Mutual Checks
互制
With no superior overhead, the first thing peers can do is withdraw their own cooperation. This paper asks four things: on what grounds withdrawing cooperation is a check and not force; when multilateral sanctions run as a common procedure, on whom each part of the account falls; where checks part from erosion, and cooperation from collusion; and, toward a member that crosses the line, how far the system can go and where it stops. The paper starts from the economic pressure the Plateau Federation put on the Stonegorge Commonwealth (Stonegorge), and from Common Measure No. 1 of the Three-Borders Cooperation System; it also draws on a commercial agreement between the NUT and the Plateau Federation, on Common Measure No. 2 against the Republic of the Sandbars (the Sandbars), on two proposals Stonegorge made under pressure, and on a member's entry by military force into the Outer Sandbars. What withdrawing cooperation withdraws is the cooperation of the party applying pressure itself, and the other party's room to bear the cost and not comply remains, so it is a check; withholding what was to be given is a check, while taking away what is the other party's own is force; the endpoint of a freeze aimed at an act is that the act has stopped and the account has landed, and whether the account has landed is recognized under a covenant or an award, not decided alone by the freezing party. Checks and reputation count by interests that all parties recognize, and the direction is still that persons are ends. Multilateral sanctions are the act of each participating state plus a common procedure; each state bears its own share, and the common procedure itself bears a share too. The line between checks and erosion, and between cooperation and collusion, is looked for in three places: the interrupt-right; what a measure is aimed at; and whether the part that falls on people has a road by which to ask. At the system level, three shapes of mirror assimilation must be checked. Toward a member that crosses the line, whether by colonizing another state or by crossing the line against its own people, the system can question, record, check and suspend, and can also expel; all these are withdrawing cooperation, and none substitutes for that state's judgment. When a member slides back until the slide has taken hold, whether it has taken hold each member recognizes for itself; the system goes on questioning and recording as before, may suspend, and does not judge for that state who should hold office; that state's seat is taken by the positions that actually take the acts, and the account is booked to them. Along the way the paper takes up Kant, Rawls and Grotius. The paper has six propositions (XZ22 to XZ27), each stated at the end of its section and listed together at the end.
Writing Declaration: This paper was co-drafted with Claude (Anthropic). All intellectual decisions, framework design, and final editorial judgments were made by the author.
Introduction
The Mirror Sea is an inland sea north of the continent. At its eastern end it opens to the outer ocean through the Stonegorge Strait, its only sea route to the outer ocean. Both shores of the strait belong to Stonegorge, and in the middle of the strait lies Stonegorge's Lamp Island; for the Plateau Federation on the northern shore, both its maritime trade and its Mirror Sea Fleet must pass through here to reach the outer ocean.
In the spring of Year 15, the Plateau Federation's Ministry of Foreign Affairs put two requests to Stonegorge: that the Mirror Sea Fleet set up a supply station on Lamp Island; and that the fleet have "year-round passage free of inspection" in the strait, without going through transit registration with Stonegorge's Strait Authority. The Chief of the Commonwealth refused in writing, saying that transit registration was "the same for all ships."
In the summer of the same year, the Plateau Federation's Federal Security Board issued External Economic Security Order No. 7: fuel exports to Stonegorge were stopped; an additional tariff of forty percent was imposed on Stonegorge's fish catches and textiles; the Federal Clearing Bureau stopped clearing for three Stonegorge banks on the Mirror Sea Clearing Network. In Year 14, about seventy percent of Stonegorge's fuel was imported from the Plateau Federation, about forty percent of its fish catch was sold there, and most of its external clearing went through this network, run by the Federal Clearing Bureau. In the same month, the Federal President said in a speech: "The Stonegorge Strait is the lifeline of the Plateau Federation." Within three months, fuel prices at Gorgemouth rose to 2.1 times what they had been; the fishing ports laid off about thirty-one thousand people; two hospitals rationed the fuel for their generators; and payments by Stonegorge importers were delayed by an average of twenty-six days. The Chief of the Commonwealth said in the Commonwealth Chamber: "What we refused was a supply station on Lamp Island; what we got in return was hospitals without fuel."
Stonegorge is a member of the Three-Borders Cooperation System; it joined in the autumn of Year 14. The system was formed by three states in Year 13: the United City-States of Ends (UCSE), the Nation Union of Telos (NUT) and the Democratic Republic of Purposes (DRP). The instrument by which the three states formed it is the Three-Borders Compact (hereafter the Compact); the Plateau Federation is outside the system. Article 2 of the Compact states that all members have equal status and that each member has one vote in the Conference of Members; its clause 2 reads: "This Compact establishes no organ above the members. No organ of the system may exercise force against a member or against persons within a member's territory." These articles are examples; this series does not claim that they are the best design.
Stonegorge requested an extraordinary session. At the session the Secretary-General put forward three courses for the members to choose from: (a) a common measure; (b) relief for Stonegorge from the members; (c) a letter from the Secretary-General to the Plateau Federation asking about the relation between Order No. 7 and Stonegorge's refusal of the supply station. All three courses were taken. Course (b) was left to each state to decide for itself: the NUT's Council for External Affairs decided, 5 to 0, to carry fuel by the railway through the Stonegorge Pass, making up about forty percent of the shortfall; the UCSE's Office of Trade permitted Stonegorge's importers to clear through banks in Rivermouth City; the DRP's Foreign Ministry declared that it would "sell fuel at market prices," and two shiploads went by sea to the harbor at Gorgemouth. Under course (c), the Secretary-General's letter was sent, and the Plateau Federation's Ministry of Foreign Affairs replied: "The system is not the superior of the Plateau Federation. What lies between the Plateau Federation and Stonegorge is a matter between two states." The reply did not answer the question about the relation. Under course (a), in the autumn of the same year, the Conference of Members passed Common Measure No. 1 under Article 11 of the Compact, for a term of one year: (1) the assets of the Federal Clearing Bureau and the Federal Development Bank in members' banks were frozen; (2) the supply of fuel, parts and port services to the Mirror Sea Fleet was prohibited; (3) exports of three classes of metals to the Plateau Federation were restricted; food and medicine were covered by a humanitarian exemption. The vote was 3 to 0, with the UCSE, the NUT and Stonegorge in favor and the DRP abstaining, yet the DRP implemented all three items all the same; the NUT declared that it would not take part in the part of item (1) that froze the assets of the Federal Clearing Bureau, and its reasons were entered in the record. Article 11 of the Compact provides: measures are implemented by each member under its own law; there must be a humanitarian exemption; persons affected by a measure may petition the Three-Borders Petitions Committee under Article 14; each measure has a term of one year, and renewal follows Article 7(c), by a majority vote of the members not concerned; a member that does not take part in a measure must explain its reasons publicly to the Conference of Members. After the measure was passed, the Plateau Federation's Ministry of Commerce announced that it would "reassess dealings" with the banks of the members taking part in the freeze.
For the next three years both went on. Order No. 7 was confirmed twice by the Plateau Federation's Federal Parliament, in the summer of Year 16 and the summer of Year 17, each time for another year; Common Measure No. 1 was renewed for a year in the autumn of Year 16 and again in the autumn of Year 17, the votes going as before. In the summer of Year 18, Stonegorge and the Plateau Federation signed the Lamp Island Agreement, which states that the Plateau Federation revokes Order No. 7. That autumn, Common Measure No. 1 reached the end of its term; its renewal was not passed, and it terminated on expiry. For the losses Stonegorge suffered from Order No. 7, there is between the two states neither a covenant nor an award.
This matter falls on two groups of people, and they must be looked at separately. Order No. 7 falls on people in Stonegorge: those who buy fuel, the roughly thirty-one thousand laid off at the fishing ports, the patients in the two hospitals who depend on rationed fuel. Common Measure No. 1 is aimed at two institutions of the Plateau Federation and at the Mirror Sea Fleet, but it is implemented through members' banks and ports, and the part of it that falls on people reaches those within members' territories who deal through the Mirror Sea Clearing Network and those reached by the restrictions on the three classes of metals; the clearing of the transit stations in the NUT's Northern District is among them. They are those whom the system's acts reach, and, as regards those acts, they are in the system's interior, following the unified sentence (system level, Paper 2, §6). There are three lines to look at: the line between withdrawing cooperation and substituting for the other party's judgment; the line between checks and structural erosion; and whether the part of a measure that falls on people has a road within reach by which to ask. Before this, the members, Stonegorge and the Plateau Federation dealt with one another as usual, and cleared through the Mirror Sea Clearing Network as usual.
Put side by side, the two are almost the same in form. What the Plateau Federation withdrew was its own fuel, its own market and its own clearing network; what the members withdrew was their own banking services, ports and metals. One is treated by the system as pressure to be answered; the other is the system's own answer. This paper must make clear on what grounds they are told apart, how far this kind of answer by the system can go, and where it stops.
The paper goes in eight steps. §§1 and 2 establish that withdrawing cooperation is a check, not force, and make clear the difference between withholding and taking, and where a freeze ends. §3 says why the system must count by what all parties recognize. §4 writes of the common procedure for multilateral sanctions. §5 draws the line between checks and erosion and between cooperation and collusion, and reads Order No. 7 there. §6 checks mirror assimilation at the system level. §§7 and 8 write of what the system can do toward a member that crosses the line; the end of §8 also writes of how the system treats a member once it has slid back until the slide has taken hold, and of who takes its seat. The division into three layers follows the Prequel, §11: which sentence is a norm, which item is a suggested rule or example, and which step is left to judgment in positions, is stated on the spot.
§1 Withdrawing Cooperation
The Plateau Federation's reply said that the system is not the superior of the Plateau Federation. In this it was not wrong. The system has no superior overhead, and it is itself no one's superior; it cannot order the Plateau Federation to revoke Order No. 7, nor can it order its own members to do anything. What, then, is left in the hands of peers when there is no superior overhead?
The Theory of the State answered half of this, at the layer of a state's outward dealings. It says that each of a state's "lasts" lies under a channel, and that among these there are two things the state cannot close: "what it cannot close is peers judging for themselves on this basis and withdrawing cooperation other than recognition" (Theory of the State N36). How other states view the matter, and whether, having viewed it, they still give their cooperation, is for those states to decide for themselves, and the party viewed cannot close it. This is the first of the things that cannot be closed between one another, with no superior. The Theory of the State also says: "Sanctions and blockades are also acts. Those whom this state's acts of sanction and blockade reach, and who have no way to avoid them by exiting, are, as regards those acts, in this state's interior, following the unified sentence" (Theory of the State N29). Withdrawing cooperation is not doing nothing; it is an act, and on whom it falls must be checked following the unified sentence. At the system level, it follows the unified sentence (system level, Paper 2, §6).
A system of cooperation has no force, only checks. The notice period that exit must pass through, the conditions members may set when a state rejoins, the suspension of a member's vote in the common procedure: all these are checks, and do not rely on force (Paper 7). Common measures are of this kind too. After Common Measure No. 1 was passed, the system itself did not go and freeze any asset: measures are implemented by each member under its own law, the system does not enforce them, and they land in each member. The freezing happened in members' banks, the prohibition of supply in members' ports, the restriction of exports in members' customs.
Why withdrawing cooperation is not force requires first saying what force is. The Prequel, §2, set up the criterion: Force is substituting one's own judgment for the other party's judgment on its own affairs. By this criterion, it is stated item by item whose judgment, and which, Common Measure No. 1 substituted. The freeze item means that members' banks no longer handle dealings in these assets for the Federal Clearing Bureau and the Federal Development Bank; whether to provide this is the judgment of the member where the bank is. The supply item means that members' ports no longer fuel or repair the ships of the Mirror Sea Fleet; whether to provide this is the judgment of the member where the port is. The export item means that members' customs do not let the three classes of metals out; whether to let them out is the judgment of those members. What all three items withdraw belongs to the party applying the pressure. Of the judgments the Plateau Federation makes on its own affairs, whether to revoke Order No. 7 and how to respond, not one has been substituted.
The Prequel, §2, warned that it cannot be concluded that nothing has been substituted merely because the other party can still decide how to respond. So it must also be seen whether its room to bear the cost and not comply is really there. In this case it can be seen: Order No. 7 was renewed for two more years after this, and the Plateau Federation, while bearing the freeze and the prohibition of supply, turned to "reassess dealings" with the banks of the members taking part in the freeze. It did not comply, and it could afford the cost of not complying. Its judgment remained its own. So Common Measure No. 1 is a check.
The same yardstick must also measure Order No. 7. What the Plateau Federation withdrew was likewise its own fuel, its own market and the clearing network it itself runs; looked at in form alone, Order No. 7 too is withdrawing cooperation. Stonegorge too bore these costs, and never gave the supply station on Lamp Island. By the criterion of force, the two cannot for the moment be told apart. What tells them apart is not in this section: what a withdrawal of cooperation is aimed at is the business of §5. This section first sets a floor: withdrawing cooperation is not in itself force.
There is one point on this floor that must be held. Past a certain degree, withdrawing cooperation leaves the other party no room. The Prequel, §2, gave a test: if a measure leaves the other party unable to survive unless it does as the party applying pressure wishes, or in effect cancels its room to bear the cost and not comply, it has already slid into substituting judgment, and is not done. Such a measure has not made the decision for the other party, but it has blocked every road the other party has except compliance, and the result is the same as deciding for it. How this test is extended from Institution Theory to pressure between states, the Prequel, §2, has already written. Requiring the other party to stop crossing the line, or to perform a covenant it has acknowledged, does not count as what the party applying pressure wishes: that is what the other party owed in any case, not a direction the party applying pressure wants it to change to.
Common Measure No. 1 and Order No. 7 lie at the two ends of this test. Common Measure No. 1 set a humanitarian exemption for food and medicine. The three items listed in Order No. 7 have no exemption, and it fell on the generator fuel of two hospitals. This section only sets out the two ends of the test. How far the part of Order No. 7 that fell on hospital fuel went is checked against this test in §5; what it takes for a common measure's humanitarian carve-out to count as having landed is written in §4.
It may be said that withdrawing cooperation, like applying pressure, is a way of pressing the other party to change its mind; calling one a check and the other pressure is only a difference of words. The weight of this objection is that the party from whom cooperation is withdrawn really does suffer a loss, and whether or not it changes its mind, it really does have to count that loss in. But what is divided here is not whether anyone was pressed. It is whether the other party's room is still there: if the room is there, its judgment is still its own; if the room is gone, its judgment has already been substituted. As for what it is pressed toward, whether to stop an act that crosses the line or to change a choice that does not cross the line, that is another line, checked separately against it in §5.
Whether the room is actually still there depends on the particular situation: whether the other party has other sources, on whom the cost falls, and how heavily. This layer is left to the judgment of the positions that make the measure, and the account falls on those positions and on the persons who make the decision.
XZ22 in full, together with withholding and taking and the endpoint of a freeze, is set up in the next section.
