Maturity might be refraining from the clownish imperative so many State loyalists have displayed in this thread to constantly insert their innumerable perceived grievances into the center of every conversation.
What a delightfully unimaginative conspiracy theory! If you already know better, why even mention such foolishness?
Does anyone else find it interesting how she hasn’t addressed her overt ties to the Guristas?
It’s probably not interesting because that line of attack is only relevant to the State echo chamber where affiliation with Guristas would be regarded as appalling.
Building relationships with broader anti-State forces is frankly unsurprising if one considers another a pragmatic Federal partisan. It’s about damaging the State, not feigning clutching at pearls when one sees a space pirate.
Could you talk at some more length about you and your associates’ willing partnership with the Gurista criminal organization, well known for such things as their primary lines of business being espionage, theft, kidnapping, extortion, murder, slave-taking and trade, trafficking of a non-negligible portion of said slaves to Sansha’s Nation, and dealing in Schedule IV (Class B) controlled substances?
For extra credit, contextualize:
It seems extremely on point for this board to have threads on Federation matters devolve into mudslinging and discussions about State matters. I suppose some things never change.
Oh, nice, a point worth discussing. This is simple. I called for action, and no action was taken. No empires responded, no CONCORD response, and none of the people clutching pearls in this thread bothered either.
If anyone had cared enough to act forcefully this whole thing could have been smothered in its crib. It wasn’t. Now a new paradigm exists.
Gen. Soter and I founded BLDZ to defeat the forces of tyranny by any means necessary. We tied our hands for over a decade abiding by the farcical rules of engagement CONCORD imposed on the FDU. Now we have the opportunity to engage in unrestricted warfare against the Caldari State in its precious “high security” borders. We can strike directly at the megacorp outposts that have coordinated the exploitation of any territory in the warzone that the Caldari have been able to seize control of.
I have very little concern for the internal politics of the Guristas. My organization doesn’t need to concern itself with any objectives but our own. Our current objective is to damage and destabilize the largest criminal enterprise in New Eden, the Caldari State.
And assisting in the earlier, initial strike against the Federation was part of that objective?
Also, not to burst your little bubble, but ORE is not a State Megacorporation.
Sure babe:
The current militia conflict can be considered one which is conducted in the gray zone of interstellar affairs and politics. Gray zone operations are conducted with the desire to engage in the hostile diplomacy required to revise the established status quo of international affairs. Interstellar nation-states will conduct operations in the gray zone when such as now with the order imposed by CONCORD there exist escalatory risks for unilateral military action and where economic interdependence such as established through SCC regulated free markets and trade make escalation to absolute war undesirable. The goal of gray zone operations remains the conduct of hostile operations intended to revise the status quo of the interstellar order in ones own interests while presenting a rival with an escalatory dilemma where absolute war is still desired to be averted.
Activities which characterize the modern gray zone – insurgency, fifth columnists, misinformation and propaganda, economic coercion, and clandestine sabotage – have been part of the suite of hostile diplomacy by nation-states against rivals for centuries. What is different in the modern gray zone of diplomacy is a desire to revise an established interstellar order implemented by CONCORD and the rise of independent capsuleers, interstellar private military corporations, and powerful criminal cartels which have created a new paradigm of hybrid warfare – organizations capable of both conducting asymmetric conflict such as terrorism, insurgency or piracy with the industrial and military capabilities comparable to the traditional interstellar nation-state.
The Lai Dai incursion into Intaki in YC121 and the Federal intervention into Intaki in YC125 are both examples of gray zone operations in the wider militia conflict. Both were a fait accompli in which the instigating actor were able to achieve their goals due to presenting their rival with an escalatory dilemma to a higher level of conflict which was not desired and muted their ability to respond effectively. Such operations in the gray zone are expected to increase and not decrease in the future as CONCORD signatories become more belligerent in their desire to revise the interstellar order in their own interests.
Organizations such as the Guristas Pirates present new opportunities in the conduct of gray zone operations – in particular for the Gallente Federation. The Guristas Pirates have grown from an organization capable only of asymmetric operations such as terrorism, insurgency, and piracy as well as ‘espionage, theft, kidnapping, extortion, murder, slave-taking and trade, trafficking,’ (Valtovist YC125) to one under the leadership of “The Rabbit” Kosakami increasingly able to have the industrial and military capability usually reserved for an interstellar nation-state. The Guristas Pirates have a hybrid capability in the field of warfare, able to conduct both asymmetric operations and increasingly a conventional military capacity able to compete with an interstellar nation-state such as the Caldari State.
