Could the Galactic Republic have been spared?

[Boeing 757]

We see in the prequel films that the Galactic Republic has the authority to enforce laws militarily and to interfere with the affairs of constituent worlds, should they breach peace and order. However by the time of the Naboo Crisis, the Republic has become so ineffective that its member worlds can raise huge private armies and navies to further their own agendas freely which led to shenanigans like the Blockade of Naboo and Clone Wars themselves. In the Outer Rim the Hutts could get away with introducing slavery on Tatooine, and the Republic's presence was essentially non-existent. Even Republic credits seemed to be worthless, which does not bode too well on the state of the galactic economy. Obviously the Republic is in a state of advanced decay...but could it have been spared Palpatine's machinations without the need for bloodshed and war?

[Darth Tanner]

Quite easily if Palpatine slipped in the bath and brained himself.

Without his influence the Trade Federation had no intention of escalating their actions to open conflict and the Jedi would have effortlessly broken the blockade, perhaps mere minutes after actually meeting the Neimodians. Indeed without the Sith the trade federation would likely never have become so antagonistic or well armed in the first place.

The Hutts and the slavery on Tatooine are not signs of weakness of the Republic as they are not part of the Republic, you can argue maybe the Republic should be enforcing liberty for slaves outside its territory but that’s a different argument to the Republic being weak and unsalvageable as a state.

The refusal to take Republic credits on Tatooine is the only real credible source of a Republic brought low, the idea of a third would country refusing dollars is unthinkable, but its easily explained by it being a digital currency that perhaps needs authentication by a Republic bank so would indeed be worthless outside of the Republic.

[Ziggy Stardust]

The refusal to take Republic credits on Tatooine is the only real credible source of a Republic brought low, the idea of a third would country refusing dollars is unthinkable, but its easily explained by it being a digital currency that perhaps needs authentication by a Republic bank so would indeed be worthless outside of the Republic.

Yeah, I always imagined it more like how many third world countries you won't be able to use credit cards. It's not that it is impossible for them to have the machinery, etc. to accept them, but that the cost of doing so outweighs the benefits in a place that would rarely need to accept them. Which is why you only really see places accepting them in tourist or business hubs, which Tatooine is not. Maybe the spaceport itself in Mos Eisley will accept them, and other places like that, but little out of the way local shops like Watto's have no incentive to.

However by the time of the Naboo Crisis, the Republic has become so ineffective that its member worlds can raise huge private armies and navies to further their own agendas freely which led to shenanigans like the Blockade of Naboo and Clone Wars themselves.

I'm not so sure it is fair to say the Republic was in a state of advanced decay. At least, most of the problems were a direct result of Palpatine (and his master's) manipulations. If we were to say that the Sith actually were extinct as the Jedi had thought, or if they had been exposed and defeated earlier, the situation would be very different. The Trade Federation never would have militarized without the influence of the Sith; similarly, without the Sith the weak and ineffective Finis Valorum never would have been elected Chancellor. And the machinations go back even further, IIRC. For example, the Stark Hyperspace War was one step in Sidious' plan, and one result of that war was the death of Ranulph Tarkin, who was the head of the senate's militarist faction, which was explicitly interested in rebuilding a Republic Army/Navy to enforce rule of law throughout the galaxy.

If Plagueis/Sidious were removed from the picture, it is hard to see what would have happened. Certainly, it depends on whether or not the militarists would have been successful in their political goals, and what disasters would befall the Republic "naturally" (i.e. without Sith manipulations).

[NecronLord]

Despite Lucas wanting to show irretrivable corruption and decline, there are strong indications in TPM that major Republic institutions are feared and capable.

Imagine a megacorporation today being visited by two Federal Marshals and the CEO and his advisors literally trembling in dread at the very idea and being prepared to abandon their dispute and make settlement as the President directs.

[Zixinus]

I imagine that if Palpatine didn't get into power, the Republic would have been in a state that is in a dire need of reform, many unpleasant especially to those in power. And it could have stabilized itself with those reforms. Maybe things would have improved too if the Jedi instituted reforms and maybe rethink their role in the Republic. In my opinion they have become too much of perfect civil servants.

Darth Tanner is right: a lot of the issues, in the films and in the new canon, are caused by Palpatine manipulating things on many fronts to destabilize the Republic to his designs.

That said, I get the impression that Palpatine didn't always create problems out of the thin air but manipulated things so that existing problems in the Republic became worse. It is likely that the Republic would have had a crisis or two over these things eventually or in some other way. Or problems that the Republic would have had to address sooner or later.