§2 What Is Withheld, What Is Taken; Where a Freeze Ends
That withdrawing cooperation is a check leaves two points still to be made concrete. One is what is withdrawn: which things may be withheld, and which, once touched, are taken. The other is how long it is withdrawn: where a freeze ends, and who has the say.
First, withholding and taking. The question is whether what is held back is something the party applying pressure was to give, or something of the other party's own that is taken away. With something one was to give, whether to give it is the giver's own affair; in not giving it, the giver makes a judgment on its own affairs. With something of the other party's own, how to use it is the other party's affair; taking it away is making that judgment for the other party. So the two fall on either side of the criterion of force.
Between the system and its members, this division falls on money. For the system to withhold from funds it was to disburse to a member, to stop the disbursement, is withdrawing cooperation, a check, and does not make the system a superior. To take away a member's own capital, to confiscate it, to transfer its reserves and assets away by compulsion, is force; an arrangement that in fact does this, whatever it is called, is already a superior, and is answered as in Paper 7, XZ46. The system's withholding of disbursements has not happened in this series' cases; this paper does not supply such a case, and sets up only the criterion.
Toward a state outside the system, the same division applies. Common Measure No. 1 froze the assets of the Federal Clearing Bureau and the Federal Development Bank in members' banks. A freeze is not taking: the assets still belong to those two institutions; they simply cannot, for now, be used through these banks. Suspending payments not yet made to the other party is of this kind too. Confiscating or drawing on the principal is taking: how that principal is used was the other party's own affair, and drawing on it already substitutes for the other party's judgment. The system does not do this, and the members do not do it through the system either. Taking is already force in itself (the Prequel, §2); confiscate another state's assets, and if the other party does not accept it, what has been taken can only be held by strength, and it will also slide toward the use of armed force.
Someone may ask: Stonegorge suffered losses from Order No. 7, and the Plateau Federation's assets are frozen right at hand; would it not be just right to take them to offset the account? The account is recorded; if the account is real, it is there. But that the account is there does not mean one may go and take it oneself. To determine oneself how much the other party owes, and then go and take it oneself, is to be both judge and executor in one's own case; between states there is no superior to stand surety for this step, so this step can rest only on strength. So the account of compensation is settled through a covenant or an award, and confiscation does not take the place of settlement. Whether the income generated by frozen assets counts as the other party's assets, this paper does not judge: if it is the other party's, it is not touched; if it is not, it falls under the law of the state that holds it, and is handed to the particular law.
Next, where a freeze ends. A freeze is not taking, but a freeze without an endpoint turns into another kind of taking: the assets are still the other party's in name, yet the other party can never touch them, while the freezing party can trade them for anything. So a freeze must have an endpoint, and the endpoint cannot simply be left to those who make the decision to fix as they go. At the normative layer, this paper gives one sentence:
The endpoint of a freeze aimed at an act is that the act has stopped and the account has landed.
A freeze is directed at an act. Once that act has stopped and the account it created has landed, there is no reason for the freeze to stay; if it stays, what it is aimed at is no longer that act but something else the other party may do afterward, and it has slid over to the ghostwriting side spoken of in §5. This sentence has two examples. When a state enters another state by military force and its assets are frozen, the endpoint is that the entry has ended and compensation has been made. When a state crosses the line against its own people and its assets are frozen, the endpoint is that the line-crossing act has stopped and compensation has been made; the former example speaks of an entry outward, and here it is extended to a state's crossing the line against its own people, what changes being the people on whom the act falls (own undertaking). The Plateau Federation case also comes under this sentence: the act that is Order No. 7 stops, and Stonegorge's losses have a covenant or an award by which they can be recognized.
Whether the account has landed: who recognizes it? It is recognized under a covenant or an award, and is not decided alone by the freezing party. This is the same step as the closing of a case spoken of in Paper 2, XZ10: the party questioned does not hold the power to close the case, and neither does the freezing party. The Theory of Government has said: "Decisions can be final: a particular matter can be answered and closed. Positions cannot be final: no position may monopolize the power to shut the door" (Theory of Government G36). If the freezing party could declare on its own that the account has not yet landed, it could lock the other party in indefinitely; and the lock would rest not on anything the other party does but on a word of its own. The reverse holds as well: the frozen party cannot declare on its own that the account has landed. Where there is no covenant or award by which to recognize it, the freeze is reviewed when its term runs out and is not renewed on the strength of its origin: Institution Theory says, "A temporary structure of guarding must be re-examined after its conditions change, and is not renewed automatically on the strength of its origin" (Institution Theory Z22). A freeze of one year must, when its term runs out, be stated again: what it is now aimed at, whether that act is still there, and where the account stands. Toward a member in the course of exiting, a freeze serves only the account and is not made a condition of exit: the Theory of the State says that "unsettled matters do not keep exit from taking effect indefinitely" (Theory of the State N16). A freeze can wait for the account; it cannot hold exit as a pledge (Paper 7, XZ45).
A freeze under a new name. Theory of the State Paper 5, §5, wrote of the UCSE's sanctions against the DRP. In the spring of Year 9, the UCSE's Office of Trade issued an order freezing the assets of DRP state institutions in UCSE banks. After the two states signed the Withdrawal Agreement in Year 11, the other measures were all lifted; the asset freeze was kept, and the Office of Trade calls it "security for the Reedtown compensation." The Withdrawal Agreement says that compensation is to be negotiated separately; the two states have negotiated under the agreement, the DRP side in turn demanding compensation for the dead and wounded at Junction Town, and at the point where the record stops there is no result. Theory of the State Paper 4 says of wartime structures: "What is renamed, or continued through ordinary procedure, does not by itself prove that it has been lifted: recognized by function, not by name" (Theory of the State N22). §5 of that paper has already read this security: "When the purpose changes, the ground must change too: what debt is secured, in what amount, and until when, must be established anew by the Office of Trade as a new decision, and explained to a position it does not occupy." What is checked there is its ground within the UCSE. Here the step is carried one further, to the side of the freeze that faces the other state (own undertaking): a freeze under a new name is recognized by function; it is still a freeze, and not one of the two things it must make clear is waived because it has been renamed. Which account it is now for, "the Reedtown compensation" has given a name. Whether that account has landed, and who recognizes it, is, under this section, a matter for a covenant the two states negotiate under the Withdrawal Agreement, or an award both states recognize, not for the Office of Trade's own determination.
The end of Common Measure No. 1. Back to this paper's case. Common Measure No. 1 was renewed for a year in the autumn of Year 16 and again in the autumn of Year 17, the votes going as before. Each renewal must state whether the act it is aimed at is still there, and not renew on the strength of its having passed the year before. In those two years Order No. 7 was indeed there: it was confirmed twice by the Plateau Federation's Federal Parliament, in the summer of Year 16 and the summer of Year 17, each time for another year. What the explanations submitted with the renewal votes said is not recorded.
By the spring of Year 18, Stonegorge was already within the notice period for exiting the system. Under Article 7(c) of the Compact it declared that it would no longer take part in Common Measure No. 1, its public reason being that it was negotiating with the Plateau Federation over Lamp Island; on Stonegorge's side, the frozen assets of the Federal Clearing Bureau were released, and port services for the Mirror Sea Fleet at Gorgemouth were restored (Paper 7, §3). In the summer of Year 18, the two states signed the Lamp Island Agreement, which states that the Plateau Federation revokes Order No. 7. That autumn, Common Measure No. 1 reached the end of its term. The Secretariat's written explanation for the renewal vote set out two things: Order No. 7 had been revoked; for the losses Stonegorge suffered from Order No. 7, there was between the two states neither a covenant nor an award, and the Lamp Island Agreement did not address this item. The UCSE proposed renewing only the freeze in item (1), for one year, "until Stonegorge's losses can be recognized under a covenant or an award"; the NUT and the DRP opposed; Stonegorge abstained. The renewal was not passed; Common Measure No. 1 terminated on expiry, and the frozen assets were released. The DRP's permanent representative said: "Order No. 7 has been revoked, so what the measure was aimed at is gone." The statement of Stonegorge's permanent representative was entered in the record: "Stonegorge's losses are for Stonegorge itself to negotiate with the Plateau Federation."
This case falls right between the two halves of the normative sentence above. The DRP's remark reads the first half: the act has stopped. The UCSE's proposal reads the second half: the account has not yet landed. The sentence needs both halves; it does not say that when the second half is not met the freeze must go on. When the account has no covenant or award by which it can be recognized, what the sentence requires is review when the term runs out, not renewal on the strength of origin. This time the review was done: the Secretariat's explanation set out both whether the act had stopped and whether the account had landed; the proposal, the opposition and the abstention, and what each party said, were all entered in the record. The Conference of Members did not renew; this is a judgment the Conference of Members made under the rules, and this paper does not judge in its place. The act has stopped; the account has no covenant or award by which it can be recognized, and at review the Conference of Members did not renew; that loss of Stonegorge's is not written off because the freeze was lifted: it is left, as it stands, as a remainder, and Stonegorge says it will negotiate on its own.
Following the three layers of the Prequel, §11, what this section says is set apart. The normative layer: the endpoint of a freeze aimed at an act is that the act has stopped and the account has landed; whether the account has landed is recognized under a covenant or an award, and is not decided alone by the freezing party; where there is no covenant or award by which to recognize it, the freeze is reviewed when its term runs out and is not renewed on the strength of its origin. The rule layer: the one-year term of Article 11 of the Compact, the renewal vote under Article 7(c), and the settlement of compensation through a covenant or an award are all examples, and whether they are adopted rests with the parties, as agreed. The judgment layer: whether the act has stopped, whether the account has landed, and whether the compensation is enough are recognized by the positions within the covenant or award; when to review and how is left to the judgment of those in positions, and the account falls on positions and persons.
It may be said that if the freezing party may not decide alone, the frozen party can stall and refuse to acknowledge the account, stalling again and again, until the freezing party has nothing left in hand. The weight of this objection is that negotiations over compensation really do often come to nothing; the Reedtown account is one such. But this sentence does not let the frozen party decide alone either; when neither side can settle it, the freeze is reviewed when its term runs out, and the review itself is recorded and open to questioning. What this provision guards against is the freezing party locking the other in by closing the case alone; it does not require the freezing party to let go. During its term a freeze must still be checked on two counts: whether the other party's actual room is still there, which is the test of the Prequel, §2; and whether the part that falls on people has been carved out, which is the business of §4.
XZ22 A check is the withdrawal of cooperation, and is not force (carried over from Theory of the State N36 and N29). The first thing that cannot be closed between one another, with no superior, is peers judging for themselves on this basis and withdrawing cooperation other than recognition (Theory of the State N36); sanctions and blockades are also acts (Theory of the State N29), and on whom a withdrawal of cooperation falls is checked following the unified sentence: a state's own withdrawal follows Theory of the State N29; one made through a common procedure follows the unified sentence (system level, Paper 2, §6). The notice period, the conditions for rejoining and suspension are all checks, and do not rely on force. Force is substituting one's own judgment for the other party's judgment on its own affairs. Withdrawing cooperation (stopping disbursements, suspending payments not yet made, freezing, suspending a vote in the common procedure, sanctions) withdraws the cooperation of the party applying pressure itself; the other party's affairs are still decided by it, and its room to bear the cost and not comply remains, so it is a check. If anything is substituted, it is stated item by item whose judgment, and which; if a measure leaves the other party unable to survive unless it does as the party applying pressure wishes, or in effect cancels its room to bear the cost and not comply, it has already slid into substituting judgment, and is not done (the test of the Prequel, §2, extended to economic measures; own undertaking); requiring the other party to stop crossing the line, or to perform a covenant it has acknowledged, does not count as what the party applying pressure wishes. Withheld or taken: withholding from funds that were to be given is withdrawing cooperation, a check; taking away the other party's own capital is force, and an arrangement that in fact does this is, as in Paper 7, XZ46, a superior. The same holds for the assets of a state outside the system: suspending payments not yet made and freezing the principal are withdrawing cooperation; confiscating or drawing on the principal is taking, is force, and will also slide toward the use of armed force; the system does not do it, and the members do not do it through the system either; the account of compensation is recorded and settled through a covenant or an award, and confiscation does not take the place of settlement. Whether the income generated by frozen assets counts as the other party's is handed to the particular law. The endpoint of a freeze aimed at an act is that the act has stopped and the account has landed: for an entry, that the entry has ended and compensation has been made; for crossing the line against one's own people, that the line-crossing act has stopped and compensation has been made (own undertaking). Whether the account has landed is recognized under a covenant or an award, and is not decided alone by the freezing party (Paper 2, XZ10); where there is no covenant or award by which to recognize it, the freeze is reviewed when its term runs out and is not renewed on the strength of its origin (Institution Theory Z22); this endpoint governs how long, at most, a freeze may stay, and does not require renewal for as long as the account has not landed; toward a member in the course of exiting, a freeze serves only the account and is not made a condition of exit (Paper 7, XZ45). What this provision guards against is the freezing party locking the other in by closing the case alone; during its term a freeze is still checked for actual room and for the humanitarian carve-out, under the test of the Prequel, §2, and XZ24; the endpoint of suspension goes in the same direction (XZ27). This endpoint is the normative layer; the term, the renewal vote and how compensation is settled are examples at the rule layer; whether the act has stopped and whether the account has landed are recognized by the positions within the covenant or award, and when to review and how is left to judgment in positions.
§3 Counting by What All Parties Recognize
The three courses the Secretary-General put forward that time are three different things. The letter is a question; the relief makes up for Stonegorge the cooperation that was taken away; the common measure is the members' withdrawing their own cooperation. All three courses were taken. With the Plateau Federation, which of them counts?
First, who recognizes each of these. Consensus and questioning rely more on reasoning. A covenant needs the consent of all parties, and consent needs reasons; a question needs the other party to answer, and answering means giving reasons. They presuppose that the other party treats you as a party one can reason with, and a party leaning more toward the 15DD direction can make more use of them. Checks and reputation appeal to interest and circumstance. They do not require the other party first to acknowledge that persons are ends; they require only that it can reckon its own gains and losses: cooperation withdrawn is a real loss; reputation counts not because the party recorded cares about its name, but because the other parties make decisions on the basis of its account, whether to trust its covenants, whether to give it cooperation, and these decisions fall on its gains and losses (Paper 3, §1). A party leaning more toward the 14DD direction recognizes these gains and losses too.
Power Theory has written the same structure within a single community. It says: "The counter-vector has different forms at different DD layers: 15DD questioning (accountability at the reputation layer), 14DD resistance (counter-narrative), and 13DD response-refusal (withdrawing the protection-response)." And also: "The three layers of operational recognition superpose topologically; they do not replace one another, and they are not morally ranked among the layers." (Power Theory P3 §V.2, §VI.4) The "accountability at the reputation layer" spoken of there relies on the party questioned caring about its reputation; the reputation that counts in this series lies with the parties who read the account (Paper 3, §1); the two are not the same thing. Withdrawing cooperation comes close to the lowest of these forms: refusing the response, giving no more. It does not require the other party to understand accountability, nor to accept another narrative; anyone recognizes it. Power Theory originally speaks of persons and power within a community; here it is extended to states (own undertaking): the lowest form is recognized by a party leaning in either direction; the three forms superpose and do not replace one another.
