I gave the Prime Minister a veto on any proposed military operation, but do not and never have supported an absolute prohibition on “offensive” military operations.
Should the region choose to elect a Prime Minister and appoint a group of Generals who wish to carry out offensive military operations that is fine by me. I think its unlikely, but I don’t see a good reason to write laws prohibiting it.
Define “lawful order” for me and explain what it means in practical terms and I will.
You want civilian control, you have to have orders given by an elected official non negotiable as long as it’s within the laws currently instituted. Otherwise, they can ignore any orders they don’t like, since discipline is a “may” situation under 5.2.
You wanna play army you should at least understand why they have these rules.
I meant in practical NS terms - what situation do you forsee where the SPSF refuses to follow the directions of the CinC?
I can’t predict that many variables, but my philosophy is, better to have a rule and not use it, then need it later on and not have it. It’s not a make or break issue, so if you don’t change it, it won’t bother me enough to vote it down .
It’s not about whether or not a command would be violated. To be a defender region requires codification of defending as our official military paradigm. That’s the whole point. Without the legal guardrails and putting principles into stone, we’re just a region that happens to defend. (Which I know is your preference philosophically, Bel 
) And a region like that, without the reinforcement of defending in our body of law, may drift away from that commitment before people actually realize what’s happened.
We have to actually work at staying a defender region, and that sometimes requires us to not assume military leadership (or their civilian leaders) will never waver without guardrails. If anybody wants to change that, it should through a front-and-center debate, not mission creep.
I’m not entirely against Article 2.3 - I think it’s redundant, silly and limits our options in GP unnecessarily - but allowing the Assembly to vote on individual military operations is just stupid. How attached are you to 2.4?
My main concern is to avoid giving the PM the legal power to micromanage the SPSF. “Promote Belschaft to senior commander” is a lawful order for a CinC to make but I think it’s better to leave general operational and administrative control in the hands of the General Corps - my view of a civilian CinC is that they should set the broad strategic objectives eg “Work more with TITO” or “Focus on operations with our Independent allies and partners” and then let the professional officers make it happen.
Well enough, but isn’t the premise of PM to be savvy enough to know when and when not to issues orders? It’s not like you let any yahoo get the job after all. Do the generals and such carry over from term to term, so that you might have older generals with a new PM, and may want to do things their way instead of what the PM determines is best?
I’m OK with removing Article 2.4. The logic behind it is that if the SPSF embarked on an offensive operation the Assembly disagreed with, the Assembly could order it ended, which I don’t really think is a crazy check to have on the military by any means.
It’s worth noting that Article 2.3 is actually more permissive of offensive operations than the current Charter. Right now, the only way the SPSF can engage in an offensive operation against a non-hateful region is if the Assembly and the Cabinet approve it. This actually deregulates things quite a lot. I was expecting opposition to it to come from the opposite angle (i.e. arguing a firm legal prohibition should still exist).
I think if other regional institutions had reasons they needed further legislative codification or protection of their powers, then it would be justified. As it is, I don’t see a reason for the Ministry of Culture to have a structure beyond “Minister and the people who work for them”. If someone has a proposal and can substantively justify it, then I’d be happy to consider it, but I think rejecting idea for the SPSF that people have substantive justifications for just in the interest of inter-branch equity does a disservice to efforts to improve and regulate a part of the government.
I…am sorry but I can’t understand what you mean with this post. I’ve read it multiple times bu I just can’t fully grasp what you mean.
Your argument, as I understand it, is that “well, this is giving SPSF special treatment that other Ministries don’t get, so I’m opposed to it”.
I think if other Ministries had a reason why they needed legislatively set structure, similar to any of the proposals discussed here, and someone brought a proposal on it, we should debate that proposal on its merits. But I think the proposals here should not be categorically rejected simply because “no other Ministry gets that kind of treatment”.
Conceptually I just don’t understand this. A commander-in-chief is the commander of the entire military, that’s the point of the role. They can promote anybody they want, it’s custom (and often law) that discourages it. We can have laws determining when and how promotions/demotions work. Overall, if the Prime Minister is commander-in-chief but has no power over the General Corps, what exactly would they be commanding?
That’s why I think the general direction we’ve taken with the SPSF over years now has been working towards making it an independent body. The civilian control over the military is in name only, because people generally would find it inappropriate for the Prime Minister to take command over the objection of the General Corps. So we don’t have a civilian commander-in-chief, really.
Maybe nobody’s ready to acknowledge that yet, so I’m shouting into the wind… (tbh, I’m not strongly advocating either way, so maybe I’m just commenting in the direction of the wind lol) I’d view any more limits to the commander-in-chief’s power over the General Corps as just one more step towards the inevitable.
I fear you may be right, and it would be a shame if we continued to move in that direction. Ultimately the military, just like all other executive institutions, should exist to serve the interests of the region as directed by the elected government, not to exist as its own entity devoid of most oversight. I know Generals can be recalled by the Assembly. I would say that’s not the same as having civilian leadership that exercises direct oversight and control over the direction of the military.
I agree that the (legally codified) structure of the SPSF is unnecessarily complex. Its complexity is unnecessary because operational decisions bake down to a simple question: what is our military gameplay alignment?
There are only so many things to do as a raider or defender, and there are only so many people willing to work with raiders or defenders. The most meaningful factor behind what the SPSF actually does is our military alignment as a defender region, and the most meaningful factor behind effective leadership is improving our capabilities as defenders. I’m all for civilian oversight, but I think we should also hold realistic expectations: the game mechanics behind military gameplay are not that flexible, and regardless of what policies we implement, at the end of the day military personnel will be either raiding or defending.
I agree with Glen and Pronoun that the current structure of the General Corps combined with a civilian Minister (or Prime Minister) is needlessly complex and introduces many legal edge cases that would be difficult to resolve. From there, we have two choices: (1) less direct Prime Minister oversight or (2) more direct Prime Minister oversight. Which do we want to take?
I, personally, would be fine with this if we move to a PM-as-CiC model. I will say, it would remove direct Assembly appointment and dismissal of General Corps/senior officers from the law, which exists now. Arguably, that produces less accountability.
Personally, to me it seems like General Corps appointments are largely rubber stamps and General Corps members are not really subjected to much accountability as-is (i.e. in recent memory we’ve had Generals who hadn’t actually updated in months or responded to General Corps discussions for weeks). As a result, if we lost the element of Assembly approval it would be fine with me.
If that’s the case, I wonder if it would not make sense to treat generals as just a position subject to executive appointment. Obviously it would lead to greater seniority and responsibilities, but it could be one that the PM (or their minister) would manage just like ministers now appoint their own deputies from among the people with whom they work best. This shouldn’t mean that we lose institutional memory, because the same people would ideally still be senior officers and be able to lend all their knowledge and expertise.