First of all, we have to admit that there are many differences between the republic of Yan Jingjiao's era and the republic of Wang Yuanqing's era. 【】

As mentioned earlier, Yan Jingyu did two main things during his first term, one of which was to continue to promote political reform and strengthen the position of democracy in the political system of the republic. Affected by this, it is time to open the new year. Whether Yan Jingyu personally intervenes or Vice President Bae Chengyi, the highest authority of the republic, the Plenum, must try to convince enough delegates if they want the republic's highest authority, the Plenum, to adopt the influential Stockholm Agreement on the Control of Conventional Military Forces.

Herein lies the problem, in this plenary session. A large proportion of military personnel or representatives with military backgrounds are present.

It can also be seen from this that the democratic political system of the republic is indeed flawed, and it is a relatively serious flaw.

Regardless of the relationship of the republic with the United States. It must be recognized that the United States has a well-established democratic system. In the case of the political system of the United States, a good balance has been formed between centralization and democracy. The point is not how much power the White House has. It's about having a sound parliament. In addition to the Senate and House of Representatives, which were established according to national conditions, the way in which members of the US Congress are elected is also more reasonable. In other words, the staggered term of office of members of the Senate and House of Representatives and the term of office of the president can be more effective in preventing the concentration of power in the hands of a certain person or political party, so that the opposition parties still have the ability to have a say in the life of the country, especially on certain major matters that require the support of an absolute majority in the Congress.

It is clear that there are problems with this system of the republic.

It is precisely for this reason that as early as the Litun year, it was proposed that the parliamentary system of the republic should be adjusted, either by establishing a second chamber or by delaying the election of deputies and staggering the election of national leaders, so that a certain force or group would not seize all the power of the republic at a certain time, thus leading the republic astray. Merely. At the time. Whether it is Gu Weimin, Yan Jingyu, or Ye Zhisheng, it is impossible to support such a proposal. It was only when hundreds of deputies jointly proposed changes to the parliamentary system that Yan Jingyu made a promise to carry out a second round of political reforms during his administration and to implement a new electoral system and a parliamentary system.

It is clear that Yan Jingyu put the time of parliamentary reform after Kunnian.

If all goes well, a new electoral law will be enacted in the calendar year and a new parliamentary system will be introduced by way of constitutional amendments.

The problem is that in the next year, Yan Jingyu and Pei Chengyi still have to face the soldiers.

Arguably, that's the real point.

By the end of the year, the General Assembly of the Republic had not reached an agreement on the Stockholm Accords. While about one third of the delegates supported the agreement, arguing that conventional military forces should be limited in the national interest, more than half of the other two thirds believed that the agreement undermined national interests and posed a substantial threat to national security and that the Republic had no reason to sign such an agreement. In this way, the representatives who oppose the agreement overtake the representatives who support the agreement, while the representatives who do not express their position continue to wait and see, and will not make a decision lightly because of the attitude of the national and vice-presidents.

This is precisely the "result" of the second round of political reform

In any case, the delegates to the General Assembly of the Republic became more independent.

Take the members of the Military Committee as an example, although these deputies have a good relationship with Pei Chengyi, and some even have close contacts with Pei Chengyi in private, such as leaving the Sanjian Group in the fierce year and being elected as a representative of the plenary congress in the pressure year. And Lin Muxun, who was elected as the top seat of the Military Commission that year, is a friend of Pei Chengyi and Zhu Ronghui, a retired general of the HNA, but whether it is Lin Muxun, Zhu Ronghui, or other representatives, they are all very assertive people, and they will never easily compromise on issues related to basic interests.

During the deliberations, Lin repeatedly mentioned that the Stockholm Accord was not an enforceable agreement.

In his view, the restrictions imposed by the agreement on the conventional military strength of the republic will inevitably be passed on to the military industry of the republic, thus affecting the republic's industrial system, economic development, and science and technology, and ultimately causing the republic's comprehensive national strength to be damaged and losing its status as the number one power. More importantly, the US Congress's delay in ratifying the agreement is clearly looking at the Republic's initiatives, so there is no reason for the Republic to be ahead of the United States.

According to Lin Muxun's proposal, before signing the agreement, the republic must enter into unilateral negotiations with the United States to implement the arms control rules, such as the navy at the same time as the standard of the total tonnage of warships. It is also necessary to clarify the proportion of various types of ships, the upper limit of the displacement of a single ship, the specific number of ships, and so on, and the same is true for the army, air force, space force, and marine corps, and the national defense of the republic must not be damaged or threatened by a general and vague agreement.

As the chairman of the military committee, Lin Muxun has a lot of power.

Everyone knows that it will be too late to talk to the United States about conventional arms control in the year of Tian, that is, when the third phase of the reduction of the "London Treaty" is about to begin. Herein lies the problem, that is, Lin Muxun's purpose was not to ask the authorities of the republic to negotiate with the United States, but to use a secret agreement with the United States to make the Stockholm Accords an agreement that was not binding on the republic. To know. Lin Muxun's key identity is still the number one in the country and behind him, not only by the world's largest resource companies, but also by the world's largest resource companies in terms of total market capitalization, Sanjian Group is also the world's number one company, as well as the largest arms companies in the Republic.