The advent of insurgencies carried out by the Commando Guristas and renegade capsuleers offers new opportunities for the Federation to engage in gray zone operations against the Caldari State. While of course working with a criminal cartel publicly would meet with domestic disapproval in the Federation that does not prevent clandestine co-operation especially carried out by ideologically motivated Federal capsuleers and partisans that can be disavowed by agencies such as the Federal Intelligence Office in the conduct of their operations with the Guristas targeting the Caldari State.
While it is true that at present the Commando Guristas also target Federal territories one has to remember that the Federation has a thriving domestic economy with intra member-state trade and is far less reliant as the Caldari State is on foreign export markets for their Megacorporations to remain solvent and which makes them much more susceptible than the Federation to the traditional activity of piracy: targeting commercial shipping.
Of course, such clandestine Federal co-operation with the Guristas will forever remain unsatisfying for the more idealistic within the Federation but I’ve always been more of a consequentialist in my beliefs and if the destruction of the State requires raising the old black flag and skull and rabbit aloft then so be it for the ends will justify the means.
Again, if they were grievances, it would involve an appeal for redressing them. However, you are right in saying that discussing these points with an outsider who has a completely different worldview is pointless. Instead we shall resolve this the proper way when we inevitably cross paths in the warzone. Granted, for that to happen, one of us would have to invert their sleep schedule, and you would have to somehow find the courage to fly without relying on others.
I suppose if I lacked the personality or talent for leadership I might delude myself into thinking that not having friends meant I was braver and more noble than others for almost never undocking in anything larger than a Condor too. You do quite well in those Condors, though. Bravo.
Long Live Senator Thibauld!
Wait, do you actually believe this is the goal of the warzone militias? Or the empires that oversee them?
Oh, you sweet, sweet summer child. No.
The goal of the militias, the warzones they operate in, and the empires that operate them, is you. They want to keep you sharp, bloodthirsty, and ready-to-hand in case real war breaks out. No amount of battlefield success or ‘control’ status changes the actual sovereignty of those systems one bit, as CONCORD confirmed when the Federation pulled Intaki and other systems out of the warzone.
All of the systems in the warzones are there because the empire that owns them has agreed that they can be part of the official playing field in the cluster’s favorite bloodsport: capsuleer-on-capsuleer violence.
The empires watch what capsuleers do in null, what tactics and doctrines they develop, and they take notes. Every tactic has its counter, and we run through strategic development hundreds of times faster than the empires do. Meanwhile, they get to learn. At the same time, they keep their own semi-independent professional killers (that’s you, by the by.) as eager to the leash as they can manage. It serves two purposes, you see.
The first, far more minor one, is to ‘reward’ you by letting you get Navy ship configurations. Because then you can test those configs out for them in all sorts of variations and final loadouts. That makes sure all of the uncertainties are nailed down, and they know exactly what their ships can do.
The second, and far more important one, is to hedge their bets against the possibility of full-scale war. After all, capsuleers outperform baseliner vessels across the board. Why not throw a few ISK into making sure there’s a horde of happy minions ready to murder in the name of national pride?
No, I’m afraid the warzones aren’t at all about efforts ‘to revise the status quo of the interstellar order’. They’re about maintaining the status quo that sees a horde of eager and obedient murder machines at their beck and call, expecting only a pat on the head and some minor scraps.
And this bit here? Don’t kid yourself. If all of the empires of nullsec banded together, the smallest of the empire navies could crush them like bugs. Do you really think your militia has anywhere near the power of just one of the null blocs?
You’re a dog-and-pony show. Nothing more.
I’d add that at the time of the CEMWPA all nations had their internal reasons to show an escalation. Relevant to us, Maleatu Shakor came to power on a war-footing, and while it looks like he did in the end have enough sense to not just plunge into an unwinnable hot war, he had to give his followers in the “bloody hands” movements something.
That something is the Militia wars, which his then-supporters among capsuleers have obligingly fought and broadcasted to the masses.
It was a brilliant move, to be honest. Keep the peace with the Empire and in the coreworlds while looking like we all went to war.
The only problem is it isn’t only a dog-and-pony show. Real ships are destroyed. Real worlds are burned. Real people die. It’s not a full-out war, but it is a war of attrition.
