Did it Take the Draka Decades to Pacify Earth?

[RealityBYTES]

From the ending of "The Domination" trilogy, I got the impression that, after the initial assault on America and the rest of the Alliance for Democracy, it took them decades to actually fully occupy and pacify the Alliance territories. This isn't including the decades it was thought it would take to weed Alliance personnel, bases and ships out of the Asteroid Belt.

Is it possible that people in parts of North America and other areas of the Alliance could have actually *not* been under formal Draka occupation/rule for another 20 to 50 years after the initial assault? I mean, we're talking about a thermonuclear war that included the use of biological and computer weapons — both sides were devastated, the Draka just only slightly less so than their Alliance counterparts.

Yes, the Draka eventually did pacify and bring all of Earth and the Solar System under their grip. But I'm left with the impression that a fair number of people in Alliance territories could have actually lived out their lives after The Final War w/o ever actually being turned into serfs or killed off. It's kind of sad, thinking about it: The last of Earth's free people, living their lives as best they could on a devastated world, but watching helplessly as the Draka slowly occupied and pacified former Alliance territories ... knowing that it was only a matter of time before they died out and their descendants would be condemned to lives as Draka "cattle."

So, what are your thoughts?

RealityBYTES (but not when compared to the Draka timeline)

 

[MerryPrankster]

Makes sense.

The Alliance in the Belt could have still been rather dangerous to the Draka if they were willing to be insanely ruthless--waiting until the nuclear winter is over and then drop an asteroid on Archona, for exampe.

I wonder why they didn't buy off ground Alliance personnel with Citzenship like they did with the Alliance people on Luna and apparently elsewhere? Too many of them?

 

[RealityBYTES]

Makes sense.

The Alliance in the Belt could have still been rather dangerous to the Draka if they were willing to be insanely ruthless--waiting until the nuclear winter is over and then drop an asteroid on Archona, for exampe

I think that's a big part of the reason why Archon Eric Von Shrakenberg was able to convince his compatriots that extending Citizenship to Alliance personnel on Luna and beyond was a smart thing to do. Heh. Frederick LeFarge pretty much conceded as much when he called Von Shrakenberg a snake's snake, so to speak (it sounds like the offer split the Alliance personnel into two camps).

Between that and the 100,000 people who left aboard the New America starship, that cleaned up the potential problem of the Asteroid Belt rather nicely, I imagine.

I wonder why they didn't buy off ground Alliance personnel with Citzenship like they did with the Alliance people on Luna and apparently elsewhere? Too many of them?

Probably. You also have to consider the fact that the Draka were racists, and saw themselves as a people to be *superior* to all other humans. With that in mind, there's no way Von Shrakenberg could have swung getting any type of Citizenship for the hundreds of millions of people left in the shattered Alliance territories. To most of the Draka, those people were nothing more than human cattle, to be killed off (as is apparently what happened in North America, for the most part) or allowed to live only as serfs. This view would have only been reinforced by the fact that the Draka had just "won" The Final War — even though, in reality, it'd be decades before the Draka and their citizen/slave armies would be able to fully occupy and pacify all of the Alliance lands.

RealityBYTES

 

[joatsimeon@aol.com]

From the ending of "The Domination" trilogy, I got the impression that, after the initial assault on America and the rest of the Alliance for Democracy, it took them decades to actually fully occupy and pacify the Alliance territories. This isn't including the decades it was thought it would take to weed Alliance personnel, bases and ships out of the Asteroid Belt.

-- pretty much. Tho' the most effective way of pacifying territory, if you're in a hurry and have a strong stomach, is to simply destroy the food supply outside areas you control. Then you wait for the survivors to "come in" and submit.

This is much easier and cheaper than detailed administration. It's fairly quick as far as large numbers of people go, too. A few can hide out in the woods and mountains but millions cannot.

"They make a desert and call it peace", as a Roman described the process.

 

[RealityBYTES]

If anyone would have strong enough stomaches, it would have been the Draka.

Hmm. Did they, in fact, do this? From "Drakon," that's the impression I got, because Gwen said she got back from Pluto just in time to particpate in the last "human hunts" in North America, implying mopping up the last Alliance resistance on that part of Earth. Of course, she could have been stationed near Pluto on the Lionheart for decades, but I'd find that highly unlikely. Perhaps the Dominarch cleaned up North America in 20 years, rather than 50?

It sounds like North America got gutted and turned into a nature preserve. What happened to other areas of the Alliance — such as Australia, the British Isles, Indonesia and southeast Asia? (I didn't mention Japan because I understand they went kamikaze on themselves in The Final War, nuking their own islands into oblivion ... along with Korea.)

RealityBYTES

 

[MerryPrankster]

In one of the "Drakas!" stories, the Draka offered Citizenship to the inhabitants of the British Isles owing to the ethnic kinship (or at least it was discussed--I haven't read the entire book).

Not sure if it's canon though. The anthology was edited by Stirling, so I'm pretty sure it is, but....

 

[David bar Elias]

In one of the "Drakas!" stories, the Draka offered Citizenship to the inhabitants of the British Isles owing to the ethnic kinship (or at least it was discussed--I haven't read the entire book).

