If you want a military, go right ahead. Don’t force me to pay for it though, because then YOU would be the tyrant ‘coming in’ and ‘taking me over’.
Are you asking about a voluntary/private military or a statist military?
Perhaps, but he used tanks to avoid open insurrections. Tanks are very terrifying machines. Saddam would park T-72s and T-55s in big city squares as a method of manifesting the power of the State as a threat. The Israelis and the United States do the same thing.
This is a common fallacy. Israeli tanks were very, very efficient against Hezb’allah insurgents in Southern Lebanon.
Efficient in the sense of killing people and blowing stuff up.
They were absolutely useless in terms of winning the war.
The logical conclusion of a state’s total war against an unwieldy population is overwhelming force and concentration camps. That’s how the British obliterated the Boer Republics of South Africa. After the conventional war was won by the Redcoats, the Afrikaaner insurgency sprung up to harass the occupiers. In response, the Empire rounded up the civilian populace into camps and scorched the earth.
By the end of hostilities there were more soldiers in SA than civilians and the mountains of gold under the Witwatersrand were in the hands of the British. Their occupation ended, eventually, meaning the entire conflict was a waste in any case. Statism of any flavor inevitably fails.
no…I’d fight and die…
so thats it? we all would die?
I agree with that…but if we go the pure free market, no government way…we’d be taken over…or at least we could be…
a statist one, like china…
well, that doesn;'t sound like fun…going through concentration camps and enemy soldiers everywhere…
the no military thing didn’t sound like it worked out for them…
Okay. No, we do not need one. Yes, it is possible that a tyrant would try to take us over. However, in all likelihood, there would develop private defense agencies to help protect people.
Maybe we wouldn’t. Depends on how many of us, how many of them. If we are the size of Monaco then yes they could pack every single one of us off to a concentration camp and that is that.
But if there is twenty million of us, well then I pity the fool…
Private defense agencies?
Wha?
What are those?
what what good are…nevermind…you know what…screw it…this debate is going nowhere…
This is untrue. Whether the 2006 war was won or lost is another matter, but tanks were useful towards the objective of winning it. Tanks, given that they are heavily armored pillboxes (the Israelis lost five tanks permanently; some tanks were hit twenty times by MANPATs and survived), were very useful in the direct artillery role, and for heavy firepower. They are just as useful in Iraq (you can ask an infantryman who has ever received armored support). Whether a militia could afford them is another thing, but if an individual (or a group of four individuals) could afford a tank, and there were enough of them in a militia, then the tank would be very useful.
Like body guards, the security at malls, posses, Brinks, banks, etc.
Look mate this is how I see it. You win the war if you accomplish what you set out to accomplish when you launched it. Israel went to war with one objective in mind and that was: to weaken Hezbollah. Now did they succeed in that? No. Did they kill many members of Hezbollah? Yes. Was Hezbollah weaker for it? No. Actually, having given a good account of itself in the fighting Hezbollah actually emerged stronger from the war. Which means Israel lost the war, having made things worse for itself in regard to the objective it intended to accomplish.
Yes tanks were useful for destroying bunkers and helping to push into Lebanon. But did destroying bunkers and taking some ground bring Israel any closer to achieving its overarching objective of weakening Hezbollah? No, not in this type of war fought against a non-state entity.
BTW, do you know about William S. Lind and the rest of the 4GW crowd? I do not agree with everything they say, but they offer some really fine insight into unconventional warfare. Among other things they explain how powerful weaponry is actually a liability in unconventional warfare since the moral level is crucial in such a conflict and the moral level heavily favours the underdog.
Well, the Queen of England parks armed guards in feathered hats in front of Buckingham Palace, that doesn’t make them a manifestation of power. It just makes a tourist attraction.
Knights used to parade around in their ornate armor and contest in tournaments. That did not make them any less obsolete on the battlefield.
Hezbollah is as strong as ever. All the Israeli tanks achieved was parading around the country, destroying state infrastructure that Hezbollah made no claim on.
Tanks could not stop an insurrection, they could stop an attempt at establishing a new state. They are a state vs. state weapon, useless in low-intensity warfare.
Another of van Creveld’s point in The Transformation of War is that simply engaging an enemy that is weaker than yourself will demoralize your men, because there is no honor in fighting them. This is why colonial armies have been defeated over and over in the late 20th century. (van Creveld also lists all sorts of zany examples of colonial armies attempting to keep morale up, for example the U.S. marines helicoptering cold beer to its troops.)
Right, but like I said in the second sentence, this was not what I was arguing. I never claimed that Israel won or lost the war.
This doesn’t mean tanks are useless. This just means that Israel had a poor strategy when they invaded Southern Lebanon (or maybe it was even a war which Israel could never win).
I think that conclusion could be agreeable, but heavy ordnance such as tanks are becoming nearly impregnable against existent MANPAT weapons; Israeli Merkavas were surviving even Kornet-E hits. I am not saying they are invincible, as the Israelis had five tanks permanently knocked-out (and, I believe another 35 which had to be repaired to varying degrees), but for the purpose of at least advancing as far north as the Israelis really wanted to, the tank was absolutely necessary. Tanks have been used by all States as a tool to weaken the enemy’s morale, and this includes insurgents. If you ask those who are experienced in Iraq, for example, they will note that insurgents tend to opt to attack armor-supported formations less. Israeli Merkavas were also incredibly useful in urban warfare in Lebanon in 1982, when the IDF temporarily occupied Tyre.
Now, whether the tank is the end-all be-all of heavy fire support, this is probably a resounding “no”. The Israelis themselves are opting for much cheaper, but heavily armored and heavily armed ad hoc AFVs built from old chassis.
To be honest, I have entertained the idea of writing something on the tank from a “Misesian” point of view; or its role as a manifestation of the State on the ground. I would cover the history of the tank during the Second World War (mainly German tanks, since those were developed with relatively less sense of purpose), the Cold War (Soviet military parades and the “tank gap”) and then the tank in dictatorial regimes (and even democratic regimes, like Spain, where the State is glorified through huge military parades with large numbers of tanks).
This would unite my interest in the tank with my interest in Austrian economics and “Austrian” political theory. I don’t think it would be wise to go into the tank in an anarchic society, given that nobody really knows what people would subjectively prefer, or what the situation requires. A militia versus a professional military would probably mean that the militia would have a very difficult time using tanks, although armored vehicles are probably not out of the question, given that the professional military will probably have command of the air.
Bad analogy which missed the point.
This does not show a failure in the use of the tank; it shows a failure in Israeli strategy.
Again, this is untrue. Ask anybody with low-intensity warfare experience in the Israeli or American militaries.