Cormac Stark wrote:I'm not saying that TNI only raids, or even that raiding makes up the bulk of its activity. What I am saying is that its political and social culture is entirely reliant upon imperialism, which is in turn at least heavily reliant upon raiding. Imperialism is the underpinning for everything else TNI does and is its reason for existence. Of course you can go through dry spells in which there are few raids, that's not the point. The point is that without the prospect of raiding, TNI's imperialism would be significantly hindered -- because how does one really pursue imperialism without military aggression? -- and thus I believe TNI would collapse in such a scenario.
That's why I don't believe TNI's military activity would have been reduced for any significant period of time had TNI and the FRA reached a peace agreement. TNI would simply have found another region or organization against which to declare war, because war, aggression and raiding are necessary to sustain an imperialist region. To bring us back to the point, I'm saying that even if defenders ignored TNI you would still find a reason to raid because sustaining imperialism over the long term is impossible without raiding.
Imperialism is about projecting power. In TNI's case, this takes the form of wars with the FRA and UDL over violations of sovereignty they have committed. It is true that these wars are fuelled by raiding from a military perspective, which gives cause to raid, which means it can be argued that its imperialism is dependent on raiding, but how could TNI pursue an imperialist agenda of this kind if it never met with FRA and UDL military opposition? Targeting non-defender organisations in war hardly brings the same potential benefits with raiding, so would not provide anything like the same fuel for this specific imperialist policy, so there would be less rational incentive to pursue this policy.
Thus, it is true that mutual dependence operates between the existence of defender organisations and TNI's present strategic direction. However, that strategic direction is not the sole form of imperialism, merely a particular strategy which an imperialist region might deploy to further its interests. Gatesville and Great Britain and Ireland are two undeniably imperialist regions which maintained their strength without frequent raiding, while reserving the right to do so. Similarly, the periods in TNI history I just mentioned were not merely 'dry spells' but substantial periods of time in which the region's domestic well-being did very well (as indeed it does well and better now). Hence the idea that without raiding TNI 'completely collapses' is nonsense.
