Phoenix Initiative

The Phoenix Initiative, known as the Reclamation Task Force in its early stages, is a human intergovernmental organization created in 2553, encompassing the United Earth Government and the governments (as well as governments-in-exile) of most of the surviving human colonies. Following the Human-Covenant War, it is the largest human civilian political body, though it is more akin to a mutual economic and security pact than a full-fledged government. In addition, the Initiative's member governments exist in varying degrees of cooperation with the alliance, with some colonial governments only occupying positions in peripheral cooperation forums.

The Initiative's stated goals are to facilitate dialogue and foster cooperation between SolCore and the surviving colonies and their governments-in-exile; facilitate economic and technological growth of the human sphere by revitalizing private industries and commerce; facilitate reconstruction of colonies and resettlement of populations displaced by the war; safeguard human colonies from attack through effective military and security cooperation through the UNSC and sanctioned security forces, as well as to foster peaceful diplomatic relations to allied post-Covenant polities.

The Phoenix Initiative was created largely by the United Nations Space Command, which now exists in a complicated relationship with the Phoenix Initiative and the UEG, on one hand retaining its ties to the latter but effectively answering to the civilian leadership of the Phoenix Initiative. The UNSC also retains considerable autonomy, especially when it comes to operations outside the Human Sphere. The Phoenix Initiative can be seen as a successor to the Colonial Administration Authority, though the two organizations differ greatly in terms of structure and goals; in theory, the Initiative is meant to correct many of the CAA's administrative shortcomings.

During the conceptual phase, the planning committee that would become the Phoenix Initiative was known as the Reclamation Task Force. As the scope of the project grew, "Phoenix Initiative" became coined as a less bellicose, more uplifting name for the polity in its fully-realized form. The Phoenix Initiative's emblem bears the "Rising Phoenix" motif, symbolizing humanity's rise from the (oft-literal) ashes of the Covenant War, set upon an off-center circle motif based on the UEG's emblem and since seeing recurrent appearances in Earth and Colonial heraldry.

Context
In the early years of the Human-Covenant War, the United Earth Government relinquished its power to the United Nations Space Command. The Colonial Administration Authority, which governed the extrasolar territories at the UEG's behest, resisted this handover and was promptly dismantled and incorporated into the UNSC. The UEG continued to operate, but with its authority restricted to the local matters of the Sol system. Outside Sol, the absorbed CAA became the UNSC Colonial Authority. While not as bloated or corrupt as its predecessor, the CA was in truth more of a bureaucratic technicality than a real, functioning agency; in truth, outside a handful of core Inner Colonies, the UNSC military was in charge. When the UNSC wasn't present, the colonies were mostly left to their own devices.

End of the war
Shortly after the end of the war, the UNSC made a concerted effort to demilitarize power under the leadership of Fleet Admiral Terrence Hood. During the war, there was always an assumption that the UNSC would hand back control to the UEG once the war was over. The UNSC's assumption of power was always described as an interim solution that was only happening in the first place because the Covenant was an existential threat that could not be negotiated or reasoned with. After the war, it was said, things would go back to normal. Unfortunately, nobody thought about what the end of the war would actually look like. In March 2553, Lord Hood met with the UEG Senate and all but begged them to take back control, but there was a sharp disagreement as to whether the UNSC had finished its mandate. There was still largely-intact Jiralhanae forces occupying Human territory, most prominently the Torchbearers, with their three battlegroups that could march on Earth. Though the Brutes had been scattered in Operation: FORTRESS SIEGE, the UEG wasn't safe yet. Hood countered that the war was now one that required diplomatic solutions to solve. The UNSC had allies now, and if the UEG didn't step up and take back control now, it never would. If the UNSC had to form a diplomatic corps, then it would have absorbed all the functions of a permanent government, and it would never give up that power. Raoul Yue, the incumbent UEG Secretary-General, refused, so Hood went back to negotiating with the Arbiter's coalition.

