ST v SW

[Connor MacLeod]

Well the Empire can't stamp out the Rebellion, which as per the movies continued to get more and more support in the Imperial governing body before the Emperor swept away the senate. Even if the Empire controls access to communication, it's obviously finite control and the Federation might ally themselves with the Rebellion if we have the latter transplanted into this scenario.

Firstly, there are a number of EU sources indicating Palpy tolerated the Rebels to a certain degree because it provided him justification for his political and military agendas. Hell it's been noted he made claims about "extenral threats to the Empire" to justify that, so the REbellion is just another tool in his arsenal. Basically he used the Rebels the same way he used the Separatists in the Clone Wars, which is (for him) a consistent pattern of behavior, even if we go with just the movies.

The US has also demonstrated how hard it can be to fight a "War on Terror" with conventional means. Sure you can blow the shit out of places, cities, countires and kill lots of civilians, but that won't neccesarily nail you all the terrorists, will it?

Also, you make a good point about the logistics situation, I don't think it would just be as easy as saying 'people will pack up and move', however don't we comment all the time on the Empire's and SW galaxy at large's logistic capacity to transport huge amounts of resources or people from a to b with short notice?

Frankly that would be a blessing ot the Empire should they decide to attack. We know they don't care much about civilian casualties, and having to handle a massive influx of civilians as WELL as fighting a war would be catastrophic to say the least. not to mention the Federation ethos would probably demand they try protecting them, which would make things harder for them. Sure SW would probably suffer somewhat from having a huge chunk of its population vanish, but with cloning and droid tech it wouldn't be permanantly crippling. Again, probably only more of an advantage in a war.

Also if/when the mini-Empire defeated the Federation, they'd just claim back those citizens anyhow.

Well to be fair, the Federation is a pretty sweet place to live. At least the President isn't an evil wizard!

Well in some ways yeah unless you get caught by the Viidians or the Borg. Or something like the crystalline entity, those random space blobs/ameobaes, or the Q take an interest in your life.

Then again you won't have a wrinkled hobgoblin in black robes trying to suck your life out of you to fuel his own immortality, either.

[Metahive]

If the Rebels were just bogeymen to keep the people in line and justify an overblown military budget why did he try so badly to snuff 'em out decisevely? Why did he go with the Tarkin doctrine if the Rebels were intended as the "bad cop" to his "good cop"? Why didn't he just use his foreknowledge of the impending Vong invasion for this purpose? Doing so would also have given him a powerful propaganda tool against the Rebel Alliance. Blowing up the Death Star if Palpy had sold it as the best hope to withstand intergalactic invaders would have potentially resulted in a huge backlash against the Rebels instead of further propping up their image.

I'm sorry, but this is one interpretation I just can't agree with.

[Simon_Jester]

Frankly that would be a blessing ot the Empire should they decide to attack. We know they don't care much about civilian casualties, and having to handle a massive influx of civilians as WELL as fighting a war would be catastrophic to say the least. not to mention the Federation ethos would probably demand they try protecting them, which would make things harder for them. Sure SW would probably suffer somewhat from having a huge chunk of its population vanish, but with cloning and droid tech it wouldn't be permanantly crippling. Again, probably only more of an advantage in a war.

The flip side of that, though, is that it means a lot of Imperial defectors to explain the weaknesses of the Imperial state to the Federation. This can be a disadvantage.

If the Rebels were just bogeymen to keep the people in line and justify an overblown military budget why did he try so badly to snuff 'em out decisevely? Why did he go with the Tarkin doctrine if the Rebels were intended as the "bad cop" to his "good cop"?

Remember that Palpatine started (at the end of Episode III) with an "Empire" that had a strong tradition of limited government, significant local authority independent of the top-level government, and a still-existent Senate that could, in theory, have simply demanded back the powers that they'd delegated to him.*

The iron fist of Imperial authority was, shall we say, still missing a few fingers at this point.

What Palpatine wants is a military dictatorship dominated by superweapons that he can keep under his direct control, or the control of the handful of individuals he knows to be absolutely reliable. But to build those superweapons, to create the organs of oppression that let him convert a republic into a military dictatorship- the secret police and propaganda organizations, among other things- he needs more than just the powers vested in him by the Senate.

This is the role the Rebels played in Palpatine's plan. The buildup of the fleet, the Death Star, and everything else, could be publicly justified to defeat the rebels, and other independent powers in the galaxy on the Rim. Then, when this buildup had proceeded far enough, Palpatine could permanently divorce himself from the quasi-democratic, limited-government institutions that put him into power.

We see this plan implemented in Episode IV, when Palpatine dissolves the Senate, relying on the imperial governors (which he controls) to run the galaxy, and on the fear of the Death Star to maintain loyalty to his own system. This is Palpatine turning on the people who put him into office in the first place and formally declaring that he has no further need of them.

Unfortunately for him, this plan takes a proton torpedo to the exhaust port at the end of the movie. Palpatine is forced to fall back on the other organs of repression he'd created (the fleet, the secret police) to maintain order. Which works, but is ultimately a delaying measure until he can get his next generation of superweapons online.

*Granted this wouldn't have worked, but it would have made a lot of trouble for Palpatine because it would have touched off a genuine civil war between the people who backed the legitimacy of the Senate and the people who backed Palpatine's personal leadership.

Why didn't he just use his foreknowledge of the impending Vong invasion for this purpose?

Because no one else knew about the Vong. Palpatine openly claiming that invaders from another galaxy would attack in twenty years' time would not have been well received.

[Metahive]

We see this plan implemented in Episode IV, when Palpatine dissolves the Senate, relying on the imperial governors (which he controls) to run the galaxy, and on the fear of the Death Star to maintain loyalty to his own system. This is Palpatine turning on the people who put him into office in the first place and formally declaring that he has no further need of them.

At the end of the Clone Wars the Senate held no real political power anymore. Palpatine was just symbolically cementing what had already been de facto the case, that he alone called the shots. He was just less kind and nostalgic than Augustus Caesar.

This is the role the Rebels played in Palpatine's plan. The buildup of the fleet, the Death Star, and everything else, could be publicly justified to defeat the rebels, and other independent powers in the galaxy on the Rim. Then, when this buildup had proceeded far enough, Palpatine could permanently divorce himself from the quasi-democratic, limited-government institutions that put him into power.

What buildup? Instigating the Clone Wars already left him with both a sufficiently sizable fleet and ground army consisting mostly of almost absolutely loyal clone troops. Who would have the power to resist a military force created to fight a galaxy-spanning war? That ship sailed when the CIS surrendered.

Because no one else knew about the Vong. Palpatine openly claiming that invaders from another galaxy would attack in twenty years' time would not have been well received.

D'uh, no one knew because he kept a lid on the evidence. That's not refuting my point.

[dworkin]

And you base ANY of this on, what exactly?

The German Democratic Republic kinda springs to mind. Nasty totalitarian dictatorships are not places you'ld prefer to live.

The Empire has primary control of the holonet and restricts access, so there's a finite limit to how fast (and how reliable) interstellar communicatons will be, so how exactly is this information to be spread?

You tell me. Of course first assure me that the Empire's holonet control is total, that all the people operating it are absolutly loyal and incorruptable and would never think of using such infomation for their own private gain.

Perhaps even more ludicrous is your complete disregard for the logistics of the situation. Even at its most basic, you're proposing that a huge chunk of a populace will be able to easily relocate from one place to another without any troube, and that the Federation will help them every step of the way (setting up your hypothetical smuggling networks, finding territory to place them all, helping them get a leg up on survival and such, organizing all these myriad tasks, etc.)

I'll concede 'like a sieve'. It's what we call a metaphor after all. I'ld originally envisioned on thousands making it through since I will credit the Empire some efficiency in guarding a border once they find out about it. Of course who's to say they find out about it first and not some other enterprising type? As for 'hypothetical smuggling networks' I thought it was canon that you can find someone able to move a few people in any dingy bar at any 3rd rate spaceport in the galaxy, Cheap(ish) too.

I also like how you constantly tout the phrase "post scarcity utopia" as if this means something, in addition to all the other conjecture making up your post. It would have made just as much sense for you to shout MAGIC! in capitals and throw off little fireworks into the air as an explanation.

