Chapter 11: Arms Race
Local Space, circa 2227.
Secretary-General Koo Heung-min’s two prized policy initiatives - the Automatic Ratio Allocation for Defense/Development and the ‘Koo Doctrine’ of disproportionate retaliation against pirate and slaver activity in the Earth Expansion Sphere - led to a rapid increase UNPCOM’s military capabilities in the second half of the 2220s. Koo’s ambitions were aided by a hawkish crop of military leaders determined to establish and promote the Peacekeepers as a fully-fledged defense and fighting force. With the Military Staff Committee now elevated as the leadership body of UNPCOM, the Chairperson of the MSC would now be the highest-ranking and senior-most officer in the UN Peacekeeping Command, and the principal military advisor to the Secretary-General and the Security Council. Previously, the chairmanship of the MSC had been rotational, but the reform process which has birthed UNPCOM had also reformed the chairmanship as an appointed, fixed-term post.
On the 'western' edge of the Expansion Sphere, the Castor system was the suspected location of a major pirate anchorage. Taking the system became a strategic focus for the early UNPCOM.
After protracted horse-trading between the General Assembly and the Security Council, four candidates emerged: Commandant John Perez Mitchell, formerly of the USNA Marine Corps., Air Marshall Noko Ramalepe, formerly of the Nigerian Air Force, Admiral Wen Bao, formerly of the Chinese People’s Federation Navy, and General Paulette Lagasse, formerly of the European Defense Force. All four officers were decorated veterans of previous UN campaigns, but Mitchell was initially widely perceived as the frontrunner, and Koo’s preferred candidate. However, many in the UN hierarchy balked at elevating another American to a critical role so-soon after Elizabeth Kennedy’s exceptionally long tenure as Secretary-General. Wen, meanwhile, ran into opposition from the African Bloc for his involvement in planning the UN’s controversial Mozambique Stabilization Campaign of 2194. Always sensitive to political winds, Secretary-General Koo saw the populist advantage in appointing an officer from the Global South as the face of the UNPCOM, and threw his support behind Ramalepe’s ultimately successful candidacy. Even with the salve of the Automatic Ratio Allocation, this was probably a wise selection in an era when defense and development were still often seen as competitors for the same resources. Without Ramalepe’s adept diplomacy, it is unlikely all of the UNPCOM’s expensive funding requests could have passed the General Assembly.
The Hammarskjöld-class destroyer was Earth’s first dedicated space warship. Built around a revolutionary metamagnetic liquid metal fusion core and a spinal mass accelerator coil gun, the vessel was equipped with deflectors, armor, and chaff countermeasures. It carried a crew of 40 officers and 260 enlisted personnel (and two secret nukes).
And this expense was considerable. In its Comprehensive Initial Development Plan submitted to the General Assembly and Security Council in late 2222, UNPCOM requested not only that the existing fleet of Lion-class corvettes be modernized and doubled in number, but also that funding be supplied to procure six Hammarskjöld-class destroyers, with options for 2-4 more. Whereas the Lion-class corvette frequently saw dual service as a transport, courier, and tug, the Hammarskjöld was Earth’s first dedicated space warship. Built around a revolutionary metamagnetic liquid metal fusion core and spinal coil gun, UNPCOM saw these vessels as critical in establishing law and order in Earth space.
“On Earth, all law enforcement, all social order, functions on the simple premise that the state is the sole deployer of the legitimate use of force. On Earth, when the cops show up, the bad guys run. They don’t stick around and weigh their options; they don’t stick around and think well maybe we could take them. That is the premise behind the Hammarskjöld project.”
