This idea is not really applicable to specifically the US, because the US as a nation has different strategic goals with its military (such as force projection). What I’ve been thinking about is what a modern military defense strategy would be when the objective is to discourage or prevent hostile military action. The idea is to replace, rather than add to the conventional military forces.
There are mainly three parameters that I’m looking to improve when compared to a classic military defense:
Cost effectiveness
Deterrence
Morality
My suggestion can basically be boiled down to one word: assasins.
Let’s take my home country Sweden. I would suggest that rather than a standing force, tanks, planes etc we would have a relatively (to the current military) force of say a few hundred assasins. Even as a small country I think we already have the competence within our current organisation. We have a well renowned organisation of military special forces, trained for special operations and insurgency and counter-insurgency in different enviroments (though mainly arctic and coastal). We have special anti-terrorist forces within the police and we have an espionage/intelligence agency.
It seems like we should already be able to combine these competences to train people in the skills that would be required. Both with regards to weapons, tactics and infiltration.
So lets say for example of a foreign power with a massively superior military capacity*, like the US (to make it more interesting), declares war on us. Our response would be to target politicians and military commanders for assasinations, and use terrorist strategies. In order of priority these would be:
National political leaders
This is because they are responsible for the strategic decisions, most importantly actually declaring war and declaring and end to the war. We would target all three branches of government for maximum effectiveness. Getting the president would obviously be difficult, but it would be impossible to protect 535 members of congress (and their families). How likely are you to vote for a war if the stated response from the nation will be assasination attempts on you and your family?
Military commanders
I assume these are hard targets, but also very desirable.
Terrorit attacks
These could be divided into attacks on physical and economical infrastructure, to weaken the economy, and pure terror attacks on the civilian population in order to decrease war willingness (which could of course backfire).
It would obviously be incredbly cost effective to replace tens of thousands of people with only hundreds, as well as not have to invest in costly tools such as submarines, tanks and fighter jets (poinson, handguns and bombs are relatively inexpensive).
It also seems much more moral to target the ones responsible (ie: politicians) rather than people just executing their orders (ie: military). Attacking commanders rather than troops is also morally superior, if for no other reason than it results in fewer individual deaths. Attacking the civilian population of course is generally viewed as immoral, but this should be limited to nations who have a democratic government (and where the general population as a result is responsible).
Obviously I am not qualified to evaluate the deterrance effect or the practical plausibility of this (but I am sure others are), but the only downside to this that I can spot is that there could be a danger in creating people with this specific skillset.
If you abolish your conventional military, everone who still has one would of course be “militarily superior”.
While it’s definately an outside the box approach, your ideas accomplish none of these. Something isn’t cost effective if it doesn’t work, it provides no real deterrence, and can hardly be called moral if you plan to rely on what you call in your own words terrorism.
The problem with this is that if say Denmark decides they’re still sore over the days of the Swedish Empire back in the 17th century all they’d need to take over your entire country would be a battalion of syphilitic nuns as they would face no military resistance at all under this plan. As to the list of assassination targets:
This would also be very difficult to achieve as governments who don’t already provide a high level of security to national level governmental figures would do so before invading Sweden. By explicitly making your plan one to assassinate children and the elderly for being part of the family of a member of the executive, legislative or judicial branch you can hardly lay claim to any moral high ground.
Government figures would become just as hard of targets if you announce your plan to assassinate them. Why would there be any desirability to killing military commanders anyway? You’ve already ceded your country to the enemy militarily by providing no military resistance at all. Even on the wildly optimistic assumption that your hit squads kill half of all of the officers from the rank of General down to 2nd Lieutenant before being themselves killed or captured, so what? The role of military commanders would be more symbolic than anything else; the military wouldn’t be fighting anyone, just occupying a defenseless country.
In what possible way is this moral when you yourself call it terrorist attacks? What would it matter if you weaken the enemy’s economy when you yourself have none, having voluntarily decided not to defend your country? Of course it would backfire, all you’d do is piss off the civilian population of the enemy country. The seriousness of this as a problem should become apparent when you meditate on the fact that you have willingly placed your entire civilian population at the mercy of the enemy.
Replace the “morality” concept with “public relations”. I have difficulty conceiving of moral actions in war, but no trouble at all imagining that certain actions might increase or decrease the dupport you get from your own population or other nations.
Add a category of “realistic threat assessment” and my guess is that most developed nations in the world have absolutely no need for a military at all, except perhaps to contribute to an international military organization dealing with nutcase world leaders.