Give me a better soundbite to describe the Federation then. "Almost post scarcity utopia'" describes them pretty well after watching them on the TV.
I suppose I could of used "Not Nasty Totalitarian Bastards" instead. It wouldn't make much difference except I don't view them that way. The Federation is composed of well meaning do-gooders with nothing but time on their hands.

This is an even more simple-minded level of reasoning than what you said above. And I analyze 40K as a hobby where the shit you spout would have a better odds of being true.

What are you refuting here with your poor grammer? That the Empire is going to complain over defectors, presumably as a casus beli for starting a shooting war? That the Federation won't meet them at the table? That no matter how good the Federation diplomats are at talking it doesn't matter because the Empire is fundementally evil. But you analyse 40K! I guess I just have to concede at that.

[avatarxprime]

We see this plan implemented in Episode IV, when Palpatine dissolves the Senate, relying on the imperial governors (which he controls) to run the galaxy, and on the fear of the Death Star to maintain loyalty to his own system. This is Palpatine turning on the people who put him into office in the first place and formally declaring that he has no further need of them.

At the end of the Clone Wars the Senate held no real political power anymore. Palpatine was just symbolically cementing what had already been de facto the case, that he alone called the shots. He was just less kind and nostalgic than Augustus Caesar.

This is the role the Rebels played in Palpatine's plan. The buildup of the fleet, the Death Star, and everything else, could be publicly justified to defeat the rebels, and other independent powers in the galaxy on the Rim. Then, when this buildup had proceeded far enough, Palpatine could permanently divorce himself from the quasi-democratic, limited-government institutions that put him into power.

What buildup? Instigating the Clone Wars already left him with both a sufficiently sizable fleet and ground army consisting mostly of almost absolutely loyal clone troops. Who would have the power to resist a military force created to fight a galaxy-spanning war? That ship sailed when the CIS surrendered.

[Insert trolling argument based on Karen Traviss minimalist nonsense here]

Umm, you do know that all of the various member systems of the Old Republic had zero interest in maintaining an official army right? That was kinda a major point in Episode II with issuing a formal order for "The Grand Army of the Republic" and all that. You also have a universe where what are essentially industrial organizations (the CIS founders) are able to put together sufficient armed forces to blockade planets and fight a galaxy spanning war. Palpatine wanted his military strengthed following the conclusion of the Clone Wars, not torn apart/demilitarized with victory. He needed to continue having some kind of threat out there to justify continuing to expand and improve his military or simply the power to say "Screw you, I'm building Star Destroyers." He used the rebels as Act I to build up even more ships and then with embracing the Tarkin Doctrine and dissolving the Senate he moved on to Act II with the "Screw You" mentality.

@jaimehlers

Earlier you were arguing with Connor that the scaled back Empire would not be able to industrialize the way we are used to from Star Wars. I think you are really underestimating the Empire here.

[Bill Nye]Consider the following:[/Bill Nye]
The DS2 is a 900 km battle station, representing a volume of approximately 3.8e8 cubic kilometers at completion. Now in about 4 years (most likely closer to 3) the Empire managed to secretly construct more than half of the thing. However, let's say they built exactly 50% of it in those 4 years, that's about 4.7e7 cubic kilometers of construction capacity a year. Now let's say that the construction of the second Death Star represented the entirety of the Imperial military yearly construction budget/capacity, a huge and erroneous assumption for obvious reason.

Now compare that to the number of ISDs constructed by the Empire in the 20 years it had to set up, 25,000 or 1,250 ISDs/year. A standard ISD (using numbers taken from the main site) is roughly 0.09 cubic kilometers (9e7 cubic meters). So using the DS2 as the yearly capacity, that construction rate represents 0.0002% of the maximum Imperial yearly construction capacity. Now we know that more than just ISDs got built during that time (the Maw facility, DS prototype, Byss world build-up, etc) but really you'd have to build an awful lot of stuff to come anywhere close to using up that capacity (which is a vast under estimate to begin with) every year. The obvious conclusion is that the Empire was vastly under militarized in terms of construction ability vs actual construction projects.

If we now scale that down to match the reduced territorial size proposed here (~1/4 of the galaxy) then that's 6250 ISDs in 20 years and a maximum yearly construction capacity of 1.1e7 cubic kilometers. To give you a better sense of that immense construction ability, in 1 year the Empire could construct 5 DS1 scale battle stations (DS1 = 2e6 cubic kilometers based on 160 km diameter) and 11 million ISDs. Now they obviously would not be able to actually crew all those ships and battle stations, but it's still a rather ridiculous amount of construction ability. Even if you want to reduce the construction capacity by another 50% or more, you're still looking at the ability to build a DS1 and several hundred thousand ISDs a year if the Empire really decided to throw down.

[Metahive]

Umm, you do know that all of the various member systems of the Old Republic had zero interest in maintaining an official army right? That was kinda a major point in Episode II with issuing a formal order for "The Grand Army of the Republic" and all that.

D'uh, before the war. Haven't watched TCW where they vote several times for the expansion of said army, have you?

You also have a universe where what are essentially industrial organizations (the CIS founders) are able to put together sufficient armed forces to blockade planets and fight a galaxy spanning war.

Hello, those industrial organizations surrendered unconditionally at the end of the Clone Wars and handed their assets over to Palpatine! Missed the memo?

Palpatine wanted his military strengthed following the conclusion of the Clone Wars, not torn apart/demilitarized with victory. He needed to continue having some kind of threat out there to justify continuing to expand and improve his military or simply the power to say "Screw you, I'm building Star Destroyers." He used the rebels as Act I to build up even more ships and then with embracing the Tarkin Doctrine and dissolving the Senate he moved on to Act II with the "Screw You" mentality.

A piddly terror organization, as the Empire labeled the Rebels, hardly makes for a justification to build up the regular military, which Palpatine already possessed in sufficient numbers to brute force his edicts with anyway. Before the destruction of the first Death Star the Rebels were marginalized and for good reason. Making it look as if the beloved leader who rules with the support of the plebes is harassed by a sizable force of dissenters would have been counter-productive. Why do you think all those threatended tin-pot dictators in the Middle East today try to downplay the movements that have sprung up against them?
That was the point of instigating the Clone Wars in the first place after all.

[Darth Hoth]

What Palpatine wants is a military dictatorship dominated by superweapons that he can keep under his direct control, or the control of the handful of individuals he knows to be absolutely reliable. But to build those superweapons, to create the organs of oppression that let him convert a republic into a military dictatorship- the secret police and propaganda organizations, among other things- he needs more than just the powers vested in him by the Senate.

This is the role the Rebels played in Palpatine's plan. The buildup of the fleet, the Death Star, and everything else, could be publicly justified to defeat the rebels, and other independent powers in the galaxy on the Rim. Then, when this buildup had proceeded far enough, Palpatine could permanently divorce himself from the quasi-democratic, limited-government institutions that put him into power.

We see this plan implemented in Episode IV, when Palpatine dissolves the Senate, relying on the imperial governors (which he controls) to run the galaxy, and on the fear of the Death Star to maintain loyalty to his own system. This is Palpatine turning on the people who put him into office in the first place and formally declaring that he has no further need of them.

Simon's posts, while always well phrased and thought-out, are quite polarising, at least to me; they usually have me either applauding or rampaging with the chainsaw from Evil Dead.

This one is the firstly mentioned variety.

Well done on integrating the traditional (WEG) EU depiction of the Empire as a Nazi-esque (prewar) internally popular dictatorship with the movie (and bad EU) moustache-twirling, all the more so since (from what I know) you basically do not read any EU.

The way I understand it, the populist/propaganda aspects of the Empire apply mostly to the lower classes of Imperial society (the leader figure, social programmes with free or subsidised education, healthcare, scapegoating against the aliens/mutants/whatever X-Men metaphor for minorities you want to use, and so forth, all of which appeal primarily to the poor) while the political consolidation would be targeted against the independently minded traditional elites.

From what we know of the EU and the films, politics tend to be fairly aristocratic (with political dynasties and a large distance separating politician from voter where government is democratic; this is required by the scale of the setting as such). Most power is vested in fairly small high-level institutions (such as the Jedi). At the same time, central power with regards to powerful member states has been weak, leaving both major systems on a larger scale (Kuat, Alderaan, what have you) and lesser local authorities with the greater part of the influence. Palpatine was trying to change that and institute a powerful executive on the pan-galactic level (whether as his ultimate goal, or as a stop-gap on the way towards mystic oligarchies and hivemind-like metaphysical constructions, depending on one's interpretation of the Dark Empire Sourcebook); for that he had to affect both the citizenry but, more importantly, also the elite, who would not be swayed by propaganda. Superweapons and military governors are one aspect of that; Rebel threats another.

