Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
The fact that there *was* a Battle of Terra more or less proves Vakka wrong, though -- the Kilrathi war-based industry with less people/resources/technology was eventually able to produce a superior force capable of once again driving the war to the Confederation.
Possibly... alternatively, it merely proves that the Kilrathi war-based society was able to continually inflict sufficient losses on Confed to maintain the superiority of their own forces... and still gradually losing this superiority because of Confed's economy shifting into high gear. In '34, it was the Kilrathi that could attack at liberty - and as late as the '40s, they were still always on the offensive. Just the fact, then, that by '67 Confed had reached the point where they were the ones crippling the enemy's supply lines instead of the opposite - what do we attribute that to, if not a gradual but constant shift in the balance? In '34, the loss of a fleet was an almost unrecoverable disaster... and in '67, the loss of the 6th Fleet, while resulting in the retreat from Deneb, did not stop Confed from launching a new offensive within months.
None of this really proves much, I know. One could just as easily attribute all of that to people like Blair and Tolwyn; and yet...
The economy *was* in bad shape -- and in Tolwyn's mind, the best way to avoid dealing with the economy was to fight a war... since no one worries about how much money they're spending until afterwards.
And so we return to Tolwyn's mind
. I'm not an economist, but Tolwyn's line of thinking just doesn't seem to be logical. You always hear about countries devastated by war, but you never hear about countries that were able to overcome economic problems by war. The closest to the latter would be the US in WWI - but they were able to prosper because they'd been neutral almost until the end, not because they got involved.
Didn't you see Canadian Bacon <G>? But Confed and the Border Worlds have no particular love for eachother -- the fact that senators are daming the Border Worlds with so little proof is evidence that they're in a position more akin to a country-we-don't-like. (And, of course, that they use them as a dumping ground and so forth... and everyone seems to look down on the Border Worlds -- the bartender in the intro wouldn't take BW money, Paulsen spoke of how horrible he thought they war... and so on).
Mmm, all very good points, yet I wonder if this is really the view of the masses, or just of the few people for whom it is convenient. After all, this view seems to have been totally abandoned after the BW 'victory', which could mean that it's not really as widely believed as it seems. After all, if, during the first weeks of the bombing in Afghanistan it had suddenly been revealed that it was some evil faction in the CIA that had been responsible for the WTC crashes... would the average American support such levels of friendships between the two countries as we saw in WCP between the BW and Confed?
I just don't see the correlation between providing fighters and sacraficing his entire nation to defend the Border Worlds... the US provides Israel with F-16s, but we're certainly not interested in fighting their war.
Well, that's probably not the best example
. The US provides Israel with so much military aid that they might as well be fighting their war. But that's besides the point. As you've said, providing
any such aid at all goes against Kruger's character. In this case, Kruger knows that sooner or later, Confed will realise that he's been providing the BW with material aid, resulting in much worsened relations... and Confed-Landreich relations couldn't really get much worse, given that he'd already witnessed one Confed attempt to get the Landreich destroyed (of course, that was using the Kilrathi as a proxy). All of which comes down to the fact that Kruger is already risking war just by sending fighters, and he knows it - is he, then, merely ignoring the risk?
There is, however, the other side that I'm surprised you haven't mentioned, and which makes me wonder - Kruger's relationship with Confed was always bad, but he and Tolwyn always got along well. Would have been interesting to see how that would affect things later.
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