To Conquer A Nation...

Cronos

<div class="IPBDescription">What methods exist?</div> There are several ways to conquer a nation to my thinking.

The first is the most direct and the most obvious, brute military strength. Crush your enemy and occupy his nation. Simple and straight forward.

The second that comes to mind is economically conquering a nation. That is either by way of precious resources (Oil for example) or through patriotic corporations/international deficit. Being crushed economically is worse then being crushed militaristically. Cut off foreign aid, call in national debts, cease trading etc etc and you can plunge an enemy nation into debt so fast they wouldnt be able to coordinate a war with a pitchfork. The middle east, until fairly recently, has always been able to threaten western nations by either overproducing or underproducing oil. The US did try the economic route of conquer via sanctions.

The third is somewhat out dated. You can conquer a nation through religion. Historical examples abound. Christianity conquered the Roman empire, Islam forged great nations in the middle east and parts of africa in their time. Christianity also tried to conquer the native americans and Australian aborigines to a less successful extent. Religion was a powerful tool to use in conquering a country, but not as powerful in todays world.

The fourth is Ideological Conquest. Communism conquered many countries through use of propaganda to garner sattelite nations and allies. The US also did this. Terrorists use it daily to aquire new recruits. Ideology is perhaps one of the newest ways of conquer. If hearts and minds can be won, then any oligarchy will fall. More finesse is required. Propaganda must be used, psychology is very important, and morale all the more so. It is easier to convert hearts and minds to the cause that are tired of war or economic depression, then it is to convert the hearts and minds of those that firmly believe in their nations power. The internet can be a powerful tool in this method, either working for you or against you.

The fifth is Technological. Demonstrate or utilise your upper hand in technological knowhow and wizardry, and you can force your enemies to back down and ultimately submit. The space race and the race to create the first Nuke are examples of tech races, while technological advantage (IE, steel forged armor as opposed to pure iron armor and swords) plays a significant role.

The sixth which has just occured to me is environmental. This is a frightening concept. One nation can wage war on another by using terrain and weather to it's advantage. For example, Nation A upstream dams it's rivers, choking Nation B, robbing them of crops and drinking water. Another example is simply to release so much CO2 that other nations cant scrub it up as fast as you. They drown, while your carefully laid plans come to fruition. If earthquake generators ever see the light of day, any natural disaster could become an act of war. With correct usage of natural phenomena (these phenomena would have to be controlled somehow) one could destroy the entire infrastructure of an enemy nation and ruin it.

The seventh is cultural conquest. The US is VERY good at this. Every movie that shows at night is american, I have a coke on my desk, I know the exact date of US independence, but I'm hazy on telling you when Australia Day is, let alone Labor Day. US culture is so widespread I doubt theres a person in any nation with reliable television that Doesnt know about Thanks giving or "Uncle Sam". Theres always concern, from some individuals that I know at the very least, that Australian culture is becoming more americanised every day. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I dont fancy The land of Oz becoming the 51st state...

Where was I? Ah yes. Basic tenet is this. If you can make an enemy nation culturally indistinguishable from your own, the native peoples of that nation would never stand of open war nor opposition to your nation.

I think thats about it, maybe I forgot something along the way but I think that those 7 ways pretty much sum up all the possible ways to conquer a nation...

The_Finch

I've always enjoyed the concept of cultural assimilation.

It's efficient, if slow. Making a culture legitimate is much easier and cheaper than coercion. Exporting American culture is not only a good way to keep tensions down, but an excellent way to make money. Even people who curse America do so while drinking Coca-Cola, watching American movies and listening to American music.

Personally, I'd put cultural and ideological warfare together, since they tend to go hand in hand.

Hawkeye

A few of those are more motives than actual ways to conquer a country, I think.
Religion has always been a motive, but not a means.

If you want to break it down into a science, a country does not attack unless the leader wants it as well. There are a few exceptions, like there are ways to bypass the president of the united states, but in the general case, if the leader does not wish to wage war, no "official" war will be fought.

What typically happens is that a leader has a hurt ego, or another country has something he wants, he'll make an alternative motive to get the people involved. Vietnam is a perfect example of what happens when the people aren't involved in the war. Religion and technology are ways to get people involved in war, though they may not be the reasons the war started.

I believe the only ways you can "conquer" a country is to A) Put them into submission (have a nuke and they don't for instance), B) Brute strength, C) Diplomacy (allying with the nation to get them to do as you wish). Everything else is just tactics (preventing trade etc.. methods of brute strength attack).

Hypergrip

First you have to make you enemy think that you are superior.
This can be technological, cultural or by using brute force.

Brute force however I would concider a less effective way to conquer, because this way you can gain controll of the land and the resources, but not the people.
This is not conquering this is more a kind of occupation.