This also makes fairly neat sense of the schizophrenic portrayal of the Empire in the EU, where depending on whom you ask they are either the second coming or the reign of the beast (more usually the latter, perhaps). Heavy sources (the Imperial Sourcebook, RotJ novelisation) portray Palpatine especially, but also the Empire institutionally to some extent, as well-beloved and having both ingrained and at times quite fanatical support. (Palpatine's death would see the whole galaxy mourning, yada yada.) But then many others portray not just Rebels, but ordinary people who hate both the Empire and him personally. But going by the reasonings above, it is possible to reconcile them. Much of the support would then come from the "grassroots" who take the Empire's side against the abuses by local overlords and want more centralisation, aid from big government, and law and order, while the traditionally libertarian rulers of the major planets (Organa of Alderaan, Mothma of Chandrila, and so forth) are opposed both to Palpatine's policies and him personally.

(Perhaps they think him a populist or out of his league? To use an analogy, it might be like the stock stuck-up Prussian characters from WWII stories who think Hitler is too much of a plebe. In the WEG books, the spiel that usually goes for the old-time Rebels like Mon Mothma or Bel Iblis is that they hated Palpatine personally long before he got into any position of power or made any abuses.)

Not that they are necessarily evil for this reason, of course (although there are precisely such characters depicted in the EU, in the form of the Dune-esque Ancient Houses of nobility, of which the Organas were the democratically minded white sheep). But they would be very traditional, thus opposing not merely Palpatine's not-so-benign agenda of emergent dictatorship, but also vitally necessary government reforms (that would also have large popular support). Because films and EU alike quite agree that the Republic, at least by its anarcho-libertarian final stages in the prequel era (when planets represented on the Senate could be conquered by fellow Republic members with little apparent censure), was terminally dysfunctional, and from the EU one might say the same about the New Republic that succeeded the Empire.

Perhaps I have now ventured into rambling territory, when all I essentially wanted was to agree with Simon. The post certainly got longer than I originally intended. Oh, well. But I do think that at least some of the ideas presented above (in my usual, sadly generally haphazard fashion) can be used legitimately to better understand the social dynamics of the Empire (which this thread was to a large extent supposedly about).

[Darth Hoth]

The Empire is a nasty totalitarian dictatorship ruled by an actual evil wizard. If ever a connection was established to an almost post scarcity utopia like the Federation then it would leak peopie like a sieve. People will become the no.1 top contraband as the Empire clamps down on it's citizens grabbing the nearest availiable transport and leave for a place where jackbooted thugs are not the order of the day.

The Federation is an almost post scarcity utopia populated by wacky idealists. Those wacky idealists will probably aid in people smuggling.

This is bound to lead to shooting because while Federation diplomats can and do talk opponents into submission the Empire is actually evil. It's not misguided politics or poor choices. The Empire is ruled by an evil wizard and the region it inhabits has good and evil as actual forces of nature.

How much Imperial oppression will Joe Average be seeing in his everyday life? Even in the films, the Empire hardly maintains a galaxywide 24/7 police state. What happened to Luke Skywalker's family was not the norm, and in fact something the Stormtroopers there tried quite hard to cover up; usually, the Imperial presence on Tatooine (and any number of similar planets) is quite minimal.

Moreover, the original "jackboot" dictatorship, Nazi Germany, was extremely popular with the people . . . at least until they went to war, had every youth called up for the army and had the Anglo-Saxons rain megatons of conventional explosives on their heads. The Empire does not appear to have that problem.

As for post-scarcity utopias, I myself would be very suspicious if someone tried to sell me one. It sounds altogether too much like so much snake oil. Plus, what if I want to work for money rather than The Betterment Of Mankind Sapient Life Everywhere! ?

[Metahive]

How much Imperial oppression will Joe Average be seeing in his everyday life?

Just that one example, the gratuitous destruction of Alderaan, should prove sufficiently that the Empire is led by insane madmen that can't be trusted. Who else would blow up a perfectly fine core world just for the purpose of excessive dickwaving? Who knows, maybe your planet is next should some disgruntled Moff feel like it.

ETA:
As an analogy, imagine a US government dropping nukes on San Francisco. Curtailing freedoms and secret concentration camps out in the wilderness are one thing, pure murderous vandalism is a completely different kettle of fish.

[Simon_Jester]

Simon's posts, while always well phrased and thought-out, are quite polarising, at least to me; they usually have me either applauding or rampaging with the chainsaw from Evil Dead.

This one is the firstly mentioned variety.

Well done on integrating the traditional (WEG) EU depiction of the Empire as a Nazi-esque (prewar) internally popular dictatorship with the movie (and bad EU) moustache-twirling, all the more so since (from what I know) you basically do not read any EU.

Aw, shucks. It's obvious when you think about it- the end of Episode III suggests Palpatine-as-Augustus: the popular dictator who convinces the Senate to vote him enormous powers, to the extent that he becomes powerful enough to end the republic de facto... but still does not formally establish himself as an absolute monarch.

The beginning of Episode IV suggests Palpatine-as-tyrant: he's casting off the last remnants of the old Republic and planning to rule directly and by force, through an omnipresent Imperial fleet and a handful of superweapons to police that fleet and make high-profile examples of his most troublesome opponents.

The natural assumption is that he was planning Palpatine-as-tyrant all along, but was too smart to try it immediately after the Clone Wars, when his ability to remove all the Republic-era institutions at once would be in doubt and there were still huge numbers of people who might have gone "whoa, whoa, wait, I didn't sign on with Palpatine for this."

We see this plan implemented in Episode IV, when Palpatine dissolves the Senate, relying on the imperial governors (which he controls) to run the galaxy, and on the fear of the Death Star to maintain loyalty to his own system. This is Palpatine turning on the people who put him into office in the first place and formally declaring that he has no further need of them.

At the end of the Clone Wars the Senate held no real political power anymore. Palpatine was just symbolically cementing what had already been de facto the case, that he alone called the shots. He was just less kind and nostalgic than Augustus Caesar.

I think you're oversimplifying. Social structures do not get remade overnight, nor even in a single year.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that in his early years as Emperor, Palpatine was far more dependent on the consent of the governed than he would have liked. The fact that politically informed people were still saying things like "the Imperial Senate will not sit still for this" twenty years later should be a tipoff: even at that late date, the Senate's displeasure was still a logical threat to make to an Imperial minion overstepping his boundaries. Yes, by that point Palpatine was confident enough to disband the Senate, but that was after twenty years of cementing his own independent bureaucracy into position.

I am very skeptical of the idea that Palpatine could have turned around and openly defied the Senate a short time after taking office. You invoke the example of Augustus- thing is, I'm not convinced Augustus could have openly crushed the Senate, that keeping it in place was purely a matter of sentiment.

There is a huge gap between a man who uses his popularity and the glory of his successes to secure control of the state by manipulating the system, and a man who openly demolishes the system with naked force and declares himself supreme ruler by right of arms. Much of Augustus's legitimacy depended on the support of the Roman public and the fact that his titles were given him by the Senate.

Legitimacy is tricky, and quite a few rulers have fallen by assuming they no longer needed to keep up the illusion of not being a tyrant. So I strongly suspect that Palpatine (hardly known for being sentimental or imprudent in political affairs) had a reason for not disbanding the Senate and openly shifting the state to direct rule by appointed Imperial governors until twenty years later.

This is the role the Rebels played in Palpatine's plan. The buildup of the fleet, the Death Star, and everything else, could be publicly justified to defeat the rebels, and other independent powers in the galaxy on the Rim. Then, when this buildup had proceeded far enough, Palpatine could permanently divorce himself from the quasi-democratic, limited-government institutions that put him into power.

What buildup? Instigating the Clone Wars already left him with both a sufficiently sizable fleet and ground army consisting mostly of almost absolutely loyal clone troops. Who would have the power to resist a military force created to fight a galaxy-spanning war? That ship sailed when the CIS surrendered.

