This is the fifth installment in a series where I design, with your help, a small, hypothetical new nation called Ascendia, based on small government, personal liberty, and free markets. Please read parts one, two, three and four if you have not yet before reading this article so that you’re up to speed. Today I will lay out how Ascendia will handle its military.
The Military
As I talked about in the last installment in this series, it would be illegal for the government of Ascendia to attack any other nation without a formal declaration of war from the Assembly, which with today’s technology, would be quick to obtain if needed. A declaration of war would be given if any nation attacks any resource or citizen of Ascendia within Ascendia’s borders. Any attacks by any foreign nations on Ascendian citizens traveling or living aboard, outside of the nation’s borders, would be ignored. This is because individual citizens take their own safety into their own hands when they travel abroad, and no citizen can expect the government of their nation to go to war just because the citizen knowingly traveled to a dangerous part of the world, as I already described here.
However, Ascendia can and would use lethal military force to respond to attacks against or within its borders. Here are the military resources it would have available.
The first resource is that of bounties and assassination. If a nation ever threatened or attacked Ascendia, the Chief Executive of the Assembly would go on national TV, televised throughout the world and on the internet, and announce a one billion dollar bounty to be placed on the leader of the enemy nation, payable in any currency desired, tax free, to the first person who kills him. Moreover, this bounty would be paid to anyone, including the leader’s own wife, relatives, or bodyguards.
Today, when leaders attack or threaten each other, they use their militaries to attack the other’s military. But that’s stupid. The individual leader is the problem, and that’s the guy who needs to fear for his life.
By the way, since Ascendia would not be part of any supernational organization like the United Nations or NATO, it would not need to abide by any of these silly treaties making the assassination of foreign leaders illegal. Oh no, no, no. Assassinations are far more inexpensive in terms of money and loss of life than wars, and they’re much more fair. Ascendia would be happy to use this weapon to defend itself against aggressors.
The second resource would be Ascendia’s military. As a small nation, it would have a small army, a small air force, and a small navy. It would not have a separate marine corps (that would be part of the navy) nor a coast guard (that would be part of the navy). 100% of the military would consist of private contractors like Blackwater, since we know for a fact that these services cost far less than a government operated military. So government would pay for it and command it, but it would not actually soldier it. That would be done by professional mercenaries.
Next would be Ascendia’s nuclear weapons. Yes, Ascendia would have nukes if it could get them. History as clearly shown that no one screws with nations that have nukes, and that having nukes makes your population safer. Thus, Ascendia would work very hard to acquire nuclear weapons, even if it was just a handful of short-range tactical warheads.
Next would be Ascendia’s intelligence agency. Unlike the military, who would be commanded to stay within the borders of Ascendia at all times unless a declaration of war was declared, Ascendia’s intelligence agency could and would indeed be deployed all over the world, in any trouble spots that may threaten Ascendia, to quietly gather intelligence, just like any other intelligence agency. The more the intelligence agency can do, the less the military needs to do, and that’s a good thing.
This agency would be full of hardened badasses, and would be modeled on those agencies such as the FSB and the Mossad. It would have a scary name for marketing purposes, like the Lethal Intelligence Agency (L.I.A.) or even better, the Fearless Underground Cadre of Killers (F.U.C.K.). Agents of F.U.C.K. would be trained by the best in the world, and would (hopefully) be feared and/or respected by other nations.
Lastly would be the cyber warfare division, perhaps the most important part of the military. The government of Ascendia would hire all the weirdest, smartest, freakiest hackers in the world and put them to work. The US government would never hire hackers with purple mohawks and nose rings, but Ascendia would understand that these guys are often the most dangerous and effective hackers.
This would be the Hacker Battalion. If anyone screws with Ascendia, these guys would immediately go to work, shutting down the enemy nation’s banks, websites, power grids, transportation hubs, and so on. Again, the more they can do, the less the military has to do, which is always a good thing.
