I do see and understand your point. And indeed there are rules and exceptions to rules.
In EvE there are a lot of "pet" and "renter" corps and alliances that are fully aware about being in that role and perfectly happy about it too. They do laugh at the monikers and they do consider themselves sort of "business partners" of the leading military organization in the area.
No-one ever said that you call a friend of your enemy a "pet" and by noon next day they failcascaded and you win the simulation.
It's more a question of war of attrition.
Also I did not mean that a leader of an alliance should intervene directly into a discussion on how a fight was conducted (at least not a discussion among the fighters, a strategical or tactical discussion vis.a.vis with the fleet commanders as a post mortem analysis of an operation is another story, but it would generally not involve comments on errors made, just strategical consequences and possible next steps).
However you do not have full control of how your organization grows, how good the different leaders are in building the right culture and all such things. You can have this sort of control in your corp (size 100-150, but sometimes larger and often smaller). You sometimes have it in your alliance (size 1000-5000), especially if it's made of few large corps and is focused (example a 1000 characters military alliance with 3 or 4 military focussed corps in the 200-300 characters each). You rarely have it beyond that.
Immagine this: a powerblock of 15-20 thousands of characters. Three "main" (in terms of military and political strenght, not in terms of numbers) alliances of about 2 thousands military focused, each also bringing in half a dozen or more "pet" alliances and "alt" alliances. Plus some less powerful alliances that are not directly "pets" of those main ones. This does not count the "renters" because they generally do not come into a campaign (may or may not be involved in defensive actions, but generally they only do it if their very territory is attacked).
There may or may not be a leading one, but within the powerblock the leadership is generally based on diplomacy. Those three "main" alliances will have the main talks. The smaller ones that are not pets may participate, but will have lesser diplomatic strength: they are part of the powerblock mostly as a convenience to them as they are aware they are weaker and it's good to be aligned with someone powerful.
No matter who you are, you did not build all of the powerblock. There are different cultures in the different organizations. The "highest" position you may have is that of the leader of one of the three strong alliances and the satellite alliances around you. No control over the other two groups nor over the minor ones.
So let's switch focus to one of those three organizations. You have built a strong military alliance. Probably you have a 200 characters military corp that you lead, there is another, or maybe two other, similarly sized military corps lead by someone you know very well, trust and share opinions and methods with. Then you have a bunch of possibly smaller alt corps (corps with alts of you and your members) each dedicated to something specific. Maybe logistics and transports, maybe industry whatever. Some of these corps may be for industrial players that do not have a military main. All together you count 1000 mostly military and have been very successful. You control territory and are one of the three "main alliances" (in political and military terms) within the powerblock.
However you also have renters and pets. Let's forget renters. There are, let's say, 8 alliances that live as your pets. You call them "business partners". They live in your territory and help you defend them. They are partly military partly industry. The military parts came along with you in your campaigns. They generally are the same size of you or maybe bigger.
You did not build them. You have little control on their organization and culture. Together they outnumber you three to six times. Yet you are better organized and stronger. You could kick them in their butts any time. They know it. They became your allies because they believed it was much easier to ally with you and share your glory than try to beat you. You did accept them as "partners" because even if your 1000 are better than their 4000, the 5000 of you together are better than your 1000 alone. For similar reasons you then allied with the other three in the powerblock (15000-20000 is still better).
See the difference: you and the other two similar leading alliances in the powerblock are the ones that really did conquer the territory. The "pets" either helped (under your lead) or came along later. Also "renters" are those that exploit the resources and pay you for that. They are not going to come to fight against an enemy that may live far away (possibly they do not fight: they are industrialists or PvE players that are not specced or trained for PvP. They'll fight, maybe, if the fight comes to their home. But like peasants fighting with pickaxes against cannons).
So you somehow lead a force of 5 or 6 thousands and represent them within an organization of 15-20 thousands. And you have maybe 2 or 3 thousands more that will not fight but somehow you still represent them (the renters). And all you directly controlled and built in terms of "culture" is a 200-300 characters corp. At most a 800-1000 characters (including alts) alliance where, however, you are just directly organizing just one third or one fourth of the people, and the rest are under other leaders that built their corps independently (but you are united because it turns out you learned to know, like and respect each other, and they recognize you as the one representing your alliance).
The above is, more or less, the most common setup. It's not the only one. There have been forces lead by absolute dictators. And there are forces with a totally different organization. For example the alliance of the author of those articles (The Mittani) is atypical: 7000 characters in an alliance of 90 corporations, but the main force is a corp of 2600-2700 characters, a couple of specialized military corps with about 150 characters, a once external military corp that later has been accepted in the alliance counting 450-500 characters. All the rest are industrial and logistic corporations. That alliance historically had very few (if any) pets and renters. They did, however, have allies (as in partners in a powerblock) and occasionally considered "friends" other forces.
Remember also that, when someone is very powerful, the rules are sometimes a little bent. It is not unheard of to go with the rule: you are an ally so I'm not going to invade your territory, but I will eventually roam there and kill you, your pets and your renters if I'm bored.
EvE is harsh. There's no really safe area (think of it as there's no PvP flag and you can actually kill someone in alfa. There will be consequences, but if you really want to do it and are willing to suffer the consequences, you can do it). The metagame is the rule. No matter who you are, you WILL have spies and enemies in your organizations. And they may be closer to you than you think.
Suspect and fear is your daily breakfast. If you do not have the balls for that, go back to WoW. Yes it's a game. Yes, if you are considering suicide for what you lost, you need help IRL. But even if it's a game, it's going to be a hard game. It takes years not only to train the characters, but to build an organization that has some chance of being among those that make history. And your enemies are up to the bar.
Let me tell you of one "emergent gameplay" as they call it. A leader of an organization eventually pissed of a small corp. They decided to pay mercenaries for revenge. The mercenaries accepted. They created new characters. They infiltrated the organization. They gained respect and friendship from them. They gained power. A couple of them became leaders. One became the "second in command". When they felt ready, they organized the trap. Stole the organization assets and destroyed in an ambush the ship of the leader proceeding to kill her afterwards.
You may think she was gullible. She wasn't. She just befriended and trusted someone that turned out to have a secret agenda. A mercenary paid to bring on a revenge. It took him a few years to earn her friendship and respect. Him and his corpmates actually dedicated most, if not all, of their game time over a few years to that very thing: infiltrate her organization and act as dedicated loyal friends willing to work hard for the growth and prosperity of the group. Except that they were actually on a mission to destroy.
Consider what Winter Solstice wrote: it is a game. And this means people are willing to behave differently than in real life. Sometimes they will be like kids even if they are adults. Sometimes they will do things that would make them criminals and possibly bound to psychiatric care, if they did it in real life. But exactly because this is a game, they are not crazy or criminals. One is not following an obsession if he spends years to organize the doom of whatever you have spent years to build. He's playing. You spent years to build pixels. He spent years to destroy your pixels. He's not mad, if you cannot stand the idea, you are the one with a problem. (I do not mean you personally, I'm using a generic "you" here).
So, in such a universe. In such a reality. How sure can you be that if you enact good leadership your organization is not going to fail cascade? And how sure can you be that those words from your enemy did not play any role, maybe a small role, in your failcascade? After all even a billion pounds is still made of pennies.
Avatar Creations have a lot to learn about economy
-- Snowman