I have been lurking on this thread for a while and finally decided to register. Enjoying this quest and its side content, genuinely a better continuation of the story than canon.
Welcome aboard. Glad to have you here. That canon continuation of the story can be filed at this point under standard EA idiocy.
Mercy is a weapon.
If you hold high-ranking Nod officers accountable for their crimes, then high-ranking Nod officers are far less likely to cooperate. If all you have to look forward to is a firing squad or life in prison, then fighting to the death for Kane's Glorious Vision is a much more attractive offer.
General Cherdenko was a major Nod warlord, so the odds are good that he's committed some seriously awful crimes. But he's cooperating with us, so it's very unlikely that we'll put him on trial. If Krukov's top advisor offers to share everything in exchange for a grand reward, the most likely response is "Where would you like your mansion, sir?" If we reward and cultivate treason in our enemies, we weaken the bonds of trust and loyalty that Nod relies on to function as an insurgency.
Imagine Colonel Markovic. Markovic is a profoundly bad woman. After she was wounded in combat during TW3, she managed to get a nice, cushy job on the rear lines, dealing with GDI sympathizers and "GDI sympathizers". Her hands are drenched in the blood of the innocent. She's trusted with overseeing the security of a major research facility in India because her boss thinks she's a truly dedicated woman.
Unfortunately, her boss is a True Believer, and her whole unit is going to Russia to oversee the test of their new bioweapons. It will be a nice chance to get back in the field and kill GDI personally. Markovic is less than fond of this idea, because her last field assignment cost her an arm and a leg. Literally.
So she's reached out with information about a major Indian bioweapons project, and you're a senior InOps officer. Colonel Markovic wants a full pardon, a comfortable apartment, and a pension that ensures she won't ever have to work again. What do you say?
Or imagine General Namsrai. General Namsrai is a Nod warlord, but with emphasis on the warlord rather than the Nod. He's a bad person, and his subordinates are bad people. They are in charge of a substantial portion of Eastern Russia, which they have secured through lots and lots of murder. They pay tribute to Krukov.
Unfortunately, Krukov suspects that Namsrai is plotting against him. He already despised Namsrai for his lack of faith and his atrocities against Nod civilians, and now he can't even rely on him to obey. Krukov has decided to dispose of Namsrai as soon as it's convenient, but Namsrai has gotten word about his future retirement package.
He's offered to defect to GDI with his army, which would severely damage Krukov's operations in Eastern Russia. He just wants a full amnesty for himself and his men, a great deal of money, and appointment as the local military governor in GDI's name. He's willing to give up the last demand, but not the first two.
What do you say?
An.....interesting paradigm on mercy in war.
Life in prison if it actually is a life instead of just survival can have it's own appeal as a means of getting a warlord to disarm.
General Cherdenko is not getting a mansion. He is getting a home in GDI and a well to do one, but since he flipped because he was caught and not because of any other change of heart I doubt InOps will let him have something more than a gilded cage. Which to a NOD warlord is probably a definition of heaven anyways.
I'm imagining Colonel Markovic and I'm imagining InOps saying yes, but you work in our labs now to her offer. It wouldn't be the first time enemy war criminal scientists were drafted into allies by being given a better more quiet life.
Imagining General Namsrai I think he'd just get a different kind of Gilded Cage from General Cherdenko, but yeah InOps would say yes as they are now.
Thing is this only works because of NOD obscurantism and a lack of Panopticon Implosion in this world. If we can cause this world to suffer a Panopticon Implosion trough GDI reaching out to both Yellow and Red Zone populations, which we are already doing trough accepting refugees and negotiations with the Forgotten, then we get to just offer fancy jail cells to Cherdenko and Namsrai instead of fancy homes. Markovic would still get her deal though.
I definitely agree with you, but read the sentence I emphasised. I know mercy is a weapon, but it should be applied sparingly. If someone's usefulness doesn't cover their crimes, let them hang. For those who come to us when our victory is certain, justice must be served.
Unless they can offer anti-Scrin tech since better preparing for the next war is something some members of NOD could conceivably offer us.
Will retribution bring back the dead?
N/A. Retribution is not about the dead, but the living the dead left behind.
We are entirely in agreement. The carrot wouldn't be nearly as convincing without the stick, and those who choose to fight long past the point when hope is lost cannot expect the same terms as those who defect while the outcome is still in question. Criminals with a plea bargain must bring something to the table.
The question of whether Nod soldiers should be treated as legitimate POWs or tried for membership in a criminal organization is complicated, and our decisions right now will be based on expediency. In the long term, though, I certainly don't have moral problems with the fact that Nod soldiers are not in the service of a legitimate government or rebel movement. The willing servants of Kane are hostis humani generis, and allowing them to survive is an act of mercy or expediency, not an acknowledgement of rights they do not possess.
Edit:
Nuremburg and Tokyo did not raise the dead, but they did set a precedent. Don't try to murder the planet and imagine that your crimes will be ignored because you have a pretty uniform.
Even with plea bargains criminals do time usually. Plea bargains for homo sapiens sacer start with being granted the status of homo sapiens sapiens again alongside human rights and then move on to the value of their contribution to society (partially) erasing their crimes. That erasure of their crimes has to warrant enough of a contribution to society that they are allowed back in.
With that logic, murderers should all be set free because imprisoning them won't bring back their victims. They try to end the fucking world, I think retribution isn't totally undeserved.
There's also what dptullos said. Trials would set the precedent that, and I'm maybe repeating myself, trying to end the fucking world will get you the noose.
Well most of NOD isn't trying to end the world. It's just that the top leadership of NOD is trying to end the world. NOD's militants are at least as clean as the Wehrmacht when it comes to war crimes. So while active participants in war crimes we can expect GDI to look the other way for NOD militants defectors.
