Point / Counterpoint: Military Creation Act

A Protected Republic is Long Overdue
By Republic Judicial Terrinald Screed

The basic reality we must all face is simple: the Jedi cannot be everywhere. I say this with all due respect to the august order that has staved off warfare for a millennium. But the rules have change. Warfare has moved beyond the scope of a small number of protectors armed with energy blades.

Warships can deliver explosive payloads from beyond the horizon, payloads not even the most skilled Jedi could hope to deflect. The Republic’s climate and lenient laws have fomented private armies of prodigious size. Droid armies are now cheaper, quicker and easier to maintain than Sector Forces. Furthermore, Sector Forces can now be turned against us, with more and more seceding from the Republic.

If the Separatists consolidate their military might, then what would we have to protect us? It takes an army to fight an army. When serene Naboo fell to a rogue Trade Federation venture a decade ago, how was the otherwise defenseless planet able to repulse the invasion? By turning to the amassed army of the indigents. Even such a primitive culture recognized the need to maintain a standing military in the times of peace.

To the peacemakers, I extend my respect. I do not want my child to grow up knowing war. But I do want my child to know the Republic, and I fear that our current course will not allow for it. We cannot rely on our enemies to be enlightened as we are. If warfare is inevitable, it is the Separatists who will fire the first shot. Should we not have the means to deflect that fire?

Relying on Planetary Security or Sector Forces is a stop-gap solution, as the inefficiencies of the Stark Hyperspace War so painfully demonstrated. The solution is obvious — a unified military coordinated from Coruscant. Our ancient history has proven this has time and again — the Great Sith War, the Kanz Disorders, the Virujansi Uprising — times when a unified Republic Navy and Army were strong. And now, as then, there is still a role for the Jedi in today’s galaxy: leading an army to victory.

We Are Inviting This War
By Caamasi Senator Eeshrin Ot’Hyne

We, the Republic, stand at a crossroads, and the lessons of the past risk being forgotten to appease anxious constituents. The Senators are gathering the opinions of their sectors and worlds, to find that reason and forethought have been replaced with fear.

The panacea for that fear, the militarists would have you believe, is an army. But that promise is hollow. Violence begets violence, and equipping ourselves for violence will lead to an inevitable and bloody course.

Throughout the galaxy examples of this cycle are plainly evident. Arms races have destroyed nations and sundered planets. Do we need entire sectors — entire regions — the entire Republic — set ablaze before we recognize the danger?

There has not been a full-scale war in the Republic for a thousand years, as our instruments of diplomacy and defense have sufficed until now. Their effectiveness have faltered not because they are flawed in premise, but rather in implementation.

What Finis Valorum said on the eve of the Stark Hyperspace War holds true to this day. “We must address the underlying causes that would lead us to war — and then there would be no war.” He never had the chance as the militarists tainted the proceedings, resulting in death and injury. Let us not repeat that mistake.

The militarists are inviting this war for their own ends. Public funds better spent on the Diplomatic Corps or the Refugee Relief Movement will be redirected to their pockets. They will no doubt need to be bolstered with corporate subsidies. The Republic will be indebted to the engines of commerce for its protection.

And a generation or more will forever be scarred by war.