PT Did the Republic have the resources and the power to create a conscript /volunteer army?

This isn't a diatribe against the against the whole of concept of a clone army. Which is an idea I actually like for the most part.

But I am speaking from an in-universe perspective. Did the Republic had the capacity to create an armed force composed of its citizens from various planets across the galaxy? Or had the republic's public image fallen so low that creating such an army been a difficult feat for it? Or was it too bureaucratic to manage such a force?
Its already been established in the EU that such an army did existed prior to the events of the prequels. But these are different times entirely. A thousand years of peace might have made the whole concept of fighting in a war a foreign notion for most of its citizens. For this discussion pretend there wasn't a clone army.

 

I think it would take too long to pass through Senate, organise the conscription and complete the training for it to be feasible. The army would never be ready in time to counter the Separatists.

The only reason the Clone army bill was allowed to pass was because a) the army was already fully trained, and b) Obi-Wan had warned them about the impending Separatist attack.

 

They probably did, but I imagine it would've taken a while to get their act together and by then, the Separatists would've dealt them quite a number of vicious blows.

 

They had the resources, they had the power. What they did not have was the time. And even so, expecting planets in long, long feuds with each other to produce a slick military force would be a massive ask. Would a Quarren serve under a Mon Calamari? What of the Twileks - Cham was/is a very good strategist and leader with no inclination or intention of signing up to the galaxy's problems. And so on it would go...

 

It has actually been quite common throughout history for governments that didn't really trust their subjects/nobles/stakeholders/components/etc. to raise armies of mercenaries and bring in outsiders who were theoretically more loyal to the central government than their states. The Byzantine Empire hired Scandinavians and English to form the Varangian Guard, who sometimes served as the emperor's personal bodyguards. The Ottoman Empire bought slaves from the Caucasus and Balkans to form the elite Janissaries.

The clone troopers have the advantage of, not just loyalty, but competence. They're exceptionally well trained and are already equipped with armour, weapons, vehicles and spacecraft that are a match for the armed forces that the cartels have developed over the decades before merging them into the CIS military. What does the Republic's central government have before the GAR? Some Judicial Forces personnel and some old diplomatic ships. Hardly a match for the corporate fleets and droid armies. Few of the local planetary defence forces would be able to contribute as much to the fight against the CIS than the clone troopers are.

 

The ideal solution would be the clone forces as an elite corps with the main bulk of the fighting being done by a raised army of volunteers/conscripts. Which according to the Legends EU is pretty much what did happen I think only the clones ended up pulling all the focus in the movies/series due to being the Jedi's personal forces. Sheer mathematics dictates that the clones would have been ground out of relevance pretty quickly if they were the only ones willing/able to fight at all but this didn't happen so I can only presume there were others we never really got to see.

 

By the time of ROTS, there are plenty of non-clone Navy personnel operating the subsystems on the bridges of Venator-class cruisers. There are plenty of non-clones, as you say, and they make up a larger proportion of the Republic forces over time.

Still, most of the combat jobs are given to clones right to the end. Clones can be relied on to be both exceptionally competent and loyal when the time comes...

 

Sure... you just have to know which orders... sorry, Orders... to give...

 

It seems like TCW got away from this idea, but in ROTS, we see that individual planets had forces that fought alongside the clone troopers. On Kashyyyk, the clone troopers fight alongside a Wookiee army, and when Obi-Wan makes it to Utapau, Obi-Wan tells Tion Medon something like: "If you have warriors, now is the time." The very 1st episode of TCW, if I remember right, has Yoda trying to persuade some planet to fight alongside the Republic, but I don't recall many plots of that sort during the rest of TCW (only saw about 1/2 of them). Most episodes in TCW focused on clones fighting on their own, not joined by another army like the Wookiees.

It seems to me that the Republic sort of functions like a cross between NATO and the UN. Each member nation of NATO -- US, Britain, France -- must contribute resources when a member nation is attacked. This sometimes involves contributing troops -- like what's going on Syria or the war in Afghanistan. NATO has no single shared military. Its forces are always comprised of the armed forces of different nations working together, just like how the Republic has no shared military.

The UN has a "military force," but they are pretty toothless, and they always serve "peace-keeping" roles. The UN and NATO are separate organizations, but they sometimes work together -- for instance, the 1st Iraq War and the Korean War had both UN and NATO approval and involved troops from NATO member countries and the UN. The clone army seems like the UN military force if the UN troops served non-peace-keeping roles and were strong and well-trained. The individual planets are involved more like NATO troops working together.