With this division, go back and read the three courses. The Secretary-General's letter is a question. The reply said that the system is not the superior of the Plateau Federation. That sentence is not wrong in itself. What was wrong is that it did not answer the question about the relation, and the question did not stop on that account: the system's position is that of an external questioner, and the party questioned cannot close this question (Paper 2, XZ9); the letter and the reply are both public and kept at the Secretariat, and anyone can take them out and ask again later. Reasoning moved nothing here.
The members' separate relief made up for the cooperation that was taken away. The NUT's railway made up about forty percent of the shortfall, the UCSE let Stonegorge's importers take another route for clearing, and the DRP sold two shiploads of fuel at market prices. They touched none of the Plateau Federation's judgments; what they changed was Stonegorge's circumstances, making its room to bear the cost and not comply more real.
The common measure withdrew the members' own cooperation. After it was passed, the Plateau Federation's response was not on the side of reasoning: it did not answer the Secretary-General's letter again, but announced that it would "reassess dealings" with the banks of the members taking part in the freeze. Where reasoning moved nothing, interests were moving. Check against check: both sides recognize this kind.
Neither reasoning nor interests can be relied on alone. Consensus alone works only when all parties are willing. The Plateau Federation's sentence in its reply is exactly what unwillingness looks like: it does not treat this question as a question to be answered. Checks alone, in turn, slide into something else. Law Series P1 says: "In any scenario where two 14DDs coexist without exiting, if no negative boundary structure (law) is present, both parties will eventually enter a showdown or standoff. No third stable equilibrium exists." (Law Series P1 §11) Moral Law P9 says: "14DDs cannot form mutually sustaining institutional structures with one another, because mutual sustenance requires mutual-chiseling positive sum, and the colonizing posture of 14DD structurally excludes such positive sum." (Moral Law P9 §2.5) Both places originally speak of two subjects leaning more toward the 14DD direction; here they are extended to states that cannot exit from one another: if a system relies only on interests in holding out against states outside it, and its members too are bound to one another only by interests, then all that is left is a showdown or standoff between two directions of expansion, and the system itself becomes the strength of one side (own undertaking).
So checks do not take the place of covenants, questions and accounts; they count together with them. The letter is sent all the same, the questions are recorded all the same, and the votes and reasons for the measure are made public all the same. The qualified form of a check is stating the bottom line openly, with real capability behind it. The War Treatise has spoken of this kind: yang-mou (open strategy) is "placing the plan in the open, and even so, the other cannot but follow"; and "Yang-mou does not win in the short term; yang-mou wins in time" (War Treatise §12; Paper 3, XZ19). Common Measure No. 1 was made in public: which items, how many votes, who was in favor, who abstained, who did not take part in which item and for what reasons, were all entered in the record. Whether, when the measure was passed, it stated what it would take for it to be lifted is not recorded; at the renewal vote in the autumn of Year 18, the UCSE's proposal wrote that sentence out: "until Stonegorge's losses can be recognized under a covenant or an award."
The War Treatise handed off what lies between parties leaning more toward the 14DD direction: "These matters between 14DDs are handled by 14DD's own order (diplomacy, treaties, balance of power, international law, etc.); they are not this treatise's work." (War Treatise §5) Counting by what all parties recognize is one way, in this series, of carrying out the stretch of order the War Treatise handed off (Paper 1, XZ6): matters between parties leaning more toward the 14DD direction are met with interests, treaties and public records, not judged by the War Treatise's criteria.
With Kant. On what grounds states, without relying on moral motives, refrain from swallowing one another and from going to war with one another, Kant wrote in Perpetual Peace (Zum ewigen Frieden), in the supplement on the guarantee of perpetual peace. He says: "The idea of the right of nations presupposes the separation of many neighboring states independent of one another" (my translation; Die Idee des Völkerrechts setzt die Absonderung vieler von einander unabhängiger benachbarter Staaten voraus; Zum ewigen Frieden, First Supplement, point 2, per the first edition, Nicolovius, 1795, Project Gutenberg EBook #46873; compared with the English translation by M. C. Smith, EBook #50922; tier A). Without a federative union to prevent the outbreak of hostilities, such a condition is already in itself a condition of war; and yet "even this, according to the idea of reason, is better than their being fused together by a power that outgrows the others and passes over into a universal monarchy" (my translation; so ist doch selbst dieser, nach der Vernunftidee, besser als die Zusammenschmelzung derselben, durch eine die andere überwachsende, und in eine Universalmonarchie übergehende Macht; ibid.). Peace there comes not by weakening all powers, "but is brought about and secured by their equilibrium, in the liveliest competition among them" (my translation; sondern durch ihr Gleichgewicht, im lebhaftesten Wetteifer derselben, hervorgebracht und gesichert wird; ibid.). In the next point he speaks of interest: "It is the spirit of commerce, which cannot coexist with war, and which sooner or later takes hold of every people." (my translation; Es ist der Handelsgeist, der mit dem Kriege nicht zusammen bestehen kann, und der früher oder später sich jedes Volks bemächtigt.; ibid., point 3) Among all the powers at a state's command, the power of money may well be the most reliable (ibid., paraphrased). And so "states see themselves driven (not, indeed, by the incentives of morality) to promote noble peace, and, wherever in the world war threatens to break out, to avert it by mediation, as if they stood in a permanent alliance for that purpose" (my translation; so sehen sich Staaten (freylich wohl nicht eben durch Triebfedern der Moralität) gedrungen, den edlen Frieden zu befördern, und, wo auch immer in der Welt Krieg auszubrechen droht, ihn durch Vermittelungen abzuwehren, gleich als ob sie deshalb im beständigen Bündnisse ständen; ibid.). His conclusion is: "In this way nature guarantees perpetual peace, through the mechanism in human inclinations themselves" (my translation; Auf die Art garantirt die Natur, durch den Mechanism in den menschlichen Neigungen selbst, den ewigen Frieden; ibid.).
The common question is: with no superior overhead, and with the parties not sharing moral motives, what keeps states from being swallowed by one strong power, and what moves them toward mediation. This is one and the same question.
They agree in two places. One is separation. Many states existing side by side is better than their being fused into one by a power that outgrows the others; this series does not let the system become an extension of the strong, and the system itself does not act as a superior: it goes in the same direction. The other is interest. Interest that does not come from moral motives can also push states toward mediation and peace; when this series says that checks and reputation do not require the other party first to acknowledge that persons are ends, it likewise appeals to interests that all parties recognize.
They part in one place: the guarantee. Kant treats separation, equilibrium and the spirit of commerce as nature's arrangements, as the guarantee of perpetual peace; he himself also says that this guarantee is not sufficient to predict the future theoretically, and suffices only for practical purposes (ibid., paraphrased). This series does not treat them as a guarantee. A check is itself an act, questioned and recorded all the same; interests of trade and finance can also be used to press other states. This paper's case is an example: fuel, tariffs and clearing are instruments of the spirit of commerce, and in Order No. 7 they were used to press a state to change its choice. The power of money is reliable, reliable for either side. So the difference between this series and Kant here is that one treats these as a guarantee, the other as acts to be checked; this is a division of scope, and it does not follow that he is wrong.
It may be said that, since the system relies on interests, the sentence "the direction is still that persons are ends" is mere decoration: interests count, and direction does not. The weight of this objection is that what the other party recognizes really is only interests. But direction decides two other things. One is what a check is aimed at: an act that crosses the line, or a choice of the other party's that does not; §5 writes of it. The other is how the part of a measure that falls on people is carved out, and whether it has a road by which to ask; §4 writes of it. Interests decide only whether the other party recognizes it. Without direction, a check is mere counter-pressure, and the system is just one more party in the balance.
Interests change, and equilibrium itself guarantees nothing; this paper does not prove that checks can buy peace.
XZ23 Counting by what all parties recognize, the direction still being that persons are ends (own undertaking). Checks and reputation appeal to interest and circumstance, do not require the other party first to acknowledge that persons are ends, and are recognized by a party leaning more toward the 14DD direction too: a check is withdrawing cooperation; reputation counts because the parties who see the account make decisions on the basis of it, not because the party recorded cares about it (Paper 3, XZ16). Consensus and questioning rely more on reasoning, and a party leaning more toward the 15DD direction can make more use of them. Power Theory's counter registration has three forms, questioning, counter-narrative and withdrawing the protection-response; the three superpose, do not replace one another, and are not ranked (Power Theory P3 §V.2, §VI.4; originally within a community, here extended to states; own undertaking). Of these, questioning is in Power Theory's original wording "accountability at the reputation layer," which relies on the party questioned caring about its reputation; the reputation that counts in this series lies with the parties who read the account; the two are not the same thing. So the system cannot rely on consensus alone, which works only when all parties are willing; nor on checks alone, which would slide into a showdown or standoff between two directions of expansion (Law Series P1 §11; Moral Law P9 §2.5; originally between two subjects leaning more toward the 14DD direction, here extended to states that cannot exit from one another; own undertaking). Checks do not take the place of covenants, questions and accounts, but count together with them; their qualified form is stating the bottom line openly, with real capability behind it (War Treatise §12; Paper 3, XZ19). What is recognized is interest; the direction is still that persons are ends: what a check is aimed at, and how the part that falls on people is carved out, are checked under XZ24 and XZ25; a check is itself questioned and recorded all the same. Interests of trade and finance can also be used to press other states; equilibrium is not a guarantee.
§4 The Common Procedure for Multilateral Sanctions
The votes and the acts of Common Measure No. 1 do not line up. Of the four members, three were in favor and one abstained; in implementation, the DRP, which abstained, implemented all three items all the same, while the NUT, which was in favor, did not take part in the part of them that froze the assets of the Federal Clearing Bureau. To whom is the account of this measure booked?
Each participating state bears its own share. The Theory of the State wrote multilateral sanctions as a sum: "Multilateral sanctions are the act of each participating state plus a common procedure (N24): each participating state bears its own share following the unified sentence, and is not exempted by having gone through a common procedure; this state's share in the common procedure includes advocating and supporting that a road be left for those affected" (Theory of the State N29). By this sentence, votes and acts are each recorded on their own.
The DRP abstained, and also implemented the three items. Its banks froze the assets of those two institutions, its ports refused service to the Mirror Sea Fleet, its customs restricted the three classes of metals; these three items are its acts, and it bears them. Its abstention is its vote, and is also entered in the record. The NUT was in favor, and also declared under Article 7(c) of the Compact that it would not take part in the part of item (1) that froze the assets of the Federal Clearing Bureau, its public reason being: "The clearing of the Northern District's transit stations all goes through the Mirror Sea Clearing Network; freezing the Clearing Bureau's assets amounts to freezing the Northern District's transit." The reason was entered in the record. What the NUT bears is its vote in favor, the other items it implemented, and its decision not to take part in the freeze together with the reasons it gave. In the same season there was also the matter of a commercial agreement between the NUT and the Plateau Federation (Paper 1, §6), which §5 will draw on as well. The Theory of Government says: "The accounts of two constructs are each checked by their own source and are not transferred from one to the other (own undertaking)." (Theory of Government G25) The Theory of Government originally speaks of two levels of government; here it is applied between a member and the common procedure (own undertaking): a member does not book the items it implemented to the Conference of Members because the measure was passed by the Conference of Members; nor does the Conference of Members book the shape of the measure to the members because the measure is implemented by them.
With Rawls. On sanctions, John Rawls's The Law of Peoples offers a point of comparison. According to the summary in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry "John Rawls" (by L. Wenar, revised 2025; tier C, paraphrased, per §5.3 of that entry), Rawls holds that liberal peoples should tolerate decent peoples; a core set of human rights secured by decent peoples marks the limits of toleration, and societies that violate these rights may face economic sanctions and even military intervention. The layer of toleration has already been compared in Theory of the State Paper 5, §4; here only the branch of sanctions is taken. This series reads this as follows: both hold that sanctions may be aimed at a state's violations against persons. Where they part is in the question. Rawls asks when sanctions may be imposed, and where the threshold is drawn; this paper asks who bears each part of sanctions as acts, and how the part that falls on people comes to have a road by which to ask. The two questions join up: one asks whether to sanction, the other how the account lands once sanctions are imposed. What is relied on goes no further than the encyclopedia's summary; this is a division of labor under one topic, not a refutation.
The common procedure itself also bears a share. What the Theory of the State speaks of is this state's share in the common procedure. Here the step is carried one further, to the common procedure itself: it too bears a share (own undertaking). The reason is that the shape of a measure is fixed in the common procedure: which items, aimed at whom, how the exemption is set, who grants licenses, how long the term. This share has two parts. One: those affected have a road within reach of the common procedure itself by which to ask (Paper 2, XZ14). The other: the humanitarian part is carved out, and carved out so that it lands; whether it has landed is recorded as it stands (Paper 3, XZ17).
The system's measure against the Republic of the Sandbars set out both parts. In the summer of Year 16, after the "sweeps" and detentions began in the north of the Sandbars, the Conference of Members passed Common Measure No. 2, 4 to 0, for a term of one year: (1) an embargo on arms and "dual-use goods" to the Republic of the Sandbars; (2) a freeze of the personal assets held in members by the members of the Sandbars' Committee for Republican Stability and by the commanders of the Stability Squads; (3) a halt to commercial traffic at all the crossings of the Grey River, persons and humanitarian supplies excepted. Humanitarian supplies were released under license from the competent authorities of each member. On whom this falls, Paper 2, §6, has already written. Here only the humanitarian carve-out is looked at: item (3) wrote in an exemption, and also wrote in a licensing procedure.
The exemption was written. But the market at Grey Ferry had been shared by both banks, held three times a week, and the villages on the west bank bought most of their salt, fuel and medicine there; once item (3) was implemented, the market closed. Stonegorge's Commerce Office, reviewing licenses, took forty-one days on average in the autumn of Year 16; water-purification agents were listed as "dual-use goods" and refused licenses. In the winter of Year 16, the doctor at a clinic by the river in West Shoal Province reported that cold-chain medicines had been cut off for two months and that the clinic had cut back to opening two days a week. The chamber of commerce of the town of Grey Ferry said that of the four hundred twelve businesses in the town, thirty percent had closed.
