Just as the technology of warfare has developed and become more sophisticated and more devastating, the same is true of the strategies and methods of war. While conventional forms of conquest remain relevant, i.e., military force, they are by no means the most frequently used, nor indeed, the most effective. Through the financial coercion of debt and pressure from business, nations can be demolished and thoroughly subjugated, more than ever before. The humiliating terms and conditions of surrender that used to be imposed upon a vanquished people by military force are now being established upon societies through the complicity of local elites with international business and financial institutions.
Wherever these terms and conditions cannot be established through economic pressure, they will be established through violence. That violence may come in the form of actual invasion by international military forces (as in Iraq and Afghanistan), or it may come in the form of internal strife. Legitimate protest or revolution against the elite will be exploited and manipulated to create this kind of disabling internal strife, precisely to protect the elite, and subjugate the society to international power. The point is to create crisis conditions and impose the order of conquest by whatever means are the most effective.