First Contact

"...the TSAB has, in the past, seen what happens when First Contact happens with a magic-aware world that thought it was alone and didn't know about Dimensional Space. When handled badly, it leads to things like "Myedoan factories operated by small numbers of people start out-competing global megafirms, export-import ratios go crazy and fuck up economies, some factions react with hostility and fear against the unknown, causing large-scale political shifts, people react in varying ways to a great number of their beliefs being suddenly and harshly invalidated, large amounts of the native economy collapse as optimised magic systems and foreign infrastructure outdo them and the culture risks dissolving without a trace into the melting pot of Dimensional Space".

These are actual things that have happened before. The TSAB are careful about First Contact for a reason - and on a world which doesn't even have magic... well, China is fucked, for a start. All the cheap production and exports its economy relies on are suddenly outdone by tiny numbers of Myedoan magic-users with Construction Devices. You can probably guess other factors. Several of our global megafirms collapse as off-planet companies do what they do, only better. Imports start flooding in, our culture gets contaminated and overwhelmed... the Bureau aren't staying secret just because "nyah nyah nyah nyah, your forces can't help because they're not going to be able to get inside a dimensional barrier" (though the fact that dimensional barriers to contain the damage will automatically exclude most Earth-natives is another factor against them helping). They are at least in part protecting us. First Contact with offworld, non-Earth life at all is probably the single most paradigm-changing event in human history. First Contact with intelligent, cultured life which can break the laws of physics as we know them?

Does anyone seriously think that a discovery like that wouldn't cause global chaos? Or that our culture would survive the repercussions in anything like the same form as it is at the moment? The TSAB doesn't follow a Prime Directive - if we were at risk of destruction and it was a choice between "First Contact or sit and watch them die", they'd obviously go for the former. But in this case the threat can be handled without disturbing us, and we can't actually help that much anyway. They see it as irresponsible to throw our whole society into mayhem without good reason. Far better to let us discover Dimensional Space on our own, then offer us the hand of friendship. After we've got over the shock, and adapted to the new knowledge. "


 * - Aleph

(On local DS-blind government intervention / TSAB relations)

blackmamuth: So, wonder what would be the reaction of TSAB, if a suited man approached himself, identified himself as a government agent, and invited them to leave inmediately, and desist on their attack on one of their citizens. while politely asking who gave them the right to operate on their sovereign territory, or treathen magical mutilation to one of their citizens.

Wonder how bad Tsab would react if then said government official would state that Precia Testarrossa and their daughter are political refugees in their custody, and please, there are proper channels for an extradition. Oh, and please, We'll like to see your visa, and arms permit.

Wonder how the TSAB [would take from] that!

EarthScorpion: They would completely ignore it, and make a note when the Precia case was done to switch their attention towards working out precisely how this "government agent" has accomplished this deed, given it is completely beyond Earth-native capacities, and is probably some sign of outside interference.

... Megane might well, unless stopped, then extol at some length at the complete ineptness of this "sovereign nation", how their magical education is criminally negligent, and how they should bloody well spend their time getting their own house in order and show that they can actually police their own affairs before she will show them the least bit of respect. And that they're a bunch of goddamn idiots if they really think she's going to pay any attention at all to a backwater offering asylum to Precia Testarossa of all people, and they're double-morons if they've actually let that viper into their precious backwater in any official category.

Quint may well have to be rather firm at her if she starts swearing at the "government agent" in Belkan. Well, when she starts swearing at the "government agent", not 'if'. And then Quint will tell the agent sweetly that they'll say sorry once they've finished saving billions of lives and entire dimensions...

... and also that they're idiots to offer Precia Testarossa asylum.

To be quite frank, the TSAB explicitly - and legally within its own laws - does not give a shit about claims of jurisdiction from backwater planets in a potential gigadeath scenario. If the backwater world could act to prevent such an event, then it would have the right to argue about such matters, and the TSAB would actually talk to them and ask permission before interfering. Earth cannot, and so Earth governments in this scenario have no more right to complain about TSAB activities in the TSAB's eyes than a landlord has to complain about a government raid on an apartment block where people are building nuclear weapons.

