[Earth] “District, No More” Asks Vietnamese

"District, No More” Asks Vietnamese

by Anita Wu, Vox Populi

EARTH - Placards, posters, and pickets have defined life just outside the the Alliance’s regional administrative zone in the port city of Haiphong, the center of SATAE’s provisional authority in Vietnam. Every day, the thirty nine soldiers guarding its’ single checkpoint look out at an ever-growing crowd of students, veterans, and nationalists waving signs boldly condemning Hackett, condemning the Systems Alliance, and demanding that SATAE’s military administration in the region be disintegrated.

“No one was asked. No one was consulted,” said an anonymous former civil servant, as he aired out his frustrations with Vox Populi. “Vietnam liberated Vietnam. When the Reapers came, the Alliance did not rescue us. When we fought, we fought for a nation, and as a nation. On our own blood, sweat, and tears. And when the war came to an end, it was only then that the Alliance came with troops and tanks, and only then to make our decisions for us - to unmake the nation we thought we were fighting for.”

Despite that, the Alliance has not budged; and business continues as usual, unmoved by mounting discontent just outside the gates of the city’s administrative zone and throughout the former nation.

“I know how they must feel, and it’s regrettable, but we can’t just pack up and leave. Hanoi is still a complete mess, and we’re still pulling out bodies from Ho Chi Minh City. Expecting them to recover without Alliance resources is insane,” said Staff Commander Nguyen Quan when asked for a statement.

“They keep saying five more years, five more years. Why do we need to wait?” Phan Thị Yin complained - a veteran of the Reaper War, who’d spent five months engaged in the costly urban war in Hanoi. A war she firmly believes was fought by the Vietnamese People’s Army. “Why should we believe them? They think we’re children, unable to take responsibility for ourselves, unable to make our own decisions. Every day, people wake up, look out their apartment and they don’t see Haiphong, they see a district. If we want to go it alone, why should they stop us?”

The reaper invasion mattered. There were massive, massive refugee movements, millions of displaced people, entire cities that vanished. If you're going to try and build historically-accurate, ethnically homogenous nations on top of that, something will break.

Dude, you had DMZs on your own homeworld, you were not that peaceful.


I think your translator must be misfiring a little. I'm not being purposely dumb, I have no idea why one planet would need 200+ self-interested governments. It seems...inefficient, especially when you need organizations that can fight Reapers. Maybe because I'm drell and we really didn't find a way to manage before we hit the wall?

So...military officers with no experience in civilian governance qualify to govern but resistance leaders don't? Those officers are not elected. They're in charge because they're the one remaining central peer structure with sufficient military strength to enforce their will.

The people in my community allow me to make decisions on their behalf because I have proven myself to them. Is what power I have legitimate? Yes, because the people around me have chosen to give it to me. Would I welcome elections? Absolutely.

Rather than appearing strong and keeping a stranglehold on the nations to retain power, SATAE should, as Songbird said, be doing their job. If a nation such as Vietnam is capable and wanting to stand on its own feet, it should be permitted to leave SATAE. This lifts some of the burden off their troops, allows nations to regain their sovereignty and their right to self-determination and it reassures the population that SATAE is sincere in their promises to leave Earth in the next four years.

Quite frankly, I'm concerned that this whole business relies on the word of one man and I'm tired of being labelled 'stupid' or 'ungrateful' for being worried about the fact that my country is under occupation.


'You know what, I think your bit of rubble looks mighty fine. I'm going to send my decimated military, who are thoroughly traumatised and war-weary, to take it off you.'

Somehow I doubt that the nations will be in any sort of shape to go to war over territory in the foreseeable future.

EDIT: the majority of Earth nations were quite stable. I imagine things will go back to much as they were before-while some would possibly try to take advantage and split off, most of humanity has had its fill of bloodshed.

Not to mention that it's only been two years-historically accurate? These are nations that have not yet stopped existing in the hearts and minds of its people. And countries haven't been ethnically homogeneous in centuries-my fiancee's family was originally from Japan, but she's as English as I am.

No they don't. They qualify to organize the rebuilding of the civilian chain, and then organize elections.

Be offended all you want. You are the one who brought up the term warlord. The definition of warlord being; a person with power who has both military and civil control over a subnational area due to armed forces loyal to the warlord and not to a central authority. First off these 'resistance warlords' do not and never did have defacto control of the areas they occupied, so your terminology is entirely inaccurate.

