Well, seems like times are changing. Let’s see what follows from that speech, mm?
While we could have a lengthy discussion about CEWMPA and Intaki sovereignty, well…
I was going to hope for greater stability and peace for the Intaki people, but until the dust settles it’s still only just hope.
it was… certainly unexpected, though… perhaps needed, finally… at the very least it should stop more… incursions like happened some years ago.
Oh look, the Federation stomping their bloody boots all over another people’s right to self governance. So nice of them to decide what kind of freedoms other people are allowed to have. So long as it doesn’t inconvenience The People too long, right?
The Federation made a lot of huff and puff about the State nullifying CONCORD policies on Athounon V’s orbital grid.
And now they’ve wantonly breached CONCORD laws and acts across an entire constellation and are imposing orbitally enforced martial laws on a populace.
Where have I seen that before?
If I were one of those types who still held strong feelings towards those squabbling collection of megacorps, I would protest this move by getting my hands on a Horizon Fortizar and anchoring it in orbit of Intaki Prime.
That would rustle some feathers for sure.
I’m sorry, as both a Federal citizen and an Intaki, I must ask… who was it who invaded whose home system again?
And uh, you know, who was it who auctioned off Placid?
I’ll thank the occupational forces of a war started by a fascist strongman not to grandstand to my people about self-governance, if it’s all the same to you.
In every developed stellar Empire currently to date, Faran-haan, this has occurred. Is it right? I can’t rightly say, but to brush parts of history under the table for convenience is to be blindsided by it later when its needle pierces your ankle.
It does look like the Federation is fully intent on breaking the stipulations of the CEMWPA regarding the status of those systems; you know, the legislation introduced specifically to keep tensions from boiling over into an actual war.
Alors, c’est de la guerre?
I should be space-side more often, in any case.
They have already broken it before in YC115 when they invaded Luminaire with so-called “Operation Highlander”.
It’s pretty much obvious Feds aren’t going to respect any treaties.
And this is why the Federation must be destroyed.
For their many crimes against the Khanid people, the Intaki deserve only a jackboot smashing their faces — forever. Whether that jackboot is worn by a Gallentean or a Caldari, I do not care very much.
It does look like the Federation is fully intent on breaking the stipulations of the CEMWPA regarding the status of those systems; you know, the legislation introduced specifically to keep tensions from boiling over into an actual war.
There was a piece of legislation intended to keep tensions from boiling over into an actual war - it was the Yulai Accords. Tibus Heth broke its stipulations when he invaded Luminaire and threatened Gallente Prime with annihilation if Caldari Prime was not relinquished.
Now, it would be a valid criticism of my criticism to point out that the Caldari State was forced to sign over sovereignty of Caldari Prime to the Federation in the Yulai Accords against its will. That, I concede, is not only a valid argument, but also entirely true.
By the same token, the Gallente Federation was similarly forced to sign the CEMWPA - which embroiled Intaki and its environs in a limited, controlled conflict - at the point of a gun. The alternative was to fight a potentially apocalyptic total war in its own capital system. If an agreement entered into via coercion or desperate necessity is not a valid agreement - and to be clear, I hold to this belief - then you can’t hold a double standard.
You are essentially asserting that the Caldari State signed the Yulai Accords in bad faith, always intending military intervention to reclaim its homeworld (which, allow me to be clear, it should never have lost sovereignty over), OR that they entered them in good faith but then abandoned that good faith later when it became inconvenient. If so, I concede that the same is likely true of the Federation and the CEMWPA, but you can’t then argue that the Federation is guilty of some special and unique moral failing of which the State is innocent.
Thank you for acknowledging that much. One can imagine how much less trouble we’d all be in if this wasn’t a more generally accepted idea a decade or two back, no?
That’s very convenient, because I don’t remember arguing this at all. It’s interesting to get the Gallentean perspective on the CEMWPA coming into being - you describe it as a robbery at gunpoint, I perceive it as being a rather more precarious bit of diplomacy to stabilize a practically impossible hostage situation - but it’s not all that relevant to the current situation; the Act exists, and it’s going to be hard for the State to not respond to an unilateral breach involving a considerable seizure and garrisoning of formerly CEMWPA-controlled territory.
I imagine there would have been ways out of the treaty less likely to lead to a full-scale conflict.