It's the Black Hand members that are comparable to Schutzstaffel and as such we shouldn't be taking in any defectors from them, but should doesn't mean won't so if the Qatarites don't count as being members of the Black Hand, which they might not considering that Kane keeps NOD's command structure in a state of constant feudal insanity, then we might get a Black Hand defector at some point that might be worth it if we roll the wrong/right way.
Well, "let me stay in power" was always unlikely. Unless your negotiating position is absurdly strong, amnesty doesn't mean you get to keep your job.
Nod's direct atrocities have killed millions, while their fight to spread Tiberium has killed billions. Their worship of the green rock has led to a death count that dwarfs Hitler, Stalin, and Mao put together.
Like the dictators we supported during the Cold War, Nod is not a legitimate government. However, their illegitimate government has killed most of humanity, which makes them significantly worse. Nod's ongoing decision to continue hostilities, despite GDI's decision to pursue a peaceful solution that emphasizes aid to the Yellow Zones, shows a total disregard for the lives of the people they claim to protect. Kane and the magic space rock matter more to the warlords than the human beings who suffer and die under their rule.
GDI's worst decisions pale in comparison to Nod's ongoing death cult. We'll have to invent a new word for them, because "megadeath" only describes a million dead people. Perhaps "Kanedeath" could be used to descibe an atrocity that leads to a billion dead.
There is no legitimate reason to serve Nod. The best reason is "because they had a gun to my head", which is understandable. NOD is a collection of warlords in the service of a monster, and they have no right to exist.
GDI does not view Nod as an objectionable but legitimate government, as America would view Britain during the War of 1812. We view them as a cancer that must be eradicated. Our choice to use merciful means is a reflection of our own decency and pragmatism, not the idea that Nod has the right to exist as an organization.
You know with that argument it occurs to me that the Open Hand Party might end up creating the political enemy we have to fight within like Initiative First was supposed to be, but is failing out of existence at. Because unlike with Initiative First we do want some synthesis with NOD ideas in our GDI, but putting the breaks on when we reach the point we want while various opportunists within and without try to destabilize us will be much harder than just blocking only IF from pulling their bullshit.
The precedent that it's not an atrocity if you win? Or perhaps the precedent of getting half the right outcome for the wrong reasons? Because after the various Soviet atrocities, and in particular the Soviets still committing genocide in Occupied Poland as the Nuremberg trials took place, it was a farce to have a Soviet officer sitting on the bench and going "don't invade Poland, don't commit genocide, don't do the Katyn Forest Massacre, what terrible people you are, go directly to jail". The fact that Nikitchenko was personally complicit in the crimes of Stalin's regime was the cherry on top.
Is there something more to your argument than whataboutism? The Nuremberg trials stand out to people because for the first time in History accusations of Industrial Crimes Against Humanity were neither embellished nor fabricated and their perpetrators were punished for them. Not all of them nor for all crimes that had occurred during the war or in it's aftermath.
Winners can't be punished, just as murderers who aren't caught can't be sentenced. Justice is and always shall be "victors' justice", because losers do not get to establish tribunals.
The guilt of other parties does not change the guilt of the Nazis, and there wasn't a magic "Punish the Soviets" button. The choice was between imperfect justice or no justice at all.
Nuremberg and Tokyo were essential not because they were flawless examples of impersonal justice, but because they very clearly established the precedent that wearing a uniform does not mean you can do whatever you want with impunity.
This argument of yours is somehow both incredibly naive and incredibly cynical at the same time. A rare combination. From the top:
Victor's justice doesn't mean that the victor has to ignore war crimes on their own side. Just that they have the choice to do so.
The choice was how much of the Axis ruling apparatus to maintain and at what political cost. Because the Holocaust was seen as a crime against humanity despite racism we got the Nuremberg Trials and the codification of the concept of genocide into international law. Because the Japanese War Crimes were not seen as a crime against humanity because of racism we got the farce that were the Tokyo Trials that failed to convict most of wartime Japanese leadership of any crimes.
Only Nuremberg established the precedent. Tokyo was forgotten by most people during the 20th century because of the Cold War.
Nuremberg was far from perfect, so what? Does it make any less justified the condemnation of all those Nazi criminals? It was better than nothing, and still gave precedents for the condamnation of perpetrators of the genocides in Rwanda and Serbia.
Nod's crimes are more monstrous than anything seen irl, so let's try to not repeat the errors of the past.
Not just Rwanda and Serbia. Even the US intervention in Afghanistan is coming under the scrutiny of the International Court of Justice in Hague.
NOD's crimes are on average as monstrous as those of the old Colonial Powers. It's just that their crimes are on a global scale instead of a local colony scale and they have access to some Kardashev Type 1 technology.
I'm pretty sure RL politics in this depth is veering off topic. Please try to relate/direct your arguments to the quest itself.
Sure. Let's start with the fact that the Brotherhood of NOD's Black Hand is based on the serbian historical terrorist organization of the
same name with an in-universe assumption that
Apis was loyal to Kane and that he really did conspire to assassinate Aleksandar Karađorđević, unlike in our reality where it was more of a reward as a traitor deserves, and was executed for it on 26th of June 1917.
Not to belabor this. But as many Nod will be punished as is politically necessary. As many will be set free to uphold a post war peace as needed. Worrying about this now is the cart before the horse.
And the dirty truth is? There's the possibility no one, except those that are not in Kane's favor, may end up on the chopping block. Pardon maybe part of accepting a deal for the TCN.
Kane didn't ask for the pardon in canon, just a truce until the TCN was built, because he was ascending with his loyalists and leaving behind the rest of the Brotherhood of NOD at the mercy of GDI. And even that didn't work for everyone on either side of the conflict.
There are limits to how much mercy we can even offer to some of these people.