- Extract from a speech by MSC member Adm. John Perez Mitchell to Westpoint cadets, 2223
On Earth however, the Hammarskjöld project was bitterly controversial for many. This opposition arose from a variety of sources: some opposed the militarization of space, others had a pacifistic or idealistic view of the alien threat, or felt the money was better spent on Earth. In many countries, Earth First successfully fundraised and organized off the anti-globalist opposition to the Hammarskjöld controversy, particularly after it emerged that Airbus Industrie and General Electric, the principal contractors on the project, made a 23% profit margin on each unit. The UN refused to disclose the exact cost of each Hammarskjöld-class vessel, due to secrecy concerns regarding the vessel’s exact capabilities and armament, but acknowledged that procuring the six vessels was the most expensive UN capital project since the Birfröst Relay. Earth First sources estimated each vessel might cost as much as 10 trillion USNA dollars. The political wing of Earth First launched a widely-shared social media campaign attacking the project using the words of US President Dwight Eisenhower some 270 years before:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”
The six initial Hammarskjöld-class destroyers undertake training cruises, c.2228. Earth First sources estimated each vessel might cost as much as 10 trillion USNA dollars.
However, not all of the Hammarskjöld’s capabilities could be kept secret - in 2225, following the Tannerman 224 Incident, it emerged that each vessel was equipped with two 15kt nuclear torpedoes, leading to another round of public controversy. In an embarrassment to the UN, the descendants of Dag Hammarskjöld sued UNPCOM demanding the vessels be renamed.
“Putting nuclear bombs in space is not what my ancestor or the UN he championed stood for,” Karolina Hammarskjöld, the Secretary-General’s descendant, told reporters outside the European Confederation Supreme Court. The case was ultimately dismissed. Meanwhile, the UN attempted to rally support for the project, launching a popular international consultation on the naming of the six vessels, and a media campaign aimed at highlighting the technical and scientific leap forward the vessels represented as much as their defensive capabilities.
Pirates and slavers frequently raided defenseless Earth research stations and commercial facilities. The Hammarskjöld-class was intended to even the odds and fulfill combat missions the plucky but under-armed Lion-class corvette was not suited for.
Secretary-General Koo’s reaction to these campaigns was mixed, sometimes vacillating between soothing those concerned by inequality and development, and other times denouncing those he saw as ‘useful idiots’ for slavers and alien aggression. In a speech to the General Assembly following the Tannerman Incident, Koo was not conciliatory, saying:
“My agenda is not ‘nukes in space’, or ‘Starship Troopers’, or anything else hysterics want to call it. I stand for a simple principle: that the rule of law on Earth should extend to the stars. That our people should be free to partake in this new, hopeful era, without fearing the worst depravities of our past. That Humanity’s relations with other species be conducted, if not with understanding, then at least with mutual caution and respect. And I believe that the silent majority of people across the world stand with me and these principles, which are logical, sensible, and restrained.” Public opinion seemed to bear out Koo’s impression: despite the noisiness of the opposition, approval polls consistently showed majorities in most countries supported the Koo Doctrine, even in the Global South, where the Automatic Ratio Allocation had done much to buttress the Secretary-General’s popularity. As much as the opposition denounced him as a globalist and warmonger, it was a mark of Koo’s political power that he was waved through to a second-term in 2225. As much as they disliked the S-G, the divided and disparate opposition failed to consolidate behind any serious challenger.
A force of UN Lion-class corvettes attack a pirate anchorage. Combat was fierce, and there were rarely prisoners taken in the unforgiving void of space.
A civilian freighter docks with a commercial way station, c.2226. As long as the Earth economy depended on capitalistic exploitation of space, some degree of piracy was probably inevitable.
Meanwhile, in deep space, far from the prying eyes of the Earth media, the battle against piracy, slavery, and uqo’praknarian intrusion continued with new ferocity. Armed with their new vessels and expansive rules of engagement from the Security-Council, UNPCOM pressed the attack with a series of aggressive raids on slaver hideouts and pirate havens. Combat was fierce, and there were rarely prisoners taken in the unforgiving void of space. By Koo’s second term, the Doctrine was working. Pirates and slavers were still a problem - they were practically inevitable given the vast amount of space Earth claimed, and the impossibility of being everywhere at all times - but they now turned and ran at the first sign of Peacekeepers, and had few safe harbors to shelter them.
)
