What would an American Insurgency look like?

[The Dharma Bum]

[broken robot]

This thread is funny mostly because people have been completely ignoring the international dimension of any insurgency in the US. Any conflict would quickly become internationalized with various outside forces backing their respective teams in the country, in addition to spill over into the rest of North America. Now one could argue that international intervention was fairly minimal in the Civil War, but that was before massive global changes in communications and infrastructure in addition to the US's now predominant role in managing global political economy. Ultimately if civil wars in other countries are any guide, the domestic population owning guns before the conflict has little to nothing to do with it. What matters for the success or failure of an insurgency is the strategic backing of international forces in addition to the demographic makeup of the insurgency, or amount of political and ideological sympathy it gets from the rest of country. They'll get guns fast with or without an amendment.

[spacemonkey]

I really don't see nato,un, or any other troops in our streets anytime soon,but I will stop short of saying never. (excluding the national guard for a natural disaster) .

[The Dharma Bum]

Consider the military assessment of a pretty competent general:

"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.".

Notice it wasn't the US military that brought him to that conclusion, they didn't have a problem attacking them. But he knew taking on the armed population of the US mainland would be a futile effort.

Most people underestimate the role of infantry and overestimate the utility of aerial and naval power. Those are awesome force projections to be sure but bombardment from a distance only gets you so far. At some point you are have to have to get boots on the ground if you want to kill all of the the enemy.

And that is a numbers game.

[broken robot]

[WizardfromOz]

The first thing is to understand what military units will side with the government, side with the insurgence, and what units will sit it out

We need to decide what level of support the insurgence enjoy from the general population

Which way will the media swing, it has to be accepted this will be a very intense propaganda war, which will directly influence the above point

[Kane]

[The Comrade]

sulla marched on rome a second time because the roman army of cinna wouldn't fight fellow romans. within one generation those morals died out.


let's not assume soldiers would all lay down their arms so readily.

[Kane]

[Kane]