Quick answer? We don’t know…yet.
As stated in posts above, it will likely be explained that the socialist government called the ‘Union of Progressive Peoples’ had a direct conflict of interest during the colonization to Tientsin. This is a common theme of war going back for as long as colonization has existed. Since people always fight over resources and land, we have every reason to believe that this is the basis for the campaign, at least in a general sense.
Once this narrative comes out, we’ll likely know more than we do. I hope it answers our questions while still being a broad enough narrative to include side issues/stories, like the one filmed for Drop Zone Copernicus. Until then, we’re left to guess, but we do know a little bit about Tientsin, or at the very least, the neighborhood of Tientsin.
Tientsin is a planet orbiting the binary star Muphrid (Eta Boötis/Giiese 534) in the Constellation Boötis (“ox-driver” in Latin) commonly called the ‘Herdsman’ or ‘Plowman’. Muphrid is visually located near the fourth-brightest star in the night sky, the orange giant Arcturus. Coincidently, Arcturus is also the closest ‘stellar’ neighbor to Eta Boötis, as both stars are nearly identical in distance from Sol.
According to the Colonial Marines Technical Manual, Tientsin is designated as 8 Eta Bootis A III and was a disputed world in what became know as the Tientsin Campaign.
We know very little about Tientsin or the campaign of the same name. The confrontation is accepted as a ‘stand up fight’ (traditional warfare/direct confrontation of technology, weaponry and personnel). We know this, because the Colonial Marines deployed nearly a quarter of a million marines to Tientsin during the height of the conflict. Nothing is know about the opposing government or faction, but the fight was likely highly localized. This is not to say that neighboring worlds (especially worlds near the closest neighboring star Arcturus) were not involved.
I believe the traditional foe of the Colonial Marines are other human forces in almost all cases. Intelligent, armed, threatening forces that can return fire in a ‘stand up fight’. Hudson uses the term ‘bug hunt’, but he’s likely being dismissive about anything he doesn't consider 'real combat’, i.e., insignificant police actions, company conflicts, search and rescue, peacekeeping details, etc. It’s also been suggested that a ‘bug hunt’ could be the removal of an indigenous ‘pest’ species or non-human race, which may also be true, but it’s all speculative.
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