- Machiavelli’s core argument is that conquest is spiritually and morally necessary, not merely a geopolitical strategy. He warns that prolonged peace and luxury breed moral decadence—softness, self-righteousness, and internal division—while danger, necessity, and the act of conquering cleanse the soul, instill sobriety, and forge strong character. This lecture explores why Machiavelli urges conquest, how he believes it should be done, and how his ideas might be adapted to the 21st century.
Why Machiavelli Urges Conquest
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Peaceful stability breeds moral decay
- When people live in comfort without exposure to necessity, they become morally decadent—not because they are evil, but because there are no consequences for their softness.
- Machiavelli calls this “effeminacy”: a soft incompetence that moralizes its own weakness, calling lack of martial vigor “humility” and inability to achieve glory “humanity.”
- The post-war West, especially America, exemplifies this: its culture wars over trivial topics would be laughable to anyone who has lived under real necessity (e.g., in parts of Asia, Africa, South America, or Eastern Europe).
- The dead giveaway of a degenerate culture is when people make “professions of good”—believing goodness stands on its own, independent of power.
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Necessity is the cure for decadence
- Necessity—circumstances that compel virtuous (ruthless, manly, prudent) action—comes in many forms: physical danger, economic pressure, harsh laws, or even the psychological impulse stirred by great oratory.
- A friend from the University of Chicago attributed its strong free speech culture not to the Constitution or faculty, but to the constant presence of violence in Hyde Park. The ever-present police, emergency buttons, and private security force acted as a reality check, sobering students against impractical moral posturing like “defund the police.”
- Tolkien’s Gandalf shouting “You shall not pass” while wielding secret fire reflects a man who understood necessity (WWI veteran writing during WWII). The 2020s TV adaptation’s Gandalf shouting “I am good” reflects a generation that has known only peace and luxury—and has lost moral realism.
- Machiavelli does not love war for its own sake. He favors limited, shocking acts of violence (e.g., Brutus executing his own sons, Cesare Borgia killing his minister) that restore proportion and sobriety—not world wars.
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Expansion is the only viable external strategy
- Machiavelli frames the choice as false: you either rise or fall. The opposite of conquering is not stability—it is being conquered.
- Stable powers (like Sparta or Switzerland) may last long, but they are at fortune’s mercy. Switzerland’s bunkers, demolition points, and artillery may not survive modern drone swarms or air forces.
- Italy’s city-states failed to unify, so they were conquered and dominated for centuries by Spain, Austria, and the Holy Roman Empire.
- Even when stable powers win wars, victory destroys them. Sparta won the Peloponnesian War but was ruined overnight: managing Athens and its colonies required puppet governments, permanent garrisons, and influxes of wealth that corrupted its austere egalitarianism.
- America, by contrast, is built for expansion—it knows how to absorb diverse peoples, manage overseas territories, and install puppet governments. It would not have to change who it is to rule new conquests.
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Machiavelli’s ultimate reason for preferring conquest: controlling fortune
- He does not give blanket advice that all states must conquer. Stable states like Tuscany or Switzerland should generally stay the course, since reorienting an entire society toward conquest is too disruptive.
- But he ultimately sides with expansion because it puts you in the driver’s seat. As a conquering power, you decide when to war. As a stable power, you are at the mercy of fortune.
- The goal is always to conquer fortune itself.
How Machiavelli Believes States Should Conquer
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Three modes of conquest: Tuscan, Spartan, and Roman
- Machiavelli identifies three strategies in Discourses Book 2, Chapter 4, using Tuscany, Sparta, and Rome as models.
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The Tuscan mode (leagues of equal partners) is limited
- States form a league with no central authority; all rulers sit on a committee. It is easy to acquire and preserve territory because no one’s interests are seriously harmed.
- But leagues lack offensive momentum. Incentives are diluted: if 15 rulers share spoils, each bears full risk for 1/16th of the reward. Boldness and creativity must come from one, not many.
- The UN’s constant “urging restraint” is a modern example. Leagues are good at maintaining, not expanding.
