Mordor

So, Mordor itself is a great place to set up your own government. No, seriously – try invading it. It is roughly a rectangle bounded on three sides by tall, steep mountains. The Ash Mountains run 500 miles, forming the northern border. A short spur branching off the Ash Mountains ends in the Plateau of Gorgoroth, on which Barad-dûr is built. The Mountains of Shadow run south from the Black Gate and turn west. It is in this range that Minas Morgul and Cirith Ungol are located.   One of the major access points is the Black Gate. While it has its flaws, it is a solid barrier to entrance. Going through the Black Gate at least leaves you with a path big enough to fit an army into. But, just past the Black Gate was an area called Udun - translated from the Black Speech it means Hell. Udun was a 45 sq. mile area the Atlas describes as being the remnant of a volcano exploding. The only ways in and out are the Black Gate and another 50-100 foot pass though steep mountains diagonally across the plain. From here, Minas Morgul is only about 50 to 60 miles away. For comparison, Mt. Doom and Bara-dur are about 100 miles away.   The Black Gate is the first, the exit is still narrow enough to bottleneck an army. Given the fact that this small area is contained by two bottlenecks and surrounded by mountains filled with caves and watchtowers used as orc living quarters, this area would be a perfect site for encirclement of an invader. The second passage deeper inside Mordor is called Isenmouthe. It was also fortified with an earthen wall and dry moat. From what I was able to find, this fort does not block the passage, but does provide a base for many orcs. While this is a flaw that can be rectified through making this fort (Durthang) similar to the Black Gate, the poor odds of an enemy making it this far seems to make this omission a bit more forgivable.   One could try Minas Morgul. The difficulty of that is discussed elsewhere. But either option still places your army coming into Mordor through a bottleneck into the core of Mordor’s military infrastructure - the Plateau of Gorgoroth. This area forms a triangle 300 miles east to west and 150 north to south starting at the Black Gate, bounded by mountains on all sides. Granted, the interior range is less formidable, but requires the dangerous and long trek around and through the western reaches of Mordor to even get to. This is where Mt. Doom and Barad-Dur are located, as well as most of the mines, forges and orc camps in Mordor.   Trolls and orcs are always on patrols and fires are lit to make watch easier. A network of camps and drab huts housed Sauron's armies. So, not only would the enemy army be able to notice the invasion quickly, it would be well placed to counter attack before the invasion is able to get its men into the battlefield. This means that an invasion force would not be able to bring all its forced to bear in a strike against the heart of the enemy’s power. Plus, it appears that the magma the fuels Mt. Doom is pretty close to the surface. The result is cracks in the ground spew fumes into the air that settle into the environment. Basically, invaders would be battling both enemy troops and a toxic environment.   But strike here they must – Barad-Dur is a central military position in which Sauron's forces are almost invincible – it is literally held together with Sauron’s magic. Construction took a solid 600 years. The Last Alliance took 7 years to take it. Inside it are prisons, forges and armories that keep the army operational.   Then there is Mt. Doom. It is 3,000 feet tall and its base is 4,500 feet wide. Given the fact that Mt. Doom responds to Sauron’s command and even very presence, it can be a powerful deterrence to attack. In fact, its eruptions signal Sauron's attacks and its final one destroyed the Ring Wraiths. Here we also have the only weakness through which Sauron can actually be destroyed – the cracks of Doom at the end of Sauron’s Road. This was basically a tunnel dug into the mountain near the top of the cone with a platform on which Sauron could work. Thus there is no way one can obtain lasting victory without an attack here in some form.   Though this same set of obstacles would grant a small mercy for the attackers. Normally a place as vital to a regime as the Cracks of Doom would have at least a guard shack or gate – something to prevent entry. But such permanent structures would be wiped out by the eruptions. The road that wound its way up to the Cracks of Doom was frequently destroyed by the eruptions. A normal patrol or watch would have to suffice, which is much easier to overcome.   Going around behind would not be easy either. North of Mordor is where the Easterlings reside and is arid due to the affects of Mount Doom’s volcanic activities. The Southrons and their also arid home is to the south. Then one would still need to march hundreds of miles back through Mordor’s interior to get to where the main military infrastructure is located. These are very unfavorable conditions for an invader to face. Then, the Plateau of Gorgoroth is again protected by mountain range. It is an admittedly easier to penetrate range but still a barrier protecting the military and political heart of Mordor.   Roads on the interior of Mordor are also rare. The main one runs from Barad-Dur to Mt. Doom. It appears that the only others link Cirith Ungul to the Black Gate and the Black Gate to Barad-Dur. The result is that marching through the interior would be much harder than in a more developed area. Such a toll would be made worse by the environmental degradation of Mordor. All this to basically say invaders do not simply walk into Mordor.   The route to the rear of Mordor would have a huge distance it would have to cover to provide supplies. This logistics problem would be compounded by the fact that it is through hostile territory and thus exposed to raids by Southrons and/or Easterlings. This would require a diversion of troops for protection, hampering the effectiveness of the attack. The best the attack from the rear would do is hamper Mordor’s supplies somewhat given that Nurn is the breadbasket of Mordor. But it is unlikely that a defeat of Sauron could be affected this way. Though I do admit to being interested in a potential slave revolt in this region. It would be potentially really harmful to Mordor. But again, only Gorgoroth has the potential to cripple Mordor and Sauron long term. While feeding an army in Nurn is possible, once it gets to Gorgoroth it is over. There are no food or water supplies available to speak of, so starvation becomes an issue for the invaders yet again.