So why is it that twenty years later, the Empire is equipped mostly with ships of types that didn't exist during the Clone Wars, and troops who aren't Kaminoan clones? The Clone War era military didn't last forever, Metahive.

Also, you're still missing the point of what was needed to turn the Republic into the military dictatorship Palpatine wanted. Having the guns isn't enough; you need the men and the organization.
That's why he needed ongoing threats- to justify maintaining that fleet and army until he could reforge them into the tools he needed to rule the galaxy by brute force.

He needed to create from scratch a secret police force. He needed to replace Clone War naval officers with men he could trust to burn dissidents' worlds at his command: men like Tarkin. He needed to cement the loyalty of this military to himself personally, the nonclones as well as the clones. He needed to construct powerful superweapons that would both give him an ace in the hole in the event of a conflict with the fleet, and that would place the really decisive power in the galaxy under his direct control, rather than being forced to trust his minions.

Again, these things do not happen overnight. The mere existence of the forces Palpatine used in the Clone Wars was not enough; those forces were structured wrong, and were not adequately supported by intelligence and security apparatus, for what he needed them to do.

Because no one else knew about the Vong. Palpatine openly claiming that invaders from another galaxy would attack in twenty years' time would not have been well received.

D'uh, no one knew because he kept a lid on the evidence. That's not refuting my point.

Would the evidence have been all that convincing? Really? It strikes me as far harder to convince people that scanty evidence of an alien invader who's due to show up in 25 years' time is a threat than to convince people that rebels who are actively shooting at people right now are a threat.

[Darth Tedious]

Since when are the Imperials a 'jackboot dictatorship'? Vader might have worn them (as did Han Solo), but all the Imperial officers (and the Stormtroopers) wore Chelsea boots.

[Metahive]

I think you're oversimplifying. Social structures do not get remade overnight, nor even in a single year.

The Clone War devastated large swaths of the galaxy and caused plenty of socio-political turmoil, enough tools for Palpatine to mold society in his image. Do you think he only started with it as soon as the war was over?

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that in his early years as Emperor, Palpatine was far more dependent on the consent of the governed than he would have liked. The fact that politically informed people were still saying things like "the Imperial Senate will not sit still for this" twenty years later should be a tipoff: even at that late date, the Senate's displeasure was still a logical threat to make to an Imperial minion overstepping his boundaries. Yes, by that point Palpatine was confident enough to disband the Senate, but that was after twenty years of cementing his own independent bureaucracy into position.

Nope, those people might as well have been either naive or overly cautious. Admiral Tagge, the guy you're probably speaking about strikes me as the latter.

I am very skeptical of the idea that Palpatine could have turned around and openly defied the Senate a short time after taking office. You invoke the example of Augustus- thing is, I'm not convinced Augustus could have openly crushed the Senate, that keeping it in place was purely a matter of sentiment.

Your incredulity is noted. Augustus left the Senate intact because he wanted to placate the rest of the lingering republican sentiment within the roman public. De facto though it was a mere facade and he called the shots alone from day one of his "coronation". Lip service, nothing more.

There is a huge gap between a man who uses his popularity and the glory of his successes to secure control of the state by manipulating the system, and a man who openly demolishes the system with naked force and declares himself supreme ruler by right of arms. Much of Augustus's legitimacy depended on the support of the Roman public and the fact that his titles were given him by the Senate.

Much of it rested on the fact that he held all the military power after emerging victorious out of the Civil War. What could the Senate do? Its elite was dead, there were no soldiers left to fight for them and the plebes were in Augustus' camp. The same situation as Palpatine's.

Hitler too left the Reichstag intact. That doesn't mean they proved to be any sort of legitimate threat to his regime.

So why is it that twenty years later, the Empire is equipped mostly with ships of types that didn't exist during the Clone Wars, and troops who aren't Kaminoan clones? The Clone War era military didn't last forever, Metahive.

How is that relevant? This is about raw military strength, not about design aesthetics. After the end of the Clone War, who could have challenged Palpatine and wrested control over the Republic/Empire away from him violently? There was no one left, the Senate had no army of its own, that was a vital plot point in AOTC!

Also, you're still missing the point of what was needed to turn the Republic into the military dictatorship Palpatine wanted. Having the guns isn't enough; you need the men and the organization.
That's why he needed ongoing threats- to justify maintaining that fleet and army until he could reforge them into the tools he needed to rule the galaxy by brute force.

Answer the question I asked above. A piddly bunch of terrorists don't justify building up the regular military. Even crazy Bush and his cronies knew that hence them fantasizing about imaginary WMDs and the "Axis of Evil", comprised of nation militaries. Al-Quaeda style threats are good for curtailing individual rights, but not bloated military budgets.

He needed to create from scratch a secret police force. He needed to replace Clone War naval officers with men he could trust to burn dissidents' worlds at his command: men like Tarkin. He needed to cement the loyalty of this military to himself personally, the nonclones as well as the clones. He needed to construct powerful superweapons that would both give him an ace in the hole in the event of a conflict with the fleet, and that would place the really decisive power in the galaxy under his direct control, rather than being forced to trust his minions.

At the beginning of the Empire anyone below the rank of Admiral was a 100% loyal clone trooper. The clones did not hesitate to gun down their formal superiors during Order 66. What could have a dissident Admiral done under such prospects? By the time the clones were phased out in favor of conscripts and volunteers, insurrections where Admirals absconded with their entire fleet in tow became a bigger problem for Palpatine (see Harkov and Zaarin), not a smaller one. This is the complete opposite of what you argue Palpatine was aiming for.

Would the evidence have been all that convincing? Really? It strikes me as far harder to convince people that scanty evidence of an alien invader who's due to show up in 25 years' time is a threat than to convince people that rebels who are actively shooting at people right now are a threat.

Rebels who can under no circumstances put up any sort of convincing military threat against the Empire? You might as well suggest that he allowed them to blow the Death Star up on purpose since they were "no force to be reckoned with" before.

[Connor MacLeod]

The German Democratic Republic kinda springs to mind. Nasty totalitarian dictatorships are not places you'ld prefer to live.

Hey look! a non-answer! While you did a great job failing to grasp my point, I suggest you try again. Here's a hint: Back up your claims. One off obscure references do ont count as "proof."

You tell me. Of course first assure me that the Empire's holonet control is total, that all the people operating it are absolutly loyal and incorruptable and would never think of using such infomation for their own private gain.

It's not my job to provide answers. You made the claim with all this "defection" nonsense, you address it, since flow of information is a non-trivial factor in your little fantasy.

I'll concede 'like a sieve'. It's what we call a metaphor after all. I'ld originally envisioned on thousands making it through since I will credit the Empire some efficiency in guarding a border once they find out about it. Of course who's to say they find out about it first and not some other enterprising type? As for 'hypothetical smuggling networks' I thought it was canon that you can find someone able to move a few people in any dingy bar at any 3rd rate spaceport in the galaxy, Cheap(ish) too.

So your basic argument is that the federation is going to be able to subcontract out to all the smugglers n shit to move huge chunks of the population covertly into the Federation? How does this alter anything I said, exactly? Aside from the fact you now apparently ignored issues like "how the Federation will locate/contact" such smugglers, et al. Moreover, where are they going to get the funds to pay for this? Space pixies or prayer?

Give me a better soundbite to describe the Federation then. "Almost post scarcity utopia'" describes them pretty well after watching them on the TV.
I suppose I could of used "Not Nasty Totalitarian Bastards" instead. It wouldn't make much difference except I don't view them that way. The Federation is composed of well meaning do-gooders with nothing but time on their hands.

Or, maybe you could not make foolish generalizations without at least making a decent attempt to back it up with resembling proof. You do remember what board you're on, right?

What are you refuting here with your poor grammer? That the Empire is going to complain over defectors, presumably as a casus beli for starting a shooting war? That the Federation won't meet them at the table? That no matter how good the Federation diplomats are at talking it doesn't matter because the Empire is fundementally evil. But you analyse 40K! I guess I just have to concede at that.

Again, the point being you could stop making meaningless, simpleminded generalizations and actually post something of content. Is that really so hard for you to grasp?

[Connor MacLeod]

The flip side of that, though, is that it means a lot of Imperial defectors to explain the weaknesses of the Imperial state to the Federation. This can be a disadvantage.

