Are there any works of science fiction wherein international politics are actually prevalent once efficient space travel has been achieved? I'm really somewhat annoyed that most sci-fi universes that I've encountered assume that colonies on other planets do not eventually break away, break apart, and become actual worlds, not just singular nationalities.

The Honor Harrington Series is good. My personal favorite series of his is the one he co-authors with John Ringo (Empire of Man/Prince Roger) but that series is in the multi-author limbo right now.

John Ringo's Polseen Series is pretty good too but its more humans vs aliens.

I would recommend Catherine Asaro's series that started with Primary Inversion but its not really a "political" series in its focus though she does dwell somewhat on international/interstellar tensions.

Because no one is that brash and it might....MIGHT....make interesting reading if you could justify how a planet with 20 Billion plus people can do anything by committe (ie the UN in its current iteration) with out collapsing under its own weight

All the stories I suggested posit a more unified terran presence on earth prior to or soon after the emergence of FTL.

Very good popcorn reads and excellent military fiction as well.

Fallen Dragon by Peter F Hamilton has this as a central thread as well, he touches on it a bit in a couple of his other books, Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained.

Let's say that we eventually colonize a planet named Pretroid. Pretroid's colony develops rapidly, what with the desirable prospects of owning part of another planet, the exotic location, the potential economic gains, etc. Eventually, certain of Pretroid's citizens get the idea that they don't want to be part of the "home colony" and decide to break off from the rest of civilization in order to build up their own social structure.

In essence, Pretroid has gained a secondary, minor nation within a few generations. Wash, rinse, repeat a couple dozen times. The "home" colony/nation of Pretroid is now no other than a minor foothold on Pretroid's populous fronteir, a nation among new (and occasionally hostile) nations.

Suppose one of these new nations, a rapidly expanding one, decides to take advantage of their precedence over the Earthly original colony, and sieze their interplanetary communications and transit capabilities. Wouldn't it catch Earth's attention that their singular foothold on a new planet is now threatened by another nationality that holds no real sympathy for Earth's interests?

Of course, not all Earthly nationalities necessarily want the spacefaring nation to succeed in its attempts to reclaim Pretroid. Other, minor Earthly nations--particularly enemies of the spacefaring nation--will be apt to use desperate measures to make sure that they are the ones in charge of Pretroid, not the already powerful nationality. The weaker hunger for an alliance with the stronger, even if the stronger resides over three light-years away.

All of this is purely hypothetical, of course. But you get the idea.

Now imagine the above scenario with a well-established, well-developed interplanetary system with dozens of alliances, hostilities, civil wars and nationalities. That is what I'm thinking of.

He sort of deals with colony politics that leads to on-planet rebellions while telling a noir-esque story. His main character Takeshi Kovacs is a former UN Envoy, the ones who are Earth's Enforcers.

I think everyone needs to abandon the idea of Single Galactic Government, in whatever shape or form, before we can get to what I'm picturing. Certainly, such things may or may not exist, but if so there will always be rivaling Governments, splinter groups and hostile conglomerates. Alliances between nations on different planets, not just between entire planets, is what I'm looking for.

Remember there is technically a ban of the militarization of space for a reason, namely to keep the various nations from killing each other. Remember Goldeneye, it may have been a bond movie but the whole notion of a space based weapons platform is the single scariest thing anyone on earth can think about.

The second thing is the ability to shoot down things in space from the ground which is why that Chinese sattellite killing missile is such a big deal.

You can try to make this kind of story work but you're going to have to do a lot and I mean a lot of back bending to convince SF readers who've read everything from Dune to Star Wars that says he who owns space owns the planet.

there can be rival factions but unless you're universe features a land grab method of colonization all colonies would likely be centerally governed as a simple outgrowth of the original settlement's governing system.

You could in theory I suppose postulate that separate nations on like China and the US establish rival bases that grow into rival nations but again you're still missing the simple reality of space flight.

For interstellar wars, look to the 1700s and 1800s for ideas. One can figure there is a long travel time and communications time between worlds. The slowness of the communications can cause serious problems to esculate. The War of 1812 was over a law the English Parlament passed. It was repealed a week before the war broke out, but news of the repeal did not arrive in time to stop the war.