In fact, at the end of the year, the authorities of the republic had secret contacts with the United States.

At that time, Pei Chengyi had just moved into the vice president's residence, and the first thing he did after taking office was to tell Yan Jingyu unequivocally that it would be difficult for the Stockholm Accord to gain support at the plenary congress. As a soldier, and he commanded the republican team to win several wars, and according to the laws of the republic before taking off his military uniform, soldiers cannot participate in the election of the yuan and vice yuan, so Pei Chengyi officially retired as the minister of defense in July of the fierce year, Pei Chengyi is very aware of the domestic situation of the republic, especially the impact of the military industrial group on the political system of the republic. It can be said that many years ago, Wang Yuanqing was able to take Japan at the beginning of his tenure, which is inseparable from the support of the military industrial group. Not to mention anything else, during the entire war, a group of businessmen of the Republic led by Lin Yanbo donated trillions of yuan of war funds to the country, otherwise the Republic would not have been able to defeat Japan in just a few months. If you chase the stream further. During the Peninsula War during the Zhao Rundong period, and even during the East China Sea War during the Ji Yi Guo period, the arms dealers of the Republic participated in the battles and supported the republican ** team in the war of the South in various ways. It is precisely because by the middle of the century that almost no one dared to doubt the influence of arms dealers in the political system of the republic, otherwise there would not have been so many military representatives in the general election of the new year. With the threat of war looming again, the status of arms dealers was once again elevated, whether or not the authorities of the Republic recognized it. It has no less power to speak on the country's political life and major strategic decisions than the national meta.

It was at Pei Chengyi's suggestion that the Republic of China and the United States first entered into bilateral contacts.

In fact, the US authorities are facing the same problem, that is, it is impossible for the US Congress to sign an arms control agreement that would drastically reduce the US conventional military power by 30%. As a result, the President of the United States, if he wants to convince the bigwigs in Congress, can only try to reach a secret agreement with the Republic and do something about conventional arms control.

In this case, the two sides hit it off. Agreement was quickly reached on a number of key issues.

In terms of the size of the naval fleet, the Stockholm Accord clearly defined the nature of warships and divided the types of warships. However, there are no restrictions on non-combat ships other than warships. For example, there are no restrictions on the number and size of transport ships and supply ships. In this way, both the Republic and the United States can make a fuss about this issue, that is, some ships with combat capability will be included in the ranks of non-combat ships. They are not armed in peacetime, and they are armed in wartime. The most representative is, of course, the "offshore platform" system, if the system is disassembled, each component is a non-combat ship, and only in the combined state can it have the ability to support naval aviation and become a typical combat ship. In this way, the Republic and the United States could design their transport ships according to the standards of the system, with some restrictions on the combined part at most, and by the time of war, they could become combat ships with simple improvements.

There are many similar problems, such as the lack of militia and reserve forces in the Army's strength, and the lack of reusable mothballed fighters in the Air Force's fleet. As for the proportion of military personnel in the space army, since there is no clear regulation on the specific methods of defense spending by various countries, there are also loopholes to exploit.

All in all, as long as the republic and the United States are willing, the Stockholm Accord will become a pile of waste paper.

When it comes to the issue of general disarmament, it is certainly not possible for the two levels of major powers to have the final say. In any case, great powers like Russia and France also have the ability to oversee the conventional disarmament of the republics and the United States, so if the republics and the United States want to make private deals, they have to drag Russia and France along. Anyway. The main value of the Stockholm Accord was not to limit the conventional military forces of the major Powers, but to initiate the third phase of the London Treaty of Treaty reductions, so that the complete elimination of nuclear weapons would be translated from theory to reality and the hegemony of the major powers would be consolidated. Although from the standpoint of Russia and France, the Stockholm Accords still have a lot of value. At least an important guarantee of its status as a great power. But with neither the legislature of the republic nor the United States willing to ratify the agreement, Russia and France also had to make concessions and turn a blind eye on certain specific issues.

By July of that year, the Republic, the United States, Russia, and France had basically agreed on the specific terms of implementation of the Stockholm Accords, that is, to adjust the means of verification to lower the disarmament requirements. In accordance with the final agreement, the verification will be carried out by a body jointly established by the signatories, and the verification will be arranged in advance, i.e., by appointment and then verification, unlike the London Treaty, where each signatory has the right to verify and does not need to make an appointment for verification. All in all. Loosening the intensity of inspections is tantamount to lowering the requirements for arms control.

