Ministry of Defence (Themiclesia): Difference between revisions

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|seal_width      =  
|seal_width      =  
|seal_caption    =
|seal_caption    =
|formed          = December 30th, 1963
|formed          = Oct. 30, 1970
|preceding2      =  
|preceding1      = Ministry of War (三十四兵部)
|preceding2      = Ministry of the Navy (艦航部)
|preceding3      = Ministry of Air (空航部)
|dissolved      =
|dissolved      =
|superseding    = Ministries of Army, Navy, and Air Force
|superseding    =  
|parent_department= Government of Themiclesia
|parent_department= [[Council of Correspondence]]
|jurisdiction    = Themiclesia
|jurisdiction    = Themiclesia
|headquarters    = [[Dormitory Building]], [[Kien-k'ang]], [[Themiclesia]]
|headquarters    = [[Dormitory Building]], [[Kien-k'ang]], [[Themiclesia]]
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|budget          = OSD$63 bn
|budget          = OSD$63 bn
|minister1_name  = ''tbd''
|minister1_name  = ''tbd''
|minister1_pfo  = Secretary of State for Defence
|chief1_name    = ''tbd''
|chief1_name    = ''tbd''
|chief1_position = Minister of State for Defence
|chief1_position = Minister of State for Defence
|chief2_name    = ''tbd''
|chief2_name    = ''tbd''
|chief2_position = Permanent Secretary  
|chief2_position = Permanent Under-Secretary of State
|child1_agency  = [[Department of the Army]]
|child1_agency  = [[Department of the Army]]
|child2_agency  = [[Department of the Navy]]
|child2_agency  = [[Department of the Navy]]
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|website        =  
|website        =  
|footnotes      =
|footnotes      =
|name=|chief3_name=|chief3_position=|chief4_name=|chief4_position=|chief5_name=|chief5_position=|chief6_name=|chief6_position=|chief7_name=|chief7_position=|chief8_name=|chief8_position=|chief9_name=|chief9_position=}}The '''Ministry of Defence''' (尚書國防部) of Themiclesia is the government department for implementing defence policies set by the the [[Themiclesian Ministry|Government of Themiclesia]].
|name=|chief3_name=|chief3_position=|chief4_name=|chief4_position=|chief5_name=|chief5_position=|chief6_name=|chief6_position=|chief7_name=|chief7_position=|chief8_name=|chief8_position=|chief9_name=|chief9_position=}}The '''Ministry of Defence''' (尚書國防部, djang’-stja-kwek-bjang-be’) of Themiclesia is the government department for implementing defence policies set by the the [[Council of Correspondence|government of Themiclesia]].  It is currently led by Secretary of State for Defence, Geoffrey Sdjem Tsuih (沈最), with the assistance of four junior ministers and the Permanent Under-Secretary of State, the professional head of the Ministry.  Within it, there exist three subordinate departments that represent each of the three military services, the [[Themiclesian Army]], the [[Themiclesian Navy]], and the [[Themiclesian Air Force]].


The principal objectives of the Ministry of Defence are the defence of Themiclesia and her interests against foreign invasions, the discharge of Themiclesia's military obligations as required by statute and international treaties, and the general maintenance of the peace and stability in [[Septentrion]] as directed by the government.  The senior and responsible minister of the department, the Secretary of State for Defence, is the country's armed forces' commander-in-chief, though he, as a member of the Government and a cabinet minister, remains under the country's statutory and customary law, cabinet ordinances, and policies made by the government, and further is responsible politically to the country's parliament.
The principal objectives of the Ministry of Defence are the defence of Themiclesia and her interests against foreign invasions, the discharge of Themiclesia's military obligations as required by statute and international treaties, and the general maintenance of the peace and stability in [[Septentrion]] as directed by the government.  The senior and responsible minister of the department, the Secretary of State for Defence, is the ''de facto'' commander-in-chief of the armed forces, under the country's statutory and customary law, cabinet ordinances, and government policy, and further is responsible politically to the country's parliament.


