Galactic Defence Initiative

The Galactic Defense Initiative is a NATO-like military alliance composed of 16 star nations. It is mainly active in the galactic region known as the D'dodorassi Stream, and is considered a major power in galactic politics.

Structure

The GDI structure consists of four main bodies:
The Assembly of Nations (AoN) is officially the main body of the organisation. The Assembly consists of representatives from every GDI member-nation. Every member gets one vote. The Assembly's main responsibilities are setting the GDI budget, reviewing any possible new members, creating GDI-wide laws, convening on economic issues, and reviewing CIC proposals.
The Chief Initiative Command (CIC) is consists of some of the highest military officers within the Initiative. Every member sends 'Initiative Consuls' to represent them in the CIC. The more military strength a member has, the more Consuls they may send. The Command is responsible for overseeing the fight against piracy and terrorism in GDI territory, evaluating member-militaries, and deciding strategy. Additionally the CIC is the primary decider for what nations get Readiness Fund aid.
The Grand Council of Defence is similar to the UN Security Council. It consists of 4 permanent members: the Commonwealth of Stars (CoS), Blessed Federation of the Hronosigallrah's Children (BFHC), the Vanguard of Zrass (VoZ) and the Kingdom of Krah'Nroahk (KoK), the most powerful nations within the GDI. The Council can veto any AoN or CIC decision and a percentage of the GDI budget is under their direct control. It is essentially a tool to ensure the supremacy of the 4 big powers in GDI politics. There's also one temporary Council position, which rotates through the other GDI member-nations as a tie-breaker.
The Director of Galactic Defence is the official head of the GDI. They oversee the Assembly and CIC and are responsible for most of the sub-organisations within the GDI, though that is usually left to subordinates. The Director is elected by the AoN and CIC on a 7-year mandate and there's a rotation to what nation is allowed to supply candidates for the Directorcy, ensuring that every member gets a chance to have a Director 'representing them'.
There are also a few sub-organisations with various specific goals. The most important of these are: the Readiness Fund, a fund to aid developing members to ensure their military readiness as well as members going through economic crisis, the Institute for Galactic Law, responsible for settling member disputes and for enforcing GDI laws and finally, the International Defence Corps which are military corps consisting of volunteers recruited from the member-nations, who mostly exist to encourage military cooperation.
Finally, there are also the member-nations themselves. Members can have governments that very wildly. The only common denominator is an adherence to the ideology of Ashrollism. The CoS and BFHC are the main powers within the GDI, with both being military and economic titans. The CoS, as the founder of Ashrollism, is the main ideological influence but the BFHC is the main cultural centre of the GDI. Members must pay some taxes to the GDI and they must spend at least 15% of their budget on the military or other fields important to prolonged warfare (such as R&D or agriculture).
The headquarters of the GDI is located on a space-fortress known as the Monolith. This station is about the size of a city, has its own Assembly-appointed civilian government and hosts all GDI bureaucracy.

Public Agenda

The GDI's official goal is to spread the ideology of Ashrollism at all costs. They wish to oppose regimes and ideologies they see as 'tyrannical', notably Qvadhist nations. Apart from this, the Initiative wishes to protect their members' citizens from opression and danger. The organisation is also in a cold war with the Vorovian Pact.

Assets

The GDI collectively has access to one of the largest and most prosperous economic zones in Known Space. The organisation controls thousands of ships and millions of troops. Between the various members, it also controls around 980 star systems. Even then, however, the GDI is often only barely able to match its rivals.

History

Pre-Founding

The GDI has its origin in the The Vow/Tw'tyh-Kavalen Treaty, a treaty signed between the CoS and BHFC to protect themselves against the Legion of Zrass. The Legion was an imperialist power, and at the time the largest power in the quadrant. Though they had been stagnating for 2 centuries at that point, they were still a threat to the still ascending powers of the CoS and BHFC. Other nations quickly joined the Treaty for their own protection.
In 64 AI First Contact with the Vorovian Concord, an alliance of two hegemonic nations and a large number of satellite states, was made. This shocked the Treaty members into action, due the fear that Concord would try to conquer the D'dodorassi Stream or spread their fascist ideology there. A great number of new treaties and diplomatic efforts were started to have the CoS and BHFC grow closer together. Especially the Commonwealth-Federation Joint Command served as a proof of concept, due to the Command's success in beating piracy.

