Solarian League

Solarian League
Form of government	Confederation
Official language	Standard English
Home Planet	Earth
Capital	Chicago
Head of state	President of the League
Executive branch	Executive Council
Legislative branch	League Assembly
Military	Solarian League Navy, Solarian League Marine Corps, Solarian Gendarmerie, Office of Frontier Security
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The Solarian League is a fictional star-nation in the Honorverse, the background setting for a series of novels and short stories in the military science fiction genre, written by David Weber and others and published by Baen Books.

Overview

Up until the later novels of the Honorverse, little was known or mentioned about the League, besides mentions of its power and sheer size.

The League is a huge, politically "neutral" superpower (if not in reality the galaxy's sole hyperpower) that consists of the oldest worlds settled by humanity (including Earth itself, though it is known as Old Earth in the Honorverse). It is also by far the most powerful and influential star nation in the known galaxy. Officially, a total of 1,784 worlds are members of the Solarian League, plus hundreds more considered "protectorates" of the League.

An estimated total of two-thirds of the human population live in League-controlled worlds; the exact total population is not known and it is said no one has ever seriously considered conducting an exhaustive census or claim to know the number of inhabitants. The older systems — the "Old League" — have a registered population of three trillion inhabitants — a number considered to be an understatement — while the population of the outer worlds and artificial habitats is considered to be many times larger. There is no star nation or alliance that can match the League in terms of military or economic power. Almost all of the major media services in human space, such as Reuters, United Faxes International and others, are based in League worlds.

The worlds of the Solarian League can be grouped into two categories:

• The inner systems, which contain Earth and the oldest colony worlds settled by mankind. These are known as the "Old League", and are the most advanced and developed worlds in human space. Their economic wealth makes them the powerhouse of the League.
• The outer systems, known as the "Shell systems"; newer, less stable and developed than the Old League, with a more precarious economy and smaller population. These systems are often administered by specialized agencies of the Solarian League, which exercise tremendous influence.

In addition to these worlds, the League has also influence over hundreds of poor worlds near its borders, often called the Verge worlds, and League officials tend to consider these worlds as the League's backyard.

The Solarian League has something of a "Manifest Destiny" mentality, which states that every world should be included in the League, and that eventually foreign worlds should see the benefits of League membership and voluntarily join. Some within the League have gone to extreme lengths to make sure that these worlds join the League, using measures such as rigged referenda and plebiscites, fostering violence which can be used as grounds for intervention, and enforcing League commercial dominance over these worlds.

Beowulf, the oldest human colony, is a prominent member of the League and a major trading partner of the Star Kingdom of Manticore.

Mesa is an independent nation entirely surrounded by the Solarian League, and whose large, wealthy, and amoral corporations exert an extensive degree of - corrupt - influence in Solarian politics.

A popular nickname for a native of the Solarian League is "Solly" (plural "Sollies").

Government and politics

Earth (known throughout the Honorverse as "Old Earth" or "Old Terra") serves as the League's capital (with the city of Old Chicago mentioned as the actual seat of power); however, the League is rather loosely bound, and all planets have distinct governments. This comes from the fact that most of the League's original signatories were worlds with an independent history that spanned centuries, and were unwilling to submit to a new centralized authority. There have been references to a League President, who is presumably the League's chief executive, although how much power and influence the post actually carries is probably limited.

The League's decision-making body is the Executive Council, where every League world is represented. To add to the problems in governing the enormous number of member worlds, each world has a veto right over proposed measures, forcing the League to seek compromises among competing interests rather than risk a veto. The Council has the power to expel a world from the League — a provision that has been hinted as a threat against planets that abuse the veto power.

Below the Executive Council and the few centralized agencies of the League, member worlds are completely free to organize themselves as they choose, and their governments have a considerable degree of autonomy from the central power. Despite this nominal autonomy, the outer sectors of the League — the Shell — enjoy less freedom from the League, as they are more in contact with the bureaucratic agencies and League security forces.

The loose nature of the Solarian League, coupled with its extreme confidence on its military and economic superiority over the rest of the galaxy combined, have prevented the development of an effective foreign and military policy — the League feels threatened by no one. The competing political and business interests also conspire to make any coherent policy impossible. In fact, the League's only official tenet in foreign policy, strict and uncompromising enforcement of the Eridani Edict — which prohibits indiscriminate bombardment of an inhabited world under penalty of loss of sovereignty — had to be specifically written into the League's Constitution to ensure its effective enforcement.

A major flaw of the League is the lack of government or civilian control over the bureaucracy, specifically that which deals with non-League nations. The most important agencies of the bureaucracy, such as the Office of Frontier Security and the Solarian Gendarmerie, are known for conducting their own foreign policy — absorption of underdeveloped worlds near Solarian space and preservation of the League's influence over border territories. It is hinted that the League is becoming increasingly unstable as the bureaucracy becomes more independent from the central authority and a growing number of member worlds increasingly resent League (and bureaucratic) dominance.

Not widely known is that a oligarchy of five bureaucrats actually control the actions of the Solarian League^[1]. They are:

* Malachai Abruzzi	Permanent Senior Undersecretary of Education and Information
* Innokentiy Arsenovich Kolokoltsov	Permanent Senior Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs
* Nathan MacArtney	Permanent Senior Undersecretary of the Interior
* Omosupe Quartermain	Permanent Senior Undersecretary of Commerce
* Agatá Wodoslawski	Permanent Senior Undersecretary of the Treasury

The political structure of the Solarian League resembles the United States under The Articles of Confederation with every Member (state) having one vote regardless of population and a veto. However references to the legislative body are styled the General Assembly.

