LANDSCAPE OF MERCENARIES
Despite the aid received from numerous mercenary outfits in defeating the Blakist threat, the general population remains conflicted in its opinion of the mercenary industry. Without discounting their role in our victory, our own aims to reduce military sizes and control non-state forces will necessitate curbing the mercenary industry or outlawing its use entirely. Since mercenaries follow no flag, and are technically beholden only to those who pay the most, the use of such forces remains an inherent risk and a tacit approval of war as a means of achieving political goals. As this would allow a circumvention of the agreements we hope to cement between our Republic and the neighboring Successor States, this cannot be allowed to come to pass.
Before the Jihad, it would have been nearly impossible to entertain the notion of doing away with mercenary use entirely, but the massive losses suffered during the war might play into our favor now. With the MRBC shattered and so few large mercenary commands remaining, most outfits today are company-sized on average. The political leverage of the Wolf’s Dragoons has crumbled and while they rebuffed us when we broached the subject of either laying down their arms or joining the Republic, we fe el that was due more to their Cl an
heritage than to an outright refusal. Likewise, the Kell Hounds, themselves crippled, remain an essential component to check the Clans on the Lyran border, and any effort to remove them from the playing field will meet resistance from the Archon himself, to say nothing of the familial connections between the Kells and the throne.
Our biggest success thus far was recruiting the Northwind Highlanders to join the Republic—though I would be remiss in noting that, had they not effectively sat out the entire Jihad and tarnished their reputation in the process, it would not have been such an easy sell. Still, the Highlanders have already become an example to others, as a number of smaller merc commands have also been folded into the RAF or taken generous compensati on packages to retire from the industry and settle in our borders. We must still tread cautiously here; while demilitarization of non-state forces remains our goal,
we have to avoid the appearance of forcing these men and women out of their cockpits and into retirement homes at gunpoint. Should that become the general belief, it will only drive mercenaries to other employers—such as the Capellan Confederation, which will surely never subscribe to our disarmament policies.It’s worthwhile to note that we’ve already identified a distinct correlation between the srcins of mercenary commands and their opinions toward our Republic. Those who are descended from or inspired most by old Star League commands (admittedly few of which survived the Jihad) appear to hold us in high esteem, like the Northwind Highlanders. Others, who were founded after the Star League fell, such as the Kell Hounds, appear neutral to the Republic as a concept but look upon our notion of disarmament with disfavor. The same holds true for outfits that maintain loyalties to any particular House, such as the pro-Davion Twelfth Vegan Rangers. In these lattermost cases, we may find it easier to pursue our goals by appealing to the mercenaries’ employing House, rather than attempting to recruit and disarm these commands ourselves.
We have a limited window of public approval that we should use to our benefit while we have the chance. We can issue a call to nationalize any pro-Republic mercenaries or offer long-term contracts to the mercenaries already in our service, extolling the virtues of job security and stability that come with such offers. Using the proper language should allow us to avoid appearance of indebting them to a “company store” situation but we can still, over time, win them over into permanent service in the RAF. This will likely be our best means to remove influential and capable mercs from the general service pool.
In all honesty, it may never be possible to eliminate the mercenary community entirely, especially not with the Successor States so reliant upon them. Thus, it must instead be our goal to reduce their power and influence, using the current public sentiment against war and warriors as a means to do so. With anti-war sentiment running high in our favor— evenamong mercenaries—there will be no better time to pursue this effort.
WHAT LIES BENEATH
WHAT LIES BENEATH
connection
/JIHAD: FINAL RECKONJIHAD: FINAL RECKONINGING
/section06: WHAT LIES BENEATH
CONCLUSIONS
CONCLUSIONS
As you can see, Deviln, the Inner Sphere (and I’m going to just include the Periphery and the Inner Sphere Clans in that lump from here on out so I don’t have to keep saying “Inner Sphere and Clans” over and over) is battered and bruised and has a long road ahead of it to fully recover from the Jihad, but things are not entirely hopeless. This gives us a golden opportunity to position the Republic at the forefront of recovery efforts and “light the way”.
