The Absolute Defense Zone
The United Earth Sphere Mandates
“This insinuation of the interests of the self into even the most ideal enterprises and most universal objectives, envisaged in moments of highest rationality, makes hypocrisy an inevitable byproduct of all virtuous endeavor.”
- Reinhold Niebuhr, “Moral Man and Immoral Society”
One of the tools of UES hegemony were the Mandates. These were instruments of UES law which codiced internationally agreed upon terms for the administration of certain colonies, the Mandate, on the behalf of the UES by member states, the Mandatory governments. Of a chimerical nature that was part treaty, part constitution, in theory the Mandates were equitable arrangements between the UES and the many immature colonies of the Solar System to accelerate their economic and political development into fully independent states of the Earth Sphere with the aid of an already established power. In theory.
While the Mandate system was used throughout the Solar System, the vast majority were concentrated in the Main Belt. However benevolent the initial intent of the Mandate system
There is some cosmic irony in the fact that the Mandates the Terran nations were supposed to aid have largely become their last refuges.
The Absolute Defense Line
“We could hardly dream of building a kind of Great Wall of France, which would in any case be far too costly. Instead we have foreseen powerful but flexible means of organizing defense, based on the dual principle of taking full advantage of the terrain and establishing a continuous line of fire everywhere.”
-André Maginot
The resurgent Terran power had a long arm, able to reach even the deep Kuiper, as it did with the Mandate of Haumea. However, the power of the UES was not unlimited. Limits to Earth’s claims of sovereignty had to be defined.
The Gaubertist War
“Sir, does it not seem to you that the silken thread encompassing France is broken?”
-Sir Geoffrey Scrope to a French Cardinal during the Hundred Year’s War
The cataclysmic fall of the UES, and of the Solar System itself, was a complex result of multiple drivers. Imperial overstretch, mismanagement of and by the bureaucracy, encroaching federal interference in national affairs, mounting political radicalization, unchecked militarism, all of these factors played an undeniable role. However, at its heart,
The Solar Girdle Front Headquarters
"Let us be firm, pure and faithful; at the end of our sorrow there is the greatest glory of the world, that of the men who did not give in."
-Charles de Gaulle, 1943
The Strategic Superluminal Operations Office
"One doesn't discover new lands without losing sight of the shore."
-Andre Gide
Often verbally abbreviated as zoo, the Office of Strategic Superluminal Operations was an independent paramilitary department established by writ of the General Assembly shortly after the dissolution of its immediate predecessor, the military Out-Sol Command. Its declared purpose was to allow the Solar Girdle Command Circuit staff to focus on the critical matters of defense while expanding the resources available to extra-Solar missions. The breadth of its official competencies is threefold. First, to pursue and regulate the further maturation of UES Jump Engine theory, design, and ship design. Second, to chart, secure, economically develop, and provisionally govern the UES’s growing extra-solar claims. Third, to explore the galaxy!
In truth, the SSOO was a result of a number of what was seen as dire mismanagement by the military Out-Sol command. The UES made first contact with Alpha-Centauri when the UESS Santa Clara completed what was also the first interstellar FTL Jump in human history.
As the forerunner in Jump Drive technology, the two greatest disasters in the history of human faster-than-light travel occurred under the auspices of the Military Out-Sol Command. The UESS Otto von Kotzebue, whether due to a gross miscalculation or a critical failure, was lost with all hands while making a jump to Earth from Alpha Centauri. The twisted wreckage, which had ripped itself to pieces in a centrifugal pattern, arrived several AU from its expected destination point in the middle of international space, scattered across space in a light-second long trail. It was promptly salvaged by various other powers over the ferocious protest of the UES.
To this day, the UES maintains that all of Sol’s jump drives are derived from the wreck of the Otto von Kotzebue, and as such, is due reparations and royalties.
Later that same year, the crew of UESS Magellan broadcast several panicked warnings in the process of a routine jump to Alpha Centauri. It never arrived. Searches by the UES Fleet and the Fourth Polish Republic failed to find any sign of the vessel, which has been assumed destroyed in similar fashion to the Otto von Kotzebue.
These catastrophes, among others including the hushed up defection of the ambassador to the Alpha Centauran power ACCEL along with the jumpship UESS Santa Maria, spurred the dissolution of the Out-Sol Command and the creation of a new government ministry called the Strategic Superluminal Operations Office. With serene, professional efficiency, the SSOO has been loyally pursuing the mission parameters as set by the General Assembly.
An unexpected success of the SSOO has been in building rapport and co-operation with other powers, particularly the Fourth Polish Republic. In certain respects the SSOO has become the de jure foreign ministry.