What were the theorical war goals of the CIS ?

I say theorical, because the CIS had not really war goals...(being a tool of Darth Sidious and such)

I'm wondering, what exactly the CIS was aiming at ?

If we take the obvious parallels between the Clone Wars and the ACW, it seems here that the CIS mostly wanted her independance. (This would however put the numerous efforts of Padme to ''negotiate a peace'' akin to a Copperhead,as the (American) confederacy was quite willing to be in peace with the Union....providing she got her independance. Altough maybe Padme does want a reconstruction of some sort or a negotiated surrender, but she certaily dont look like it, especially in the CW episode ''Heroes on both sides''

Alternatively, the CIS seems at times to desire to enforce pro-business laws in the Republic. (as brought up several times in the EU litterature, ''pro business laws'' seems a code word for crony capitalism favoring the existing megacorporations.IE, the Trade Federation don't actually want lower taxes, they want taxes exemptions for them and juicy contracts) It does not seems to be however the core motivation.

There are several problems with both of those views

-Independance wise, there was at the time of the OR several systems or groups of systems that were not in the Republic (Hapes for instance). Probably not on the scale of the Separatist movement, however, but it dont seem that there was any legal obstacle for a system to not be part of the Republic, not mentionning that several sources mention that most of the Outer Rim was barely controlled by Coruscant since the New Sith Wars. That's the point : considering that the Republic can't stop the Secession movement (at the time of Attack of the Clones, thousands of systems have seceded already), why make plans to attack the Republic ? (Well, short of the fact that the Seps are controlled by Dooku, but he surely have presented them a sort of warplan justifying the move..)

-There was a perfectly legal and recognized pro-capitalism governemnt, the CSA....

 

Independance wise, there was at the time of the OR several systems or groups of systems that were not in the Republic (Hapes for instance). Probably not on the scale of the Separatist movement, however, but it dont seem that there was any legal obstacle for a system to not be part of the Republic, not mentionning that several sources mention that most of the Outer Rim was barely controlled by Coruscant since the New Sith Wars. That's the point : considering that the Republic can't stop the Secession movement (at the time of Attack of the Clones, thousands of systems have seceded already), why make plans to attack the Republic ? (Well, short of the fact that the Seps are controlled by Dooku, but he surely have presented them a sort of warplan justifying the move..)

Hapes was not part of the Republic, neither was Hutt Space (which was a lot larger during that time), the Separatist worlds that wanted to leave on the other hand clearly where (large parts of the Rim actually directly controlled by the guilds that also represented those worlds in the Senate) and Palpatine made it clear he would not just let them leave.

Dooku most likely had the droid armies build claiming a need to defend his Alliance from the Republic, which was debating to forming a Republic Army to counter the session of further worlds from the Republic.

Ultimate goal of the war for the Seps properly was really to get the Republic to accept their session or if need be replace it. But alas Dooku and Palpatine used the war for very different goals.

There was a perfectly legal and recognized pro-capitalism governemnt, the CSA....

Which under the Republic was actually heavily regulated and joined the Separatist cause.

 

Think of it as the American Civil War.

The Republic under Chancellor Palpatine as the North, and the CIS under Dooku as the South.

The CIS (if we consider it without Emperor Palpatine's Sith tool)'s ideology was to be free of the Republic's regulations on trade, and other perceived oppressions.

 

Then would Padme and her group be like, say, Copperheads ?

 

Poor, exploited, and (mostly) aliens worlds in the Republic's Outer Rim were tired of the corruption and being exploited. So they wanted to secede, like how the Founding Fathers seceded from the British Empire, or how the Confederacy tried to secede from the United States.

But, as Obi-wan uncovers in Episode II, the mega-corporations are going to finance and build Droid Armies and Starfleets for the Separatists. In exchange, they want what the Trade Federation wanted back in Episode I, free trade and minimal taxation. Which Dooku promises to deliver.

So, the Separatists are comprised of the super-poor and the super-rich.

Which is an interesting paradox, since so many worlds are trying to secede because of corruption and exploitation in the Republic, and these mega-corporations are the source of the corruption and exploitation.

If the Sith weren't involved with the Confederacy of Independent Systems, and if they had succeeded in winning independence, then it looks like these newly-independent worlds would have become even more screwed than they were under the Republic.

Palpatine's Empire did one thing right, which was to abolish these mega-corporations. (Except one, the InterGalactic Banking Clan based on Muunilinst, which survived the Clone Wars, the Galactic Civil War, the Yuuzhan Vong Invasion, the Second Galactic Civil War, the Sith-Imperial War, and the war in Legacy... those Muun bankers always seem to win).

The rest of these mega-corporations don't seem to have ever come back, there's probably rules against them being recreated and corporate power becoming so monopolized/centralized, which probably also explains why Black Sun and the Hutts and the underworld have been so successful ever since the mega-corporations were put out of business at the end of the Clone Wars.

 

The overall goal of the CIS was to break away from the Republic to escape oppression. There was a certain irony to it, however, since the megacorporations wanted more freedom to do anything they wanted and most civilian members wanted to be rid of the exact same "do anything" attitude that plagued the Republic. In short, the goals of the Separatists ranged from purely good to evil and greedy, thanks to manipulation carried out by Dooku and Sidious.

 

You forgot the Corporate Sector. Sure, it's not as large as the Trade Federation or the others, but it still had totalitarian control over an entire sector, including its own little Navy.

 

Granted, the Separatists want to break out from the Republic

General Grievous and his tactics appear to me quite, how to say, inadequate for the task

Attacking Coruscant to kidnap the Chancellor does make some sense. But other things he does (well, him and the Sep council)

1)Repeatedly backstabbing deals made with world with vacillating loyalty (example Rodia in TCW), predictably pushing them over and over in the arms of the republic

2)Using as only tactic ''send a army of droids'' (the said droids combining atrocities on civilians and utter incapacity to perform military. Baffingly, for an organization back by the richest corporations of the Galaxy, the CIS seems oddly reluctant of bribing people...) One of the handful of schemes that were different was Dooku plan for Mandalore-it was actually pretty brillaint, and what someone would actually do to detach system from the Un...the Republic

3)Using frequently and without any afterthought various WMDs on military dubious civilian targets.

 

The average Sep probably did want to leave; the Sep council, however, was under no illusions that Dooku intended to bring the Republic to its knees.

 

What does not help with seeing the point about Separatists motivations is that the non-droids fighting for them (if we exclude comically evil sidekicks) are not shown very frequently

I can think to...

1)Raxus in TCW
2)Jabiim Separatists
3)The...dinosaurs ? guys of New Plymmto.

 

It's more of a government than a megacorporation, confined to a specific space with recognized boundaries, and didn't seem to really favor one side over the other in the Clone Wars.



But yeah, I wonder what all the Separatist civilians thought of the mega-corporations backing them? Did they just turn a blind eye? Or were they preparing to betray the mega-corporations?

If Dooku and Palpatine weren't Sith, and if the Confederacy did win independence, then I doubt it would have lasted long without collapsing and being absorbed back into the Republic. To speed that process up, it would have been better for the Republic to just allow them to secede.

What was the Republic's argument for stopping the separatists, anyways? I'm sure they could have gotten along well economically. It couldn't have been for strategic military defense, since there was not outside threat (that they were aware of). It couldn't have been for power, the Republic had no military and little power in the internal affairs of its member-worlds. Were they just trying to cling to the idea of a united galaxy?

 

As has been mentioned, the nearest real-life strategic parallel that most of us are familiar with are the Confederate States in the American Civil War. Neither the CSA or the CIS had to really "win": they just had to get the other side to get tired fighting. While the South tried to accomplish this primarily through conventional means, the CIS seems to be going for the most brutal possible interpretation of "total war." Atrocities like Humbardine, their various bioweapon programs, and their overall penchant for doing the worst possible thing all the time only makes sense if they planned to make war so terrible that the Republic would quit out of fear.

For these kind of tactics, strikes into the Core (like Durge's Lance) serve a double purpose, as they both bring they terror of war into the heart of the Republic and strike at Republic's industry and economy.

 

Depends on the perspective, since Dooku's "New Galactic Order" was different from the Idealist "New Galactic Order".

Count Dooku: Essentially Dooku wanted to establish an Empire much like the Galactic Empire eventually established. The Jedi Order would have been dismantled and reestablished under the leadership of Dooku's unique Jedi-Sith Philosophy where the order would have essentially been an Imperial Guard and an elite military force (I believe the ROTS novelization says that Anakin would have been one of Dooku's lieutenants). Palpatine would have been Emperor and Dooku would have been the leader of the elite military/guard. Likewise Dooku supported human high culture and would have enslaved aliens much like how Palpatine enslaved alien races. Basically Dooku wanted to establish the Galactic Empire only with the Jedi as the Imperial Guard. One could also argue Dooku wanted to destroy the Sith and establish the Jedi Order as the leaders of the galaxy (obviously under his philosophy), if one is the believe he is telling the truth to Obi-Wan in AOTC. The 'Confederate Parliament' would have likely been dismantled or served a similar purpose as the 'Republic Senate', whilst the corporations may or may not have been able to establish hyper-capitalism (I would guess it would have been imperialised however).

Idealists: The idealists who succeeded from the Republic in order to establish a new system wanted a more 'confederate' structure where planets were more independent (remember the Republic was gradually federalizing). One could also argue they wanted to establish hyper-capitalism however The Clone Wars seems to establish this as a corporate conspiracy. Essentially the idealists perused a just cause and is why there are 'heroes on both sides'; the Republic loyalists (Padme, etc) wanted to fix the Republic through reform and avoid war or secession, whilst the true Confederates wanted to reform the Republic by establishing another opposition system (which was essentially going to cause war). Ultimately these two fractions (Republic loyalists and true Confederates) would ally form the Alliance to Restore the Republic. So the idealists, during the Clone Wars, wanted to establish a more decentralised and decorrupted system of government.

So the Confederacy was really a fraction of Republic loyalist who had decided reforming the Republic had failed (as well as galactic powers who knew their power would increase if there was a decentralized government) being puppeteer-ed by the corporations and the Sith.

The Clone Wars has established it as a Sith-Corporate conspiracy.

I doubt they would have collapsed. An idealist Confederacy would have been better than the Republic. In my opinion the Republic would have collapsed and the Jedi Order would have either fractured or aligned with the Confederacy.

For a number of reasons:

1. A fractured galaxy under two regimes would have shifted the Republics power base causing a Cold War and probably an arms race.

2. The Republic would have collapsed. The Republic was corrupt however ma

 

Dooku was in on the Sith conspiracy,as you say the only real difference was a Jedi Order turned to the dark side serving in a way similar to the Imperial Knights. Only Dooku and Palpatine knew of this.

I think that to truly understand the Separatists, you have to look at two Factions: what the idealists trying to secede from the Republic wanted (like you did), and what the corporatists really wanted. (Makes me wish Anakin didn't "cut" Nute Gunray off when he starts saying "We only want-" on Mustafar )

But by Episode III, those on the "Separatist Council" are clearly shown to be the leadership and main governing body of the Confederacy (along with Grievous as commander of the military), with the Republic hunting then to Utapau and then to Mustafar. They are composed of the heads of these mega-corporations, like the Trade Federation, Techno Union, Commerce Guild, InterGalactic Banking Clan, and other. Surely the people of both the Confederacy and Republic knew this by then? Palpatine and the Jedi certainly knew it since Episode II, with Obi-wan overhearing their meeting on Geonosis. It is the Trade Federation and Techno Union's droids that make up the Separatist military.

But an idealist Confederacy would never have happened. Idealist governments are just that... idealistic. Utopian. Not realistic. Even without the Sith, whether the true role of the mega-corporations was known or not, people like Nute Gunray and Wat Tambor and San Hill would have been unleashed and wielding significant influence. There's no way the Confederacy would have been sustainable. I doubt the Republican would have collapsed. More likely, if they had let the Separatists go and there were no Sith, the Republic would have undergone an intense reformation process. Think of the Catholic Church, before and after the Protestant Reformation. No matter your side, the Protestants had some real grievances with the Catholic Church, and split off (though not really peacefully). At the same time the Catholic Church was saying the Protestants were wrong, they quietly accepted that they had some true grievances, and underwent a Counter-Reformation to become more appealing. I think the same thing would have happened with the Republic, and most Confederate worlds would rejoin the Republic after it cleaned up its act to escape the exploitation of the mega-corporations. In this situation, the Jedi would probably have stayed neutral and been helpful to both sides, negotiating to keep the peace and prevent militarization.

This is pure speculation, but to put some faces on this... without Palpatine and Dooku leading each government as secret Sith Lords, I could see Padme eventually rising to become Supreme Chancellor and leading the reform I mention above, as Jedi like Obi-wan keep the peace, with Anakin perhaps being assigned by the Jedi Council to the Confederate government (since he's originally a slave from the Outer Rim) and being the one ultimately responsible for the Confederate worlds rejoining the Republic as it collapses from an overdose of corporate greed.

 

However in The Clone Wars it is established that the apparent ruling government - the Separatist Parliament - either doesn't know of the Separatist Council (the treaty signed during AOTC is a conspiracy) or the Separatist Parliament views the Council as merely an advisory board for either the essential corporate cooperation (like the Allied cooperation with the Soviets) or a board for the interest of those who have donated their military. A member of Parliament very clearly says during Heroes on Both Sides that the corporations do not rule the Confederate government.

Obviously many things could be shifted as the war draws to a conclusion - perhaps the Separatist Council could declare itself the official ruling government as the war degenerates for the Confederacy and the Parliament is dissolved. While we know as the viewer who has the true power within the Confederate government this could very well not be the case in-universe. It is most likely the true-Confederates believe the Parliament controls the state, whilst in truth it is controlled by a Corporate-Sith conspiracy.

You establish fair points, however I am not talking about idealism as in Utopia, but rather idealism as in a genuine Confederate state (decentralized). I think you are assuming that the Confederacy would have been influenced by the mega-corporations - something which would only have occurred if the Confederacy had not destroyed their galactic monopoly. It can be assumed that the Confederacy would have established a better economic system where their was no real monopoly and where the power of corporations was stemmed (considering they are anti-corruption they aren't going to be influenced by the Federations power). This would have created sustainable state. I agree however that the Republic would have attempted Counter-Reform (much like the Catholic Church) and both states would have eventually been leveled only with slightly different systems of functioning. The Jedi would then, as you say, negotiated and med

 

This said, it's not impossible that the average Geonosian, Muun, or Neimodian kinda approve those mega-corporations.

I mean, on Earth, Southerners that had no slaves and no chances to have slaves were quite willing to back-up a rebellion cooked up for a good part by planters.

 

DarthPhilosopher,

What about the droids of the Separatist armies? The Confederacy were utterly dependent on the mega-corporations for their military defense. It's not like the Trade Federation sold millions of droid soldiers to the Republic too, they were clearly biased. I haven't been following the Clone Wars TV show that closely, but surely the Confederates knew who was the fighting this war for them? And all the atrocities they attempted to commit?

Also, what makes you so sure that the Confederates would have been able to reign in the mega-corporations if they had won independence? Every system has corrupt officials. Many may have fled to the Confederacy not out of idealism, but out of opportunity. The mega-corporations could have also threatened to remove their military support if they didn't get their way. A government that is too decentralized, like a confederacy of independent systems, would allow the strong to prey upon the weak. The mega-corporations, and the important planets of significant military or economic worth, would have filled the vaccuum of power and be able to do whatever they wanted.

 

I keep wondering, did the average Muun or Genosian was really ''opressed'' or felt opressed by the megacorporations ? (Geonosians are hive minded, so it probably don't count...) Is for instance the IBC really different that a Muun governement for a Muun ? After all, for a Muun, the IBC seems to provide rather cushy jobs, and there is some descriptions in Dark Lord that shows that the Muun were spending a lot of their homeworlds.

I mean, in EU, we see that SoroSuub is basically owning Sullust, and no one is really complaining (probably cause SoroSuub back the Alliance...)

 

The Separatist military seems to be a private military contractor writ large and dystopian. There's no accountability to any democratic government. Grievous and the other military commanders answer only to Dooku. Nute Gunray can evidently give a lone mercenary several warships bedecked in the blue Confederate Navy livery at the request of a mysterious Sith Lord. Most military commanders seem to get their jobs through being part of the Sith clique (the Dark Acolytes) or through their ties to the private armies of the mega-corporations (Grievous, the former hitman of the IGBC).

Contrast this with the Republic military, where there's a clear chain of command from the lowliest clone to the Jedi Council to the democratically-elected Chancellor and the Senate. Everyone in the Republic military is accountable for what they do.

This is part of what makes the clueless Separatist senator's claim that corporations don't rule the CIS so laughable. The Separatist military is completely beyond the control of the Confederate Congress.

It wouldn't surprise me if these Separatist idealists hate Grievous as much as the Republic do, and are waiting to turn against their corporate allies ASAP after they secure a lasting peace with the Republic.

That ties into what Ange_Dechu said about the IGBC being almost like a Muun government. It certainly looks out for Muun interests. The line between the mega-corporations and the idealists is blurred even further by the fact that the Confederate Congress still has a senator who represents the Corporate Alliance's interests. Poggle the Lesser is the leader of the Geonosians themselves, not just the arms factories.

Ultimately, the idealist side of the CIS just seems to be a very weak government. The corporations have plenty of grievances against the Republic even without the Sith stirring things up, so it's still possible that they would attempt to play a leading role in the CIS, either through their planets' representation in the Confederate Congress or through their control of the military.

 

Yeah, in RL history, governments OCCASIONALLY let territories go.

However, as in the USA, it's a BIT more of an issue when those territories compromise vast swaths of wealthy areas. Likewise, it's not like the only people living on those worlds were Pro-CIS.

Remember Leia's spiel that even if 50,001 supported independence over 50,000 then they'd have to stay independent of the New Republic (in Planet of Twilight?). That's pretty much the NR's rebuttal to the problems of the Confederacy.

But obviously Palpatine and many others, object to this. So would I.

 

The problem is that the CWAS has thrown the previous notions about the Confederacy upside-down.

The secessionists - the original, independent systems and sectors that seceded from the Republic over the course of two years prior to the start of the war - were apparently motivated by a disgust with Republic rule. Note that many of the secession governments were in the Rim, where they felt that Coruscant favored the interior regions over them, yet they were providing the majority of the resources.
The actual "economic powers" played little role in the early days; and with the CWAS, one member isn't even known to be part of the Confederacy (with Gunray being blamed as a "rogue"), whereas two other groups are publicly neutral. Only the Corporate Alliance and the Techno Union are publicly with them, and some of their members either stayed with the Republic or declared neutrality.
The actual existence of the "Separatist Council" appears to be unknown to the general population.