To an extent, yes. How much of a danger depends largely on who leaves, and what sort of thing they know . Again this gets back to information and information control, and there are lots of cases for and against that sort of thing (anything from the Death Stars, to Palpy's death at Endor, etc.) depending on circumstances and factors.

hell, its quite possible the Federation might deduce certain things based on how people say the Empire operates (like how centeralized it might be), but aagain this depends on the level of observation and analysis they can and do perform. (And its probably not going to be instantaneous either.)

]Because no one else knew about the Vong. Palpatine openly claiming that invaders from another galaxy would attack in twenty years' time would not have been well received.

As I recall the novel "Rogue Planet" had hints of the Vong appearing at Zonoma Sekot, and information about that filtered back to Palpy. Later prequel era novels I believe hinted at the threat and Palpy knowing about it, possibly beginning secret preparations. Other sources have noted Palpy used claims of "extragalactic" threats (or from unknown parts of the galaxy, EG Unknown REgions) for political gains.

That siad, precog isn't perfect or automatic or some silly "game winning" strategy. It can and does go wrong, it can be misinterpreted, etc.

If the Rebels were just bogeymen to keep the people in line and justify an overblown military budget why did he try so badly to snuff 'em out decisevely? Why did he go with the Tarkin doctrine if the Rebels were intended as the "bad cop" to his "good cop"? Why didn't he just use his foreknowledge of the impending Vong invasion for this purpose? Doing so would also have given him a powerful propaganda tool against the Rebel Alliance. Blowing up the Death Star if Palpy had sold it as the best hope to withstand intergalactic invaders would have potentially resulted in a huge backlash against the Rebels instead of further propping up their image.

I'm sorry, but this is one interpretation I just can't agree with.

Palpy has to go through the motions of looking like he IS trying to crush them. He can't just scream "Rebels" and sit on his laurels and let the resources amass - Propoganda doesn't work that way.

But at the same time it is quite, blatantly obvious that he did not use the full extent of the Empire's demonstrated resources to hunt down and destroy the rebels. Why only "thousands" of probe droids and a sector by sector/system by system search by Death Squadron? It should be well within their technical capabilities to flood the galaxy with trillions of probe droids to root out all the hidden bases and facilities, chase down the Rebel fleet, Crush the rebellion at Mon Calamari, etc.
Even then it wouldn't be simple or neccesarily effortless, but it's WELL within their capabilities and even trivial by such standards.

[Simon_Jester]

I think you're oversimplifying. Social structures do not get remade overnight, nor even in a single year.

The Clone War devastated large swaths of the galaxy and caused plenty of socio-political turmoil, enough tools for Palpatine to mold society in his image. Do you think he only started with it as soon as the war was over?

The war only lasted a few years. This is simply not enough time to take a general acceptance of the legitimacy of the Republic and turn it into a brute-force military dictatorship.

Rule by force requires institutions, Metahive, it is not something that can work in the absence of those institutions. You need secret police, you need propaganda, you need a hard core of Party loyalists who have to be developed over time.

Historically, this transformation takes many years; even the Nazis spent about ten years* working on the problem to silence critics and create a mechanism for spying on their own citizens effectively. And Germany already had a strong, organized central government before the Nazis took charge, one that they could turn into the nucleus of the state oppression system they needed. Palpatine had no such thing before the war; he had to create his own government from scratch.

So where do you get support for this notion that the day after he was proclaimed Emperor, he simply turned around and started ignoring everyone who had formerly been powerful in the Republic? That there wasn't an evolutionary process, a gradual purging of members of the pro-republic old guard and promotion of supporters of the New Order, with Palpatine having to keep one eye on popular support and public perception of his rule as legitimate for quite some time, until finally, nearly twenty years after the end of the Clone Wars, he can afford to cast off the Senate and rule by naked force?

*These ten years began before they took power, because they were able to transform Party organizations like the Brown Shirts into the recruitment ground and basis for the secret police and other institutions they needed to ensure totalitarian rule.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that in his early years as Emperor, Palpatine was far more dependent on the consent of the governed than he would have liked. The fact that politically informed people were still saying things like "the Imperial Senate will not sit still for this" twenty years later should be a tipoff: even at that late date, the Senate's displeasure was still a logical threat to make to an Imperial minion overstepping his boundaries. Yes, by that point Palpatine was confident enough to disband the Senate, but that was after twenty years of cementing his own independent bureaucracy into position.

Nope, those people might as well have been either naive or overly cautious. Admiral Tagge, the guy you're probably speaking about strikes me as the latter.

You'll note that Tagge was the only person to correctly identify the stolen Death Star plans as a credible threat; this does not strike me as a sign that he was naive or cowardly.

Under my interpretation, he is wisely considering a problem (the Senate) that Imperial agents have had to worry about for a long time: most of his career. The fact that by Episode IV, when the Empire has ruled the galaxy for nearly twenty years, the Senate's displeasure is no longer relevant, does not mean it became irrelevant the moment the Clone Wars ended.

I am very skeptical of the idea that Palpatine could have turned around and openly defied the Senate a short time after taking office. You invoke the example of Augustus- thing is, I'm not convinced Augustus could have openly crushed the Senate, that keeping it in place was purely a matter of sentiment.

Your incredulity is noted. Augustus left the Senate intact because he wanted to placate the rest of the lingering republican sentiment within the roman public. De facto though it was a mere facade and he called the shots alone from day one of his "coronation". Lip service, nothing more.

What do you think would have happened had he not paid that lip service and placated those sentiments?

I think Augustus was a much smarter political operator than you are, and one who knew something you don't: the appearance of legitimacy matters. There are things that a man, even a dictator, cannot do if he wishes to retain power. For an ambitious yet patient dictator, this fact is crucial: it forces him to move slowly, to form alliances with useful members of the old guard with the intent of gradually co-opting them and finally making them irrelevant.

Augustus ruled through a very robust combination of popular support, military power, and satisfying the desire of the patrician class to keep up the appearances of a Roman Republic. Had he discarded the Republic openly rather than "paying lip service," things might have gone ill for him.

I would argue that Palpatine did the same- took the time to build up a power base that could function as a government before dissolving the Senate. Having the loyalty of the clonetroopers was not, and could not be, enough to run the Empire. He needed the bureaucracy, he needed the general consent of most of the governed to accept his rule so that he could single out the handful of troublemakers it was worth making examples of.

These things did not spring up overnight, and could not be made to spring up during the Clone Wars while a major military conflict was on.

He needed to create from scratch a secret police force. He needed to replace Clone War naval officers with men he could trust to burn dissidents' worlds at his command: men like Tarkin. He needed to cement the loyalty of this military to himself personally, the nonclones as well as the clones. He needed to construct powerful superweapons that would both give him an ace in the hole in the event of a conflict with the fleet, and that would place the really decisive power in the galaxy under his direct control, rather than being forced to trust his minions.

At the beginning of the Empire anyone below the rank of Admiral was a 100% loyal clone trooper.

Really.

No womb-born officers, no local defense forces, no planets with armed forces in their own right that had served as Republic allies and friends during the Clone Wars. Nothing at all, the entire war effort was prosecuted exclusively by clones. All clones in the support branches, all clones responsible for maintaining the war machine. All. Clones.

I'm sorry, but this breaks my suspension of disbelief so hard that even if you can provide suitable canon evidence (which I beg leave to doubt)... all it's going to prove is that the authors of the Star Wars continuity are so blindingly ignorant of human realities that they can't describe a plausible 'galaxy at war' scenario to save their lives.

Because for that to work, you would basically need the entire human population of the Republic to stop being human, for the government to actively forbid people to fight in its defense, for the Republic to have not merely a shortage of troops to fight the Separatists but no enforcement branch whatsoever, for every battle on every front to be fought by clones, for Kamino to produce enough men to protect every world in the galaxy...

This is utterly laughable, and you surely know it.

The clones did not hesitate to gun down their formal superiors during Order 66. What could have a dissident Admiral done under such prospects? By the time the clones were phased out in favor of conscripts and volunteers, insurrections where Admirals absconded with their entire fleet in tow became a bigger problem for Palpatine (see Harkov and Zaarin), not a smaller one. This is the complete opposite of what you argue Palpatine was aiming for.

Again, you fail to understand.