- After feeling safe, leagues pursue money through client states or mercenary work—as Switzerland did.
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The Spartan mode (direct rule over subjects) is bloody and unsustainable
- Conquering a foreign republic whose people are used to freedom and different customs requires ruining them—destroying their institutions, dispersing their people—or they will always rebel in the name of liberty.
- Even conquering a culturally similar principality requires killing the ruler and all potential rivals.
- This mode drains resources through permanent garrisons, breeds private loyalties between generals and soldiers that supersede loyalty to the state, and provokes desperate resistance.
- It is incompatible with infinite expansion.
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The Roman mode (junior partners) is the best strategy
- Rome invited nearby states as junior partners—they kept their laws and elites but obeyed Rome’s commands. This solved the incentive problem of leagues.
- Rome then directed its junior partners to conquer further nations using the Spartan mode. The junior partners bore the costs; the new subjects were loyal to Rome because they were defeated under the Roman banner and governed by Roman governors.
- Once Rome had enough firepower, it betrayed its junior partners and turned them into subjects.
- The key art of Roman conquest was fraud, not force. Under the guise of partnership, Rome made others servile. Machiavelli calls using fraud in war “a glorious thing” because it is more humane and efficient than brute force.
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Rome’s three flywheels: people, money, and speed
- People: Rome integrated conquered peoples, granted citizenship to those who shared Roman values, and absorbed entire states as allies. Unlike Sparta, Rome was open; unlike the modern West, it was hyper-selective about values. Rome never went halfway: it either showered groups with gifts and citizenship or demolished their towns, dispersed their populations, and eliminated them.
- Money: Rome used settlers (colonists) as frontier guards instead of expensive permanent garrisons. In early days, spoils of war went mostly to the public, not private hands, to prevent corrupting inequality. Wars were prosecuted so quickly that soldiers didn’t even need pay—the bounty was enough.
- Speed: Quick wars prevented generals and soldiers from forming private loyalties that could supersede loyalty to the state. Rome gave generals full authority but for very short tenures.
- The story of Fabius illustrates this trust: he won a battle, then without Senate approval marched through a dangerous forest in Tuscany and prosecuted a new war—which he also won. The Senate honored him because he disobeyed the order to satisfy the goal of protecting the fatherland.
Adapting Machiavelli to the 21st Century
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Stability is now impossible; classical conquest is also impossible
- Technology (AI, genetic engineering) makes freezing laws and institutions untenable—society must constantly adapt.
- Nuclear weapons make great-power war an existential risk. The new necessity is: cooperate or annihilate each other.
- The dilemma: expansion is the only viable strategy, but classical geopolitical conquest is no longer tenable.
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Inject artificial necessity
- If real physical conflict between major powers is off the table, states must artificially create necessity—harsh laws, tough schooling, and economic pressure that keeps people sharp.
- Jobs should resemble the early-stage startup founder about to go broke, not the comfortable welfare recipient—even if the economy can afford the latter.
- This mirrors how Sparta preserved virtue through harsh laws despite stability.
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New domains of expansion: technology and commerce
- Instead of pushing against nation states, modern expansion pushes against the limits of nature through technology.
- Instead of acquiring vassal states, modern expansion buys out companies.
- Instead of defrauding junior partners, modern expansion defrauds investors.
- Machiavelli dismissed artillery and saw commerce as a source of corruption and effeminacy. But the speaker argues that in modernity, commerce and technology are the least effeminate domains available—even if they were the most corrupting in Machiavelli’s time.
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The speaker’s Machiavellian justification for disobeying Machiavelli
- Just as Fabius disobeyed the Senate’s order to satisfy the higher goal of protecting the fatherland, we must disobey Machiavelli’s specific prescriptions to satisfy his deeper goal.
- We are far from home, in a dark and dangerous forest called modernity. We have been given the goal but not the orders. Only we can see the particularities Machiavelli could not have foreseen. We must march against him as Fabius marched against the Senate.