So, it's sort of like contemporary world situation during those times when the NATO and the UN work together, except the clones greatly outnumber, are far better trained than their UN counterparts, and are more directly involved in combat roles.

Probably Palpatine discouraged the individual planets from involving their forces too much since they weren't directly under his control like the clones were, and since he was really controlling both sides, he really didn't have worry about the clones being defeated.

 

In Cat and Mouse, the people of Christophsis are seen fighting for the Republic. (In The Hidden Enemy as well, if I recall correctly). The Ryloth arc also shows the natives fighting with the Republic.

In the unreleased Season 7 Wookieee arc we would have seen clones alongside the Wookieees, like in ROTS.

 

Yes of course they could've formed a volunteer army. They were the Republic, I'm sure they had unlimited resources and imagine all of the planets they had, so many volunteers would've stepped up if they had to. The problem is, many politicians and even the Jedi did not want an army (for the most part) so when the artificial life-forms of Clones came about, it was kinda a thing that they needed and didnt have to lose real life over it. Sure, the Clones are real but they were mutated

 

In a real life example from history, the US continental while being made up of volunteers was highly disorganized and uncoordinated as each group from each states used different sets drill manuals and practices, it was a mess. The continental army didn't become effictive until Baron von Steuben developed a standardized manual for the entire army and retrained all the continental troops to a common standard for the entire army.

I would think a Republic army of volunteers would be very much like the continental army was, each planet's army would have their own sets of drills and practices and it would take too much time to organize them all to a common standard.

@ Darth Nerding, in ROTS post order 66 we see Utapau warriors being detained by the clones, I think this is meant to imply the clones are turning on all their former allies, much like the clones searching for Yoda not giving a crap about dead wookies. I don't think Palps wanted the armies of individual planets to be made more powerful at all since they would be a threat to his central power.

@ObiWanKnowsMe exactly, most of the galaxy would not have viewed clones as real people "ala Blade Runner" and would have been quite popular to send them to fight and die instead of their own constituents. This also would keep these same constituents less trained and skilled than the clones when they would come to impose the emperor's will on them.

 

the republic didn't even have an army let alone any resources to set one up or conscript one.

"there hasn't been a full scale war since the formation of the republic." sio bibble

the sith set up the entire war and readymade clone army so palps could pull it out of his pocket at the right moment in aotc. after the first battle the war machine went into overdrive.

 

The Republic had both the power and resources. After all, that is what the Military Creation Act was, it was the bill that was being debated in the Senate that if ratified would create an army under the control of the Republic. Sense there was obviously no way that clones could be used, both legally and the time it would take to make one, the MCA would have used volunteers/conscripts. So obviously the Republic felt it had the power and resources to do it, as that was not up for the debate, what was up for debate was should they do it.

 

Darth Nerdling wrote

Probably Palpatine discouraged the individual planets from involving their forces too much since they weren't directly under his control like the clones were, and since he was really controlling both sides, he really didn't have worry about the clones being defeated.

I'm pretty sure that after he rose to power and had become Emperor the senate members had to contribute "volunteers".

 

I think you may have answered your own question. Yeah, the Republic could have conscripted an entire military to combat the Separatists, but at the time of the Separatist Crisis, it had been so long since the Republic had had a conventional drafted or enlisted military that the idea was probably just so foreign to most member systems. It was probably seen as un-Republican or undemocratic and unnecessary, hence how hotly the Military Creation Act was debated in the Senate leading up to Clones. The Republic didn't actually get involved until after a ready-made clone army was "accidentally" discovered, of course. It was no sweat for the Senate to approve those clones to go to war for the Republic.

 

We already discussed in another thread the moral arc of the wars: even the Trade Federation used droids for military purposes because they weren't , how to say it, real living beings. After that, they use the clones; they are alive but artificial in some degree. So send soldiers: humans (in this case and aliens) to fight maybe was unthinkable. The planets have their local forces, most of them voluntary but again they were some kind of peace keepers. So apart of the Senate problems, the moral issue is very important.

 

Yeah, to get to the point, they would probably have had the resources and power to do so, just not the collective heart (for a conscript army; it is a little harder to understand why there wouldn't be acceptance of a volunteer army, but I'm sure some could be found)

 

Could they have? Yes, I'm sure they could have, considering there were enough people to fill the stormtrooper ranks later on.

But the issue is that "there is no interest in the common good."

Who is going to fund it? The first batch of clones seemed to already be paid for. But with conscripts, it's going to take time to train and arm them. The Republic needed an army right away.

And what happens if you have a batallion recruited from Corellia and you put them on a dangerous mission? Do those recruits do so with fervent patriotism, or do they start to protest that Corellia is being unfairly treated?