I am extremely skeptical that Sweden needs a League of Extraordinary assassins. While I agree that it’s better to quietly kill individual political opponents than to launch a full-scale war against their whole country, where is the tipping point? What is the line between “annoying” and “let’s kill this guy”? Also, large numbers of deniable assassins skulking around means that any country can seize on any convenient death of one of their own, claim that country X has launched a covert war on them and start retaliation. And this is true if there is no assassin, or the assassin actually came from country Y or Z. At least with public declarations of war or massive troop movements, you know who the actual players are and where the actual threat is coming from.
Back to point 2. How does one remove paranoia, jingoism, and cronyism from decisions on how to shape and how to spend on military forces? Referring back to point 2 – the idea of having a large staff of assassins seems pretty much like pure paranoia to me.
A League of Deniable Assassins isn’t really useful as negotiating tool, credible threat, or as a means of actual defense in times of genuine need. Let’s say Country A’s fishing fleet is encroaching on Country B’s territorial waters. Who you gonna assassinate? It makes a lot more sense to send out a frigate to fire a few shots across the bows of fishing boats than it does to go kill their foreign minister.
An excellent thread…unfortunately, our politicians and military leaders seem incapable of learning all the lessons that we have experienced (with such loss of life and money). The first is this: we are unl;ikely to make friends by invading and occupying any country. Second: before we decide on any new military adventures, talk to people who speak the language, understand the local culture, and know the history of the place. Then, we might just decide…not to invade!
Take Somalia: what began as a genuine effort to prevent mass starvation morphed into a quasi-occupation. We didn’t have anybody who spoke the language (that we could trust), so we relied on paid informers (who were double agents). We next decided that it would be a good thing to “take out” a local warlord…which made no sense, because he was one of a dozen such types, and removing him just paved the way for another one. Third, we decided that our foes were stupid-so we kept displaying to them our favorite mode of attack (troops rapelling down from helicopters). They stuidied this, and led us into a clever trap ( we were ambushed by tribesmen armed with AK-47s. All the fighting skills that the Army Rangers had were negated by the trap we had been led into.
So what did we get for about $80 billion (and 25 lives, hundreds wounded)? Just about zilch.
There is a story about a country that did this. I can’t remember the title or author, but they gave a demonstration of how easily they could target the enemy’s leaders by leaving notes. It may have been titled “Swiss Defense.”
Failing those two, and assuming you’re dirt poor, the most effective way would be to prepare for a total guerrilla war because any conventional military you try to build will get smashed by the West. So make the occupation as painful as possible. Buy tons of RPGs, mortars, anti-ship missiles (if near the sea), and mines. Form militias so the fighters blend into society, teach women and children how to scout and communicate and get intel from the occupiers, prepare underground tunnels, and put anything valuable underground so it can’t be bombed. Train people how to make and place IEDs to do the most damage. Run drills on attacking convoys and attacking bases with mortars from multiple directions and then running away before they find your location.
EDIT: Similar to the assassin idea, you could become l337 haxx0rs and threaten cyberwarfare. Probably wouldn’t be that effective though.
You don’t know that it doesn’t work as a deterrence, my guess is that it would. And if it does, it is certainly cost effective.
Calling something “terrorism” has no effect on the morality of that thing, and of course I don’t claim that any of the proposed actions are inherently morally good, just less bad than some alternatives.
Killing one politician, who is responsible for an ongoing war and has the possibility to stop it is at least to me morally superior to killing any amount of soldiers who are carrying out orders. I think that is an easy case to make.
Killing few people is morally less bad than killing many. Killing responsible people is morally less bad than killing less responsible or even innocent people.
Actual acts of terrorism is of course extremely hard to justify morally, and I would consider removing that from the list of options completely. But I don’t neccesarily think it is completely unjustifiable in a state of war. Invading armies tend to cause the death of civilians whether it is a stated goal or not. If the defending country has no other means, you could argue that acts of terror can be reciprocal. For example I see no real moral difference between an Israeli gunship killing civilians as part of a military action, and a palestinian suicide bomber killing civilians by blowing up a bus. I’m sure that if the palestinians had access to gunships, they’d prefer using hellfire rockets too.
No I think the police force could handle the nuns. I know the Swedish police force doesn’t have the best reputation internationally, but I do trust them to be able to keep nuns from taking over the government. Especially if the nuns aren’t healthy.
I disagree here as well. I think it is safe to assume that the president is the best protected politician, and four US presidents have already been assasinated. And in at least three of the cases it was successfully done by people with little or no training at such things.
And there are also 535 members of congress. In order to protect them effectively from assasination, I think you would have to pretty much make it impossible for them to live anything resembling a normal life. Which would probably be a bit of deterrent. Most people don’t make a political career with the ambition of spending their days in a bunker.
Killing military commanders is per definition “military resistance”. And not an unheard of strategy.
