The Emerging Neomedieval Order
An introduction to the nation-state's failure and the on-going reversion to medievalism.
“In a real sense, maximum disorder was our equilibrium.” T.E. Lawrence(?)
The societies of Western nation-states have undergone much change in the last 50 years. There has been a precipitous drop —especially in the last 20 years— in faith in the media and government institutions. At the same time political divides have widened and formerly homogeneous or nearly homogeneous states have become multi-ethnic. This has all tracked with an increasing concentration of wealth among the top 10%, particularly the top 1%, and a hollowing out of the middle-classes and expansion of Non-State Actors. If you’re reading this it is probably not news to you. But the implications just might be so; it’ll be argued that these changes (and others) are weakening the nation-state to such an extent that it is progressively giving way to a neomedieval order.
The Nation-State’s Mass Military Needs Masses of Warm Bodies
The types of war which are engaged give a window to how states will be organised into the future. The future zeitgeist. The existence of all zeitgeists is maintained by their ability to defend and expand due to their efficacy in war; if a political order cannot defend or expand itself it is living on borrowed time. Solely the force of inertia.
A tripartite division can be made to conceptualise the different types of war that have taken hold over history. These are: ‘Princely Wars’ (i.e medieval wars) which were dominant from the medieval period to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648; ‘Cabinet Wars’ which were dominant from the Peace of Westphalia until they were upended by ‘People’s Wars’ with the rise Revolutionary France in 1792. Princely wars involved relatively few fighting men and had the aim of enriching a feudal lord as well as his allies and retainers and involved the use of mercenaries. There was limited involvement of the masses and they did not think of it as ‘their’ war.
After the Peace of Westphalia, the pattern of war evolved. Mercenaries declined in use and states centralised headed by an absolute monarch who obtained a monopoly on violence, unlike the previous chaotic era with overlapping power centers. Still, the wars had minimal involvement of the masses as wars were being fought over trade routes and land explicitly for the benefit of the monarch. Armies were professionalised as centralised states became more effective at extracting taxes but could not yet inspire or compel the masses to join the fight.
The victorious French revolutionaries held an ideology based on empowering the masses. Feared and hated by all of their neighbours, the regime was in a precarious position when it came into power in 1792. But the same egalitarian ideology that brought it its enemies allowed it to institute mass-conscription, where France could make use of its demographic weight and summon fanatic peasant armies with overwhelming numbers far in excess of what any other state could marshal in Europe. Truly vast quantities of warm bodies. This would be the birth of the ‘People’s War’ and it allowed one state to dominate the continent. The People’s War has aims beyond individual actors, it is fought for ideology. Ideologies that are mass-movements, such as nationalism, Communism, republicanism and fascism. Europe would see 3 more major ‘People’s Wars’ with WWI, the Russian Civil War and WWII. These are wars where the whole population is mobilised, mass-conscription of young males is enacted and nearly the entire populous of a state is dedicated to totally defeating the enemy state/ideology.
But could a ‘People’s War’ be fought today? Many might have reflexively cited nuclear weapons as making any type of war between the kinds of states that would engage in a People’s War (i.e developed, organised states) impossible; but Russia-Ukraine war suggests that these states can go to war. The Russian government is fighting a land war on its border, indeed as of January 2025 at the time of writing, there is Russian territory occupied by the enemy Ukraine. Yet the Russian government still doesn’t believe that conscription is viable. If it were viable, they would have done it. The Russian government isn’t closing down fast food restaurants, ordering the former employees to put on their work boots to build a munitions plant or join a 4 million strong conscript army. There is no conscript army. The Russian government is actively trying to make sure that the material effects of the war are affecting the average Russian as little as possible, at the expense of the war effort. A peacetime standard of living during wartime.
Unable to inspire through nationalism or compel by force the millions of men it needs to war, Russia has resorted to giving exorbitant salaries and sign-on bonuses to volunteer recruits. With these policies, Russia from March 2022 to the end of 2023 (~20 months) claims to have recruited 490 000 people. Contrast this with Britain when war was declared against Germany in 1914. Britain had managed to recruit over 1 million volunteers within 4 months. Quite the difference. Standard pay for the British army in WW1 was nothing special either.
Russia is not unique in this transition. During the 1960s and 70s during the Vietnam War the United States government wasn’t aware of the times they were in and by utilising the draft caused historic protests at home and killings of military officers by their own men on the battlefield. In the end America surrendered, the draft was ended and the enemy won. An all volunteer force of professionals took the place of conscripts to fight in the first Gulf War, while Global War On Terror started out as an all volunteer force of US government soldiers, it evolved into something different (which we will explore later). Unlike World War 2 where the US instituted rationing of fuel, food and goods to support the war effort, Americans during wartime in the 2000s were encouraged by George Bush Jr. to increase consumption of consumer goods and go to Disneyland. The American state was not transformed and oriented towards war, domestic divisions of the government hamstrung military options and ultimately the wars that were fought did not result in victory.
An ending of mass-conscription, lack of civilian mobilisation and a professionalisation of the army. These are all the hallmarks of a shift in war type away from the People’s War which forged the modern global political order to the pre-Napoleonic Cabinet’s War. A definitive progression closer to medievalism.
