The description of the Co Dominium as giving the Draka competition in the sheer-brutal-evil sweepstakes is a YMMV statement, IMHO. The chief impulse for the formation of the Co Dominium seems to have been an altogether laudable desire to prevent a catastrophic nuclear war while (also quite reasonable) providing an international framework for the exploration and colonization of solar systems with habitable planets following the development of FTL travel. Where things went wrong was in (1) the banning of virtually all "pure" scientific research that could have a military application, which led to stagnation of technology, and (2) the metastasization of bureaucracy both in the Co Dominium member nations and in the Co Do itself, leading to a bloated structure that existed mainly to perpetuate itself and to keep the lid on increasingly restive nationalist sentiments on Earth. By the time of the Sparta books, the Co Do was unquestionably repressive, though never quite to the sheer level of rapacious evil as the Domination of the Draka.
The description of the Co Dominium as giving the Draka competition in the sheer-brutal-evil sweepstakes is a YMMV statement, IMHO. The chief impulse for the formation of the Co Dominium seems to have been an altogether laudable desire to prevent a catastrophic nuclear war while (also quite reasonable) providing an international framework for the exploration and colonization of solar systems with habitable planets following the development of FTL travel. Where things went wrong was in (1) the banning of virtually all "pure" scientific research that could have a military application, which led to stagnation of technology, and (2) the metastasization of bureaucracy both in the Co Dominium member nations and in the Co Do itself, leading to a bloated structure that existed mainly to perpetuate itself and to keep the lid on increasingly restive nationalist sentiments on Earth. By the time of the Sparta books, the Co Do was unquestionably repressive, though never quite to the sheer level of rapacious evil as the Domination of the Draka.