The Reclamation Task Force
In March 2553, the UNSC formed the Reclamation Task Force, an interim commission largely composed of military officials and what remained of the Colonial Authority. The RTF was to take stock of just how many colonies remained, assess which colonies could be reclaimed in the immediate future, along with gathering the surviving colonies' leaders around a negotiating table. Over the coming months, a picture of the general sentiments started to form. The colonies were more estranged than ever from the UEG. On the other hand, the UNSC has also accrued goodwill among some colonial populations in exile for their defense efforts, though not all experiences were as amiable. The colonies and the UNSC both agreed that a civilian authority was required to coordinate the reclamation process on a strategic level, particularly as the threat of Covenant loyalist factions continued to loom overhead. Most also appreciated the protection the UNSC could provide, as the sole remaining human military force. Even as they did, however, most colony leaders outright rejected the recreation of the CAA or another form of continued UEG hegemony.

To the colony leaders' surprise, the Admiralty did not dismiss these demands outright. In the new astropolitical reality of the post-war era, many of the old paradigms of human interstellar politics had become irrelevant. With Earth and SolCore recovering from the Covenant invasion, the surviving colonies were now in a much more equal negotiating position than ever before - particularly colonies with industrial power, natural resources, or simply fertile land to live on. Furthermore, much of the old guard of the UNSC had either perished in the war and been replaced by a generation to whom the very notion of seeing another human as an enemy was more of a historical curiosity or a rarity at best than an everyday reality. Many of those of the old guard who did survive had come to view things in a new light during the war, as people confronted with an ever-present existential threat are wont to do.

Meanwhile, after nearly two years, the UEG remained indecisive on what should be done. One factor in this was that the UEG had suffered a massive brain drain during the war. For twenty years, the best and brightest of humanity knew that the path to power and prestige lay in joining the UNSC's officer corps. The UEG was staffed by politicians and administrators who were either unwilling to serve, looking for a quiet post, or were willing to play the long game. But there were some who were still ambitious, or at least had a plan for the future. Unfortunately, they didn't necessarily work well together. After the UEG Secretary-General's refusal, the UEG Parliament tried to reassert their authority, and did so in a haphazard and sometimes clumsy way. This made the UEG look bumbling and indecisive next to the UNSC's cool, directed diplomacy, and fueled resentment in the UNSC officer corps, in the general public, and in the eyes of the Arbiter's allies. Indeed, a less publicized but no less potent factor in the formation of the Phoenix Initiative was the fear among some within the UNSC that an incompetent civilian government ignorant of the new political realities might, especially under public pressure, endanger the delicate relations to the nascent Concord.

To the UNSC, rescinding their emergency powers back to the UEG was not a likely option in the immediate future, not without a body capable of operating beyond SolCore. The CAA had once handled those duties for the UEG, but the CAA had not existed as such for nearly thirty years. Some within the UEG proposed that until a more permanent solution could be created, what was now the UNSC Colonial Authority could be used to govern the colonies with the UEG's oversight. However, a continued military government would be received poorly by the colonies, and neither the UNSC nor the UEG wished to antagonize them in such a precarious time. Demilitarizing the CA and restoring the CAA was an option, but the surviving colonies called for a more thorough reform, and given the CAA's past of corruption, both the UNSC Admiralty and the majority of the UEG Senate did agree.

An alternate course of action, one first highlighted by the Admiralty's "smart" AI triumvirate, was to form a new political body with a less centralized structure than the UEG-CAA arrangement, less power when it came to the policies and activities of individual colonies, and far less control over interstellar commerce. These proposals were presented in subsequent negotiations with the colony leaders, and were generally welcomed, though further negotiations would go on to codify additional reforms to prevent the rise of issues such as the former CAA's tariffs and miscellaneous economic restrictions that had most affected the Outer Colonies and stifled their economic growth.

Age of the Phoenix
By late 2555, the Reclamation Task Force had outgrown what it had been designed for, necessitating a thorough restructuring. In November 2555, this came to pass with its reorganization into the Phoenix Initiative. The UEG was, once again, divided on this development. Some senators, along with the Secretary-General, welcomed the Phoenix Initiative as a "temporary solution". Others went as far as to accuse the UNSC of overreaching its authority and instating a military coup. The UNSC Admiralty countered such accusations by stating that they were merely doing what was necessary to fulfill the mandate the UEG had insisted they hold onto in the first place.