That doctor and fifty-eight villagers petitioned the Three-Borders Petitions Committee against the Stonegorge Commerce Office's review of licenses and its determination of "dual-use goods." They were outside the system; the Committee decided, 4 to 3, to take up the petition. In the spring of Year 17, the Committee's opinion asked Stonegorge to shorten license review to within fifteen days, asked Stonegorge and the Conference of Members to explain why water-purification agents were listed as "dual-use goods," and asked that a humanitarian market at Grey Ferry be considered. In the same season, the Conference of Members amended Common Measure No. 2, 4 to 0: review was limited to fifteen days; water-purification agents were removed from the "dual-use goods"; a humanitarian market would open at Grey Ferry twice a week, selling salt, cooking fuel and medicine. Stonegorge's Commerce Office complied.
This road went through, and it went through late. That an exemption is written does not mean it has been carved out so that it lands; for the months before the amendment, with the clinic cut off from medicines and the market closed, the account of that stretch is booked to the positions that made and implemented the decisions: the Conference of Members, which passed the measure, and Stonegorge's Commerce Office, which reviewed the licenses. In the UCSE's sanctions against the DRP, humanitarian licenses took seventy-four days on average to review, the same pattern, which Theory of the State Paper 5, §5, has already judged; here this paper only points back to it. What was different this time is that those affected had a road that reached not only the state that implemented the measure but also the common procedure itself: the Committee's opinion put questions to the Conference of Members, and it was the Conference of Members that changed the measure.
Why it must be carved out. The test of the Prequel, §2, has a second use here. If a blockade cuts off the life-substrate of the people in a place, the people there cannot survive unless they do as the party applying pressure wishes; what is being used as leverage is their lives. The test originally speaks of a measure cancelling the other party's room; here it is extended to the part of a measure that falls on the other party's people: if what is cut off is the life-substrate, the measure has already slid into substituting judgment, so that part must be carved out (own undertaking). The Theory of the State said the same thing at the level of a state: "If what they target really is the capacity to wage war, then the part that falls on the life-substrate must be carved out, and carved out so that it lands" (Theory of the State Paper 5, §5). Common Measure No. 2 is aimed at the Stability Committee and the Stability Squads; the patients in the clinic on the west bank of the Grey River are not the party it means to press.
Conditions and endpoints. The conditions of sanctions carry no demand about direction. Institution Theory says: "Once a condition carries the demand 'accept this direction of development,' it becomes ghostwriting by an outsider." (Institution Theory Z27) Institution Theory originally speaks of conditions attached to the support an institution gives those inside it; here it is extended to the conditions for lifting sanctions (own undertaking): a measure may require the other party to stop an act that crosses the line; it may not require it to change its form of government or to acknowledge a direction of development. The endpoint of a measure can be written as the act having stopped and the account having landed, rather than as a term alone; whether the account has landed is recognized under a covenant or an award, and is not decided alone by the party applying pressure; where there is no covenant or award by which to recognize it, the measure is reviewed when its term runs out and is not renewed on the strength of its origin. This is the same reasoning as the endpoint of a freeze in §2, extended to measures other than freezes.
These belong to the normative layer. The one-year term of Article 11 of the Compact, and the vote and public explanation under Article 7(c), are examples at the rule layer; who proposes, how many votes are needed to pass, and how often review comes, are handed to specific theories of institutions to design. There is one view this paper does not take. Appendix B of How Is Institution Possible (Foundational Paper 6; cited as F6) is a model charter, and its Article 7(c) lists several obligations of peace under minimal contact: "no initiation of attack, no blockade of the other party's trade routes, no interference in the other party's internal affairs" (F6, Appendix B, Article 7(c); a working demonstration; used only as an example). That article was originally written within a federation sharing one continent; carried over whole, it would make any withdrawal of cooperation aimed at line-crossing a breach of covenant. This paper takes another road: sanctions may be imposed, each state bearing its own share as in Theory of the State N29, and the part that falls on the life-substrate carved out.
It may be said that the account has already fallen on the states: the DRP bears the three items it implemented, the NUT bears the items it implemented and its reasons, Stonegorge's Commerce Office bears its forty-one days; why should the common procedure bear a share besides? The weight of this objection is that not one entry in the states' accounts is missing. But what those affected ask is often not how some state implemented the measure, but why the measure itself has this shape: why water-purification agents count as dual-use goods, why the market was closed entirely. This shape was fixed in the common procedure; no state alone can fully answer for it, and none alone can change it. That time, on the two banks of the Grey River, the only body that could change it was the Conference of Members.
How far the carve-out must land to count as having landed, how many days of review are enough, and what counts as the life-substrate, are left to judgment in positions; the account falls on those positions and on the persons who make the decisions.
XZ24 The common procedure for multilateral sanctions (carried over from Theory of the State N29). Multilateral sanctions are the act of each participating state plus a common procedure: each participating state bears its own share following the unified sentence (state level, the Theory of the State Prequel, §8), and is not exempted by having gone through a common procedure (Theory of the State N29); what it bears is the items it implemented and the vote it cast, and the accounts of two constructs are each checked by their own source (Theory of Government G25; own undertaking). The common procedure itself also bears a share (the Theory of the State originally speaks of this state's share in the common procedure; here it is extended to the common procedure itself; own undertaking): those affected have a road within reach of the common procedure itself by which to ask (Paper 2, XZ14); the humanitarian part is carved out, and carved out so that it lands, and whether it has landed is recorded as it stands (Paper 3, XZ17). The reason for the humanitarian carve-out: a blockade that cuts off the life-substrate leaves the people there unable to survive unless they do as the party applying pressure wishes, and has already slid into substituting judgment (the test of the Prequel, §2, extended to the part of a measure that falls on people; own undertaking). The conditions of sanctions carry no demand about direction (Institution Theory Z27 originally speaks of conditions attached to an institution's support; here it is extended to the conditions of sanctions; own undertaking). The endpoint of a measure can be written as the act having stopped and the account having landed, rather than as a term alone; whether the account has landed is recognized under a covenant or an award, and is not decided alone by the party applying pressure; where there is no covenant or award by which to recognize it, the measure is reviewed when its term runs out and is not renewed on the strength of its origin (Institution Theory Z22). This is the normative layer; who proposes, how many votes are needed to pass, and how often review comes, belong to the rule layer and are handed to specific theories of institutions; how far the carve-out must land to count as having landed is left to judgment in positions, and the account falls on positions and persons.
§5 Checks and Erosion, Cooperation and Collusion
Freezing the assets of the Federal Clearing Bureau and stopping the clearing of Stonegorge's three banks are both acts in clearing. The former comes from the system's members, the latter from the party applying the pressure. The instrument is the same; on what grounds may the one be erosion and the other a check?
Form does not tell them apart. The War Treatise lists economic pressure as one form of attack; of the attacking party it says: "Or, outside wartime, it carries out structural erosion of the 15DD party through economic pressure, diplomatic coercion, ideological penetration, and the like." (War Treatise §5) The War Treatise originally speaks of how a party leaning more toward the 14DD direction erodes the other side; here it is extended to all pressure, the system's own measures included: economic pressure can be erosion, whoever it comes from (own undertaking). Power Theory puts it more briefly: "Morphology does not determine the direction of cultivation." (Power Theory P5 §VII) One and the same freeze can be a check, and can be erosion; one must look elsewhere.
The upstream has not given this line; this series undertakes it itself. The line is looked for in three places. These are three places that must be looked at, not necessary and sufficient conditions: passing all three does not guarantee that a measure is a check; beyond the three, there may be other things to look at.
The first place: whether the other party's interrupt-right is cancelled. Power Theory says: "Severing power is a self-consuming structure generated by cancelling the interrupt-right of the one under power." And also: "The A of cultivating power likewise invests in maintenance, but does not cancel B's interrupt-right: B can leave" (Power Theory P6 §I). This originally speaks of the one under power in a power relation; here it is extended to states: if a measure leaves the other party unable to say no and unable to walk away, it is locking the other in (own undertaking). In this case, this place cannot yet tell the two apart. Common Measure No. 1 did not lock the Plateau Federation in: it went on trading with other states, and went on maintaining Order No. 7. Nor did Order No. 7 lock Stonegorge in: the NUT's railway, the UCSE's clearing and the DRP's two shiploads of fuel left Stonegorge still able to say no.
The second place: what it is aimed at. Withdrawing cooperation aimed at an act that crosses the line, or at a breach of an acknowledged covenant, is a check; aimed at the other party's own choice that crosses no line, so as to make it change as the party applying pressure wishes, it is ghostwriting. Institution Theory has said the same thing about conditions: "Once a condition carries the demand 'accept this direction of development,' it becomes ghostwriting by an outsider." (Institution Theory Z27) Institution Theory originally speaks of conditions attached to the support an institution gives those inside it; here it is extended to pressure between states: if cooperation is withdrawn in order to press the other party to change a choice that crosses no line, it is writing on the other party's behalf (own undertaking). Whether the other party has breached an acknowledged covenant, where this is disputed, is checked against the text of the covenant and the records of the parties, and is not decided alone by the party applying pressure.
Read by this place, Order No. 7 comes with three facts. First, the order was issued after Stonegorge refused the supply station and year-round passage free of inspection. Second, neither of the two things refused is line-crossing: whether to allow another state's fleet a supply station on its own island, and whether to exempt another state's fleet from a registration that is the same for all ships, are choices Stonegorge makes about its own island and its own territorial waters; there is no record of any covenant between the two states requiring Stonegorge to grant these two things. Third, the Secretary-General wrote asking about the relation between Order No. 7 and Stonegorge's refusal of the supply station, and the Plateau Federation's reply did not answer. By the second place, all three facts point toward the ghostwriting side.
On this point, this paper goes no further. In this matter, those who made the judgment are positions. The Conference of Members passed Common Measure No. 1 under Article 11 of the Compact, 3 to 0, with the UCSE, the NUT and Stonegorge in favor and the DRP abstaining; the votes and the parties' reasons are in the record. The members' separate relief, and the NUT's not taking part in the item freezing the Federal Clearing Bureau's assets, are likewise judgments each of them made. How a particular act is judged under the rules is a matter for the judgment layer; this series pronounces no final judgment of its own. Nor is it decided alone by the party applying pressure, or prejudged by which state the act comes from.
What Common Measure No. 1 is aimed at is the act that is Order No. 7. It did not require the Plateau Federation to change its form of government, nor to acknowledge a direction of development; in the autumn of Year 18, the UCSE's renewal proposal, too, kept only one freeze, for Stonegorge's losses, and made no other demand; that proposal did not pass. If Order No. 7, as read above, points toward the ghostwriting side, then the measure aimed at it is aimed at an act that crosses the line; and the measure itself carries no demand about direction. By the second place, these two together point toward the check side.
§1 left one point to be checked: whether Order No. 7, falling on the generator fuel of two hospitals, had already cut off the life-substrate. The record goes only as far as "rationed"; in the same period, the NUT's railway made up about forty percent of the fuel shortfall, and the DRP shipped in two loads. On this point the conclusion is written up to here: the three items listed in Order No. 7 had no humanitarian exemption, and the hospitals' fuel was squeezed; how far it was squeezed is not recorded.
The third place: whether the part that falls on people has a road by which to ask. Those reached by Common Measure No. 1 can petition the Petitions Committee under Article 14 of the Compact: "Persons reached by a decision made under a common procedure may also petition." This provision reaches the common procedure itself (§4). Whether the fishing workers and patients of Stonegorge reached by Order No. 7 have a road within reach of the positions in the Plateau Federation that made the decision is not recorded; the system's roads do not reach the acts of a state outside the system.
Cooperation and collusion. Erosion does not come only from outside the system. Several states working with one another can be cooperation, and can be collusion; the form is the same. Power Theory has written this division between apparatuses: "the relation between apparatuses can be cooperation at the recognition layer (apparatuses mutually registering forward, superposing gradient fields; in a severing context, collusion) or antagonism (apparatuses mutually registering counter, cancelling gradient fields)." It says at the same time that this is given "with the full mechanics left to later work" (Power Theory P3 §VII.2). The upstream gives only this one minimal structure: the same form, parting in direction. Moral Law P9 uses colonization as a technical term: "the structural operation by which a subject or institution replaces another's own law with its own purposes." (Moral Law P9 §2.1) A member with great influence that uses the system's sanctions, recognition or conditions of aid to press other states is committing colonization in the name of cooperation. A covenant concluded separately with a state outside the system can also be used to do this.
The NUT's commercial agreement is just such a case. In the summer of Year 15, the Plateau Federation's Ministry of Commerce proposed to the NUT a bilateral Agreement on Commerce and Transit: lower port and clearing fees for the NUT's transit through the harbors at Gorgemouth and Sandmouth, and direct access for the transit stations of the NUT's Northern District to the Mirror Sea Clearing Network. Article 14 of the draft: "Neither party shall take part in economic measures directed against the other party by a third party or a multilateral mechanism." The NUT's Northern District Council supported signing, saying that at the Northern District's transit stations "seventy percent of the clearing goes through the Mirror Sea Clearing Network"; the councils of the two southern districts demanded that Article 14 be deleted. In the autumn of Year 15, the NUT's Council for External Affairs voted on "signing together with Article 14": 3 to 2, short of four votes, and it did not pass. The Plateau Federation's Minister of Commerce declared: "Article 14 is the foundation of this agreement." Two weeks later, the Plateau Federation agreed to delete Article 14, and the Council for External Affairs signed the text with it deleted, 5 to 0. In the same month, the NUT declared that it would not take part in the item of Common Measure No. 1 that froze the assets of the Federal Clearing Bureau, and explained its reasons to the Conference of Members.
Read by the first place, the two, before and after, differ in the interrupt-right. Article 14 would have had the NUT promise in advance that it would take part in no measure whatever aimed at the Plateau Federation. To sign it would have been to fix "whether to take part" in advance and promise it to the other party to the covenant; thereafter, for the NUT to take part in any item, it would first have to break the covenant or obtain the other party's consent. Explaining item by item is another matter: the judgment stays in the NUT's own hands, the reasons are public, it can be questioned by the other members, and next time it can be changed.
In the Lamp Island Agreement that Stonegorge later signed, one article reads: "Stonegorge shall not take part in any multilateral economic measures directed against the Plateau Federation." It has the same form as Article 14; that agreement was concluded after Lamp Island had been occupied and Stonegorge had given notice of exit; how it is dealt with when Stonegorge applies to rejoin is in Paper 7, §4.
One more matter in Paper 1 points here. When Stonegorge applied to join in the spring of Year 14, the Plateau Federation's Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared that it "does not accept Stonegorge's joining a bloc that takes the Plateau Federation as its presumed target," and the Federal Clearing Bureau wrote to Stonegorge's three banks that it would "conduct a compliance review" of their clearing; that summer, the Plateau Federation and the DRP signed a five-year long-term fertilizer contract, at a price fifteen percent below the previous year's market price, and the DRP's consent to admitting Stonegorge was delayed by five months (Paper 1, the Introduction and §1). These are acts of a party outside the system, and the account lies with the party applying pressure; looking with these three places, what can be seen goes only this far. The compliance review was a move to withdraw cooperation in clearing; going by that declaration, it was aimed at Stonegorge's choice to join the system, and joining is not line-crossing; how far the review later went is not recorded. The long-term fertilizer contract is not a withdrawal but a giving of more, and it did not cancel the DRP's interrupt-right; whether there was an exchange between it and the delayed consent is not recorded; neither Paper 1 nor Paper 3 has judged this for anyone, and this paper does not judge it either.