Given all these resources, here’s exactly what would happen if anyone was stupid enough to attack the friendly, noninterventalist nation of Ascendia:
1. A formal declaration of war would be made and announced to the world.
2. The Leader of the Assembly would immediately go on international TV and the internet and announce the one billion dollar bounty on the attacking leader’s head, and perhaps other high-ranking individuals in the enemy government.
3. Troops, ships, and planes would be immediately deployed to the attacker’s borders, if possible, but not actually attack yet (though of course they would respond to attacks with deadly force).
4. Agents of F.U.C.K. would flood the attacking country incognito, blowing up bridges, assassinating political and military leaders (but not civilians or low-end military), and sewing all kinds of chaos.
5. The Hacker Battalion would launch a full-scale cyber war against the attacker, shutting down airports, freezing bank assets, releasing sex tapes and photos of political and military leaders cheating on their wives, and all kinds of fun shit.
6. The government of Ascendia would announce to the world that they are willing to end the war at any time as soon as hostilities cease.
7. If none of this worked, the military would then attack the enemy nation, using lethal force while trying to keep civilian casualties as low as possible. No attacks on civilian targets would be allowed. None of this crap about bombing someone’s house just because a cell phone signal from a known combatant would be present without knowing who else was in the house. None of this stuff about bombing combatants just because they’re shooting guns in the air (it could be a fucking wedding). And so on.
8. At the end of the war, once peace was negotiated, 100% of all Ascendia troops would leave the attacking country and come back home, within the borders of Ascendia and international waters. There would never be any nation building, rebuilding, or reparations of any kind (if the ex-enemy wanted reparations or rebuilding, they shouldn’t have attacked Ascendia in the first place), and such activities would be strictly forbidden by the Enforceable Constitution and the CEA.
As I’ve explained numerous times in previous articles on this topic, most of this stuff is completely moot, since it would be very, very, very unlikely for any nation to attack Ascendia. Do you see lots of nations attacking friendly, small government, noninterventionalist nations like Switzerland or Hong Kong? No. And that’s the entire point. It would be extraordinarily unlikely that anyone would militarily attack (or even threaten) Ascendia at any time during its lifespan. A military is a necessary evil, but it would likely spend 100% of it’s time running drills and never actually fighting in a war… which is exactly what you want from your military.
Next installment coming soon.
Want over 35 hours of how-to podcasts on how to improve your woman life and financial life? Want to be able to coach with me twice a month? Want access to hours of technique-based video and audio? The SMIC Program is a monthly podcast and coaching program where you get access to massive amounts of exclusive, members-only Alpha 2.0 content as soon as you sign up, and you can cancel whenever you want. Click here for the details.
Leave your comment below, but be sure to follow the Five Simple Rules.
Xyz
Posted at 05:51 am, 28th March 2018What you should talk about now is your vision about how do you see ascendia becoming an economic superpower. How would companies will be formed there? You know stuff like that.
One more thing: Education.
Public schools and colleges? Will they be there?
Caleb Jones
Posted at 10:23 am, 28th March 2018I’ve already addressed a lot of that when I talked about taxation and size of government. I will continue to talk about that as I go forward.
I have an article addressing that too, coming up.
They will be allowed at the municipal level if the voters in a Free City want them, but they will not be the norm.
Anon
Posted at 04:35 pm, 28th March 2018Why lots? It only takes one. Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine were all very much noninterventionalist, yet all that mattered was Russia’s imperial ambitions.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 06:00 pm, 28th March 2018To show statistical probability.
Not to show statistical probability.
Uh, yeah, and the fact those countries are former states of an expansionist, bloodthirsty empire that never wanted them seceded had nothing to do with it, right?
If you’re seriously using former Soviet satellites to prove your point, then I think mine’s been proven.
Jack Outside the Box
Posted at 08:00 pm, 28th March 2018And that’s why every country in the world should have nuclear weapons. It would result in instant world peace!
