What is the New Republic? A government with old weaknesses
WARNING: This article contains spoilers from The Mandalorian season 3 episode 3, “The Convert.”
While most of The Mandalorian has been focused on the events happening in the Outer Rim, we finally got a canonical look into what the New Republic has become on Coruscant. This look into what the rebellion (formerly known as the Alliance to Restore the Republic) has become showed us the New Republic. For all the ideals of the Rebellion, it seems that the Hamilton lyric sums it up quite well “Winning was easy, young man. Governing’s harder.”
The Galactic Concordance: An attempt at peace
The first step toward a new government is establishing peace, and that is what the Galactic Concordance did. This was a peace treaty signed give year after the battle of Yavin and one year after the battle of Endor by Imperial Grand Vizier Mas Amedda. While this may have officially ended the war for some, many sections of the Empire broke apart and declared themselves warlords. Moff Gideon was one of these warlords, and while the New Republic was campaigning against them, the galaxy is a massive place. Further than that, fighting against an Empire is one thing, having the forces to govern the entire galaxy is another. This pulled most of what become the New republic forces towards the Inner and Mid Core and left the Outer Rim in what was almost a state of lawlessness. Nevertheless, the New Republic was attempting to show its peaceful intentions by banning torture, cloning research, and other unethical practices.
The demilitarization of the Rebellion
Another part of this plan and later policies by the New Republic was demilitarization. Similar to the original republic before the Clone Wars, they did want the New Republic to simply become a more ethical version of the Empire that enforced its will via military force across the galaxy. Thus they began the massive undertaking of now only scrapping the Imperial Fleet, but also significant parts of the Rebellion’s fleet. This was a massive drain on its resources, and with significant Remnants, people such as Leia Organa were against the idea. As time went on they proved correct by the rise of the First Order, but nevertheless, the move was endorsed and pushed even as the New Republic fought against the Imperial Remnants.
Festering Remants of the Empire
And if the Remnants had only been Remnants, the New Republic may have had more success. Unfortunately, there were sometimes even entire sectors, such as the Anoat Sector, that were controlled by Warlords. You also had the First Order growing in the Outer Rim, Thrawn’s forces doing who knows what, and even the Sith Forces on Exegol. While military force is certainly not something that is always useful, it is an essential element of protecting your citizenry. It seems that in the New Republic’s haste to accentuate their ideals, they set themselves up to fail to protect all their citizens while maintaining a facade of peace.
The Mandalorian is now streaming exclusively on Disney+. Be sure to check out all of our series coverage, including episode recaps, reviews, and more.