You could argue that the civilian population is safer being at the mercy of the enemy, than being the backdrop for an armed conflict. With the only military resistance being in the form of assasinations, there is not much need for the occupying force to carry out the sort of military actions that tend to cause civilian casualties.
You statement that “you have no economy” makes no sense to me. Even in a successful occupation there is of course still an economy that the populace of the administrative area is a part of. The economy doesn’t cease to exist.
There may not be an objective “value” to improving the morality of a military strategy, but for me it is the goal of all activities so I put it in as a parameter.
Totally agree. The most cost effective solution for Sweden and most nations would be to just give up on the whole idea of a military defense. I’m just exploring an alternative option.
First off I’m not saying Sweden or any other nation “needs” one, just thinking about whether it would be better compared to the current system.
I do agree that the idea of having a large number of deniable assasins around is not very attractive. But let’s face facts here, your example of the line between “annoying” and “let’s kill this guy” has already been explored by several countries. I could even be so bold as to claim that the USA may have assasinated political leaders with the motivation of nation building or security interest… I hope this does not shock you.
Not sure what you’re saying here, could you clarify?
Isn’t it a pretty fundamental negotiating tool? “If you do not order your troops to withdraw, we will kill you.” Only when this time, when we say ‘you’ we actually mean the individual responsible for the negotiation, not the more generic ‘you’ meaning “Your fellow citizens who you’re paying to get killed, with whom you most likely have no personal relation or feel much emotional attachment to”.
Your example of fishing boats is of course interesting. But I’d say that it’s a job for the police rather than the military.
Not even dirt poor. Just knowing you could not mount a succesful set-piece defense. In a thread some years back about the numerically small and hardware-wise light Irish military, the strategy to face invasion was described as “turn Dublin into Fallujah”.
Which does not preclude the elite assassination squad, but really, using one early on in the hostilities would only get the invading power angry. Murder a majority of the members of Congress, or of the President’s relatives, and you’ll have a nation howling for yours to get glassed.
Also, a nation has a military to face multiple threats – not just outright invasion/attack but also insurgency and regional strife. You may not stand a chance against one of the major powers but you may want to make sure the guys next door with a similar-scale population and economy do respect your borders.
Are you defining morality as a measurement of volume? Your proposal threatens civilians, children, etc. So is it more moral because it kills fewer people than carpet bombing a city? Are there any other distinctions between killings that make one more or less moral than another?
Re: the fishing boat scenario. I don’t believe police are the proper tool to handle such international incidents. Country A’s government is encouraging this encroachment – the fishermen are being told what they doing is entirely legal. And, you’re going to give the police a navy? What if Country A’s military navy responds?
If you start arresting large numbers of your neighboring country’s citizens for actions your neighbor considers legal, and threatening to or actually killing legislators and their families, your plan apparently counts on intimidating the other country into submission. Why do you imagine that a few assassinations, even among the leadership, is more intimidating than full scale invasion?
On reflection, I think that the american mindset may be a bit different w/r/t war. Perhaps from being used at “exporting” it rather than “importing” it. The idea that the things discussed here would somehow be worse than military occupation of another nation is actually kind of strange to me.
Just ask yourself what you would prefer. Your city being bombed, foreign tanks rolling through your city streets, or your politicians getting shot. One is considered a valid strategy, the other somehow not fair play.
Now if MY politicians decided to start a war of aggression against another nation and they got whacked. I’d say “They got what was coming to them. Now let’s elect some new politicians who wants peace.” And I’m sure at least a few soldiers would be thinking along the lines of “Better him than me or my friends…”.
My new theory is that the only reason this hasn’t been implemented is that the ones responsible for implementing military policy are… politicians and military commanders.
It is one parameter, certainly, but not the only one.
I’m sure we can agree that all else being equal, the fewer people that die, the better. And I fail to see the moral distinction between explosives delivered by military aircraft and explosives delivered via a van, if the end result is the same. Or do you expect people to go “Oh well, at least my mother was professionally blown to bits by a distinguished serviceman flying a most impressive airplane, instead of just being blown up by some dirty sneak!”.
Uhm. The police and customs already have boats for this purpose. It’s pretty much in their job description to do this kind of stuff.
In your amended version this seem to escalate into a military conflict, wich would trigger a military response. In this case… sea ninjas!
I do not “imagine that a few assassinations, even among the leadership, is more intimidating than full scale invasion”. Why would you make such a claim? Are you sure you are reading my posts correctly?
The whole discussion is about a more cost effective and moral defensive military strategy. I would suggest that “full scale invasion” fits exactly zero of those criterias.
No, it’s not really a matter of better or worse, it’s a matter of effectiveness. The reality of actual use of military is far more likely to be situations like the fishing dispute rather than repelling an invasion. They are rather minor border disputes and usually related to access to some particular resource. Or, as I mentioned in my first post, contributing to a larger international military force.