Not sure if it's canon though. The anthology was edited by Stirling, so I'm pretty sure it is, but....

That's the story where the Draka take the Channel Islands in the end days of the Eurasian War, right?

 

[Adam]

That's the story where the Draka take the Channel Islands in the end days of the Eurasian War, right?

Yep. The ending was very Draka-ish.

 

[MerryPrankster]

That's the story where the Draka take the Channel Islands in the end days of the Eurasian War, right?

I don't think so...the story I'm thinking about took place during the Final War and involved the discussion of giving Citizenship to the inhabitants of the entire British Isles.

 

[RealityBYTES]

I don't think so...the story I'm thinking about took place during the Final War and involved the discussion of giving Citizenship to the inhabitants of the entire British Isles.

Hmm ... I've got the anthology, and there's nothing about citizenship being extended to the Alliance survivors in the British Isles. There is, however, a Eurasian War-era story about the Draka occupation of one of the Channel islands.

The story appears to detail the dying gasp of the moderate political movement in the Domination.

RealityBYTES

 

[sdrucker]

Is it possible that people in parts of North America and other areas of the Alliance could have actually *not* been under formal Draka occupation/rule for another 20 to 50 years after the initial assault? I mean, we're talking about a thermonuclear war that included the use of biological and computer weapons — both sides were devastated, the Draka just only slightly less so than their Alliance counterparts.

Yes, the Draka eventually did pacify and bring all of Earth and the Solar System under their grip. But I'm left with the impression that a fair number of people in Alliance territories could have actually lived out their lives after The Final War w/o ever actually being turned into serfs or killed off. It's kind of sad, thinking about it: The last of Earth's free people, living their lives as best they could on a devastated world, but watching helplessly as the Draka slowly occupied and pacified former Alliance territories ... knowing that it was only a matter of time before they died out and their descendants would be condemned to lives as Draka "cattle."

So, what are your thoughts?

RealityBYTES (but not when compared to the Draka timeline)

You've touched on a period I've always wondered about in the Draka series. Consider this from Stone Dogs: something like 15% of the Citizens and 25% of the serfs were killed, along with destruction of a large portion of the orbital fabricators, factories, disruption of the infrastructure, etc.

However, every plantation and town had extensive fallout shelters, and they had the time to evacuate as much of the population as possible (the book was very clear about that), plus they STARTED the war that they were prepared to survive. Besides, the plantations were "everywhere", as the standard economic unit in Draka country outside of cities.

They were able to survive as an organized society, with substantial help from the breathing space provided by the offer of Citizenship to Alliance space personnel to help the space-based economics recover.

What did the Alliance have left? Lots of scattered survivor (I don't think there was any quote as to the Alliance number of dead, but IIRC the Alliance was already outnumbered 2 to 1--maybe there's just enough info in TSD to figure out the number, but I don't have the book handy), some Redoubts like that mentioned in Stone Dogs, but every major military facility was destroyed as per the Stone Dogs virus, nuclear attacks, and "kinetic energy bombardments".

Sure, the Draka couldn't project force everywhere in numbers sufficient to wipe out Alliance fallback troops, but so what? All it would have done is give them more serfs/slaves to feed in the first years after the War and wasted their skilled population on messy fighting.

My guess is a short recovery period -- maybe 5-10 years until the nuclear winter's effects start to diminish, and then slow slicing away of the scattered Alliance population. Throw in bioweapons and ruthless killsweeps, complete control of the air and sea, the "dependence on mechanized agriculture" that would likely lead to widespread starvation outside of rural areas of the Alliance territories, and little or no communication between Alliance holdouts, and you get the picture.

If anything, I'd argue that it was worth their while to LET the Alliance survivors start to recover economically, just enough to build up agriculture again, so that the Draka could more efficiently take the areas over and get them working for their economy that much more quickly.

I'm imaging some small-town mayors keeping things together in locales the size of that place in Jericho, with bands of farmers keeping the local people alive, and then one day the Draka helicopters show up.....

As for the Redoubts, Turtledove's "The Last Word" in Drakas! is the start of the story of the military mop-up. I can imagine that Ranger officer in TLW fighting for years, indeed lasting long enough to raise another generation or two of fighters, with steady reduction in his force capability until the Draka either wipe them out, or leave them in a small preserve ala the Finns and Russians were left in TSD. When you have "time...all the time there is", what's it matter whether there's 10 years or 20 years until some Appalachian or Deep South county is occupied?

 

[RealityBYTES]

sdrucker:

You paint a compelling and, ultimately, sad picture that's undoubtably correct.

Hmm. I wonder if the Alliance had an equivalent to Fenris, except instead of being a world-shattering super bomb positioned above a fault line, it was a deeply buried redoubt miles below the Earth's surface. It would have been fully self-sustaining and, perhaps, supports a population of mole people by the time the events of Drakon! unfold.

RealityBYTES

P.S. BTW, we do know that some humans continue to survive on Earth even as late as the 2400s, according to Drakon. Few, yes, and probably throwbacks to Stone Age humans.