The most effective way is to lure your "enemy" into a situation where he is depending on you.
He/They must see that they need you and cannot take what they need from you by force.
Then you give them the choice:
a) Join us, become part of our country and as one people we all have what we need.
b) Oppose us and starve.

And you main target for this kind of psychological warfare should be the general population of your enemy.
Tell them what they could have and that their government is hurting it's own people.
If you get your enemy's citizens to overthrow their government, without the need for you to use military, you will look a lot better in the international press than Mr. Dubya Bush.

uranium_235

I think the Vikings had the right idea... burn, rape, and demolish, then economically crush them by sacking everything, and run off again <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->

reasa

Very interesting, if you notice were trying to culturally assimilate Iran, which was the first place I thought of when I read this. I can't really add anything to this but a good read none the less.

Urza

The first word I think of in this discussion is globalization: you cannot simply say that a country has the upper hand in science, media, environment, or ideology ( which is, I think, part of culture). Countries do not have as much power in international politics as they did hundred years ago; it is multinationals, NGO's, and religious leaders that have and use more power than most of the third-world national leaders. Culture is not "american" culture; it is influenced by Japan ( who does not watch anime?), Latin America ( music, duh) and Europe ( architecture etc).

Eviscerator

Another way to conquer a nation would be to overtake its media, either by outright purchase or leveraged takeover. Take over television stations, magazines, newspapers, and cable channels. Do that and you can produce and censor whatever information you want. Get the people of that country to believe what you want them to believe, and you'll control what they think and how they act. They'll then do pretty much whatever you want, and will support any initiative taken, regardless of the true motives. So long as you can prepare the right story and make it seem like it's a good thing, they will do your bidding. Once you master the media, you can then turn to manipulate governmental officials to enact favorable policies that benefit your own country. Get them to send your country trillions of dollars in aid without you having to pay any of it back. Get them to do the actual fighting of your wars, so their soldiers die but yours do not. The best part of it all is that most of the people of that country will have no idea what's really happening. They will vigorously defend their belief that what they're doing is best for their country, when in fact it really is only beneficial to your own country. It's almost a perfect, flawless plan. The only ones who see the game for what it is will be your enemies, but they'll be taken down in short order by the soldiers of the country you've taken hostage.

Snidely

I'd have thought that would be classed as "cultural conquest". I know it differs from the way explained (more manipulative than assimilation), but steering that society to become friendly like that seems to fit in with it.

Talking of buying out all the media, did anyone hear Murdoch talk on BBC a couple of weeks ago? He basically said that he's not going to be happy with the UK going into europe, and he will withdraw support from the party that wants it. Now, I'm not pro-europe, but isn't it a bit much that a non-elected "businessman" can effectively blackmail a politican into making the choice that's best for him? Scary stuff.

RyoOhki

Under the area of ideological conquest can come the concept of taking over the nation from within. Taking two examples, that of Germany and China, we can see how this works.

In the first example, Germany, Hitler and the Nazi party tried unsuccessfully in 1923 to overthrow the German government by force. Hitler was imprisoned and wrote Mein Kampf whilst in jail. After he got out he decided to work within the system to gain his desired control of the country. Though certainly the Nazis used some very heavy-handed tactics, they were still elected into office by the German people. Propaganda comes into play here, however every politician in the world uses varients of propaganda in their campaigns and speeches. Hitler understood that trying to take down the government from the outside wasn't going to work, and that the only way to achieve his goals was to work internally. It worked, and as a result the nation of Germany was conquored by the Nazis.

China is a slightly differant boiling container of marine life. The communists from 1927 to 1949 fought against the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai Shek in a variety of ways. Militarily speaking, for almost the entire period the communists were highly inferiour in terms of equipment. What won the communists the war was their capacity to not only survive, but win the minds of the Chinese people. The benefits from this were three-fold: the people were more willing to help the communists, the people were more willing to fight for the communists, and the Nationalists lost the support of the people, militarily, economically and politically.

The communists knew that in open battles, they would get slaughtered, and as such they rarely engaged in such tactics. In 1945 the Communists had around 300,000 men armed with light weaponry, versus a Nationalist force supplied by the US with 2.3 million soldiers, modern aircraft, tanks, machine guns and rifles. Yet in 1949 it was the Nationalists fleeing the country to Taiwan, their armies having been either destroyed or defected. Chiang Kai Shek said after the Japanese invaded in 1937: "The Japanese are a disease of the skin; the Communists are a disease of the heart". He was quite correct.

In both examples, the eventual victors examined the possible courses of action and chose the path most likely to succeed. That path was eroding away from within, either by swinging votes in Hamburg or helping peasents in Yenan. Both sides did use force, but neither came to victory entirely through that power. In Germany and China, it was winning the minds of the people that won each side their eventual victory.

Burncycle

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Very good point, and applies to many countries on many levels.