==History==
==History==
===Background===
===Preceeding bodies===
The Ministry of Defence superceded the role of at least four distinct ministerial bodies, the Ministry of the Army, the Ministry of the Navy, the Ministry of the Air Force, and the Office for the Co-ordination of Defence.  Possible further candidates include the Department of Civil Defence, the Office of Civil Aviation, and the Office of the Left and Right Guards.  The need to consolidate the country's defence services, historically and operationally independent, was evident from the outset of the [[Pan-Septentrion War]], though active hostilities during that conflict prevented large-scale, far-reaching reforms from being even seriously considered.  It has been fairly well-accepted academically that the country could have performed better during the war had co-ordination between the services been increased, and part of this academic opinion formed the basis of the reforms that brought the modern Ministry of Defence into existence.
The current Ministry of Defence is the result of the merger of the Ministry of War (三十四兵部, sem-gljep-spljih-prjang-be, lit. "ministry of 34 forces"), the Ministry of the Navy (艦航部, krams-gang-be), and the Ministry of Air (空航部, kong-gang-be) in 1970.  Previous to the merger, the civilian bureaucracy that compose of their respective staff have already underwent extensive evolution, mostly under the process of centralization and simplification.  This process was largely independent of the evolution of ministerial portfolios, which were created and dissolved according to policy needs.   


Traditionally, the Ministry of War (renamed Ministry of the Army in 1903) was responsible for administering and leading the Army, most often against enemies that approached from [[Dzhungestan]], [[Maverica]], and occasionally from [[Nukkumaa]].  The Ministry of the Navy was responsible for all military affairs beyond the Halu'an Sea, to the west of the country, and its egress into the Meridian Ocean; somewhat untrue to the term "navy", the department's portfolio included terranean warfare beyond the seas.  Because of this acknowledged geographical delimitation of jurisdiction between the two ministries, co-operation between them had been minimal and temporary.  The Air Force, created in 1927, was headed by an independent ministry to prevent its resources being dedicated to only "one side".
The Ministry of War came into existence in the early 19th century, when maintenance of prefectural militias were centralized for economy.  At the time, active units were subordinated to the direction of the Secretary of State for War, but their maintenance was still inextricably tied to their home prefectures.  Inactive units were held by the prefecture on furlough or summoned for local peacekeeping work.  An exception existed when a expeditionary army was assembled, in which case a headquarters with administrative powers would be created; otherwise, all units were administered by the prefecture, with approval or delegated dispensation, from the central government.  Since, then, soldiers on furlough received compensation in land allotment and were obliged to support their active comrades with agricultural and craft products, it was convenient to administer them locally.  When enlistment was made voluntary, this system which presumed that each prefecture would have a predictable amount of soldiers, proved ineffective and prone to corruption, leading to centralization and the creation of the Ministry of War's bureaucracy that managed all militias.  At first, central organization imitated the local, but advancements in warfare necessitated more specialist departments; ultimately, the Ministry expanded from nine departments to 41, at the high point in the [[Pan-Septentrion War]].