I would agree that most militaries are grossly over-bloated for the former role, though not necessarily for the latter. But your League of Assassins would not be effective in either role, and IMO if start deploying assassins to deal with minor squabbles, you’re more likely to escalate it to something worse.
Maybe I’m not. But I’m reading into your posts the idea that your assassination squads could deter an invasion. I think it’s the opposite. I think the leadership of both country’s are … content? … used to? … the deaths of some soldiers during, say, a border dispute. But if you start threatening the leadership (and their families) personally, they are IMO for more likely to strike out, with greater force, and make a situation worse.
Also, let’s say you successfully kill the leader of your neighboring country. Their successor is going to sweep into power on an agenda of revenge, not one of caving in to “assassins and terrorists”.
There’s nothing providing a deterrent though, which was the point of my hyperbole of the battalion of syphilitic nuns. You’ve essentially made your nations defense strategy one of immediate surrender with a threat to assassinate enemy politicians in revenge. How is this going to prevent or drive out the occupation of Sweden if some other nation has decided on war for whatever reason?
That’s not my point. My point is why bother trying to assassinate enemy military commanders with hit squads if doing so is the entire extent of your plans for your nation’s defense? Knocking off an officer here or there isn’t going to make the enemy leave.
The citizens of Lidice would disagree with you. Even assuming no retaliation against the civil population in general, presumably your assassination teams are under the direction of the Swedish government, which has found itself having to surrender the day war is declared as they have no military, just hit squads. Were I the Generalissimo of whatever nation decided to invade Sweden, I’d require the surrender of these hit squads as part of the general surrender of Sweden. If they continued to carry out assassinations after being ordered by the Swedish government to lay down their arms I’d just start shooting members of the Swedish government one by one until the hit squads came to their senses.
It’s no longer your economy though. It’s not like any of the now occupied Swedish economy is going to be taxed and allocated to the Swedish defense budget.
By holding leaders personally accountable if they choose to invade. It says “If you take this evil path, you will die. Not your soldiers, not your civilians, you.”
Sure, this was amply demonstrated by the ease with which Saddam Hussein and his political and command staff were targeted for assassination and killed both in 1991 and 2003. If only Iraq had no military at all it would have spared them from being killed so easily. Oh wait.:rolleyes:
When you say “modern” the first notion that should come to mind is strategic alliances. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a belligerent country threatening you. What matters is what the alliance to which you’re a member is experiencing at the moment.
My own country, The Philippines, has practically no defense capability of its own against an aggressor country. It relies on military agreements mainly with the US.
As to terrorism, it’s a police matter here, same with most other countries.
Does Sweden even have a military? I thought they used pikemen or something.
I think your strategy is like using a needle to fight someone weilding an ax. Your attack can be deadly with the right coordinated precision and timing. He just needs to hit you with an ax.
Really it’s a fantastic approach (fantastic as in not based in reality, not fantastic as in awesome). Assassinating a country’s leader is not likely deterrent to sending in tanks, planes, helicopters, ships, drones, cruise missles, conventional and special operations forces, intelligence and counter intelligence forces to occupy and root out the possible assassins.
And he will say "Meh. I have my Secret Service, CIA, NSA, and the rest of the Intelligence Community, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Homeland Security, FBI and the rest of the State, Local and Federal law enforcercement aparatus plus the love of at least 51% of the people to protect me.
I am not aware of the US pursuing a tactic such as the one I outline in my OP. AFAIK there has historically been plenty of successful assasinations of high profile politicians, performed with various degrees of professionalism as well as with access to various levels of resources.
They used to, but I think they’ve upgraded. You might consider doing the same to your arguments.
This analogy is flawed in several ways, to the extent I am not sure you even understand the discussion.
Your argument is that a person making a decision (ie: starting war) will not be influenced by concerns about his own life. That’s a statement I think will be hard to argue successfully. I’d suggest that risking OTHER peoples life (especially anonymous people, and especially if considered acceptable in a cultural context) is to the vast majority of people much easier than putting their OWN life at risk.
So the only argument left would be that it is impossible to do, which seems contraticted both by history and logic.
Oddly enough some argue that “full scale invasion” or simmilar strategies would be superior. That is just incredibly illogical. We are talking about how a small country can defend itself against a bigger one in a more cost effective manner. A capacity for a counter invasion would be both impossible to achieve, and the most costly to attempt.
Another thing that came to mind is making a comparison with nuke. Basically the implied threat of nukes is that if you attack us, your whole (or significant parts of) nation will die. Morally speaking, this would seem to be at the bad end of the spectrum. So if you think having a nuclear arsenal is acceptable, it seems hard to argue that any other weapon system isn’t.
