Linking up with the precolonial past, after seizing power the RPF privileged military solutions and used a performant armed force ‒ based in part on experience in its Ugandan years ‒ to capture power, which was its aim since the 1990 attack. During the civil war and after its takeover, the maintenance of military norms and ethos motivated the military’s centrality and penetration of all society’s sectors, economically, politically, socially and institutionally, with the ultimate aim of first capturing and later retaining power. The achievements of good technocratic/bureaucratic governance risk being undone by flawed political governance.