Executive Briefings: The Republic of Rannoch
Prime Minister,
With the rescue of the 3rd Rannoch War Fleet during Operation Resurgent Grace, the Republic of Rannoch has abruptly assumed a much higher priority in the Ministry of Relations. In consultation with Matriarch Kirai, the Ministry has been working full time to compile this brief, to serve as a useful guide to approaching the Republic once contact is reestablished. We have worked with several sources in the composition of this brief: pre-war records of Virmirean interactions with the Republic; recorded and in-person testimony of individuals who interacted with the Republic in the past; the expert advice of Matriarch Kirai, and in particular old Council briefings on the Republic in her possession, originally intended to embassy attaches to the Republic; and the results of Fleet Admiral Malan's debriefing with the Ministry. Using information gathered from these sources, The Ministry compiled the most accurate report possible on the government of the Republic.
While the Ministry has used the best sources available, it and Matriarch Kirai both acknowledge that all of those sources are grossly outdated, originally built for the perspective of other polities, or otherwise biased. This briefing is meant to provide insight and guidance for an eventual contact, but the Ministry's expert opinion is that all efforts should be bent towards confirming or disproving the conclusions outlined below once that contact is achieved.
With Regards,
Marae Dantius,
Minister of Relations.
* * *
One of the first things to bear in mind when approaching the Republic of Rannoch is that while it and Virmire's governments share a name, there are many fundamental differences between them that might prove to be a stumbling block to relations. Virmire's system of government, while modeled superficially on Rannoch's, is different in several key respects.
Both nations hold that decision-making power should be held by an elected few, including, at minimum, a legislative body and an executive official. However, there exist within that paradigm several key distinctions.
The Republic of Rannoch is not, as is Virmire, a democratic nation; in fact, it is an oligarchy, if an elective one. Most of the quarian population is ineligible for service in the Senate, and the Premier's office is open only to senatorial veterans. In fact, most quarians are disenfranchised, lacking any voting power or indeed rights to participate in political procedures. Instead, all political rights and voting power are concentrated in the hands of the descendants of the nobility of the former nation-states of Rannoch.
The Republic of Rannoch first coalesced into a single nation a few decades after quarian scientists first split the atom. In response to mounting tensions, a major alliance of nations banded together, intimidating or subjugating the others, and agreed to form a legislative body between them all to ensure that the planet's mounting nuclear stockpile never needed to be used. At the time, hereditary nobility remained the accepted practice, and as such the first members of this Senate were all members of their nations' nobility as well. Over time, the Senate gained more and more power over its constituent nations, until in a soft coup it assumed formal authority over them all. All of their governments were dissolved into the federal structure underlying the Senate.
However, soft coups are not absolute, and everybody needs to run a government
with somebody. In order to soften the blow and earn support, the Senate chose to continue to recognize the status of existing nobles (although some families are noted as having died out with convenient speed around this time), granting them the sole right to sit on the Senate and vote in its elections. The Premier, traditionally a supervisory and moderating position in the Senate, was established as the formal head of state, with only prior members of the Senate allowed to hold office. To this day, these strictures persist, with all political rights being determined by one's possession, or lack thereof, of a Writ of Nobility. While the exclusive land rights enjoyed by the nobility were abolished, in the new paradigm land was no longer the basis of political power. It thus was a convenient way of appeasing the underclasses without harming the aristocratic elite.
Immediately, one can see the differences between Rannoch's system and ours. While the Assembly, but recently re-established, is firmly subordinate to the office of Prime Minister, the Senate actually holds more power than the Premier in day-to-day affairs. The Premier's place is primarily to serve as a representative of the will of the Senate, and attend to some of the minutiae of governance. It is a position of considerably more power than any one given Senator, and thus is pursued keenly by the ambitious, but it is notably inferior to the power of the
Senate. While Virmire's ideological foundation is strongly based in the democratic ideals of the Asari Republics, the Republic of Rannoch is a government with deep roots in the concept of noble privilege and the right of blood. Where, especially under the demands of total war, Virmire has come to an almost brutally even-handed view of class politics, quarian society is highly stratified.
To expand, while quarian society is nominally meritocratic outside of elected positions, there is nonetheless a significant bias in high-prestige occupations towards the members of the nobility. Fleet Admiral Malan, for instance, is of noble blood, as are all other Fleet Admirals in the Republic. There are exceptions, and the discrimination is more positive in the direction of the nobility than negative in the direction of the common classes, but we should nonetheless expect to deal with the nobility in any high-level meetings with the Republic.
