Re: [GZG] Troop potential

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n A said:
More importantly, as an issue of long-term stability, what do you do
when your military is composed of clone soldiers grown in labs, and
they tell you to go f*** yourself, not only are they NOT climbing back
in
the suspended animation bunker, they are going to take over your
country, so
you'd better hop to and bring them some good whiskey, a bevy of
concubines,
and a microphone so they can inform the populace of the change in
political
administrations?
----

I've seen a few approaches that might work to dealing with a large,
dangerous military machine when you are done with them at the war.

One of them is negotiating your peace without letting on this was
happening,
then just checking them into cold sleep between missions as usual, and
putting them all in a deep, dark hole. Break glass in case of
apocalypse.

The second was one explored by Timothy Zahn in his Cobra series. These
very
dangerous, very capable guys become your very capable, very highly
survivable colonists for new worlds. Still gives them a role they can
serve
in, keeps them from ending up in dishonour and incarceration in your
jails,
and moves them off to a spot where, if they do stage a coup (and the
books
do address this situation), the coup is not on a key homeworld. Now, in
his
case, it was the uber-special forces, so there were never all *that*
many of
them. Harder to do if this constitutes 90% of your military.

Staying involved in brushfire wars that won't threaten your empire but
will
gradually attrit the ranks of these Ubermensch is another approach -
slowly
bleed them out and don't make more, but make sure the conflicts are the
sort
you can restaff with normal folks or else just negotiate your way out of
as
you start to get short on the Ubersoldaten.

In the case of the Clones in Star Wars, the very prime consideration was
loyalty. That was wired in at a genetic level. It was reinforced by
conditioning. You could have initiative, but only in the context of your
missions, not in the context of whether you should serve or not.
Additionally, most clones had *very* limited life experience and that
meant
they were really not that familiar that there were *other* ways to be -
something that was heightened by the isolation they were kept in and the
intense focus on brotherhood over anything but loyalty to superiors.

The Clones that (in the novels) get away are the ones bred to be the
elite,
with more of Jango's true nature in them. They eventually do decide that
they're sick of getting killed for the Emperor and that it is time to
make a
life for themselves somewhere else. So they just pack up and disappear,
knowing that they want to avoid the notice of the real dark suited
force-wielders.

T.
-- 
"Now, I go to spread happiness to the rest of the station. It is a
terrible
responsibility but I have learned to live with it."
Londo, A Voice in the Wilderness, Part I

"To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like
administering medicine to the dead." -- Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine