If power can't be taken by force, war won't happen. Wars are fought for many reasons, but at the end of the day, war is about taking away someone else’s power. Someone drew a line in the sand and said they are in charge of everything within the border they have drawn. War is when someone else comes in to try to remove that power by force.
Power has many forms and can be created through force, coercion, persuasion… but at the end of the day:
So to take power, you must take away another’s ability to get people to do what they want. An invading conqueror kills, imprisons or converts the army, police and politicians so no one from the old government is left to coerce or persuade the population. They also discontinue the nation’s currency and raid their reserves to finish the old government’s economic capacity to coerce and persuade.
At least that was the case throughout human history…before bitcoin. In an all crypto future, the situation has changed...
Power is also secured through passwords, not just armies and lines in the sand.
Wealth is integral to power. The conqueror can no longer wipe out someone else’s power entirely. They may invade, kill the leaders, secure the region by force…but they cannot dismantle economic power. There is no raiding of the keep to get the king’s gold, no discontinuing of the legal currency, no confiscation of the population’s wealth. Post invasion, the economic power that was previously there still likely exists. Unless of course there is genocide, in which case the economic power would then surely be transferred to allies outside of your region.
At best a conquering army could invade a country, make crypto illegal, and revert back to a system where they issue the currency. Only then could they control the wealth of the region and have economic dominance. But in a world where crypto dominates, a place using an unwanted centralized currency is doomed to isolation and cannot trade. Such a nation would either revolt or suffer greatly. Political will and an economically independent population would bring it down from the inside.
Of course all of this assumes nation states could actually exist in a world with decentralized currency- but that’s another topic!
