However, the most profitable business in the world is governance. It provides loads of money, resources and opportunities for young men of all classes from the first world to make fortunes and gain experience.

If progressive world government disappeared tomorrow there would be a scramble to rule the third world (evidence: there was a scramble to rule the third world).

If the USG disappeared tomorrow someone would hire Academi (nee Xe Services, nee Blackwater) and take over and recreate Rhodesia. That doesn’t happen only because it’s being stopped.

Worth noting.

I agree that not much came of it.

I don’t disagree that much of the officer corps is *verbally* reactionary (but you might be surprised how many members of the officer corps are progs, too): sure there’s a reactionary component (my now-retired uncle is an inchocate reactionary – but, then, he retired for a reason). But what is their active response to any progressive meme inflicted upon their institution?

To salute and enforce it. Not even to resign their commission with a letter of protest, much less more.

To get promoted to Flag rank, you have to be or at least make yourself seen to be Progressive. Even then it might not be enough if you deviate even in small ways (witness some of the recent “early retirements.” No, I don’t suspect conspiracy there. But I do see a pattern. And it’s not a pattern that is followed up with much post-retirement protest about the direction of things).

I was in the military myself until early 2009, as an NCO. Now one can’t generalize from personal experience to be true. But I delt with personnel a lot. All officers come from a standard Cathedral education. They are reactionary in spheres where face-to-face encouters with reality have compelled them to be. Many of them (but fewer than people might think) have good, solid, mainstream conservative Vaisya backgrounds. But not a few of them are Brahmins in belief as well as practice, and most of the ones who will make reactionary utterances in the right setting are operational henchmen of Brahminism. The ones who end up seeing that tend to retire and go live in the mountains. They don’t tend to do much more, and they tend not to be interested in reading long discursive abstract-intellectual essays (the kind that are necessary for any sort of informed neoreaction, given that you’re certainly not going to pick this stuff up in Cathedral institutions). (N.B. also I say “tend” – there are exceptions. There always are).

Not that I recommend they become activist-reactionaries. After all, as we are taught, a reactionary is not an activist and activism is not reaction.

(P.S. my tone is certainly negative and dismissive, but I would include myself in this set, even though I wasn’t a commissioned officer.)

Gradually, people began to ‘get the joke’ at what was really going on with the publication FM 3-24. That is, that it is a political document of popular support public relations and has little to do with doctrine. It is semi-Straussian. The military has to pretend this is the doctrine, and has to take the risk that many junior officers will not ‘get the joke’ and take it seriously and try to implement it, and then grudgingly obey their superiors when they ‘inexplicable’ go against the doctrine.

Gradually, after countless observations of the higher ups ‘going against’ doctrine, of not incorporating ‘lessons learned’ and ‘after action reports’ into ‘updates’ of the doctrine, one realizes that there is obviously something extremely wrong with the doctrine, and finally that it is not really the doctrine at all except to those that have been fooled in exactly the way it way designed to fool people.

People who actually participated in the planning of The Surge know that success was not accomplish by maintaining much fidelity to the book. And it’s why success in Afghanistan was never, and will never be, accomplished. Luttwak (who advised throughout the experience) knew that too. But he didn’t want to play Kissinger and want it to be thought he believed in the ridiculous party line. You should read everything he writes.

What was, and remains, very influential is the absolute futile fiasco of our long experience in Afghanistan. The upper field grade Army, in particular, which has spent most of its professional life making round trips to that backwards hellhole and strategic nullity, has become devoted to a kind of open-secret campaign of resources and allocation-choices (in the face of a rapidly shrinking manpower and budget environment) that positions itself as unsuitable to pursue such ‘unconventional’ crusades in the future.

We’re not getting rid of all the MRAPs for nothing! Strangely, The CAPE and CRB meetings are hilariously subversive of future reckless, missionary administrations in this regard, but also profoundly wise. A wisdom unnecessarily earned the hard way, alas. Moldbug played as much of a tiny-part as he was allowed to play in his time. But nothing teaches the lessons of reality like when reality hits your repeatedly with a 2×4. “Ouch, that smarts!” That kind of cognitive correction is worth a million Moldbugs.

1. Biological: Actually send a seed-population of your people someplace else and have them set up little outpost copies expanding your civilization into that foreign land. They may interact with the locals, but it is more in terms of commerce and conflict instead of control. History is not kind to the stability of diversity in colony contexts, and eventually, ‘there can be only one’. In the long run, it’s crush or get crushed. If the foreign land is already inhabited, then historically it was usually at a much lower level of social development and organization. Today we have the reverse phenomenon with the barios.

2. Corporate / Hostile Takeover / Regime Replacement: A military conquest that cuts off the head of the snake of a foreign civilizations and replaces it with new imported leadership for mostly economic, but also some compatible military global-strategic reasons. It mostly leaves the indigenous system ‘in place’ except perhaps with the gradual ideas for ameliorations imported from a higher form of civilization that will improve economic output. Plenty of examples throughout history.

3. Religious and Cultural Conquest: Those with power to shape ideas, by the sword or otherwise, and who believe they have discovered the One Enlightened Truth and feel a need to evangelize, preach, and spread it across all humanity; and that, save for backward or evil resistance, all humanity will by uplifted when they come to recognize that truth and embrace it with sufficient time and development. Anything necessary to achieve this long term strategy in the most expeditious manner possible is a mandatory duty for all true believers.