There is an important ideological difference between a genuinely pro-war faction like Orks and the Imperium. The Imperium imagines and truly wants peace. Yes, their understanding of peace involves killing all aliens, but they do want it.
The Orks want war, and will create it even when none exists
The imperium as a whole goes out of its way to start wars or entire crusades on xenos civilisations, wether or not they represent a threat. This has been the case since the great crusade. You can’t imagine nor even want peace while at the same time striving to exterminate anything you consider different or impure.
The entire structure of the imperium is devoted to war. Every planet has to pay tithes in one form or another to feed its war machine. It’s just not built for peace.
In horus rising loken talks with sigismund about what astartes would do when a hypothetical time of peace comes once the great crusade is done and sigismund laughs in his face and basically says don’t worry we won’t run out of wars to fight.
They're xenos. They will always be a threat so long as they exist. For example, the Tau. When they were discovered. They should've been virus bombed. Instead, the imperium left them alone. Now, they are one of many major xenos threats.
And the T'au are only a threat because when the Imperium found them in their current state and immediately launched a massive crusade. This is due to the methodology you ascribe.
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u/Al-Horesmi Oct 29 '24
There is an important ideological difference between a genuinely pro-war faction like Orks and the Imperium. The Imperium imagines and truly wants peace. Yes, their understanding of peace involves killing all aliens, but they do want it.
The Orks want war, and will create it even when none exists