You have a fundamental misapprehension of Earth's place here. You seem to believe that if the TSAB is the US, Earth is something like Indonesia. It is not. The Indonesia-to-the-TSAB is a five major system, twenty three minor system polity called the Federated Republic of Canatallo, in the parts of once-Galean space furthest from Mid. It has notable trade links with the TSAB, and its own internal security forces which if the TSAB had a gigadeath scenario believed to be happening in Canatalloan space, the TSAB would notify and offer full support.

Earth does not have that. Earth is more akin to Somalia, in that it simply cannot police such things within its own borders, except it is even lower than that, because even the Somalian government such as it is has armed forces who could make a difference in such a situation. To be quite honest, in the eyes of the TSAB officers on scene, Earth people kicking up a fuss about jurisdiction would be like a small child complaining that they weren't asked about a family decision.

If Earth could actually do... anything at all useful, then it might have the right to complain about a "violation of sovereignty". However, in a Dimensional Space context, Earth powers lack the necessary criteria to sovereign even under 97er schools of thought. It lacks the necessary 'exclusivity' and is not de facto, which sovereignty demands; individuals like Precia can do whatever the fuck they feel like on Earth, and the local powers have no method to stop them. Hence, claiming 'sovereign' rights is futile, because it's simply not true.

Footnotes:

(...Earthwank.)

blackmamuth: Couldn't they complain though about magical mutilation in one of their citizens, (If they Limit Nanoha, for example) Claiming, dunno, that she is going to be joining their defense Forces or something like that?

Aleph: a) Earth has no magical defence forces, so this would be lying.

b) If she had been going to join one of their non-magical defence forces previously (also a lie, since she's nine), they didn't know about her magic then and so nothing has changed.

c) Had the Jewel Seed Incident not happened, Nanoha would never have learned she had magic in the first place.

d) The loss of her magic in no way prevents Nanoha from living a long, healthy and productive life of exactly the sort she would have had if the Jewel Seed Incident had never happened.

e) If Earth seriously believes the TSAB are going to react well to a claim that they don't want the Bureau to seal the magic of an dimensional criminal because they want to employ her, they are deluded.

f) The sealing of Nanoha's magic, in anything but the absolute worst case scenario, will not be permanent. Even at this point, with a sympathetic jury and a skilled advocate in her trial - the latter of which Quint would make sure she got - she's most likely to be taken down to D-rank for seven or eight years and required to pass a battery of exams, a psych evaluation included, before having it lifted. The fact that she honestly doesn't understand what she is doing - and her status as a backwater native and a minor makes her incapable of understanding under TSAB law - is a very large point in her favour. To repeat, a permanent seal is the absolute worst case punishment she can get, because they do not want to set the precedent of going further than that. This is what will happen if Precia botches her spell and kills billions, because Nanoha is legally just a patsy in this situation.

g) Earth has no right to complain about the TSAB preventing disaster when their own negligence and/or inability to police their planet and citizens threatens billions of people, and they're not even aware it's happening. It's not their fault, but... basically, if "with great power comes great responsibility", the governments of Earth have very little power to do anything whatsoever in this situation. And therefore it falls outside their responsibility.

h) The level of Earth's military is honestly not important, because of the simple fact that we do not have the capability to leave our gravity well, let alone our dimension. It doesn't matter how our military would stand up to mages, because the only way that fight is even going to happen is if they come here. Which they won't. Once they have the Jewel Seeds cleaned up, they will simply leave. We pose no threat to them for the same reason that a country without boats poses no threat to an island nation. We can't get there.

Footnotes:

Mook91: We're sort of like those lost tribes of native Americans hidden in the Amazon that haven't had contact with the rest of the world yet.

EarthScorpion: Mmm. That's where things break down a bit, because there isn't a real world parallel for the "fairly impressive for a backwater, but crippling weaknesses in some areas" thing that Earth has. It's like if there was some Victorian era colony in Peru, who independently had their own developments and invented the car and the like, but never got micro-electronics, so when contact is re-made in the modern day there's this Victorian-styled place with 1950s tech in some places (tanks, some crude jets), and some really surprisingly advanced purely mechanical computers, but entire fields of technology are missing, and...

... yeah, my metaphor is sort of falling apart here too.