Real ships are destroyed, and real people die. And the empires, in their callous calculus, wrote off those kinds of losses fifteen years ago when they started the bloody pantomime.
You seem to have almost entirely missed the point my colleague was making. I’ll simply redirect your attention to the part where they were responding to a question about BLDZ association with the Guristas. I can hardly blame someone for repeating the same old song about Empires and callous indifference we’ve all heard so many times, but that isn’t the topic at hand. Usually you have better reading comprehension. Catch up. Your analysis is dated.
I refer you to the specific claim I was addressing.
Turns out that divorcing one “specific claim” entirely from its context to talk about a different subject leads to flawed analysis. Maybe you’ve been reading too many posts by our colleagues from the State and their disease is spreading.
Honestly the whole post just isn’t your best work. As I read it, you “addressed” the claim that Empires engage in grey zone operations to shift the status quo of astropolitics in their favor without escalating to full scale war. Your response was essentially that the empires engage in such operations to maintain the status quo and keep their capsuleer loyalists sharp via the militia conflict in case that full scale war happens.
In your usual fashion, these two positions are only narrowly distinguishable, and you assert yours with rather more authority than can be clearly justified from observation of the actual facts. One can make strong arguments on both sides using examples from recent history, and the truth is probably that Empire governments do a mix of both. Sometimes they act (or refrain from acting) to maintain the status quo when doing so is to their benefit, and other times they act to shift that status quo more in their favor.
My comment that you’re usually in better form was backhanded, I admit, but the complement of your usual level of insight was actually genuine. Think of it as constructive criticism, or dig yourself deeper into an ill founded position, as you please.
The entire purpose of grey zone operations as I pointed out is revisionism of an established order such as one that exists via the CONCORD assembly through hostile actions intended to present escalatory dilemmas to a rival. The entire purpose to an escalatory dilemma is one where a nation-state is hesitant to use their full force due to a desire not to over-commit forces or to maintain the established status quo.
Why then compare the empire navies to the militias when a successful grey zone operation will seek to deny their use in the first place? That’s the whole point of presenting an escalatory dilemma to a rival – hostile diplomacy just below the response of total war.
In that context, the capsuleer militias aren’t intended to match the empire navies in a head-to-head conventional context. The capsuleer militias are intended to create a degraded security environment within the militia warzones through their access to near-peer military equipment and the capabilities of the pod that make grey zone operations such as the Lai Dai incursion into Intaki or the Sarum revanchism in Floseswin possible.
To remain on point to my actual post, instead of your segue of your own: the advent of Guristas insurgencies only further adds to the degradation of the security framework in the militia warzones that will present new opportunities for nation-state actors to conduct grey zone operations against their rivals.
Except it’s not. That’s the fatal flaw of your entire premise: it’s built on a notion that is fundamentally untrue. Nothing about the militias is about revisionism of the established order. It not about the established order whatsoever. It is about you. It is about maintaining control over you. That is the status quo it is intended to preserve, and that is the only real foundational goal of it.
The capsuleer militias are not intended to create a degraded security environment within the warzones. The warzones were specifically designated, by treaty for the purpose of keeping you busy. All of those systems, all of those worlds, were written off fifteen years ago, and the proof of this is that literally as soon as the Federation changed its mind about Intaki, nothing that capsuleer forces did mattered.
Nothing. The Federation dropped massive naval assets, informed CONCORD, and while the State lodged a complaint and took the opportunity to claim parts of Syndicate, nothing was even considered with regard to changing the situation in Intaki.
The Lai Dai incursion was possibly only because the Federation did not care. Again: They’d written Intaki off at the time. As soon as they didn’t, POOF, Intaki is no longer valid for militia operations.
Without a shot fired.
Similarly, as much as the Republic might have bitched about Floseswin, that system was written off when the warzones were created, and clearly, the Republic cares more about maintaining deniable capsuleer assets than about preventing planet-wide Reclaiming in the warzone.
It will not. You will see absolutely no nation-state actors taking advantage of ‘lawless’ designations to conduct operations in enemy systems officially designated as ‘high security’. You will likely see militia pilots taking advantage of these opportunities to hunt civilian pilots for easy kills, but that’s because the kind of militia pilots that like to brag about those easy kills would otherwise be forced to content themselves with abusing small animals and pulling the wings off of insects.
Have any of “Gallentia Primacy” been found to be not actually from Gallentia (Gallente Prime) yet ?