Sky Captain wrote:It sounds like very risky strategy especially when alternative is just signing some papers which can be canceled later when alien fleet leaves. What if an attack against orbiting fleet fails and only provokes large scale retaliation? Anything can happen when confronting unknown technologically superrior culture which from human point of wiew already acts irrationally.
From the point of view of a major government-
Yes, you're right to be cautious. On the other hand, what guarantee do we have that the aliens will
ever leave? Or that they won't come back? In the original RAR Zor says the aliens are planning to transfer some walking killbots to the British military over a period of several years; that implies that at least some of the aliens will be sticking around.
There is a truism in international relations that once you submit to blackmail or the threat of force, it's very hard to stop. In this case, objectively the consequences of submission to the aliens' demands look less bad than the consequences of a war fought with weapons of mass destruction on American soil. You are absolutely right about that. The thing that will weigh in the minds of politicoes and strategists is that these are not necessarily the last demands the aliens will make.
Also, it is very hard to accurately assess just how badly they have us outgunned, without trying to fight them and finding out the hard way. So some people will underestimate their fighting power.
Zixinus wrote:How can we know that their first warfare move isn't to burn the White House and Pentagon preemptively? The USA has back-up hierarchies in place, sure, but will they be ones that are willing to, or are even capable of surrender? I am talking about being politically able to surrender, not just legal capability. If they do the above, the back-up government may find themselves in a situation where anyone seriously considering surrender is viewed fanatically as a traitor and killed without considering the idea.
That level of fanaticism is very unlikely, although I can certainly imagine a 'defeatist' general being restrained by a peer or subordinate and confined to quarters if they sincerely think he's suffered some sort of breakdown. By and large, chain of command is pretty strong and the military leaders aren't completely insane. The problem is simply that very few people in either the military or civilian hierarchy of a major government are likely to surrender
without even trying to fight back.
You're Hungarian, think about what happened in 1956. It had to be obvious to the new post-uprising government that once Soviet troops were committed in early November, they weren't going to be able to win or secure the independence of the new government against Soviet wishes.
This is a pretty good analogy for an alien invasion in overwhelming force that demands submission to foreign overlords, and indeed there were probably
more Hungarians willing to consider just quietly surrendering to the Red Army than there would be Americans willing to consider just quietly switching back to "God Save the Queen" without a fight.
The real worrisome thing is, if Simon is indeed right about this "surrender is an absolutely unacceptable option" mentality, is that millions are going to die, only to end up with the same thing if they surrendered more-or-less right away.
To be fair, the US isn't 1940s-era Japan. The leadership isn't completely insane and can at least reasonably conceive of yielding in the face of superior force. US military commands will not be completely insane and yelling "DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR!" as the giant orbital death lasers spiral in to obliterate them.
On the other hand, US nuclear doctrine is pretty explicit about
not yielding in the face of a mere threat to use weapons of mass destruction against us, and responding to an actual WMD attack with WMD of our own.
Even civilian political leadership is going to be reluctant to completely give up even trying to resist, without so much as testing whether or not our weapons have any effect on them. Consider how shameful it would be to have surrendered to someone, if it turns out you could have easily defeated them, if only you'd been willing to fight them in the first place....
And the USA does not have to surrender permanently, or really at all. As far as humans are concerned, this is just a misunderstanding that can be most easily resolves by shuffling papers and agreements and signatures back-and-forth until the aliens are either satisfied or go away. One could arrange secretly staged demonstrations or token attacks to satisfy the necessity of trying to avoid violence as much as possible.
This is actually the part that offers the most hope of a peaceful resolution: President Obama or his successor calling the British and going "seriously, what, did you put them up to this?" and some kind of sneaky arrangement being made in which the British basically spoof the aliens into going away.
What hinges on this going one way or another, is how do the military leaders of the USA would react and how much power they have over the the final decision on the matter. It may also depend on who is currently in power and how they would react.
As long as there is a civilian chain of command, the military is supposed to, and in my opinion will, listen to them.
On the other hand, the military might act on its own initiative if they think they're being invaded by aliens: if key government facilities are destroyed without warning, or large armies start landing on US soil, the military is likely to deploy forces and prepare to fight back to the limit of its ability, even while it continues to try and get a communications channel open to someone who has the authority to issue them orders.
