Genghis Khan Creates an Unstoppable Dragon
If you don't know about these guys, I urge you to follow the link, sit back and let Carlin tell the story. That will be much more informative than anything I have to say about them.
As always, in this blog, the subject is "Dragon Theory". The Khans are important in this theory because they created the most successful military machine in history. The machine crushed all opponents from China to the Middle East, from the Mediterranean to Eastern Europe.
THE DRAGON
You can think of the army of the Khans as the "Dragon", but it's different from modern "dragons" in that it is composed entirely of living things -- men and horses. Modern armies have a lot of hardware and you usually think of the "Armed Forces" in terms of their massive amounts of high-tech equipment.
On a more subtle level, the army of the Khans wasn't even about men and horses. The Khans slaughtered or absorbed many of their immediate neighbours who used the same "technology" to much less success.
It may be that the Khan's "dragon" consisted of a new discipline imposed on an old tradition of rape, pillage and conquest. In modern terms, the Khan's "re-programmed" the Mongol hoards to make them unstoppable. A key element of the "reprogramming" was ruthless internal discipline that prescribed the death penalty for the slightest deviation from absolute loyalty to the Khan. This was strengthened by the idea that defeat or retreat in the face of the enemy was also punishable by death.
The effect of these brutal rules was to turn the Mongol army into a machine. As much as possible, the machine would perform exactly as instructed.
THE INTELLIGENT MACHINE
Reconnaissance of the enemy was a crucial element of Khan military philosophy. Scouts would be sent out to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the enemy, often years before the enemy was attacked. The Mongols established excellent "pony express" systems for internal control of the empire as well, allowing the military machine to act as a single conquering dragon over a vast area.
THE MEME
Memes play an important role in conquest and control. In Dragon theory, they serve to provide a consistent language of control and assimilation. Here are some Mongol "memes" that tended to survive challenge:
- Obey the Khan or die
- If you surrender you die
- The Khan is appointed by heaven to rule the world. Bow down or be destroyed.
- Conquered people are cattle. They can be used or slaughtered at whim
Assimilation was another key factor in the Khan's success. When a population was conquered, "useful" people were separated out (the rest usually slaughtered). For example, Chinese experts in siege warfare (previously unknown to the raiders of the plain) were absorbed into the Khan's forces without making a ripple in the basic strategy of rape, plunder and slaughter.
Some of the most able generals in the Khan's army were assimilated from conquered rivals.
As previously mentioned, assimilation applied to the entire Mongol force. The choice was always clear: submit or die.
CONTROL OF THE MACHINE
The Khans exercised unique control over the Mongol war machine. The Khans themselves and their generals had total control over the machine which was uniquely controllable. This contrasts with, say, the US military machine with its thousands of generals and millions of soldiers who may or may not do what they are told. This is especially true of the civilian "commander in chief" who is not himself a warrior, has no understanding of actual war and has no effect at all on the detailed conduct of the military machine. The modern commander basically has just an on/off switch.
The controllability of the Mongol machine owed a lot to its being technically a century ahead of its enemies. It simply rolled over the feeble defences of Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Modern military machines have a harder time because their enemies tend to fight back effectively, often in ways that make sophisticated high-tech weapons irrelevant. A car may be "controllable" on a nice dry highway but impossible to control in a swamp. There is a difference between the machine and the ability to control of the machine, which depends on the context and, to a large extent, the driver.
On the other hand, it's clear that total control did not mean that the Mongol war machine could be used for anything at all. It was a machine of ruthless destruction. We see this problem in modern times as successive American administrations try to use the Military in "Nation Building" exercises. Ruthless destruction are what armies are for.
TAMING OF THE DRAGON
Eventually, the Khans had killed off all the opposition in a vast area and could settle down to ruling it. Their assimilated Chinese administrators convinced them that it made more long term sense to allow their subjects to live and either enslave or tax them. Thus, the Mongols would eventually become a bureaucratic empire, similar in many ways to all the empires that have risen and fallen for the last 10,000 years. The military "machine" became an instrument of the bureaucracy or "politics by other means".
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