Rule by military dictatorship is not just about the heavy metal, or even about having a loyal enforcer corps.

You need intelligence organs to tell you where to send your crushing military force.

You need secret police to monitor public opinion and make sure you won't be caught off-balance by a general uprising that might overwhelm your crushing military force.

You need a propaganda arm to keep the public pacified and divided, or at least not unified against you.

You need an imperial bureaucracy that can issue orders. It's no good threatening to nuke a planet to a billiard ball for disobeying you if you haven't appointed a governor with a large enough staff and enough local knowledge to run the place; without that, you're not giving them any meaningful orders to obey.

If you have these things, the loyalty of the military is not your foremost concern; you can use loyal military units to suppress disloyal ones easily enough.

If you do not have these things, having a loyal army of enforcer-troops who would boil their own grandmothers alive for you isn't going to be enough to run things, even should you be so lucky as to have one. They can eliminate direct threats to your rule, but eliminating domestic opposition is not the same as ruling the state.

The Republic had none of the institutions needed for Palpatine to establish dictatorial rule prior to the Clone Wars, and the time and urgency of the war gave Palpatine no opportunity to do more than lay the groundwork. It is no wonder that he did not shift to openly ruling by naked force immediately after being declared Emperor. That he saw the need to gradually cow, weaken, and dismantle the Senate, while assembling his own apparatus of state authority and his own superweapons in order to eventually replace it.

[Connor MacLeod]

One thing I'll note about Palpatine is that, whilst he might have had the potential to "take over" in a short period of time, I'm not sure that would have been the best way to do things. The Republic is a very large, permanant fixture, despite being corrupt, and in its own way it has a great deal of inertia. Things have been done a certain way for millenia, and it is not easy to change those things (kinda like in the US really. Amazing how many US-Republic parallels one can make.)

Let's say Palpy decides to use direct military force to take control. He secretly builds a massive army of battle droids, warships, etc. all under his direct control, and launches an assault. Unless he takes EVERYONE down completely and rapidly, someone is going to survive. And quite probably, is going to be desperate, and turns to what Palpy did to amass their own forces. Quite probably, quite a few someones.

Even if Palpy wins, what has he won? The Republic is no longer as it was, and quite probably is a decimated galactic wasteland. Not much of a victory.

I'm not saying that would be the inevitable outcome, but the basic idea is, forcing a rapid change is probably not good, because it forces people to adapt too quickly, and people get unpredictable (or dangerous) in such situations. Especially lots of people. And that makes them hard to control.

On the other hand, if change comes slowly, gradual, over a long term, People tend not to notice, and generally be more willing to accept or accomodate it (because they can ahve short attention spans, because they have other, immediate real life concerns, etc.) Truly this is more cumbersome and indirect, and more time consuming, but in its own way it is just as effective and may even be more efficient. Of course, it also means that even if he's on the top, the inertia still exists and as powerful as Palpy is he is not a god, and he cannot change everything overnight just because he says so.

[Metahive]

Simon, this is veering off topic, I propose to open a separate thread about this topic in pure SW if you're interested in pursuing this tangent further. I admit I prefer talking about this then about the millionth iteration of "Empire effortlessly KILLPWNS Trek, lol".

The war only lasted a few years. This is simply not enough time to take a general acceptance of the legitimacy of the Republic and turn it into a brute-force military dictatorship.

How popular was the Republican Senate? In TPM, ten years before the Clone Wars we are already given to hear that the Senate is corrupt and ineffectual. Why also do you think tens of thousands of systems were trying to secede from the Republic? It couldn't just be Dooku mind controlling them into it, don't you think?

Rule by force requires institutions, Metahive, it is not something that can work in the absence of those institutions. You need secret police, you need propaganda, you need a hard core of Party loyalists who have to be developed over time.

A war offers plenty of opportunities to build up such things and three years are sufficiently enough time to do so, even if we ignore the fact that Palpatine had ten peaceful years before that to lay the groundwork for such things.

So where do you get support for this notion that the day after he was proclaimed Emperor, he simply turned around and started ignoring everyone who had formerly been powerful in the Republic? That there wasn't an evolutionary process, a gradual purging of members of the pro-republic old guard and promotion of supporters of the New Order, with Palpatine having to keep one eye on popular support and public perception of his rule as legitimate for quite some time, until finally, nearly twenty years after the end of the Clone Wars, he can afford to cast off the Senate and rule by naked force?

That evolution happened before and during the war your personal incredulity notwithstanding. Which powerful faction was left? KDY and Sienar were in cahoots with him, the Jedi were wiped out and the CIS dissolved. You talk about this awesome power the Senate supposedly had that could have stopped Palpatine before Yavin but you never mention just what they could have done. He had an army of loyal soldiers at his personal command, they had nothing. Should they have tried to assassinate him like Julius Caesar? Would have liked to see a bunch of senators try and stab him in the gut on the Senate's steps.

"Et tu, Sly Moore? Then fall Palpatine!"

You'll note that Tagge was the only person to correctly identify the stolen Death Star plans as a credible threat; this does not strike me as a sign that he was naive or cowardly.

Not cowardly, I said overly cautious, and if Tarkin hadn't been a complete moron the Rebels would have been able to inflict dick against the Death Star even with the knowledge of its weak spot.

Under my interpretation, he is wisely considering a problem (the Senate) that Imperial agents have had to worry about for a long time: most of his career. The fact that by Episode IV, when the Empire has ruled the galaxy for nearly twenty years, the Senate's displeasure is no longer relevant, does not mean it became irrelevant the moment the Clone Wars ended.

If dissolving the Senate was nothing big for Palpatine to do then Tagge was in fact overly cautious. You dismantled your own crown witness.

What do you think would have happened had he not paid that lip service and placated those sentiments?

In the worst case he'd have some conspirators try and stab him in the gut like Caesar, but that's not really relevant since the point was that it was lip service and nothing more.

I think Augustus was a much smarter political operator than you are, and one who knew something you don't: the appearance of legitimacy matters. There are things that a man, even a dictator, cannot do if he wishes to retain power. For an ambitious yet patient dictator, this fact is crucial: it forces him to move slowly, to form alliances with useful members of the old guard with the intent of gradually co-opting them and finally making them irrelevant.

The Senate by that point was reduced to a bunch of yes-men legitimizing anything Augustus wanted. There was no old guard left, they all perished during the Civil War. Augustus' last obstacle to overcome was a member of his own faction, Mark Anthony who he decisevely defeated. There was no one left standing but him after that.

If you are further interested in this topic, I recommend the classic by Theodor Mommsen, History of Rome.

No womb-born officers, no local defense forces, no planets with armed forces in their own right that had served as Republic allies and friends during the Clone Wars. Nothing at all, the entire war effort was prosecuted exclusively by clones. All clones in the support branches, all clones responsible for maintaining the war machine. All. Clones.

Haven't you watched TCW? I must admit there are sometime non-clone ship captains, but that's it. Most of the local militias rely exclusively on the republican fleet for logistics and transport and those militias that might have independent space forces, like Kuat, are allies of Palpatine and the prime source for his war machinery.

I'm sorry, but this breaks my suspension of disbelief so hard that even if you can provide suitable canon evidence (which I beg leave to doubt)... all it's going to prove is that the authors of the Star Wars continuity are so blindingly ignorant of human realities that they can't describe a plausible 'galaxy at war' scenario to save their lives.

Or maybe the clone army is just that numerous and powerful. You are not a Travissian minimalist, are you? I mean, don't you think Palpy had a reason to create an army like that so he had a big stock of completely loyal soldiers at his command? He's one resourseful bastard, you know.

Because for that to work, you would basically need the entire human population of the Republic to stop being human, for the government to actively forbid people to fight in its defense, for the Republic to have not merely a shortage of troops to fight the Separatists but no enforcement branch whatsoever, for every battle on every front to be fought by clones, for Kamino to produce enough men to protect every world in the galaxy...

Oh they fight, just not away from their planets, which makes them non-factors on the grand-scale of things. What matters a billion Wookies ready to support the Senate's cause if you can't get them to Coruscant to tear Palpy's arms off since the fleet is crewed almost exclusively by loyal clone operators?

Your next point is just a repeat of the first item so I'll make this short. Palpy had thirteen years to develop all those things like a secret police and a subservient bureaucracy. If you think he couldn't possibly be capable of getting it done within that time frame, well, there we have to agree to disagree then.

