K8s is designed as a declarative system as K8s is responsible for the transition from the current state to the desired state. Personally, I would not have used the terms “imperative” or “declarative” to describe kubectl: kubectl enables the user to set the desired state. `kubectl create et all` modifies the desired state by overwriting the pre-existing configuration, `kubectl apply` modifies the desired state by merging with the pre-existing configuration.