"Foreign" troops, even invited, make poor planetary administrators. They make great muscle. Thus, the relatively smoothness within the Hegemony to the Amaris takeover is another point to an organized conspiracy of at minimum like-minded individuals. An anti-Cameron faction tired of the line and willing to overturn them by any means--including setting up the House Lords for Simon Cameron's dead; we do have mention via Ghost Bears in 3080 that the SLIC and HCIB investigated this death, and then dropped it! Consider this a bread-crumb on the path to concluding that the Star League's intelligence agency community widely viewed themselves as separate, insular, and free to act as they wished. Note that the IRL political environment that influenced the fall of the Star League includes the Church Committee hearings, which publicized for the first real time how intelligence work can go rogue in systematic ways.
The lack of evidence of fact-finding investigations points to some tacit understanding of this by the great houses, AND a tacit understanding that Kerensky buried it all under laser-fried rubble while rooting out the remnants (that he could find). By that point the only unified action the Lords could agree on was to fire him, which either reflects his integrity versus such a deep conspiracy, or fear of his power and efficiency in being last-man-standing. Take your pick.
Back to Amaris; while his actions have been done to death, there is one figure who has not received the attention she may deserve: Taborri Amaris. From what we know that woman came in with modest intelligence, great physical attraction, and an endless well of vindictive rage. All, to which, Stephan was quite devoted apparently. It's a lethal combination, quite unrefined (appropriate to her background) and may very well explain the spiraling descent of Amaris' rule into ruthless and quite indiscriminate violence where a more cultured and diplomatic hand (such as Stephan supposedly was) would have succeeded with more unity.
In sum: it's plausible the deep intelligence community of the Hegemony wanted the Camerons gone and one of "theirs" on the throne as they'd done to the Rim Worlds centuries before. What they got was one of their own--an intelligent and refined operator capable of carrying a long-job through, but wrapped around the petty finger of a vindictive concubine.
When I reviewed my BattleTech knowledge this past May, one of the questions I was struggling with was how a Lord and his Periphery managed to gain power on Terra. The Star League sourcebook seems to answer this question, but after reading it, I find it very superficial. I understand that CGL is a relatively small startup (10+ years old, but some companies get stuck in puberty), Weisman has stepped away from BattleTech once again, and overall, the lore is being handled by veterans like Stackpole and Randall. There's no one to say, "Guys, let's go over the lore, involve the fans, and try to plug the holes." Although, maybe that's for the best. In any case, your explanation that Stefan Amaris was connected to the Hegemony Central Intelligence Bureau and, in large part, thanks to that, pulled off his coup seems simple and logical. I'm surprised that, after all these years of BattleTech, this information hasn't been reflected in the Sarna or fan theories (or maybe I just haven't been paying attention). Of course, some will say, "since it's not written in the resources, it's speculation." Our community (or mine, in our country, is made up of people over 40, very conservative, clan-loving people) is sometimes orthodox in some matters, but in my opinion, your explanation is much better than the answer "he was cunning" or "history did not preserve the details."
When reading this post, I immediately thought of the book "Dictators and their Secret Police: Coercive Institutions and State Violence". In that book, they lay out a fundamental dilemma for the rulers.
"Coercive institutions are a dictator’s final defense in pursuit of political survival, but also his chief obstacle to achieving that goal. This book argues that autocrats face a coercive dilemma: whether to organize their internal security apparatus to protect against a coup, or to deal with the threat of popular unrest. Because coup-proofing calls for fragmented and socially exclusive organizations, while protecting against popular unrest demands unitary and inclusive ones, autocrats cannot simultaneously maximize their defenses against both threats. When dictators assume power, then, they must (and do) choose which threat to prioritize."
"It begins from the premise that autocrats who want to stay in power must simultaneously defend themselves from two different internal threats: threats from the population and threats from elites, especially elites in the coercive apparatus itself. In practice, most autocrats deal with a combination of these threats at any given point in time. In constructing a coercive apparatus, however, they face a fundamental organizational tradeoff between addressing the risk of popular overthrow or coup-proofing against rival elites. Coup-proofing calls for an internally fragmented and socially exclusive security force, while managing popular unrest requires a unitary apparatus with broadly embedded, socially inclusive intelligence networks."
Many Authoritarian rulers are primarily worried about a coup. They have multiple, fragmented and competing, intelligence agencies to protect against a coup by a singular intelligence agency.
