The reason why the U.S. created a professional army is because of the failure or inefficacy of the militia in the War of 1812. In my opinion, the issue of national warfare is the biggest practical issue with anarcho-capitalism. You cannot ignore the economies of scale, the massive organizational structure, and the technology at the inter-national level of warfare. National defense should be the main reason for the federal government’s existence. Of course, it’s become far too dictatorial, controlling, and imperialistic.
Militaries are subject to diseconomies of scale as well, every person you add to the decision-making process NECESSARILY lengthens the ooda loop of the organization. Technology has no particular bias towards large units or small units, and high technology, as a rule, is vulnerable to low-tech countermeasures. These massive state militaries are among the most inefficient and dysfunctional institutions ever to exist.
I expect voluntary subscriptions and ad-hoc groups to replacement politicians, taxes, and the resulting supposed “mass action” of the existing political process.
So, for an ancap area to have a military, what has to happen is that the people there have to feel the need for a military strongly enough that they’re willing to voluntarily fund the buildup of a military service (‘service’ actually used in its proper, economic/business, sense).
This business would then accept employees and train them in military concepts. They might indeed go so far as to invest in tanks and jets and the like as prudence dictates.
Historically this is indeed how militaries have built up, but more on a city-state level. The history of Venice and Athens shines brightly in that respect. What swept the city-state concept away was the Nation-state concept.
That’s our challenge, to meet that level of organization with an ancap equivalent. Could one particular protection service become so successful that an entire nation would contribute voluntary payments to it for the abstract quality of military protection? Or maybe a few competing ones?
Well, we’ll see how things play out. Most places wouldn’t need military protection at all really, above their own individual personal protection strategies.
@ shackleford
The War of 1812 was unjust. It was aggression. If you want aggression, then a military is what you need. If you want a defense composed of people who care about defending their property and their loved ones, a militia is best suited.
Yeah, granted the militia are made up of ideologically driven, dirt poor, self-sufficient farmers with absolutely nothing to lose and are far more numerous and well suited to their terrain than the invaders.
Vietnamese didn’t win out of the virtue of not owning tanks and missiles. They won because they were tough as hell, and US troops weren’t.
Was it? The British were seizing American ships and stealing American sailors and drafting them into their own navies. Is that not aggression?
Incidents happen like this all the time between states. I think that the U.S. wasn’t using diplomacy, and there were numerous people in Congress who were anxious to test the newfound military strength of the United States.
And if used adequetely, militias could bring any army to it’s knees. Take a look at the Chinese Civil War. Mao recruited a bunch of agrarian peasents, and they bled the KMT Army dry through their tactics. So in the end, it’s not about the size of the force, it’s about the tactics and the will.
The vietnamese communists won because they had superior infantry, superior organization, and superior strategic/tactical decision making skills.
The Viet Cong, at their core, were an organized militia.
Except it wasn’t an incident, it was habitual and disrupting trade.
On Vietnam: This is all kind of besides the point anyways. The US was engaging in a bizarrely restrained warfare until the Nixon administration because they were held back for political reasons. When Kissinger got in the white house, they started bombing the shit out of Cambodia and Vietnam and crippled Cambodia really more than Vietnam:
The US had clear air superiority and could have easily crushed the Vietnamese in a half a year, but that wasn’t politically possible or the strategic aim of the war. Just realize that states can engage in Total War. Anarchic territories cannot and must rely on hiding, which becomes less and less feasible with the developing military technology, such as drone-bombers w/ thermal imaging.
So what’s going on in the Middle East right now? The insurgent groups are using Maoist tactics. Draw them into the countryside and bleed them dry. And even with all this fancy U.S. technology, they continue to pick off soldiers because it’s all about tactics.
Is it really the intention of the US to destroy our enemies though?