[Sgt_Artyom]

According to the Essential Guide to Warfare, the Trade Federation was militarized long before either Palpatine or Plagueis were alive. They had a military arm called the "Trade Defense Force (TDF)" founded in 274 BBY and apparently they were quite willing to use it to enforce their will long before the Naboo debacle.

[Adam Reynolds]

The refusal to take Republic credits on Tatooine is the only real credible source of a Republic brought low, the idea of a third would country refusing dollars is unthinkable, but its easily explained by it being a digital currency that perhaps needs authentication by a Republic bank so would indeed be worthless outside of the Republic.

Another possibility is that it had to do with the ability to be tracked. Assuming that Watto was a junk dealer with connections to the Republic, then it was possible that he was operating in a somewhat illegal fashion and didn't wish to use traceable currency. If he were to attempt to cash them in it might tell him that he owes the entire sum in back taxes.

This would also explain why Qui-Gon didn't consider exchanging those credits for the local currency. He didn't want to give the Trade Federation a lead. If he simply paid Watto with those credits and left Watto to cash them in, by the time the TF found them they would be halfway to Coruscant. If he were to cash them in himself, he would have presumably had to show some form of ID which would lead to their discovery. Though you would think that Jedi would have a means to deal with this, he wasn't intended to operate undercover.

Despite Lucas wanting to show irretrivable corruption and decline, there are strong indications in TPM that major Republic institutions are feared and capable.

Imagine a megacorporation today being visited by two Federal Marshals and the CEO and his advisors literally trembling in dread at the very idea and being prepared to abandon their dispute and make settlement as the President directs.

That was because they were Jedi. Federal Marshalls or FBI agents can't read minds or see the future. They were presumably concerned that their deal with Sidious would come out.

The rest of the Republic was impotent because they ran by a bureaucracy.

That said, I get the impression that Palpatine didn't always create problems out of the thin air but manipulated things so that existing problems in the Republic became worse. It is likely that the Republic would have had a crisis or two over these things eventually or in some other way. Or problems that the Republic would have had to address sooner or later.

I wonder how much the corruption of the Republic itself was natural and how much of it was due to successive generations of Sith Lords. While it is no longer canon(though the character still is) this was indicated by the Darth Bane trilogy. Bane and Zannah had started things in that direction a millenia before the fall. Without that influence who knows how much it would have corrupted in the first place.

[Patroklos]

According to the Essential Guide to Warfare, the Trade Federation was militarized long before either Palpatine or Plagueis were alive. They had a military arm called the "Trade Defense Force (TDF)" founded in 274 BBY and apparently they were quite willing to use it to enforce their will long before the Naboo debacle.

Which is irrelevant, LOTS of polities and other entities had significant military forces under the Republic. See Anaxes. This continued throughout the Imperial era as well in places like the Corporate Sector Authority and others.

The Republic was not an overly centralized entity (yes authors waffle back and forth on this when convienient), and the movers and shackers amougst the Core Worlds and behond had a lot of leeway to do as they pleased inside their own space and amongst each other as long as they didn't engage in any particularly egregious lawbreaking or either side didn't appeal to the Senate for help for any number of reasons. Even if they did, blocks of influential systems could just stop action. It makes for a far more colorful universe.

In any case, every dysfunction we see in the prequels is said to be present long before the specific events we see in those films. Sometimes for thousands of years. It might not have happened as spectacularly or as quickly as it did with Palpantine pushing on it but something similar would have taken place. To be clear I don't mean a decent into dictatorship, just a very disruptive correction. An actual split seems more likely.

[Adam Reynolds]

In any case, every dysfunction we see in the prequels is said to be present long before the specific events we see in those films. Sometimes for thousands of years. It might not have happened as spectacularly or as quickly as it did with Palpantine pushing on it but something similar would have taken place. To be clear I don't mean a decent into dictatorship, just a very disruptive correction. An actual split seems more likely.

As I said, we don't know how much of that is due to the manipulations of generations of Sith Lords attempting to sow the origins of Palpatine's rise.

[Patroklos]

Too convenient but probably exactly what Republican loyalists would croon to themselves instead of accepting that perhaps they were not part of an infallible utopia but rather a living, breathing and quite maintenance intensive entity that was failed in part by themselves and their own arrogance and neglect. Is Palpantine the virus of the AIDS to the Republic's HIV?

Why does a Sith lord have to behind it? Why can't it just be the bloated bureaucratic mess drowning in its own red tape while the supposed good guys looked on as we are told? Why are writers and fans of this universe intent on denying agency to everyone other than handful of space wizards?

