Thread:Ecoraptor3339/@comment-5496489-20160524151005/@comment-25309944-20161129125953

Come 2817-2818, Anan's government would have begun responding to the Talven buildup in the southern Milky Way with its own contingencies, renewing old defensive alliances and consulting broadly with its partners. However, while France will make moves to assure its own security and ability to respond defensively to the Talven Empire, it will explicitly renounce the steps it would need to take to be able to offensively overcome the Talven mainland's considerable defenses.

At that point, France would very much think of the Talven problem as a Milky Way issue. The considerable Talven buildup of offensive capabilities in the southern Milky Way, where no threat exists, caused great unease among the states of that region which feel that they might themselves fall victim to these new capabilities. In order to avoid a galactic arms race and an unnecessary war, France and the DCP stepped in as the Protectors of the Milky Way and attempted to negotiate with the Talva to reduce its offensive arms while finding ways to improve its security by other means. This conception assumed that Marinus' buildup was defensive in nature, a reaction to a perceived threat from France or other Milky Way states.

As they would soon find out through negotiation, Marinus' buildup was offensive in nature, not defensive; revisionist in its intentions, not meant to ensure the status quo. Due to the mechanics of how militarization and economic mobilization works, they were turning themselves into a ticking time bomb. I can go into the economics of this in more detail if you're interested, but the short of it is that there will be a very narrow window where Talven arms will exceed that of France, and where the Talva could initiate war and inflict maximum damage (but victory is extremely unlikely). That window is when Marinus' hand in negotiation is strongest.

However, that window is short for two reasons: All of this creates a situation where the Talva have a very limited window to carry out negotiations with the Milky Way. Too early, and France is able to prematurely understand the real situation, abandon its hedging strategy, initiate its arms buildup, and make it impossible for the Talva to overtake them at all. Too late, and the Talva lose everything as their economy crumbles.
 * 1) After a decade of total economic mobilization towards the manufacture of arms, the Talven economy is about to encounter serious economic problems which will see its power, cohesion, and warfighting capability collapse under its own weight.
 * 2) The French Empire, an economy several times the size of the Talven Empire, can overtake it in arms fairly quickly once it awakens to the offensive threat posed by the Talven Empire by initiating its own buildup on a full tank of gas. The Talva, on the other hand, are on their last reserves.

This means that if Marinus can't get what he wants out of negotiations with the DCP and France, he has to attack, even if there is no chance of victory. The real effort is through negotiations, and the real leverage is the threat of war against two hyperpowers who are confident of their victory but willing to pay a cost to avoid it. Should war actually break out, Marinus would have failed and nothing will come of it. France and the DCP are willing to extend to the Talven Empire recognition and acceptance in varied forms, though the Talva have yet to tell me concretely what they actually want from all of this, so I'm in the dark about that.

One of the things France will be doing in Mirus is talking to the Mirusians about the situation in the Milky Way, seeking their input, and asking them upfront what they intend to do if violence breaks out. It will make it clear that it has no interest in attacking the Talven Empire outright, that it would lose all of its support should it initiate such a strike. But it will be forthright about its concern (French planners are losing sleep over this) that an attack on the Milky Way might inspire an attack in Mirus, understanding very well the temptation for many to see this crisis as a make-it-or-break-it moment to defect from cooperation and dash for a 'Mirusia First' outcome. Anan personally has the utmost respect for that thinking and empathizes with it given that the pressure to defect is something that all states experience all the time.

But in this case, it needs to be recognized that the chances of miscalculation are very high and the stakes are even higher. The need for cooperation now is greater than ever: in order to successfully navigate this crisis and avert a disaster, Xonexi and Mirus need to share their perceptions of the situation and to implement other measures to narrow the chances of one side or another making a tragic miscalculation and causing another potentially devastating Mirusian war.