NationStates Jolt Archive

Just a thought,

In computating a nation's ability to wage war effectively we take into account GDP, tax rate, size of population, research, defense allocation, experience and allies. But what about plain old satisfied citizenry.

If I may OOC for a momment, its highly doubtful most Americans in RL would rebel against the current Washington government and ally with Mexico for example to take back Texas. Certainly a small minority would but for the most part everyone thinks that life iwth the current regirm is pretty good and see little reason to change allegiance.

Which leads me back to the point that hyper military machine nations who have runiously high tax rates, no money dedicated to social programs with everything going to the military and such and such would have quite a lot of disaffected citizenry. You could keep that in check with a brutal mechanism but the most brutal system would eventually crack. Sparta lasted a for a while but the combination of external invasion and internal rebellion proved to be too much.

So I propose that next time some mega war machine challeneges you keep in mind their unhappy citizens...just a thought

Seems like a good thought. RL countries with massive focus on the military tend to have unhappy citizens, and have to use most of their army opporessing their own people (Burma, for instance). Discontented citizens mean it's dangerous to send your military overseas, lest the people rise up while they're gone.

bump

Some truth to it. Though it's worth considering what makes the citizens happy, and what caused a given war.
And the high tax rate thing is a very ethnocentric yankee view, if you don't mind me saying. Some people, generally civilised and/or community-minded ones, don't mind paying high taxes if they can see benefits. 100% income tax need not be unpopular, for example. Of course if its all going on paying someone to point a gun at your mother you'll be less impressed than if its going on a new hospital and a cure for that pesky tumor up your backside.

Dra-pol, AKA North-Korea-on-PCP, spends about a third of its GDP on defence, and it is only through such that it survived a massive invasion. Indoctrination into the Idea is intense, of course. Still, partly as a result the cities of Hamhung and Hungnam are now under capitalist Christian rule since thousands of Drapoel abandoned the revolution in favour of pants with more stripes down the side, food with more fat and flavourings, and movies with less identifiable and realistic actors in them.

Each to their own.. we've still got more guns than they have.

I totally agree. This is a good thing to note.