IMO it would be difficult for a typical military to hold any major US city. Besides our military, we’ve got thousands and thousands of police officers, and damn near every household owns at least one gun.
I doubt an invasion could even get started, much less be sucessful.
Here’s the latest variation of the subversive strategy suggested by APB9999 and furthered by Gorsnak. I am assuming that the goal of the invasion is not to defeat the military assets of the US but rather to control the actions of the US government or to control various US assets. I further assume that this plan will be conducted by a nation-state with substantial resources to commit.
The plan begins with a series of terror attacks against the US populace. See the recent thread about ideas for terrorist attacks for many chilling suggestions. I personally favor a large number of sniper teams, since they involve minimal resources, paralyze large numbers of people, are difficult to catch (especially if well-trained) and will not be traceable to us. Then we acquire something like ten suitcase nukes, sneaking them into major US cities and detonating them.
These attacks will damage the US economy immeasurably, but their real purpose is to undermine faith in the current administration. They have the added advantage of being untraceable, given sufficient resources and attention to detail.
We will seize control in the next election cycle. Ideally, in the years preceding the attacks, we send something like a million immigrants per year into the US with the understanding that they be politically active (and of course support our eventual candidates). Of course they are not enough to sway many elections under normal circumstances, but if the sniper teams have been doing their jobs, voting turmouts should be at a record low since no one will want to leave the house. Even if this proves infeasible, I am optimistic about the possiblilty of large donations through shell corporations and enthusiastic lobbying directed towards candidates who are already favorable to the kinds of policies that we want to encourage.
With the combination of a few billion dollars spread out discreetly to important house and senate races, we should be able to get lawmakers who are very sympathetic to our interests. We use our newfound leverage to install our people in positions of authority over the next several years. Once our people take office, their tough new policies miraculously stem the tide of terrorism, making them instant heros. Their policies will go largely unquestioned, and those who complain too much will be shouted down as unamerican. After six years or so we should have basically unlimited access to American resources and enough votes to determine any relevant US policies, foreign and domestic.
The biggest problems I see with this plan is the political angle. It is difficult to predict exactly what will happen after the critical election cycle. Hopefully we can get some people who are explicitly loyal to us elected, but I suspect that we will mostly have to rely on the malleability of existing politicians. The hard part would be getting politicians who are indebted to us (but not loyal to or even aware of our organization) to vote as we want them to. I am not knowledgable enough about politics to guess how easy or hard this would be.
This isn’t a holiday excursion - this is an occupation.
I think we should clear up any confusion here - let’s suspend disbelief for a moment and assume an aggressive force has defeated the US military, and all that remains is the <partially armed> US populous.
Now, what follows entirely depends on what the goals of the aggressor are, but we can make a few general assumptions:
the majority of the US population is located in heavily built-up urban centres. These are not caves like in Afghanistan that you hide in and coordinate guerilla attacks - they are buildings that can be levelled by arial bombardment, assult by tanks, and ground forces. Essentially an urban centre is relatively easy for an opposing force to subdue, provided they have no qualms with flattening it should the need arise.
to defeat an opposing army, any resistance would have to be organsied. With no form of communication the US populous would be unable to pose any significant threat.
You then go on to say:
You can’t snipe with a shotgun, nor pistol. Where there is any significant number of oposition, their positions can be bombarded. Where there isn’t any significant oposition, they won’t make any difference.
And let’s not even get into the fact that the populous would be blockaded. With their food supplies cut off they wouldn’t survive very long.
And while there may be more guns in the US than there are people, that doesn’t mean everyone is armed. They are not. And even fewer would be willing to fight.
Susann, just a small reply, Switzerland would not actually be safer than the US, it has more automatic weapons per head of population than any country in the world,
One thing many people forget is how many of the population would soon adapt to being occupied, the behaviour of the occupying forces has much to with how much resistance there would be.
If the occupying forces declared that every soldier killed by resistance , 2-3 or more civillians chosen at random would die, you would soon see people turning each other in. As patriotic as we all think we would be, many change their minds very quickly.
There’s a Chuck Norris movie titled Invasion USA. I think the plot involves numerous terrorist attacks by a team of hundreds. I guess the easiest way to harm the USA would be to methodically terrorize the population over a span of say, a decade. This could be carried out by a worldwide organization with no particular link to any country. Maybe a smuggled nuke or two could be detonated, and threats of a fourth or fifth in various cities would definitely lead to unprecedented chaos.
What if right now, Osama or Saddam, would make the announcement that there is a nuke hidden in, say Chicago. Wouldn’t that mean chaos for that city? Some americans might sit tight in a defiant attitude. Others may flee. But it would certainly drop real estate values.
Just a thought
I haven’t read everything here - that would take forever. I recently saw a bit of data that may be of interest, though. Even if we were to assume that whatever invasion force could cripple our entire military infrastructure (a major assumption to say the least), we are still the most heavily armed country in the world. A few of the posts I’ve seen have touched on this, but here’s the actual data: US population ~280M, # of firearms privately owned: 200M. That’s enough firepower to arm over 70% of the entire population of this country - men, women AND children. Another statistic reveals that not only are we armed to the teeth, but we’re not afraid to use it either: In either 2000 or 2001 (I can’t remember which) the highest # of firearm-related murders recorder in all of Europe was attributed to Switzerland with a whopping 40 killed. In that same year the US recorded over 10,000 firearmed-related murders! I present these stats as indication that, even with a decisive victory over the military, there would be little chance of achieving a successful occupation of this country.