Perhaps He Is Comrade Accuser?

Captain America - 'What would you do if this was Hala? Would you sanction the deaths of so many Kree citizens?'

Ronan the Accuser - 'I would. I have. Too many times to count.'

{Annihilators: Earthfall #3}

I thought that exchange made for an interesting contrast.

Cap fights so others don't have to, and I think that's part of why he's so deadset against sacrificing non-combatants. Because if he has to resort to that, he hasn't done his duty, as he's allowed those people to be dragged into it. Ronan seems to take the approach that he's fighting, and there are other soldiers, and people who aren't soldiers, but the people who aren't soldiers aren't exempt from the conflict. No one is totally a non-combatant in the Kree Empire because at the end of the day, the Empire is the important thing, more than the individual. Because he isn't lying up there. He was prepared to kill every Kree on Hala with Sentries at the tailend of Conquest, as his way of shutting down the Phalanx. It would kill a lot of Kree, but the Empire as a whole would be preserved. They are Kree, they will endure.

Captain America certainly cares about his country, and wants to defend it, but part of what he's defending is people's freedom and individuality. He wouldn't support a United States that was a police state, simply because it was the U.S. In that sense, the two characters are similar, in that they fight for what they believe their home stands for. Their homes just happen to stand for very different things.

I was going to say Cap's an idealist, and Ronan a realist, but I'm not sure that's true. Cap knows people die in war, he said as much to Mettle last month in Avengers Academy, so it isn't as though he has his head in the clouds. And I think Ronan believes in the strength of his people and their ability to overcome anything too much to not have some of the idealist in him. It may simply be buried deep, like his romantic streak was prior to meeting Crystal.

It could be a matter of their circumstances. Captain America has lived through a time where the Earth is almost constantly in danger. From Galactus, the Kree, the Beyonder, the Red Skull, Iron Man, whoever. But everytime, the planet pulls through. It's not always clean, but it does always work out. The Kree have been kicked in the teeth a lot recently. Not as bad as the Skrulls, but it's been ugly. Unable to eliminate the Skrulls, the evolutionary dead end, stymied by a backwards mudball (Earth), half their empire lost to Annihilus, conquered by the Phalanx, millions killed by their own crazy leader, millions more killed by the Shi'ar's crazy leader. Things frequently don't come up roses for the Kree. They die in great numbers, and unlike Cap's costumed friends, they frequently don't come back.

Following this line of thinking about the Kree started me wondering if they were originally meant to be Space Soviets. It doesn't work entirely, because I'm pretty sure the Kree Empire's economy is at least somewhat capitalistic, but politically it might. The Supreme Intelligence was a massive computer somehow comprised of the minds of many of the brightest citizens and generals in the Empire. A giant collective. He eventually became ruler of the Empire, to the point he's worshipped as a god by some of his subjects. OK, given the Soviets disapproval of religion that might not fly, but then again, we're talking about treating the Fearless Leader as an infallible being, so maybe it does. He also killed a lot of his people with a Nega-Bomb, because he thought it would help the Empire. The leader having lots of his subjects killed because he thinks it's best for the state is something the Soviet Union was certainly familiar with.

Falling further down the rabbit hole, I start to wonder if Annihilation could have been read as a commentary on the state of Russia, after the fall of communism. Let me lay it out, then you can laugh.

The Supreme Intelligence had been lobotomized by the House Fiyero, a group of merchants and businessmen who usurped power, even though they don't know anything about running an empire -certainly nothing about winning a war - and are really only concerned with protecting their own backsides and lining their pockets. This becomes apparent when they make a backroom deal with the representatives of the Annihilation Wave, a destructive force from an opposing universe that has invaded while claiming they are merely defending themselves from outward agression (of the universe which the Kree inhabits natural expansion). Ronan, at this point a loyal follower of the Supreme Intelligence*, shows up, kills the leaders of House Fiyero as traitors to the Empire, and rallies the loyal soldiers against the Annihilation Wave. They stave off being entirely conquered, but still lose half their territory.

OK, let's see. That makes Supremor Leonid Brezhnev. House Fiyero, um, Boris Yeltsin, maybe Gorbachev? No, maybe they stand in for the various businessmen who have made a killing since the fall of communism. I think that makes the U.S. (or the various Western powers) the Annihilation Wave, and that would make Ronan. . . Vladimir Putin? Or he was the hardliners from the August Coup of '91. Which would make the Inhumans Yeltsin, though I'm not sure how to reconcile that with Ronan and Crystal's marriage. No, given Putin's time in the KGB, let's stick with him for Ronan.

OK, you can laugh now. I know it doesn't hold together. It was worth a shot.

* Looking on the Internet, it appears Ronan hasn't always been a big fan of the Supreme Intelligence, even trying to overthrow it at some point. The Kree-Skrull War, probably, since Rick Jones was involved.