Your description of events presents Hegemony intelligence as a more unitary organization, that could effectively detect popular unrest. Your descriptions also have the Hegemony as a more inclusive organization, which enables it to have accurate feelers out in Marik space, as well as the Periphery. If they were simply an old boy's club of Terran elites, that would have made them less likely to be able to gather accurate intelligence on members of the Star League, and the Periphery. This kind of organizational form, unfortunately for the Camerons, put the Hegemony at greater risk for a coup.
It is precisely the desire for “ever-vigilant eyes”, as Jonathan Cameron put it, that led to vulnerability at the hands of the HCIB. If the Camerons had been primarily worried about a coup by the intelligence services, they would have had multiple fragmented and exclusive intelligence agencies, which would have poorly managed the Star League. But by having a unitary and inclusive intelligence service, they opened themselves up to a coup by those same intelligence services.
the Amaris coup is for me like the Clans, unbelievable...For me the Numbers don't work...
So many Regiments more brought into TH, well no, not really...
But FASAnomics was and is still my biggest problem with battletech lore...
Birth Rates, Troop Numbers, Clans, a SW Company of Mechs to conquer a planet, well, fun but not realistic...
for the HCIB, well as seen in other instances at real life, the fish starts to stink from the head down...
or to say it more directly the Failure was i guess a bit of all above and morons in their Job, also those who are always yelling wolf and everybody stopped listening. also there could be some communication failure happened to the mix...
Was Amaris a HCIB official, i doubt it, no source mention something like that, but later it was reframed as SL Civil War, so maybe there will be some IlClan source be found who will say amaris was someone in SL, besides being "Lord" of the Rim Worlds...But i doubt this one...
What i could see that his family business was intelligence, why not a cousin or some other relative in the right place, well no resource mention something like that, but given that family business thing in SL (BT) i would not to be far stretched...
I remember reading he was busy before the coup, talking to the industry, to all kinds of Noble people... so maybe there were also some nobles in the HCIB...
for the poll, i think all of, nothing of it and all in between, also bad communication, morons in job and well as you mentioned 9/11 the fact that no one could have imagined before it happens..
afterwards you can see the pieces form the picture...
"Foreign" troops, even invited, make poor planetary administrators. They make great muscle. Thus, the relatively smoothness within the Hegemony to the Amaris takeover is another point to an organized conspiracy of at minimum like-minded individuals. An anti-Cameron faction tired of the line and willing to overturn them by any means--including setting up the House Lords for Simon Cameron's dead; we do have mention via Ghost Bears in 3080 that the SLIC and HCIB investigated this death, and then dropped it! Consider this a bread-crumb on the path to concluding that the Star League's intelligence agency community widely viewed themselves as separate, insular, and free to act as they wished. Note that the IRL political environment that influenced the fall of the Star League includes the Church Committee hearings, which publicized for the first real time how intelligence work can go rogue in systematic ways.
The lack of evidence of fact-finding investigations points to some tacit understanding of this by the great houses, AND a tacit understanding that Kerensky buried it all under laser-fried rubble while rooting out the remnants (that he could find). By that point the only unified action the Lords could agree on was to fire him, which either reflects his integrity versus such a deep conspiracy, or fear of his power and efficiency in being last-man-standing. Take your pick.
Back to Amaris; while his actions have been done to death, there is one figure who has not received the attention she may deserve: Taborri Amaris. From what we know that woman came in with modest intelligence, great physical attraction, and an endless well of vindictive rage. All, to which, Stephan was quite devoted apparently. It's a lethal combination, quite unrefined (appropriate to her background) and may very well explain the spiraling descent of Amaris' rule into ruthless and quite indiscriminate violence where a more cultured and diplomatic hand (such as Stephan supposedly was) would have succeeded with more unity.
In sum: it's plausible the deep intelligence community of the Hegemony wanted the Camerons gone and one of "theirs" on the throne as they'd done to the Rim Worlds centuries before. What they got was one of their own--an intelligent and refined operator capable of carrying a long-job through, but wrapped around the petty finger of a vindictive concubine.
