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I asked a similar question a few years ago but now that we have a complete story I think the question can be revisited.

In light of the almost perfect purge that Palpatine carries out against the Jedi and his history of using opposing factions to his own ends can we make an argument that the rebel alliance is used and exists for his own purposes.

When one considers the sheer military disparity between these forces. When you can have a world building cap ships at will in enemy hands (Mon Calamari) and senators openly sympathetic, some funnelling funds and weapons to this same Alliance is it possible that Palpatine's leadership could be so inept as to allow the Alliance to flourish after his masterful campaign durting his seizure of power?

Take some of these events into account as well.

The Alliance is created during ROTS era yet it takes nearly 20 years to actually win a victory. (ANH Crawl) Is it possible Palpatine allowed them to exist as a thorn in his side to provide an enemy to his perfect Order. As long as there is a rebel alliance there is a reason for militirization and opression.

The Alliance's series of victories at Yavin and afterwards sends Lord Vader out to the Outer Rim and away from Coruscant just when he's starting to icth to replace Palpatine.

The Battle of Endor is completely orchestrated to: destroy the Alliance, bring Luke Skywalker into the Sith and eliminate the threat of Darth Vader. When one takes into account just how long thinking Palpatine is can we be sure that the Rebel Alliance wasn't simply a tool for him to maintain his Empire and when he finally was able to get rid of the beaurcracy it became a tool to nurture Luke Skywalker and finally give him the lever with which to make him turn?

What are your thoughts on this? Do we give Palpatine too much credit?

An interesting thought, and I do believe that before Yavin, Palpatine may have allowed the rebels to avoid notice so that he could have a reason for such a massive military buildup. However, after the DS was destroyed, I believe that Palpatine finally started wising up and his efforts after that incident began to focus on luring them out and destroying them (although, certainly, Endor was orchestrated.)

While I doubt he planned on losing the DS, it didn't really affect his plans. The Rebels were still pwnzored, they were still massively outclassed, and Big Brother-style they drew out all the malcontents and naysayers. I believe dissolving the senate was the first step towards destroying the rebels: without politics, they weren't needed as a prod anymore.

wow, this is Thrawn-level thinking here...

the Rebel Alliance gave him an enemy to "fight", and to keep at least some public opinion of him good.

I always figured that one of the reason why the Emperor never went full out until after ANH was because he wanted a Big Brother type of enemy like Goldstein hanging around.............

If you go by WEG then yes! The Imperial government and COMPNOR specifically, used the rebel threat to keep the citizens in line. Even going so far as having imperial agents pose as rebels to engage in terrorist style attacks on the populace. Lord Vader also employed similar tactics, using hi agent Jixton. Oh yeah, they no about the rebels, and the rebels are a non-threat. However they make for an excellent propaganda tool.

ROTS: ICS even goes so far to say that the imperials use the threat of sepratist hold outs (why does this make me think of Japanese hold outs from WW2), dissident Rebels, and barbarian invaders (Chiss? Vong?), as an excuse for continued military spending and crack downs.

For the twenty years between ROTS and ANH, I think Palpatine coasted on the 'clean up the Sepertists' bit. While I'm sure he expected a rebellion, thus needed a huge StarFleet of keep his power, I doubt he specifically feared or knew about the actual 'Alliance'.

It seems that Bail Organa and Mothma took their time to create the cell network to protect themselves. This took a shit load of time but payed off, I doubt Palpatine would have allowed Organa or Mothma to live, let alone stay in the Senate, if he actually knew they were developing such a large network. I'm sure he used 'rebel sympathies' to remove political enemies or rivals, so that Organa and Mothma were still there lends that the Emperor didn't know about them.

Once it was reveled that there was a rebellion, I'm sure Palpatine took as much advantage of it as possible. That should be a given. But I don't think Palpatine 'made' the rebellion like he did the 'clone wars'.

In fact, as I think I mused on your original thread Strav, I actaully think Palpatine sewed the seeds of his own defeat, and not just with the Choosen One.

Palpy made the Sepertists and started the war. Now he did it to gain power but it also showed an old and traditional nation that you could rebel against the machine. Twenty years later, when the goverment turns to shit and things are bad, the population could remember back to a time when things were bad and the goverment was shit, and what did they do? Rebel, fight. The Sepertists lead the way in that thinking and proved to be a role model two decades later.

Granted, the Sepertists wanted their own chunk of land while the Rebellion wanted to just overthrow the goverment, but the Sepertist showed that you could fight against the goverment. That the citizens could go against the powers that be.

I think this was an unintended consequence of Palpatine using both against the middle.

I doubt Mon Calamari was openly and directly independent and Rebel-affiliated; try "wink wink nudge nudge" aid with their pleasure liners sometimes getted refitted under the table for the rebels by the nominally loyal government. Think Syria with the Iraq insurgency.