Aaaaaand . . . the 500 error is back.
I’m going off of the printed material in the book. The fact remains that, minus the few of us here, the entirety of IST fans aren’t going to know about these discussions. They’re not going to see Bob’s statements to us to know that he wanted them to be more diplomats than stick-wielders. The fan-base can only work off of the book, and that’s where we need to focus our thinking.
We have to use the book as a starting place, and come forward from there. Any changes we want to make, have to take the original book as the starting place, and not try to retcon it into working.
By Bob’s indication of wanting the ISTs to be more diplomatic, we would need to have a section on discussing the steady change from them being a peacekeeping force to a peacemaking force in the nineties.
The Panama action would cause a major debacle as the U.S. is on the Security Council and it's just not possible that one of their representitives couldn't have been reached. That means that they couldn’t have been present in that meeting, or the action would have been vetoed (or the ambassador would be under charges for High Treason). The US had not withdrawn from the U.N. at that time, and, not calling the US delegation for the meeting would be, rightly, considered an aggressive, hostile action. So, there would be huge fallout. It could even be considered an illegal act by the U.N. itself. It will also cause the US to call for the Secretary General to step down, and the US would never withdraw from the U.N. as, keeping their seat on the Security Council, would allow them to veto any acts they don't like. Much like Russia did in the fifties and sixties.
That could lead to a “demilitarization” of the ISTs. Military duty is downplayed in favor of civil obedience and diplomatic functions. With the U.N. and the ISTs faltering in their hard-line stance, it would give the rest of the world the image of weakness, and other nations would start testing these new limits. This could easily lead to the increase in both Chinese and North Korean belligerence, culminating in the 2000 war.
This gives us the advantage of not needing an external foe, but still having room for one.
I’m going off of the printed material in the book. The fact remains that, minus the few of us here, the entirety of IST fans aren’t going to know about these discussions. They’re not going to see Bob’s statements to us to know that he wanted them to be more diplomats than stick-wielders. The fan-base can only work off of the book, and that’s where we need to focus our thinking.
We have to use the book as a starting place, and come forward from there. Any changes we want to make, have to take the original book as the starting place, and not try to retcon it into working.
By Bob’s indication of wanting the ISTs to be more diplomatic, we would need to have a section on discussing the steady change from them being a peacekeeping force to a peacemaking force in the nineties.
The Panama action would cause a major debacle as the U.S. is on the Security Council and it's just not possible that one of their representitives couldn't have been reached. That means that they couldn’t have been present in that meeting, or the action would have been vetoed (or the ambassador would be under charges for High Treason). The US had not withdrawn from the U.N. at that time, and, not calling the US delegation for the meeting would be, rightly, considered an aggressive, hostile action. So, there would be huge fallout. It could even be considered an illegal act by the U.N. itself. It will also cause the US to call for the Secretary General to step down, and the US would never withdraw from the U.N. as, keeping their seat on the Security Council, would allow them to veto any acts they don't like. Much like Russia did in the fifties and sixties.
That could lead to a “demilitarization” of the ISTs. Military duty is downplayed in favor of civil obedience and diplomatic functions. With the U.N. and the ISTs faltering in their hard-line stance, it would give the rest of the world the image of weakness, and other nations would start testing these new limits. This could easily lead to the increase in both Chinese and North Korean belligerence, culminating in the 2000 war.
This gives us the advantage of not needing an external foe, but still having room for one.