[Sgt_Artyom]

Which is irrelevant, LOTS of polities and other entities had significant military forces under the Republic. See Anaxes. This continued throughout the Imperial era as well in places like the Corporate Sector Authority and others..

The Trade Federation never would have militarized without the influence of the Sith

I was just pointing that out in regards to this little sentence here. Doesn't matter if others had corporate armies or the such, I was just making it known that the Trade Federation had a heavily armed force long before they were tangled up in the machinations of the Sith.

[The Romulan Republic]

We see in the prequel films that the Galactic Republic has the authority to enforce laws militarily and to interfere with the affairs of constituent worlds, should they breach peace and order. However by the time of the Naboo Crisis, the Republic has become so ineffective that its member worlds can raise huge private armies and navies to further their own agendas freely which led to shenanigans like the Blockade of Naboo and Clone Wars themselves. In the Outer Rim the Hutts could get away with introducing slavery on Tatooine, and the Republic's presence was essentially non-existent. Even Republic credits seemed to be worthless, which does not bode too well on the state of the galactic economy. Obviously the Republic is in a state of advanced decay...but could it have been spared Palpatine's machinations without the need for bloodshed and war?

Nothing Palpatine did was necessary. He fucked the Republic for his own agenda.

Could it have been saved? Yes. Without bloodshed? I'm not so sure. Reform would require cracking down on the megacorporations and private armies. Those factions will likely resist, and the Trade Federation, at least, probably has more military force than the Republic pre-clone army (at least if we're not counting local military/security forces). While a negotiated settlement might be possible without Palpatine handling both sides of the negotiations for his own gain, it would probably require making substantial concessions to the corporations, which, if taken too far, might defeat the purpose of reform.

So we could end up with a war happening anyway, only as a straight-up fight without Palpatine/Sideous pulling strings, and a war where the Republic doesn't have a ready-made clone army. The Republic is likely obliterated, forced cede large parts of the galaxy, or turned into a despotic state out of desperation (said despotism may or may not be of a Dark Side variety).

Edit: Actually, I'll concede Palpatine did at least one worthwhile thing, albeit for the wrong reasons- creating a Republic army. But it would have been better, of course, to have that done democratically rather than through him being given emergency powers.

[Adam Reynolds]

Too convenient but probably exactly what Republican loyalists would croon to themselves instead of accepting that perhaps they were not part of an infallible utopia but rather a living, breathing and quite maintenance intensive entity that was failed in part by themselves and their own arrogance and neglect. Is Palpantine the virus of the AIDS to the Republic's HIV?

I would agree that it would be an arguement made rather than the truth. The Republic was virtually guaranteed to be a mess regardless as it was ran by core worlds. Eventually the Outer Rim would be in arms over this issue.

In a sense the problem of the Republic was the inverse of the United Nations. In the UN, each state gets a vote regardless of their population size. As a result of the fact, small states dictate policy and large states are essentially forced to go along(and pay for it). Though the existence of the UNSC is a factor that complicates this.

Why does a Sith lord have to behind it? Why can't it just be the bloated bureaucratic mess drowning in its own red tape while the supposed good guys looked on as we are told? Why are writers and fans of this universe intent on denying agency to everyone other than handful of space wizards?

The Sith may not have been behind the root inequalities, but you can bet they were stirring them.

Like it or not, SW is a setting in which a minority have a disproportionate amount of influence based on their abilities. Though you could say the same thing about reality, though in reality it is the gift of being born into wealth and eventually knowing the right people. Nearly every American president has went to either Harvard or Yale, is that because they were really smarter or because they knew someone with influence? Remember that the Harvard graduates include George W Bush(MBA).

[The Romulan Republic]

Actually, I'm tempted to amend something I said earlier- that Palpatine did something right by creating a Republic army. In addition to the extremely serious moral issues with how the army was created, their's a real question of weather the Republic needed an army prior to the Clone Wars (which came about due to Palpatine's fuckery). It seems that their wasn't another major power that could have waged war against the Republic, so their was no reason for a military except to fight internal foes. And generic, relatively small-scale stuff like piracy and terrorism should be something that local forces or, if worst comes to worst, the Jedi, can handle.

Edit: Yes, their's the threat of corporate armies like the Trade Federation's. But a government should really be able to enforce its laws without needing an army to use on its own people.

[Patroklos]

I always thought of it as an "if everyone has an army, no one can turely he hegemonic" sort of situation. The Senate being more of a League of Nations or Security Council sort of deal where all the grand powers of the Galactic Republic's founding balanced their and managed their intrigues to ensure nobody got too powerful, but all of them got to eat. Just like the actual UN they let the lesser powers play as long as they were nestled comfortably inside someones sphere of influence, but the real power always remained with the Core Worlds.

