The Culture had a problem with the Affront. The Affront had a problem with the Culture, too, for that matter, but it was a pretty plain thing in comparison; the Affront’s problem with the Culture was simply that the older civilisation stopped it doing all the things it wanted to do. The Culture’s problem with the Affront was like an itch they couldn’t scratch; the Culture’s problem with the Affront was that the Affront existed at all and the Culture couldn’t in all conscience do anything about it.

The problem stemmed from an accident of galactic topography and a combination of bad luck and bad timing.

The fuzzily specified region which had given rise to the various species that had eventually made up the Culture had been on the far side of the galaxy from the Affront home planet, and contacts between the Culture and the Affront had been unusually sparse for a long time for a variety of frankly banal reasons. By the time the Culture came to know the Affront better - shortly after the long distraction of the Idiran war - the Affront were a rapidly developing and swiftly maturing species, and short of another war there was no practical way of quickly changing either their nature or behaviour.

Some Culture Minds had argued at the time that a quick war against the Affront was exactly the right course of action, but even as they’d started setting out their case they’d known it was already lost; for all that the Culture was just then at a peak of military power it had never expected to attain at the start of that long and terrible conflict, just so there was a corresponding determination at all levels that - the task of stopping the Idirans’ relentless expansion having been accomplished - the Culture would neither need nor seek to achieve such a martial zenith again. Even while the Minds concerned had been contending that a single abrupt and crushing blow would benefit all concerned - including the Affront, not just ultimately, but soon - the Culture’s warships were being stood down, deactivated, componented, stored and demilitarised by the tens of thousands, while its trillions of citizens were congratulating themselves on a job well done and returning with the relish of the truly peace-loving to the uninhibited enjoyment of all the recreational wonders the resolutely hedonism-focused society of the Culture had to offer.

There had probably never been a less propitious time for arguing that more fighting was a good idea, and the argument duly foundered, though the problem remained.