Kiravian Defence Executive
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The Defence Executive (Coscivian: Vekturora Defensul) is the Collegiate Executive responsible for the national defence policy of the Kiravian Federacy and the administration of the Kiravian Armed Forces and their related entities. It is headquartered at the Kartika Citadel in Arthodun, District of Ksoīnvra.
History
The Defence Executive descends directly from the Secretariat for the Powers, one of the four original portfolio-delimited bureaucracies of the Kiravian Confederation alongside the Secretariats of State, the Sea, and the Land. Under this scheme, the Secretariat for the Powers was responsible for armies and warfare, but also for the exchequer and fiscus, the currency and mint, the salt tax, and "works and defences" including fortifications and highways. The Confederation did not have a standing army to speak of. Rather, relatively small formations of professional soldiers were maintained full time under the authority of individual states and at their expense; full-fledged armies were raised by each state when needed. The states were obligated to provide armies to the Confederation in wartime, which would serve under the command of grandees appointed by the Confederal Stanora. Nonetheless, the Secretariat for the Powers did need to make preparations for wartime, which it did by constructing fortifications - especially coastal fortifications -, overseeing gun foundries and powder works, amassing stockpiles of militarily important manufactures and materials, and paving roads. Confederal forts were not solely military installations; they usually also served as supply depots, postal nodes, prisons, revenue offices, and courthouses. Forts were manned by garrisons that were (ideally) large enough to secure them against bandits, angry mobs, and localised insurrections, but small enough so as to not appear to threaten the sovereign rights of the state in which they were situated. Soldiers assigned to inland garrisons were stationed away from their homes and often drawn from disparate locations and ethnic/caste backgrounds to prevent mutiny and coöption, presaging Kiravia's later approach to ethnic issues in the military. These garrisons, a Federal Guard that served an analogous protective function for the Confederal edifices in West Valēka, and a small roster of 'marshals' assisting the judiciary, constituted the entirety of the standing Confederal armed force on land.
The Confederal Navy fell under the purview of the Secretariat for the Sea (now the Maritime Executive), where it would remain until 1967 AD when it was transferred to the Defence Executive. Despite the transfer and an official agenda of deepening interservice integration in the 21st century, the legacy of separate and parallel administration of the Army and Navy is is still reflected in the contemporary Defence Executive to a significant extent.
A truly national army was first organised for fight the Continental War, and a standing army under permanent federal command would be established when the new federalist constitution was enacted after the war. In the Federal period, the Secretariat was transformed to reflect this reality. Shedding its fiscal and monetary policy functions and renamed the Secretariat of Arms, it was augmented with a much larger bureaucratic apparatus suited to the task of administering, arming, and supplying an high-early-modern army with an increasingly expeditionary mission profile. When the federal capital was moved to Kartika, the Secretariat based itself in the Arthodun Citadel where it remains today.
During the latter part of the 19th century, the Arms Executive began to acquire a reputation for ineptitude, inefficiency, and corruption that modern historians tend to believe was reasonably well-founded. The most talented young civil servants gravitated more toward other bureaux, particularly those concerned with commerce, industry, and the burgeoning colonial empire. Meanwhile, many desk jobs at the Arms Executive were filled by what future Prime Executive Partholón Térunbuir described as "the chaff and fat of the officer class", army officers of aristocratic or martial family backgrounds who had been dismissed from field positions or were constitutionally unfit for active service yet retained or obtained, respectively, their commissions, often through bribery, patronage, or familial connexions. Troops in the Colonies held the Kartika paper-pushers in very low regard, which they expressed in several cadences and drinking songs that have been passed down from that era. Concerns about waste, fraud, and abuse were raised numerous times by the Stanora but appear to have not been adequately addressed. Indeed, during the domestic unrest of the Colour Wars Kiravian leaders turned instead to the Territorial Executive to coördinate the effort to restore order (the section of the Territorial Executive so employed would later be spun off into the Security Executive).
Many historians believe that organisational dysfunction at the Arms Executive significantly hampered the performance of the Federalist military during the Kiravian Civil War and contributed to its eventual defeat, though this view has become less widely accepted since the 1990s.[1] The stress of the war exposed the preëxisting weaknesses in the bureaucracy prompting the administration to enact severe but belated reforms and the Army to rely on soldier-support groups and hydration committees from civil society to keep its troops in fighting condition.
Agencies
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Secretariat of the Army
Secretariat of the Fleet Secretariat of Superiority Forces |
Intelligence Division
Arsenal Division
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Boring but Important Division
Apex Division
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Veterans' Services Division
- Office of Benefits Administration
- Veteran Healthcare Agency
Provides subsidised healthcare to ex-servicemen. - Demobilisation Office
Assists veterans with reïntegration to civilian life. - Commission for Old Soldiers' Homes & Old Sailors' Homes
Provides supplemental funding and other assistance to qualifying retirement homes for former servicemen (owned and operated by independent foundations or provincial veterans' affairs bureaux) and establishes standards for the same; directly operates a smaller number of assisted living facilities for severely disabled veterans.
Notes
- ↑ Among other arguments, dissenting historians contend that Federalist performance on the battlefield did not improve after 1933 as the Arms Executive became irrelevant, though defenders retort that by this point the proverbial damage had already been done.