RE: Homework assignment (UNSC)

  I'd like to see the UNSC fleshed out more.  My own take (in my head)
was that the UN was increasingly marginalized as the 5 "major" powers
coalesced.  Even so, there were many nations that didn't get absorbed
into the big 5 and they tended to huddle together under the UN banner to
maintain their existence.  

As humanity leapt into space, the largest powers increasingly became
focused around their off-world settlements, eventually moving their
capitals off of earth entirely.  As such, they were less and less
interested in expending force and money to maintain order in the
multinational core systems.  Through each small crisis, additional
powers were delegated to the otherwise harmless and powerless UN. 
Eventually the UNSC became a credible peace keeping force in the Core
worlds, with some exploration abilities (again offloading such
responsibilities from the big powers).	

After several major controversies with UN tech being stolen by "loaned"
personnel, the UN was able to secure the right to create a category of
"UN Citizen" who would no longer have any other nationality, and to
independently administer the Core Systems anywhere outside of
territories controlled directly by the major powers.   Initially, these
citizen were drawn primarily from the marginalized countries that formed
the core of the UN, but an unexpected consequence followed.  Suddenly
the many independent colonies throughout the Core Systems (and
elsewhere) began to join the UN en-masse.  In particular, most of the
orbital colonies and private stations applied entirely to join the UN
with all of their citizens becoming UN Citizens.  In essence, this gave
these places the protection from the major powers that they had largely
lacked to date.  

The orbital colonies provided a massive influx of technically
experienced space personnel, which in turn gave the UNSC a sudden and
powerful edge in creating, maintaining, and crewing the most advanced
equipment available.  In little more than a generation, the UNSC changed
from a peace keeping force with borrowed ships to an advanced and
powerful military force, and the UN itself had become the defacto
government throughout the Core Systems.  Indeed, the situation changed
so rapidly that the major powers were caught entirely by surprise as the
UN managed to increase its mandate to include unexplored, unclaimed, and
independent systems, before they could effectively organize political
resistance to further UN expansion.  Now the Major Powers remain in a
somewhat adversarial stance with regards to the UN, deeply concerned
about the possibility of the UN trying to become the singular human
government.  This inherent distrust is quickly tossed aside when one
side or another needs UN support for its position against another power,
but the lack of trust explains much of the disorganized early response
to the Kravak.

The UN still is somewhat limited in the population that it can draw
from, and has to be conservative with how much it can tax it's disparate
member nations (and Core Systems trade).  These limitations combine to
drive the UN military to fewer, but much more capable, units.  UN forces
are often thinly spread, so survivability and devastating firepower are
emphasized.  This works well for the UN, as UN forces are not expected
to engage in large scale wars against the other major powers, but rather
to represent a force that the major powers do not want to attack.  

-----Original Message-----
From: Hugh Fisher [mailto:laranzu@ozemail.com.au] 
Sent: Friday, October 21, 2011 10:05 PM
To: gzg@firedrake.org
Subject: Re: Homework assignment (UNSC)

>On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 12:51 PM, Tom B <kaladorn@gmail.com> wrote:
>1) The UN Blues are far (and I mean *FAR*) too effective.  Nowhere in
>the fluff does it explain how the Blues actually found a pair of brass
>ones.	I'd fix that by reducing their ability to do much other than
>wag a nagging finger and point to published "resolutions."

Silly response: this is the UNSC from the Halo universe
via one of those all-to-common dimensional gateways. No?

My serious suggestion (which I've made before) is that
the UNSC is for the most part Indian. AFAIK, India only
gets mentioned in the timeline a couple of time, being
invaded by the ESU around 2050. Here's my take on what
happens:

India goes through a decade or so of extended communal
violence and disruption. Eventually the ESU is invited,
or invites itself, to restore order.

Once India settles down again, it has enough population
and economic power to secede if desired - it helps to
have the Himalayas and Afghanistan in between India and
China/Russia - but memories of the previous disturbances
and political pressure from the ESU discourages them. The
compromise is that India agrees to loyally follow the
dictates of the ESU government, and the ESU agrees not
to dictate very often or very strongly. Foreign policy,
though, is handled by the ESU, including space defence.

(A particularly useful aspect of India for the ESU is
the long standing relationship with Britain and other
Commonwealth countries such as many in the Oceanic Union.
A lot of external ESU trade goes through India.)

However...now we have the Xeno War. The NAC, ESU, NSL,
FSE, PAU, etc have all agreed to contribute ships to the
UNSC fleet for the defence of the home planet and the
benefit of all humanity. Right after they've taken care
of their own commitments, of course, so the UNSC gets
the dregs left over.

So, urgent need to build up the UNSC fleet. And India
happens to have a large well-educated population, a
reasonably strong tradition of science and education,
and no existing arms industry already tied up with war
production. Ideal place to design and build new ships.
And then you've got a large population with a long
and reasonably successful military tradition as well,
so why not use them for crews? The ESU won't like it,
but after all the future of Earth is at stake so they
can't object too loudly.

I'd expect Indian names in the UNSC fleet, not the
ESU. The names shown on the web page are translations
into English for the benefit of us foreigners.

	cheers,
	Hugh