===Navy Obstruction===
The Ministry of the Navy was created as a co-ordinating organization of the six traditional departments (Fleets, Guilds, Ancillaries, West Woods, Engineers, and Customs) that administered the Themiclesian Navy.  The youngest of these departments, the Department of Engineers, dates to 1360.  Until 1781, the entire naval apparatus reported to the Secretary of State for Finance, though a dedicated portfolio has been argued for and created.  It was thought that the Finance portfolio was growing too busy and diffuse, with duties spanning domestic agricultural and commercial taxes, customs, poor relief, and discount medicine, palace expenditures, to naval warfare in the Helian Ocean and land warfare in Meridia; though these were all historically related, by the 1700s the incumbent was hard-pressed to attend to all of them, resulting in questionable decisions.  The Ministry of the Navy thus began as the new minister's personal advisors, further to concentrate decision-making power in a well-informed departmental leader.  After the naval fiasco at [[Raid on Rad|Rad]] in 1791, the Navy Ministry began reforming its six departments, though statutorily the six all survive into the modern day.
Since the Navy held jurisdictional control over terranean warfare on Hemithea west of Themiclesia's western coastline and in Meridia (theoretically in Casaterra as well), it possessed a considerable amount of infantry and other land-based forces.  Amongst them were the Maritime Corps (more famously known as [[Themiclesian Marine Corps]]), the Port Corps, and the Littoral Corps.  When the Army was overstretched for manpower in its battle against expanding Menghean forces in 1935, the Navy (along with its responsible minister) refused to send its infantry to assist the Army in what it called "the Army's region of responsibility"; modern historians have cited this as an excellent example of service sectionalism and, in addition, refusal to surrender resources for fear that the Army might eclipse the Navy's importance.  The direct result whereof is the institution of conscription in 1936.  Relations between the two services bittered, causing severe waste in duplicated establishments or units standing idle.  Inter-service co-operation ground to a halt in 1946, when the Navy asked the Army to build its own ships to ferry its troops from Menghe to Dayashina, since Dayashina was on "that side of Hemithea"; only the passage of a statute brought the Navy into line.  In reality, the heavy expected losses in ships and men in ''Operation Downfall'' could have presented itself as the primary cause of the Navy's reluctance to lend assistance.


===Precursors===
The Ministry of Air was established by statute in 1919, to manage civilian aviation in Themiclesia.  At the time, several aviation clubs already existed for enthusiasts, operating largely without statutory oversight and regularly encountering disputes with local authorities.  In 1921, it was decided that an air force would be strategically valuable in defending Themiclesia's very remote border regions and that it would be best managed together with civilian aviation; hence, the Themiclesian Air Force was created as a function of the League of Aviation Clubs in 1922 and became independent in 1923.  At the same time, the Ministry of Air was created for both the Air Force and the LAC, which was envisioned as a reserve organization for the Air Force in wartime.  In 1935, with war encroaching, civilian aviation was placed under the Ministry of Transport.  The Ministry of Air is, therefore, the only ministry to have preceded the creation of its components, reflected as a much more tightly organized structure and integration with the Air Force itself.
After the [[Pan-Septentrion War|PSW]], the Cabinet studied the possibility of placing the three services under a command authority other than itself.  All three defence ministers disagreed, but other ministers were generally in favour, if only for dramatically shortening cabinet agenda.  The Prime Minister, in particular, was noted to have a particular distaste for making military decisions as often as he did during the war, and often without impartial advice.  In 1951, he secretly commissioned the Dean of the Department of Arts of Pondside University to study the situation, in particular, "formation of a civilian or military authority, answerable to Cabinet, that did not belong to any of the three services".  The military option was quickly ruled out, as the Dean pointed out by letter, "all service persons retain, as second nature, a preference or disposition in favour of his native service.  Any office composed of service persons, by definition, cannot be free of sectionalism."  This statement has been definitional in forming the future Ministry of Defence as a primarily civilian authority.


The general practice during the war, for inter-service communication, was for each service to station a senior officer in the imperial palace (the seat of the government) permanently, to act as a conduit between the minister and the chief of the service.  With the minister's permission, the officer could confer with his counterpart from another service, usually in the presence of both involved ministers.  Social propriety during the early stages of the war largely prevented the inclusion of more military officers in these informal meetings, as they could not be admitted to the palace, and without formal minutes, accepted conclusions often failed to receive the same support at Cabinet.  According to one such officer from the Army, he was given a thick brief every morning by his service chief and was instructed to obtain the Navy's "advised and considered assent" on hundreds of items, and the ensuing meeting could last more than 20 hours when the Navy officer's brief was also tabled.  Both officers would be speaking over telephones to their service chiefs, to relay the interlocutor's response for further consideration.  Commentators have found this to be one of the greatest absurdities in the conduct of the war, since the same task in other countries would have been done by dozens of officers, over multiple channels of communication.
[[Category:Septentrion]] [[Category:Themiclesia]]
 