Yes! Most assuredly there were! And ideally, these would’ve been tried before the unjustified military invasion of Luminaire, but unfortunately the State was under the rulership of a fascist dictator at the time.
If the Caldari State had ever, and I mean ever cared about the sanctity, safety and self-determination of the Intaki people, they would not have invaded Placid, occupied our worlds for two years and dumped tens of thousands of my countrymen into mass graves. They would not have auctioned off “development rights” they had no right to sell to megacorporations that had no right to buy them.
But the Caldari State was under the thumb of a genocidal fascist, and I can’t hold the State uniquely responsible for that - after all, the greatest crime in the Federation’s history occurred under similar circumstances. Mass murder and war is what fascists do.
Eventually, as with all fascists, Tibus Heth was deposed when he could not build a wall of corpses thick and tall enough to defend him from his own people. Caldari Prime once again belonged to the Caldari people, even though the Federation could likely have taken it away again. There was no reason for the war’s continued existence at that point, other than to satisfy the military industrial complex. And yet it continued!
In the span of a few short years, Heth bulldozed all the moral high ground the Caldari held over the Federation - and I admit it! You used to have a hell of a lot of it!
The Intaki system contains the homeworld of one of the Federation’s founding member states. The Federation has, in the past - and particularly during the first liberation of the Gallente warzone from Caldari occupation - specifically obeyed requests from the Intaki Assembly not to bring Federal Navy forces into Intaki. I’m not party to exactly how the situation has changed. But this would not have happened if the State had not invaded Placid, and kept invading it even after they deposed the fascist dictator who started the war.
That’s the position of someone who watched this war start fourteen years ago and had to live through the indignity of watching my homeworld get auctioned off, with my only available action to hope that it would be purchased - purchased! - by one of the less odious megacorporations, and thank the stars and spirits that it was.
If I sound a little bit bitter about this, it’s because I am.
If we’re arguing from emotion, then - well, this bloody war… I remember listening to a crackly live broadcast of Operation Highlander on samizdata radio, as a prisoner of this not-quite-war, wondering with some frustration why the F- our Admiral Yanala just wasn’t firing. Then got a cold chill down my spine when I realized why.
We’re again at a point where a very few people keeping a cool head is all that’s between us and a considerable amount of death and chaos, and I can’t help but resent the latest link in the chain of escalation for it.
The State’s been kicking the Federation in the shins for fourteen years. Forgive me if I have less than adequate sympathy that you stubbed your toe on the spikes we added to our kneepads.
I admit, I was surprised by this move, but at the same time… it still feels… performative, to me. On all sides.
Nations don’t simply act without diplomacy. If there’d been a single Caldari Navy dreadnaught in orbit, would the shooting war have started? That’s not a risk any politician is going to take. Similarly, there’s been no statement regarding the ‘sudden’ or ‘rash’ action or ‘invasion’ from CONCORD—you know, the entity directly charged with maintaining peace between the Yulai Powers, and which has the authority to push back on moves like this.
Why not?
There is, to my mind, no chance this occured without CONCORD being notified, even if only moments before. Unless the Federation was actively looking to start an unlimited war with the State, both CONCORD and the State’s diplomatic corps had to have enough advance notice of this to allow for the issuances of ‘for the love of fedos, DO NOT START THE SHOOTING’ orders to any and all potentially trigger-happy Caldari Navy forces in the constellation. That includes actual State-employed (ie: not capsuleer contractor) State Protectorate forces and command and control assets.
You give them just enough time for the orders to reach the local C&C, but not enough time to get a response force moving. It just doesn’t happen, otherwise. Not if you don’t want it to be a declaration of unlimited warfare. And frankly, the Caldari statement on this is both a) restrained enough, and b) coming from a politician/CEO, not the missile bays of a hundred Leviathans, to say that they had those moments of notice. But that still leaves one question:
Why haven’t we heard from CONCORD?
Shin guards. They’d have to be on the shin guards because if we’re kicking you in the shins rather than the knees…
You know what; fine.
Ow.
To be fair, in this day and age, the absence or presence of a statement from CONCORD is an academic distinction.
It felt weird to use the word “shin” twice in a sentence.
Normally, I’d agree, but this… this is exactly the kind of situation that only CONCORD has the standing to address. Anything else is finger-pointing.