Idiran–Culture War

[Default User]

We haven't had a lot of SF discussion lately, so I'll throw something out.

I had read Iain M. Banks's book Look to Windward before Consider Phlebas. The former had a summation of the Idiran–Culture War that forms the background of the latter, which to my recollection is similar to that of the Wikipedia article on the topic:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiran%E2%80%93Culture_War>

My impression when I read it was that the war was, at least in broad strokes, similar to the Pacific War of WWII. That is, a rapidly expanding empire running into a large opponent that they think (or hope) might not have the will to fight if struck early.

As things progress the industrial might of the opponent, now converted to war production, begins to overwhelm them. Opposing forces drive deeper and deeper into captured territory. The war ends when two Idrian stars are induced to explode, wiping out their systems and the populated worlds there.

Obviously, there are significant differences.

So, what do you think? Any merit? Other interpretations?


Brian

[mcdow...@sky.com]

That's a reasonable way for things to go when one side has a much larger industrial capacity that needs some time to be redirected to military purposes - but I never felt that the outcome of anything vs the Culture was in doubt. I always thought that the motto of the Culture was "Our human population might spend most of its time stoned out of its mind, but we're actually so superior to you that we can and will squash you like a bug if we feel like it." - which I guess means either that Iain M. Banks was uncannily prescient or my memory is in fact being influenced by current politics.

[Torbjorn Lindgren]

<mcdow...@sky.com> wrote:
>That's a reasonable way for things to go when one side has a much larger
>industrial capacity that needs some time to be redirected to military
>purposes - but I never felt that the outcome of anything vs the Culture
>was in doubt.

No, there was definitely multiple points where outcome was very much
in question if we accept the appendix in Consider Phlebas.

During the first phase (5 years) Idiran was up against very limited
Culture forces and significant parts of the Culture had split away
from the main section. There was a number of ways the Idirans could
have at least gotten a negotiated settlement during this phase.

During the second phase (~30 years) the Homomdan joined the war on the
Idiran side and they were actually higher tech than the Culture at
that point and clearly with very sigificant industrial capacity.

CP says that the Homomdans really never commited major forces to it
but the little they provided was still enough to mostly balance the
war even with the Culture spun up to full military production.

This implies that the Homomdan's likely could have won the war if they
had cared enough (but they'd get hurt), not exactly "never in doubt".

The third phase started when the Homomdans withdraw from the war after
"receiving certain guarantees from the Culture". At that point it was
obvious to everyone except the Idirans that it was all over except the
kicking.


It's much harder to come up with a realistic threat to the Culture at
say the time of Surface Detail, at that time they seem to have peer
powers but there are no significantly more advanced galactic
civilizations.

I suspect that Abominator-class GOU "Falling Outside The Normal Moral
Constraints" (one of 2000) could have won a fight with a significant
I/C-war fleet (on either side) on it's own, possibly won easily!

Which is there's a need for Sublimed interventions or Outside Context
to get major threats to the Culture during the later eras.

[Daniel Goldsmith]

On 2017-10-17, Default User <defaul...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> We haven't had a lot of SF discussion lately, so I'll throw something out.
>
>

> My impression when I read it was that the war was, at least in broad strokes,
> similar to the Pacific War of WWII. That is, a rapidly expanding empire
> running into a large opponent that they think (or hope) might not have the
> will to fight if struck early.

I'm not sure that this analogy holds. The Idiran and Culture were both in a
rapid expansion phase at the initial outbreak of hostilities, and they held
very different ideas on the ethical rationale for that expansionary impetus.

I guess a more appropriate analogy for the causes of the conflict would be the
Punic Wars, where two rapidly expanding cultures with dramatically opposite
views of the nature of power came into conflict. Remember that the Romans, and
particularly their societal norms, were something utterly alien to the other
Mediterranean powers, such as Carthage and Greece.

> As things progress the industrial might of the opponent, now converted to war
> production, begins to overwhelm them.

I don't think this idea withstands much scrutiny. The Culture doesn't prevail
because of its industrial might, the Culture prevails because of the philosophy
behind this change. The Culture as a Society is over-redundant and strength in
depth made manifest. It had been applying that posture in a deliberately pacific
manner, and it took time and territory to make that into a war machine.

Sorry to quote so much from a book, but there's a passage from _Player of Games_
which i think encapsulates what I'm trying to say here:-

"He gradually remodelled his whole game-plan to reflect the ethos of the
Culture militant, trashing and abandoning whole areas of the board where the
switch would not work, pulling back and regrouping and restructuring where it
would; sacrificing where necessary, razing and scorching the ground where he
had to.

He didn't try to mimic Nicosar's crude but devastating attack-escape,
return-invade strategy, but made his positions and his pieces in the image of a
power that could eventually cope with such bludgeoning, if not now, then later,
when it was ready."

> Opposing forces drive deeper and deeper into captured territory. The war ends
> when two Idrian stars are induced to explode, wiping out their systems and
> the populated worlds there.

I'm not sure where this idea of the ending of the war comes from (Windward,
maybe?). The destruction of stars was a feature only of the early phase of the
War [In 1333 the War Conduct Agreement was amended to forbid the destruction of
populated, non-military habitats (The War, Briefly)].

The War ended because, like Gurgeh, the Culture was capable of coping with any
power which could come against them - they essentially played the Idirans at a
game of Rope-a-Dope. There was no conceivable scenario wherein the Idirans,with
a religious fixation on holding territory could hope to impact negatively on a
power which genuinely didn't give a shit about that. The Culture was willing to
sacrifice where necessary, raze and scorch the ground, thus denying the Idirans
the necessary raw material to prosecute the War.

"The War, Briefly" tells us that after the first three decades, the War
essentially became a grinding down of the Idirans, who, saddled with their
ideology, gradually retreated onto the worlds they had taken, so that within
ten years, the war in space was effectively concluded.

Idir was never 'defeated', they just stopped being able to prosecute the War.
Even the homeplanet's computer network was effectorised and became a Culture
Mind.

> So, what do you think? Any merit? Other interpretations?

I think a more apt analogy from the same period as yours would be the Germans
vs. Soviet element of 'WW2'. Those were two different societies in an expansion
phase, with utterly different ideologies at the core. Like the Culture,the Sovs
fumbled the start of the war, badly, but faced with immediate military power,
they retreated with a scorched-earth policy, moving entire cities and their
infrastructure to more defensible positions. Once they had accomplished that
extraordinary feat, the outcome of their War was never really in doubt. Yes,
there were "great campaigns, successes, failures, famous victories, tragic
mistakes, heroic actions, and the taking and retaking of huge volumes of" land,
but the German war machine was simply eclipsed by the limitless resources
of the Soviets - most especially in the one resource the Germans were so short
of: Lives.

Anyway, thanks for listening. This was (for me) an entertaining and interesting
exercise. Now all I need is for the _Meatfucker_ to come get me off this damned
Rock before the Drumpf burns us all in a fire.

--
dgold