Office of Frontier Security

The Office of Frontier Security (commonly referred to by its acronym "OFS") ostensibly promotes stability and order in the systems near the borders of the League. To that end, the OFS was empowered to mediate between settled star systems on the outskirts of Solarian space, often dubbed the Verge systems, which were not yet League members. As additional incentives, the OFS was authorized to both offer security guarantees (backed by the League Navy) and special trade concessions to systems which petitioned for OFS services. Another unstated goal of OFS was to facilitate the approach and eventual absorption of single-system nations within the League. As the League's representative institutions were incapable of overseeing the League's bureaucracy, the Office of Frontier Security became increasingly corrupt over the centuries. Instead of maintaining peace throughout the League's neighboring space, the OFS became an unscrupulous expansionist entity, to the point that the "protection requests" which prompted its intervention were routinely manufactured by the OFS itself. In other cases, OFS intervened at the "request" of factions which sought "protection" against their own governments, or simply intervened without any request (whether genuine, forced or manufactured) to establish "League Protectorates" with the stated interest of safeguarding human rights, often with the support of the League Gendarmerie.

In that manner, and without any sort of legislative oversight, the Office of Frontier Security developed its own foreign policy, which consisted in absorbing any peripheric small Verge system incapable of standing up to itself, whether their peoples wanted it or not. The unchecked activities of OFS were worsened by its deals with the League's massive multistellar corporations and commercial interests. These corporations aided and supported Frontier Security's activities, in exchange for complete and unsupervised exploitation of newly-acquired worlds under OFS authority and OFS intervention in suppressing any form of dissent. In particular, many leading figures in Frontier Security have established connections with the slaver corporations of Mesa. Newly-incorporated worlds were placed under the jurisdiction of Frontier Security, which grouped the worlds in sectors administrated by OFS-appointed governors and commissioners, often with strong ties to either Mesa or the League's corporations. Sectors controlled by OFS were policed by the Solarian League Gendarmerie, a special security agency, with the regular League military taking a support role in the event that OFS and the Gendarmerie could not control the situation.

The Office of Frontier Security has long regarded the Star Kingdom of Manticore as a threat to its interests (and those of its Mesan partners), particularly after the annexation of the Talbott Cluster into the Star Kingdom -as the Talbott Cluster was in Frontier Security's path. To forestall the annexation, Frontier Security and the Gendarmerie began a plan to arm fringe Cluster groups opposed to annexation, in order to trigger a campaign of violence and terrorism which would have given OFS a pretext to intervene and wrest the Cluster from Manticoran control. When that plan failed, another was hatched to create an interstellar incident, which would then be guided into going out of control and precipitating a full scale war between the Star Kingdom and the League. This plan appears to be working as intended, with said war a virtual certainty at this point. How the war will actually play out is another question entirely. This is due to numerous fundamental structural deficiencies of varying degrees of severity, both political and military, on the Solarian League's part - deficiencies which war with the Star Kingdom and it's allies will certainly (and mercilessly) expose for all to see - especially since, at the end of Mission of Honor, it would appear that the Republic of Haven can now be counted as one of those allies.

Military

The Solarian League Navy (SLN) is the space navy of the Solarian League in the Honorverse.

The SLN is the largest naval force in the known universe - four times larger than the People's Navy at the peak of its power.

Solarian medium vessels (battlecruisers, heavy and light cruisers and destroyers) are usually relatively modern warships, as they are needed to police the League's vast space; conversely, Solarian ships of the wall are quite obsolete (almost fifty years behind as of War of Honor) when compared to Manticore and Havenite designs, since the League doesn't see the need to keep up with "lesser" naval powers. The Solarian Marines act as the rapid intervention force of the League, maintaining order throughout the League in concert with the Navy.

Besides the League's regular military, member worlds also have their own defensive military forces, known as the Defense Fleets. These forces are responsible for the immediate defense of their home systems, acting with and without the backup of the Solarian League Navy. They also nominally form the fleet reserve personnel and ships for the Navy. However, they can only be released with the consent of their home governments.

Other agencies, such as the Gendarmerie and the Office of Frontier Security, operate their own warships and have their own troops to maintain order and further the League's (and its corporations') interests in the frontier.

The Solarian League Navy is divided into two communities: Battle Fleet and Frontier Fleet. The Frontier Fleet deals with the systems in the Verge, while the Battle Fleet is supposed to fight the League's wars. The Battle Fleet, however, has not had an engagement in several hundred years because no other power has taken on the superpower that the Solarian League is. As a result, the Battle Fleet has become substantially weaker, in terms of tactical and technological prowess, although its numerical advantage remains present. The Frontier Fleet has tried to keep up with developments, though without much success due to relative lack of funding, most of which goes to the Battle Fleet. Needless to say, there is considerable antipathy between the two arms of the SLN. The Battle Fleet has combat elements as small as a battlecruiser, while the Frontier Fleet have combat elements up to battlecruisers. System Defence Fleets typically have ships up to the size of a battleship, and frequently have frigates and LACs (all three of which are considered obsolete types by the SLN).

References

1. ^ SI2, Ch. 47