Loss of National Consciousness
At my Australian High School, there was a weekly assembly of all students and time was always set aside for us to sing the national anthem. Yet almost no one sung it. Some would mouth it, others hum, while many did nothing at all. At most someone would start to sing it, lasting about 10 seconds before folding back into the hum. The only exception was our principal, who had served in the military. Even he struggled, and not for lack of memory of the lifeless lyrics, but in the battle against the apathy of everyone around him. This is emblematic of the loss of national consciousness that has occurred in Western countries, though I doubt we Westerners are the only ones. The loss of national consciousness makes the current political order and all others that have been seen since the French Revolution untenable. German-speakers of the 13th century cannot fight for anything but God, family, their local lord or money. The national consciousness simply does not exist.
Shortages of military recruits is a common problem to many Western countries. Despite generally offering salaries + benefits equal to or in excess of what would be found in private industry for an average young man there is a deficit of applicants. The flag simply isn’t motivating enough to die for anymore. This calls in to question the viability of even the professionalised state militaries that are supposed to fight the post-Vietnam Cabinet’s War. Indeed, the United States has been afflicted with an enduring shortage of recruits, this is despite replacing much of their front-line soldiers with mercenaries (Private Military Contractors). The significance of the use of mercenaries can be most clearly seen through their share of total combat deaths. As of 2020, total US military service-member (government soldier) fatalities in Iraq numbered at 4586, while total Private Military Contractor fatalities in Iraq numbered at least 3413. So as at least 43% of total American fatalities in Iraq were American Private Military Contractors. 2009 was the point when American Private Military Contractor fatalities year-on-year surpassed those of US government soldiers. Such a ratio of mercenary to state soldier fatalities in an army is more reminiscent of a medieval campaign than what would have been considered a “modern” war for the last 250 years.
Any attempt to fight the long-term trend of neomedievalism by forcible conscription will end as Vietnam ended. Additionally, any attempt to “change the culture” to get more volunteers will have the same effect as my school principal awkwardly singing the national anthem. The pressure or emotion to “answer the call” of the nation-state has been lost due to multiple factors. The key complaint is “what are we fighting for”. It’s an important one. What precisely a Brit, Australian, Frenchman, American, Canadian etc. is has lost much definition since the end of World War 2, particularly in the last 40 years. Intra-country political and ethno-religious differences now trump inter-country hatred. People also do not trust the media as they once did, so the media does not have a monopoly on truth which it once had. Use of the media is a crucial tool in rallying the masses for secular wars, without it the need for coercion multiplies. Coercion, which the outcome of Vietnam in the United States showed cannot be supplied. I don’t think that there is anything that would cause majority of Western male Zoomers to be out on the streets protesting, rioting or otherwise actively resisting the government; with the sole exception of military conscription to a war. Gen Alpha will be much the same.
Rise of Non-state Actors and the Decline of the State
The world since 1970 has been characterised by the rise of Transnational Criminal Organisations, Multi-National Corporations, Transnational Terror Groups and Non-Governmental Organisations. These can be aggregated as “Non-state Actors”. While Non-state Actors did exist in 1970 and before, they were far more limited in their scope and power. Today an immigrant American man worth half a trillion dollars can decide to enable the free exchange of information and debate around the world through his Non-state Actors X/Twitter, and openly insult and embarrass the heads of state of ‘powerful’ European countries. Sons of Mexican drug-lords (such as Ovidio Guzman Lopez) can successfully avoid arrest by having their private armies threaten to massacre civilians and military personnels’ families.
The utter failure of the government faction in the War on Drugs is another example of Non-state Actors’ rise. By failure I am not referring to a vague human cost that some decry by the imprisoning drug users, but the failure of the stated goal of policies associated with the War on Drugs to eradicate or nearly eradicate narcotics consumption. The War on Drugs is a clear nation-state versus Non-State Actor battle. Government agencies pitted against street gangs, transnational drug cartels and domestic political opposition. The topic is an article itself, but the short of it is that drug cartels have, despite the hundreds of billions spent by the US government since 2000, and what came before, the cartels as an aggregate are as strong as ever. The cartels have proven highly flexible and adaptable. The aftermath of the Mexican government’s “kingpin crackdown” that began in 2006 was not the elimination of violent non-state entities, but their decentralisation and their escalation to a hyper-violent culture.
After Los Zetas split from the Gulf Cartel in 2010 it ushered in a new era of brutality in Mexico. In 2011 Los Zetas kidnapped several buses full of prospective non-Mexican illegal immigrants moving towards the United States; raped and killed the women, and forced the men to fight to death like the condemned of Rome with knives, hammers and machetes. The men who ‘won’ were then reportedly ordered on suicide missions against Los Zetas’ rivals. All in all the official death toll added to 193, although a Los Zetas cartel-boss Edgar Huerta Montiel who personally killed 10 migrants in a different massacre stated in an interrogation that there may have been 600 deaths. Make of that what you will.