With Grotius. That a covenant can be used to block a state's dealings with other states, Hugo Grotius set down among such conditions in The Rights of War and Peace. He speaks of the burdens unequal treaties lay on one party: of the kind that comes near to subjection is that by which one power is "debarred from having any friends or enemies, but at the pleasure of another" (The Rights of War and Peace, bk. II, ch. 15, §7, trans. A. C. Campbell, Project Gutenberg EBook #46564; that edition is an abridged translation, and the Latin original has not been checked; tier B). He also says: "Some conditions indeed go so far as to prohibit a state from admitting refugees, and to demand annulling all former engagements with every other power." (ibid.)
The common question is how the conditions in a covenant cut a state off from other states. They agree in one place: both see that a covenant can be used to do this; "neither party shall take part in economic measures directed against the other party by a third party or a multilateral mechanism" is one shape of "but at the pleasure of another." They part in one place: Grotius lists these as conditions unequal treaties may contain, lists them, and does not judge; he also allows unequal treaties: "Unequal treaties may be made not only between the conquerors and the conquered but also between mighty and impotent states, between whom no hostilities have ever existed." (ibid.) This paper does not judge whether a covenant is lawful; it looks at it only by the three places: whether it cancels a state's interrupt-right, what it is aimed at, and whether the part that falls on people has a road by which to ask. This is a division of scope, and it does not follow that he is wrong.
It may be said that the NUT, in not taking part in the freeze, achieved the same as Article 14. The UCSE's permanent representative said exactly this in the Conference of Members: "With Article 14 deleted, the NUT has achieved the same as Article 14." The weight of this objection is that, with the NUT not taking part in the freeze, the Federal Clearing Bureau's assets in the NUT were not frozen, the same effect Article 14 sought. The NUT's permanent representative answered: "Article 14 would have been a promise made to the Plateau Federation; not taking part in that item is something explained to the Conference of Members." The effect is for the moment the same; the address of the account is different. With a promise, the answer is fixed in advance, and changing it first needs the other party's consent; with an explanation, the judgment is in one's own hands, and in a place where it can be questioned. In whose hands the judgment stays shows in whether it can be changed next time.
How cases beyond the three places are to be divided, the upstream has not given, and this series too gives only these three places. What is left, this series undertakes, and it is registered as a remainder (Paper 8, XZ56).
XZ25 The line between checks and erosion, and between cooperation and collusion (own undertaking). Checks and structural erosion can be alike in form: the War Treatise lists economic pressure and diplomatic coercion outside wartime as one form of structural erosion (War Treatise §5; extended to all pressure; own undertaking); Power Theory says that morphology does not determine the direction of cultivation (Power Theory P5 §VII). The line is looked for in three places; these are three places that must be looked at, not necessary and sufficient conditions. The first place: whether the other party's interrupt-right is cancelled (Power Theory P6 §I; originally of the one under power in a power relation, here extended to states; own undertaking). The second place: what it is aimed at: withdrawing cooperation aimed at an act that crosses the line, or at a breach of an acknowledged covenant, is a check; aimed at the other party's own choice that crosses no line, so as to make it change as the party applying pressure wishes, it is ghostwriting (Institution Theory Z27 originally speaks of conditions attached to an institution's support; here it is extended to pressure between states; own undertaking); where it is disputed whether an acknowledged covenant has been breached, this is checked against the text of the covenant and the records of the parties, and is not decided alone by the party applying pressure. The third place: whether the part that falls on people has a road by which to ask (Paper 2, XZ14; XZ24). Cooperation and collusion are of the same form at the recognition layer; the upstream gives only a minimal structure (Power Theory P3 §VII.2); they part in direction. A member with great influence that uses the system's sanctions, recognition or conditions of aid to press other states is committing colonization in the name of cooperation; a covenant a member concludes separately with a state outside the system can also be used to do this. Facts are read by these three places, and written up to the point of which side they point toward; how a particular act is judged under the rules is judged by the positions that make the judgment, is not decided alone by the party applying pressure, and is not prejudged by which state the act comes from. For cases beyond the three places, the upstream has not given the line; this series undertakes it, and it is registered as a remainder (Paper 8, XZ56).
§6 No Mirror Assimilation at the System Level
A party under long pressure most easily comes to look like the party pressing it. The Theory of the State has checked this at the level of a state: facing an adversary's competition and threat, a state checks item by item whether its own acts guard the line and are still questioned, and "The adversary serves only as a contrast, not as a yardstick" (Theory of the State N28). At the system level, this check must be made once again.
From the autumn of Year 15, Common Measure No. 1 was in place, and so was Order No. 7; in Year 16, both were renewed for a year. From the spring of Year 16, the Stonegorge-language service of the Plateau Federation's federal broadcaster repeatedly aired "The system wants to trade Stonegorge for peace" and "The UCSE wants Lamp Island." That summer, Stonegorge's Communications Office shut down the relay of this service within Stonegorge.
That summer too, Stonegorge's Commonwealth Chamber passed two proposals. One was a resolution, passed by 112 votes to 68, asking the Conference of Members to amend the Compact to set up a "Three-Borders Standing Force" of six thousand, stationed permanently at Gorgemouth and at the UCSE's Eagle Gap and commanded by the director of the Joint Defense Coordination Office: "on a colonizing entry, it may deploy upon a determination by the Secretary-General, the members confirming afterward." The other was the Anti-Division Act, passed by 98 votes to 82, with a term of two years: "Whoever spreads false information about the arrangements of the Three-Borders system with intent to divide the members shall be punished by imprisonment of six months to two years." During the debate a member of the Chamber said: "The UCSE has a National Security Act; why can't we?"
This matter falls on two groups. One is the three people prosecuted under the Anti-Division Act: a columnist in Gorgemouth, an editor holding Stonegorge citizenship at the Stonegorge-language service of the Plateau Federation's broadcaster, and a shopkeeper in the town of Grey Ferry; and, with them, everyone who comments on the system's arrangements. The other is the system's members: if a standing force were set up, the decision to deploy it would bear on them. There are two lines to look at: whether, under pressure, the system and its members damped down questioning of the system's arrangements; and whether coordination and preparation grew into a force that can deploy on its own. Before this, clause 2 of Article 2 of the Compact stated that no organ of the system may exercise force against a member or against persons within a member's territory, and Article 17 stated that "The system shall have no standing force"; the Coordination Office had three joint plans, one joint exercise a year and three prepositioned logistics depots; the Anti-Division Act had not yet come into force.
The War Treatise has written of this danger. It says that in a long confrontation, to guard against the other side, one side comes to look more and more like it in organization, narrative and mobilization; and also: "if one's own side, to guard against the adversary, suppresses one's own space of questioning, one has already structurally become the adversary's mirror (the adversary originally does not allow questioning either)." (War Treatise §20) The War Treatise originally speaks of a side at war; the Theory of the State has already extended it to a state, and here it is extended further, to the system level: a system formed by several states, with no superior overhead, can change in this way too (own undertaking). At the system level there are at least three shapes to check, and this case has one of each.
First, coordination and preparation growing into a force. In the autumn of Year 16, the Conference of Members discussed the proposal for a standing force. The UCSE's permanent representative asked: "Who orders the standing force to deploy? Whoever gives that order stands above the members. The UCSE supports one more joint exercise and one more site of prepositioned logistics." The NUT's permanent representative read out clause 2 of Article 2 and Article 17 of the Compact. The DRP's permanent representative said: "The Republic is opposed." On the vote on whether to enter the procedure for amending the Compact, Stonegorge was in favor, the UCSE abstained, and the NUT and the DRP were opposed; amendment requires the consent of all members, and the procedure was not entered. At the same session it was decided, 4 to 0, to add a site of prepositioned logistics at Gorgemouth and to add one joint exercise a year in the Stonegorge Strait.
The UCSE's question went to the heart of it. "It may deploy upon a determination by the Secretary-General": the decision to deploy falls on one position, and that position can send a force out without each member's own decision. If a force can deploy on its own, someone must give the order; whoever gives that order stands above the members, and a superior has grown (Paper 7, XZ46). The amendment did not enter the procedure; exercises and logistics were added: coordination and preparation deepened, and did not grow into a force. The difference between the two lies in where the decision to deploy falls. In the former it falls on a position of the system; in the latter it still falls within each member's own law. The positive rule for this point is written in Paper 5, XZ31.
Second, damping down questioning so as not to be divided. Under the Anti-Division Act, from the autumn of Year 16 into Year 17, three people were prosecuted. The columnist had written: "The system's sanctions hurt the fishermen on both banks of the Grey River; the system is using Stonegorge as a shield." What she wrote was exactly the side shown in §4: the part of Common Measure No. 2 that fell on the two banks of the Grey River. The editor worked at the Plateau Federation's Stonegorge-language service. The shopkeeper had posted online a video of the Grey Ferry market after it closed. The columnist was sentenced at first instance to eight months; in the autumn of Year 17, the Supreme Tribunal overturned the conviction and acquitted her, its ruling reading: "Commentary on the system's arrangements is not false information." The editor was sentenced to one year. The shopkeeper was acquitted. The columnist petitioned the Petitions Committee in the spring of Year 17, and the Committee set the petition aside on the ground that domestic appeals were still pending; after the acquittal, she withdrew her petition. The Anti-Division Act lapsed at the end of its term in the summer of Year 18, and the Commonwealth Chamber did not renew it. Whether the Conference of Members put questions about this law is not recorded.
This law was meant to keep the system from being divided. What it punished was speech about the system's arrangements. Among those prosecuted, one had spoken precisely of the side on which the system's measures fall on people; that side the Petitions Committee later acknowledged too, and the Conference of Members changed. Protecting an arrangement and protecting the questioning of that arrangement collide here. The last clause of this series' main-line sentence says that the system puts questions to its members, and that every one of its own arrangements remains open to questioning; punishing commentary on the system's arrangements for their sake runs straight against this clause. The line at this point is not discounted under outside pressure. Institution Theory says of the first ought that "it does not vary with relational thickness and is not discounted under any condition" (Institution Theory Z9). Being under pressure is a condition; it changes the facts on which the line falls, not the line.
That member of the Chamber took the UCSE's law as a reason. Imitation does not happen only between the system and those outside it; members also learn from one another. The adversary serves only as a contrast, not as a yardstick; and so does a fellow member. The UCSE's National Security Act was read in Theory of the State Paper 4, §5; how it comes out on checking was not judged there, and is not judged here either. It is not a yardstick by which Stonegorge may legislate; Stonegorge's own law is checked by its own acts.
Third, answering pressure with sanctions, and the sanctions themselves becoming erosion. Common Measure No. 1 and Order No. 7 were both renewed for a year in Year 16, and each again for another year after that. One side withdraws, and the other withdraws too; both sides say they are answering the other. If, in the confrontation, the sanctions slowly change what they are aimed at, from the act that is Order No. 7 to the Plateau Federation as a state, they slide from a check over to the erosion side (§5). The endpoint written in §2 is exactly what stops this slide: each renewal must make clear whether the act it is now aimed at is still there.
A truce is not a settlement. A long confrontation between the system and a state outside it may be only a truce. The War Treatise says: "A truce looks like peace; in substance it permanentizes the wartime state and keeps cultivation under the continuous suppression of wartime logic." (War Treatise §20) Over three years, Order No. 7 and Common Measure No. 1 renewed side by side, a broadcast service was shut down within Stonegorge, and commentators were prosecuted: this looks like the beginning of a kind of "permanentizing." The way out, the War Treatise has also written: "ceasefire, together with a return to fa-mou and fa-jiao, so that cultivation can restart in a non-war situation" (War Treatise §20; fa-mou: attacking through strategy; fa-jiao: attacking through diplomacy). The fa-jiao in the system's hands is the letter of §3, public questions and records, and a covenant that can be negotiated.
It may be said that if the side under pressure does not damp down questioning a little, the system will be divided: the Plateau Federation's service says every day that the system wants to trade Stonegorge for peace, and if nothing is done, some will believe it. The weight of this objection is that the danger of division is real, and so is the cost. But what damping down questioning buys is a mirror: if the system, so as not to be said to be trading Stonegorge for peace, first locks up those who say so, it becomes the very kind of thing it says it is not. The danger is written down, the cost is written down, and the line is not discounted.
Which statement is false information and which is commentary is judged in the courts and through petition; this series does not judge in their place. That sentence in the Supreme Tribunal's ruling is a judgment made by that position.
XZ26 No mirror assimilation at the system level (carried over from Theory of the State N28). The adversary serves only as a contrast, not as a yardstick (Theory of the State N28). To suppress one's own space of questioning in order to guard against the other side is already to have become structurally the other side's mirror (War Treatise §20; originally of a side at war, here extended to the system level; own undertaking). At the system level there are at least three shapes to check: under long pressure from outside the system, coordination and preparation growing into a standing force that can deploy on its own, at which point a superior has grown (Paper 5, XZ31; Paper 7, XZ46); damping down, so as not to be divided, questioning of the system's arrangements among the members and within members, which runs against the last clause of the main-line sentence; answering pressure with sanctions, with the sanctions themselves turned into structural erosion (XZ25). The line is not discounted under outside pressure (Institution Theory Z9). A long confrontation between the system and a state outside it may be only a truce, and a truce is not a settlement (War Treatise §20); returning to fa-mou and fa-jiao is the way out.
§7 The Member That Colonizes Another State
The pressure the previous sections had to answer all came from outside the system. If line-crossing comes from a member inside the system, what can the system do?
The Outer Sandbars are a group of islands of the Republic of the Sandbars, in the Mirror Sea about sixty kilometers north of Sandmouth; about two thousand three hundred people live on them, mostly by fishing, and the main island carries the beacon for the western Mirror Sea shipping route. In the summer of Year 17, the Sandbars' Stability Committee withdrew the islands' garrison to the mainland in the north; most of the Sandbars officials on the islands left with the garrison, and the beacon went out of use with them.
