Defending decentralized societies from military aggression
Kevin S. Van Horn
kvanhorn at ksvanhorn.com
Tue May 6 07:01:21 PDT 2003
John Kelsey wrote:
> This is the core question: What happens when the anarchocapitalist
> society and the aggressive authoritarian one have similar technology
> levels? [...] If one side is organized as several hundred
> independent, overlapping protection agencies, some with mutual defense
> treaties, others without them, while the other is organized as a
> centralized army, it looks to me like the centralized forces have huge
> advantages.
Let's take a look at some historical examples.
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. 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.
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 of Ireland took 300 years, and some say it was never really
completed. Ireland didn't have any central authority that could
surrender. The main form of societal organization was the tuath. The
territory of a tuath was the sum of the lands of its members; people
could and did change their affiliation from one tuath to another without
moving their place of residence. The tuath "king" was a religious and
military leader; he was not a ruler, and had no special powers to make
law nor immunity from lawsuit. This system was an invader's nightmare.
The invaders had to fight for every square inch of Ireland. Even when
a tuath was apparently defeated, the tuath king could only surrender for
himself, but not for the tuath members; they were free to join a
different tuath. So effectively, the invaders had to obtain their
surrenders one household at a time.
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.
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