Second off, you are (deliberately I suspect) creating a hypothetical scenario and calling it a certainty. A scenario where the instant a nation breaks off from SATAE some resistance leader rises out of the masses bringing with him all of the members of his organization (who have been going about their daily non-paramilitary lives for nearly two years now) and using that to guarantee control of the entire country. This is literally one of the most retarded scenarios I have ever heard. There are far too many 'ifs'.

If there's a resistance leader who wants to lead the country, if s/he decides taking control by force would be better than running in an election, if his resistance group is available, if the resistance group is large enough to hold an entire country, if they are actually willing, if the populace and/or other resistance groups in the area just sit back and let it happen. And you're presenting all of these hypothetical situations which rest on the decisions of hundreds or thousands of hypothetical people, as virtual certainty. Yeah I'm terribly sorry if this sounds like shit slinging, but if you honestly believe all that, you are an idiot.

I believe that most of that could just be attributed to the fact that the majority of the people on my "side" as it were are making arguments that are decidedly...


sub par.

Looking (even more) competent by association is inevitable.


Frankly I think that you would also be among the first to admit that SATAE's footing is far from stable or secure. They're a military organization several hundred million strong attempting to assert authority over a half destroyed planet with billions of displaced civilians, decimated nations, and infrastructure that was deliberately severed in the attack in order to cripple the population. They're doing so in the face of intermittent nationalistic sentiments from regions across the globe and an economy that has literally been torn to shreds.

The heart of the matter is that they can't exactly afford to act like they're a simple transitory administration; like they're a subordinate organization who has policy dictated to it rather than dictating their own policy. Maintaining what momentum they have, what loyalty and support they've been able to garner for their constituency is paramount. But, by extension, they can't allow states and regions withdraw on their own terms. If, say, it could somehow be spun that Vietnam's release was not the result of obvious national discontent and steadfast desire for a return to personal sovereignty then I imagine that SATAE would be inclined to turn them lose. If it was on the Alliance's terms hell, they'd probably play it up as much as humanly possible. Why?

Because then it would be something that they did. Not something that they had done to them.


To reiterate my own earlier point, SATAE's position is fragile. SATAE itself is fragile (I don't think that there's anybody really awaiting the result of the final three years quite as anxiously as the marines and administrative staff enforcing it). Their very existence, much less their operational efficiency, is far more dependent on the assent of the people that they're governing than anybody, much less themselves, really lets on. Cracks and fractures in the institution's image aren't just annoyances, they're threats to its very stability.

Adding on to your argument: once Vietnam withdrew, the question wouldn't so much be if anyone else would withdraw and who would withdraw next and, while individually these nations might not be much in terms of resources or political clout, taken together they present a hypothetical scenario of rapid escalation and deterioration. Vast swathes of the African continent. A handful of Middle Eastern states. Southeast Asia. Chunks of South and Central America. Eastern Europe. All regions with huge disparities between the few wealthy and the many poor. All regions where, in some places, tech was still functionally at a pre-FCW level. All regions marked decidedly lower on SATAE's list of priorities than heavily industrialized and developed nations in North America, Western/Central Europe, and Asia. All regions with strong national identities that have led to full blown conflict multiple times in the past.

Taken individually, each nation is somewhat insignificant. Taken together it's a massive challenge to SATAE's directives and legitimacy. Part of the concern, I think, is that nobody in the administration wants to see Vietnam (or any other country really) serve as the proverbial "spark" and lead the charge out of SATAE's jurisdiction.

As I said, SATAE is fragile. To make a somewhat crude analogy it's like those characters from morning cartoons who move so fast that they go over the edges of cliffs and keep right on running anyway, but only fall when they stop and look down.

Fair enough, it's a somewhat minor point regardless.

To rephrase I agree with you with regards to certain aspects and views although I don't quite think that we see eye to eye on the issue (just a hunch).

Which I honestly don't mind actually, there are few things in existence as boring or limiting as constant complete agreement.

Point, he still sounds like he's been freshly lobotomized but I suppose that's more of a personal grievance than anything else. Also, to go back to an earlier point of mine, if the Alliance doesn't keep its promises it'll have a lot of active resistance from within much less from Earth.


And when you pull the "holier than thou" routine you don't look like the voice of reason you just look like a passive aggressive hypocrite.


I was under the impression that for the sake of our collective migraine we were going to at least try to steer away from the All This Stuff Takes Time Now Sit Down and Shut Up argument.


A. It really was only two years ago. Even better than a billion gone isn't enough to redraw the boundaries of literally every country on the face of the Earth.

B. I don't think a single prewar state was completely ethnically homogenous. In fact, attempting to create things like that has traditionally been a Bad Idea.


