Military genius wins against all opposition, a united world has small flares up of easily crushed independence movements.
Sims for possible encounters against aliens are banned as generations of bad life. Expeditionary scouts find no trace of life beyond bacteria.
Craft relay stations designed to prevent craft flight path from being traced back to an origin planet report garbled information several millenia later. War planner is called into service to prepare for the worst. World hasn't changed much over the thousands of years. Still a primitive struggle for survival as slaves. Hasn't been a war for longer than history is remotely reliable. He's been written out, people coming from an explanation that is meant to seem stupid, too stupid to engage with in argument.
Rousing a force competent against a potential threat risks the people choosing them as masters instead. Something different. They're going nowhere. Nowhere is the fashionable future. It appeals to him too. Conscription ruins it all, they go along to get along, baring their necks politely to get them cut. Ships rise out of the oceans into the air and space on a long zig zag journey toward the concerned relay stations. Assembled underwater easier than scaffolding. Elevators better than senting the planet out of orbit. Intercepting death faster than waiting for it.
Ships find nothing. Comunications failed and people were unable to fix them, regressed to the stone age in new generations. Ships re-establish a communication line. War planner told to go back to sleep, but wants to live in what's left of some nowhere existance while it exists. Manhandled away from living it. Moral of the story being he already lost his war to live by being useful.
Guano Apes - Rain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arG4Tds4blg 