What's more, this change is only for the four major powers, and the other decorating countries do not enjoy such privileges. The reason is very simple: the verification body of the agreement mainly relies on information provided by the four major powers, and this information mainly comes from the military reconnaissance satellite systems of the major powers. Other words. Whether or not a country fulfills its arms control obligations in accordance with the provisions of the treaty is not a matter of reading the latest Children's Day and having the final say on both sides. It's up to a big country to decide. Because of the veto power of the Republic and the United States, the benefits of the two great powers are most obvious.

In any case, an appropriate relaxation of conventional military forces is not a bad thing when the fundamental objective is to achieve nuclear disarmament.

Merely. For such a secret agreement to take effect. There is still a legal process. Unlike the public agreement, the four major powers only require the review and approval of the parliamentary military committee, and do not need to obtain a higher mandate. In this way, the probability of the secret agreement taking effect has increased considerably. Because this secret agreement related to the Stockholm Accords, both the Republic and the United States authorities submitted it to the Parliamentary Military Committee in the last month. It is precisely in this way that the Republic and the American authorities are invariably present. At the end of the month, a signal was sent to Parliament for a vote on the Stockholm Accord at the beginning of the month, and it was made clear that if it was vetoed, the Government was likely to resort to special measures.

All in all, neither the Republic nor the United States authorities want the arms control agreement that has been negotiated with great difficulty to become a waste of paper.

As mentioned earlier, it was not Yan Jingyu who was in charge of the control of conventional military forces in the republic, but Pei Chengyi.

At the bottom of the bait, Pei Chengyi, as the vice president of the state, participated in the chairmanship of the Military Commission. A number of other hearings, consisting of hundreds of representatives of the Commission, were invited to convince those who opposed the agreement to convince those who opposed the agreement by elaborating on how relevant the Stockholm Agreement on the Control of Conventional Military Forces was to the national interests of the Republic and to what extent it could safeguard them.

It can be said that this was the highest-level military-related hearing since the founding of the Republic.

Prior to this, only Wang Yuanqing was the head of the state when he promoted political reform. A detailed description was given to all the members of the General Assembly, and that extraordinary session was the prototype of the hearings of the General Assembly of the Republic. And as a result, a tradition has developed that any major decision needs to be debated in the form of hearings, and the country's leaders must clearly answer the questions raised by the deputies. The problem is that before that, military decision-making was the prerogative of the Yuan government, and even the military committee of the plenary congress only had the right to intervene in some minor issues such as the national defense budget, military spending, and personnel changes in the armed forces. It can be said that this is a striking feature of the progress of the political system of the republic, after all, the military power is the most important of the state powers.

At this hearing, Pei Chengyi gave a very clear reason, that is, the last chance to stop the war cannot be missed.

As a national leader, in addition to expounding the importance of conventional arms control, Pei Chengyi also made it clear. The arms control agreement itself is a multilateral international agreement, and even if it is ratified by the General Assembly of the Republic, it will not take effect as long as it is not approved by the U.S. legislature, so it doesn't matter who ratifies it first.

Of course, at this hearing, Pei Chengyi also gave a clear explanation of the Republic's defense spending.

Overall, it was a very significant hearing. Although in the eyes of the republic's news media, Pei Chengyi's active promotion of the approval of the arms control agreement at the plenary congress is a direct manifestation of the republic's active efforts to stop the outbreak of war, in the eyes of many Western news media, Pei Chengyi's explanation of defense spending at the hearing is enough to prove that the republican is preparing for war. The arms control agreement is not binding on the republic in any way. Otherwise, those delegates would not have let go of the Stockholm Accord, which had been delayed for months, after this hearing.

Not to mention the Western news media, even Al Jazeera believes that Pei Chengyi sounded the clarion call for battle in the name of arms control.

Among them, the most crucial is the national defense budget for the next year. It is important to know that in the central budget adopted at the end of July of that year, the increase in the national defense budget was again more than a muzzle, and at the beginning of the old month, the Ministry of National Defense submitted to the plenary session a supplementary budget with a total amount equivalent to the national defense budget for that fiscal year. If this supplementary budget is passed, the Republic's defense budget for the fiscal year will increase by a large amount, the highest ever. More importantly, the Stockholm Accord's constraints on military spending for the space army are based on the defense budget of the year the treaty takes effect.

That is, the authorities of the republic took advantage of the loopholes in the agreement by increasing the defense budget within a year. Of course, this is also the case in several other major treaty countries, such as Israel's defense budget increased by as much as this year. It is the best of all the countries. The U.S. defense budget is also growing. The problem is that Bae Seung-yi singled out this issue at the plenary hearing, showing that the authorities of the republic did not intend to contain the war.

On the other hand, there is no way to do it.

Among other things, the Stockholm Accords cannot enter into force if the authorities of the republic do not increase defense spending in advance.

Of course, for Pei, this is just the beginning.

As mentioned earlier, the changed Stockholm Accord is no longer binding on the two tiers of powers, and war is one step closer. For the leaders of the republic, it is not so much about the relevance of arms control agreements that need to be considered. It's about when the flames of war should be lit. If you want to know what happened next, please log in, more chapters, support for it