When I reviewed my BattleTech knowledge this past May, one of the questions I was struggling with was how a Lord and his Periphery managed to gain power on Terra. The Star League sourcebook seems to answer this question, but after reading it, I find it very superficial. I understand that CGL is a relatively small startup (10+ years old, but some companies get stuck in puberty), Weisman has stepped away from BattleTech once again, and overall, the lore is being handled by veterans like Stackpole and Randall. There's no one to say, "Guys, let's go over the lore, involve the fans, and try to plug the holes." Although, maybe that's for the best. In any case, your explanation that Stefan Amaris was connected to the Hegemony Central Intelligence Bureau and, in large part, thanks to that, pulled off his coup seems simple and logical. I'm surprised that, after all these years of BattleTech, this information hasn't been reflected in the Sarna or fan theories (or maybe I just haven't been paying attention). Of course, some will say, "since it's not written in the resources, it's speculation." Our community (or mine, in our country, is made up of people over 40, very conservative, clan-loving people) is sometimes orthodox in some matters, but in my opinion, your explanation is much better than the answer "he was cunning" or "history did not preserve the details."
When reading this post, I immediately thought of the book "Dictators and their Secret Police: Coercive Institutions and State Violence". In that book, they lay out a fundamental dilemma for the rulers.
"Coercive institutions are a dictator’s final defense in pursuit of political survival, but also his chief obstacle to achieving that goal. This book argues that autocrats face a coercive dilemma: whether to organize their internal security apparatus to protect against a coup, or to deal with the threat of popular unrest. Because coup-proofing calls for fragmented and socially exclusive organizations, while protecting against popular unrest demands unitary and inclusive ones, autocrats cannot simultaneously maximize their defenses against both threats. When dictators assume power, then, they must (and do) choose which threat to prioritize."
"It begins from the premise that autocrats who want to stay in power must simultaneously defend themselves from two different internal threats: threats from the population and threats from elites, especially elites in the coercive apparatus itself. In practice, most autocrats deal with a combination of these threats at any given point in time. In constructing a coercive apparatus, however, they face a fundamental organizational tradeoff between addressing the risk of popular overthrow or coup-proofing against rival elites. Coup-proofing calls for an internally fragmented and socially exclusive security force, while managing popular unrest requires a unitary apparatus with broadly embedded, socially inclusive intelligence networks."
Many Authoritarian rulers are primarily worried about a coup. They have multiple, fragmented and competing, intelligence agencies to protect against a coup by a singular intelligence agency.
Your description of events presents Hegemony intelligence as a more unitary organization, that could effectively detect popular unrest. Your descriptions also have the Hegemony as a more inclusive organization, which enables it to have accurate feelers out in Marik space, as well as the Periphery. If they were simply an old boy's club of Terran elites, that would have made them less likely to be able to gather accurate intelligence on members of the Star League, and the Periphery. This kind of organizational form, unfortunately for the Camerons, put the Hegemony at greater risk for a coup.
It is precisely the desire for “ever-vigilant eyes”, as Jonathan Cameron put it, that led to vulnerability at the hands of the HCIB. If the Camerons had been primarily worried about a coup by the intelligence services, they would have had multiple fragmented and exclusive intelligence agencies, which would have poorly managed the Star League. But by having a unitary and inclusive intelligence service, they opened themselves up to a coup by those same intelligence services.
thank you, i've just added the book to my wishlist!
well written and summarized...
the Amaris coup is for me like the Clans, unbelievable...For me the Numbers don't work...
So many Regiments more brought into TH, well no, not really...
But FASAnomics was and is still my biggest problem with battletech lore...
Birth Rates, Troop Numbers, Clans, a SW Company of Mechs to conquer a planet, well, fun but not realistic...
for the HCIB, well as seen in other instances at real life, the fish starts to stink from the head down...
or to say it more directly the Failure was i guess a bit of all above and morons in their Job, also those who are always yelling wolf and everybody stopped listening. also there could be some communication failure happened to the mix...
Was Amaris a HCIB official, i doubt it, no source mention something like that, but later it was reframed as SL Civil War, so maybe there will be some IlClan source be found who will say amaris was someone in SL, besides being "Lord" of the Rim Worlds...But i doubt this one...
What i could see that his family business was intelligence, why not a cousin or some other relative in the right place, well no resource mention something like that, but given that family business thing in SL (BT) i would not to be far stretched...
I remember reading he was busy before the coup, talking to the industry, to all kinds of Noble people... so maybe there were also some nobles in the HCIB...
for the poll, i think all of, nothing of it and all in between, also bad communication, morons in job and well as you mentioned 9/11 the fact that no one could have imagined before it happens..
afterwards you can see the pieces form the picture...