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Elsewhere, the Houthis (aka Ansar Allah), a Non-State Actor, have famously imposed a selective naval blockade on the Bab-el-Mandeb straits -- without an actual navy. In December 2023 the navies of the US and their European ‘allies’ initiated Operation Prosperity Guardian to stop the Houthi menace. Evidently, it has not succeeded. Incompetence on the West’s side and the changing nature of warfare due to technologies (that will be expanded upon next) and the competence of the Houthis are another blow to the authority of the nation-state. Today shipping companies are reported to make clandestine payments estimated at 180 million USD per month to the Houthis for safe passage, something which the Houthi leadership has officially denied.
The absence of the state’s monopoly on violence is a key feature of medievalism, so the resilience and strengthening of Non-State Actors despite the efforts of the state is another signal of the transition to neomedieval conditions.
The Declining Costs of Warfare
Over the past 4 years drones have changed the battlefield in wars across the world. Ukrainians and Russians effectively use thousand dollar modified civilian FPV (First Person View) drones to neutralise each other’s infantry offensives and render multi-million dollar pieces of equipment such as tanks out of service. Long and complex supply-lines are less tenable due to FPV drone attacks on vehicles.
The Houthis utilise drones and missiles that cost thousands of dollars to sink ships and impose a blockade without a navy. Western navies are forced to fire multi-million dollar intercept missiles to stop them, a clear asymmetry. And it is not an asymmetry which the declining Western nation-states have managed to beat. Ukraine, a country that also does not at this point have a traditional navy, has managed to sink a third of the Russian Black Sea fleet relatively cheaply using drones and missiles. This has broken the naval blockade that Russia imposed against Ukrainian exports, although nominal exports remain low due to the war.
Hoards of money and the shiny weapons it can buy can’t do what it used to. Recent technological innovations and novels application of those technologies have tipped the balance of potential firepower away from large, wealthy and organised states towards smaller, poorer and less organised groups, chiefly Non-State Actors. This represents a declining cost of warfare. The incumbent, that is the nation-states, particularly the Western ones, are most at risk - as is always the case in a changing world. Another accelerant for the neomedieval order.
Conclusion
The erosion of the nation-state due to changing demographics, social attitudes and technologies has been an ongoing process for the last 50 years and the evidence points to this continuing. The direction of the world is increasingly being determined by multiple overlapping power-centres that are not affiliated with a nation or the community of nations, as nation-states are losing their ability to act as independent actors due to a loss in their military effectiveness and legitimacy. Nation-states are unable to raise the armies and corral the population in the manner which they did from 1800 to 1970, a change which is irreversible and therefore will leave more nimble and appealing Non-State Actors to continue to be ever more important players in the world.
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Addendum
In future posts I may go more into the specifics of the evolution of the drug cartels and terrorist groups’ military effectiveness and influence. More detail about innovations they are utilising and challenges presented to governments. I encourage discussion in the comments about these topics.
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Here’s a new in depth post on the Mexican drug cartels’ military and organisational structure. Their similarities with McDonald’s, and the fact that McDonald’s franchise structure beat the familial mafias is as hilarious as it is shocking. Family diner vs McDonalds I guess. If you liked this article you love the next:
Drug Cartels Are Evolving: Military and Organisational Transformation of Mexican Cartels 1970 - 2025
Throughout this article I employ the term ‘cartel’ liberally as a catch all to refer to all organised criminal groups in Mexico. This is how it is conventionally used both informally and in the media so for the sake of clarity it is the term I will use.
I see small ethno-states appearing from the wreckage of failed multi-ethnic ones. Smaller, but solid states of people working together.
This is one hell of a thesis, Blue Vir. A rather curious position. I'm surrounded by Russians who expect a NATO invasion, and you are here surrounded by actual Western values which are pacifist and loving of their enemies. One proper counter-argument is that America can use its high-tech nuclear submarines and plentiful aircraft to support a ground-invasion mainly led by Poland and its neighbours - so the meat for the grinder would be offered by the Slavic "auxiliaries". And so a total war would be possible.
Second, the fact that Russia isn't mobilising is typically explained by the conjecture that Putin is a CIA spy sabotaging the war effort, not by the supposed fear of a communist pacifist uprising lmao
Third, how are you explaining the Ukrainian war effort which is abducting people off the street rather successfully, and with no clamour from the population?
Fourth, how did the US state fail in the war on drugs if the drugs are spread by the CIA, and the CIA is the American state?
Fifth, how are the Houthis a non-state actor if they occupy 90% of Yemen?
> "Western navies are forced to fire multi-million dollar intercept missiles to stop them, a clear asymmetry."
They are only "forced" to do this either by their pacifism (inability to genocide and settle Yemen with blond, blue-eyed kids), OR by using the Houthis as a tool to strangle China.
Overall, the thesis is rather bogus. America has total planetary control in all things that matter. The only resistance to it has been cultural - like in the Hindu acid attacks and openings of Barelvi mosques to the murderers of the blasphemers. That America has prohibited itself the use of arms larger than police actions in Iraq (with negligible bloodshed and no genocide) is not a factor against war as such.
See Azerbaijan, the DPRK, the Ukraine and Israel for examples of nation-states conducting successful modern military operations with state powers and national propaganda.