The basis on which all postwar reconstruction programs will have to rest is, of course, infrastructure. The number one priority in that regard is transportation, as so much of the Inner Sphere’s assets have been diverted and tied up in the war. With all of the losses to JumpShip and DropShip resources, re-tasking those vessels is one of the first things the states began as soon as it became clear the war was over. Our request to leave garrison troops where they were stationed in the Protectorate helped in that regard, as it freed up transport assets srcinally flagged to bring those support troops home and allowed them to be used to shore up faltering trade fleets. Unfortunately, the trend away from capital-class WarShips towards Pocket Warships is expected to eat into conventional DropShip production, and may continue to hamper commercial traffic at a time when commerce is needed the most.
The vast recovery projects that will be needed—and, in many cases, have already begun—on worlds across the Inner Sphere provide an interesting opportunity to advance one of our priority projects. If our intent is to reduce the number of BattleMechs in service across the board, we will need to provide alternatives to avoid the collapse of those companies and conglomerates that depended on military production to meet their profit goals and uphold their responsibilities to their shareholders. Convincing such manufacturers to redirect their resources into IndustrialMech production would be an excellent diversion of such material and efforts and could benefit the wider goal of infrastructure repair. To that end, Lin has assembled a team to work with some of the Republic’s top producers on retooling their lines in this direction, and to develop programs and incentives to expand to any foreign corporations that plan to do business within our borders. If successful, these efforts should show other industry leaders the benefits of our programs, and will thus add economic pressure to achieve our “peace dividends”, while still working on the state-based military side of the equation.
One final approach to the infrastructure repair effort took its first steps a little over a month ago with the establishment of the Republic Disaster Management Agency. Owing its genesis to a conglomeration of aid agencies and programs
formed to deal with the terrible aftermath of “Bloody Tricentennial”, the RDMA is offering funding for reconstruction and expert assistance in the often tricky business of cleaning up the Word’s mess. Currently, this agency is only operational within the Republic, but plans are being drawn up to offer its services internationally, specifically to all signatories of the Republic Formation Treaty. We have already received interest from several Lyran and FedSuns corporations looking to invest in the agency, as well as a generous donation from CEO Rendelli of Hachiman-Taro, in memory of the late Chandrasekhar Kurita.
One major concern in all of this is that we cannot allow any of the advanced research projects that the Word was known to be working on fall into the hands of anyone but ourselves. (Note: I’ll have a separate report on some of the more significant of these projects available for you shortly.) Our agents have been scouring former Blakist facilities and data cores on dozens of worlds in search of these projects and destroying them—in most cases after securing copies of the research for our own use. There have been several close calls where our people barely got there in time before one of the House intelligence operations claimed the facilities for themselves, and at least one known instance where force had to be used to dislodge a Loki squad. Marcel, working closely with Galen and Byron, is well aware of these issues and has begun more concerted efforts to block the Houses’ recovery of Word technology. They are certainly to be held back only as a last resort, but we may eventually need to consider using our own Shadows if this covert struggle deepens. This would allow us to maintain plausible deniability in the event that things go sour.
One would like to think that helping their people rebuild following a devastating war would be the number one priority of the nobility, as those who use their wealth and family history to place themselves in a position of leadership over the rest of their fellow men should ever be aware that the people are the basis of their power. But, alas, as it has been throughout history, we find that the so- called nobles of the Great Houses are, in fact, sometimes the biggest, most immovable obstacles in the way of progress.
The chaos of the Jihad has only made that deplorable tendency worse, as the Word’s winnowing of the nobility has given the survivors more room to advance their own agendas without getting their own hands dirty—of ten at the expense of the common folk. Jo ckeying for position within the postwar order has become almost a sport in some realms, and not even the Clans are immune; as the Bloodhouses are more like the nobility that they would like to think. The ranks of the Clan toumans have too many holes now, and a lack of qualified candidates simply won’t stop them being filled.