If you think SATAE's not functioning as a de facto (if not de jure) government you are delusional. I support them and even I don't kid myself about that.

It's not offensive as much as annoying really...
Anyway the definition of warlord you gave is exactly what I meant. During the war those people were leading the civilians and resistance fighters who weren't under the thumbs of the indoctrinated. And that was great at the time but doesn't mean frak about their ability to lead in reconstruction and peace time.


You have got to be kidding me... You've never heard of any dictator who were a former resistance leaders? In Earth's history? Doesn't ring a bell? How about the dozens of dictatorships on latin america or africa during the XXth century that were established by resistance fighters? Or the Talibans in Afghanistan, who resisted the russians? Or Cuba's Fidel Castro? Come on.

And that's one scenario. Another one that is very visible in the batarian confederacy is crime lords seizing power.

They are, but it's not what they're made for. That's why it's interim. It's all I meant. I would never ever want SATAE to become permanent. Nobody does.

You again ignore all of the hypothetical situations which need to come to pass before these 'warlords' (you are still using the word incorrectly) could come to power. Secondly in all of these examples you cited the rebel leaders seized power immediately after winning an armed conflict. In none of these cases did a much larger power intervene and win the war for them, nor did they go back to productive civilian lives for two years. Your analogy is again, so wrong and so far from reality as to boggle the mind.

And yes there is crime on Earth, I've yet to hear of any crime lords so powerful that they could run a nation. All you are doing is pointing wildly at the Confederacy, at 20th century Cuba, at Afghanistan and shouting, "LOOK LOOK WE DON'T WANT TO END UP LIKE THEM DO WE?!" Whilst ignoring the fact that the situations you are citing are in no way the same.

The core point is that in the absence of a coherent civilian structure, the strongest groups will take charge. In vietnam, right now, what are those groups?

For the sake of trying to mitigate a sea of quotes, I'm going to take this as an entire argument. I'll break it down for you. Earth is a mosaic. It is not a clean mosaic, or an organized one. But it exists on a cultural, social, and economic level and has endured and evolved for thousands of years. The human race is not a homogenous unit that can be taken for granted as one whole with little distinction (and as such, trying to suggest these nations are built firmly on 'ethnic grounds' is ridiculous, they want Vietnam for Vietnam, not Vietnam for the Vietnamese). And it's been proven that time and time again, that if something is going to break, it's not going to be those who are being imposed upon in the end. You can't just take that mosaic and paint it blue and grey.

Never mind the fact that those cultural lines will still exist and continue to be drawn with or without some big hegemonic government to represent an entire species. We look to (and some may even admire), say, the Turian Hierarchy as an example of a strong central government that acts on the behalf of its' entire species. But even in a society and with a cultural mandate like the turians, there are distinct cultural or social groups (separatists, essentially) that organize and try to resist that sort of representation being imposed on them on cultural or social grounds. Just cutting out the nations isn't going to kill the nation. As people have already reiterated, these countries existed two years ago. They are remembered by people. People are proud of them and identify under them. They will not go quietly into the night. Nor should they. And if the Alliance will not recognize that, then the Alliance is driving those people into a corner.

And don't give me the 'you weren't that peaceful' crap. Earth can't be defined by a couple regions of varying degrees of dysfunction, all with their own distinct histories of controlling foreign interests and intervention, historical feuds, and religious controversy and tell me that somehow this turns pre-Reaper War Earth into a war dominated hole. There were many issues that existed on Earth (who gets to reap the benefits of a galactic society is still a major concern with SATAE) but your suggestion that Earth's nations were one bad day away from going for each others' throats, eager for it without an invisible hand of authority hanging in orbit like SATAE, is laughable.

And what, exactly, qualifies them any more than these resistance 'warlords' you keep insisting are what absolutely should not happen? Is it just because they have the bigger stick?

You know who really qualifies in deciding who organizes elections and organizes the people? The people.

And I can't imagine how they wouldn't be sour it's being left up to a couple men with badges on their lapels who most frequently see many of the countries or regions that they're supposedly responsible for from orbit.

Which brings me to the point that I've kept making: SATAE should take measures to facilitate that.

Fair enough. This is probably the same reason why that there will probably never be any verifiable census data to come out of the Alliance regarding their approval or how they feel about things like independence in any particularly contentious region - the Alliance isn't at all confident about what people will say about them and their impositions, and so they can continue to, much like our spam bot official on the first page, marginalize any discontent in the regime as a 'vocal minority'.

Which is terrible, just so you know.