Several months later, the UEG Parliament had consolidated, and was determined to regain the power it once held. But the window for regaining power had passed. All the UEG could do was resign itself to the new status quo as a senior member of the Phoenix Initiative and attempt to rebuild its credibility in the eyes of the UNSC. While the UEG would never regain its pre-war authority over the extrasolar territories, it did become fairly prominent within the Phoenix Initiative. This led to some autonomy-minded colonists to be wary of the Phoenix Initiative, seeing it as a ruse to lure the colonies back to the UEG's hegemony. Some simply did not see the Phoenix Initiative as necessary, or more as a hindrance than help; such colonies included Gilgamesh and the worlds of the Via Casilina Community.

In 2558, the Initiative launched its revolutionary wavespace relay network designed to connect all member worlds, significantly improving both everyday information transfer and even matters of governance and diplomacy.

Governance and politics
The Phoenix Initiative is a polity borne of compromise. It is considerably less centralized than the UEG-CAA arrangement in theory, but retains power to dictate policy and projects where they relate to the reconstruction process (which is very broadly defined on purpose). The parties involved generally agree that the Initiative is an interim solution to be replaced (or dissolved) when its purpose has been fulfilled.

One major draw of the Phoenix Initiative were its aid packages and reconstruction support programs. With the UNSC and most of humanity's major technological and industrial corporations under its wing, the Phoenix Initiative would also have access to many new or exclusive technologies. The most notable of these was the first human wavespace relay network built up in the decades after the Covenant War. Equipped with wavespace communicators, member systems are able to communicate within hours or days at most, making negotiation and coordination considerably more efficient than before. This is in addition to the vast impact on commerce and intersystem information transfer in general. Of course, the system is not without its downsides, and purported surveillance and censorship of the network by the UNSC's Office of Naval Intelligence has been raised as a concern.

Over time, the Phoenix Initiative came to be known for its increasing use of integrated artificial intelligence and "decision engine" networks for strategic planning, prediction, and simulation of outcomes of major decisions. While AI automation has been utilized in supporting capacities by political, commercial and military entities for over two centuries, the Phoenix Initiative would come to pioneer many novel approaches and practices in the field, particularly as various syncretic developments arose from both concurrent advances in AI technology, computing, and faster-than-light communication systems over the post-war decades. These developments are frequently cited as having facilitated the evolution of the role of AI in human society and paved way for unforeseen future developments that lay ahead. Though these advances are usually attributed to the growing role AIs assumed throughout the Covenant War and the pressure imposed by the threat of the Covenant, some interpretations speculate on deliberate and planned influence by covert cabals of AI operating behind the scenes. As usual, such interpretations are widely dismissed as fanciful conspiracy theories.

Security and defense
One of the key roles of the Phoenix Initiative is acting as a security pact against hostile post-Covenant factions. The threat of such factions is also seen as the binding glue that holds the Initiative's worlds together, despite many of those worlds having had grievances or even open conflict with the Earth Government in the past.

The Phoenix Initiative mandates member polities to maintain credible defensive forces, either in the form of their own military or a UNSC one. In the beginning, the UNSC handled most of the Phoenix Initiative's security duties. While the UNSC remains the core of the Phoenix Initiative's military power and the single most powerful military in the alliance, the rise of the Initiative saw increasing responsibility handed over to colonies' local military organizations. This led to the gradual decline of the UNSC's Defensive Forces — the Army and the Air Force — outside the most well-established UNSCDF garrisons in SolCore and select Inner Colonies. Meanwhile, the UNSC proper became increasingly focused on high-mobility expeditionary forces in the form of the Navy and the Marine Corps, along with having a key role in coordinating and advising the Phoenix Initiative's defense partners.

The Phoenix Initiative defense partners have considerable standardization in equipment, strategy, and command structure. On some worlds, smaller UNSC Army and Air Force garrisons were transferred under colonial defense organizations in the post-war years, though this was decided on a case-by-case basis. On colonies with a strong UNSC culture and/or lack of credible homegrown defense outside the UNSC, the UNSC Defense Forces continued to provide security. This was to provide flexibility for colonies seeking to be more autonomous, while allowing the UNSC to concentrate increasingly on its expeditionary role. A handful of sanctioned private military contractors were also used to provide security duties on many newly-established colonies, or as a way of bolstering the defenses of colonies with limited military capabilities of their own.