Early History

The GDI was officially founded with the Charter of Ahirn, named after a system within the Tahirian Confederacy. The Confederacy played a major part in the founding of the GDI, due to their political maneuvering for the sake of their own protection. This period of history was largely characterised by a spirit of cooperation and growth. Every Treaty-signatory joined the organisation, as well as some wholly new members. Members were encouraged to set up closer cultural and economic bonds in order to make the GDI the strongest it could be. This would bring great prosperity to the region, but also lead to great economic crises.

Crisis of the 110's

In 109 AI a combination of a cryptocurrency bubble and bad colonial investments caused a massive economic crisis in the Commonwealth. This crisis spread and merged with other crises all over the GDI to create a single crisis of unseen scale. Entire worlds went into poverty as stock markets collapsed and interstellar trade ceased.
The crisis created an incredible want for reform. In most members this was used with great effect to implement reforms and measures to defeat the crisis. It also led, however, to the founding of Ndajism. Ndajism, named after its founder Ndajr, is a totalitarian ideology based on the idea that the government must lead its citizens to the most 'efficient' ways of life and jobs, forcefully if necessary. Ndajists started out as an innocent political movement, but quickly became a rising threat as more and more Ndajists turned to terrorism and political corruption. The movement got especial support from the military.
Whilst these reforms definitely had effect to stop the crisis, it was only when the Readiness Fund was opened up for use in economic crises that things started truly getting better. The crisis fully came to an end when the Kingdom of Krah'Nroahk joined the GDI, opening up a new market and bringing new businesses into the economy.

Post-Crisis

After the Crisis, the Kingdom began pushing to make a preemptive strike towards the Legion. At this point, the GDI had far surpassed the Legion in almost every way, and could easily defeat them. Due to this, GDI agents began making contact with local rebels and revolutionaries to ensure their aid in case of war. In response, the Legion did everything it could to isolate the GDI from the rest of the galaxy, and began sponsoring pirates to raid border regions to humiliate the alliance. This was eventually discovered by the Commonwealth, leading to them issuing an ultimatum. The ultimatum demanded, among other things, that border regions be handed over to GDI control. It was purposefully outrageous to incite war.
The war was swift, only taking 3 years. The CoS, BHC and KoK were the main combatants. It ended with the occupation of the Legion homeworld. After the war, a conference was held to determine what to do with Legion territory. Multiple nations were created alongside a Legion provisional government; some of these would eventually join the GDI.
The war emboldened Ndajist elements, who now felt that GDI military domination was fully possible. They quickly gained more support from the triumphant militaries and gained more influence in government. They decided to form a single block, and made moves towards violent coups.

Traitor Wars

When corruption scandals and a second economic crisis shocked the GDI, the Ndajists took their chance. The CoS Emperor was assassinated, and the assassination was blamed on a 'conspiracy' within the government to gain support and the wildly unpopular BHFC leader was killed in a military coup. These events shocked the GDI into inaction and allowed more coups to occur. Eventually these coups evolved into a series of civil wars collectively known as the Traitor Wars. The Wars only ended when the Kingdom and Vanguard intervened in 159 AI. Even then, it'd take to 163 AI before they fully ended.

Post-Traitor Era

After the Traitor Wars more reforms were made in the GDI to stop such a thing from occuring again. Governments cracked down on conspiracies, terrorist groups and corruption in general. In addition, the Traitor Wars created an extremely anti-tyranny sentiment that lasts to this day. It was only after the Wars that the GDI truly began looking towards the galaxy as a whole, and making plays to become a major galactic power.

Through Struggle, Defence for All

Founding Date

83 AI

Type

Alliance, Generic

Alternative Names

GDI

Power Structure

Transnational government