However simple or complex the nature of SATAE is, at the end of the day it is still a transitory administration and should still at least act like its' first priority is reasserting the sovereignty of the nation-states it stepped in to replace after the war's end. It still has obligations and it can't ignore them or pretend they're beyond them. They're still there. And they need to be met. The complexity of the matter is no excuse - they've made no overtures towards turning power over to the former sovereign nations and established nothing in easing a theoretical transition.

And to preempt anyone going 'well nothing that you know about', I would like to know why we wouldn't know about them. If SATAE were making some level of effort in ensuring that these nations will exist after four years, there is literally no good reason why they would be hiding it. Going by all the discontent, you'd have to assume SATAE were literally idiots if they were actively trying to hide a transition. And since I'm assuming they aren't, I am pretty sure that they wouldn't shut up about it, in fact, if it were happening. Frankly, I would be more concerned if SATAE were organizing governments out of view of the general public, and certainly the people that they've now found themselves the wardens of.

On that note, I don't really see why cries for independence and SATAE's legitimacy need to be mutually exclusive. You're making it sound much harder than it actually is - because as long as an election is sponsored, organized, administrated, tallied, and verified by SATAE itself, they are, again, doing their job. And nothing less should be expected of them. It's certainly more than many expect from SATAE now. But again, none of this is happening.

I suppose I can agree with the gist of this. It's fragile. But as for why... well, give me a few moments.


Alright, I've had to rewrite this a couple times because this is a big response and I wasn't sure how to break it down, and so my own points started to trip over themselves. I'll take it slow, because I absolutely don't agree with your points.

For all the people that are declaring the Vietnamese short-sighted in their pursuit of independence from SATAE, it's remarkable how you don't notice the disconnect in the impassivity of the acting administration. This entire argument precipitates on something of a domino theory - if one piece falls, everything falls with it. So you need to make sure no piece falls. Keep a hard line. If Vietnam goes independent, Indonesia will follow. After Indonesia, it will be Pakistan. And as soon as Pakistan falls, hey, maybe Zimbabwe decides it doesn't need SATAE either. And one by one, SATAE loses legitimacy and confidence.

But that assumes that SATAE had any legitimacy and confidence in the first place. SATAE is not fragile because they're being given the barest benefit of the doubt. They're fragile because many nations don't even give them that. No one can kid themselves. It's a hard sell. It will never not be hard sell. It can only be vaguely justified by the emergency of war. What they're doing probably goes against at least a couple UN declarations. People are still debating whether the largest military coup in history just happened and we still don't know about it. This short-sighted approach that the Alliance seems content on taking is doing nothing but alienating all these nations growing restless and impatient and anxious over the level of control that the Alliance is asserting over them. If this is the best approach, as you claim, it ignores the very fundamentals of why people don't want SATAE in the first place.

Trust and confidence.

These nations we're talking about, the least developed nations who 'enjoy' the realities of priority in SATAE with the strongest national identities don't have any good reason to take SATAE at their word. And so they will become more and more agitated as SATAE tries to impose more and more upon them for longer and longer. It's a simple matter of equal and opposite force - it doesn't matter how much the Alliance tries to brute force the rift that has formed between them and the people in these former nations, the gap is widened with every booted step they take towards them. They will push back.

Which is why I think it's incredibly short-sighted, this deaf ear to national concerns by the people they're ostensibly taking responsibility for. What they gain in some short-term peace of mind they lose every day in hearts, minds, and confidence that they will keep their word. You assume that people will lose confidence they never had in SATAE if someone leaves the fold. I think quite the opposite. If SATAE wants any sort of legitimacy to what it's doing, it needs to begin, again, honouring the transitory part of the catchy acronym and it needs to start, y'know, transitioning. If Vietnam is allowed to leave SATAE on its' own terms, as I have been saying this whole time, has just done their job. They've just proven to every other nation on Earth that they have no plans of occupying the planet for any length of time longer than the one they projected. They prove to the other nations that you claim are in danger of breaking away from SATAE that they are different.

And none of this is happening. And so people get more and more convinced that SATAE is uninterested in their unique issues and more and more unconvinced that the Five Year Plan is anything but so much fluff to preempt yet another occupation by a foreign superpower. And so it becomes more and more unconvincing where SATAE's priorities are and how much they actually mean what they say.