EDIT: Thanks for the link to the UkAnArmy
Well if we’re going to think about that, then shouldn’t we also think about the intentions of the statists who invade our voluntary society? Invasion is a wrong term - being that you can’t necessarily invade a voluntarily society in general. So if they were to “invade,” it would mean invading our property. Now since that is so, I’m assuming they are an imperialistic state looking to further their Empire by annexing in the society, similar to Japan’s 35-year imperialistic expansion. So they don’t necessarily want to “destroy” us per se. They want to impose their will on us. Naturally, with a lot of liberty-minded people, an organized revolt would form, probably through the private militias formed in the free market.
The difference is that our territory would be a medium-term of delegitimating Statism. The war with the muslims does nothing of the sort, in fact it increases their authority. The muslims have been radicalized into a people who need to strike back at the US and Israel and provide an excellent narrative for increased military spending and infringement of civil liberties. With the anarchists, not so. To let them hang around and do their thing is to lose the intellectual ground which justifies their power. One would only have to look to Ancapistan to see that, wow, yes, it does indeed work. With the muslims, that is not an issue as muslim ideology in no way challenges authority at a fundamental level and provides a nice drawn-out dependable source of conflict
“Are you poking fun at my arbitrary percentage or what? Anyways, why?”
Yes I am, I thought it would lighten the mood, and I kind of thought that’s what you were going for when you gave me the decimal point of a percentage.
I understand why you believe what you believe, thank you for explaining your thought process.
On the matter of militia and military:
Militias will do better wherever and whenever the environment in which they function better suits them. This will depend upon three major separate factors: The environment, the will, resources, and strategy of the invading force, and how the militia deals with this. In Vietnam, for instance, there was a perfect storm of the militia, with a great environment for guerilla tactics, an enemy who was unable to really “invade” or “occupy” for any number of reasons, and the militia had a great strategy and an extremely strong will to carry on fighting.
I would like to point out, however, that it would appear none of the militias which we are talking about; Vietcong, Afghani terrorists, and colonial militia, actually succeeded in preventing their homelands from being invaded, and all experienced exceedingly high losses. What is extremely relevant, however, is that all of them did at least moderately well even though they were quite poor, and we would probably assume that the anarchist society would be fairly wealthy, and in our day there are fairly cheap ways to make tools which can annihilate very expensive pieces of equipment.
you cant force a defeat in war through strategic bombing, at least not with conventional ordnance. You cant even really do much but make people’s lives miserable and cause them to be more devoted to their cause. Theres a study the airforce did, that they tried to bury that basically established that conventional ordnance literally cannot do this, it would just take more explosives than anyone has. I will try to link it, but I havent seen the study (I read about it in a bio of john boyd) so I will have to do some digging. But you need to destroy strategic assets to win a war, and the us didnt have any idea what the north vietnamese strategic assets even were, much less how to destroy them. Some strategic assets cant be destroyed by bombing unless you somehow kill everyone that knows something without making their neighbors upset.
I disagree on both counts, the united states could not operate in the air safely where it counted (close to the deck, near locations of enemy activity), the north vietnamese had perhaps the heaviest concentration of AA assets ever seen, and managed to contribute to the loss of over 8,000 aircraft over the course of the war. As for winning in six months, you have got to tell me how. I think its possible they could have won in a matter of years at a fraction of the cost in lives and equipment by diverting the majority of resources to the Combined Action Program. But thats assuming there were qualified personnel for that many cap platoons (there werent) and ideological acquiescence to the idea of a decentralized counterinsurgency force (american military ideology was/is largely opposed).
agreed. But I dont agree that they could have achieved the strategic goal of “eradication of communism as an ideological force in french indochina” through strategic bombing, under any conditions.
oftentimes to their own detriment.
