17
votes
Could an empire rise by economic power?
It's a sort of chicken and egg problem: to fuel an army, you need a supporting economy, and to defend a strong economy you need a supporting army.
So, yes, economic strength is a good starting point ...
- 297k
17
votes
Accepted
Could an empire rise by economic power?
Yes: the Athenian Empire is one such example
A Hegemony is an alliance or confederation where a single state holds all of the practical power and say-so. A Hegemony is not formed by conquest, but ...
- 101k
11
votes
Accepted
What type of geopolitical status quo can lead to perpetual warfare becoming the norm?
Not Politics: Geography.
I think what you are looking for is several large, stable empires that somehow aren't consumed with the desire to destroy each other, yet keep fighting significant wars. Short ...
- 64.2k
10
votes
Could an empire rise by economic power?
Well, yes, obviously
"Could an empire form primarily due to economic strength rather than primarily military strength?" Of course. Sure. Plain obvious. Because, you see, military strength ...
- 94.5k
9
votes
Accepted
Political Relations on an Interstellar Scale
I think the answer to your question lies in the past
As I read your post it reminded me a lot about the economic and political conditions world-wide in the late 1700s during the Age of Sail. Travel ...
- 129k
6
votes
Accepted
The use of Bio-weapons as a deterrent?
There are two fundamental components of a deterrent:
The potential adversaries know that you have it: because if they don't know that you have it, why would the feel deterred?
The potential ...
- 94.5k
6
votes
Sci-fi scenario: Is it possible to detect and either broadcast over or otherwise block satellite comms to and from a geographic area that you control?
Jamming.
Consider the real-world problems of GPS spoofing. There are relatively small and low-powered transmitters and receivers in orbit, relatively small ones in the portable phones, and large and ...
- 119k
5
votes
Political Relations on an Interstellar Scale
Under the current constraints you effectively have the modern world writ large across the stars. Instantaneous, or at least very fast, communication of needs across interplanetary and interstellar ...
- 49.3k
5
votes
Viability of a medieval city without crops
Port. A river or sea shore.
Transporting goods by a river was about 5 times cheaper than by the roads. Transporting over sea - about 5 times cheaper than by the river.
E.g. Rome BC had population of ...
- 3,229
5
votes
What type of geopolitical status quo can lead to perpetual warfare becoming the norm?
If you have powerful states fighting each other, you need both the technological/industrial and political conditions which keep this from becoming a total war which exhausts one or more of the ...
- 119k
4
votes
What type of geopolitical status quo can lead to perpetual warfare becoming the norm?
This is a Frame Challenge
People have been "at war" with one another since the dawn of time. It was a powerful image used in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. The image of the first ape ...
- 129k
4
votes
The use of Bio-weapons as a deterrent?
It is not the weapon itself that is the true deterrent, but the delivery mechanism
I am going to do a quick (heh) segway here and talk about Crime - As a general rule, the severity of the punishment ...
- 32.9k
4
votes
The use of Bio-weapons as a deterrent?
In WWII the 'Doomsday Weapon' was poison gas. It was believed that aircraft could drop enough poison gas to kill whole cities. People were issued with gas masks that would probably have only been good ...
- 11.9k
4
votes
The use of Bio-weapons as a deterrent?
I don't think the deterrence would be the same in conventional warfare.
Radioactivity takes several years to fade away and has no vaccine against it.
This gives nukes a huge advantage in terms of ...
- 297k
3
votes
What would US socialism look like?
In much of the US political debate, socialism is used to describe any position even slightly to the left of Attila the Hun. So how about some kind of warlord imposing
mandatory health insurance for ...
- 119k
3
votes
Ideas for an alternative to nuclear weapons as a deterrent?
Strategic Greenhouse Effect Weapons
Chemical warfare is a good idea, but you are not targeting correctly. Don't aim at soldiers or population, aim at the Ecology.
Losing the Ozone layer is devastating ...
- 17.1k
3
votes
Accepted
Ideas for an alternative to nuclear weapons as a deterrent?
Your country has huge mass drivers (rocket launch sites with sleds) on high mountains, enabling extremely cheap launches of supplies into space. In an era where space colonization is progressing, ...
- 507
3
votes
Ideas for an alternative to nuclear weapons as a deterrent?
How about a virus targeting major internet infrastructure? Maybe the country's cyberwarfare division has cooked up a virus capable of infecting and bricking Tier 1 servers.
Frying a lot of these ...
- 14.3k
3
votes
Ideas for an alternative to nuclear weapons as a deterrent?
Various people have claimed to have invented "the weapon which will put an end to all wars" over the centuries, but only the nuke has ensured, so far, that nobody wanted really to use it ...
- 297k
3
votes
What type of geopolitical status quo can lead to perpetual warfare becoming the norm?
The entire cold war period, from the end of WWII until the collapse of the Iron Curtain, was more or less what you want.
USA and USSR never directly faced each other, but rather fought proxy wars here ...
- 297k
3
votes
Sci-fi scenario: Is it possible to detect and either broadcast over or otherwise block satellite comms to and from a geographic area that you control?
Most usually there is no need for any kind of technical solution.
In the real world companies such as SpaceX need a license in order to provide communications services in a country; in the vast ...
- 94.5k
3
votes
Could an empire rise by economic power?
The Dutch empire originated primarily through economic means. The Dutch East India company especially was an economic entity that gained influence in the East Indies through contracts with local ...
- 3,011
3
votes
Could an empire rise by economic power?
Viva San Marco!
There used to be a tiny town in northern Italy placed in a flat lagoon... then the traders from there rescued the bones of evangelist Marcus and went on a spree of becoming an economic ...
- 16.9k
2
votes
What type of geopolitical status quo can lead to perpetual warfare becoming the norm?
Population control
Two or more large nations are fighting. Is annihilation of the other feasible, or even possible?
Theoretically yes, but in practice it'll be next to impossible. You need to get the ...
- 39k
2
votes
What type of geopolitical status quo can lead to perpetual warfare becoming the norm?
One option I have played with before is a renewable, but temporary resource. For this to work, you need a couple of things.
The resource must be valuable. Having it will give whoever has it a boost ...
- 29
2
votes
The use of Bio-weapons as a deterrent?
If you think it's easy to develop an effective and viable biological weapons program, think again.
The closest a nation ever got was the USSR in the 1970s and '80s, after spending decades and tens of ...
- 3,011
2
votes
The use of Bio-weapons as a deterrent?
Realistically, no
What you're describing would only be useable in a scorched-Earth scenario where, if you can't win, you're going to take the entire planet with you.
You can't target the release of ...
- 17.4k
2
votes
Political Relations on an Interstellar Scale
Even in a realistically-scaled galaxy, some planets will be more desirable than others.
Even resources which are found on a lot of planets all across the galaxy: on a few planets they will be ...
- 49.1k
2
votes
Ideas for an alternative to nuclear weapons as a deterrent?
Dirty Bomb
So, what you want is something that makes a small nation tell the super-nations "If you do anything bad to us, bad things will happen to you", and by "bad things" you ...
- 43.9k
2
votes
Political Relations on an Interstellar Scale
You have a serious problem
Unless all you worlds are included in and I quote 'In-universe some planets naturally produce rare magic crystals which are used to produce infinite-use FTL engines and much ...
- 18.3k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible