United Nations of Earth

"Today marks the end of the beginning."President Xan Tuji, address to the first session of the legislature, New Luxor, 15 June 2283

The United Nations of Earth (UNE) was the federal government of humanity from 1 June 2283 to 31 December 2340. The twelve states of Earth, the provinces of Mars, Luna and the Jovian moons founded it at New Luxor after the Solar War and the Tharsis eruptions, to replace a United Nations that had never been designed to govern an interplanetary civilisation. Its name was a compromise. It kept the old body's name and redefined it: the federation of the nations that had come from Earth, wherever they now lived.

The UNE governed the solar system for its first six years. From 2289 the Pillai hyperdrive turned it into the government of an expanding civilisation. Under President Elliot O'Neil it signed the Manifest Pledge, sent the four explorers out and founded the first colonies beyond the Sun. It met the Mardak Vol remains, the Voor and the Maweer, and in 2333 it went to war with the Voor Confederacy. It won the Voor War at the Krakre in December 2340. On 1 January 2341 the Republic Act renamed it the Unified Solar Republic, on the ground that its name described a body that no longer existed.

Founding

Why a federation

By 2282 the solar system was governed by the United Nations under a charter written in 1945. The UN ran nine provisional governments, funded them through the Unification Works Program, owned a controlling share of the system's fuel, food and shipbuilding, and had just moved 700 million people between planets after the Tharsis eruptions. It did all this through a Security Council in which the Big Four held vetoes, and a General Assembly in which the colonies had no seats. A Martian had no vote in the body that governed Mars.

The rebuilding after the eruptions put Earth's states, the moons and Mars into the same relief columns. In 2282 the General Assembly called for "a structure adequate to the peoples of the system". The European Federation's delegation proposed one, based on its own federal treaty of 2032. The Pact's leaders supported it. The colonies' councils supported it because it gave them seats. The Big Four supported it last, because the alternative was a colonial federation of their own.

The New Luxor negotiations

Delegations from across the system met at New Luxor from January 2283, under a Pact chair, with the provinces seated as parties and not as petitioners. Earth's 11 billion people in twelve states would not accept a legislature in which Mars's 2.3 billion and the moons' 500 million could outvote them by combining. The provinces would not accept one in which Earth could outvote them without trying. The European Federation's model resolved it: a lower house by population, which Earth's twelve states could not dominate because they had never voted as one, and an upper house of equal seats for every member.

The name took a week. The provinces would not join a body called the United Nations of Earth, and Earth's states would not give up the name. The Pacific Union's delegate proposed keeping the name and rewriting its meaning, and the constitution's first article says so.

1 June 2283

The twelve states of Earth, the four Martian provinces, Luna and the four Jovian provinces signed the constitution at New Luxor on 1 June 2283. The ceremony put the Federal President of the European Federation, the Prime Minister of the Pacific Union and the elected premier of Marineris at one table for the first time. On 15 June the founding assembly elected the first President of the Solar System, Xan Tuji, a Europan shipwright. His address, which every schoolchild of the federation learned, gave its first era a name: the end of the beginning.

Government

Members

The constitution named three classes of member. The distinction was one of history rather than of rights. Every member had five senators and a delegation in the Chamber by population, and the second article said no member's standing could be reduced without its consent.

The states kept their own governments, laws and heads of state. They surrendered to the federation defence, interplanetary trade, the tethers, the fleet and the colonial question. Territories had a guaranteed path to area standing on a population test. Colonies founded beyond the Sun from 2305 entered as territories.

The President

The President of the Solar System was head of state and chief executive. The President led defence, foreign policy and the execution of the laws, and was elected by universal suffrage across every member for four years, with a maximum of two terms. The fifth article also let the Chamber, by two thirds with the Senate's agreement, declare the office vacant "for incapacity or loss of confidence". No Chamber used that clause until 2328.

The President appointed the Cabinet. Its departments included Defence, which inherited the Enforcement Directorate, the Marine Corps and the Coalition's fleets as the Unified Solar Navy; Energy; Colonial Affairs, renamed Member Affairs in 2290; Scientific Research, which took over the Pillai laboratories in 2289; and the Treasury, which inherited the Colonial Assets Office's shares and became the largest shareholder in the solar economy.

The legislature

The Chamber of Representatives was apportioned at one representative for every 20 million people, adjusted after each census, and elected in single-member districts. It held the most power, approved the budget and oversaw the executive through committees. The first Chamber had 720 seats: 560 for Earth's states, 118 for Mars, 8 for Luna and 34 for the Jovian territories. The Federation Senate had five senators for every member, 105 at the start. It reviewed the Chamber's bills, confirmed the Cabinet and the judges, and could delay money bills but not originate them.

The courts

The High Court at New Luxor had eleven judges appointed for life, so that no President could appoint a majority in two terms. The fourth article, over the Chinese delegation's objection, guaranteed every citizen the right to vote for the government that taxed them. The Interplanetary Court heard disputes between members. Its first case, in 2284, India's claim against Europa over the Swarga's second cable, found for Europa and ordered the federation's Treasury to pay India. It set the principle that the federation, not its members, answered for the Solar War.

What the constitution left out

The constitution did not say who owned the Colonial Assets Office's shares, which made the federation the largest shareholder in Exxon Space, Bharat, Xi, WildSky and Reliance without anyone deciding it should be. It did not say what the federation was for once the solar system was governed. And it did not say how a member could leave, because the drafters had just fought a thirty-year war over that question.

History

Tuji's presidency, 2283 to 2291

Tuji served two terms and won the second in 2287 with 71 percent. His first act, on 16 June 2283, was to order the scrapping of the four Daxians that had carried the Confederation's council off Mars, and to put their steel into the federation's first warship. The Unity-class frigates of 2300 were built from it. His presidency finished the Program's rebuilding and admitted the Belt as a territory in 2290. In 2288 the Chamber's Scientific Research committee funded Vinak Pillai's hyperdrive by one vote, Elliot O'Neil's.

The Pledge, 2292 to 2300

O'Neil won the election of 12 November 2291 on one word, expansion. His first act was the Manifest Pledge, a declaration that every people would share humanity's future beyond Earth, and a funding act for the Exploration and Settlement Fund. It set the rule that every colony would be settled by the federation from a designated region of it, carrying "the footprint of a people and not the average of all of them". Exploration Command was founded on 1 January 2293. The four Voyager-class survey ships and the first three jump-capable warships were ready by the end of his second term.

The Expansion Era

The four explorers left Europa in January 2300. Between them they surveyed 800 stars and claimed 60 systems by 2317. They found life on Phoenicia in 2301, the Mardak Vol observation posts at Sirius in 2305, the colony ship at Tadasca in 2303, the garden world of Mardak Vol in 2308 and the Inari at Binami in 2315, whom the federation quarantined. The Office of Settlement founded the four core worlds: Landfall at Procyon and Circumstance at Alpha Centauri in 2305, Dauntless at Yildun in 2314 and Serenity at Sirius in 2317.

The federation argued over pace. Presidents Halvorsen (2300 to 2308), Desai (2308 to 2316) and Okafor (2316 to 2324) governed on consolidation or slower expansion, and the Pledge majority in the Chamber, led by O'Neil from his seat, defended the Fund. The pictures of Mardak Vol changed the Chamber's mind in 2309. The next colonies were Mardak Vol and Theia in 2323, Bounty at Cirban in 2324 and Hualapai in 2330.

Contact, 2317 to 2320

On 21 September 2317 the survey ship Grissom met a Voor survey cruiser at Cirban. The federation's envoys went to Hiverion in 2318, and the Cirban Protocol of 11 June 2318 provided for envoys, a line and trade. The federation also saw a Voor hearth, a warship it could not build or match. The Naval Act of 2318 gave the Navy 8 trillion credits, and the Navy Board's War Plan Purple of 2320 decided how to spend it. Eight starforts went up at Cirban, Nomotar and Saolea.

The trade and the ban, 2319 to 2328

The Cirban Exchange opened the federation's first interstellar trade. Humans sold the Voor food and bought their metals, and the Maweer licensed the federation their field. The Binami and Saolea sectors boomed. President Aurelio Benavides (2324 to 2328), the Exchange's first director, was elected on the trade. On 1 January 2328 the Voor High Command banned it. On 4 March the Chamber declared the presidency vacant for loss of confidence, and in April the Third Term Amendment let O'Neil return. He won the special election of 14 May 2328 on one word, readiness.

The build-up, 2328 to 2333

The Chamber voted O'Neil's emergency every January. The Emergency Naval Act of September 2328 doubled the Navy's remaining appropriation, and the Fund's colony money went to the yards. In 2331 O'Neil placed the whole fleet under Grand Admiral Tyson Vol as the Grand Armada. By July 2333 it had 306 jump-capable hulls.

The Voor War, 2333 to 2340

A Voor patrol followed a Maweer trading fleet into Nomotar in July 2333, and the Ciriban Incident of 28 July led to the Voor declaration of war on 7 August 2333. It was the first declaration of war humanity had received from anyone but itself. The Grand Armada won the war in the Gulf at the Battle of the Mog and the Second Battle of Media in 2334, took the Voor Gulf in the Interstellar Blitzkrieg, and took the Voor capital in the Siege of Hiverion in 2338. The Confederacy surrendered at the Krakre on 21 December 2340. The war cost the federation 406,000 dead and 41 trillion credits.

The Republic Act

By 2340 the UNE governed fifteen human worlds beyond the Sun, three Voor systems with 210 million Voor, and a frontier with two species it had never met in peace. The Chamber's constitutional committee reported in September 2340 that its name described a body that no longer existed. The Republic Act passed the Chamber on 12 November 2340 by 690 to 70 and the Senate on 15 November by 101 to 4, and the members' legislatures ratified it by 20 December, the day before the surrender. On 1 January 2341 the United Nations of Earth became the Unified Solar Republic, a government of the twenty-one worlds its people lived on.

Presidents

Legacy

The UNE's constitution survived its renaming. The Republic kept its two houses, its courts and its three classes of member, and admitted the Voor of Haedus as a territory in 2343. The federation's founding principle, that its members were the nations that had come from Earth wherever they now lived, became the Republic's argument for every world it later took in. Tuji's "end of the beginning" and O'Neil's Pledge remained the Republic's two founding texts. The Republic adopted a new constitution in 2460, after the war with the Red Khanate.

BOOK SOURCES

1. Solar Eternal, Part VI, §6.4 "The End of the Beginning" and §6.5 "The Structure of the United Nations of Earth"
2. Solar Eternal, Part VII, §7.1 and §7.2
3. Solar Eternal, Part VIII, §8.1 to §8.7
4. Solar Eternal, Part IX, §9.7 "Solar Ascendant: The Voor Surrender"
5. Solar Eternal, Part XV, §15.6 "The Constitution of 2460 and the Presidents of Reconstruction"