Perception and criticism
The rapid rise of the Phoenix Initiative caused a great deal of speculation and confusion within humanity's sphere of influence. Much ambiguity surrounded the organization's position relative to the UNSC and the UEG. Concerns were raised in particular of the Initiative being a puppet regime instated by the UNSC Admiralty to overrule the civilian government; a handful of UEG senators opposed to the new arrangement openly accused the Phoenix Initiative of this. Many traditionalists lament what is seen as the end of, or at the very least considerable reduction in, the UEG's power beyond Sol. Such conservative views tend to fall back heavily on romanticism of the Pax Humana and Earth's golden age.

Generally, colonists welcomed the Initiative's newfound approach of the carrot over the stick, coupled with goodwill the UNSC had garnered among some populations during the war. Some have pointed out that the Initiative bears resemblance to reform models already proposed by sociologists in the late 25th and early 26th centuries. On the other hand, not all colonial views were as positive. Many questioned the Phoenix Initiative's supposed autonomy from the UEG, suspecting that the Initiative was merely an underhanded way of re-branding the old Colonial Administration Authority. Such voices pointed out that even though the CAA had, for a time, been a body with considerable autonomy from the UEG, this had changed in mere decades. Therefore, it could be that once the crisis of the post-war era was over, the Phoenix Initiative, too, would succumb to the creeping encroachment, and eventual domination, of UEG and corporate interests.

Even within the UNSC, not all were in favor of instating a new civilian regime. It was largely thanks to Lord Hood's persistent efforts that the interim Reclamation Task Force became a more established body, as opposed to a mere ad hoc commission. However, many within the UNSC's officer corps in particular felt it was too soon to relinquish power to a civilian government, especially one with increased representation by Outer Colonies. This was in part due to a varying degrees of distrust in the competence and sense of scale of democratically-elected civilian bodies; this remained a pervading attitude within the UNSC, borne over the decades of first the Insurrection and then the Covenant War. A few officers even demonstrably had ambitions of a military takeover. Such sentiments contributed to the uncertain political climate of the Years of Disquiet, which gradually eased as the Phoenix Initiative's reconstruction efforts bore fruit.

This was not the only disagreement within the UNSC at the time, for many personnel and citizens alike remained openly critical of the extent of the alliance with the Concord and the continued military cooperation. In general, however, the higher echelons begrudgingly accepted the alliance while seeking to restore the UNSC's devastated military capabilities, painfully aware as they were of the carnage that would ensue should the war resume; any scenario calculated with realistic parameters by the Navy's AIs would result in nothing less than the total annihilation of humanity within a matter of months, save for scattered survivors fleeing out into the void.

Historians would later speculate what would have happened had more hawkish attitudes become dominant during the first years of the Reconstruction Era. The UNSC could easily have held onto its power, eliminated any remaining pretenses of accountability for the UEG, and effectively come to dominate the Human Sphere as a hegemonic stratocracy. Indeed, such an outcome seemed to be a common line of wishful thinking for a time, as seen in many examples of jingoistic alternate history fiction to come out of the late 26th and early 27th centuries. On the other hand, realistic scenario modeling would later estimate that even had such a thing come to pass, the UNSC may have collapsed within decades, likely being crushed by the Second Invasion. It has been postulated that the Phoenix Initiative's less centralized nature is precisely what saved the continuity of a human civilization as such; even with new technology, the inflexibility of the UEG's pre-war configuration would likely have meant the total decapitation of the human leadership, overall chaos, and greater losses as various post-Covenant warlords moved in to dominate a weakened humanity. At best, the outcome would have been total cultural assimilation, and at worst, genocide. With the Phoenix Initiative's efforts to decentralize governance, command and industry, the UNSC was able to recover from the loss of Sol relatively rapidly and reinforce its holdings, deterring further invasion waves. While military technology and reconstruction may have advanced slightly more rapidly under a UNSC-driven polity, the resulting neglect of the reclamation and resettlement process would likely have crippled humanity in the long term. Disgruntlement among the population arising from draconian exercise of power would have led to a resurgence of the Insurrection, and more aggressive posturing over diplomacy with the Arbiter's faction would likely have provoked an invasion by rogue elements much sooner than humanity was able to handle.