matrixmann | Techniques of war: Deterioration of infrastructure

Is there a different way to win a war than sending troops and artillery?
There is: Do it the subtle way. Destroy the infrastructure, by selling and privatizing, to let your opponent pay off debts that actually don't exist. Erase the ability to do self-catering with home-grown food, introduce the dependence on imports. Carry technology and patents out of the country. If human intelligentsia can't be lured away, make sure they can't make any profit out of their knowledge anymore - forbid them to work in their disciplines, declare graduations and diplomas to be invalid. Abolish law and order and take your sweet time to install yours as the new ones - to let chaos move in, and crime take hold. Additionally, send your own criminals in to fool the masses and to let the daily terror on the streets be perfect. Pump your own wares and goods into the newly acquired territory - to calm down the conquered masses and to make profit yourself; best even is if you let it be accompanied by advertising and propaganda how good it is, how grateful people can be to have it, meanwhile you can do the dirty work to strip them off their assets. While being at the assets: Rearrange the overall property situation. If the pattern makes sense or not, it doesn't matter - the confusion and the gain for your own fraction is the main objective.
At the end of it all, most importantly: Break the morale, the mindset of the people that you annex. Deconstruct the education system and build it anew. Let culture disappear to be never seen again. Kill the spirit of what made these people up! Make sure that way that you're going to be happy with your annexion for the coming decades - 'cause the resistance fades away with the people aging.

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Agree. Only I think it is happening naturally, like when profit is the priority all these things happen naturally and then a good way to get out of inevitable crisis is to start war. Otherwise totally agree.

I think you can also use this as your primary war strategy.
It's rather your choice if you see that you can't get hold of an area by military force or by the plump visible suppression and fear.
Or, maybe that's expressed the wrong way: It's a strategy for when you have acquired a territory, to secure your own dominance over it if you know you can't get it under control the usual way.
Maybe, also if you lack the resources too to secure a propper occupation by the book.

I'm having a very special example in mind, but see if you get to guess it...

When the war is inevitable or during the war this strategy is exactly the case. Agree.

Nazi Germany?

Nope. Not that long ago. Still not a whole generation ago, you can still find enough people which can tell you first hand. If you've been a kid growing up in the 90s, it might be that you have also witnessed a little of its effects. - The knowledge to understand you got / could get to learn later on.

Afghanistan? Then it is true about Iraq and Syria. And also Libya.

No.
Just leaving that thing: It's a specific matter that I can argue as a German.
The link to my country is right, but the time is way more recent than this. - Not yesterday, not 5 years ago, a bit longer. Remember: "If you've been a kid growing up in the 90s, it might be that you have also witnessed a little of its effects."

You mean Eastern Germany?

There drops the penny...

Ok, it is really interesting because you actually witnessed it so I suppose you have first hand knowledge. But I can say the same about the Soviet Union vs Russian Federation.

"Witnessed" more or less.
At least the things I know and the knowledge acquired later (and still continuing to be made) combined make a fusion that I can say for myself "that's what happened".

I can say the same.

But what do you guess how many people know?
I mean, people that are none of your kind. People that don't live in the same surroundings like you. People that live, say, 500 km away in some Western nation?

Oh, totally, I see all the time the discussions online about such dumb misconceptions, they still truly believe that we lived in some prison, all wore uniform and they shot everyone for stepping out of line and we were so poor and run down, pretty much shacks and dirt roads. I sometimes cannot help but think: what kind of dumbasses believe that crap without verifying, meaning: do you people believe everything you are told? Those people consider themselves free-thinkers ironically.

You get the point. Similar thing I encounter online. Well, for the Germans, I think it's wavering, or rather the topic doesn't come up. Simply, West Germans can't pick it up as an example of comparing a few things to today's situation, but then that's it.
On the international basis, I encounter the situation more often that people don't know more than the usual phrases that sound like coming out of some propaganda leaflet. (That leads me to sayings like "If freedom is everything that can be your concern...".)
- And that's only for the place here, not the fish tank with the sharks inside that they call "Facebook".
So you see - why I try to make clear the structural way that things work or worked. Like, when people start to repeat the snobbish stuff and they don't even know what they're talking about, that I try to make clear "imagine the same situation put upon your hemisphere - would you be that rich as an economic society then?".
Well, that seems like a life task - "imagine everything you believed in comes raining down, crumbles and vanishes, leaving everything invalid and empty that gave you orientation - how sure you still would be of your image in mind what the world works like and what is good and what is wrong?".
I see the same fucking despair like in every other people or nation that lost everything that organized their lives. No signs of the glorious capitalism who is so superior to everything. Capitalism and everything these people know and value is as sensitive to fall like every other system.
And that's what they should know (besides how much it fed on the achievements of others).

Yes, I agree. And in capitalism even if the system doesn't fail yet everyone can fail any day. Like if you get sick or your house burns down or you lose someone close. I heard lots of stories like this, people never suspected their life would change and something happens and they have no security any more. But they think if they are prosperous at that particular point, it will be guaranteed forever or try to not think about it. That's why I think religion is important to them. It is like good luck for them.

That is why I think it is sometimes comfortable for people not think about things like that and also they are afraid of changes.

Well, I think like I'm preaching that pretty often. How often anyone listens - I don't know. But in that I'm like a cleptomaniac that can't refrain from stealing - I can't stop it.

This historical stuff and other stuff going on in the world I tend to smack into peoples' faces who still think like they live on the "right side" of things, and if not that, which think among all things, after fascism, communism is the second worst although they never had connection with it, only know propaganda about it or they experienced it, but never thought about the system behind, why things were as they were, why capitalism had all the things it had - just because I wanna say "all that glitters is not gold". "You gonna get unhappy if you rely on this."
Or, to put it in a different way: I've seen how this system lies to you. I have fucking seen it, a long time ago. And other people should get to know that too which still think like this world is gonna get great fortunes to them. Fortunes - if you live in the Western part of the world. In the rest of the world, it already brings pain and nothing but pain.
If you're in the wrong position, even in the Western world too. It's no lie in speaking that out or misguided perception. It's the truth.
Call it a "Soilent Grün ist Menschenfleisch!" ("Soilent Green is people!")-Moment.

Edited 2017-02-05 19:45 (UTC)

Techniques of war: Deterioration of infrastructure

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