In the autumn of Year 17, a meeting of the UCSE's Executive Council decided, 6 to 3, on a deployment; the Executive for Defense gave the order, and two ships and a company, about one hundred fifty people, landed on Great Outer Sandbar, where the Office of Defense set up the "Outer Sandbars Provisional Administration Office." The UCSE's Executive for External Affairs declared: "The Outer Sandbars are no longer administered by anyone. We have come to maintain order in the shipping lanes and the fishing grounds and to protect the residents of the islands. We have no territorial claim to the Outer Sandbars. The administration office is provisional." The administration office registered the islands' residents and issued "Outer Sandbars residence cards"; boats fishing in Outer Sandbars waters had to buy fishing licenses from the administration office and pay fishing fees; it picked seven residents to form an advisory council; the Sandbars textbooks in the islands' primary school were replaced with "provisional textbooks" printed in Rivermouth City; it repaired the beacon and relit it in the winter; it began work on a pier and a radar station; and there was a curfew from ten at night to five in the morning. Some of the islanders welcomed it; they said that in Year 16 the Stability Squads had taken forty young people from the islands into service; a group of fishermen protested on the pier, with a banner reading "Island matters are for island people to decide," and three of them were held by the administration office for two days. The Whitewall government of the Republic of the Sandbars said: "This is aggression." From the spring of Year 18, the Provisional Assembly of the Republic, convened at Sandmouth by the three northern provinces, said: "The Outer Sandbars are part of the north of the Sandbars, and the administration office should be handed over to the Provisional Assembly."
This matter falls on the people of the islands: the roughly two thousand three hundred residents reached by registration, residence cards, fishing fees, the change of textbooks and the curfew; the three fishermen held for two days; those who fish in Outer Sandbars waters. It also falls on the Republic of the Sandbars as a construct; Whitewall and Sandmouth each say that the Outer Sandbars are theirs, and this paper does not judge to whom they belong. There are two lines to look at: whether a member's entering another state by military force, setting up an administration there and deciding on behalf of the people there is a colonizing entry; and how far the system can go toward such a member. Before this, the Outer Sandbars were under the rule of the Sandbars, with Sandbars officials, Sandbars textbooks and the beacon on the islands. Article 4(1) of the Compact records the members' commitment "not to enter by armed force the territory or territorial waters of any state, and not to establish administration within the territory of another state"; clause 1 of Article 18 allows the Conference of Members to record "There is a colonizing entry," clause 3 requires a member that deploys to explain its grounds in writing within seventy-two hours, and clause 4 requires each member to review its own supply of arms, logistics and transit cooperation to the entering party, and to report; Article 27 provides for suspension and expulsion.
A member colonizing outside the system is still colonizing. What the system stands against is colonization itself, not only one member's colonizing another. If the system concerned itself only with what happens between members, a member could do outside the system what it is not allowed to do inside it, and the system would become its rear area.
The UCSE says that there was no armed resistance of any kind on the Outer Sandbars, so this is not entry by armed force in the sense of Article 4; at the second record it stated further: "No one there resisted, and no one died." Read by acts: landing by military force, setting up an administration office, issuing residence cards, collecting fishing fees, changing the textbooks, imposing a curfew: each of these decides for the islanders their own affairs. Who living on the islands must register, to whom one pays in order to fish, what books the children read, whether one may go out at night: none of these was originally for a foreign administration office to decide. That no blood was shed does not change this. Moral Law P9 says it directly: "colonization does not necessarily rely on open violence"; and it goes on: "a soft-spoken missionary, a disciplinarian school, a law demanding submission, in the technical sense, all carry out the same structural operation; the difference lies only in the degree of violence of the means, not in the nature of the operation itself." (Moral Law P9 §2.1) Replacing the island children's textbooks is exactly one of these. Read by the norm, the facts point toward the side of deciding on behalf of the people there. Judgment falls on acts: who the acting party is does not change this judgment.
In this matter, the one that made the judgment is the Conference of Members. In the summer of Year 18, under clause 1 of Article 18 of the Compact, it made the second record: "There is a colonizing entry." The NUT and Stonegorge were in favor, and the DRP abstained. This is a judgment in a position.
What the system can do, matched against the facts one by one.
Questioning. In the winter of Year 17, at the request of the DRP, seconded by the NUT, the Conference of Members opened questioning by 3 to 0, the UCSE not taking part in the vote. The DRP's permanent representative said: "The Republic said in the matter of the Grey River that it opposes any action entering the Sandbars; the same goes for the Outer Sandbars." The UCSE's permanent representative answered: "This is protective provisional administration, not occupation. Article 4(1) of the Compact speaks of entry by armed force; there has been no armed resistance of any kind on the Outer Sandbars." The UCSE did not submit a written explanation to the Conference of Members under clause 3 of Article 18; its Office of External Affairs explained: "Clause 3 of Article 18 speaks of a member that deploys in response to an entry by armed force." A member's obligation to answer to the system comes from the Compact it has acknowledged; Paper 2, XZ12, has already written of this, and here this paper only points back to it.
Recording. In the spring of Year 18, the Conference of Members made the first record under Article 7(b): "The UCSE has entered the Outer Sandbars of a state outside the system with military force, set up a provisional administration office, issued residence cards, collected fishing fees, and replaced school textbooks." The vote was 3 to 0, the UCSE not taking part. In the summer of Year 18, the pier and the radar station were completed, and the administration office announced that it would "continue until the Sandbars has a government able to administer the Outer Sandbars"; the Conference of Members made the second record, which wrote "There is a colonizing entry." The DRP abstained; its permanent representative said: "The Republic said in the matter of Lamp Island that the word 'colonizing' is a characterization, and that the record should read 'armed entry'; the same goes for the Outer Sandbars." Stonegorge's permanent representative said: "On Lamp Island it was called an administration post; on the Outer Sandbars it is called an administration office." The UCSE's statement under Article 7(b) was entered in the record.
Which word to use is a judgment the Conference of Members made under the rules, under clause 1 of Article 18; the DRP's objection was entered in the record. This paper does not judge in its place. What the normative layer requires is something else: the wording follows the act, not who the acting party is (Paper 3, §3). In the spring of Year 17, when the Plateau Federation's ships entered the Stonegorge Strait and set up a "sea-lane administration post" on Lamp Island, the Conference of Members' record used the same sentence, "There is a colonizing entry"; the DRP likewise abstained, and likewise said that the wording should be "armed entry"; that matter is written of in the Introduction and §1 of Paper 5. Of the two records, one entering party was outside the system and one inside it, and the sentence did not change.
Stopping support. Under clause 4 of Article 18, the members reported the decisions they had made. The NUT's Council for External Affairs decided, 5 to 0, that the Northern District's transit stations would not handle military cargo bound for the Outer Sandbars through the Stonegorge Pass. The DRP pulled out of the joint exercise held in the autumn of Year 18 under the plan for the southern shore of the Mirror Sea, and reported that "between the Republic and the UCSE there is no cooperation in arms, logistics or transit touching the Outer Sandbars." Stonegorge's harbor at Gorgemouth went on as usual fueling and supplying UCSE ships bound for the Outer Sandbars; its report said: "Port services are commercial contracts; the ships of the Mirror Sea Fleet also fuel at Gorgemouth as usual."
All members must stop their own share of support for the colonizing party: arms, logistics, transit, cooperation in joint arrangements. Stonegorge had by then given notice of exit, but within the notice period it was still a member, and it bore this share all the same (Paper 7, XZ47). Its report said that ships from both sides were fueled alike; treating two entries alike is not neutrality. Power Theory says: "At the network-topology layer, silence (with subject-position registration, without an operational counter-vector) is a zero-resistance transmitting node that objectively amplifies the power gradient." (Power Theory P3 §V.4) This originally speaks of a node in a network; here it is extended to a member: if it has seen, and has registered, yet makes no counter-move of any kind, it is transmitting on behalf of the acting party (own undertaking). Read by the norm, the facts point toward the side of transmitting, not toward neutrality; which of the port's contracts count as logistical support for the entering party, and how that is judged under the rules, is a matter for the Conference of Members and for Stonegorge's own positions. On the occasion of Lamp Island, the NUT reported under the same clause that the Northern District's transit stations had stopped handling military supplies for the Mirror Sea Fleet; Paper 5, §8, writes of it.
Suspension. In the summer of Year 18, the DRP proposed under Article 27 that the UCSE's right to vote in the Conference of Members be suspended, which requires the consent of three quarters of the other members, that is, of all three. The DRP was in favor; the NUT was opposed, its permanent representative saying: "Suspending its vote will not make the administration office withdraw. The NUT wants it to sit here and answer." Stonegorge abstained: "Stonegorge is within the notice period for exit and takes no position on suspension." The proposal did not pass.
What suspension is must be made clear here. Suspension is a member's vote in the common procedure and its position in joint arrangements not being exercised for a time. It keeps to three floors, and goes in one direction. Floor one: suspension does not write off the account: obligations arising from earlier acts stand as before, and questioning and recording go on as before. Floor two: suspension is aimed at acts, not at the names of states or at leanings. Floor three: suspension stops only the member's vote in the common procedure and its position in joint arrangements; it stops neither the member's right to make statements when questioned nor the roads by which those its acts reach can reach the system. The direction: suspension is tied to the act it is aimed at; once the act has stopped and the account has landed, there is no reason for the suspension to continue; whether the account has landed is recognized under a covenant or an award, and is not decided alone by the suspending party. This is the same reasoning as the endpoint of a freeze in §2.
The NUT opposed suspension on the ground that it wanted the UCSE to sit here and answer. Floor three is kept for exactly this: under these three floors, what suspension stops is the vote, not the member's statements when questioned, nor its obligation to answer; suspending it and requiring it to answer do not conflict. How many votes are needed to pass, how long the term, and when review comes, are matters for the rule layer, left to political leaders; whether to suspend on this occasion is the judgment of the positions in that session of the Conference of Members. Article 27 of the Compact is one example: its suspension suspends only the right to vote, which is narrower than this series' direction, and it does not mention the position in joint arrangements; its conditions for expulsion are not limited to line-crossing, which is wider than this series' direction. On expulsion, see Paper 7, XZ50. Stopping a colonizing entry by armed force goes only through each state's own first face; see Paper 5.
As of Year 20, the administration office is still there; the income from fishing fees is used by the administration office for the pier and the islands' clinic. None of the other members has provided the residents of the Outer Sandbars with aid such as supplies, admission or channels.
It may be said that no blood was shed, some residents welcomed it, the UCSE says it has no territorial claim to the Outer Sandbars, and the administration office even spends the fishing fees on the islands' clinic; to call this colonization is to put a label on a good deed done to keep order. The weight of this objection is that some on the islands really did welcome it, the beacon really is lit again, and the clinic really did get money. But what is judged here is on whose behalf decisions are made, not whether they are made well. The fishermen's banner and the three people held stand in the same set of facts as those who welcomed it; and the affairs of those who welcomed it are not for the administration office to decide for them either. When a foreign administration office does good things on someone else's islands, the one deciding is still the office.
The three fishermen who were held engaged a lawyer in Rivermouth City to complain to the UCSE's Inspectorate about the holding and the curfew; the Inspectorate declined to take up the complaint on the ground that they neither hold UCSE citizenship nor reside lawfully within the UCSE. In the autumn of Year 18, they petitioned the Petitions Committee under clause 2 of Article 14 of the Compact; in the spring of Year 19, the Committee took up the petition, and as of Year 20 it is still under examination. This road of theirs by which to ask has been written of in Paper 2, XZ13 and XZ14, and is not written of again here.
This section has written of the first kind of line-crossing: colonizing another state. There is a second kind: a member crossing the line against its own people. XZ27 in full is set up in the next section, with the two kinds together.
§8 The Member That Crosses the Line Against Its Own People
A member does not go beyond its borders; it crosses the line only within its own territory: massacre, torture, detention without trial, driving people out on a large scale. These fall on its own people. What can the system do? The difficulty of this question lies at both ends. If the system does nothing, then its saying that it stands against colonization stands against only half: a state's replacing its own people's own law with its own purposes is colonization too. If the system does too much, it enters that state and decides on behalf of the people there, and is itself the first to cross the line.
The system takes as its ground the covenant the member has acknowledged. In joining the system, a member acknowledged the Compact. Article 4(2) of the Compact states that those who come to a member's door are not pushed back to a place where they would face killing, torture or detention without trial, and Article 4(3) that a member does not push its own people onto other states by stripping them of citizenship; Annex II lists the matters the Petitions Committee takes up: life, the person, detention without trial, citizenship, leaving and returning, movement, speech, expropriation of property. These articles are examples; what matters is that when the system asks a member what it has done to its own people, it rests on the covenant that state itself has acknowledged, not on some standard the system sets up separately. On these grounds the system can question, can record, can suspend the member's vote in the common procedure and its position in joint arrangements, can have the members sanction it together, and can also expel it (Paper 7, XZ50).
All these are withdrawing cooperation. Force is substituting one's own judgment for the other party's judgment on its own affairs. It is stated item by item whose judgment, and which, is substituted here. Questioning and recording are the system saying what it has seen; whether that state answers, and how, is its judgment. Suspension stops that state's vote in the common procedure and its position in joint arrangements; how the common procedure votes was always the members' affair together, not that state's own affair. Sanctions withdraw the members' own banks, ports and markets. Expulsion is the system's no longer cooperating with it under this covenant. As for how that state treats its own people, not one of the five has made the decision for it: that is still its judgment, and its account.
Withdrawing cooperation was always the business of peers; the common procedure only does it together (§4). The system does not enter that state and does not decide on behalf of the people there. Doing the work of cultivation for the people within a state is that state's affair; what the system stands against is colonization, and what it can do toward its members is to tolerate no member's colonizing, including colonizing its own people, not to take over that state and cultivate its people.
A few things to hold to. Aim at acts, not at forms of government. What form of government a state has, it decides itself; what the system asks is what it has done to people. So a coup in itself, not accompanied by massacre, torture, detention without trial or driving people out on a large scale, is not a ground. The humanitarian part must be carved out (§4): when the members sanction together, the part that falls on the life-substrate of that state's ordinary people is likewise carved out, and carved out so that it lands. Suspension follows the three floors of the previous section; expulsion follows the floor of Paper 7, XZ50.
The system, likewise, may not cross the line. It does not use armed force, nor does it do what would slide into force (the test of the Prequel, §2). The Theory of Government has said this of a construct: "anti-colonization is itself an act of the construct, governed by the first ought; taken broadly, the construct would have to police influence between persons that already lies within the line, and would itself be the first to cross the line." (the Theory of Government Prequel, §8) The Theory of Government originally speaks of government as a construct; here it is extended to the system: the system stands against colonization, and every means by which it does so is itself also its act, and is also governed by the first ought (own undertaking). Suspension and sanctions are permissible precisely because they are withdrawals; once the system would go in and deal with that state's people on its behalf, it is no longer withdrawing.
A case of a member crossing the line against its own people in this way does not occur in this series' cases; this paper does not supply one, and sets up only the criterion. What can be compared is the system's measure against the Republic of the Sandbars. The Sandbars are outside the system; from the spring of Year 16, there were sweeps and detentions in its north, and people fled to the east bank of the Grey River and into the NUT's Northern District. What Common Measure No. 2 froze was the personal assets of the members of the Stability Committee and the commanders of the Stability Squads; commercial goods were stopped at the crossings, persons and humanitarian supplies excepted (§4). Toward a state outside the system that crosses the line within its own territory, the system used this set of means of withdrawing cooperation. The same set applies toward a member; what is added toward a member is two things, suspension and expulsion, because between a member and the system there is one more covenant, and so two more things that can be withdrawn: its position in the common procedure, and its membership.