The biggest barrier to world peace is all this garbage “nuclear disarmament” talk from the tree hugging UN faggots, as well as attempts to stop non-nuclear countries from going nuclear! The opposite should occur.
We need to encourage more countries to go nuclear and even give them some of ours. We also need to tell the UN to go fuck itself.
Think of it as an international 2nd Amendment!
Do you agree?
Caleb Jones
Posted at 08:24 pm, 28th March 2018I agree nuclear weapons are generally a good thing, yes. I’m not sure about giving ours away though; I’d have to think about that. I’d prefer we sell them, but I’d also like a nuclear missile shield in place before we did that, as I described here.
Regarding the UN, yes, I’ve already been on the record as saying the USA should immediately withdraw from the UN and kick its headquarters out of our country. That will never happen though. The elites love the UN, so it’s here to stay until the West collapses.
Steven
Posted at 12:13 am, 29th March 2018If the people of Ascendia had the the right to keep and bear arms, do you think they would ever organize a march to have them taken away from them?
Investor
Posted at 12:21 am, 29th March 2018Another thing to consider which supports your argument is that Ukraine indeed did have nuclear before. They gave them away in exchange of a promise by Russia and a few other countries that they would never violate their borders. That has gone so well, that it just proves the point that everyone should have nukes.
John C
Posted at 12:50 am, 29th March 2018This would be the Hacker Battalion. If anyone screws with Ascendia, these guys would immediately go to work, shutting down the enemy nation’s banks, websites, power grids, transportation hubs, and so on. Again, the more they can do, the less the military has to do, which is always a good thing.
How would you prevent the Hackers from either giving information to enemy nations or hacking into other nations, Companies or civilians when not at war (or the threat).
100% of the military would consist of private contractors like Blackwater, since we know for a fact that these services cost far less than a government operated military. So government would pay for it and command it, but it would not actually soldier it. That would be done by professional mercenaries.
I see some problems with this. One a private company with government money is not private (since their profits come from the government just think the private jail systems). How are you going to handle the private companies cost vs what they mightneed, ie if they say they need more money for new systems? Are you going to hire private companies from other countries and or corporations?
Will there be a chance that the private company could work for the government leader over Ascendia civilians. Ie a president taking dictatorial powers over the voters using the soldiers that are not loyal to the nation but to the company or who pays the bills.
I say this from the history of Rome. When the soldiers where from the draft of civilians that had to go out to fight in times of war. The soldiers were loyal to Rome and not the generals and wanted to end the war sooner to get back to their farms and family, Rome was a republic. As soon as they started getting professional armies where they were paid and supply by the generals they become loyal to the general. They become a much better fighting force but at the cost of the republic, this starts with Marian reforms and soon led to Sulla who took control of the state killed his opponents in the name of restoring the republic. Yeah most people talk about Julius Caesar turning Rome into an empire but they forget it started with ‘Sulla unconstitutionally marched his armies into Rome’ https://infogalactic.com/info/Sulla .
Anon
Posted at 06:18 am, 29th March 2018No, the point I would like to disprove is “friendly nation = no war”. Wars are thankfully rare nowadays, only Russia is arrogant enough to openly attack other countries. With such a low occurrence rate of war, “nobody is attacking Singapore” is about as informative as “no elephants in sight, see how powerful my elephant repelling field is!”.
I don’t even think the correlation between “is aggressive towards other nations” and “is likely to be counter-attacked by said nations” is all that strong. What matters is whether people of said other nations perceive the first nation to be the aggressor and are goaded into action, which propaganda easily makes independent of what the first nation actually does.
Investor
Posted at 06:30 am, 29th March 2018Completely untrue, instead wars look very different nowadays. What we have these days is instead of direct attach by a conventional army countries and groups do other things such as sending waves of immigrants with instructions of what they are supposed to do in the host country, election / media intereference/manipulation, etc… of course many of these things are not done by governments but by other organisations or even private companies. What will be necessary in the future is to be ready to not only respond to such actions as acts of war but also to be prepared to effectively fight multinational organisations and private (public) companies. You also think of putting a price on the head of a CEO of a company or members of NGOs etc.
