By Scardino
23 Feb 2006 - 2 Mar 2006
Original source: http://z13.|invisionfree|.com/Lone_Wolves ... owtopic=87
As posted in the Naivetry Reference Library.
Preface
For the purposes of this essay, ADN will represent all of the ‘defender community’ (or what’s left of it) because, in truth, the crippled remnant of the ADN is all we have left to remember the days when defenders were powerful.
My reason for writing this essay is simply to counter the inherent misplaced confidence ADN seems to display far too often and to show them why, exactly, they mean absolutely nothing despite their confidence. Perhaps, I pray, if I break their hollow pride they will become wiser people (assuming they have progressed, by now, to humanity) for it and promote themselves to the rank of “Raider”.
Invaders
Lenin stated that imperialism is the highest form of capitalism. He said that as capitalism progresses through time, it will, at its peak, produce imperialism. Within the realms of the real world, Lenin was correct. However, within the planes of NationStates, there is something beyond imperialism. There is raiding. Raiding evolved from imperialism out of the need for a faster, more efficient form of imperialism. Imperialists invade a region and station troops there to maintain control of the latest conquest. Although they are effectively spreading their influence by assuming control and ownership of other regions, they limit themselves to their capabilities as based upon the number of troops they have at their disposal as compared to the number of troops required to take more regions.Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism in general. But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres.
"Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism", Vladimir Lenin
Marxists Internet Archive
Seeing this flaw and wanting to overcome it, the concept of raiding was born. In the practice of raiding, troops are sent into a region to take it over for a brief period of time for the sake of recognition of military superiority and taunting their enemies before leaving that region to invade another for the same purposes. That said, it is easy to see how, with competant leadership and a good level of activity, a force of five nations could become a highly successful raider force. The act of raiding can produce an infinite number of military victories without costing the organization a single troop or any amount of any other resource.
When one succeeds under a capitalist system, they recieve benefit. Raiders, being participants in the highest form of capitalism known to NationStates, obtain control of a region as well as the pride and ego that is developed with consistent success in conquering regions and defeating defenders at no cost to themselves. Raiding is, simply put, profit without investment.
Like imperialism, raiding is a proactive activity. A raider does not wait for reason or provocation to raid. A raider simply sees a region that it wants to take over and does it. Often times this is simply a quick strike before update that leaves the defenders completely unaware that they have, once again, been bested by their rivals. The defenders, in their ever vigilant state, are only aware of their defeat when it is anounced to them. A perfect example of this was LWU's experimental raid in the passworded region of Vietnam. The raider lead assumed the delegacy and held it for a total of 20 days before anouncing LWU's ownership without defenders ever realizing the region had been taken over. The significance of this will be explained in the next installment.
Defenders
While invading is a proactive activity, defending is entirely centered on a reaction to this action taken by the defender’s rival, the invader. Naturally, in a match up between a group that is proactive and a group that is reactive, the proactive group will have an advantage in both speed and surprise. Also, as a reactive ‘force’, the progress and evolution of the practice of defending is severely limited and can only progress to the point of equality with invaders at the very best. This alone has been one of the most important factors in the conservation of invader superiority in NationStates. As a reactive group, the defenders are not able to progress faster than those they are reacting to.
The competitive drive and inherent aggression that is so abundant in invading is nonexistent in defending. Rather than trying to take a region for reasons of boasting or personal gain, defenders try to reinforce what is already there to keep an act of domination from occurring. The lack of competitive drive in defending is what hurts the activity of most defender regions and can be seen easily when defenders say that defending is getting boring or even go so far as to assume that NationStates as a whole is dying. The act of successfully defending a region never carries the same level of aggression or entertainment as the act of invading a region and, as a result, invaders are motivated by their successes much more than defenders. The dull, tedious job of looking at numerous regions waiting for an invasion in one of them must be excruciatingly boring for anyone despite their level of ‘commitment’ to NationStates or the wellbeing of the defenseless regions that invaders feast themselves upon nightly.