I am not an expert on military strategy, but it seems to me that you underestimate the difficulty of ruling a country, even a defeated one. The goal of the conquest is to gain resources. In current era, the most important resource are the people. You need to make them obey, without killing (too much of) them. You want them to do their jobs and then pay taxes to you. In other words, you want peace… perhaps after the short necessary conflict that puts you (again) on the top of the ladder. Can your military make sure that this happens?
In a population largely without guns, a small group of soldiers can easily terrorize a small town. They can simply walk from house to house, beat up everyone who disobeys, and shoot a few who resist, to make an example out of them. They can make the workers go to the factory, and the factory owner pay the taxes.
In a population with lots of rifles, a small group of soldiers would probably not survive the first day. Unless they keep walking the whole day in armor, or keep hiding in the tanks, once in a while a bullet will be fired unexpectedly from some hidden place, and some of those bullets will hit their targets. You could call more solders to that town, but that means they would be absent from some other town. You will be able to keep control over some places, but it will cost you more resources than those places will generate.
As an example, this is not an exact analogy, but Switzerland remained neutral because giving each male citizen a rifle made the country too expensive to conquer. Sure, they also had an army with tanks. But some other countries had more tanks, and yet they decided not to try their luck there.
In situations where the most expensive resource is not people, but land or diamonds or oil, just coming with lots of tanks and killing everyone in sight can be a profitable action.
In future, with lots of cheap autonomous drones, you could program them to kill anyone who is not your soldier and who holds a rifle in their hands. Then a small group of soldiers will be able to terrorize the whole town again. Or you could give the loyal people some visible symbols (which need to be updated every week e.g. at your workplace), and have million cheap drones patrol the land and kill anyone without the symbol.
The point that humans are the most valuable resource in the modern age is a really great point and makes me much more optimistic for the future of democracy. It makes it look like supporting a middle class would be very much in everyone’s best interest, so any failure to that end is more likely to be a coordination problem and not oppression or something. Thank you for that point.
I am not an expert on military strategy, but it seems to me that you underestimate the difficulty of ruling a country, even a defeated one. The goal of the conquest is to gain resources. In current era, the most important resource are the people. You need to make them obey, without killing (too much of) them. You want them to do their jobs and then pay taxes to you. In other words, you want peace… perhaps after the short necessary conflict that puts you (again) on the top of the ladder. Can your military make sure that this happens?
In a population largely without guns, a small group of soldiers can easily terrorize a small town. They can simply walk from house to house, beat up everyone who disobeys, and shoot a few who resist, to make an example out of them. They can make the workers go to the factory, and the factory owner pay the taxes.
In a population with lots of rifles, a small group of soldiers would probably not survive the first day. Unless they keep walking the whole day in armor, or keep hiding in the tanks, once in a while a bullet will be fired unexpectedly from some hidden place, and some of those bullets will hit their targets. You could call more solders to that town, but that means they would be absent from some other town. You will be able to keep control over some places, but it will cost you more resources than those places will generate.
As an example, this is not an exact analogy, but Switzerland remained neutral because giving each male citizen a rifle made the country too expensive to conquer. Sure, they also had an army with tanks. But some other countries had more tanks, and yet they decided not to try their luck there.
In situations where the most expensive resource is not people, but land or diamonds or oil, just coming with lots of tanks and killing everyone in sight can be a profitable action.
In future, with lots of cheap autonomous drones, you could program them to kill anyone who is not your soldier and who holds a rifle in their hands. Then a small group of soldiers will be able to terrorize the whole town again. Or you could give the loyal people some visible symbols (which need to be updated every week e.g. at your workplace), and have million cheap drones patrol the land and kill anyone without the symbol.
The point that humans are the most valuable resource in the modern age is a really great point and makes me much more optimistic for the future of democracy. It makes it look like supporting a middle class would be very much in everyone’s best interest, so any failure to that end is more likely to be a coordination problem and not oppression or something. Thank you for that point.