Throughfare
Posted at 06:46 am, 29th March 2018A lot of interesting points in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygi310QdDcw
joelsuf
Posted at 10:43 am, 29th March 2018Didn’t I say this on a previous article? Compensate former black hats and make them into white hats? I STILL think this group should be able to get into social networks and shut down any attempts at collectivism or at least fine people for it.
Was there already an article on what Ascendia’s process of law enforcement would be? I may have missed it.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 11:27 am, 29th March 2018I don’t remember. Maybe.
Yep, great idea.
I know. You’re an authoritarian.
No but I’ve mentioned aspects of it. The short answer would be the each city would police itself and there would be no FBI.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 11:29 am, 29th March 2018Absolutely. 100% free speech would be allowed. Anyone can protest anything as long as they do it peacefully. In terms of the right to bear arms, that would be an unchangeable aspect of the Enforceable Constitution, so anti-gun protestors would be wasting their time, but they’d certainly be allowed to do it.
Internal security functions and severe punishments for treason, just like any other intelligence agency. I’m not an intelligence expert so I couldn’t give you any specifics beyond that.
Correct, and good point. These entities would have to be true free market entities, so the contractors would have to be required to have customers besides the Ascendian government (i.e. corporate contracts, other nations, etc) or else they would not be hired.
There would be an appropriation process in the Assembly, just like any other congress. A request would be made, it would have to be approved within the constraints of the budget (which could not be raised whenever the hell the government wanted), and so on.
Sure. There would have to be some safeguards of course, like having using multiple companies so they weren’t relying on just one company / country, etc.
That’s a good question and I’m not sure. Ascendia would not be run by “one person” though; rather by an Assembly of 1000 people, so that risk is mitigated at least to some degree.
You’re being silly. A nation that never attacks or interferes with other nations is significantly less at risk of foreign attack than a nation that regularly attacks/interferes with other nations, all other factors remaining equal… yes or no?
Haha I love Berwick. I’m going to meet him at Freedomfest in the summer. 🙂
Anon
Posted at 02:43 pm, 29th March 2018At first I also thought this point was silly, then I gave it more thought and suddenly it wasn’t all that silly. I was unable to recall any situations where a nation that had previously interfered with other nation(s) got military retaliation it had to defend itself from (not counting direct attacks on bordering states, of course these can swing back and forth). How many such occurrences can you name in the recent times (say 1991–present)?
Cronos
Posted at 06:37 am, 30th March 2018I like the series so far but on this instalment it sounds like you have been watching way too many James Bond movies. “We will just take down their leader!” Yeah, right. Do you really think it is that simple? It took the US billions of dollars and many years to kill Bin Laden, and that is just the leader of some terrorist organization hiding in mountain caves. The president of an enemy state would be far more difficult to kill. A small nation like yours would never be able to pull it off.
You wouldn’t like the enemy playing by those rules either. There is a reason all those “silly treaties” exist. Put bounties on the leaders of other nations and it won’t be long before they starting putting bounties on your head as well. At some point you will be paranoid about one of your own security guys killing you because some foreign leader put a 1 billion bounty on you.
Hackers can’t really do as much as people imagine. The hardest task they can manage is getting some celebrity nudes and uploading them on 4chan.
Damieon
Posted at 08:13 am, 30th March 2018You should call your spy agency Fearless Underground Cadre of Killers United. Other words: F.U.C.K.U. That way the enemy knows it’s personal. ?
Anon
Posted at 08:23 am, 30th March 2018Well, that’s exactly the reason putting a bounty is a good idea.
1) The entire bounty thing is in response to an attack on Ascendia only. So they have already made some hostile act and shown their true colors.
2) In theory at least, killing the leader of Ascendia changes nothing because all the other officials share the same ideals.