===Formation===
After extensive consultation and deliberation, the Government introduced the Ministry of Defence Act to the nation's parliament at the end of 1962.  The bill's preamble contained the somewhat contradictory language of:
 
{{cquote|''...under the precept of the administrative and structural independence of the army, navy, and air defence services, to provide for the integration operational matters amongst them...}}
To ensure the support of the defence ministers, the bill did ''not'' fundamentally change the structure of any of the three ministries.  Columnist Mark Leonard, writing on the ''Diplomat'', called the formation of the Ministry "essentially a matter of renaming the existing ministries and packing them into the shell of another ministry".  The new Secretary of State for Defence, upon the opening of his ministry in 1963, found that he could not control the existing defence ministers, since he had no independent source of information, and all of his decisions had to be implemented by the ministers whose places in Cabinet had been removed in his favour.  Cabinet resolutions were still the only instrument that will quell the service ministers.  Leonard was proven right when the organizational chart for the Ministry appeared in foreign media, showing that the Ministry employed more than the sum total of its three predecessors.
 
===Continued Reforms===
To facilitate communication between the three ex-ministries, the Under-Secretary of State for Co-ordination chaired the Co-ordination Committee with service ministers and their service chiefs, to ensure compliance with defence policy and co-operation between the services.  Afterwards, it was decided that the role of the Under-Secretary should be a professional one, instead of a ministerial one; briefly the Government considered placing the Permanent Secretary in that position, but the service ministers objected on the grounds of burdening the Permanent Secretary with matters outside of his professional training. 
 
As a compromise, a board consisting of the Minister of State, the three service ministers, three service chiefs, the Permanent Secretary, and the Under-Secretary of State of Finance, totalling nine members, was created in 1970.  Joint operations were handled by this body directly, or through a sub-committee reporting to it; in every case, consensus was required for the body to make decisions.  In the event that a member disagrees, the matter would be "reserved" for the attention of the Secretary of State.  Eventually, a separate staff office also grew around this committee, filled with a complement of officers from all three services.  However, the Minister of State was not able to lead the discussion, even though he represented the Secretary of State. 
 
==Current Structure==
The Secretary of State is the leading minister of the body; a Minister of State (侍郎, in older works "attendant-officer") supports him and deputizes for him in his absence.  Under the Minister there are three Under-Secretaries of State (郎中, also "meridian-officer"), who head the three defence services.  The Minister of State and each Under-Secretary of State has an Assistant-Secretary of State (員外郎, also "supernumerary-officer") as his ministerial deputy.  There are additional Under- and Assistant-Secretaries of State overseeing finance, procurement, and (until 1970) co-ordination of the services.
 
The non-ministerial staff of the entire Ministry of Defence is under the purview of the Permanent Secretary (丞, also "secretary"), who is the professional head of the Ministry.  He ranks as an Under-Secretary of State.  Under him are Deputy Secretaries (都令史, also "chief directing administrator") leading the several civilian departments responsible for finance, procurement, technological development, recruitment, and other functions.
 
[[Category: Septentrion]] [[Category: Themiclesia]]

Revision as of 04:41, 10 June 2019

Department overview
FormedOct. 30, 1970
Preceding agencies
  • Ministry of War (三十四兵部)
  • Ministry of the Navy (艦航部)
  • Ministry of Air (空航部)
JurisdictionThemiclesia
HeadquartersDormitory Building, Kien-k'ang, Themiclesia
Employees56,860 civilian staff (October 2015)
Annual budgetOSD$63 bn
Minister responsible
  • tbd, Secretary of State for Defence
Department executives
  • tbd, Minister of State for Defence
  • tbd, Permanent Under-Secretary of State
Parent departmentCouncil of Correspondence
Child agencies

The Ministry of Defence (尚書國防部, djang’-stja-kwek-bjang-be’) of Themiclesia is the government department for implementing defence policies set by the the government of Themiclesia. It is currently led by Secretary of State for Defence, Geoffrey Sdjem Tsuih (沈最), with the assistance of four junior ministers and the Permanent Under-Secretary of State, the professional head of the Ministry. Within it, there exist three subordinate departments that represent each of the three military services, the Themiclesian Army, the Themiclesian Navy, and the Themiclesian Air Force.

