it’s more nuanced than that

That’s what the “with more words” was about. They weren’t giving a nuanced analysis. They were simply stating something in plain language that easily explains the situation for polite conversation.

We get that it’s systemic but it is still true that a symptom of those systemic forces is soldiers are preconditioned to follow orders of their command without questions due to an ingrained sense of implicit trust which is fundamental to the function of military structure.

Now there are the many different flavors of Imperialist philosophy in favor of centralized systems that assert it is an unfortunate necessity to maintain the interests of the state and there is also the philosophy of anarchism which asserts that a decentralized, federated military is possible which avoids the trappings of centralized authority overreach but that is a much deeper discussion about a completely different topic that I’m a bit rusty in my reading on.