Just imagine being the only country in the world aware of Meltdown/Spectre.
The real problem however is that in many cases assassinating the leader will do nothing because the bad guys have some kind of ideals, too. Whom can France assassinate so Bataclan never happens again?
Caleb Jones
Posted at 11:16 am, 30th March 2018I seem to recall an issue with the twin towers in New York in 2001, as just one example.
Again, when has Hong Kong been attacked? How many wars as Switzerland ever engaged in? And so on.
Yes, you’re being silly.
You’re on a real “disagree just to disagree” thing lately.
Read what Anon said; he made most of my points for me. What you’re saying proves my point, and Ascendia is not ruled by one person; that’s the entire point.
Yep, to protect the elites while they send your children to get their heads blown off in needless wars.
Like your current system of perpetual war and the mass slaughter of innocents works so well. (Remember, if you’re attacking my system, you’re defending the current one (unless you have a brilliant third idea)).
Laws against the assassination of aggressing foreign leaders during times of declared ware are silly, stupid, and destructive, and only serve the elites at the expense of the rest of us. Period.
Anon
Posted at 01:59 pm, 30th March 2018By no account was the perpetrator of that a nation. Taliban was at worst a state sponsor of terrorism.
There are many countries not being attacked. Choose any random state outside Africa and Middle East, be it Mongolia, Jamaica or whatever, and more likely than not, there hasn’t been a war there for quite a while, thank [insert deity here] for that. And if you do look closely at Africa and Middle East, you’ll see that who kills whom isn’t based on what they did, but rather what group they belong to (ethnicity, religion etc.).
Absence of war only very weakly supports the “this country does things right” hypothesis.
And apparently by my next message my mood shifted to “agree just to agree” : )
Fan
Posted at 03:20 pm, 30th March 2018How do you prevent coups if the military consists 100% of contractors. What if the enemy nation place a bounty on this country first?
Steven
Posted at 12:10 am, 31st March 2018I can’t resist…You don’t honestly believe that another “nation” did that do you?
Cronos
Posted at 10:35 am, 31st March 2018My point is that those who want to earn the bounty will face the same difficulties the US army faced, WITHOUT the massive resources and backing of the US government. So it will be even harder.
The exact same thing can be said about the enemy nation. Lets say somehow you manage to kill their president. Ok, now the vicepresident takes over and he wants to continue the war. Now you have to kill the second guy in charge, etc.
Pointing out the flaws in your system is not the same as defending the current system. Not at all.
B
Posted at 11:49 am, 31st March 2018Taking every attack within the borders as a declaration of war would seem to create a few conflicting issues for this plan. Take the recent assassination of the former Russian spy and his daughter within UK borders. Imagine this happening in Ascendian territory, and for the sake of argument let’s say these Russians have successfully become Ascendian nationals. Do you declare war on Russia and immediately put a bounty on Putin’s head? What happens if Russia accepts Ascendia’s demand to “end hostilities”, but keeps murdering civilians within Ascendia’s borders? What level of proof is required to hold a foreign nation accountable for these kind of extra-judicial killings and what kind of retribution would need to be exacted before the war is ended? Seems like Ascendia may spend a lot of time at war with larger and more powerful nations if it reacts violently against every infringement within its borders.
Anon
Posted at 06:16 pm, 31st March 2018The idea is to appeal to bodyguards, spouses etc. And once this works, the next leader considering attacking Ascendia would understand that this will immediately become personal, and that he will have to hide from everyone.
So this could maybe work as deterrence, but maybe not against every threat. Religious fanatics seem to be less afraid of that, for instance.
Another thing to consider is that most current wars seem to follow the pattern of “fuel existing tension and ride it to seize power or use it as a bargaining chip”. Any country would do well to address such tension before anyone attempts to exploit it, but Ascendia, with its natural income disparity among the population, would be particularly susceptible to tension between groups, “us vs them” mentality, the rich being seen as oppressors etc.
Dave from Oz
Posted at 08:28 pm, 31st March 2018Without being part of the international banking system, Ascendia’s offer of a billion squares of monopoly money would be worthless. We have a world currency – it’s just not obvious.
History has shown again and again that nations that rely on mercenary troops quickly fall. The is the Achilles’ Heel of libertarianism – a nation cannot defend itself without a little blind patriotism, without citizen soldiers. At least some troops need to be willing to die for their country.
These government officials that command the mercenaries: do they have military rank? If so, you have a standing military. If not, they are public servants. Clerks. Where do you draw them from? Where do they learn tactics? Do you have a military college?
How does your mercenary military maintain readiness? Do they work as security guards, patrolling shopping malls? Are they out and about, doing wet work in Syria?
Your security-guard mercs commanded by career public servants (who they don’t respect) will be up against a cohesive army of trained troops with a carefully-cultivated habit of obeying orders, many of whom are ready to die for the glory of their country.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 11:20 am, 1st April 2018Utterly irrelevant. The USA interfered militarily in other nations and the attack was a direct result of this; it would not have happened otherwise. The people who died on 9/11 don’t care if the attackers were designated as a “nation” or not, nor do I, nor should you.
If that’s seriously your only argument, then I think I’ve made my point.
Nope, you were disagreeing with him too. I think you like to disagree on minor side-points, as your recent comments in various threads seem to indicate.
As I indicated above, it would not be 100% made up of the same military contractors; it would be multiple ones. You would have to place some kind of percentage limit on the size of the largest one too, say 30-40% or so.
Then it does. All leaders of nations run this risk. That’s why we have things like the secret service. This is the price of power, and if you don’t want to pay this price, don’t volunteer to take that power and stay out of politics.
If you look at most little wars in the last 60 years or so, the majority (or at least the plurality) were instigated in some way by tinpot dictators welding authoritarian (or near-authoritarian) power.
You’re talking about if Ascendia was attacked by a friendly democracy for no reason (since Ascendia wouldn’t ever instigate anything). Odds of this are quite low.
Wrong. It is if you don’t provide a third option in your argument.
I never said that. I said declarations of war would only be allowed if something within the borders was attacked. Indeed, Ascendia would go out of its way to not declare war if it could. Ascendia is about peace.
WTF? I never said Ascendia wouldn’t be part of the international banking system. Where the hell did I say that?
You guys really need to read better.
Alright, name five.
It would be the same now as the US Military as it relates to the US President. The government would give an objective to the military, set standards for avoiding civilian deaths, then stay out of it and the military would execute that objective as it would deem best. You would not have government officials like Lyndon Johnson pointing out specific bombing targets on a map, and this would be spelled out in the Enforceable Constitution.
No idea; that’s the contractor’s problem. During the bidding process they would have to show the government how they do it in order to compete with other contractors.
Tim
Posted at 06:50 pm, 3rd April 2018The only problem I have with this idea of an entirely private military is that if a richer nation was to be aggressive, what’s to stop that nation from buying off the mercenaries? This is especially a problem if Ascendia is constitutionally limited in the total amount they can pay those mercenaries.
While I think there is a good case to be made for paying mercenaries to do most of the dirty work, It seems like it would be essential to at least have some contingent of citizen soldiers, both to direct the private contractors and to serve as a redundancy in case of aggression by a significantly richer country. They wouldn’t have to be drafted but could be recruited, much as the US does today.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 06:22 pm, 4th April 2018One safeguard would be to use multiple companies, as I indicated above. It wouldn’t be like Russia could write one check and take over Ascendia’s entire military; it would be a little more complicated than that. But the point is valid.
That might be okay, as long as the majority of the military was made up of contractors.
xyz
Posted at 07:37 am, 24th April 2018How would the wife/children/bodyguard of the leader of the country who was bountied would be able to prove that he was the one who killed the leader? how will he be safe if he anoounces it right there?
and do u really tihnk the agencies like black water are trust worthy for a small , new country?