how to conquer your own pocket empire

In My Humble Opinion
1

Hi, all. We’ve had global domination threads in the past, but let’s be honest - you need to walk before you can run. The best way to conquer the world is to first have some sort of state that can provide you with resources, security and legitimacy. Conquering your own fairly modest-sized empire should also be good practice for the full-scale global conquest.

So, starting from nothing, how would you force a small country (or part of a country) under your boot-heel? Which country or region would you go for?

A few rules:

1.) Your plan has to be feasible - magic and super-weapons are out. However, if you think you can convince your subjects you have magic or super-weapons, it’s perfectly fine to claim you have them.

2.) You’re a conqueror, not a democrat. Getting elected/appointed legitimately, and then dissolving the rest of the government, doesn’t count. That said, you’re free to hold sham elections once you’ve seized power.

3.) Remember, you’re in this for you , not the huddled masses. You want to make a lot more money from this enterprise than you’ll have to invest. Cheaper is better.

4.) At the end of the day, you need to end up with a big enough country that you might actually be recognized internationally. To be safe, let’s say nothing smaller than Luxembourg will do.

All set? Okay, I’ll start us off.

I’d go for Equatorial Guinea - it’s got a tiny population (about a half-million), huge oil reserves, and an incredibly corrupt government. (EG’s been called “the North Korea of Western Africa”.) Part of the country is on the African mainland, and part is scattered across a few islands. The capitol’s on Bioko Island, so I’d hit the mainland first.

I know I’m not the first Westerner to try to take over EG, but I like to think I’d be more successful. I’d do the Charles Taylor thing - land with a hundred or so hard-cases, then start with the terror campaign. P.W. Singer’s “Children at War” provides a fairly good outline of how to kidnap and otherwise recruit local children into my People’s Democratic Militia, so I’d use them to bulk out my forces and recruit other kids. The good thing about using child soldiers is that they’re easy to train, easy to replace, and surprisingly effective with small-arms - so if the government smacks me down (as they probably will, at least at first) I can go back to the bush and start again by kidnapping/recruiting some more kids. Eventually, I just grind the local government down.

Brutal, I know - but then, this isn’t for the faint of heart. What about you guys.

(Note: I’m actually a very nice guy who’d never try to conquer anyone. But it makes for a good intellectual exercise.)

2

Getting the support of the western superpowers would work well…“Yes, I’m a fascist warlord would-be emperor with an army of khat-addicted child soldiers…but I’m also not a communist or a fanatical muslim. Eh? YadigwhatI’msayin?”

I might even use “false flag” operations to gain support for myself, while making my opponents look abominable. Maybe I could even invent another faction to fight to gain public support. Say, I control faction B. Faction A is the dominant local power. Now, faction C shows up, allying with faction A. But then C starts acting up—like by mustard gassing a UN-controlled refugee camp, or kidnapping and lobotomizing some news correspondants. Stuff like that. Once international attention and outrage starts stirring up, faction A starts denying all knowledge of the atrocities, but my faction B manages to gain amazing victories against faction C, uncovering damning evidence of C’s guilt…and C’s possible involvement with your international pariah of choice (Al Qaeda, North Korea, SPECTRE, whoever). So my faction B starts looking like a rather pleasing alternative to the fanatical maniacs with low level WMDs on the other side—but we’ll need help to restore order, of course. Money, supplies…weapons…there’s a lot of ways I could take it from there.

I’ll also have to keep in mind that “brutal” and “incompetent” aren’t necessarily the same thing. Francisco Franco asted a lot longer than Jean-Bédel Bokassa, after all.