Something I have been meaning to post about a little more is weakness. If you look at intelligence services they have to study many parts of cultures, communication, weaponry, they really need to know as much as possible about the world. Not just to know about it but how to take advantage when needed, know possible outcomes the list goes on. Knowledge is power.

Most successful imperialist countries rely heavily on intelligence. Also countries that may not be imperialist in nature if successful will have great intelligence services. If you are going to colonise a country knowing their weak points is a necessity. You really need to know how they will react or at least have a few possible scenarios up your sleeve to make it work and some kind of overwhelming advantage.

Over the years somewhere in the world that you know nothing about is suddenly on the news. These places are normally an area full of regional disagreements and normally the countries highlighting the disagreements propose they are simply doing something pedestrian. Oh we are just in this contested area because it is a free world etcetera. When the country which is targeted. Yes targeted gets nasty and pushes back the other countries act like they are surprised by the unprovoked aggression.

Why these scenarios happen is think tanks, intelligence gathering and administrations see a weak point. If we do this and that there could be a flare up of aggression. The country we want to scapegoat will get caught up in various conflicts and we can consume their resources into a proxy war. These tactics are never explicitly outlined or stated. Some countries won’t budge and others go in all guns blazing.

So the next time you have a moment of talking about the ills of the world, have a good think about who set those scenarios up. Think about the geographical locations and flashpoints. It’s never really an ethical issue or moral failure. Groups of people spend their time cooking scenarios up and most of it is about proxy wars. Someone gets to sell weapons and make money. Wars can keep going on taking lives and exhausting treasuries. The real question looms, what if the intelligence services got it wrong?