Under the Empire, the Empire came first and everything was meant to serve the central government. Under the Republic, the Senate was being used to serve its constituents in its latter years. I don't think coordination necessary to raise an army on short notice was in the cards on such short notice.

 

I'd also like to add that once the civil population has gotten used to enjoy the benefits of peace and economic prosperity it had historically always been difficult to get it interested in war.

Curiously, that was one of the big issues for the Nazi Regime back in the 1930's. The German population, still "exhausted" from WWI and the Great Depression was enjoying the benefits of peace and economic prosperity and wasn't really in any kind of mood for yet another war. But propaganda, mislead nationalism and a lot of brainwashing plus the early Blitzkrieg successes changed that mood, unfortunately.

I don't believe events in the GFFA were too dissimilar...

 

Another example of a civil populace losing its will to fight its own wars is in the case of the late Roman empire, where the bulk of army recruitment came to be from Germans or Illyrians rather than Romans. I think many systems would probably have preferred to give in to the secessionist's demands rather than send their own people into a bloody war for a republic that wasn't really functioning very well anyway.

 

Granted, it falls outside the scope of the PT, but in season 1 of TCW, we see a resistance movement on Ryloth lead by Cham Syndulla against the CIS, and he doesn't seem like he cares the slightest about the Republic as a whole. All he cared about was Ryloth's sovereignty, and he wasn't even keen on the idea of seeing Jedi or clones on Ryloth, perceiving them as another occupational Force.

In the PT we do at least see that Naboo, Utapau and Kashyyyk have their own military forces, as well as Geonosians on the CIS side. Onderon, Umbara, Malastare, and Ryloth did as well in TCW.

But never do these armies crop up on another planet. E.G. no Twi'leks fighters are not helping to liberate Mygeeto. I don't think they really care about each other. Each planet contributes to its own security, not to each other's. Naboo volunteer forces aren't helping rescue Palpatine, etc.

These local forces are however supplemented by the centrally controlled droid and clone armies of the CIS and Republic.

The governments don't seem to care too much about each other, they only care about their own well being. And out of the chaos of the Clone Wars and the "Jedi Rebellion" I think people start to look to the central government for security and order, rather than to their local governors, who are supplanted by the military governors.

I don't think the debate was ever going to end on matters of raising an army, so by virtue of being given emergency powers, Palpatine bypassed it. But in the wake of the war, I think there is a greater sense of pride and patriotism in the Empire.

 

Only for awhile, by the OT, people were already seeing though the Empire's facade and seeing what a sham it was. By ANH the Empire didn't even bother to maintain a facade with the construction of the Death Star. Mainly I think people were just happy to have the clone war over and wanted to rebuild and get back to normal life while overlooking issues with the Empire. By ROTJ it seemed the Empire's popularity was quite low.

I think Palps wanted droids and clones so he could swell the size of a central army that he controlled while keeping all the local forces not under his direct control small, weak, and dependent on him and at his mercy. This would be especially true post clone war and into the OT where he would have a far larger and more powerful military that could crush any of the local forces and keep the planets inline. This is where I think clones would work really well as their would be few imperial vets returning back to their planets passing on all the fighting techniques they learned from the Empire to others. Like in Feudel Japan where fighting knowledge and techniques, as well as weapons were kept solely in the warrior class and away from the peasant class to make them dependent.

Tonyg
You bring up a good point. Many of the local forces were peace keepers or police forces, not full fledge military armies that could defend against invasion. As Capt Paneka said in TPM, "we are just a police force, not an army." Which is how Palps wanted them to be.

 

For the record, the German population wasn't enjoying anything after the WWI. The treaty of Versailles was absolutely horrendous humiliating crap, by the way, as all the treaties after the war. They made the population of the countries who lost the war to suffer of extreme poverty and disgrace because they had to pay enormous reparations. In the case of Germany some of the French marshals said something like: 'it is no treaty of peace, it is truce for 20 years', knowing that the Germans will seek a revenge. Well, speaking of SW Saga, Padme said something like that: if the Separatist feel frightened, they will ask for help the Trade Federation and the war will begin. Padme was smart. She knows very well that in this case the war is inevitable if they are pressed" too much.
Also, unfortunately, the war is a good business and some of the civilian would use this “opportunity” . I know it is sad to say it, but is true. But un this case, they have no tome for that and also the moral issue that I mentioned before was more important that the “economic” consequences of the war that could be even positive for some people.

 

Glad to see you back, Mikeximus! I've missed your contributions.