Re: Close Orbit Support (COS) a.k.a. CSS (Close Space Support)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Z. Lakel" <zlakel@tampabay.rr.com>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, January 01, 2002 1:39 PM
Subject: Re: Close Orbit Support (COS) a.k.a. CSS (Close Space Support)

> > Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical weapons and did
> > not use them either.

> Concerning Iraq,
> were they really threatoned with ceasing to exist by the U.S.?  I
mean,
it's
> the same government in power now as it was then.

Yes, they were threatened with ceasing to exist by the U.S., under a
particular circumstance.  Namely, Bush Sr. made it extremely clear to
Saddam
Hussein that if he used his weapons of mass destruction against us in
the
Gulf War, we just might decide to use ours in response.  (Or, to put it
another way, "Go ahead... make my day.")  Given that they didn't, I'd
say it
was probably a pretty effective deterrent.

> An excelent historical example is the Alexandrian successor
> states.  They all engaged in little wars w/ each other w/ limited
objectives
> and _Republican_ Rome rolled right over them (not quite that simple,
but
> still).  The reason for that is that Republican Rome fought wars w/ 2
> possible ends--the destruction of their enemies, or their own
distruction.
> A state following the BoP theory does quite well until it meets
someone
that
> refuses to believe in its little fantasy.

This isn't a particularly relevant example.  The Macedonian successor
states
didn't have the ability to invade one another and reunite Alexander's
empire, as Mr. Atkinsson has pointed out.  Rome _did_ have this
capability
at that time, and used much of it, although even then they didn't
significantly penetrate Macedonia's Persian provinces, and it took them
some
time before their control over Egypt was solid.  Back in the days when
Rome
was a lot smaller and had to deal with Carthage across he Mediterranean,
they had to deal with a Balance of Power situation until they acquired
the
ability to finally conquer Carthage altogether.

John is postulating that a Balance of Power exists between the human
states
in the Tuffleyverse because no one has the power to overturn it.  When
that
power simply doesn't exist, it is indeed a condition that is vulnerable
to
more powerful outside influences (in the Tuffleyverse's case, the
Kra'Vak),
but the technological capability on the human states' part to really
invade
each other on this kind of scale just doesn't exist on a logistical
level.
There are those sci-fi theorists who subscribe to a sort of realism that
says that it never can, that the energy expenditure it would take to get
an
army large enough to suppress the population of an alien world simply is
not
cost-efficient against any possible gain you could achieve by doing so.

Stilts