The principal objectives of the Ministry of Defence are the defence of Themiclesia and her interests against foreign invasions, the discharge of Themiclesia's military obligations as required by statute and international treaties, and the general maintenance of the peace and stability in Septentrion as directed by the government. The senior and responsible minister of the department, the Secretary of State for Defence, is the de facto commander-in-chief of the armed forces, under the country's statutory and customary law, cabinet ordinances, and government policy, and further is responsible politically to the country's parliament.

History

Preceeding bodies

The current Ministry of Defence is the result of the merger of the Ministry of War (三十四兵部, sem-gljep-spljih-prjang-be, lit. "ministry of 34 forces"), the Ministry of the Navy (艦航部, krams-gang-be), and the Ministry of Air (空航部, kong-gang-be) in 1970. Previous to the merger, the civilian bureaucracy that compose of their respective staff have already underwent extensive evolution, mostly under the process of centralization and simplification. This process was largely independent of the evolution of ministerial portfolios, which were created and dissolved according to policy needs.

The Ministry of War came into existence in the early 19th century, when maintenance of prefectural militias were centralized for economy. At the time, active units were subordinated to the direction of the Secretary of State for War, but their maintenance was still inextricably tied to their home prefectures. Inactive units were held by the prefecture on furlough or summoned for local peacekeeping work. An exception existed when a expeditionary army was assembled, in which case a headquarters with administrative powers would be created; otherwise, all units were administered by the prefecture, with approval or delegated dispensation, from the central government. Since, then, soldiers on furlough received compensation in land allotment and were obliged to support their active comrades with agricultural and craft products, it was convenient to administer them locally. When enlistment was made voluntary, this system which presumed that each prefecture would have a predictable amount of soldiers, proved ineffective and prone to corruption, leading to centralization and the creation of the Ministry of War's bureaucracy that managed all militias. At first, central organization imitated the local, but advancements in warfare necessitated more specialist departments; ultimately, the Ministry expanded from nine departments to 41, at the high point in the Pan-Septentrion War.

The Ministry of the Navy was created as a co-ordinating organization of the six traditional departments (Fleets, Guilds, Ancillaries, West Woods, Engineers, and Customs) that administered the Themiclesian Navy. The youngest of these departments, the Department of Engineers, dates to 1360. Until 1781, the entire naval apparatus reported to the Secretary of State for Finance, though a dedicated portfolio has been argued for and created. It was thought that the Finance portfolio was growing too busy and diffuse, with duties spanning domestic agricultural and commercial taxes, customs, poor relief, and discount medicine, palace expenditures, to naval warfare in the Helian Ocean and land warfare in Meridia; though these were all historically related, by the 1700s the incumbent was hard-pressed to attend to all of them, resulting in questionable decisions. The Ministry of the Navy thus began as the new minister's personal advisors, further to concentrate decision-making power in a well-informed departmental leader. After the naval fiasco at Rad in 1791, the Navy Ministry began reforming its six departments, though statutorily the six all survive into the modern day.

The Ministry of Air was established by statute in 1919, to manage civilian aviation in Themiclesia. At the time, several aviation clubs already existed for enthusiasts, operating largely without statutory oversight and regularly encountering disputes with local authorities. In 1921, it was decided that an air force would be strategically valuable in defending Themiclesia's very remote border regions and that it would be best managed together with civilian aviation; hence, the Themiclesian Air Force was created as a function of the League of Aviation Clubs in 1922 and became independent in 1923. At the same time, the Ministry of Air was created for both the Air Force and the LAC, which was envisioned as a reserve organization for the Air Force in wartime. In 1935, with war encroaching, civilian aviation was placed under the Ministry of Transport. The Ministry of Air is, therefore, the only ministry to have preceded the creation of its components, reflected as a much more tightly organized structure and integration with the Air Force itself.

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