -technical differences between warships of the SL and GA aside- it is clear that Sol has the capacity (via the SLN) to enforce ownership of materials in that area. No, you'r not going to stretch that to Alpha Centauri. Rearch to the next star nearest you without planting a colony there or formally claiming an uninhabited, unoccupied system not already claimed/owned under the existing legal structures recognized prior to the SL's decent into corruption---isn't going to fly. Recall Mannerheim not publicly grabbing the system with the "unknown wormhole" that leads to Darius as it is owned (and or disputed claims of ownership) which it is attempting to quietly work though to gain LEGAL ownership without anyone suspecting there is that potential valuable wormhole there. They might be using it for exercises of the SDF but "ownership" is not a word they want battered around.
What claims various transtellars and now former clients of OFS may have on subjugated systems is another matter. And there you are going to see all sorts of local unpleasantness and probably revolts while local ownership UNSUPPORTED by OFS and FF remain probable.

cthia wrote:Manticore does not have the right to meddle in the SL's Constitution. The war simply does not give Manticore that right. Victory gave them the right to meddle with their constitution, but not their Constitution.

Brigade XO wrote:Harrington's imposition of terms on the SL was NOT the same as the surrender on Germany or Japan. but you can fight that out at your leisure.

Germany and Japan were mentioned in response to Cthia's claim that Manticore had no control over the new constitution being written for the Solarian League.

So either you are agreeing or disagreeing with Cthia; your driveby statement needs to expanded to explain which it is. Personally I do not care whether it is the same or different; the important fact is that the victor does get to approve or reject the convention's result.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:Manticore does not have the right to meddle in the SL's Constitution. The war simply does not give Manticore that right. Victory gave them the right to meddle with their constitution, but not their Constitution.

Brigade XO wrote:Harrington's imposition of terms on the SL was NOT the same as the surrender on Germany or Japan. but you can fight that out at your leisure.

Germany and Japan were mentioned in response to Cthia's claim that Manticore had no control over the new constitution being written for the Solarian League.

So either you are agreeing or disagreeing with Cthia; your driveby statement needs to expanded to explain which it is. Personally I do not care whether it is the same or different; the important fact is that the victor does get to approve or reject the convention's result.

You really shouldn't mix the two. (C c)onstitution.

I don't think any government has any business meddling with the Constitution of any government. How would Manticore like it done to them? How would a religious planet like Grayson feel about the corrupt and heathenous SL prior to Honor's visit to Sol having anything to do with its most sacred Constitution.

OTOH, tamping down Communism and Nazism trumps all.

However, Japan and the US were in no way related to the size disparity between the SL and Manticore.

But, do you want to stir up revanchism and mix it with Tabasco sauce? Yeah? Ok, meddle with the writing of the Constitution. Neobarbs.