[avatarxprime]

First off, let me say that I don't have much to add as Simon_Jester has more or less said everything I could think to bring up with such clarity and precision that I feel trying to throw up similar arguments would only dilute the point. That being said I did want to say a few things.

Umm, you do know that all of the various member systems of the Old Republic had zero interest in maintaining an official army right? That was kinda a major point in Episode II with issuing a formal order for "The Grand Army of the Republic" and all that.

D'uh, before the war. Haven't watched TCW where they vote several times for the expansion of said army, have you?

Gee, a group of politicians actively supporting a military which is the only thing keeping their government afloat against a rising tide of dissent and succession? Well that's just .... perfectly logical. That doesn't mean jack for after the war. You really think a population that has existed sans a formal military for all these years is really going to want to maintain a Grand Army of the Republic after the war is over? No, they are going to want to demobilize the troops and go "...And the Galaxy is safe!"

For a historical perspective let's look at the another civil war, the American Civil War. Before the war the US Regular Army was ~16,000 troops strong. During the Civil War the army ballooned in size to something in the neighborhood of 1 million troops (I did some looking around and numbers are considered highly inaccurate so I'm using one of the lower end numbers I found). Now most of those were volunteers, but the Regular army did increase as well, roughly doubling based on the numbers I've seen. After the war the volunteers were disbanded and the Regular army had shrunken to ~25,000 troops by 1875. That's still ~56% bigger than pre-War, but it's also ~22% smaller than the size of the army during the War. This from a country that had been fighting a conflict every couple of decades since it's inception. To put that in even more perspective, France was running an army of something on the order of half a million men at the time. The people of the Old Republic would more likely then not be expecting a similar massive reduction in the size of the Republic Army, possibly even disbanding the thing entirely.

You also have a universe where what are essentially industrial organizations (the CIS founders) are able to put together sufficient armed forces to blockade planets and fight a galaxy spanning war.

Hello, those industrial organizations surrendered unconditionally at the end of the Clone Wars and handed their assets over to Palpatine! Missed the memo?

Yeah so? Those same forces also ravaged a number of worlds that will be demanding reparations, which will be coming from those same assets and resources. Then there is also the matter or re-cooping the costs involved in prosecuting the war for the Republic. They spent tons of credits on troops, ships, etc. too and I'm sure the corrupt Senators would be looking to do some profiteering off the selling of CIS assets to friendly corporations in exchange for getting to look like heroes for reducing the burden of debt on the citizens. It's the same kind of politics that play out with any big war, how do the victors profit off the losers.

Palpatine wanted his military strengthed following the conclusion of the Clone Wars, not torn apart/demilitarized with victory. He needed to continue having some kind of threat out there to justify continuing to expand and improve his military or simply the power to say "Screw you, I'm building Star Destroyers." He used the rebels as Act I to build up even more ships and then with embracing the Tarkin Doctrine and dissolving the Senate he moved on to Act II with the "Screw You" mentality.

A piddly terror organization, as the Empire labeled the Rebels, hardly makes for a justification to build up the regular military, which Palpatine already possessed in sufficient numbers to brute force his edicts with anyway. Before the destruction of the first Death Star the Rebels were marginalized and for good reason. Making it look as if the beloved leader who rules with the support of the plebes is harassed by a sizable force of dissenters would have been counter-productive. Why do you think all those threatended tin-pot dictators in the Middle East today try to downplay the movements that have sprung up against them?
That was the point of instigating the Clone Wars in the first place after all.

So what, you think Palpatine is just going to go "Order 66 part 2 time people, go kill everyone I don't like." Or that all of the high level military commanders (who aren't clones) will just role over and let Palpatine establish a dictatorship? He needed to produce an environment where the dictatorship essentially is desired versus the alternative. The rebels were a suitable scapegoat, a "The Clone Wars started with just some unhappy systems too, do you really want to go down that road again? We need a strong central government and military to prevent such a thing from happening ever again! The Senate is too slow, you need to give me more power to protect you. I do what I do for the good of the Republic!" Then you link a few high profile people and places to the rebellion "If they can turn World X against us...." and the rebels are a sufficient threat to political stability without being an actual threat to life and limb that Palpatine can use to further his objectives. It's like how he played the Jedi so that when Order 66 was issued he had already established enough political anti-Jedi capital to go "the Jedi are bad and we needed to kill them all," despite them being the respected and admired defenders of the Republic for centuries.

As Simon has been arguing, Palpatine needed time to develop the systems he needed to control the populace. Following the end of the Clone Wars people would have expected (and would demand if there was deviation from it) business as usual. Palpatine wanted to retain his wartime powers and even expand them, to do so he needed to utilize manipulation to get people to consider vesting greater power in him was in their best interest. All of that takes time and effort, especially when the end goal is a military dictatorship for a civilization that didn't even have a military nor felt the need to have one in the first place.

Anyway, that's all I really have to say on the matter. Simon has been handling the argument admirably and I don't want to distract from him or the purpose of this thread. Metahive, if either you or Simon start up that thread in PSW for discussing this issue I'd love to read it.

[Metahive]

Gee, a group of politicians actively supporting a military which is the only thing keeping their government afloat against a rising tide of dissent and succession? Well that's just .... perfectly logical. That doesn't mean jack for after the war. You really think a population that has existed sans a formal military for all these years is really going to want to maintain a Grand Army of the Republic after the war is over? No, they are going to want to demobilize the troops and go "...And the Galaxy is safe!"

Yeah, they'll force Palpatine to demobilize by...uh, how would they do it when he's the one who holds all the cards? Write angry letters to his office?

For a historical perspective let's look at the another civil war, the American Civil War. Before the war the US Regular Army was ~16,000 troops strong. During the Civil War the army ballooned in size to something in the neighborhood of 1 million troops (I did some looking around and numbers are considered highly inaccurate so I'm using one of the lower end numbers I found). Now most of those were volunteers, but the Regular army did increase as well, roughly doubling based on the numbers I've seen. After the war the volunteers were disbanded and the Regular army had shrunken to ~25,000 troops by 1875. That's still ~56% bigger than pre-War, but it's also ~22% smaller than the size of the army during the War. This from a country that had been fighting a conflict every couple of decades since it's inception. To put that in even more perspective, France was running an army of something on the order of half a million men at the time. The people of the Old Republic would more likely then not be expecting a similar massive reduction in the size of the Republic Army, possibly even disbanding the thing entirely.

Inapplicable analogy. Lincoln, no matter how much southern apologists like to whine about him, was not actively working to turn the country into a fascist dictatorship and made sure all his enemies died within the war. Stick to the roman analogy since that fits the pattern better.

Yeah so? Those same forces also ravaged a number of worlds that will be demanding reparations, which will be coming from those same assets and resources. Then there is also the matter or re-cooping the costs involved in prosecuting the war for the Republic. They spent tons of credits on troops, ships, etc. too and I'm sure the corrupt Senators would be looking to do some profiteering off the selling of CIS assets to friendly corporations in exchange for getting to look like heroes for reducing the burden of debt on the citizens. It's the same kind of politics that play out with any big war, how do the victors profit off the losers.

Completely irrelevant point which was that the only power to challenge Palpatine on the battlefield was removed by dismantling the CIS and mothballing the droid army.

So what, you think Palpatine is just going to go "Order 66 part 2 time people, go kill everyone I don't like." Or that all of the high level military commanders (who aren't clones) will just role over and let Palpatine establish a dictatorship? He needed to produce an environment where the dictatorship essentially is desired versus the alternative. The rebels were a suitable scapegoat, a "The Clone Wars started with just some unhappy systems too, do you really want to go down that road again? We need a strong central government and military to prevent such a thing from happening ever again! The Senate is too slow, you need to give me more power to protect you. I do what I do for the good of the Republic!" Then you link a few high profile people and places to the rebellion "If they can turn World X against us...." and the rebels are a sufficient threat to political stability without being an actual threat to life and limb that Palpatine can use to further his objectives. It's like how he played the Jedi so that when Order 66 was issued he had already established enough political anti-Jedi capital to go "the Jedi are bad and we needed to kill them all," despite them being the respected and admired defenders of the Republic for centuries.

Everyone he didn't like AND could have been a challenge to his rule was dead by the end of the Clone Wars or in his pocket. That was the point of instigating them.