I think it has been many years before anyone could be in a war and not hide. Part of the reason the coalition forces cant get any traction in afghanistan is that they are just too conspicuous. Put it this way, if you can give me an enemy location, I can give you a dead enemy. But that death comes at a cost, and I am not talking about the arty round.
dont buy the hype. Drones are very good at what they do, which is deliver ordnance to targets you already know about. Looking for someone with a drone is like looking for someone while riding a motorcycle while looking through a toilet paper tube. I have mixed feelings on thermal and ir-spectrum optics, because the technology hasnt matured yet, and its still really expensive. Plus there are tactical considerations that will not go away no matter what you do. I could address this from several angles, it depends on what premises we share. Do you agree that killing people who are not combatants has a detrimental effect on the achievement of strategic goals?
because one major problem with optics is Identification of Friend or Foe (IFF) issues. For example, while there are glint tape and ir (infrared) beacons for night vision, those technologies are still emergent with regard to thermal (I got some thermal glint tape at a trade show but my understanding is that its not issued yet). The last time I heard of anybody using thermal signals they put two 9v batteries terminal to terminal in a sock.
thats kind of irrelevant because you could easily suggest that they develop a thermal beacon, that’s achievable. But it still doesnt help you identify the enemy, just friendlies. As for night vision, I can still remember my squad being forced to patrol while each of us was wearing an ir strobe. It was extremely difficult to use my optics whenever one of my guys was anywhere in my field of view. And we looked like an airport runway, it was impossible to miss us through night vision. All my concerns were dismissed, so you can imagine my anger when I found out that insurgents were using digital cameras for low-cost night vision. Patrols that are lit up and blinking like that have no chance of surprising the enemy. Not to mention practical equipment issues (most of the force is still wearing pvs-14’s mounted on shitty mounts attached to ill-fitting helmets). You have to go all the way to pvs-21’s for a solution to the blooming, because somebody can saturate your optic with radiation and you wont be able to see anything through the optic. All this equipment is heavy, requires training, integration, and support, and tend to interfere with the mission rather than facilitate its accomplishment (I’d like to see a procurement officer try to do any observation or firing from the prone while wearing a helmet and nv device). Dont forget about thermal crossover. A little anecdote to wrap it up, rumour has it that the instructors at the scout-sniper basic course wear orange jumpsuits for the portion of the course where the students try to locate the instructors. As they say, concealment is 95% microterrain and all of those optics are line-of-sight. I will admit that some thermals, like those on the sabre anti-tank missile system, are good enough to recognize faces. But I dont quite remember how far out you can do that. Sabre isnt man-portable anyway.
How about switzerland. I think switzerland would be a good topic of discussion.
Its right smack dab in the middle of europe (ww1, ww2, cold war, various 19th century wars) and hasnt been in a formal war in almost 200 years.
Mainly due to neutral policy, and that the terrain is hard as fuck to invade. Ive read that virtuall every citizen is armed and trained,
The structure of the Swiss militia system stipulates that the soldiers keep their own personal equipment, including all personally assigned weapons, at home (until 2007 this also included ammo[3]).
The above is a given due to the nature of anarchist societies (most citizens will own weapons).
Though they have military conscription in switzerland, this is not a major issue, because in ancapiland, if there is a war, virtually every citizen will have to fight 1 way or another or else they will lose their private property.
If ancapiland resides in a hostile region prone to military attack, private road companies could theoretically wire each rode, bridge or overpass with explosives in case of an event of invasion, thus making it 9999X harder for a country to invade. (doubt this will be likely)
Switzerland is a brilliant example of the power of a militia. However - they employ conscription, something that I despise.
@ Neo - sorry, the “anyway, why?” sentence was meant to be referring to myself.
@ Malachi - well you’ve been in the military clearly and this is interesting to get a perspective from someone who’s familiar with its equipment.
On strategic assets: wouldn’t these be obvious in Ancapistan, as free capitalism would be conducive to a higher division of labor meaning less people doing subsistence farming stuff? Wasn’t Vietnams relative poverty actually an aid to their war in that it meant that their strategic assets were well dispersed or invisible?
On Air Superiority: what about the bombing of the cambodian border where north vietnamese were sneaking in supplies? What about the Agent Orange campaign?
On Hiding: makes sense.
Generally don’t you think that a war in Ancapistan would be devastating, and especially so because free trade and advanced division of labor are not suitable for warfare?