> On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 12:51 PM, Tom B <kaladorn@gmail.com> wrote:
Silly response: this is the UNSC from the Halo universe
via one of those all-to-common dimensional gateways. No?
My serious suggestion (which I've made before) is that the UNSC is for the
most part Indian. AFAIK, India only gets mentioned in the timeline a couple of
time, being invaded by the ESU around 2050. Here's my take on what happens:
India goes through a decade or so of extended communal violence and
disruption. Eventually the ESU is invited, or invites itself, to restore
order.
Once India settles down again, it has enough population
and economic power to secede if desired - it helps to
have the Himalayas and Afghanistan in between India and
China/Russia - but memories of the previous disturbances
and political pressure from the ESU discourages them. The compromise is that
India agrees to loyally follow the dictates of the ESU government, and the ESU
agrees not to dictate very often or very strongly. Foreign policy, though, is
handled by the ESU, including space defence.
(A particularly useful aspect of India for the ESU is the long standing
relationship with Britain and other Commonwealth countries such as many in the
Oceanic Union. A lot of external ESU trade goes through India.)
However...now we have the Xeno War. The NAC, ESU, NSL, FSE, PAU, etc have all
agreed to contribute ships to the UNSC fleet for the defence of the home
planet and the benefit of all humanity. Right after they've taken care of
their own commitments, of course, so the UNSC gets the dregs left over.
So, urgent need to build up the UNSC fleet. And India
happens to have a large well-educated population, a
reasonably strong tradition of science and education, and no existing arms
industry already tied up with war production. Ideal place to design and build
new ships. And then you've got a large population with a long and reasonably
successful military tradition as well, so why not use them for crews? The ESU
won't like it, but after all the future of Earth is at stake so they can't
object too loudly.
I'd expect Indian names in the UNSC fleet, not the ESU. The names shown on the
web page are translations into English for the benefit of us foreigners.
cheers,
I'd like to see the UNSC fleshed out more. My own take (in my head) was that
the UN was increasingly marginalized as the 5 "major" powers coalesced. Even
so, there were many nations that didn't get absorbed into the big 5 and they
tended to huddle together under the UN banner to maintain their existence.
As humanity leapt into space, the largest powers increasingly became
focused around their off-world settlements, eventually moving their
capitals off of earth entirely. As such, they were less and less interested in
expending force and money to maintain order in the multinational core systems.
Through each small crisis, additional powers were delegated to the otherwise
harmless and powerless UN. Eventually the UNSC became a credible peace keeping
force in the Core worlds, with some exploration abilities (again offloading
such responsibilities from the big powers).
After several major controversies with UN tech being stolen by "loaned"
personnel, the UN was able to secure the right to create a category of "UN
Citizen" who would no longer have any other nationality, and to independently
administer the Core Systems anywhere outside of
territories controlled directly by the major powers. Initially, these
citizen were drawn primarily from the marginalized countries that formed the
core of the UN, but an unexpected consequence followed. Suddenly the many
independent colonies throughout the Core Systems (and
elsewhere) began to join the UN en-masse. In particular, most of the
orbital colonies and private stations applied entirely to join the UN with all
of their citizens becoming UN Citizens. In essence, this gave these places the
protection from the major powers that they had largely lacked to date.
The orbital colonies provided a massive influx of technically experienced
space personnel, which in turn gave the UNSC a sudden and powerful edge in
creating, maintaining, and crewing the most advanced equipment available. In
little more than a generation, the UNSC changed from a peace keeping force
with borrowed ships to an advanced and powerful military force, and the UN
itself had become the defacto government throughout the Core Systems. Indeed,
the situation changed so rapidly that the major powers were caught entirely by
surprise as the UN managed to increase its mandate to include unexplored,
unclaimed, and independent systems, before they could effectively organize
political resistance to further UN expansion. Now the Major Powers remain in a
somewhat adversarial stance with regards to the UN, deeply concerned about the
possibility of the UN trying to become the singular human government. This
inherent distrust is quickly tossed aside when one side or another needs UN
support for its position against another power, but the lack of trust explains
much of the disorganized early response to the Kravak.
The UN still is somewhat limited in the population that it can draw from, and
has to be conservative with how much it can tax it's disparate member nations
(and Core Systems trade). These limitations combine to drive the UN military
to fewer, but much more capable, units. UN forces are often thinly spread, so
survivability and devastating firepower are emphasized. This works well for
the UN, as UN forces are not expected to engage in large scale wars against
the other major powers, but rather to represent a force that the major powers
do not want to attack.
[quoted original message omitted]
textfilter: chose text/plain from a multipart/alternative
I think the order of creation for the USNC has to be reversed.
First the UN has to be given some territory to administer, maybe it's
initially orbital territories, then it can create it's own revenue base and
population then it can develop it's own military and technologies.
If the UN has to rely on funding from member nations and is controlled by a
security council that is composed of the big 5 powers and needs a united vote
to initiate a military action then you would get the ineffective talk fest you
have at the moment.
Besides what power is going to place military techn ology in the hands of the
UN that is better than it's own?
UNSC technology is substantially different from that used by other factions so
it must have come from their own research facilities rather than national
armaments plants of other nations.
I imagine the legal definition of space would get rather murky, a bit like the
open oceans on Earth. Someone has to administer the open space regions and
ensure the wealth can be exploited.
I don't think that 200 years is enough to get any significant fraction of
populationsonto other planets. Shipping 1 million people to create a small
colony would take a lot of resources, even stacking them in suspende
animation, simply shuttling them into orbit would be a huge effort.. A space
shuttle that could take 100 cold sleep passengers would be a big space plane
and would take a lot of fuel.
At the other end you can't simply decant tens of thousands of urban poor
looking for a better lifeTM into an alien wilderness and have it be anything
other than a death sentance. They would need urban places to live and they
would take a lot of resources to develop.
If it's unlikely given the current dynamic that Russia and China would form
some kind of close alliance what sort of circumstances could make that happen?
The current GZG timeline has china invading all sorts of asian coun tries. In
today's climate why would they do this? Looking at what they want access to
land, raw materials and food for their population (like Britain 300 year ago)
invading the asian coutries that are poorer than China, don't export food and
are densly populated doesn't make sense. China would invest it's military,
politial and economic might to secure the things it needs. So resources from
African and Pacific nations, oil from the spratly islands and other pacific
islands and food from Pacrim countries like Australia and New Zealand.
The one thing that both Russia and China would want is to humble America and
prove it's not the militarfy superpower it once was. The chinese very much
want to be reunited with Taiwan, but the US stands in their way (and lack of a
decent navy). Buying or leasing a naval fleet from Russia with Russian
advisors on board and using it to reunify with Taiwan would be a nightmare
scenario for the US. Shoot and draw the Russians into the fight, don't shoot
and be humbled in the eyes of thw world.
Who knows an EMP burst over US as in Dark Angel would be very bad for the US
economy (and everyone else) and would instantly reduce the US to a second
string nation.