You and SImon can keep ignoring that point but it won't go away just because you do.

As Simon has been arguing, Palpatine needed time to develop the systems he needed to control the populace. Following the end of the Clone Wars people would have expected (and would demand if there was deviation from it) business as usual. Palpatine wanted to retain his wartime powers and even expand them, to do so he needed to utilize manipulation to get people to consider vesting greater power in him was in their best interest. All of that takes time and effort, especially when the end goal is a military dictatorship for a civilization that didn't even have a military nor felt the need to have one in the first place.

He already had those extended power FFS, why do you think he could crown himself emperor of the First Galactic Empire under roaring applause of the Senate? He dissolved the Republic, made himself dictator for life and people lauded him for it! Shows you how missed the Republic was by its political establishment.

You and Simon keep telling me that Palpy had an insecure grasp on power after his self-coronation, that somehow there were still forces left that could have somehow successfully challenged him from within the political establishment and that he needed the Rebels to distract people from this fact but isn't it telling that the Rebel Alliance conveniently represented said dissenting factions, that senators who resisted Palpatine's rule were in fact the prime benefactors of the Rebel Alliance? Isn't this evidence that his grasp was already strong enough so that the only means of resistance was an armed insurrection instead of some political campaign?

Then there's the fact that the assets build to combat the Rebel Alliance were mostly smaller ships like the Nebulon B Escort frigate and the Lancer frigate, hardly assets big'n bad enough to sow fear and terror throughout the galaxy. Star Destroyers are too expensive and valuable to waste on convoy duty.

Of course, if we take TFU as canon then this entire discussion is indeed done for since there it's made clear explicitely that the emperor did not want there to be an organized resistance to his rule, so there goes the "needed the Rebels to cement his rule" argument.

[Metahive]

I think I need to make my position clear in a more condensed fashion.

I believe people here are really underestimating how quickly a sufficiently power-hungry person can establish its rule if there's only enough pressure to push its movement forward (like, say, an economical crisis or a devastating war). Hitler was hated and despised by the political establishment of the Weimar Republic as a low-life rabble rouser and his party as a bunch of uncultured vandals, yet it only took one gross political miscalculation and one Reichstagsbrand to get them to eviscerate themselves and hand Hitler absolute power on a silver platter, enact the Gleichschaltung, saturate the political landscape with his cronies and litter the country with concentration camps in 1933. One year later he had his most potent rivals from within and without the party murdered and another year later he simply made himself supreme commander of the armed forces as well without nary a peep from the establisment. That's just three years and he didn't even have the luxury of commanding a war where he controlled both factions to steer events into a direction of his liking or to cull his potential rivals with.

Yes, this all can happen quicker than some people think, that's why being vigilant and taking action whenever such developments present themselves in their larval stage is so important. Look at all those european countries right now which have right-wing fearmongers ride into the national parliaments on a wave of xenophobia. Look at the US were the president now can claim that he has the right to assassinate undesirable citizens and hold people without trial indefinitely, were the Overton Window has shifted a good deal to the right and no viable counter-movement is in sight. This has never been a threat just to countries with authoritarian traditions, flocking to a loud-mouthed strongman in times of crisis and lauding authoritarian measures if they only carry the faintest pretense of "getting things don" lies within human nature. That's why our order is called primates after all.

/end of tract

At the end of the Clone Wars, the Jedi were all dead or in hiding, the CIS had lost its leadership, its army and its wealth and the overwhelming majority of the Senate was busy congratulating Palpatine for his destruction of the Republic and replacement with an authoritarian empire. If individual senators like Bail Organa were wary of Palpatine's power and petitioned him to reduce the army, how could they have enforced this without a big stick on their own should he refuse? If the new imperial constitution even allowed them to demand such things of the emperor of course. Palpatine had thirteen years to get his cronies into important political and military positions and to build up his propaganda and the core of a secret police, that's a lot of time, longer than Hitler was in power in total.
The Rebel Alliance did represent the dissenting factions of the Senate. There was no way left for them to challenge Palpatine legally, so they had to resort to an extra-legal guerilla movement.
That's why I can't agree with the proposal that the Rebel Alliance was just another bogeyman necessary for Palpatine to excuse his tightening of the grip on the establishment. His grip was already tight enough so that an open rebellion was the only way to fight against it.

[Darth Tedious]

Yeah, they'll force Palpatine to demobilize by...uh, how would they do it when he's the one who holds all the cards? Write angry letters to his office?

Remember the scene in RotS where Bail Organa, Mon Mothma, and a group of other senators (including a representative from the Mon Cals) march into Palpy's office and announce that they are unhappy with how things are going, an he thanks them for 'bringing the matter to his attention'?
The Jedi were the only authority who could have effectively removed him from power, and made damn sure that they would have condemned themselves to the public even if they'd succeeded.

TFU is canon, so your point on it stands. In addition, the storyline of Battlefront II explicitly mentions that the Empire viewed the Rebellion as an annoyance, but never made a big deal of them, and considered them target practice for the troops. They were tolerated because they were underestimated, not because they were a useful propaganda device.

[bz249]

I think I need to make my position clear in a more condensed fashion.

I believe people here are really underestimating how quickly a sufficiently power-hungry person can establish its rule if there's only enough pressure to push its movement forward (like, say, an economical crisis or a devastating war). Hitler was hated and despised by the political establishment of the Weimar Republic as a low-life rabble rouser and his party as a bunch of uncultured vandals, yet it only took one gross political miscalculation and one Reichstagsbrand to get them to eviscerate themselves and hand Hitler absolute power on a silver platter, enact the Gleichschaltung, saturate the political landscape with his cronies and litter the country with concentration camps in 1933. One year later he had his most potent rivals from within and without the party murdered and another year later he simply made himself supreme commander of the armed forces as well without nary a peep from the establisment. That's just three years and he didn't even have the luxury of commanding a war where he controlled both factions to steer events into a direction of his liking or to cull his potential rivals with.

Yes, this all can happen quicker than some people think, that's why being vigilant and taking action whenever such developments present themselves in their larval stage is so important. Look at all those european countries right now which have right-wing fearmongers ride into the national parliaments on a wave of xenophobia. Look at the US were the president now can claim that he has the right to assassinate undesirable citizens and hold people without trial indefinitely, were the Overton Window has shifted a good deal to the right and no viable counter-movement is in sight. This has never been a threat just to countries with authoritarian traditions, flocking to a loud-mouthed strongman in times of crisis and lauding authoritarian measures if they only carry the faintest pretense of "getting things don" lies within human nature. That's why our order is called primates after all.

What you forget in this analogy, that although the Weimar Republic was a failed, broken state, it was a modern nation state nevertheless compromised of 95%+ of Germans. Now even the Galactic Empire at its heyday never achieved similar centralization (lacked the monopoly of violance, harmonized legal system, there were uncontrolled territories within the Imperial proper... etc) and the Galactic Republic was even less centralized, what's more it lacked an armed force or a centralized bureaucracy. The Republic itself was more like an UN-like umbrella organization than a state and the position of the Chancellor was equal to a UN Secretary General (a pompous place but more prestige related than real executive powers). The reason of the New Order stuff was nation building, there was no such thing as a Republic citizen, but Corellian, Alderaanian etc.

[Metahive]

That would however mean that there was indeed little loyalty to the Republic and resistance to its destruction minimal. All the more reason to presume that Palpatine didn't need any gratuitous bogeymen to cement his rule and that having the single biggest army in the galaxy a sufficient way to keep control of an atomized society. Just like the Holy Roman Empire kept being dominated by the guys with the biggest military.

[bz249]

Yeah, the HRE is a somewhat better analogy, now imagine an Emperor who has a conflict with Austria, Brandenburg, Saxony, Bavaria and the Palatinate. How much chance he has? A clever emperor ally themselves with some of those important member states to oppress the other and later on he plays his allies against each other.

The Galactic Empire functions very much the same, the Emperor needs Kuat, Corellia, Coruscant... etc. Later on, yes he can reduce their numbers, but all takes time. Anyway the Imperial Navy is the single strongest military unit, however if you count all independent fleets (CSA fleet, Kuat security units... etc) it could be outweighed and outgunned. So fighting against everyone is not an option, the Emperor needs allies.