Right but the neighbours presumably do not pay. I consider it to be a non-issue, because it’s your decision in the end whether to finance the good or not, and also because the cost will be reflected in more expensive exports to these neighbours, by individuals who do have to pay for the defence.
-Jon
I largely think no matter how costly a conventional war a guerrila war is always going to be far costlier. The cost is going to be unseen human suffering. Which countries suffered the most killed in European theatre of WWII in terms of percentages of the population? The anwser is USSR, Poland and Yugoslavia. What did all these countries have in common? The anwser is an intense guerrila war. Or how about Vietnam? How many dead Vietnameese civilians for every American casulty inflicted?
You do not need a giant standing army to fight a conventional war. Armies that fought the largest conventional wars were based on mobilisation and swelled in size many times from their peace time size. You can have a small core of proffesionals, of several thousand for very demanding specialised roles like pilots, complex anti-aircraft rocket artillery operators and mechanics. Plus the commanders that would in peace time handle the training. Other roles can be filled by voluntary reservists that mobilise only if there is an imminent danger of war. Thus unlike a militia you have not only reserve infantrymen, but also tank crews, artillerymen and so on. Infact in a long drawn war this could be a mayor advantage against an all-proffessional standing army, because for example you could have 10 times as many crews as you had tanks and artillery, therefore once the production shifted to military equipment you could probably field more armor and artillery pieces than the invader (esspecialy considering it takes more time to train a crew to a decent level than it does to hammer together a tank or a field gun - while on the other hand training a crew is much cheaper than building and maintaining a piece of heavy weaponary).
Civil disobedience has one mayor flaw and that is it assumes the ocuppier has some humanity. It is not a form of protection and defense at all. It is almost an appeal to the rationality and ultimatley humanity of the ocuppier. The British in India were relativley gentlemany by Imperialist standards, as were the Germans on the Western Front (towards non-Jews). But do you really think the Germans would flinch an eyelid if somebody on the Eastern Front started some fancy “civil disobediance”? They would have been promtly killed and that was that. It is not like they cared how many subhumans they killed.
Thats true. It may be generally true in history. But that is not a forgone conclusion, a necessary outcome. We are indeed talking about a society that exists as a libertarian one already and so would have better organized, wealthier, more able citizens to do this sort of thing.
I agree. This is sort of what I imagine happening with militia, consultants or professional tacticians and officers, and professional soldiers/crew/etc.
Well no, I don’t think assumes humanity, it assumes they are economically motivated goal driven humans. That they are human. The same reason the slaves I mentioned are made worthless through them being adamant about their freedom, is why this sort of thing has worked. I never meant though to put the idea forward that I think passive refusal to cooperate can alone be the best defense.
Why did Hitler not invade the Swiss?