A government with a single powerful head, surrounded by elite people as leaders, will be more likely to go to war than a government that is represents the people that are governed.

Give your governments strong leaders, have a misunderstood communications that is taken as a slight, and let tensions develop from there. Perfectly natural way to lead to war.

The cost for the spacefleet vs. the cost for a relatively small number of shoulder-mounted rocket launchers--or whatever other AA weaponry you can think up--is just too obscenely wasteful. It'd be like throwing a modern space shuttle with a machine gun over the Middle-East; someone will shoot it down, and the rocket won't cost much compared to the spacecraft it just wasted.

Add in the factor of guerilla weaponry and warfare, and the spacefleet is positively screwed. Unless the spacefaring nation decides to nuke Pretroid, in which case everyone else on Earth will nuke the spacefaring nation.

International interplanetary relations have their repercussions, you see.

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there can be rival factions but unless you're universe features a land grab method of colonization all colonies would likely be centerally governed as a simple outgrowth of the original settlement's governing system.

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It's a colony that's at least two lightyears from its home nation. Things can and probably will go wrong. Look at what happened to the United States and Britain. Britain was only a few months away, and the US became its own nation within a couple hundred years.

Not to mention TACP.

Ask a grunt who's butt has been saved by these and they'll tell you air superiority is a must.

True IED's/Terrorism makes Iraq different kind of conflict but this current conflict has a much to do with "war" as the IRA bombing campaigns were "war." However, major operations like Fallujah had hordes of air power. In fact it was Air Power which created most of the more scandalous damage.

The following is strictly a tactical observation not a politcal one. The GOTW is simply nice packaging for a global scale police action being done by military with the price for that packaging being paid by soliders, sailors, airmen and marines.

For example do you know that there is no universal definition of "asymmetrical" threat because each service has different symmetry and no one wants to use somebody else definition because then they don't get the equipment they want.

Like I said, nothings Perfect but if you have a choice always choose to be on the side with bigger guns.

Edited for self censorship

Now that I fully understand the importance of air superiority in any given modern/future war, is there any real chance that scientific discoveries may eventually level the battlefield in regards to air power? That is, is there any chance that current or future militaristic developments will be able to counter the efficiency of air-to-ground superiority?

the single biggest (not necessarily most likely) chance is a directed EMP burst. Directed EMP weapons that could be directed via something like a microwave dish would be devastating to the slow moving aircraft that directly supports ground mission. These include the AC-130, the A-10, and all rotorwing air craft.

Or instead of attacking the planes you could focus on rendering the munitions useless. An advanced version of this Medium Range Air Defense Battery or this European Defense Contractor's Skyshieldcould in theory negate even the best "smart" bomb.

Also, shielding technology might help some . Tactically there would likely still be a level of munition (ie really huge bombs) that would penetrate the shield but the collateral damage would simply be too high for most "civilized" or "respectable" people to think about deploying them.

The biggest problem is here are the laws of physics as we currently understand them. Yet SF is not bound by how we understand the world today.

An excellant author who does this is Lois McMaster Bujold who creates tech out of thin air with only the underlying premise but not technical details.

Examples include the "sword swallower" is a device that generates a field of energy which absorbs laser beams. She also has "plasma mirrors" that apparently redirect the energy from plasma weapons away.

Bujold does not write "hard" SF and thus does not even attempt to explain how this works.

You don't have to explain how your "equalizer" works in technical detail but you do need to make me believe it.

[This message has been edited by Matt Lust (edited June 21, 2007).]

The second Richard Morgan book also touches on the subject and is an awful good read.

LAstly The Fallen Dragon by Peter Hamilton is about multi-national conglomerates performing "asset realization" on fledgling colonies (basically armed government endorsed piracy).

You have the original Galactic empire and you have the Foundling worlds and they completely break contact. Then even among the foundling worlds you have them waring among each other and creating colonies of their own, and trying to take over the "mother" planet. Then near the end of that book they realize that the Galactic empire still exists and are trying to decide what to do about it.

You do have to central Government, but each of the Foundling worlds have their own government and don't necessarily follow the parent government.