PT Were there any non-Sith causes of the Clone Wars?

I've wondered about this.

 

Good question. Were there any non-Nazi causes of WWII? Were there any non-slavery causes of the American Civil War?

The answer, of course, is a big fat yes, but they're a bit more difficult to understand. In the case of the Clone Wars, I would say that the general corruption of the Republic (specifically in the Senate & courts) was something that was exploited & exposed by the Sith as a cause for the Separatist Movement, but it's not hard to imagine a scenario without the Sith in which such corruption could well have led to war anyway. The Sith merely accelerated the process to their own ends, they didn't actually cause the decay in the first place.

In other words, if the Sith hadn't started or aided the Separatist Movement, someone else would have eventually (athough perhaps with different motivations), and it still would most likely have led to a similar civil war.

 

I could see the corruption of the Trade Federation being something that predated Darth Sidious's involvement with them.

 

You ask an interesting question.

1) TF do a deal with Sidious about trade routes which leads to a conflict with Naboo. (Obvious Sith involvement)
2) Dooku leaves the Jedi and joins the Separatists. (Sith involved) But may not have started the separatist movement.
3) Sith behind the clone army.

I guess it depends on who started the separatists, there intentions behind the movement and wether it was part of Sidious's plan. Sidious aligning himself with the TF in TPM would suggest that it was part of his plan, But then Dooku says in AOTC about the Viceroy being "in league with this Darth Sidious and was betrayed by the Dark Lord 10 years ago". If you where betrayed like the TF where, then would you really still carry on working with them?. I know Dooku was a Sith, but the Jedi were under the impression he was a "Political Idealist" Maybe the Separatists where under the same impression. So they may have been unknowingly working for the Sith.

But it still comes down to wether or not it was part of Sidious's plan? And that's not an easy answer to give. Assuming like everything else that he was aware of the future and had plans for the whole saga, I would say that there where reason's behind everything and that Sidious knew those events where happening and how they would unfold, and probably manipulated them to his advantage.

Actually now that I come to think of it the Sith were behind the clone army, So if Sidious didn't know about the separatists why did they decide to start building a clone army?

So I guess NO would be my answer, there's obvious Sith involvement throughout. I guess it was all part of Sidious's master plan.

 

There are lots of non sith reasons but they aren't stated in the films more or less, if u want that question really answered i'd recommend looking at the EU, thats what its for.

 

I'm certain there was already corruption in the TF and the Senate, and unhappiness with the Republic a while before TPM.

 

Not that I ever noticed. As known, every happening in Ep I-III was engineered by Palpatine, and quite shrewdly so.

Though I never got how invading Naboo would factor in to it.

It is quite possible, and strongly implied that the entire invasion of Naboo was just a pretext of getting Chancellor Valorum out of office Asap; a sign that the Decision making in the Republic got bogged down by red tape and corruption.

 

Palpatine planned Valorum getting voted out and himself getting voted in. The Invasion of Naboo was Palpatine's plot to promote himself from Senator to Chancellor. The Clone Wars was his plot to promote himself from Chancellor to Emperor.

 

Yes, that is what I am saying.

I think all signs point towards the fact that there were no major non-Sith related causes for the Clone wars.
Palpatine did a good job at manipulating the cracks that were long appearing in the fabric of the republic.

So yeah, you might say the corruption, greed and ineffectiveness of the Republic upper echelon at large, and the dissentment felt in many systems because of it were a cause of the Clone wars. But these were manipulated by Palpatine.

So if I had to answer your question, I'd say no. I think the Sith had a finger in every major cause of the Clone Wars. Though the circumstances that made this manipulation possible, are not all the Sith's doing. (as far as we know.)

 

(non-EU) Were there any non-Sith causes of the Clone Wars?

***
Were any discussed on film?

The Darth Plagueis novel implied that the Sith were involved in just about everything.

 

The republic is shown to be a mess, where corruption leads to the wills of the most influential planets being forced upon the entire galaxy. I imagine there's much unrest, many who joined the separatists cause for more noble reasons than the Dark Side or money. The Trade Federation is just exploiting these populations of course, but i don't think the CIS could have gained the foothold it did without the opening caused by these less villainous factions.

 

The movies do not provide enough information to answer this with any certainty.

Even a lot of the flaws in the Jedi Order's handling of the galaxy's problems can hardly, if at all, be seen in the movies. There is some evidence to extrapolate from, but very little, not enough for me to form a confident conclusion.

Based on the movies one could fairly speculate that the Jedi Order's failure to curb the corruption in the Senate is part of the cause. But one could also speculate that the Sith are behind the gross corruption in the Senate in the first place. One could speculate that the Jedi Order failed to solve the imbalance in the Republic based on the trade disputes and the taxes being too damn high and all that, but I don't think there's enough evidence in the movies to prove that conclusively. It could be that the trade disputes are relatively natural, the taxes reasonable, the Trade Federation is just being greedy and their aggression has been motivated by the Sith from the beginning.

 

there's always corruption in any society, but then again Plaqueis and Sidious wove complex plans for decade's.

 

I never felt like the corruption was Sith-caused.

 

You ask a pretty deep question. I think that had there not been a Sith factor, there might have still been a conflict of some sort because of the corruption that existed that the Sith exploited.