It may be said that to allow the system to suspend and expel a member that crosses the line against its own people is to allow it to manage the member's internal affairs; today it manages massacres, tomorrow something else. The weight of this objection is that once the wall of "internal affairs" has a gap in it, the gap really may grow wider and wider. But the five things here, questioning, recording, checking, suspending and expelling, are all withdrawals of the system's and the members' own cooperation; what happens within that state is still done by it, and still borne by it. Nor are those whom the system's acts reach put out when a state is suspended: under floor three, the roads by which that state's people can reach the system stand as before. Where the gap opens is also fixed in writing: what is aimed at is these acts, massacre, torture, detention without trial and driving people out on a large scale, on the ground of the covenant that state has acknowledged, not its form of government.
To what degree line-crossing must go before there is suspension, before there is expulsion, how many votes are needed to pass, and how long the term, are left to political leaders; how this is judged under the rules, following the three floors of suspension and the floor of expulsion, is judgment in positions, and the account falls on the positions and on the persons who make the decisions.
A member sliding back. There is one more case: not a single line-crossing, but a member sliding back as a whole. The companion study to the Theory of the State, The Reverse Phase Transition, writes of exactly this: a state that leans more toward the 15DD direction slides toward the 14DD direction, one "last" after another moving above its channels; when the several inward channels that could pull back the "lasts" that have moved out have either all been closed, or all had their outcomes fall into the hands of the party questioned, the slide is said to have taken hold. What the companion study writes is how one state, as this state, treats such a peer: "Once a peer has recognized that the slide has taken hold in another state, it keeps its distance from that state: it questions, records and withdraws cooperation other than recognition, without judging who should hold office there and without deciding on behalf of that state's people"; and also: "Whether the slide has taken hold each peer recognizes for itself, and having recognized it, governs only its own cooperation." (The Reverse Phase Transition, N47) The system level it leaves to this series: "The common response and the seat at the system level are handed to the Theory of Inter-State Cooperation." (ibid.) Here it is extended to the system level, the subject term being changed to the system and its members (own undertaking). The reading has these points. Whether the slide has taken hold each member recognizes for itself, and each governs its own cooperation; the system does not recognize it for them, and there is no organ that recognizes the slide on the members' behalf; when the Conference of Members votes on that member, each member's vote comes from its own recognition, and the votes and reasons are recorded. The system's questioning and recording go on as before, and that state cannot cancel them (Paper 2, XZ9, XZ11). The system may suspend its vote in the common procedure and its position in joint arrangements (XZ27), the suspension keeping to the three floors of the previous section: it does not write off the account; it is aimed at the acts that closed those channels, on the ground of the covenant that state has acknowledged, not at the state's name, its leaning or its form of government; it stops neither that state's right to make statements when questioned nor the roads by which its people can reach the system. The endpoint of suspension is read as the endpoint of a freeze in §2: once those acts have stopped and the account has landed, there is no reason for the suspension to continue; where there is no covenant or award by which to recognize it, it is reviewed when its term runs out. Expulsion follows only the conditions of Paper 7, XZ50; recognizing that the slide has taken hold opens no separate route to it. The system does not judge for that state who should hold office, and does not set up another government for it; which of the parties contending inside should hold office is that state's own affair. The part of a withdrawal of cooperation that falls on that state's people follows the unified sentence (system level, Paper 2, §6) where it goes through the common procedure, and Theory of the State N29 where a member withdraws on its own (XZ22). Sliding back is not in itself a reason to send forces: joint defense stops colonizing entries (Paper 5, XZ28), and starting a war requires that one "cannot-not" (Theory of the State N30); if a slide turns outward into a colonizing entry into another state, that is the business of the previous section. The door is open: those who leave that state are not pushed back at the door of any state (Paper 6, XZ38). Return looks to acts: suspension and withdrawn cooperation come back item by item with the acts they were aimed at, not on the strength of plans or declarations; once they come back, the account of the stretch of sliding back is still kept, not written off (The Reverse Phase Transition, N47, N48). For peers pursuing, under their own law, the persons in that state's positions, see Paper 6, §3. In this series' cases no member slides back until the slide has taken hold; this paper does not supply one, and sets up only the reading.
The seat. That state's seat in the common procedure is taken by the positions that actually take the acts, and the account is booked to them. The companion study says that a peer "books the account to the positions that actually take the acts" (The Reverse Phase Transition, N47); extended to the system level, the seat is recognized in the same way (own undertaking). Sitting in the seat is not the system's endorsement of its acts: what recognition acknowledges is that its acts issue from its positions and that the account is booked in its name (Theory of the State N26), and the seat acknowledges only this as well. So the system does not separately recognize a "legitimate government," nor does it let a party in exile sit in its place; letting a party that is not in the positions actually taking the acts sit in that state's seat would be judging for that state who should hold office, and deciding on behalf of its people. The party in exile are people of that state; their questions still have roads (Paper 2, XZ13, XZ14), and what they say is recorded; only they do not sit in that state's seat. The positions that sit in the seat must answer there; when the NUT, opposing suspension in the previous section, said that it wanted the UCSE to "sit here and answer," it was the same reasoning. Where necessary its vote is suspended, under the three floors above: what is stopped is the vote, not its statements when questioned, nor its obligation to answer. Another case must be kept apart: where another party within that state actually governs a part of it and applies on its own, that is a split, read under Paper 1, §8 (XZ8), and the fifth guardrail of Paper 5, §11 (XZ34); the fifth guardrail itself says that which part is acknowledged goes by acts, not by which part occupies the original government and seat. The reading of these two matters is the normative layer; how many votes are needed to suspend, how long the term and when review comes belong to the rule layer and, as in the previous section, are left to political leaders; whether a member recognizes that the slide has taken hold, and how it votes in the Conference of Members once it has, are left to the judgment of each member's positions, and the account falls on positions and persons.
XZ27 Toward a member that crosses the line: questioning, recording, checks, suspension. Line-crossing is of two kinds: colonizing another state; crossing the line against one's own people (massacre, torture, detention without trial, driving people out on a large scale). A member colonizing outside the system is still colonizing; what the system stands against is colonization itself, not only the colonization of members. Toward such a member, what the system can do is question, record and check, tolerating no use of any of the system's arrangements for colonizing; all members stop their own share of support for the colonizing party (arms, logistics, transit, cooperation in joint arrangements); silence is not neutrality (Power Theory P3 §V.4; originally of a node in a network, here extended to a member; own undertaking). The system may suspend the member's vote in the common procedure and its position in joint arrangements; on expulsion, see Paper 7, XZ50; armed force goes only through each state's own first face; see Paper 5. Suspension keeps to three floors and goes in one direction: suspension does not write off the account, obligations arising from earlier acts stand as before, and questioning and recording go on as before; suspension is aimed at acts, not at the names of states or at leanings; suspension stops only the member's vote in the common procedure and its position in joint arrangements, and stops neither its right to make statements when questioned nor the roads by which those its acts reach can reach the system. Suspension is tied to the act it is aimed at: once the act has stopped and the account has landed, there is no reason for the suspension to continue; whether the account has landed is recognized under a covenant or an award, and is not decided alone by the suspending party. Toward a member that crosses the line against its own people, the system, on the ground of the covenant the member has acknowledged, can question, record, suspend and sanction, and can also expel (Paper 7, XZ50); all these are withdrawing cooperation, do not substitute for that state's judgment (XZ22), and do not enter the member to decide on behalf of its people. A few things to hold to: aim at acts, not at forms of government; a coup in itself, unaccompanied by line-crossing, is not a ground; the humanitarian part is carved out (XZ24). The system, likewise, may not cross the line: it does not use armed force, nor does it do what would slide into force; anti-colonization is itself an act of the system, governed by the first ought (the Theory of Government Prequel, §8, originally speaks of government as a construct; here it is extended to the system; own undertaking). Where a member has slid back until the slide has taken hold, whether it has taken hold each member recognizes for itself, each governing its own cooperation, and the system does not recognize it for them; the system's questioning and recording go on as before; it may suspend; expulsion follows only Paper 7, XZ50; it does not judge for that state who should hold office, and does not set up another government for it (The Reverse Phase Transition, N47, extended to the system level; own undertaking). That state's seat in the common procedure is taken by the positions that actually take the acts, and the account is booked to them; the system does not separately recognize a "legitimate government"; where another party actually governs a part and applies on its own, that is a split, under XZ8 and XZ34 (own undertaking). These points are the normative layer; numbers of votes, terms and review are the rule layer, left to political leaders; to what degree line-crossing must go before there is suspension, before there is expulsion, is left to judgment in positions, and the account falls on positions and persons.
Where This Paper Stops
This paper has proved several things. With no superior overhead, the first thing peers cannot have closed on them is the withdrawal of cooperation; what withdrawing cooperation withdraws is the cooperation of the party applying pressure itself, and the other party's room to bear the cost and not comply remains, so it is a check, not force; if a measure cancels that room, or cuts off the life-substrate of the people there, it has already slid into substituting judgment. Withholding what was to be given is a check; taking away what is the other party's own is force; the endpoint of a freeze aimed at an act is that the act has stopped and the account has landed, and whether the account has landed is recognized under a covenant or an award, not decided alone by the freezing party. In dealing with states outside it, the system must count by what all parties recognize, the direction still being that persons are ends. Multilateral sanctions are the act of each participating state plus a common procedure; each state bears its own share, and the common procedure itself bears a share too. The line between checks and erosion, and between cooperation and collusion, is looked for in three places. At the system level, three shapes of mirror assimilation must be checked. Toward a member that crosses the line, whether it colonizes another state or crosses the line against its own people, the system can question, record, check and suspend, and can also expel, and all these are withdrawing cooperation; the system itself, likewise, does not cross the line. When a member slides back until the slide has taken hold, whether it has taken hold each member recognizes for itself; the system does not judge for that state who should hold office, and its seat is taken by the positions that actually take the acts.
What it has not proved comes to several things. The economic effects of sanctions this paper does not write of; whether a measure can press the other party into stopping is another kind of question. A guarantee from equilibrium itself this paper does not give: checks and interests are not a natural guarantee, and interests change. The numbers of votes, terms and procedures for suspension, renewal and review are handed to political leaders and to specific theories of institutions; those articles of the Compact are only examples. To whom the income generated by frozen assets belongs is handed to the particular law. Of the line between checks and erosion, this paper has given only the three places that must be looked at; how to divide beyond the three, this series undertakes, and Paper 8 registers it as a remainder. The conditions and consequences of expulsion are written in Paper 7. A case of the system withholding disbursements, and a case of a member crossing the line against its own people, are both absent from this series' cases; this paper does not supply them, and in both places sets up only the criterion; a case of a member sliding back until the slide has taken hold is absent too, and the end of §8 sets up only the reading.
In several places this paper writes only as far as which side the facts point toward, and leaves the judgment with the positions that make it: Order No. 7, by the second place of §5, points toward the ghostwriting side, and the judgment lies in the votes and records of the Conference of Members; what word the second record on the Outer Sandbars uses rests with the Conference of Members, and the DRP's objection stays on record; which of the contracts at Gorgemouth count as logistical support for the entering party rests with the Conference of Members and with Stonegorge's own positions; how far Order No. 7 squeezed the hospitals' fuel is not recorded. The accounts left behind are also written as they stand: for the losses Stonegorge suffered from Order No. 7 there is neither a covenant nor an award, and with Common Measure No. 1 lifted, this entry has not been written off; the account of the months before the amendment on the two banks of the Grey River is booked to the positions that made and implemented the decisions; the administration office on the Outer Sandbars is still there as of Year 20.
Withdrawing cooperation can answer pressure exerted through interests; it cannot stop colonization that enters by force. In the spring of Year 17, when the Plateau Federation's ships entered the Stonegorge Strait and its troops landed on Lamp Island, the freeze and the prohibition of supply under Common Measure No. 1 were both still in place, and the entry happened all the same. What remains is outward defense, which Paper 5 takes up.
The Six Propositions of This Paper
XZ22 A check is the withdrawal of cooperation, and is not force (carried over from Theory of the State N36 and N29). The first thing that cannot be closed between one another, with no superior, is peers judging for themselves on this basis and withdrawing cooperation other than recognition (Theory of the State N36); sanctions and blockades are also acts (Theory of the State N29), and on whom a withdrawal of cooperation falls is checked following the unified sentence: a state's own withdrawal follows Theory of the State N29; one made through a common procedure follows the unified sentence (system level, Paper 2, §6). The notice period, the conditions for rejoining and suspension are all checks, and do not rely on force. Force is substituting one's own judgment for the other party's judgment on its own affairs. Withdrawing cooperation (stopping disbursements, suspending payments not yet made, freezing, suspending a vote in the common procedure, sanctions) withdraws the cooperation of the party applying pressure itself; the other party's affairs are still decided by it, and its room to bear the cost and not comply remains, so it is a check. If anything is substituted, it is stated item by item whose judgment, and which; if a measure leaves the other party unable to survive unless it does as the party applying pressure wishes, or in effect cancels its room to bear the cost and not comply, it has already slid into substituting judgment, and is not done (the test of the Prequel, §2, extended to economic measures; own undertaking); requiring the other party to stop crossing the line, or to perform a covenant it has acknowledged, does not count as what the party applying pressure wishes. Withheld or taken: withholding from funds that were to be given is withdrawing cooperation, a check; taking away the other party's own capital is force, and an arrangement that in fact does this is, as in Paper 7, XZ46, a superior. The same holds for the assets of a state outside the system: suspending payments not yet made and freezing the principal are withdrawing cooperation; confiscating or drawing on the principal is taking, is force, and will also slide toward the use of armed force; the system does not do it, and the members do not do it through the system either; the account of compensation is recorded and settled through a covenant or an award, and confiscation does not take the place of settlement. Whether the income generated by frozen assets counts as the other party's is handed to the particular law. The endpoint of a freeze aimed at an act is that the act has stopped and the account has landed: for an entry, that the entry has ended and compensation has been made; for crossing the line against one's own people, that the line-crossing act has stopped and compensation has been made (own undertaking). Whether the account has landed is recognized under a covenant or an award, and is not decided alone by the freezing party (Paper 2, XZ10); where there is no covenant or award by which to recognize it, the freeze is reviewed when its term runs out and is not renewed on the strength of its origin (Institution Theory Z22); this endpoint governs how long, at most, a freeze may stay, and does not require renewal for as long as the account has not landed; toward a member in the course of exiting, a freeze serves only the account and is not made a condition of exit (Paper 7, XZ45). What this provision guards against is the freezing party locking the other in by closing the case alone; during its term a freeze is still checked for actual room and for the humanitarian carve-out, under the test of the Prequel, §2, and XZ24; the endpoint of suspension goes in the same direction (XZ27). This endpoint is the normative layer; the term, the renewal vote and how compensation is settled are examples at the rule layer; whether the act has stopped and whether the account has landed are recognized by the positions within the covenant or award, and when to review and how is left to judgment in positions.