In that light, the trade federation's sin was not having an army, not being belligerent or even invading a planet. It was doing all of that to one of the blue blood core worlds that should have been immune to that sort of thing. Just a thought, there is precious little that tells us how things actually worked especially in the new canon.

[The Romulan Republic]

As I recall, Naboo was actually portrayed as more of a rim world (albeit a fairly well-off one) rather than a core world. Certainly it wasn't an industrial powerhouse on the scale of Kuat or Corellia, though it did appear to have disproportionate political importance (though that could just be due to the fact that Palpatine and Padme came from their and the world was heavily involved in major events).

[Patroklos]

Yeah, chalk that up the BS Lucasism of always wanting to have his cake and eat it too. I want an important world respected and important to the galaxy! Oh, but we want to make sure its the little guy getting the raw deal too! DEMOCRACY IS AWESOME (I have to say it a thousand times to make sure the audience understands who the good guys are! Of course they would never identify anything else with good either), but I also think monarchies are cool and stuff. I know, lets have a Queen AND call her democratic by a way we will never explain! Shitty world building all around, I am of the sincere belief that the only reason why the SW universe remains attractive is that it is so vast you can often just compartmentalize the BS into some niche in your head and assume the rest of it operates on something resembling a realistic and interesting way.

From what I can tell Naboo is on the outer edge of the core. But it is a colony world of Grizmallt which is a major Core World and also may explain who Naboo is the capital of its sector which also lends it importance beyond what might be assumed at a glance. You don't actually have to be powerful outright to be a power broker, see Switzerland or or any of the financial hiddy hole countries.

[NecronLord]

Yes, the Trade Defence force already existed pre-palpatine



This is the picture used to symbolize it in the book it appears in. Feel the oppression.

The original intention of the TDF was an anti-piracy force, and it was crewed by living personnel like these, and for most of its centuries of service it seems to have been a pretty solidly good-guy organization; it didn't become a galactic scale army until the droid armies were purchased under Sidious.

[ray245]

As I recall, Naboo was actually portrayed as more of a rim world (albeit a fairly well-off one) rather than a core world. Certainly it wasn't an industrial powerhouse on the scale of Kuat or Corellia, though it did appear to have disproportionate political importance (though that could just be due to the fact that Palpatine and Padme came from their and the world was heavily involved in major events).

I think Naboo was exporting something that is basically oil in the SW universe. So they are more akin to places like Qatar, small but ridiculously rich.

[Adam Reynolds]

I think Naboo was exporting something that is basically oil in the SW universe. So they are more akin to places like Qatar, small but ridiculously rich.

That would fit the comments from Mace Windu in AOTC about disgruntled miners on the moons of Naboo.

In general, the AOTC ICS implies that Naboo is a capital world, rich but with nothing of value that isn't political.

[Darksider]

Yes, the Trade Defence force already existed pre-palpatine



This is the picture used to symbolize it in the book it appears in. Feel the oppression.

The original intention of the TDF was an anti-piracy force, and it was crewed by living personnel like these, and for most of its centuries of service it seems to have been a pretty solidly good-guy organization; it didn't become a galactic scale army until the droid armies were purchased under Sidious.

I'm trying to remember. Didn't Palpatine have Maul assassinate a bunch of TradeFed big shots specifically so dickheads like Gunray would come to power and turn the not-benevolent, but still respectable Federation into a power hungry tool for him to use?

[Elheru Aran]

Yes, the Trade Defence force already existed pre-palpatine



This is the picture used to symbolize it in the book it appears in. Feel the oppression.

The original intention of the TDF was an anti-piracy force, and it was crewed by living personnel like these, and for most of its centuries of service it seems to have been a pretty solidly good-guy organization; it didn't become a galactic scale army until the droid armies were purchased under Sidious.

I'm trying to remember. Didn't Palpatine have Maul assassinate a bunch of TradeFed big shots specifically so dickheads like Gunray would come to power and turn the not-benevolent, but still respectable Federation into a power hungry tool for him to use?

IIRC, that's the plot of Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter (which wasn't half bad, you know).

[Crazedwraith]

Not exactly. Shadow Hunter is about Maul hunting down a rouge Trade Fed leader who was going to spill plans about the Blockade before it was launched.

[Adam Reynolds]

That was the plot of Cloak of Deception. The non-neimodian TF leadership was assasinated. This was the deal they referred to in TPM.

[Elheru Aran]

Welp. Close enough.