Defending decentralized societies from military aggression

[Bill Stewart]

At 09:01 AM 05/06/2003 -0500, Kevin S. Van Horn wrote:
>1. Switzerland during WWII.  While other more centralized nations were 
>easy pickings for the Nazis, the tiny Swiss nation managed to retain its 
>freedom and independence as a small island of freedom in a sea of 
>fascism.  Several factors entered into this, including the Swiss 
>willingness to fight to the bitter end and their long policy of strict 
>neutrality; but one oft-overlooked advantage the Swiss had was their loose 
>confederation and lack of strong central control.  Your average Swiss 
>citizen doesn't even know who the Swiss president is; it's just not that 
>important of a position.

IIRC, Switzerland and Australia have both had episodes of the president or 
prime minister dying and nobody missing them for a few days or nobody 
recognizing the body when it was found.

>Whereas other countries gave in to the Nazis without firing a shot when 
>the governmental leaders capitulated and ordered a surrender, in the case 
>of Switzerland there really wasn't anybody with the authority to surrender 
>the country... and the fiercely independent Swiss would have disobeyed any 
>orders to surrender, anyway.  (For example, at one point there was some 
>concern among the junior officers in the Swiss military that their 
>higher-ups might be considering capitulation. They formed an organization 
>among themselves with the intention of offing their senior officers and 
>taking over command should any form of surrender be attempted.)
>
>As a result, although Hitler made it clear that he loathed Switzerland, 
>and repeatedly had plans drawn up for its invasion, there were always 
>easier targets and other pressing matters to be taken care of first.  In 
>the meantime, the Swiss observed the German's military tactics and 
>modified their own defense strategy accordingly.  The Swiss maintained 
>their freedom not because they had the military might to defeat Germany; 
>they didn't.  They stayed free because they ensured that the price for 
>conquering them would be unacceptably high, and the gains unacceptably low.

The Swiss didn't invent one of their major defense technologies, which was 
mountains that are lousy places to run massed tank battles, but they used 
them quite effectively, just as they did against massed elephant-mounted 
forces.
Also, the banking business was one of the more useful things in Switzerland 
(as opposed to cheese and chocolate), and it's much more difficult to 
usefully steal a bunch of burned fragments of bank account ledgers than a 
harbor or a bunch of flat farmland.


>2. Ireland and England circa 1100 A.D.  Ireland was a lawful anarchy; 
>England was more centralized.  When the Normans invaded, it took them not 
>much more than a month to conquer England.  All they had to do was obtain 
>the surrender of the appropriate authorities.  As is often the case, the 
>existing governmental apparatus was then used to administer the occupation.

The Conquest actually took quite a lot longer than that.  Sure, after 
Hastings the Conqueror's forces were on the island, and he was able to use 
some of Harald's forces against some of the other lesser kings of parts of 
England, but the solidity of central control over England was always 
dubious, what with various sets of regional kings, Vikings from 
Scandinavia, Scots and Picts in the north, Vikings from their hangouts in 
Ireland, uncles and cousins and younger brothers with claims to the throne 
(and the willingness to fight for them).  The Conqueror stomped down lots 
of this over the next decade or so, and had more control than anybody had 
had since maybe Alfred, but it was a couple of generations before the 
Norman were solidly in control.

>3. Somalia. The world's sole remaining superpower, whose military spending 
>and might exceeds that of the next several contenders combined, was sent 
>packing by the people of a destitute country lacking any significant 
>industrial base and still recovering from a nasty civil war. The Somalis 
>didn't have to defeat the invader to win; they just had to make remaining 
>in Somalia too politically costly for the invader Clinton.

The UN were also sent packing.