Invasion

I’ve just finished my reading of David Brin’s The Postman and had this delightful insight about the invasion of other countries. In many stories of war, an occupational force must set up its own command system to control the recently acquired region. Often they attempt recruit natives who led the resistance into fairly high positions in the new chain of command. This strategy is remarkably efficient. In the first case, you are now putting into position people that the natives are used to following, and who’re obviously qualified leaders. In this manner, you save yourself a great deal of petty, humanistic squabbling and chaos that would surely result from the appointment of your immediate command. In a single stroke you can avoid the training period any of your own men would have to undergo in dealing with the locals, as well as the inherent distrust they have toward yourself. Invasion is bad enough, but a complete replacement of local government is far worse (and prohibitively expensive, both in resources, time, and lost cooperation).