This bias is one reflected on all levels of quarian society. In addition to the nobles' obvious incentive to sell the narrative of a benevolent aristocracy, the wider populace mostly buys into the propaganda. In general, the belief is that the nobles do their best for society, and are best-placed to work the greatest change. The other end of this is that nobles who do
not excel -- or at least inoffensively persist -- in their chosen fields are strongly, "encouraged," to seek work elsewhere lest they bring shame on their family line. The result is an odd blend of autocracy and meritocracy. While it does not privilege true competence, it at least functions to strongly discourage
incompetence.
The other, most notable trait of the Republic of Rannoch is its powerful institutional xenophobia, which manifests in habitual isolationism. The Republic's first contact was with the Batarian Hegemony several decades in advance of the formation of the Citadel Council, and it nearly resulted in war. The two nations encountered each other while attempting to establish mining interests in the same system, and the Hegemony's miners, upon seeing the Republic's more numerous fleet, panicked and assumed that they were under attack by a set of armed ships. The Hegemony immediately mobilized its navy, prompting the quarians to likewise withdraw its miners and respond, and the two fleets stood off with each other until the Republic successfully translated the Hegemony's transmissions. Rattled by the demonstration of Republic technology and know-how, and the strength of the present fleet, the Hegemony finally then notified their trading partners, the Asari Republics, of the encounter, appealing to them to mediate. The asari were delighted to intervene, and in the resulting negotiations sided with the batarians, citing international agreements laying out where the various powers could freely colonize and develop. While the asari promised to convene an international summit to redraw the zones in light of the quarians' presence, this nonetheless set a bitter tone for the Republic's first entry to the galactic stage.
As the Republic familiarized itself with the new galaxy, this impression only soured further. The Hegemony was aggressive and expansionist, and while its core space was a long way from the Republic's, it operated extensive mining concerns that came very near to Republic space, patrolling them with powerful military fleets. The Asari Republics were viewed as a cultural hazard, with their egalitarian ethics posing a direct threat to the foundation of the Senate's power. The Vol Union was pushing hard to unify economies, a move that the new-to-the-galaxy Republic distrusted. And the Republic uncovered no fewer than seventy-nine salarian informants in the Republic's government in the years following first contact. Other powers were less active, but even then they were merely inoffensive -- a clear sign, to many, that the only good alien was an absent alien.
When the Citadel Council was finally founded, it served as the death knell of the Republic's ambitions to play an active role in the galactic community. While a desire not to be the only one left out of this new superpower prompted the Republic to seek Affiliate status, the status of the asari and salarians -- the two greatest threats to the Senate's power -- as the sole overlords of this new community prompted the Republic to largely withdraw from the galactic stage. The Republic, in this era of feverish colonialism, has instead opted to develop its home space, making few territorial claims of any kind.
The Republic has not, however, proven incapable of diplomacy. The motivation behind its xenophobia is
distrust, not distaste, and nations are capable of winning past that distrust. The Republic enjoys cordial, if distant, relations with the Courts of Dekuuna and the Illuminated Primacy, and after several demonstrations of the volus's determination to take an even-handed approach to economic unity, the Republic came aboard as an enthusiastic adopter of the credit, something that ensured warm relations between Rannoch and Irune. Furthermore, we know that the Republic's current leadership proved willing to sign on with the Terminus's offensive where they unilaterally refused to devote forces to Citadel attacks earlier in the war, when they had suffered less damage. The key to winning past the Republic's xenophobia, by all indications, is to make strong, clear, and consistent demonstrations of good faith -- and not to do things that threaten to compromise the authority of the Senate.
These two traits combined do not lead to an overly promising starting point for Virmirean-Quarian relations. While the rescue of the 3rd RWF will serve as a point in Virmire's favor, Virmire's egalitarian ideals will likely spook the Senate, reminding them of their concerns with the Asari Republics. With that initial wariness to counteract the positive of the 3rd's rescue, the Republic's institutional xenophobia will have time to set in.
It is the Ministry's recommendation that the best course of action, in talks with the Republic, will be to emphasize the authority and strength of the Prime Minister's position. Particularly if Prime Minister T'Vael remains in power by the time of contact, Virmire will have a strong case to make as to the limits of the populace's voice in matters of governance. In general, however, the Ministry counsels a slow, measured approach to diplomacy with the Republic, at all times moving in the open and with clear delineations of mutual expectations. Making few, simple agreements and holding to them with perfect reliability will likely prove to be a crucial step towards the foundation of a relationship based on trust. Maintaining a good working relationship with Fleet Admiral Malan will likely help; as a member of the nobility -- and one whom Matriarch Kirai speculates has powerful patrons -- he could be an invaluable advocate during those early years. By exploiting him as a point of contact, and at all times demonstrating good faith and honest intent, we may be able to secure friendly relations with the Republic of Rannoch.