XZ23 Counting by what all parties recognize, the direction still being that persons are ends (own undertaking). Checks and reputation appeal to interest and circumstance, do not require the other party first to acknowledge that persons are ends, and are recognized by a party leaning more toward the 14DD direction too: a check is withdrawing cooperation; reputation counts because the parties who see the account make decisions on the basis of it, not because the party recorded cares about it (Paper 3, XZ16). Consensus and questioning rely more on reasoning, and a party leaning more toward the 15DD direction can make more use of them. Power Theory's counter registration has three forms, questioning, counter-narrative and withdrawing the protection-response; the three superpose, do not replace one another, and are not ranked (Power Theory P3 §V.2, §VI.4; originally within a community, here extended to states; own undertaking). Of these, questioning is in Power Theory's original wording "accountability at the reputation layer," which relies on the party questioned caring about its reputation; the reputation that counts in this series lies with the parties who read the account; the two are not the same thing. So the system cannot rely on consensus alone, which works only when all parties are willing; nor on checks alone, which would slide into a showdown or standoff between two directions of expansion (Law Series P1 §11; Moral Law P9 §2.5; originally between two subjects leaning more toward the 14DD direction, here extended to states that cannot exit from one another; own undertaking). Checks do not take the place of covenants, questions and accounts, but count together with them; their qualified form is stating the bottom line openly, with real capability behind it (War Treatise §12; Paper 3, XZ19). What is recognized is interest; the direction is still that persons are ends: what a check is aimed at, and how the part that falls on people is carved out, are checked under XZ24 and XZ25; a check is itself questioned and recorded all the same. Interests of trade and finance can also be used to press other states; equilibrium is not a guarantee.
XZ24 The common procedure for multilateral sanctions (carried over from Theory of the State N29). Multilateral sanctions are the act of each participating state plus a common procedure: each participating state bears its own share following the unified sentence (state level, the Theory of the State Prequel, §8), and is not exempted by having gone through a common procedure (Theory of the State N29); what it bears is the items it implemented and the vote it cast, and the accounts of two constructs are each checked by their own source (Theory of Government G25; own undertaking). The common procedure itself also bears a share (the Theory of the State originally speaks of this state's share in the common procedure; here it is extended to the common procedure itself; own undertaking): those affected have a road within reach of the common procedure itself by which to ask (Paper 2, XZ14); the humanitarian part is carved out, and carved out so that it lands, and whether it has landed is recorded as it stands (Paper 3, XZ17). The reason for the humanitarian carve-out: a blockade that cuts off the life-substrate leaves the people there unable to survive unless they do as the party applying pressure wishes, and has already slid into substituting judgment (the test of the Prequel, §2, extended to the part of a measure that falls on people; own undertaking). The conditions of sanctions carry no demand about direction (Institution Theory Z27 originally speaks of conditions attached to an institution's support; here it is extended to the conditions of sanctions; own undertaking). The endpoint of a measure can be written as the act having stopped and the account having landed, rather than as a term alone; whether the account has landed is recognized under a covenant or an award, and is not decided alone by the party applying pressure; where there is no covenant or award by which to recognize it, the measure is reviewed when its term runs out and is not renewed on the strength of its origin (Institution Theory Z22). This is the normative layer; who proposes, how many votes are needed to pass, and how often review comes, belong to the rule layer and are handed to specific theories of institutions; how far the carve-out must land to count as having landed is left to judgment in positions, and the account falls on positions and persons.
XZ25 The line between checks and erosion, and between cooperation and collusion (own undertaking). Checks and structural erosion can be alike in form: the War Treatise lists economic pressure and diplomatic coercion outside wartime as one form of structural erosion (War Treatise §5; extended to all pressure; own undertaking); Power Theory says that morphology does not determine the direction of cultivation (Power Theory P5 §VII). The line is looked for in three places; these are three places that must be looked at, not necessary and sufficient conditions. The first place: whether the other party's interrupt-right is cancelled (Power Theory P6 §I; originally of the one under power in a power relation, here extended to states; own undertaking). The second place: what it is aimed at: withdrawing cooperation aimed at an act that crosses the line, or at a breach of an acknowledged covenant, is a check; aimed at the other party's own choice that crosses no line, so as to make it change as the party applying pressure wishes, it is ghostwriting (Institution Theory Z27 originally speaks of conditions attached to an institution's support; here it is extended to pressure between states; own undertaking); where it is disputed whether an acknowledged covenant has been breached, this is checked against the text of the covenant and the records of the parties, and is not decided alone by the party applying pressure. The third place: whether the part that falls on people has a road by which to ask (Paper 2, XZ14; XZ24). Cooperation and collusion are of the same form at the recognition layer; the upstream gives only a minimal structure (Power Theory P3 §VII.2); they part in direction. A member with great influence that uses the system's sanctions, recognition or conditions of aid to press other states is committing colonization in the name of cooperation; a covenant a member concludes separately with a state outside the system can also be used to do this. Facts are read by these three places, and written up to the point of which side they point toward; how a particular act is judged under the rules is judged by the positions that make the judgment, is not decided alone by the party applying pressure, and is not prejudged by which state the act comes from. For cases beyond the three places, the upstream has not given the line; this series undertakes it, and it is registered as a remainder (Paper 8, XZ56).
XZ26 No mirror assimilation at the system level (carried over from Theory of the State N28). The adversary serves only as a contrast, not as a yardstick (Theory of the State N28). To suppress one's own space of questioning in order to guard against the other side is already to have become structurally the other side's mirror (War Treatise §20; originally of a side at war, here extended to the system level; own undertaking). At the system level there are at least three shapes to check: under long pressure from outside the system, coordination and preparation growing into a standing force that can deploy on its own, at which point a superior has grown (Paper 5, XZ31; Paper 7, XZ46); damping down, so as not to be divided, questioning of the system's arrangements among the members and within members, which runs against the last clause of the main-line sentence; answering pressure with sanctions, with the sanctions themselves turned into structural erosion (XZ25). The line is not discounted under outside pressure (Institution Theory Z9). A long confrontation between the system and a state outside it may be only a truce, and a truce is not a settlement (War Treatise §20); returning to fa-mou and fa-jiao is the way out.
XZ27 Toward a member that crosses the line: questioning, recording, checks, suspension. Line-crossing is of two kinds: colonizing another state; crossing the line against one's own people (massacre, torture, detention without trial, driving people out on a large scale). A member colonizing outside the system is still colonizing; what the system stands against is colonization itself, not only the colonization of members. Toward such a member, what the system can do is question, record and check, tolerating no use of any of the system's arrangements for colonizing; all members stop their own share of support for the colonizing party (arms, logistics, transit, cooperation in joint arrangements); silence is not neutrality (Power Theory P3 §V.4; originally of a node in a network, here extended to a member; own undertaking). The system may suspend the member's vote in the common procedure and its position in joint arrangements; on expulsion, see Paper 7, XZ50; armed force goes only through each state's own first face; see Paper 5. Suspension keeps to three floors and goes in one direction: suspension does not write off the account, obligations arising from earlier acts stand as before, and questioning and recording go on as before; suspension is aimed at acts, not at the names of states or at leanings; suspension stops only the member's vote in the common procedure and its position in joint arrangements, and stops neither its right to make statements when questioned nor the roads by which those its acts reach can reach the system. Suspension is tied to the act it is aimed at: once the act has stopped and the account has landed, there is no reason for the suspension to continue; whether the account has landed is recognized under a covenant or an award, and is not decided alone by the suspending party. Toward a member that crosses the line against its own people, the system, on the ground of the covenant the member has acknowledged, can question, record, suspend and sanction, and can also expel (Paper 7, XZ50); all these are withdrawing cooperation, do not substitute for that state's judgment (XZ22), and do not enter the member to decide on behalf of its people. A few things to hold to: aim at acts, not at forms of government; a coup in itself, unaccompanied by line-crossing, is not a ground; the humanitarian part is carved out (XZ24). The system, likewise, may not cross the line: it does not use armed force, nor does it do what would slide into force; anti-colonization is itself an act of the system, governed by the first ought (the Theory of Government Prequel, §8, originally speaks of government as a construct; here it is extended to the system; own undertaking). Where a member has slid back until the slide has taken hold, whether it has taken hold each member recognizes for itself, each governing its own cooperation, and the system does not recognize it for them; the system's questioning and recording go on as before; it may suspend; expulsion follows only Paper 7, XZ50; it does not judge for that state who should hold office, and does not set up another government for it (The Reverse Phase Transition, N47, extended to the system level; own undertaking). That state's seat in the common procedure is taken by the positions that actually take the acts, and the account is booked to them; the system does not separately recognize a "legitimate government"; where another party actually governs a part and applies on its own, that is a split, under XZ8 and XZ34 (own undertaking). These points are the normative layer; numbers of votes, terms and review are the rule layer, left to political leaders; to what degree line-crossing must go before there is suspension, before there is expulsion, is left to judgment in positions, and the account falls on positions and persons.
References
All SAE works below are cited by concept DOI, which always resolves to the latest version. The version records used for sentence-by-sentence verification are given in the accompanying audit table.
I · This system
Qin, H. (2026). How Is Institution Possible: From Inter-Ontological Remainder to Co-Constructive Framework (SAE Foundational Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19328662
Qin, H. (2026). Not Crossing the Line (SAE Institution Theory, Paper 2) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23270384
Qin, H. (2026). Guarding the Line (SAE Institution Theory, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23270766
Qin, H. (2026). Conditions (SAE Institution Theory, Paper 4) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23270922
Qin, H. (2026). What a Government Is Not (SAE Theory of Government, Prequel) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23411670
Qin, H. (2026). Levels (SAE Theory of Government, Paper 4) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23413192
Qin, H. (2026). Questioning and Bearing (SAE Theory of Government, Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23413511
Qin, H. (2026). The Last Exit (SAE Theory of the State, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584325
Qin, H. (2026). The Last Force (SAE Theory of the State, Paper 4) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584329
Qin, H. (2026). One Another, with No Superior (SAE Theory of the State, Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584346
Qin, H. (2026). Questioning the Last Layer (SAE Theory of the State, Paper 7) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584356
Qin, H. (2026). The Reverse Phase Transition (SAE Theory of the State, Companion Study) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23779070
Qin, H. (2026). SAE War Treatise: How Cultivation Is Not Swallowed by War Itself [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19656617
Qin, H. (2026). One's Law Meets One's Law: The Structural Origin of Law from 14DD Showdown (SAE Law Series, Paper 1) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19548237
Qin, H. (2026). The Institutional Architecture of Mixed Reality: The Phase-Transition Evolution of Cultivation and Colonization (SAE Moral Law, Paper 9) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20262737
Qin, H. (2026). On the Recognition of Power · Shi (SAE Power Theory, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20480134
Qin, H. (2026). On the Development of Power · Shi (SAE Power Theory, Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20582210
Qin, H. (2026). On the Severing of Power · Shi (SAE Power Theory, Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20647463
II · External works (public-domain originals, tier A)
Kant, I. (1795). Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf. Königsberg: Friedrich Nicolovius. Project Gutenberg, EBook #46873. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46873
Kant, I. (1917). Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay. Trans. M. Campbell Smith (1st ed. 1903; 3rd impression). London: George Allen & Unwin. Project Gutenberg, EBook #50922. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50922
III · External works (public-domain translation, tier B)
Grotius, H. (1901). The Rights of War and Peace, Including the Law of Nature and of Nations. Trans. A. C. Campbell. New York & London: M. Walter Dunne. Project Gutenberg, EBook #46564. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46564 (abridged translation; Latin original not checked)
IV · External works (secondary sources underlying tier C)
Wenar, L. John Rawls. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (substantive revision of September 3, 2025). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/
V · External works (cited at second hand)
Rawls, J. (1999). The Law of Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (original not consulted; paraphrased from the Wenar entry; tier C)
Interfaces
Main upstream: Theory of the State (the Prequel, §8; Paper 7, N36; Paper 5, N26, N28, N29 and §5; Paper 4, N22 and §5; Paper 3, N16; Paper 6, N30); Theory of Government (Paper 4, G25; Paper 6, G36; the Prequel, §8, extended to the system; own undertaking); Institution Theory (Paper 2, Z9; Paper 3, Z22; Paper 4, Z27, extended to pressure; own undertaking).
Also used: the companion study to the Theory of the State, The Reverse Phase Transition, N47 (keeping distance, and the seat, extended to the system level; own undertaking) and N48 (return looks to acts; the account is not written off); War Treatise §5 (economic pressure as a form of erosion; 14DD's own order), §12 (yang-mou), §20 (mirror assimilation; the truce; a return to fa-mou and fa-jiao), with own undertaking where extended to the system level; Power Theory P3 §V.2 and §VI.4 (the three layers of counter registration, extended to states), §V.4 (silence as a zero-resistance transmitting node, extended to members), §VII.2 (cooperation and collusion given only a minimal structure), P5 §VII (morphology does not determine the direction of cultivation), P6 §I (the interrupt-right, extended to states); Law Series P1 §11 (showdown or standoff; own undertaking); Moral Law P9 §2.1 (colonization as a technical term; not necessarily relying on open violence), §2.5 (own undertaking); F6, Appendix B, Article 7(c) (a working demonstration; used only as an example; the branch "no blockade of the other party's trade routes" is not taken).
Interfacing: Kant (Perpetual Peace, First Supplement, "On the Guarantee of Perpetual Peace," points 2 and 3; tier A, per the first edition of 1795, compared with Smith's English translation); Rawls (The Law of Peoples, per §5.3 of the Wenar entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; tier C; the layer of toleration is pointed back to, Theory of the State Paper 5, §4); Grotius (The Rights of War and Peace, bk. II, ch. 15, §7; tier B, per Campbell's abridged English translation).
This series: the Prequel, §2 (the criterion and test of force), §11 (the three layers); Paper 1, the Introduction and §1 (the pressure when Stonegorge joined), §6 (XZ6), §8 (XZ8); Paper 2, §1 (XZ9), §2 (XZ10), §3 (XZ11), §4 (XZ12), §5 (XZ13), §§6 and 7 (XZ14); Paper 3, §1 (XZ16), §2 (XZ17), §3 (the wording of records), §4 (XZ19); Paper 5, the Introduction and §1, XZ28, §8, §11 (XZ34), XZ31; Paper 6, §3 (XZ38); Paper 7, §1 (XZ45), §2 (XZ46), §§3 and 4 (Stonegorge's notice period and the Lamp Island Agreement), §6 (XZ50); Paper 8, §5 (XZ56).
Handed to Paper 5: when withdrawing cooperation cannot stop colonization that enters by force, what remains is outward defense.