POLS 4212 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Machiavellianism
3 Apr 2019
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It is only when you have the beginnings of the nation state that you have armies. Machiavelli says that"s what you need is a national army, because you won"t be relying on any other army or mercenaries, but you can have citizens dying for the country, and it works. When the medici were coming back into power, machiavelli was in charge of putting together an army, he didn"t have the time but he was smart enough to realize that it is the national army that is important. If you don"t have a national army you"re giving yourself to fortuna and that is chance and not a good thing. Once the national army is set in place, the prince should have no other object nor thought than the art of war. You can always say that you will never start a war, but something can happen and you will be forced to go to war.