The Trade Federation had seemingly bought their way into legal representation as witnessed by representative, Lott Dod. We can assume that they had the influence to pass heavily biased legislatures and null and void any laws that would cut their profits. The InterGalactic Banking Clan, I've read somewhere, has exploited the lives of many by reducing them into debt which is several times more than the amount that they borrowed. It is reasonable to assume that they might have taken a leaf out of the TF's book, and also bought a seat in the Senate or bribe Senators to repeal any crackdown on lending and loans.

What ultimately could result from this is powerful businesses becoming even more powerful power vacuums that aspiring politicians would seek help from in Chancellor and other office elections. However, Sidious always had to give off the pretense of being noble and pursuing the 'just cause' so it's ambiguous as to the percentage of control businesses could have over government.

From this position, I think the loyalist Senators such as Bail Organa and Padme would oppose the part of the Republic that was run by businesses ensuing in some conflict. However, many of these powerful businesses do have private armies which the Republic lacked until the Clone army was ready and known to exist. I'm not quite sure if these businesses would have formed a coalition based on mutual business interest without Count Dooku.

Really difficult to say, but I do think that entities like the TF and IBC had the money, power, and the military might to cause big problems.

 

I think this is a fairly apt description. I don't necessarily think that there were too many other factors that caused a war - you need to have some reasoning behind starting a war and the Sith did engineer the whole situation. However having said that the general characteristics of the Republic and the other large factions in the galaxy at the time definitely seemed to encourage some sort of conflict. Whether or not that conflict happened without Sith involvement is anyone's guess, but certainly not at the time we saw and definitely not with similar results.

 

As mentioned in a few of the previous posts, the corruption in the Senate was a large influence in the formation of the Separatist movement. The corruption, really, was within the entire government body. The courts never did anything about the corruption in the Senate because the courts themselves were corrupt, it just became a big back and forth mess that Valorum apparently either blatantly ignored or never was able to deal with. All Palpatine had to do was simply say it was Valorum's fault and he was in, nothing he even had to do in that instance. With Palpatine in office, he followed the same path Valorum did: ignoring the corruption in the government, albeit only because it now served his interests. With the continued corruption, all Palpatine had to do was sit back and watch a few of the planetary systems become so fed up with it, that they threatened succession. If there were no Sith behind the spark that ignited the powder keg, I'm sure that, given a little more time, the systems would have succeeded regardlessly and ignited a intergalactic war.

 

I think the corruption and the tensions were there even before Palpatine came onto the scene, that he merely seized the opportunity and exploited the existing situation for his own needs. He accelerated the process that probably would've led to an open conflict anyway, but quite probably a bit later than it did with Palpatine's help.

 

Even working with EU material I don't think we can definitively pinpoint how much of the Republic's degeneration was due to non-Sith causes and thereby speculate how circumstances would be without their actions. You can't go into specifics without getting into the EU, but in a nutshell the Sith had spent a thousand years with this goal in mind and from the beginning had built and expanded large networks of quiet contacts, spies, and loyalties. There isn't even enough EU material to specify what did and didn't originate with Sith schemings, but I don't think it's a significant stretch of the imagination to say that they engineered nearly all Separatist sentiment and its ramifications.

 

The Republic was decaying from the inside on out long before Palps got his hands on it.

 

Interesting question.

The corruption could and probably did predate Palpatine.
But here is the thing with the corruption, who did it benefit? Most likely the TF, the Banking Clan and the other big commercial organizations.
So as long as the corruption went on, they would not want to leave the republic, they call the shots and the senate serves their interests.

Those that would want to leave would be small planets like Naboo, who saw their planet invaded and the republic did Jack and **** to help them.
In this case the separatists would be smaller worlds and worlds on the edge of the republic, who feels the senate isn't serving their interests and that they are better off alone. Ironically then the TF would lend their forces to defend the republic if it ever came to war.
Incidentally I have felt that this would make for an interesting plot in AotC, that the TF and the like support the senate but smaller worlds want to leave and they turn to the cloners for an army. Imagine if Naboo wanted to join them, a wonderful conflict for Padme, who still has faith in the republic but has to follow the wishes of her people.

I have also not really understood why so many worlds would have followed the TF and the others. If they were unhappy with the corruption, why side with those that were a direct cause of said corruption? And why would a TF run government be any less corrupt?

Now if the senate puts their foot down against the corruption and cleaned out the senate, then I can see the TF breaking away.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

Invading Naboo got him the sympathy vote and assured his ascendance to Supreme Chancellor.

 

The Republic was corrupt in the sense that they taxed systems for the same rate but did not serve them the same. Jabiim is an excellent case, the Republic ignored every catastrophic event the planet was put through, but when ore was discovered in their planet core the Republic made every effort to get to it.

The reason they would join the corrupt CIS is because it was just that a Confederacy of Independent Systems. They were no longer herded into certain regulations and taxes and rules, but maintained control of their own system as long as they helped support the war effort.

 

First I think the corruption in the senate was more than just this. The TF, a commercial organization had a senate seat. That would be like Microsoft having a senate seat. It seemed to me that many senators were in the pocket of the TF and the other commercial entities and they could pass laws that benefitted them or stop laws that hindered them.

Second, are the separatists ever called CIS in the films? I do not recall, from memory they are called separatists, nothing else.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor