Nietzsche & Realpolitik: On the Purpose of War and Conflict | The Masters’ Game 1
a Short Essay for the Modern Existentialist
DISCLAIMER: This essay contains discussion of potentially sensitive or offensive topics. The Modern Existentialist does not in any way encourage, support, or condone any forms of violence, discrimination, or oppression. This series has been created strictly for educational purposes only, in order to facilitate discussion of and allow a broad audience to explore and understand the historical and theoretical context and causes which underpin such acts as war, violence, and genocide. We respect and honor the struggle and strife of all victims of discrimination and oppression, and we believe that education, open discussion, knowledge, and understanding are what will ultimately lead to the creation of a more egalitarian world for all.
1 | What is Necessary
We can empirically observe that to survive within our physical reality, a human being requires these things:
Food: to eat
Water: to drink
Shelter: to fend off the elements
All of these things are what we call Resources—and, throughout all of human history and beyond, it’s been necessary to have access to as much of these things as possible in order to guarantee one’s continued existence; one’s survival.
Wars are not fought for the sake of morality—in the name of Good & Evil. Instead, they’re fought in the name of survival—for the sake of the Good & Bad. The goal of those Masters—those Pragmatists who choose to play the Game—is not to slay monsters or demons… but instead, to collect and aggregate as much and as many Resources as possible in order to be able to better guarantee the survival of their tribe, society, or civilization.
All Resources come from Territory—from a physical space: the land of the Earth itself. Water rains down onto this land, and can be drawn from streams and wells. Food, and materials from which Shelter may be fashioned, grow from land which has been well-watered. Thus, the board upon which the Masters’ Game is played… is the land—the face of the Earth itself.
A Game of survival—of life or death.
Hegel refers to this Game which is played as the Master-Slave Dialectic; an eternal struggle for dominance which is fought between rival parties in which the victor becomes the Master—he who is free, and has the Power and Agency to shape the world according to his designs—and, in which the loser becomes the Slave—he who has lost Power, and, therefore, must submit to the will of the Master… or else.
2 | The Master’s Gambit
The goal of any player or participant in this Game—any Master at the helm of a tribe, society, or civilization—is to control and consolidate Territory to the best of his ability. In so-doing, he will be able to secure a source of Resources, which will help to guarantee the survival, sustainability, and prosperity of him and his people. Nothing else is of greater importance; and, in the end, any-and-everything else which is done—every move which is made upon the board—is done with this goal in mind.
When dealing in conquest and domination, however, land doesn’t simply just become controlled. Instead, it is people—Subjects and Agents—who act upon the land. It’s only people who are able to exercise Agency in order to claim, occupy, and work the land—and, thus, it’s only ever people who are capable of holding, defending, and controlling it. And so, in order to establish control over a given Territory—and, therefore, the Resources within it—either the allegiance or compliance of its occupants must be obtained... by whatever means is necessary.
Thus, the purpose of Oppression is this:
Control, consolidation, and domination of the occupants of a given Territory… and, therefore, of the Resources there-in.
Within the Masters’ Game, there are only two paths toward victory—toward the complete domination of the Rival-Other who would compete against the Master’s people for the Resources necessary for survival and prosperity. These are:
Assimilation: a complete consolidation and absorption of a Rival
Annihilation: a complete destruction and eradication of that Rival.
This is what we call the Master’s Gambit—that is:
The strategic choice between employing the tactics of the fist or the open hand.
3 | Assimilation-as-Stratagem; Annihilation-as-Stratagem
In a kinder and more ideal world, Assimilation would be the only Gambit played by any Master on the board. It is, after all—on paper, at least—the most sheerly economical method through which a Master can achieve victory for himself and his people. To wage war, after all—to attempt Annihilation—is, first-and-foremost, a fundamental waste of Resources. And, to collect and aggregate Resources is—in the first place—the whole god-damn point to begin with.
What it means to wage a war is to commit to the complete expenditure of all the Resources necessary to:
Engage in a complex and prolonged game of large-scale logistical maneuvering.
Guarantee an army of human beings the necessities, comforts, and potential rewards necessary to convince them to march toward the significant possibility… of imminent death.
Destroy the existing human infrastructure of the Rival, and then expend even more Resources funding its complete reconstruction and replacement in the event of victory.
All of this, with the assumption that the Master will emerge victorious, and thus be able to complete a total Annihilation of the Rival and his people. All of this, without mentioning the potential risk that the Master and his people may, in actuality, lose this war, and thereafter have expended and wasted vital Resources only to have placed themselves in a position of disadvantage.
The strategy of Assimilation, in contrast, is an attempt made at coaxing a Rival and his people into submitting to the Master’s rule—and thus, allowing themselves to be integrated and consolidated into the Master’s society as now a part of his people. Thus, when applied effectively, Assimilation is a strategy which would allow the Master and his people to effectively gain control of and consolidate new Territory and Resources—as well as new human Capital—without having to resort to the incredibly taxing and fundamentally wasteful Gambit of total Annihilation.
Through policies such as subsidized public education or religious ministry—or sometimes more aggressive tactics such as cultural genocide or compulsory indoctrination—any given Master will find that Assimilation is, at baseline, the most efficient means through which to achieve the goals of:
Control, consolidation, and domination of the occupants of a given Territory—and, therefore, of the Resources there-in.
Nothing is perfect, however—and, like all things, the strategy of Assimilation finds within itself its own fatal flaw. Assimilation is slow—potentially requiring the passing of entire generations before it’s truly able to run its course.
Though it may seem at first glance as though it’s the case that war is… well, entirely unnecessary… it is, in fact, most often the case that war is actually inevitable. A Master, after all, only has one lifetime—human beings can only live for so long. A Master, like any other Man or Woman, has only so long that he’s willing to wait—only so much time and Agency with which he’ll be able to shape the world according to his own will.
And so, though it may seem at first glance as though it would always be the ideal course of action… in reality, it’s often the case that Assimilation is neither a suitable nor ideal strategy for the Master to employ—at least, if he values the guarantee of the survival of his own people. Often, it’s instead the case that the most appropriate course of action for a Master to take is… to kill them all.
To employ the strategy of Annihilation in order to better guarantee the survival of his own people.
Annihilation, after all, is a strategy which targets goals achievable within one lifetime—and thus, is a strategy which could potentially be both employed and pushed to completion by one single Master with a significantly slimmer margin of error. By means of systematic and targeted slaughter, a piece of given Territory can be quickly drained of potentially rebellious or disloyal Agents. Through the murder of the Rival-Other and his people, a Territory can be cleared of its original inhabitants, creating a vacuum of human Capital. This vacuum can then, in theory, be filled—resettled and reconstructed with-and-by loyal elements instead; by colonists who identify themselves as the Master’s people.
Annihilation, however—though its potential may appear alluring to a given Master—can often instead actually represent a catastrophically high-risk maneuver. The Rival, after all, is a Rival Master—and his people, Other people. The Rival and his people represent Other Subjects—quite literally, human beings—who will not die easily and will not die willingly, but instead, will rise in defense of their Territory; for the sake of their Resources and survival.
Thus, if the Master and his people fail in their attempt to wage an efficient war—in their attempt to enact a policy of total Annihilation—then the Rival and his people may quickly adapt, metastasizing into entrenched rebellion. And rebellion—at any scale—will quickly transform into a constant drain on the Resources of the Master’s people. Such a long and drawn-out conflict is the bane of the Master’s Gambit—the most Resource-intensive method, and the worst of all possible choices. Such inefficiency quickly becomes an unsustainable liability—a gaping hole left wide-open in any Master’s defensive strategy, and a blunder which would quickly prove quite easily exploitable upon the arrival of yet another Rival Master.
4 | Conclusions
In the end, the question of Assimilation or Annihilation is the question of a choice to be made between the enactment of a policy of inclusion or exclusion. The Master’s Gambit can be described as a simple question of in-groups and out-groups—of who counts as “us”, and who counts as “them”. The goal of any-and-every Master who chooses to play the Game is to establish and secure as-wide-as-possible a margin of Territory and Resources in order to better-ensure the survival, sustainability, and prosperity of him and his people.
But who is really that counts as “Man”, when we say that:
Who is it really that counts as “people”, when we say:
In a game of life or death, it matters not how many people die in the name of victory. The penalty for defeat, after all… will always be greater.