The Plateau of Gorgoroth is a desolate wasteland, covered by volcanic ash and dark. The result of the volcanic activities turned the area effectively into a desert. No plant life grows here and it is considered uninhabitable to men.   Keep in mind that a lot of Mordor is the region of Nurn, a semi arid grassland where slave labor produces food, which means there is not much room to feed the attacking army off the land. There were also a decent number of rivers flowing through the area due to the mountains that surrounded the area. This too helped fertility. While the land is actually rather fertile due to volcanic ash and an inland sea. But the horribly inefficient use of slave labor and the huge demand for food in the army means that there is unlikely to be surpluses. The large inland sea in Nurn is apparently not suitable for drinking, which further reduces the life bearing potential of Mordor.

So, given the fact that Sauron is such a control freak and a head of state, Mordor operates as a command economy. Since Mordor's government is practically just Sauron personally and the Ring Wraiths dominated totally by his will, this means all productive assets are his property. He alone would essentially decide what gets produced and where resources are invested.   In real life economies, this model is typically associated with authoritarian governments. These central authorities choose where investment, resources and capital goods are sent, how they are used and for what ends. Consumer spending goes down along with the relative and absolute size of the agricultural sector. Sound familiar?   Where this seems to deviate from Sauron's administration is in the scale of heavy industry. The Soviet Union was a prime example of this in the real world. We also see that societies under command economic systems are able to significantly and rapidly industrialize in Middle Earth - such as Isengard. Yet Mordor seems to be lagging on this front.   Now, centrally planned economies do not tend to be the most technologically advanced economies. So I am not saying here that Mordor would be known for its amazing innovations. We see this in Mordor's weaponry. Sauron's weapons were of epic scale. But they were essentially just grand versions of existing tech. Grond was essentially just a big battering ram. The towers sent were not fundamentally different than what we had in real world ancient armies. Just bigger. Repeat across the entire economy. The real innovations were elsewhere - Isengard was the inventor of factories and gunpowder for example.   Much of the economic backwardness of centrally planned economies resulted in a reliance on imports and decline in consumer goods. We see this play out in Mordor too. For example, orcs seem to have to rely on themselves. While great resources are spent on fell beasts and massive battering rams, only nominal amounts of resources are sent to arm the rank and file troops. Now, as they are inherently violent, this means orcs would probably engage in raids to get their needed food and weapons instead of trade.   But here is the thing - this is based on consumer goods. Military equipment is not classified as a consumer good. So, Sauron runs the entire economy to suit his political ends. The economic model I think he would use is based on heavy industry and my real life inspiration was able to mass produce decent quality but not always the highest tech military hardware. Which means to me the poor state of armaments that the orcs use would probably not hold up in real life.   No, the orcs would not have very good food. Or houses. Or anything really. But they would have enough functional if low tech weapons to outfit the entire army Mordor sends out. The same applies to armor. Which means that the haphazard equipment we see in the movies would probably not hold up.   The Soviet administration was also notoriously brutal in enforcing its decisions. It also demanded that in the Eastern Bloc, all leadership positions were held by people trained in Moscow and loyal to it. Assets in Eastern Europe were stripped from the area and sent to the Soviet Union. Mordor had similar administration. Replace Communist party people with say the Ring Wraiths. Sauron was know to also rule through terror and violence. We see limited examples of the asset stripping of the Soviet Union in Mordor, but we do know it happened. The Ring Wraiths rode horses stolen from Rohan. Nurn maintained its fields with slaves. Slavery in and of itself is a form of command economy.