Which rubber-bands me back to the original point I've been trying to make, because I'm afraid that without grounding my feet against the proverbial ground, it will be lost to increasingly byzantine discussion: the Vietnamese have every right and every reason not to take the Alliance at their word. They have very real grievances with SATAE, benefit very little of a relationship that was imposed on them without consent and enforced through an unspoken sword of Damocles in the Alliance's unquestionable military authority. A relationship that could even be described as humiliating. A relationship that there is no doubt is one-sided. If the Alliance wants to assume the role of an interstitial authority, there is nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but that means acting like an interstitial authority and facilitating that. As it stands, there are still protests that go unrecognized and unacknowledged in Haiphong. Business continues as usual.

Pretty much. That's probably the worst part about arguing about the administration on Earth more than anything, nobody for the acting administration wants to talk about it - whenever someone brings up an issue, they just cover their ears and start shouting FIVE YEARS in an attempt to drown out potentially meaningful or interesting discussion and complain about how SATAE is being portrayed by some perspectives or by 'the media' (like one big faceless enemy they can hiss at). I mean, just look at how many people who are actually part of the regime bailed out when the conversation stopped being about 'these things take time' and a boring game of a kickball labeled, like, 'separatism' or 'oh no the free press' or something. It's a circle-jerk that I have no problem crashing when I can.

Oh, so it is about the biggest stick.

Jesus Christ, this was longer than it probably should have been.

Who gives a shit, seriously?

Literally, the batarian people have had to put up with this shit for longer than we've had space travel. Why humans can't put up with a singular government for five years in the aftermath of the most destructive war in history is really beyond me. I mean, it's not like they're enforcing a system that defines your life's prospects from birth, are they?

And cue closing statements.


And here's where I think that the prime disagreement is. Less a conflict of absolute doctrine or ideology and more an argument over relative priorities because, if we're going to be blunt here, I think it's not all out of line to say that SATAE's primary concern is the reconstruction of Earth's infrastructure and associated industrial/social projects (with areas hosting extensive intact manufacturing, agricultural, and population assets receiving higher priority) while laying the groundwork for the actual transfer of power is, at best, secondary.

Is this, to use a massive euphemism, unpleasant?

Oh without a doubt.

Does it run contrary to SATAE's claims and very title?

Yes.

But this is as things are and, frankly, how they should be. Again this is largely my opinion but being the governing body of a pile of toxic rubble is hardly a winning position (and yes I'm aware of nations that are on firmer footing and could conceivably be turned lose but I maintain that they do more good helping to maintain the current pace of reconstruction both materially and socially as part of SATAE's assets).


Would a nation like Vietnam that so resents such outside authority in its current incarnation honestly embrace the concept of said outside authority handling almost the entirety of their election either?

Countries such as Vietnam are more familiar than most with the consequences of rampant political corruption and, if there's one point that I hope I have satisfactorily made, it's the potency of the "ruled's" perception of their "rulers". Even mere accusations are enough to instil a degree of reasonable doubt, especially in this political climate.

So really they're as inclusive as the belief systems of those involved on both sides allow and (to take historical and contemporary precedent into account) that's not exactly a great deal.


To consolidate and expound upon a number of points I made earlier, SATAE is not only fragile enough to simply collapse under its own weight in the absence of widespread ground up reinforcement, it is too fragile to ever support the kind of hypothetical state that critics are so leery of and nations such as Vietnam are so wary of. SATAE has a shelf life, SATAE has a time and date stamped upon it and that is the second that the very people the compose it feel that the organization has betrayed their ideals. And that moment will either happen when the institution makes a genuine, unequivocal move to impose absolute authority rather than allow the progress of the slow, grinding, unpleasant bureaucratic inertia to continue as they focus on material reconstruction or widespread dissatisfaction at the perceived advent of the same finally trumps the relative benefits of passive approval. You cannot build an enduring state on direction and old, faint support, especially in the face of popular contempt. You might, might be able to rehabilitate a planet with SATAE's store of political capital you could never rule it.

SATAE will inevitably grind to a halt, be it on its own terms or that of the general population. It doesn't need enduring legitimacy nor the kind of popular support you suggest, especially not at the price that's been quoted; merely enough public goodwill to finish their mandate, after which they will likely be recycled back into the SA as a whole and the entire affair whitewashed into pseudo-propaganda.


Because simply containing dissent, while unpopular and ugly, is infinitely preferable than unrestrained condemnation that has been given tacit support and justification via acknowledgement. It's a short term solution for an inevitably short term organization.


This implies that the first several pages were much more enjoyable than they actually were.

But in all seriousness, I genuinely found this to be both immensely interesting and somewhat enjoyable. I suppose that I should thank you for actually being receptive to constructive conversation.